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To dab et al. user:Barefact continues his old pan-Turkist campaign, this time on Yamna culture, discarding the Kurgan hypothesis as a specimen of "19th-century European nationalism". My edits are summarily reverted. The guy has the habit of content forking which results in such pages as Kangly (alongside the better-established Pecheneg) or Turkic Khaganate (alongside our traditional page Göktürks), so it's only reasonable to anticipate similar developments in this case. Please keep an eye on the page. -- Ghirla -трёп- 21:32, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
Hell's bells, but
if this article isn't about the worst article I've seen on Wikipedia in some time. I think we need some extra eyes here.
ScienceApologist (
talk) 23:58, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
sigh -- the spelling " Türkic" is a dead giveaway barefact's at it again. I suppose his unsourced stuff should be blanked without further ado. This would amount to about the same as programming a vandalbot to blank all additions that contain the string "Türkic". I guess that FACT NEEDED ( talk · contribs) is just a sock of barefact's. It may be about time to escalate this and officially promote Barefact to "Ararat arev" status. -- dab (𒁳) 12:47, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Another barefact hotspot is Turkic alphabets, which he keeps turning into a confused content fork of Old Turkic script. I had missed yet another revert of his back in June. See Talk:Turkic alphabets for the more than year-long history of this piece of idiocy. -- dab (𒁳) 12:52, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Another disruptive editor on an anti-
Kurgan hypothesis mission? Sigh... -
Merzbow (
talk) 00:49, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
it appears that barefact has just lost the monopoly on the "Türk" spelling -- enter MagyarTürk ( talk · contribs)! dab (𒁳) 09:11, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
I think the evidence linked from this section will suffice to permaban barefact. His protracted campaign of edit-warring, dedicatied violation of MOS and CFORK by insisting to duplicate Old Turkic script at Turkic alphabets (well after he had been told that the latter clearly needs to redirect to Turkic alphabet), and the protracted and incorrigible insertion of fringecruft and Godwinian rants into article space,
and finally, if that isn't enough, suspected sockpuppetry [6] (may require a RCU). At this point, this isn't a case for WP:FTN, but for taking admin action. Hence I suggest the case should be presented at WP:AN. dab (𒁳) 09:33, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
M. Alinei's Paleolithic Continuity Theory -- the place where crackpots of all creeds and races meet. dab (𒁳) 20:49, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Alinei is quotable, within WP:DUE, since he published academically. Barefact, however, goes around touting soundbites from Alinei as facts. Alinei's PCT is notable enough for a dedicated article, I suppose, but it is far too eccentric to be even mentioned at unrelated articles, let alone mentioned prominently. PCT is bona fide WP:FRINGE, the guideline is intended precisely for cases like this. incidentially, the claim that Gimbutas was a Baltic nationalist would need some backup too. Notably, her hypothesis does not locate the PIE Urheimat in her own country, a feature which (understandably) is exceptionally rare among nationalist "theorists". In fact, Gimbutas' allegiance was to her sex, not her nation, and admittedly her later work is far too second-wave-feminist to be taken at face value. She is an icon of Wiccans and die-hard-matriarchs, not of Baltic nationalism. -- dab (𒁳) 08:41, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm working through all this. Hold on a sec. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate) 14:59, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Could someone here have a look at Marfa lights? The wildest claims seem to be near the end. -- Steven J. Anderson ( talk) 21:09, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
After some issues on other articles surrounding the topic of abiogenic oil from a certain user, I went in to the main article to see if it couldn't be cleaned up a bit. Turns out, for a fringe science (I'm calling it that because nobody in the petroleum business takes it seriously or has been able to use the ideas behind it to find oil), this article is really long and technical. One move I made was to change instances of "theory" on the article to "hypothesis", because there is no evidence that shows any discovered petroleum to be of an abiogenic origin. This hasn't sat well with one editor who has reverted me a few times using edit summaries that I still don't quite know what to make of [9]. Any help hashing this out and pruning the article to conform with wp:undue would be appreciated. NJGW ( talk) 17:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Hi all.
Currently there are a number of editors at Talk:Cold fusion actively working for New Energy Times to try to get our Wikipedia article to conform to a position that treats the subject with more favor than mainstream secondary sources give it. They are writing articles about editing Wikipedia and publishing them on-line, glowingly praising themselves for getting the article into such a state.
Now the article is protected right now by an administrator who sees the issue as a contest of equals (which it manifestly is not, but I digress). The current version up I think is better than previous versions, but there are some issues.
There are more issues, but this gives a decent overview. Basically, there are a number of users asserting ownership over an article which needs to be carefully vetted lest we mislead the reader into thinking there is more to Cold Fusion than meets the mainstream eye.
Thanks in advance.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:08, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Now the new tactic being advocated is that WP:FRINGE doesn't apply to Cold fusion! Amazing. I started a request for comment on the subject. ScienceApologist ( talk) 19:56, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
(undent) That whole article is a bit messy... the lead doesn't even say what cold fusion is (see this old version for an example of what would be a more informative lead). That should probably be followed by a section on fusion in general and why the scientific community generally doesn't accept cold fusion, followed by a section on the arguments for it, and then the history (as it's virtually a trivia section in this case). Just my take on the layout to help it approximate the scientific consensus. NJGW ( talk) 18:26, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
Again re the Storms book: I don't think there is any precedent for a scientific book to be deemed unreliable even in the circumstances of WP:REDFLAG. If you can prove me wrong, fine. I really do not want this case to set a precedent that we can judge for ourselves what is or isn't scholarly simply on our impression of a book's contents. BTW, "one-sided" is to be expected in the context of academic disagreement. The usual remedy is to balance with an opinion on the opposite side. Itsmejudith ( talk) 10:34, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
The section "Statistics" seems to be one huge original synthesis. Article has been tagged as NPOV violation since March 2007. I found it in the backlog, where there are many other fringey articles. Itsmejudith ( talk) 15:00, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
It needs a reference discussing "race and crime" head-on. Just citing various statistics and pulling a "race and crime" analysis from them is pure WP:SYN. dab (𒁳) 10:00, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Some SPAs have popped up to revert back in the statistics section: I've reverted and blocked + semiprotected. The rest of the article isn't that great either, so I agree that a merge to someplace else is probably the best option. Long-term, eyes will need to be kept on this material wherever it winds up. It's a natural spill-off point for the Race and intelligence warriors. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate) 14:52, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
The statistics section looks like it was terrible. FYI, the topic itself is tiptoed around in academia. The most influential paper on the subject in recent years is this one, which has its own article. Though the paper purports to "not be about race" this is hotly disputed. My own belief is that an article is warranted but would probably be un-maintainable. -- Relata refero ( disp.) 18:18, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
somewhat predictably, we get editors at that article emphasizing the dates preferred in medieval Talmudic philology, trying to tone down actual academic consensus by blatant editorializing ("the Talmud says 1200 BC, however, some confused modern scholars are unsure about it and find it difficult to accept"). Any article introducing academic mainstream position in a "however" phrase following some historical or eccentric minority position is clearly in WP:UNDUE WP:FRINGE territory. Of course (as always in these cases), Talmudic philology should also be discussed, in proper terms, DULY, and at the pertinent articles. -- dab (𒁳) 09:54, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Could someone else please have a word with Meieimatai ( talk · contribs)? I am at my wit's end trying to reply to his misconceptions and explain things to him. It's gotten to the point where he's just trashing normative scholarship. [11] [12] You review Talk:Torah and his talk page if you need a better idea of his ideas and approach. Can someone please help? Vassyana ( talk) 04:15, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I'd be grateful if someone more knowledgeable than myself could have a look at Talk:Black Stone#Hindu view and this edit, which an anonymous IP editor has repeatedly been adding. Essentially the editor is claiming that the Ka'aba in Macca was originally a Hindu temple (!) and is citing an apparently fringe scholar in support of that claim. I've had a look at the sourcing, which seems to be very thin indeed; some second opinions would be useful. -- ChrisO ( talk) 12:46, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
complete nonsense. -- dab (𒁳) 15:24, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
The source regarding Abdul Haq if you look into the Google data base it states one source that was reviewed and digitized from the University of Michigan see ([ [13]]) that review from the University of Michigan should be reliable enough. -- BabaTabla ( talk) 16:53, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
It's still an source and the academic Oxford should be one reliable source according to footnotes it falls into category. -- BabaTabla ( talk) 17:01, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
For the benefit of any admins who might read this, it may be useful to explain that the Ka'aba is as important to Muslims as the Cross is to Christians, so it is very important to defend this article from fringecruft. Looie496 ( talk) 17:48, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
this is such a non-issue. BabaTabla, read WP:FRINGE, WP:NOTE, WP:DUE. Ahmadiyya authors often come up with far out surreal stuff. Discuss these in Ahmadiyya related topics, if at all notable, but don't spam unrelated articles with this. dab (𒁳) 20:29, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
you can go through more sources they can be found in the google book search. The information seems to have a good amount of sources here are some
Some Academic Sources:
Regual search:
There seems to be indefinte sources and sure deserves to be notable. -- BabaTabla ( talk) 15:48, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Stop citing cranky literature of the sort of "Jesus in Kashmir - The Lost Tomb", "Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence" ( Stephen Knapp!) or "Indian Kshatriyas Once Ruled from Bali to Baltic". You must not think very highly of everyone else's intelligence to say the least. You want to proceed as follows: If you are interested in the Sayar-ul-Okul, write an article, based on reliable sources, at Sayar-ul-Okul. Once you've done that, come to Talk:Black Stone and seek WP:CONSENSUS for including a brief mention and a link to the Sayar-ul-Okul article at the Black Stone article. dab (𒁳) 16:09, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
[ [21]] there just sources now you can see that there notable ? -- BabaTabla ( talk) 16:23, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I've googled Sayar-ul-Okul and created a stub. Allegedly an 18th century Ottoman anthology of Arabic poetry, it is only ever mentioned in crackpot Hindutva trash literature. Even the alleged editions of 1864 and 1932, which feel credible enough, are taken from Hindutva sources. I have tagged my own stub with {{ hoax}} until we can at least substantiate the existence of the manuscript. dab (𒁳) 16:43, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Since I've been unable to substantiate the existence of this manuscript, I've userified my stub, see User talk:Dbachmann/Sair al-Okul for details. dab (𒁳) 17:13, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Seems full of OR and POV nonsense. Doug Weller ( talk) 21:06, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
This is weird. I've never heard of "British Israelism" before this, and would like some confirmation that the term is actually used beyond some small groups. Obviously there are lots of weird theories still splashing around about Biblical characters, incluing Jesus, visiting Britain at some point in their careers, but I've never heard of anyone unifying these under the heading "British Israelism". What we look to have here is the last remnant of cranky 19th century nationalist pseudoscience. I think the article should probably focus more on said 19th century crankiness and less on it's 20th/21st century remnant. But academic sources may be scarce. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate)
"hyper-rational Americans"?? The only people who still believe in this stuff are the followers of Armstrongism, via Edward Hine. This stuff is a creature of the Georgian era. Back then, it was still possible even for educated people to entertain speculations that have long since been ruled out. If the last shred of credibility this may once have had didn't expire with George IV, it did most certainly with John Wilson. Today, this isn't more than a curiosity of the history of Georgian Britain, and of the Christian fundamentalist lunatic fringe in the USA. dab (𒁳) 15:26, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
This was a surprisingly widespread fantasy in earlier generations, and there is no problem sourcing it: the LC subject heading is "Anglo-Israelism" and WorldCat has 932 books under that subject, the most recent from 2008, including a number of active periodicals. The British Israel World Federation alone has 171 entries there. From what i understand, the article is actually in my opinion a pretty good start, with appropriate links and references. That it comes across as nonsense is another matter entirely. . DGG ( talk) 07:05, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
User:PTWilkinson is new today and is 'removing vandalism', ie stuff he doesn't like, from this article (Wilson is a pseudo-historian). It's bad enough anyway, with a lot of unsourced stuff about his career, but Wilkinson's changes and deletions [27] turn it into even more of a PR piece. I've reverted twice so far but obviously can't continue. I will add that of course we must follow WP:BLP. Doug Weller ( talk) 13:54, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Would someone with knowledge of nutrition like to cast an eye on the short sentence in Blackberry that deals with the antioxidant content. AFAIK, all fruit and vegetables contain antioxidants. And antioxidants are probably good for you. Certainly fruit and veg are good for you. They taste great. Let's all eat plenty of them. Obsessing about the exact proportions of antioxidants in blackberries compared to blueberries and other fruit could be getting into fringe territory and the source doesn't look great. Itsmejudith ( talk) 19:37, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Osteomyology is currently the subject of an edit war. One version is promotional and the other appears to be plagued with original research. It needs some serious attention from people knowledgeable in cleaning up original research and with experience in medical fringe topics. Vassyana ( talk) 05:00, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Could some univolved could take a look at it. IP is reverting well refernced version in favour of openly anti-Semitic essay containg frases like "Jewish lies", "lies about false numbers of Holocaust" etc. [28] M0RD00R ( talk) 10:14, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
This idea has two issues: one there is an anon actively editing the article who likely works for the company trying to raise venture capital in support of it. Two, cold fusion proponents don't like the idea to be criticized because it's one of the only attempts to explain how their claimed low energy nuclear reactions could actually exist. So we have two different groups trying to get this pseudoscience crankism redescribed as revolutionary new discovery! Please help. ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:17, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
The term is Hindutvadi.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Tripping Nambiar ( talk • contribs) [30]
Haha, I assure you, the term used is indeed Hindutvadi. I'm glad you know some Sanskrit, Hindutvadi must be the popular adaptation. But please don't add to that by talking out of your ass and suggesting Hindutvadi is inapposite due to "X-vaadin is someone touting X", I'll check up on that. Trips ( talk) 11:55, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Many of the editors active here may not remember this, but we had an epic showdown with a flurry of Hindutva zealot accounts orchestrated from some yahoo group back in 2005-06, as it were the classic original case of pseudoscholarly fringe campaigns with ideological motivation. We were able to tackle it by stubborn sticking to encyclopedic documentation, exposing editors' allegiance by referring to academic literature on the religious right in India -- which gave us our present revisions of Indigenous Aryans, Out of India, Indo-Aryan migration, Voice of India, Koenraad Elst, Subhash Kak and N. S. Rajaram articles besides spin-offs like Historiography and nationalism and ultimately this board. Eventually, the Hindutva sock armies gave up and disruption subsided.
We are now seeing signs of a revival of such, ahem, crusades. Beginning with comparatively harmless naive piety at Hinduism, users Tripping Nambiar ( talk · contribs), Sindhian ( talk · contribs) (and to a lesser extent Wikidas ( talk · contribs)) are currently doing their best towards filling the boots of immortal zealot trolls of the stature of Bharatveer ( talk · contribs), Sbhushan ( talk · contribs) et al.
The articles I mentioned could do with some supervision before this gathers any more momentum. Tripping Nambiar at the moment is blanking away material he doesn't like at Indigenous Aryans. -- dab (𒁳) 12:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
yep, this is just to take note of the general trend. No immediate action is required, but some vigilance is appreciated. In the usual course of events, some of these accounts will soon resort to sockpuppetry as they become frustrated with their 3RR blocks. The more tenacious ones will then prance around for a couple of months (Ararat arev style) before they become frustrated with that game too. -- dab (𒁳) 08:00, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
btw, I think what is ultimately behind this is the Indian general election, 2009. The BJP is going to capitalize on religious tensions and national mysticism in their bid to get back into power, and as a side-effect we'll get months of " ABCD" tech students trying to turn en-wiki into a propaganda platform. That's just how it goes, and we have the tools to deal with it. -- dab (𒁳) 08:22, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Hi guys!. Interesting read of the viewpoint of Dab and his WP majority demographic, actually no its just Dab doing most of the posting as usual. Remember Dab the more you try and propagate a viewpoint on WP by trying to make certain material appear more like the Westboro baptist church for example, and therefore easier to criticize and discredit, the more other/new editors are going to realize the game. The important thing to realize from all viewpoints is that Hindutva cannot be stereotyped with movements seen in the West. There are similarities and important differences that should not be underestimated. Trips ( talk) 14:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if everyone is aware of the discussions going on at [31]. Doug Weller ( talk) 18:10, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if anyone feels up to looking at this - it starts "n ethnic group of people[2] native to mainly the Punjab region[3] of Northern India and Pakistan that have attributes of an ethnic group, tribe and a people.[4][5] The Jat people are considered by some to be the merged descendants of the original Indo-Aryans and a later addition of Indo-Scythian tribes of the region, merging to form the Jat people.[6] Others conclude a native Indo-Aryan lineage on the basis of ethnological, physical and linguistic standards[7][8][9][10][11][12]." Dubious references (I've removed one really racist one), and more of the Aryan race nonsense I tried to get rid of at Kashimiri people. I've been asked to do something about User talk:24.185.128.31 but (a) I am not an Admin and (b) I have to go make naan bread for dinner. Thanks. -- Doug Weller ( talk) 16:38, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
This is one corner of the bottomless pit that is Wikipedia's Indian clan cruft. See also Category:Jat; Category:Kambojas; Category:Khatri clans; Category:Sakaldwipiya; Category:Brahmin communities; Category:Social groups of India. I grant you the topic is complex, but some people truly don't know where to draw the line in their enthusiasm for their ancestry (needless to say, these articles are all written by members of the respective groups). Probably unbeatable is Satbir Singh ( talk · contribs) and his epic coverage of the Kambojas (who get about two brief mentions in all of the Britannica). Devesh.bhatta ( talk · contribs) also deserves mention here. I've pretty much given up keeping track of these things until they start spilling beyond their walled gardens. dab (𒁳) 17:50, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
For reference, here is what can be considered a sane encyclopedic coverage (from a hundred years ago), from the 1911 Britannica ("Some writers have identified the Jats with the ancient Getae, and there is strong reason to believe them a degraded tribe of Rajputs, whose Scythic origin has also been maintained. Hindu legends point to a prehistoric occupation of the Indus valley by this people, and at the time of the Mahommedan conquest of Sind (712) they, with a cognate tribe called Meds, constituted the bulk of the population.") Compare the coverage in the current Britannica,
(that's the full article).I daresay that their "sense of group solidarity [and] pride" is also responsible for Wikipedia's inability to come up with a decent article on them (holds for many other castes as well). To begin with, I would try adapt the "ethnic group of people" to something closer to Britannica's "a peasant caste of northern India and Pakistan" dab (𒁳) 18:01, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
no, using "works by Indian sociologists" isn't realistic. Indian academia is fundamentally broken. It's all political and "communalist" (the Hindu zealots vs. the Muslim zealots vs. the Marxists). We need to base the gist of the article on tertiary sources (encyclopedias), and then flesh them out with whatever secondary sources we can find. -- dab (𒁳) 21:26, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
Talking of Indian topics, I've got some motivated young men at History of Hinduism atm, dropping me vandalism warnings at this point, if anyone's interested. -- dab (𒁳) 21:29, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
See also {{ Sakaldwipiya}} and {{ Kambojas}}. We can be proud if we have full articles on obscure castes and tribes that only receive a brief mention in Britannica or any other print encyclopedia, but to have full navigation templates betwenn a dozen half-baked articles riddled with problems is beyond the reasonable even for a "work in progress". I have moved {{ Sakaldwipiya}} to {{ Ancient India and Central Asia}} in the past in the interst of sanity, but someone apparently felt they had to recreate it... Looking at the epic mess in articles like Brahmin communities, Brahmin gotra system etc. I really what is the problem with the Indian topics. We get a lot of people willing to invest a lot of work in them, but none of them appears to have any basic grasp of good editing, encyclopedicity or style. It's really quite exasperating. dab (𒁳) 09:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Is Koenraad Elst RS? Should we include this paragraph in the article Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh? Otolemur crassicaudatus ( talk) 01:12, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Elst is quotable as a partisan author in Hindutva topics. "Noted Indologist Dr. Koenraad Elst" is ridiculous. "Noted Belgian far-right journalist" is more like it. Giving a full paragraph of Elst ranting at critics is silly. We can state something like "In the opinion of Hindutva supporter Koenraad Elst, criticism of RSS is dishonest.[footnote with link to rant]". dab (𒁳) 09:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Are people aware of this? See [32]. The recent attempts to change Pseudoscience are related to this. Doug Weller ( talk) 20:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I forgot that there is a big disagreement at List of pseudosciences and pseudoscientific concepts with an attempt to delete a large number of subjects, eg pseudo-archaeology, ancient astronauts, etc. 45K worth of stuff. This article is under an ArbCom decision, by the way. I'm obviously suffering from recent lack of sleep since I meant to put this in originally. Doug Weller ( talk) 20:57, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I just did some editing on the Kabbalah Centre article. The entire Teachings section [33] section contains some pretty amazing claims without any sourcing at all, and I wonder if that whole section should be deleted. Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 15:00, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
Thirusivaperur ( talk · contribs) is still engaged in his mindless reverting to a claim of the first attestation of the Tamil language dating to 600 BC at List of languages by first written accounts. [34]
If this was argued in any way, it would be a fringe theory. As it is, no argument is presented in the first place, this is just a Tamil nationalist kid that escaped his long overdue block for some reason. If anyone was to build Thirusivaperur's argument for him (the first scattered evidence of writing in Sri Lanka dates to the date mentioned),I have placed the correct reply here in anticipation. dab (𒁳) 17:04, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
There are some recent changes to the article First Sex that are a bit too deferential to the book and its influence. Standard lines about "The controversy continues" and insinuations that critics are living off the patriarchy's largess. I'm no anthropologist and I've never read Gould Davis, so I don't feel competent to fix the article, but it would be swell if someone more qualified would give it a looking-at. (The article has been in a pretty sorry state for quite some time, in fact.) Thanks. Phiwum ( talk) 20:09, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
(update) There seems to be a new problem developing here, with an editor claiming a right-wing Christian male conspiracy to remove their edits and destroy the wiki with their anti-science. Could do with more eyes. I think I've engaged enough and don't want to get further involved with this editor. -- SesquipedalianVerbiage ( talk) 14:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
Please monitor the contributions of User:Lakinekaki especially at Process equation and Solar cycle where he is adding a lot of pseudoscience to articles about mainstream ideas in defiance of WP:WEIGHT and also his own conflict of interest. Also note that the user is building something of a walled garden to keep previously deleted articles promoting his pet ideas. See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Lakinekaki/Bios theory
ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:29, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
Update:*Again he sees my name and reverts the edit, without even knowing why and what I edited. [41] I fixed 404 error with the archived page. Lakinekaki ( talk) 19:16, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to ask that someone take a look at the FairTax article and the associated sub articles. I've been trying to improve the article and the primary editors will use any claim as long as they can point a reference link at it. While I'm fine with that for the sections on the history of the bill and the social movement behind it the majority of the article is specific predictions of economic activity and when I trace back through the references to find the actual source calculations I find nothing, just bare assertions with no indication of method or models used. After going through the links it appears that only one economist has ever published on the matter, on the pro side and those articles seem to be the source for few if any later citations by other authors. No professional economist has published anything critical of the bill that I can find which makes making the article less of an ad for the group that wrote the bill somewhat challenging. After going over the wikipedia rules it appears to me that the economic prediction parts of this article falls under the WP:FRINGE policy but an outside opinion would be greatly appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kbs666 ( talk • contribs)
This article is a featured article and was featured on Wikipedia's mainpage. Editors who have problems with this article usually are arguing and debating against the topic as opposed to the article. They argue over specific policies and then say that the policy is wrong or false. They may also cite a particular sentence and then say that the whole article is POV or someother taboo. I happen to disagree with the topic but I think the article is not subject to POV or Fringe issues that would tank the article as it is. An editor had a big problem with the article and thought the article was fringe, so I suggested posting the article to this notice page so that the editor may get an outside opinion. The fringe argument centers on sources tied to proponents of the legislation originating from those involved with the topic of the article (like Congresspersons) or those who are proponents of the topic. However, there is also a substantial presence of sourced counter-arguments. This article endeavors to be on the topic of the proposed FairTax legislation and includes who is against it and who is for it and why and what arguments each side uses. EECavazos ( talk) 04:29, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
With all due respect, a "fringe theory" is something along the line of "the earth is flat" or "the moon is made of green cheese" or a tax protester argument such as "no law makes me liable for a U.S. federal income tax." I agree with editors EECavazos and Morphh. The article in question is about the FairTax, an actual proposal to change U.S. tax laws. The proposal has been referenced in the Washington Post, in the Boston Globe, at CNN and other places. I do not support the FairTax itself and I don't edit the Wikipedia article very much, but I agree that the subject of the article is not a "fringe theory" as that term is used in Wikipedia. Debates about the verifiability of sources used in the article, about the neutral point of view of the article, and about other Wikipedia policies and guidelines, are properly handled in the talk page for the article itself -- which is where those kinds of questions have been handled. The argument that the article covers a "fringe theory" is not, in my view, tenable. This noticeboard on "fringe theories" does not seem to be the proper place to be discussing the merits of the article. Yours, Famspear ( talk) 21:15, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
The FairTax is a fringe theory in the sense of WP:Fringe -- it "departs significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view in its particular field of study". It is difficult to find much public academic discussion of it. Most of the published material consists of position papers by proponents, some of whom work in right-wing think tanks. (And the FairTax books, of course.) There is, however, one excellent resource: the recommendations published by the US Official Tax Reform Panel in 2005, which explicitly considered this plan, among others. [43] They placed the FairTax plan in the category "what landed on the cutting room floor", and wrote:
A Houston-based conservative group has recently advocated replacing all federal income taxes (as well as the payroll tax) with a retail sales tax, which it characterizes as the Fair Tax.18 Recognizing that, by itself, a RST would impose an unacceptable burden on low-income families, advocates of the Fair Tax have proposed packaging the RST with a “prebate,” a lump- sum payment to all families intended to offset the burden of the RST on low-income families. Proponents of the plan have not stressed its distributional effects at the opposite end of the income distribution – substantial reductions in tax burdens, broadly similar to those that would occur under a Flat Tax. The panel notes that under the RST the share of total taxes paid by the five percent of families with the highest incomes would fall from 58.6 percent to 37.4 percent.19 It would seem difficult to characterize the resulting system as “appropriately progressive.” In rejecting the RST as a viable reform option, the panel noted these problems: 1. In the absence of the prebate, the replacement RST would violate the requirement that tax reform options be “appropriately progressive.” 2. A prebate program designed to offset the burden on low-income families would cost an estimated $600-780 billion annually, making it by far the largest entitlement program in history. 3. The required sales tax rate would be at least 34 percent – far higher than state sales tax rates and VAT rates found in Europe – and probably much higher, once statutory base erosion and evasion are considered. 4. The federal administrative burden would be similar to that of the income tax. 5. If states continued to levy income taxes, taxpayers would experience little simplification, and complexity might actually increase as states could no longer rely on the administrative efforts of the federal Internal Revenue Service. 6. A targeted cash grant program, in which payments were phased out as income rose, would require calculations of income similar to those under the income tax.
This paper is not cited in the article. Looie496 ( talk) 22:12, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
May I suggest that you take the discussion back to the article's Talk page... You are now discussing issues that do not relate to this noticeboard. Thanks. Blueboar ( talk) 14:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, you read correctly. In case you haven't heard of this (and I'm assuming the frequenters of this noticeboard have heard of almost everything), it's, well, what it sounds like. I just made several edits there: deleted a section of medical claims referenced to a source called INeedCoffee.com (seriously), changed a section title from "How it works" to "Claims of effectiveness" and a few other NPOV and spelling cleanups. I'm bringing this here because I don't intend adding the article to my watchlist. Arguing with someone about whether squirting mountain grown Folger's French roast up one's poop chute might have beneficial medical effects is just a more loathsome experience than I'm prepared to contemplate at this juncture of my temporal existence. Consequently, I'm requesting that others keep an eye on the article. Also, a quick look at Max Gerson and Gerson therapy might not be such a bad idea. I haven't really looked them over myself and don't know if they have problems.-- Steven J. Anderson ( talk) 20:27, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Efforts to rewrite the Kenneth Lay article, presenting the theory that he faked his death, have returned. -- Allen3 talk 19:29, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
At List of minority-opinion scientific theories a known alternative medicine POV-pusher is trying to claim that various pseudoscientific ideas are actually minority opinions within science because there is a peer-reviewed paper on the subject in an out-of-the-way journal. I let him know on his user talk page that the criteria for inclusion should be that the idea has been described as a legitimate theory within science by someone who does not accept the idea. Since there are thousands of journals, it isn't too hard to get any and all crazy ideas published by somebody. That does not make the idea a "minority opinion" within the scientific community. I would appreciate it if people here would watch this article carefully: a lot of POV-pushing seems to be rampant there.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:21, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
It doesn't make sense to demand upfront proof of "refutation" by medical science, and doing so just leads to a proliferation of crap articles which say: "Snakeoil.com reports that the mango juice enema treatment(TM) has a 100% success rate in metastatic cancer; these data hvae not been confirmed or refuted by the medical community." MastCell Talk 19:34, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Some significant changes have been proposed at WP:FRINGE. Input from a larger segment of the community is needed. Thanks. Blueboar ( talk) 12:48, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Persecution of Rastafari has no sources. Is this a legitimate phenomenon and is it notable enough to be separate from Rastafari?
Also, see the main Rastafarianism article. A lot of rastafarian theology is presented as fact and the article is more of a sermon than an encyclopedia entry.
Perfect example from the main article:
Rastafari is not a highly organized religion; it is a movement and an ideology. Many Rastas say that it is not a "religion" at all, but a Way of Life.
Also:
Today, Rastas are not just Black African, but also include other diverse ethnic groups including Native American, White, Māori, Indonesian, Thai, etc.
The article is a treasure trove of bullshit. ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 07:58, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
To clarify: I don't mean to demean Rastafari or claim Rastafari itself is B.S.. I'm saying the article is B.S.. -- just in case that wasn't clear.
Also, another thing I've noticed: The article puts forth the fringe theory that the word, cannabis, is derived from the Hebrew "qaneh bosom." ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 19:00, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
I just removed a shittonne of unrelated stuff about fluorosis from the Water fluoridation conspiracy theory. More eyes would help! ScienceApologist ( talk) 21:15, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
We need some incredulous people at Talk:Atropa belladonna who are willing to combat a severe amount of ignorance.
I have two editors who don't belong at Wikipedia tendentiously and disruptively attempting to justify terrible sources (per WP:REDFLAG) about atropa belladonna. I need help. No one is paying attention to this issue.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 23:25, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
TWA Flight 800 alternative theories. Read. Weep. Try to fix.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 00:40, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
Psychophysical parallelism has been changed rather drastically lately. The article is about a concept in psychophysics, which is part of psychology. One editor has attempted to hijack the content and add stuff from an article he already had deleted. Now, this may not sound too fringey, yet, the stuff he adds (and from his former article) are pretty far out there. I ask that people take a look. Thanks. Dbrodbeck ( talk) 12:37, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
This seems to be a bit too credulous account of a conspiracy theory, with claims like "Between 1982 and 1990 twenty-five British based GEC-Marconi scientists and engineers... are known to have died in mysterious circumstances." Suicide is mysterious? I'd like some more attention on this. Phiwum ( talk) 17:44, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
A pile of conspiracy theory. It is obviously intended to make it seem like a grand conspiracy is at work throughout the whole article from the title on out. This is a fringe case and a blatant view push of such a degree that it could be held up as a perfect example of such problems. Vassyana ( talk) 05:38, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
Because the previous discussion of this article was long and confusing, let me summarize the current situation as I see it. The article is dominated by a fringe group (proponents of the FairTax proposal), and is strongly weighted against more mainstream views, represented most clearly by the 2005 report of the President's Advisory Panel for Federal Tax Reform [48]. As a first step toward balancing the article, I added a short paragraph to the lead, as follows:
In 2005, President George Bush established an advisory panel on tax reform, chaired by former senators Connie Mack III and John Breaux. As part of its task, this panel examined several variants of the FairTax proposal in detail. Chapter 9 of their final report was devoted to an evaluation of proposals of this type. The panel concluded that some of the calculations underlying the FairTax plan are based on incorrect assumptions, and that several concerns, including difficulties of enforcement and administration, made it undesirable to recommend a plan of this type.
As I expected, this edit was immediately reverted, by Morphh. Past experience leads me to believe that it is a waste of time to attempt to improve this article without help from an administrator. Looie496 ( talk) 16:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
As I said in my first request for assistance, any and every attempt at making this article less of a cheerleader for this bill has been met with absolute refusal or immense amounts of arguing. There is a multiple post back and forth where Morphh argues the definition of 'most.' The article and subarticles repeatedly makes specific claims about economics and when those are questioned, some are provablly wrong or deceptive, I'm met with the 'no rebuttal evidence is available' argument which is frequently cited by the editors arguing that side is due to the subject being fringe. It was only when I started saying that all these claims violated WP:FRINGE that those editors started claiming this wasn't a fringe idea. In the several weeks I've been aware of and working on this issue many other editors have made comments that they are unsatisfied with the article's bias but with the entrenched editors absolutely refusing to budge and those of us looking to improve the article being too well behaved to start an edit war nothing can get improved. An administrator or other binding process seems the only possible resolution. Kbs666 ( talk) 17:29, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
I've had a look. The article is extremely inappropriately weighted, with a vast amount of material sourced to non-peer-reviewed partisan work and from working papers of one or two major proponents of the idea. The fact that this is a notable political proposal does not mean that the actual economic benefits have been studied as part of mainstream public finance (and as such, is appropriate for this board). I'd fix it, except its clearly WP:OWNed by someone. Relata refero ( disp.) --07:59, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
This article could do with some help. The "oral tradition" section for some reason has an anti-science/medicine calypso songs lyrics within it, while the (admittedly awful and biased) "modern connotations" section has now been blanked. All of the sections need some work, and this article doesn't really leave you any the wiser about Traditional Medicine (although I did learn a bit about Martin Luther after following some links) Verbal chat 09:46, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Over the past couple weeks, a small but vocal (gee, go figure!) contingent of editors has been repeatedly acting to remove Category:Denialism and/or insert Category:Exposé from the Great Global Warming Swindle article. A small sampling of diffs: [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] (with that diff citing a 7-4 "vote" as consensus, reminds me of someone) [55] [56]. As this, a hokey British "documentary" (in "scare quotes", naturally) allegedly "disproving" global warming using bad science and dishonest methodology, is by now the deadest of dead issues (all the cool kids are over at Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed), it's rather tricky to establish a howling Zerg rush of opposition on the talk page, which is pretty much the only thing these editors respond to (any one person, especially the particular one person who's making this post, tends to be ignored amongst the series of ridiculous straw polls and glorified back-patting). I'm up against 3RR, and quickly running thin(ner?) on WP:CIVILity. More eyes and perhaps a few more eloquent voices than myself would be a good thing. -- Badger Drink ( talk) 17:47, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
As you can see, there is now an RFC about the category Denialism (not started by me). There is also a war developing on the talk page about including the word controversial (which the film admits to being) and polemical (which the makers of the film and th regulators claim it is). More eyes and opinions on this would be helpful. Verbal chat 07:17, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I have a feeling that trouble is brewing on these articles (both need massive work anyway) related to the Great Global Warming Swindle problems discussed above. If people could help out with sourcing, definition, content and balance issues for these articles that would be great. I'm going to be away for a while and will only have sporadic access to WP, so please add these articles to your watch lists (and despair!) :) Verbal chat 13:57, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I first encountered this new-to-me content on the Harvey Milk bio which I'm pretty familiar. i have been reading about Milk for years. An editor kept adding in a "Milk's Support for People's Temple" even though there seemed to be little support for this content in reliable sources. I did my own research of what any RS's had to state and inserted several neutral sentences but this alone did not appease their desire to see an entire section devoted to the subject. After an RfC, ANI report and full page protection, Wikidemo came to the rescue and started an article to house much of the content that was seen as undue in this other articles. I'm not greatly familiar with all the other players and politicians in the Jim Jones/People's Temple universe so I only commented on what I saw as POV and, IMHO, questionably sourced items in the Political Alliances of the People's Temple#Harvey Milk section. I detailed these out on the talk page in hopes that the main editors there would look into the concerns and hopefully address them. Now I'm being told that I am acting in bad faith and my asking for reliable sourcing is disingenuous in some fashion. It took me 2.5 months to get the "bonus" undue content off the Milk article but now I feel by having an article just on this subject the editors are emboldened to present information without regards to neutrality. I may be over-reacting to this however there seems to be some agenda of painting Milk as a major pro-Jones/People's Temple supporter when my looking into sources shows almost the opposite. Milk stated at the begining he thought they were weird and dangerous. As a politician he basically did what all the politicians were doing. I'd appreciate someone else looking at this as I don't thing anything I say will be received well at this point. Banjeboi 15:13, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I'd be grateful for views on an odd issue that has cropped up on Talk:Muhammad al-Durrah. (I have cross-posted this to the reliable sources and fringe theories noticeboards as it presents overlapping issues.)
A disagreement has arisen about a statement sourced to this article from the Australian newspaper The Age, concerning an individual named Nahum Shahaf, who has been in the limelight concerning claims that a vast international conspiracy staged the death of a Palestinian boy in 2000. In the context of a critique of Shahaf's views, the source states that Shahaf "has no forensic or ballistic qualifications". Several other newspaper sources say that "Shahaf concedes he is no authority on ballistics", that he is "not an expert" and that he is "known mainly as an inventor". He describes himself as a physicist. It's not clear if he has any formal qualifications as such, since nobody has yet been able to find any sources which describe his qualifications. There is, in short, nothing to suggest that the statement that he "has no forensic or ballistic qualifications" is in dispute by anyone, not even by the man himself.
A relatively new editor, User:Tundrabuggy, disagrees with the source on two grounds. First, he states that the reporter is "considered by some to be highly biased [against Israel]" (i.e. a few pressure groups and individuals have criticised his reporting) and has requested the removal of his use as a source - see : Talk:Muhammad al-Durrah#Challenge on one of the reporters. Second, Shahaf himself has said that his expertise is based on his having "finished all the stages necessary in learning this topic", "read the scientific material" and "consult[ed] with several experts", but has not at any point that I know of asserted that he has any qualifications in that area. On that basis, Tundrabuggy argues that Shahaf is qualified and it's therefore wrong to state that he has no qualifications. Here Tundrabuggy seems to be elliding the distinction between having knowledge of a subject and having qualifications in that subject. (I have knowledge of the daily struggles of being a man, because I'm a man. I don't have qualifications on that subject because I've never passed an examination on gender studies.)
The rather tedious discussion can be found at Talk:Muhammad al-Durrah#Nahum Shahaf.
It seems to me that this is an example of (a) would-be censorship - if we removed every source that someone disagreed with at some point, we wouldn't have much of an encyclopedia left; and (b) original research, since Tundrabuggy is essentially arguing on the basis of his personal belief that Shahaf has "qualifications" and it's therefore wrong to cite a newspaper report which says he doesn't, even though the man himself isn't known to have made this claim. I'd be interested to know what people think of this from a fringe theories perspective, since I'm conscious that proponents of fringe sources often claim that they have a greater degree of expertise than is really the case (cf. the ID and anti-AGW crowd). -- ChrisO ( talk) 13:51, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
I seem to be missing something. Where is the link to the WP article? Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 14:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Atropa belladonna. I need some HELP at this page. Please. ScienceApologist ( talk) 20:12, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
People, this is an article on the PLANT, not on the remedy. If we want to have an article on individual remedies, that's one thing. But to pollute articles on an essentailly unrelated subject with homeopathy is my beef. In January I went through and removed homeopathy from all the articles that did not have sources which indicated that homeopathy was somehow important to the subject of the article ( Domesticated sheep is an example where homeopathy stayed). This is the last article left that does not have a source which explicitly indicates that homeopathy is important to the plant. Actually, if anyone knows of a source that says something about this plant being famous for its homeopathic use, that would make me feel MUCH better, but as it is the best we can do is an anecdotal mention in the OUP book on health foods (how Deadly nightshade became a "food" I'm not sure, but anyway). That's simply not very good sourcing and definitely looks to me like a WP:WEIGHT violation. People think that just because it's a small instance that it isn't a big problem. Well, we have a system for dealing with these attempted "small mentions" of homeopathy that had found their way into no less than 30 different articles on plants and chemicals: excising.
You know, List of homeopathic remedies is a great page. Why violate the principle of one-way linking? ScienceApologist ( talk) 05:42, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
::::::::: When you wonder what should or should not be in an article, ask yourself what a reader would expect to find under the same heading in an encyclopedia.
Let's put it this way: Before I made the tweaks, it claimed that they literally could heal and harm people with their minds. In the lead. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 21:35, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
You might be interested in the Xrroid article, and the accompanying discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Xrroid. -- The Anome ( talk) 11:02, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
This needs some looking at. It appears to be intended as a timeline of events in insular Celtic history. The bizarre title "Pretanic isles" seems to be a Celticist coinage to avoid the phrase "British isles". The creator of this article claims it is justified by one sentence in the British Isles naming dispute article - a sentence that is footnoted to Google seraches. The article also lists exact dates for quasi-mythical events such as the battle of Camlann. Paul B ( talk) 13:06, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but it is obvious to the most casual reader that the article is overwhelmingly Celticist in orientation. There's nothing wrong with that as long as the title refects that fact. Leaving aside Canlann specifically, there are numerous dates that are portrayed as fact, when facts are anything but certain. Paul B ( talk) 15:35, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
this should just become a timeline of the British Isles. Perhaps split. The "Celticist" bias can be smoothed out by a merger with timeline of British history. I don't think we should delete material that is suffering from blatant bias. Nine times out of ten, it can be usefully integrated with existing material. Alternatively, there is nothing wrong with a timeline of Insular Celtic history if somebody's into building that. dab (𒁳) 07:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
In all it's wonder and glory, satanic ritual abuse is a much changed page from a year ago. What does the fringe theories noticeboard think, is it too far slanted towards skepticism, and are there any suggestions? There is ongoing debate on the talk page that it is too skeptical and there is not enough credence given to the "believer" side, that undue weight is given to the skeptical sources. Are there any suggestions or insights onto this? WLU ( talk) 01:06, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Chuck, this is nonsense. You don't need to prove the "existence of Satan" to establish the existence of Satanism any more than you need to prove the existence of God to establish the existence of Christianity. The point is that "Satanic Ritual Abuse" is a conspiracy theory, or a "moral panic", with next to no footing in reality. Therefore, the article will, for better or worse, need to be about the moral panic. -- dab (𒁳) 07:20, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
There are two things I'd like the folks at this noticeboard to know about this article. First, it was recently semiprotected, because an IP editor was revert-warring a number of hostile tags onto the article. Second, it really does have most of the problems the IP was pointing out, albeit in a misguided way. It has not a single inline reference and reads like an advertisement for this (new age?) mind-body discipline. It treats all of the claims of its advocates as some kind of undisputed, absolute facts. Help, please, from folks with experience NPOVing this kind of article. Just be aware that there was recent admin action there. -- Steven J. Anderson ( talk) 23:31, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
I've left the precociously in the merged version for your enjoyment :) I had never heard of Eutony. The only interwiki worth mentioning is de:Eutonie, which dates to May 2008. I guess we can keep an article on Alexander and her school, but one article is definitely enough, and it does need third party sources if it is to be rid of its warning tags. -- dab (𒁳) 09:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
essentially a WP:SYN-fork of Kingdoms in pre-colonial Africa. Note that there is no literature on "African Empires". A term that is in de-facto use is "West African empires", referring to the medieval Sahelian kingdoms and their successor states. The term "African Empires" does occur [65], and apparently has some currency in Afrocentrist literature, referring to some sort of imaginary pre-colonial Pan-African "golden age". The term consequently appears in publications such as African Philosophy in Search of Identity, A History of Native American and African Relations (viz., Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories), African Glory: The Story of Vanished Negro Civilizations, Cafundo: My People, My Folk, My Senzala, My Roots, An Introduction to Pan African Studies etc. Not sure whether "African Empires" as a notion in Afrocentrism has sufficient notability for a standalone article or whether it should just be merged back into Kingdoms in pre-colonial Africa. Note that it is undisputed, of course, that there have been empires in Africa. It's just that this doesn't make for a topic any more than Eurasian empires. -- dab (𒁳) 12:14, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Linus Pauling's most famous pseudoscience still has people who are die-hard committed to this idea. We need some extra eyes at Orthomolecular medicine and related pages. There are actually people arguing that orthomolecular medicine is not generally considered a pseudoscience. That's news to me. In the last class I taught about pseudoscience, we devoted an entire week to the subject! ScienceApologist ( talk) 20:18, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
An unpublished source from some guy with a PhD in psychology, which spends only 2-3 sentences on OMM, is not a reliable source. The argument that the scientific community ignores OMM is false, since there are publications on it. OMM requires a good source, since it was founded by a Nobel Laureate and run by people with MDs and PhDs. 20:58, 13 August 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by ImperfectlyInformed ( talk • contribs)
Lord help us, they're storming the castle. Man the balustrades and ready the hot oil vats! ScienceApologist ( talk) 21:04, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
Let's not forget that ScienceApologist is a proven disruptive editor with a track record of 28! blocks [67] one Arbcom, followed by subsequent controversies around of his Arbcom sanctions. ScienceApologist has recently conceded to work with a mentor [68] Other editors who have complaints about disruptions from this user should bring it up with the mentor. MaxPont ( talk) 07:35, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Water fluoridation opposition NEEDS HELP. In part, the issue is now that there are a lot of people trying to say that because the anti-water fluoridation activists think it is important to include unrelated facts about extremely high-concentrations of fluoride due to things OTHER THAN municipal fluoridation schemes that on Wikipedia they should similarly be allowed to soapbox their claims. We have right now two sections devoted to health affects that are IMPOSSIBLE to get with a municipal water fluoridation scheme. I'm trying to get them removed but the true believers won't let me. Will you stand up to their ownership of this article? Please. We need your help.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 21:57, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
I started an RfC: Talk:Water fluoridation opposition#RfC: Are sections 2 and 3 relevant to this article? ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:08, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
The article about the fringe group The Low Level Radiation Campaign was deleted about a month ago after I prod'd it for numerous reasons. Now the Company Secretary of the LLRC, Richard Bramhall, has turned up here to request restoration. It was restored and then immediately put up as an AfD. Richard Bramhall, who has extensively edited the article, has now asked for the page to be deleted to remove the criticism (on the link above) - and this makes me edgy. I'm all for the current article to be removed, as it's awful. However, should we have replace it with an article that uses the many criticisms of the LLRC, Dr Chris Busby, and their Second Event Theory as sources to accurately describe this group of fringe scientists. Maybe I'm over-reacting, as this is a very small group (and I'm not as mad as I sound), and the article will not be retained in its current state anyway. I'm just interested in what, if anything, should replace it. Thanks. Verbal chat 21:12, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
Deletion doesn't mean it will be gone forever. What we're trying to ascertain here is whether your group meets notability criteria and whether something, probably a much smaller balanced article, should replace it. Also, you are free to partake in discussion, but due to your CoI you should refrain from editing the page. Instead, bring up points on the talk page. If you can provide reliable sources for your claims about the LLRC, that would be great. Note I never said 2nd event theory was central to the LLRC, and censorship should make anyone "edgy" - especially if your groups claims are true! An attack page has also not been suggested. If you are having problems logging into your account, just follow the instructions on the login page. Also, please be civil and assume good faith of others actions. You are being needlessly confrontational and combative. (PS my name here is Verbal, Chat is a link) Verbal chat 11:38, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
This page is an archive. Do not edit the contents of this page. Please direct any additional comments to the current main page. |
To dab et al. user:Barefact continues his old pan-Turkist campaign, this time on Yamna culture, discarding the Kurgan hypothesis as a specimen of "19th-century European nationalism". My edits are summarily reverted. The guy has the habit of content forking which results in such pages as Kangly (alongside the better-established Pecheneg) or Turkic Khaganate (alongside our traditional page Göktürks), so it's only reasonable to anticipate similar developments in this case. Please keep an eye on the page. -- Ghirla -трёп- 21:32, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
Hell's bells, but
if this article isn't about the worst article I've seen on Wikipedia in some time. I think we need some extra eyes here.
ScienceApologist (
talk) 23:58, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
sigh -- the spelling " Türkic" is a dead giveaway barefact's at it again. I suppose his unsourced stuff should be blanked without further ado. This would amount to about the same as programming a vandalbot to blank all additions that contain the string "Türkic". I guess that FACT NEEDED ( talk · contribs) is just a sock of barefact's. It may be about time to escalate this and officially promote Barefact to "Ararat arev" status. -- dab (𒁳) 12:47, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Another barefact hotspot is Turkic alphabets, which he keeps turning into a confused content fork of Old Turkic script. I had missed yet another revert of his back in June. See Talk:Turkic alphabets for the more than year-long history of this piece of idiocy. -- dab (𒁳) 12:52, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Another disruptive editor on an anti-
Kurgan hypothesis mission? Sigh... -
Merzbow (
talk) 00:49, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
it appears that barefact has just lost the monopoly on the "Türk" spelling -- enter MagyarTürk ( talk · contribs)! dab (𒁳) 09:11, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
I think the evidence linked from this section will suffice to permaban barefact. His protracted campaign of edit-warring, dedicatied violation of MOS and CFORK by insisting to duplicate Old Turkic script at Turkic alphabets (well after he had been told that the latter clearly needs to redirect to Turkic alphabet), and the protracted and incorrigible insertion of fringecruft and Godwinian rants into article space,
and finally, if that isn't enough, suspected sockpuppetry [6] (may require a RCU). At this point, this isn't a case for WP:FTN, but for taking admin action. Hence I suggest the case should be presented at WP:AN. dab (𒁳) 09:33, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
M. Alinei's Paleolithic Continuity Theory -- the place where crackpots of all creeds and races meet. dab (𒁳) 20:49, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Alinei is quotable, within WP:DUE, since he published academically. Barefact, however, goes around touting soundbites from Alinei as facts. Alinei's PCT is notable enough for a dedicated article, I suppose, but it is far too eccentric to be even mentioned at unrelated articles, let alone mentioned prominently. PCT is bona fide WP:FRINGE, the guideline is intended precisely for cases like this. incidentially, the claim that Gimbutas was a Baltic nationalist would need some backup too. Notably, her hypothesis does not locate the PIE Urheimat in her own country, a feature which (understandably) is exceptionally rare among nationalist "theorists". In fact, Gimbutas' allegiance was to her sex, not her nation, and admittedly her later work is far too second-wave-feminist to be taken at face value. She is an icon of Wiccans and die-hard-matriarchs, not of Baltic nationalism. -- dab (𒁳) 08:41, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm working through all this. Hold on a sec. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate) 14:59, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Could someone here have a look at Marfa lights? The wildest claims seem to be near the end. -- Steven J. Anderson ( talk) 21:09, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
After some issues on other articles surrounding the topic of abiogenic oil from a certain user, I went in to the main article to see if it couldn't be cleaned up a bit. Turns out, for a fringe science (I'm calling it that because nobody in the petroleum business takes it seriously or has been able to use the ideas behind it to find oil), this article is really long and technical. One move I made was to change instances of "theory" on the article to "hypothesis", because there is no evidence that shows any discovered petroleum to be of an abiogenic origin. This hasn't sat well with one editor who has reverted me a few times using edit summaries that I still don't quite know what to make of [9]. Any help hashing this out and pruning the article to conform with wp:undue would be appreciated. NJGW ( talk) 17:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Hi all.
Currently there are a number of editors at Talk:Cold fusion actively working for New Energy Times to try to get our Wikipedia article to conform to a position that treats the subject with more favor than mainstream secondary sources give it. They are writing articles about editing Wikipedia and publishing them on-line, glowingly praising themselves for getting the article into such a state.
Now the article is protected right now by an administrator who sees the issue as a contest of equals (which it manifestly is not, but I digress). The current version up I think is better than previous versions, but there are some issues.
There are more issues, but this gives a decent overview. Basically, there are a number of users asserting ownership over an article which needs to be carefully vetted lest we mislead the reader into thinking there is more to Cold Fusion than meets the mainstream eye.
Thanks in advance.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:08, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Now the new tactic being advocated is that WP:FRINGE doesn't apply to Cold fusion! Amazing. I started a request for comment on the subject. ScienceApologist ( talk) 19:56, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
(undent) That whole article is a bit messy... the lead doesn't even say what cold fusion is (see this old version for an example of what would be a more informative lead). That should probably be followed by a section on fusion in general and why the scientific community generally doesn't accept cold fusion, followed by a section on the arguments for it, and then the history (as it's virtually a trivia section in this case). Just my take on the layout to help it approximate the scientific consensus. NJGW ( talk) 18:26, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
Again re the Storms book: I don't think there is any precedent for a scientific book to be deemed unreliable even in the circumstances of WP:REDFLAG. If you can prove me wrong, fine. I really do not want this case to set a precedent that we can judge for ourselves what is or isn't scholarly simply on our impression of a book's contents. BTW, "one-sided" is to be expected in the context of academic disagreement. The usual remedy is to balance with an opinion on the opposite side. Itsmejudith ( talk) 10:34, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
The section "Statistics" seems to be one huge original synthesis. Article has been tagged as NPOV violation since March 2007. I found it in the backlog, where there are many other fringey articles. Itsmejudith ( talk) 15:00, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
It needs a reference discussing "race and crime" head-on. Just citing various statistics and pulling a "race and crime" analysis from them is pure WP:SYN. dab (𒁳) 10:00, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Some SPAs have popped up to revert back in the statistics section: I've reverted and blocked + semiprotected. The rest of the article isn't that great either, so I agree that a merge to someplace else is probably the best option. Long-term, eyes will need to be kept on this material wherever it winds up. It's a natural spill-off point for the Race and intelligence warriors. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate) 14:52, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
The statistics section looks like it was terrible. FYI, the topic itself is tiptoed around in academia. The most influential paper on the subject in recent years is this one, which has its own article. Though the paper purports to "not be about race" this is hotly disputed. My own belief is that an article is warranted but would probably be un-maintainable. -- Relata refero ( disp.) 18:18, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
somewhat predictably, we get editors at that article emphasizing the dates preferred in medieval Talmudic philology, trying to tone down actual academic consensus by blatant editorializing ("the Talmud says 1200 BC, however, some confused modern scholars are unsure about it and find it difficult to accept"). Any article introducing academic mainstream position in a "however" phrase following some historical or eccentric minority position is clearly in WP:UNDUE WP:FRINGE territory. Of course (as always in these cases), Talmudic philology should also be discussed, in proper terms, DULY, and at the pertinent articles. -- dab (𒁳) 09:54, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Could someone else please have a word with Meieimatai ( talk · contribs)? I am at my wit's end trying to reply to his misconceptions and explain things to him. It's gotten to the point where he's just trashing normative scholarship. [11] [12] You review Talk:Torah and his talk page if you need a better idea of his ideas and approach. Can someone please help? Vassyana ( talk) 04:15, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I'd be grateful if someone more knowledgeable than myself could have a look at Talk:Black Stone#Hindu view and this edit, which an anonymous IP editor has repeatedly been adding. Essentially the editor is claiming that the Ka'aba in Macca was originally a Hindu temple (!) and is citing an apparently fringe scholar in support of that claim. I've had a look at the sourcing, which seems to be very thin indeed; some second opinions would be useful. -- ChrisO ( talk) 12:46, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
complete nonsense. -- dab (𒁳) 15:24, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
The source regarding Abdul Haq if you look into the Google data base it states one source that was reviewed and digitized from the University of Michigan see ([ [13]]) that review from the University of Michigan should be reliable enough. -- BabaTabla ( talk) 16:53, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
It's still an source and the academic Oxford should be one reliable source according to footnotes it falls into category. -- BabaTabla ( talk) 17:01, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
For the benefit of any admins who might read this, it may be useful to explain that the Ka'aba is as important to Muslims as the Cross is to Christians, so it is very important to defend this article from fringecruft. Looie496 ( talk) 17:48, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
this is such a non-issue. BabaTabla, read WP:FRINGE, WP:NOTE, WP:DUE. Ahmadiyya authors often come up with far out surreal stuff. Discuss these in Ahmadiyya related topics, if at all notable, but don't spam unrelated articles with this. dab (𒁳) 20:29, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
you can go through more sources they can be found in the google book search. The information seems to have a good amount of sources here are some
Some Academic Sources:
Regual search:
There seems to be indefinte sources and sure deserves to be notable. -- BabaTabla ( talk) 15:48, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Stop citing cranky literature of the sort of "Jesus in Kashmir - The Lost Tomb", "Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence" ( Stephen Knapp!) or "Indian Kshatriyas Once Ruled from Bali to Baltic". You must not think very highly of everyone else's intelligence to say the least. You want to proceed as follows: If you are interested in the Sayar-ul-Okul, write an article, based on reliable sources, at Sayar-ul-Okul. Once you've done that, come to Talk:Black Stone and seek WP:CONSENSUS for including a brief mention and a link to the Sayar-ul-Okul article at the Black Stone article. dab (𒁳) 16:09, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
[ [21]] there just sources now you can see that there notable ? -- BabaTabla ( talk) 16:23, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I've googled Sayar-ul-Okul and created a stub. Allegedly an 18th century Ottoman anthology of Arabic poetry, it is only ever mentioned in crackpot Hindutva trash literature. Even the alleged editions of 1864 and 1932, which feel credible enough, are taken from Hindutva sources. I have tagged my own stub with {{ hoax}} until we can at least substantiate the existence of the manuscript. dab (𒁳) 16:43, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Since I've been unable to substantiate the existence of this manuscript, I've userified my stub, see User talk:Dbachmann/Sair al-Okul for details. dab (𒁳) 17:13, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Seems full of OR and POV nonsense. Doug Weller ( talk) 21:06, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
This is weird. I've never heard of "British Israelism" before this, and would like some confirmation that the term is actually used beyond some small groups. Obviously there are lots of weird theories still splashing around about Biblical characters, incluing Jesus, visiting Britain at some point in their careers, but I've never heard of anyone unifying these under the heading "British Israelism". What we look to have here is the last remnant of cranky 19th century nationalist pseudoscience. I think the article should probably focus more on said 19th century crankiness and less on it's 20th/21st century remnant. But academic sources may be scarce. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate)
"hyper-rational Americans"?? The only people who still believe in this stuff are the followers of Armstrongism, via Edward Hine. This stuff is a creature of the Georgian era. Back then, it was still possible even for educated people to entertain speculations that have long since been ruled out. If the last shred of credibility this may once have had didn't expire with George IV, it did most certainly with John Wilson. Today, this isn't more than a curiosity of the history of Georgian Britain, and of the Christian fundamentalist lunatic fringe in the USA. dab (𒁳) 15:26, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
This was a surprisingly widespread fantasy in earlier generations, and there is no problem sourcing it: the LC subject heading is "Anglo-Israelism" and WorldCat has 932 books under that subject, the most recent from 2008, including a number of active periodicals. The British Israel World Federation alone has 171 entries there. From what i understand, the article is actually in my opinion a pretty good start, with appropriate links and references. That it comes across as nonsense is another matter entirely. . DGG ( talk) 07:05, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
User:PTWilkinson is new today and is 'removing vandalism', ie stuff he doesn't like, from this article (Wilson is a pseudo-historian). It's bad enough anyway, with a lot of unsourced stuff about his career, but Wilkinson's changes and deletions [27] turn it into even more of a PR piece. I've reverted twice so far but obviously can't continue. I will add that of course we must follow WP:BLP. Doug Weller ( talk) 13:54, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Would someone with knowledge of nutrition like to cast an eye on the short sentence in Blackberry that deals with the antioxidant content. AFAIK, all fruit and vegetables contain antioxidants. And antioxidants are probably good for you. Certainly fruit and veg are good for you. They taste great. Let's all eat plenty of them. Obsessing about the exact proportions of antioxidants in blackberries compared to blueberries and other fruit could be getting into fringe territory and the source doesn't look great. Itsmejudith ( talk) 19:37, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Osteomyology is currently the subject of an edit war. One version is promotional and the other appears to be plagued with original research. It needs some serious attention from people knowledgeable in cleaning up original research and with experience in medical fringe topics. Vassyana ( talk) 05:00, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Could some univolved could take a look at it. IP is reverting well refernced version in favour of openly anti-Semitic essay containg frases like "Jewish lies", "lies about false numbers of Holocaust" etc. [28] M0RD00R ( talk) 10:14, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
This idea has two issues: one there is an anon actively editing the article who likely works for the company trying to raise venture capital in support of it. Two, cold fusion proponents don't like the idea to be criticized because it's one of the only attempts to explain how their claimed low energy nuclear reactions could actually exist. So we have two different groups trying to get this pseudoscience crankism redescribed as revolutionary new discovery! Please help. ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:17, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
The term is Hindutvadi.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Tripping Nambiar ( talk • contribs) [30]
Haha, I assure you, the term used is indeed Hindutvadi. I'm glad you know some Sanskrit, Hindutvadi must be the popular adaptation. But please don't add to that by talking out of your ass and suggesting Hindutvadi is inapposite due to "X-vaadin is someone touting X", I'll check up on that. Trips ( talk) 11:55, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Many of the editors active here may not remember this, but we had an epic showdown with a flurry of Hindutva zealot accounts orchestrated from some yahoo group back in 2005-06, as it were the classic original case of pseudoscholarly fringe campaigns with ideological motivation. We were able to tackle it by stubborn sticking to encyclopedic documentation, exposing editors' allegiance by referring to academic literature on the religious right in India -- which gave us our present revisions of Indigenous Aryans, Out of India, Indo-Aryan migration, Voice of India, Koenraad Elst, Subhash Kak and N. S. Rajaram articles besides spin-offs like Historiography and nationalism and ultimately this board. Eventually, the Hindutva sock armies gave up and disruption subsided.
We are now seeing signs of a revival of such, ahem, crusades. Beginning with comparatively harmless naive piety at Hinduism, users Tripping Nambiar ( talk · contribs), Sindhian ( talk · contribs) (and to a lesser extent Wikidas ( talk · contribs)) are currently doing their best towards filling the boots of immortal zealot trolls of the stature of Bharatveer ( talk · contribs), Sbhushan ( talk · contribs) et al.
The articles I mentioned could do with some supervision before this gathers any more momentum. Tripping Nambiar at the moment is blanking away material he doesn't like at Indigenous Aryans. -- dab (𒁳) 12:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
yep, this is just to take note of the general trend. No immediate action is required, but some vigilance is appreciated. In the usual course of events, some of these accounts will soon resort to sockpuppetry as they become frustrated with their 3RR blocks. The more tenacious ones will then prance around for a couple of months (Ararat arev style) before they become frustrated with that game too. -- dab (𒁳) 08:00, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
btw, I think what is ultimately behind this is the Indian general election, 2009. The BJP is going to capitalize on religious tensions and national mysticism in their bid to get back into power, and as a side-effect we'll get months of " ABCD" tech students trying to turn en-wiki into a propaganda platform. That's just how it goes, and we have the tools to deal with it. -- dab (𒁳) 08:22, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Hi guys!. Interesting read of the viewpoint of Dab and his WP majority demographic, actually no its just Dab doing most of the posting as usual. Remember Dab the more you try and propagate a viewpoint on WP by trying to make certain material appear more like the Westboro baptist church for example, and therefore easier to criticize and discredit, the more other/new editors are going to realize the game. The important thing to realize from all viewpoints is that Hindutva cannot be stereotyped with movements seen in the West. There are similarities and important differences that should not be underestimated. Trips ( talk) 14:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if everyone is aware of the discussions going on at [31]. Doug Weller ( talk) 18:10, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if anyone feels up to looking at this - it starts "n ethnic group of people[2] native to mainly the Punjab region[3] of Northern India and Pakistan that have attributes of an ethnic group, tribe and a people.[4][5] The Jat people are considered by some to be the merged descendants of the original Indo-Aryans and a later addition of Indo-Scythian tribes of the region, merging to form the Jat people.[6] Others conclude a native Indo-Aryan lineage on the basis of ethnological, physical and linguistic standards[7][8][9][10][11][12]." Dubious references (I've removed one really racist one), and more of the Aryan race nonsense I tried to get rid of at Kashimiri people. I've been asked to do something about User talk:24.185.128.31 but (a) I am not an Admin and (b) I have to go make naan bread for dinner. Thanks. -- Doug Weller ( talk) 16:38, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
This is one corner of the bottomless pit that is Wikipedia's Indian clan cruft. See also Category:Jat; Category:Kambojas; Category:Khatri clans; Category:Sakaldwipiya; Category:Brahmin communities; Category:Social groups of India. I grant you the topic is complex, but some people truly don't know where to draw the line in their enthusiasm for their ancestry (needless to say, these articles are all written by members of the respective groups). Probably unbeatable is Satbir Singh ( talk · contribs) and his epic coverage of the Kambojas (who get about two brief mentions in all of the Britannica). Devesh.bhatta ( talk · contribs) also deserves mention here. I've pretty much given up keeping track of these things until they start spilling beyond their walled gardens. dab (𒁳) 17:50, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
For reference, here is what can be considered a sane encyclopedic coverage (from a hundred years ago), from the 1911 Britannica ("Some writers have identified the Jats with the ancient Getae, and there is strong reason to believe them a degraded tribe of Rajputs, whose Scythic origin has also been maintained. Hindu legends point to a prehistoric occupation of the Indus valley by this people, and at the time of the Mahommedan conquest of Sind (712) they, with a cognate tribe called Meds, constituted the bulk of the population.") Compare the coverage in the current Britannica,
(that's the full article).I daresay that their "sense of group solidarity [and] pride" is also responsible for Wikipedia's inability to come up with a decent article on them (holds for many other castes as well). To begin with, I would try adapt the "ethnic group of people" to something closer to Britannica's "a peasant caste of northern India and Pakistan" dab (𒁳) 18:01, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
no, using "works by Indian sociologists" isn't realistic. Indian academia is fundamentally broken. It's all political and "communalist" (the Hindu zealots vs. the Muslim zealots vs. the Marxists). We need to base the gist of the article on tertiary sources (encyclopedias), and then flesh them out with whatever secondary sources we can find. -- dab (𒁳) 21:26, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
Talking of Indian topics, I've got some motivated young men at History of Hinduism atm, dropping me vandalism warnings at this point, if anyone's interested. -- dab (𒁳) 21:29, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
See also {{ Sakaldwipiya}} and {{ Kambojas}}. We can be proud if we have full articles on obscure castes and tribes that only receive a brief mention in Britannica or any other print encyclopedia, but to have full navigation templates betwenn a dozen half-baked articles riddled with problems is beyond the reasonable even for a "work in progress". I have moved {{ Sakaldwipiya}} to {{ Ancient India and Central Asia}} in the past in the interst of sanity, but someone apparently felt they had to recreate it... Looking at the epic mess in articles like Brahmin communities, Brahmin gotra system etc. I really what is the problem with the Indian topics. We get a lot of people willing to invest a lot of work in them, but none of them appears to have any basic grasp of good editing, encyclopedicity or style. It's really quite exasperating. dab (𒁳) 09:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Is Koenraad Elst RS? Should we include this paragraph in the article Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh? Otolemur crassicaudatus ( talk) 01:12, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Elst is quotable as a partisan author in Hindutva topics. "Noted Indologist Dr. Koenraad Elst" is ridiculous. "Noted Belgian far-right journalist" is more like it. Giving a full paragraph of Elst ranting at critics is silly. We can state something like "In the opinion of Hindutva supporter Koenraad Elst, criticism of RSS is dishonest.[footnote with link to rant]". dab (𒁳) 09:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Are people aware of this? See [32]. The recent attempts to change Pseudoscience are related to this. Doug Weller ( talk) 20:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I forgot that there is a big disagreement at List of pseudosciences and pseudoscientific concepts with an attempt to delete a large number of subjects, eg pseudo-archaeology, ancient astronauts, etc. 45K worth of stuff. This article is under an ArbCom decision, by the way. I'm obviously suffering from recent lack of sleep since I meant to put this in originally. Doug Weller ( talk) 20:57, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I just did some editing on the Kabbalah Centre article. The entire Teachings section [33] section contains some pretty amazing claims without any sourcing at all, and I wonder if that whole section should be deleted. Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 15:00, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
Thirusivaperur ( talk · contribs) is still engaged in his mindless reverting to a claim of the first attestation of the Tamil language dating to 600 BC at List of languages by first written accounts. [34]
If this was argued in any way, it would be a fringe theory. As it is, no argument is presented in the first place, this is just a Tamil nationalist kid that escaped his long overdue block for some reason. If anyone was to build Thirusivaperur's argument for him (the first scattered evidence of writing in Sri Lanka dates to the date mentioned),I have placed the correct reply here in anticipation. dab (𒁳) 17:04, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
There are some recent changes to the article First Sex that are a bit too deferential to the book and its influence. Standard lines about "The controversy continues" and insinuations that critics are living off the patriarchy's largess. I'm no anthropologist and I've never read Gould Davis, so I don't feel competent to fix the article, but it would be swell if someone more qualified would give it a looking-at. (The article has been in a pretty sorry state for quite some time, in fact.) Thanks. Phiwum ( talk) 20:09, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
(update) There seems to be a new problem developing here, with an editor claiming a right-wing Christian male conspiracy to remove their edits and destroy the wiki with their anti-science. Could do with more eyes. I think I've engaged enough and don't want to get further involved with this editor. -- SesquipedalianVerbiage ( talk) 14:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
Please monitor the contributions of User:Lakinekaki especially at Process equation and Solar cycle where he is adding a lot of pseudoscience to articles about mainstream ideas in defiance of WP:WEIGHT and also his own conflict of interest. Also note that the user is building something of a walled garden to keep previously deleted articles promoting his pet ideas. See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Lakinekaki/Bios theory
ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:29, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
Update:*Again he sees my name and reverts the edit, without even knowing why and what I edited. [41] I fixed 404 error with the archived page. Lakinekaki ( talk) 19:16, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to ask that someone take a look at the FairTax article and the associated sub articles. I've been trying to improve the article and the primary editors will use any claim as long as they can point a reference link at it. While I'm fine with that for the sections on the history of the bill and the social movement behind it the majority of the article is specific predictions of economic activity and when I trace back through the references to find the actual source calculations I find nothing, just bare assertions with no indication of method or models used. After going through the links it appears that only one economist has ever published on the matter, on the pro side and those articles seem to be the source for few if any later citations by other authors. No professional economist has published anything critical of the bill that I can find which makes making the article less of an ad for the group that wrote the bill somewhat challenging. After going over the wikipedia rules it appears to me that the economic prediction parts of this article falls under the WP:FRINGE policy but an outside opinion would be greatly appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kbs666 ( talk • contribs)
This article is a featured article and was featured on Wikipedia's mainpage. Editors who have problems with this article usually are arguing and debating against the topic as opposed to the article. They argue over specific policies and then say that the policy is wrong or false. They may also cite a particular sentence and then say that the whole article is POV or someother taboo. I happen to disagree with the topic but I think the article is not subject to POV or Fringe issues that would tank the article as it is. An editor had a big problem with the article and thought the article was fringe, so I suggested posting the article to this notice page so that the editor may get an outside opinion. The fringe argument centers on sources tied to proponents of the legislation originating from those involved with the topic of the article (like Congresspersons) or those who are proponents of the topic. However, there is also a substantial presence of sourced counter-arguments. This article endeavors to be on the topic of the proposed FairTax legislation and includes who is against it and who is for it and why and what arguments each side uses. EECavazos ( talk) 04:29, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
With all due respect, a "fringe theory" is something along the line of "the earth is flat" or "the moon is made of green cheese" or a tax protester argument such as "no law makes me liable for a U.S. federal income tax." I agree with editors EECavazos and Morphh. The article in question is about the FairTax, an actual proposal to change U.S. tax laws. The proposal has been referenced in the Washington Post, in the Boston Globe, at CNN and other places. I do not support the FairTax itself and I don't edit the Wikipedia article very much, but I agree that the subject of the article is not a "fringe theory" as that term is used in Wikipedia. Debates about the verifiability of sources used in the article, about the neutral point of view of the article, and about other Wikipedia policies and guidelines, are properly handled in the talk page for the article itself -- which is where those kinds of questions have been handled. The argument that the article covers a "fringe theory" is not, in my view, tenable. This noticeboard on "fringe theories" does not seem to be the proper place to be discussing the merits of the article. Yours, Famspear ( talk) 21:15, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
The FairTax is a fringe theory in the sense of WP:Fringe -- it "departs significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view in its particular field of study". It is difficult to find much public academic discussion of it. Most of the published material consists of position papers by proponents, some of whom work in right-wing think tanks. (And the FairTax books, of course.) There is, however, one excellent resource: the recommendations published by the US Official Tax Reform Panel in 2005, which explicitly considered this plan, among others. [43] They placed the FairTax plan in the category "what landed on the cutting room floor", and wrote:
A Houston-based conservative group has recently advocated replacing all federal income taxes (as well as the payroll tax) with a retail sales tax, which it characterizes as the Fair Tax.18 Recognizing that, by itself, a RST would impose an unacceptable burden on low-income families, advocates of the Fair Tax have proposed packaging the RST with a “prebate,” a lump- sum payment to all families intended to offset the burden of the RST on low-income families. Proponents of the plan have not stressed its distributional effects at the opposite end of the income distribution – substantial reductions in tax burdens, broadly similar to those that would occur under a Flat Tax. The panel notes that under the RST the share of total taxes paid by the five percent of families with the highest incomes would fall from 58.6 percent to 37.4 percent.19 It would seem difficult to characterize the resulting system as “appropriately progressive.” In rejecting the RST as a viable reform option, the panel noted these problems: 1. In the absence of the prebate, the replacement RST would violate the requirement that tax reform options be “appropriately progressive.” 2. A prebate program designed to offset the burden on low-income families would cost an estimated $600-780 billion annually, making it by far the largest entitlement program in history. 3. The required sales tax rate would be at least 34 percent – far higher than state sales tax rates and VAT rates found in Europe – and probably much higher, once statutory base erosion and evasion are considered. 4. The federal administrative burden would be similar to that of the income tax. 5. If states continued to levy income taxes, taxpayers would experience little simplification, and complexity might actually increase as states could no longer rely on the administrative efforts of the federal Internal Revenue Service. 6. A targeted cash grant program, in which payments were phased out as income rose, would require calculations of income similar to those under the income tax.
This paper is not cited in the article. Looie496 ( talk) 22:12, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
May I suggest that you take the discussion back to the article's Talk page... You are now discussing issues that do not relate to this noticeboard. Thanks. Blueboar ( talk) 14:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, you read correctly. In case you haven't heard of this (and I'm assuming the frequenters of this noticeboard have heard of almost everything), it's, well, what it sounds like. I just made several edits there: deleted a section of medical claims referenced to a source called INeedCoffee.com (seriously), changed a section title from "How it works" to "Claims of effectiveness" and a few other NPOV and spelling cleanups. I'm bringing this here because I don't intend adding the article to my watchlist. Arguing with someone about whether squirting mountain grown Folger's French roast up one's poop chute might have beneficial medical effects is just a more loathsome experience than I'm prepared to contemplate at this juncture of my temporal existence. Consequently, I'm requesting that others keep an eye on the article. Also, a quick look at Max Gerson and Gerson therapy might not be such a bad idea. I haven't really looked them over myself and don't know if they have problems.-- Steven J. Anderson ( talk) 20:27, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Efforts to rewrite the Kenneth Lay article, presenting the theory that he faked his death, have returned. -- Allen3 talk 19:29, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
At List of minority-opinion scientific theories a known alternative medicine POV-pusher is trying to claim that various pseudoscientific ideas are actually minority opinions within science because there is a peer-reviewed paper on the subject in an out-of-the-way journal. I let him know on his user talk page that the criteria for inclusion should be that the idea has been described as a legitimate theory within science by someone who does not accept the idea. Since there are thousands of journals, it isn't too hard to get any and all crazy ideas published by somebody. That does not make the idea a "minority opinion" within the scientific community. I would appreciate it if people here would watch this article carefully: a lot of POV-pushing seems to be rampant there.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:21, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
It doesn't make sense to demand upfront proof of "refutation" by medical science, and doing so just leads to a proliferation of crap articles which say: "Snakeoil.com reports that the mango juice enema treatment(TM) has a 100% success rate in metastatic cancer; these data hvae not been confirmed or refuted by the medical community." MastCell Talk 19:34, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Some significant changes have been proposed at WP:FRINGE. Input from a larger segment of the community is needed. Thanks. Blueboar ( talk) 12:48, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Persecution of Rastafari has no sources. Is this a legitimate phenomenon and is it notable enough to be separate from Rastafari?
Also, see the main Rastafarianism article. A lot of rastafarian theology is presented as fact and the article is more of a sermon than an encyclopedia entry.
Perfect example from the main article:
Rastafari is not a highly organized religion; it is a movement and an ideology. Many Rastas say that it is not a "religion" at all, but a Way of Life.
Also:
Today, Rastas are not just Black African, but also include other diverse ethnic groups including Native American, White, Māori, Indonesian, Thai, etc.
The article is a treasure trove of bullshit. ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 07:58, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
To clarify: I don't mean to demean Rastafari or claim Rastafari itself is B.S.. I'm saying the article is B.S.. -- just in case that wasn't clear.
Also, another thing I've noticed: The article puts forth the fringe theory that the word, cannabis, is derived from the Hebrew "qaneh bosom." ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 19:00, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
I just removed a shittonne of unrelated stuff about fluorosis from the Water fluoridation conspiracy theory. More eyes would help! ScienceApologist ( talk) 21:15, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
We need some incredulous people at Talk:Atropa belladonna who are willing to combat a severe amount of ignorance.
I have two editors who don't belong at Wikipedia tendentiously and disruptively attempting to justify terrible sources (per WP:REDFLAG) about atropa belladonna. I need help. No one is paying attention to this issue.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 23:25, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
TWA Flight 800 alternative theories. Read. Weep. Try to fix.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 00:40, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
Psychophysical parallelism has been changed rather drastically lately. The article is about a concept in psychophysics, which is part of psychology. One editor has attempted to hijack the content and add stuff from an article he already had deleted. Now, this may not sound too fringey, yet, the stuff he adds (and from his former article) are pretty far out there. I ask that people take a look. Thanks. Dbrodbeck ( talk) 12:37, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
This seems to be a bit too credulous account of a conspiracy theory, with claims like "Between 1982 and 1990 twenty-five British based GEC-Marconi scientists and engineers... are known to have died in mysterious circumstances." Suicide is mysterious? I'd like some more attention on this. Phiwum ( talk) 17:44, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
A pile of conspiracy theory. It is obviously intended to make it seem like a grand conspiracy is at work throughout the whole article from the title on out. This is a fringe case and a blatant view push of such a degree that it could be held up as a perfect example of such problems. Vassyana ( talk) 05:38, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
Because the previous discussion of this article was long and confusing, let me summarize the current situation as I see it. The article is dominated by a fringe group (proponents of the FairTax proposal), and is strongly weighted against more mainstream views, represented most clearly by the 2005 report of the President's Advisory Panel for Federal Tax Reform [48]. As a first step toward balancing the article, I added a short paragraph to the lead, as follows:
In 2005, President George Bush established an advisory panel on tax reform, chaired by former senators Connie Mack III and John Breaux. As part of its task, this panel examined several variants of the FairTax proposal in detail. Chapter 9 of their final report was devoted to an evaluation of proposals of this type. The panel concluded that some of the calculations underlying the FairTax plan are based on incorrect assumptions, and that several concerns, including difficulties of enforcement and administration, made it undesirable to recommend a plan of this type.
As I expected, this edit was immediately reverted, by Morphh. Past experience leads me to believe that it is a waste of time to attempt to improve this article without help from an administrator. Looie496 ( talk) 16:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
As I said in my first request for assistance, any and every attempt at making this article less of a cheerleader for this bill has been met with absolute refusal or immense amounts of arguing. There is a multiple post back and forth where Morphh argues the definition of 'most.' The article and subarticles repeatedly makes specific claims about economics and when those are questioned, some are provablly wrong or deceptive, I'm met with the 'no rebuttal evidence is available' argument which is frequently cited by the editors arguing that side is due to the subject being fringe. It was only when I started saying that all these claims violated WP:FRINGE that those editors started claiming this wasn't a fringe idea. In the several weeks I've been aware of and working on this issue many other editors have made comments that they are unsatisfied with the article's bias but with the entrenched editors absolutely refusing to budge and those of us looking to improve the article being too well behaved to start an edit war nothing can get improved. An administrator or other binding process seems the only possible resolution. Kbs666 ( talk) 17:29, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
I've had a look. The article is extremely inappropriately weighted, with a vast amount of material sourced to non-peer-reviewed partisan work and from working papers of one or two major proponents of the idea. The fact that this is a notable political proposal does not mean that the actual economic benefits have been studied as part of mainstream public finance (and as such, is appropriate for this board). I'd fix it, except its clearly WP:OWNed by someone. Relata refero ( disp.) --07:59, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
This article could do with some help. The "oral tradition" section for some reason has an anti-science/medicine calypso songs lyrics within it, while the (admittedly awful and biased) "modern connotations" section has now been blanked. All of the sections need some work, and this article doesn't really leave you any the wiser about Traditional Medicine (although I did learn a bit about Martin Luther after following some links) Verbal chat 09:46, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Over the past couple weeks, a small but vocal (gee, go figure!) contingent of editors has been repeatedly acting to remove Category:Denialism and/or insert Category:Exposé from the Great Global Warming Swindle article. A small sampling of diffs: [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] (with that diff citing a 7-4 "vote" as consensus, reminds me of someone) [55] [56]. As this, a hokey British "documentary" (in "scare quotes", naturally) allegedly "disproving" global warming using bad science and dishonest methodology, is by now the deadest of dead issues (all the cool kids are over at Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed), it's rather tricky to establish a howling Zerg rush of opposition on the talk page, which is pretty much the only thing these editors respond to (any one person, especially the particular one person who's making this post, tends to be ignored amongst the series of ridiculous straw polls and glorified back-patting). I'm up against 3RR, and quickly running thin(ner?) on WP:CIVILity. More eyes and perhaps a few more eloquent voices than myself would be a good thing. -- Badger Drink ( talk) 17:47, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
As you can see, there is now an RFC about the category Denialism (not started by me). There is also a war developing on the talk page about including the word controversial (which the film admits to being) and polemical (which the makers of the film and th regulators claim it is). More eyes and opinions on this would be helpful. Verbal chat 07:17, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I have a feeling that trouble is brewing on these articles (both need massive work anyway) related to the Great Global Warming Swindle problems discussed above. If people could help out with sourcing, definition, content and balance issues for these articles that would be great. I'm going to be away for a while and will only have sporadic access to WP, so please add these articles to your watch lists (and despair!) :) Verbal chat 13:57, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I first encountered this new-to-me content on the Harvey Milk bio which I'm pretty familiar. i have been reading about Milk for years. An editor kept adding in a "Milk's Support for People's Temple" even though there seemed to be little support for this content in reliable sources. I did my own research of what any RS's had to state and inserted several neutral sentences but this alone did not appease their desire to see an entire section devoted to the subject. After an RfC, ANI report and full page protection, Wikidemo came to the rescue and started an article to house much of the content that was seen as undue in this other articles. I'm not greatly familiar with all the other players and politicians in the Jim Jones/People's Temple universe so I only commented on what I saw as POV and, IMHO, questionably sourced items in the Political Alliances of the People's Temple#Harvey Milk section. I detailed these out on the talk page in hopes that the main editors there would look into the concerns and hopefully address them. Now I'm being told that I am acting in bad faith and my asking for reliable sourcing is disingenuous in some fashion. It took me 2.5 months to get the "bonus" undue content off the Milk article but now I feel by having an article just on this subject the editors are emboldened to present information without regards to neutrality. I may be over-reacting to this however there seems to be some agenda of painting Milk as a major pro-Jones/People's Temple supporter when my looking into sources shows almost the opposite. Milk stated at the begining he thought they were weird and dangerous. As a politician he basically did what all the politicians were doing. I'd appreciate someone else looking at this as I don't thing anything I say will be received well at this point. Banjeboi 15:13, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I'd be grateful for views on an odd issue that has cropped up on Talk:Muhammad al-Durrah. (I have cross-posted this to the reliable sources and fringe theories noticeboards as it presents overlapping issues.)
A disagreement has arisen about a statement sourced to this article from the Australian newspaper The Age, concerning an individual named Nahum Shahaf, who has been in the limelight concerning claims that a vast international conspiracy staged the death of a Palestinian boy in 2000. In the context of a critique of Shahaf's views, the source states that Shahaf "has no forensic or ballistic qualifications". Several other newspaper sources say that "Shahaf concedes he is no authority on ballistics", that he is "not an expert" and that he is "known mainly as an inventor". He describes himself as a physicist. It's not clear if he has any formal qualifications as such, since nobody has yet been able to find any sources which describe his qualifications. There is, in short, nothing to suggest that the statement that he "has no forensic or ballistic qualifications" is in dispute by anyone, not even by the man himself.
A relatively new editor, User:Tundrabuggy, disagrees with the source on two grounds. First, he states that the reporter is "considered by some to be highly biased [against Israel]" (i.e. a few pressure groups and individuals have criticised his reporting) and has requested the removal of his use as a source - see : Talk:Muhammad al-Durrah#Challenge on one of the reporters. Second, Shahaf himself has said that his expertise is based on his having "finished all the stages necessary in learning this topic", "read the scientific material" and "consult[ed] with several experts", but has not at any point that I know of asserted that he has any qualifications in that area. On that basis, Tundrabuggy argues that Shahaf is qualified and it's therefore wrong to state that he has no qualifications. Here Tundrabuggy seems to be elliding the distinction between having knowledge of a subject and having qualifications in that subject. (I have knowledge of the daily struggles of being a man, because I'm a man. I don't have qualifications on that subject because I've never passed an examination on gender studies.)
The rather tedious discussion can be found at Talk:Muhammad al-Durrah#Nahum Shahaf.
It seems to me that this is an example of (a) would-be censorship - if we removed every source that someone disagreed with at some point, we wouldn't have much of an encyclopedia left; and (b) original research, since Tundrabuggy is essentially arguing on the basis of his personal belief that Shahaf has "qualifications" and it's therefore wrong to cite a newspaper report which says he doesn't, even though the man himself isn't known to have made this claim. I'd be interested to know what people think of this from a fringe theories perspective, since I'm conscious that proponents of fringe sources often claim that they have a greater degree of expertise than is really the case (cf. the ID and anti-AGW crowd). -- ChrisO ( talk) 13:51, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
I seem to be missing something. Where is the link to the WP article? Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 14:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Atropa belladonna. I need some HELP at this page. Please. ScienceApologist ( talk) 20:12, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
People, this is an article on the PLANT, not on the remedy. If we want to have an article on individual remedies, that's one thing. But to pollute articles on an essentailly unrelated subject with homeopathy is my beef. In January I went through and removed homeopathy from all the articles that did not have sources which indicated that homeopathy was somehow important to the subject of the article ( Domesticated sheep is an example where homeopathy stayed). This is the last article left that does not have a source which explicitly indicates that homeopathy is important to the plant. Actually, if anyone knows of a source that says something about this plant being famous for its homeopathic use, that would make me feel MUCH better, but as it is the best we can do is an anecdotal mention in the OUP book on health foods (how Deadly nightshade became a "food" I'm not sure, but anyway). That's simply not very good sourcing and definitely looks to me like a WP:WEIGHT violation. People think that just because it's a small instance that it isn't a big problem. Well, we have a system for dealing with these attempted "small mentions" of homeopathy that had found their way into no less than 30 different articles on plants and chemicals: excising.
You know, List of homeopathic remedies is a great page. Why violate the principle of one-way linking? ScienceApologist ( talk) 05:42, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
::::::::: When you wonder what should or should not be in an article, ask yourself what a reader would expect to find under the same heading in an encyclopedia.
Let's put it this way: Before I made the tweaks, it claimed that they literally could heal and harm people with their minds. In the lead. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 21:35, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
You might be interested in the Xrroid article, and the accompanying discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Xrroid. -- The Anome ( talk) 11:02, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
This needs some looking at. It appears to be intended as a timeline of events in insular Celtic history. The bizarre title "Pretanic isles" seems to be a Celticist coinage to avoid the phrase "British isles". The creator of this article claims it is justified by one sentence in the British Isles naming dispute article - a sentence that is footnoted to Google seraches. The article also lists exact dates for quasi-mythical events such as the battle of Camlann. Paul B ( talk) 13:06, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but it is obvious to the most casual reader that the article is overwhelmingly Celticist in orientation. There's nothing wrong with that as long as the title refects that fact. Leaving aside Canlann specifically, there are numerous dates that are portrayed as fact, when facts are anything but certain. Paul B ( talk) 15:35, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
this should just become a timeline of the British Isles. Perhaps split. The "Celticist" bias can be smoothed out by a merger with timeline of British history. I don't think we should delete material that is suffering from blatant bias. Nine times out of ten, it can be usefully integrated with existing material. Alternatively, there is nothing wrong with a timeline of Insular Celtic history if somebody's into building that. dab (𒁳) 07:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
In all it's wonder and glory, satanic ritual abuse is a much changed page from a year ago. What does the fringe theories noticeboard think, is it too far slanted towards skepticism, and are there any suggestions? There is ongoing debate on the talk page that it is too skeptical and there is not enough credence given to the "believer" side, that undue weight is given to the skeptical sources. Are there any suggestions or insights onto this? WLU ( talk) 01:06, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Chuck, this is nonsense. You don't need to prove the "existence of Satan" to establish the existence of Satanism any more than you need to prove the existence of God to establish the existence of Christianity. The point is that "Satanic Ritual Abuse" is a conspiracy theory, or a "moral panic", with next to no footing in reality. Therefore, the article will, for better or worse, need to be about the moral panic. -- dab (𒁳) 07:20, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
There are two things I'd like the folks at this noticeboard to know about this article. First, it was recently semiprotected, because an IP editor was revert-warring a number of hostile tags onto the article. Second, it really does have most of the problems the IP was pointing out, albeit in a misguided way. It has not a single inline reference and reads like an advertisement for this (new age?) mind-body discipline. It treats all of the claims of its advocates as some kind of undisputed, absolute facts. Help, please, from folks with experience NPOVing this kind of article. Just be aware that there was recent admin action there. -- Steven J. Anderson ( talk) 23:31, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
I've left the precociously in the merged version for your enjoyment :) I had never heard of Eutony. The only interwiki worth mentioning is de:Eutonie, which dates to May 2008. I guess we can keep an article on Alexander and her school, but one article is definitely enough, and it does need third party sources if it is to be rid of its warning tags. -- dab (𒁳) 09:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
essentially a WP:SYN-fork of Kingdoms in pre-colonial Africa. Note that there is no literature on "African Empires". A term that is in de-facto use is "West African empires", referring to the medieval Sahelian kingdoms and their successor states. The term "African Empires" does occur [65], and apparently has some currency in Afrocentrist literature, referring to some sort of imaginary pre-colonial Pan-African "golden age". The term consequently appears in publications such as African Philosophy in Search of Identity, A History of Native American and African Relations (viz., Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories), African Glory: The Story of Vanished Negro Civilizations, Cafundo: My People, My Folk, My Senzala, My Roots, An Introduction to Pan African Studies etc. Not sure whether "African Empires" as a notion in Afrocentrism has sufficient notability for a standalone article or whether it should just be merged back into Kingdoms in pre-colonial Africa. Note that it is undisputed, of course, that there have been empires in Africa. It's just that this doesn't make for a topic any more than Eurasian empires. -- dab (𒁳) 12:14, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Linus Pauling's most famous pseudoscience still has people who are die-hard committed to this idea. We need some extra eyes at Orthomolecular medicine and related pages. There are actually people arguing that orthomolecular medicine is not generally considered a pseudoscience. That's news to me. In the last class I taught about pseudoscience, we devoted an entire week to the subject! ScienceApologist ( talk) 20:18, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
An unpublished source from some guy with a PhD in psychology, which spends only 2-3 sentences on OMM, is not a reliable source. The argument that the scientific community ignores OMM is false, since there are publications on it. OMM requires a good source, since it was founded by a Nobel Laureate and run by people with MDs and PhDs. 20:58, 13 August 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by ImperfectlyInformed ( talk • contribs)
Lord help us, they're storming the castle. Man the balustrades and ready the hot oil vats! ScienceApologist ( talk) 21:04, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
Let's not forget that ScienceApologist is a proven disruptive editor with a track record of 28! blocks [67] one Arbcom, followed by subsequent controversies around of his Arbcom sanctions. ScienceApologist has recently conceded to work with a mentor [68] Other editors who have complaints about disruptions from this user should bring it up with the mentor. MaxPont ( talk) 07:35, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Water fluoridation opposition NEEDS HELP. In part, the issue is now that there are a lot of people trying to say that because the anti-water fluoridation activists think it is important to include unrelated facts about extremely high-concentrations of fluoride due to things OTHER THAN municipal fluoridation schemes that on Wikipedia they should similarly be allowed to soapbox their claims. We have right now two sections devoted to health affects that are IMPOSSIBLE to get with a municipal water fluoridation scheme. I'm trying to get them removed but the true believers won't let me. Will you stand up to their ownership of this article? Please. We need your help.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 21:57, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
I started an RfC: Talk:Water fluoridation opposition#RfC: Are sections 2 and 3 relevant to this article? ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:08, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
The article about the fringe group The Low Level Radiation Campaign was deleted about a month ago after I prod'd it for numerous reasons. Now the Company Secretary of the LLRC, Richard Bramhall, has turned up here to request restoration. It was restored and then immediately put up as an AfD. Richard Bramhall, who has extensively edited the article, has now asked for the page to be deleted to remove the criticism (on the link above) - and this makes me edgy. I'm all for the current article to be removed, as it's awful. However, should we have replace it with an article that uses the many criticisms of the LLRC, Dr Chris Busby, and their Second Event Theory as sources to accurately describe this group of fringe scientists. Maybe I'm over-reacting, as this is a very small group (and I'm not as mad as I sound), and the article will not be retained in its current state anyway. I'm just interested in what, if anything, should replace it. Thanks. Verbal chat 21:12, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
Deletion doesn't mean it will be gone forever. What we're trying to ascertain here is whether your group meets notability criteria and whether something, probably a much smaller balanced article, should replace it. Also, you are free to partake in discussion, but due to your CoI you should refrain from editing the page. Instead, bring up points on the talk page. If you can provide reliable sources for your claims about the LLRC, that would be great. Note I never said 2nd event theory was central to the LLRC, and censorship should make anyone "edgy" - especially if your groups claims are true! An attack page has also not been suggested. If you are having problems logging into your account, just follow the instructions on the login page. Also, please be civil and assume good faith of others actions. You are being needlessly confrontational and combative. (PS my name here is Verbal, Chat is a link) Verbal chat 11:38, 19 August 2008 (UTC)