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Hi folks, came across this on at WP:FEED and I am not quite sure what to make of it. It reads like an essay/OR but before send it to Afd I would like input from others. Thanks. – ukexpat ( talk) 16:36, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
We have an editor here who wants to insert "The Book of Genesis predates Christianity and forms part of the Torah, a Hebrew Jewish scripture and therefore creationism based on Genesis owes more to Judaism than to Christ's own teaching." He argues that this is not OR and he doesn't need a source on the basis that this is a logical conclusion (although he uses more words than I have). He compares this to an earlier argument he had where he was asked for a source to prove that a in the UK losing your job doesn't mean you lose your health care. 4 editors disagree with him. I'll try to move the argument here, which is where the rest of us think it should be. Dougweller ( talk) 18:03, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) " The only purpose ... is to essentially make the claim "The Jews are responsible for the culture wars"" What????? It says no such thing! It merely is highlighting the fact that certain Christians have a different opinion how to interpret what is essentially a Jewish era rather than a Christian era text. -- Hauskalainen ( talk) 02:24, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
I've think we've reached the question we really want people on this noticeboard to comment on, namely:
Is the statement "The Book of Genesis predates Christianity and forms part of the Torah, a Hebrew Jewish scripture and therefore creationism based on Genesis owes more to Judaism than to Christ's own teaching." either
- an instance of a novel synthesis or
- an instance of a routine calculation?
Could we please see some input below from people who haven't yet commented on this issue. Gabbe ( talk) 13:04, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
The idea that Creationism is anything other than Christian is not supported by the sources. Christians use the Old Testament in ways that Jews do not. Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:34, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
The definition of WP:OR requires that the disputed statement's purpose is "to advance a position" (and presumably one that is disputable). If that is the case in this case, what is the "position" I am accused of advocating? And why is it disputable? The purpose of the statement is merely to point out that Christians founding their belief on the contents of Genesis are doing so using a document that is not in essence of their own religion. Sure it is based on a text which both Christianity and Judaism accept as part of their beliefs. But because the essence of Christianity as areligion which marks it out from Judaism comes from the teachings of Cgrist as reported in the Gospels, and the other writings and ideas in the New Testament and by later Christian scholars, if the main source of certain Christians' belief in creation is Genesis then the source is essentially one that is from Judaism. I am curious to know there are people out there who seem to object to this. I am sure it is not because there is no WP:RS to say this and I am fairly sure they don't really believe that this is WP:OR or else they would put up an argument that would defeat the logic. So it was with the health care issue. Nobody tried to demonstrate that losing a job in the UK would result in a loss of health insurance coverage. The argument about WP:OR was put up by editors in the US who did not like the fact that in their own country it was quite normal to lose health insurance coverage when a person lost theor job. No British writer would ever claim the same thing that I wrote because it is so obvious, and as far as I could see no American writer had ever said that about the UK. Just because nobody had ever said it did not make it challengeable. Sheer logic holds it to be true (because national health insurance coverage in the UK is related to legal residency and not to emplyment status). Anyhow, I challenge anyone to tell me what the "position" is that I am supposedly trying to advance. -- Hauskalainen ( talk) 15:40, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
I'd oppose this statement on the grounds that it is unnecessary and argumentative (and frankly because it misses the point), but it clearly is not original research. I can find any number of sources who point out that the Council of Nicaea gathered texts from the Judaic (and early Christian) traditions and chose which to include in the Bible. Jewish traditions that made the cut went into the old testament; teachings of Christ and his followers that made the cut went into the new testament; all were considered (after that) to be divinely inspired Christian teachings. This is all well documented. does Hauskalainen need to find some scholar who is oafishly pedantic enough to point out that - hey! - genesis is included in the old testament? "No Original Research" does not mean that we need to edit like mindless, drooling idiots. let's not water down wp:OR to deal with situations like this.
@ Hauskalainen: you missed the point because regardless of Genesis' roots in Judaic tradition, it is now firmly and irrevocably a Christian doctrine, with meanings and implications in Christianity that the Talmud story does not share. you might as well try to tell Buddhists that they are all really Hindus. -- Ludwigs2 00:13, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) I have reinstated this noticeboard posting because I still do not regard the discussion as fully closed.
I note the User:Ludwigs2 actually agrees with me that this cannot be WP:OR because there is much evidence to show that there are sources which fundamentally show the truth in the statement. Now he is right in the sense that it is a bit pedantic to point out that Genesis emmanates from Judaism rather than Christianity and I agree with this editor that Christians have adopted the 'old book' and that this today forms part of the basis of Christian belief. The statement that I made does not actually dispute this and I would be agreeable to adding a qualifier to the statement to this effect to mollify those who seem to be claiming that I am impying that Genesis is not part of Christian theology (which I am not. It clearly is, though the interpretation of the creation story in Genesis varies widely with most Christians worldwide rejecting a literal interpretation). I agree with Hans that the last element of the statement could be regarded as WP:SYN and that is why I am open to amending the last element of the statement (because clearly I have no WP:RS to show that others have examined the degree to which Creationists basing their belief on creation as described in Genesis turn to sources other than Genesis itself). This is the issue which User:Professor marginalia raises. But this is not the real issue. I am saddened that this dispute was brought to this noticeboard before we had completed the discussion at TALK as I was going to modify the second part of the statement.
The issue really is that some Christian Creationists take a literal interpretation of this part of the Talmud, which is a document predating the Christian era (even though they are included as an inclusive part of Christian thelogy). Hans does not address the WP:NOR issue on that fundamental issue, though he seems to believe as I do that it is mostly American Christians who have taken the stance that Genesis must be defended as literal truth. majority of Christians worldwide seem happy to accept evolution and therefore do not defend a literal interpretation of Genesis. And I agree with him that most Jews seem to take the same stance. Hence we have a situation where there are certain Christians choosing to take a literal interpretation of Genesis (an essentially pre-Christian text) which most Jews and most other Christians choose not to do. This is what I think needs to be conveyed to the WP readership because it has an intrisic truth based on the origin of Genesis and the views of the majority of Jews and most Christians in the world (though perhaps not in the USA).
For people like me, coming from a Christian background which rejects a literal interpretation of Genesis without rejecting the notion that God exists or somehow shapes creation) this is a fundamental observation that needs to be made because it is so curious that certain fundamentalist Christians (mostly in the USA) cling to a belief that is not really essentially Christian or even essential to Christian faith (seen from the majority perspective of Creationism as an observer not sharing this belief). It represents a POV that is not in the article currently and all POVs should be represented in the article.
Most Christians in my part of the world look upon these extreme fundamentalist with some curiosity because a literal interpretation of the creation story is not an essential part of our faith. True, I have not come up with a source which actually says this but I am sure that this will be easy to do.
I would like reviewers here to concentrate on the issue of how the article can state the odd situation that there are some Christians which take a narrow interpretation of a document which is, in its origins, a document from Judaism , and which is not interpreted in this way by the majority of other Christians or indeed by most Jews. That is the key issue here. Too many editors are focussing on the last sentence which I am prepared to change or modify to accommodate those concerns (because I understand that they are valid and that the last element of the statement is not sustained).-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 19:28, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
"Few Jews or Christians in most places around the world now take a literal interpretation of creation as described in Genesis, a document that predated the Christian era. This trend has followed the development of a growing body of evidence from evolutionary biology, geology, and cosmology which tells a different story. However, in the United States, it is Christians and not Jews that are the force behind the revival of creationism."
Most of this is said elsewhere in the article with references except the pointing out that Genesis predates the Christian era. This is not difficult to prove. The article already says that most jews do not take a literal view of Genesis but the purpose of the phrase I wanted to add is maintained. i.e. the origin of Genesis in Judaism but the fact that is that it is Christians rather than Jews that are trying to adhere to a document that predates the Christian era. -- Hauskalainen ( talk) 22:27, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Re-reading the section, I see that in effect this is what the section reads. I think I will drop the discussion. Thanks to all those who contributed.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 06:36, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
Snap! I was hesitant about bringing this here until I saw the entry above. What's the best thing to do with this, which looks like pure OR? Dougweller ( talk) 13:56, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
There are reference "citations" to comments made by various persons, but no actual citation of where those comments were made or where they can be verified. I'm not sure how to approach this, which seems an example of OR. Monkeyzpop ( talk) 11:25, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
Over on Talk:Roxburgh_Branch we're having a discussion about the use of primary sources and the context in which they can be used. The documents being cited as primary sources and therefore leading to parts of the article being possible OR, are corporate files that used to be privately held by the corporate body for its business use and are now widely accessible through a document archive. The discussion on the page has examined every aspect of the extent to which such materiable might be useable on Wikipedia, where a secondary source has not been determined.
There is certainly a need to determine an appropriate context, if any, for the use of such primary sources in this way. I interpret the policy Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources as being one that devolves the verifiability to the reader but at the same time the author must be sure that it is possible for the reader to verify the claims made; otherwise it is OR. In the case of internal corporate files of an organisation, particularly those of a historical nature going back over many years (40 in this case) it might not be possible for a reader to make any kind of verification at all. PatrickDunfordNZ ( talk) 07:35, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Unpublished dissertations and a manuscript are given unusual prominence by an editor or editors with very similar IP addresses. The editor has not replied to questions or objections, but has stated that "Warning: Editing war: References to Bruni, Jalaluddin and Nguyen are repeatedly removed and WILL repeatedly be put back in again". Thank you. Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( talk) 20:35, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
there are ongoing concerns on Talk:Lia_Looveer. We have 3 sources:
In my view, this is a rather strange situation in which both supporters and detractors of the subject of the article seem to be happy that the article about that person exists (each hoping to push the article to a certain direction, based on scant evidence), while the best course of action might well be to revisit the AfD on the basis of a more systematic assessment of whether the article meets the notability criteria or not. Cs32en 08:13, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
I believe the aforementioned article is too much based on original research and personal interpretations of certain users, as well as giving undue weight to minority views. Furthermore, it it inconsistent with other articles about the subject. There was previously a decision to merge this article with Proposals for a Palestinian state. On July 2009 this article was "revived" by certain users. The article underwent many changers ever since. The current version is highly problematic, as it suggests that a state called Palestine already exists (an issue highly contested and controversial) and that it is the successor of the British Mandate of Palestine (a very unusual view among scholars). Any recent attempts to change the article was rejected, and the explanations on the talk page seems to me as if certain users try to push personal interpretation of sources into the article, in a way that resembles an academic thesis rather than a Wikipedian article. DrorK ( talk) 03:50, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
user 96.242.163.70 created the article: Grandfather of India
I suspect this may be original research. First, there are no references. It also reads very POV. Also, the comments by the editor on the discussion page intro imply original research: “I beleive this is a very important history issue and needs active discussion in veiw of unrevealed historical facts.” and “as a student of History of Indian History, I beleive the issue needs to be re-examined by historians in veiw of the facts revealed. The history needs to be re-written.”
Of course Wikipedia isn't the place to re-write history.
The material has also infiltrated several other articles. In Swami Dayananda Saraswati the editor changed “Some now revere him as Rashtrapitamah (Grandfather of the Indian Nation” to “That is why the Indians now revere him as Rashtrapitamah (Grandfather of the Indian Nation)” There is a substantial difference between the two statements.
The only reference to his being called the “Grandfather of India in ANY wikipedia article is: Rajender Sethi, "Rashtra Pitamah Swami Dayanand Saraswati" published by M R Sethi Educational Trust Chandigarh. Since the author and publisher appear as the same name could this be self-published? BashBrannigan ( talk) 19:54, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
I forgot to mention, I was also wondering if I should have nominated the article for Speedy Deletion, but I wasn't familiar with the process. BashBrannigan ( talk) 01:25, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Can someone add this to their watchlist? User:Terryalan keeps adding original research here and here. In the second reversion, he basically admits it is original research. 216.117.11.39 ( talk) 13:29, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Naluboutes,Nalubotes Aeria Gloris,Aeria Gloris 18:28, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
There is repeatedly inserted a category without naming any source, just by conviction. Could someone help here? The discussion is taking place on Talk:Spiral_Dynamics#removal_of_.22new_age.22_category and Talk:Spiral_Dynamics#The_new_age_issue. Thanks, -- Pevos ( talk) 20:42, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Please forgive the intrusion gentlemen but does Ken Wilbur have a degree in psychology or psychiatry or philosophy or sociology? Also Professor whomever aside.. Wilber is known as a new age person..An example from Salon..
would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the 'edge of history.' There would be a real New Age."
- Ken Wilber, Up From Eden, pg. 328
Again forgive the intrusion but uh that find was just by typing in Ken Wilber into google which then added the words New Age to my entry. As the Ken Wilber New Age debate has already happened and for the sake of balance and fairness the label was removed from his wiki article. It has not changed peoples perception of him and his views.
LoveMonkey (
talk) 18:55, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
(e/c) ugh, this is not my day for peaceful coexistence with others...
@snowded & lovemokey: don't misunderstand me; I didn't say that Wilber and II were scholarly/academic. He has a Master's in psychology, I think, and he's very well-read, but that's about it. I only said that they take an analytical approach that is not typical of New Age thinking (which tends towards emotional/'oceanic' thought). My concern with the label is that outside of 'actual' new age domains, the term 'new age' is usually used as a mild pejorative (along the lines of Schwartzenegger's "girlie-man" comments). LM, note that that's precisely the tone of the reference you gave. I would hate to see Wilber's/II's defense against (what they perceive as) an erroneous insulting term be used as proof that the erroneous insulting term actually applies. They don't use typical New Age thinking, they don't self-identify as New Age - they shouldn't be categorized that way without some decent reason.
@Gothean: I've run across you before (on Ramakrishna, I think), and you had the same spiteful, didactic, tendentious editing style that you showed in this post here. please play nice. -- Ludwigs2 19:07, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Well. Ken Wilber's theory is not peer reviewed as far as I know (if so please post where and when that happened-pretty please with money on top). As for Snowded, well me and him and his buddy User:Peter Damian are not buddies. But Snowded is right here. So I support him (hell they got me a 24 hour ban so I have no pony in the race). As his comment about the source. It appears to be backward as again, Ken Wilber's work as far as I know is not peer reviewed he's not an academic authority on this, his stuff is pop culture and has no academic weight as far as know (no disrespect Ken, I loved your stuff on the Matrix special edition (<; LoveMonkey ( talk) 19:56, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
As I have mentioned on its talk page, much of the article on the company that I represent (and therefore have a conflict of interest regarding), Hill & Knowlton, is POV and requires references and citations from reliable sources. So far, none of the article's editors have responded to my call for the article to be checked for its neutrality and references improved/unreliably sourced material removed.
I can therefore only assume that the editors of this article are trying to make my organisation look bad by not presenting either a neutral or well-balanced point of view, supported by reliable sources.
As my COI restricts me from directly editing the article, I am therefore reaching out to this community of editors in the hope that someone with an independent position will review the article for unreferenced original research and edit it accordingly.
Niall Cook (Hill & Knowlton) 13:55, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
It has been asserted that Mass killings under Communist regimes is a coatrack, synthesis, and thus original research.
The argument placed for this is that:
The article makes no claims which are SYNTH, and this is now procedure for the sake of procedure. I was accused of SYNTH and OR for this Talk page post
[9] contains no OR or SYN, and is not even in the article for any such claim to be made. As the premise is faulty, this is not a "counter argument" of any kind or sort, and immediately follows the post from Fifelfoo.
Collect (
talk) 01:00, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
I'll just repeat the examples I've given on the talk page to show that no matter what evidence is shown some editors continual cry "Synthesis, synthesis."
I asked who they would consider to be mainstream scholars in the area and they answered Benjamin Valentino and Helen Fein:
The "synthesis" and "original research" arguments they harp on for deleting this article are pure nonsense.
Responding to Collect above, Collect's diff of their talk contribution is a perfect example of SYNTH and OR by listing in proximity. By listing unrelated items, without a RS'd structural explanation for the list, an implied commonality is created. While this was a talk page contribution, it is a beautiful miniature example of the SYNTH problem with the main article. Fifelfoo ( talk) 01:10, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Terminology:
In response to questions:
Responding to Blueboar:
Although there is no academic literature connecting mass killings with Communist regimes, there is a non-academic theory that communist ideology leads to mass killings. The theory was developed by theorists who equate communist killings with Nazi Germany ( moral equivalence). The theory has its immediate origins in holocaust denial, but instead of denying the holocaust (holcaust trivialization), it equates the crimes of communists with the natural reaction of Europeans against the "Jewish threat". Many Eastern European advocates of the theory were upset when their governments apologized for their involvement in the holocaust because the Jews had not apologized for causing WW2. The main point is that while Nazis may have killed 6 million (although that is questioned) the Jewish communists killed 100 million. Communism is equated with Jewishness although some versions replace Jews with Russians.
Originally I voted to delete this article because of its inherent POV, OR, and SYN problems. However on reading more about its significance in far right ideology I think it is a legitimate article.
The Four Deuces ( talk) 22:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
The "Terminology" section is composed of some statements that do not reflect adequately the sources, and thereby create a distorted picture. In the second section's paragraph
a Valentino's definition of mass killing is provided that is supplemented with a detailed description of one chapter of his book that is devoted to mass killings in three Communist countries. This fragment is intended to create an impression that Valentino developed a "Communist mass killing" concept, what is obviously false, because he clearly wrote in the same chapter that "Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as Communist or been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing." My conclusion is that the second para is SYNTH.
The third para
is, probably, the most vague way to present a very clear authors' conclusion ("It would therefore appear (assuming for the moment that there are not any big measurement biases) that autocratic regimes, especially communist, are prone to mass killing generically, but not so strongly inclined (i.e. not statistically significantly inclined) toward geno-politicide."). In other words, Wayman and Tago simply state that there is no statistically significant linkage between genocide and Communism, although some connection between autocracy and mass killing does take place. My conclusion is that this para is pure OR. One way or the another, this para deals with connection between Communism and mass killing, not with terminology.
A fourth para ("Helen Fein a founder and the first President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars has termed the mass state killings in the Soviet Union and Cambodia as the "Soviet and Communist genocides and Democide".") also pretends to create an impression that Helen Fein put forward the term "Soviet and Communist genocides and Democide". In actuality, according to Fein's own words ""However, while totalitarian states have been more likely to commit genocide than are other states, most cases of contemporary genocide since World War II were committed by authoritarian, not totalitarian states, and are not ascribable to ideology." it is impossible to speak about genocide or democide as something pertinent to Communism. My conclusion is that the para is pure OR.
The fifth para ("In his book The killing trap: genocide in the twentieth century Manus I. Midlarsky compares similarity of killings of Stalin with those of Pol Pot.") is quite obscure for me because it has nothing to do with terminology.
The sixth para ("Communist states are alleged by some genocide scholars, such as Daniel Goldhagen and Benjamin Valentino, to be responsible for deaths far in excess of any other regime type") deals with the number of Communists' victims and also has nothing in common with terminology.
Summarising all said above, the whole section pretends to create an impression that some special terminology exists that describes Communist mass killings. I believe I was able to demonstrate it is absolutely false.-- Paul Siebert ( talk) 03:23, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Obviously, the "terminology" section is only the emerged part of the iceberg. AFAIK the article's previous name was
Communist genocide. The article was renaimed to avoid deletion (if I am not wrong). I personally have no major objection against the old name (as well as against the present one) provided that, but only provided that the article combined only well established cases of mass murders and genocide (Cambodia, Stalin's Great Purge, etc) and briefly mentioned other cases of preventable prematutre deaths that, according to some scholars, can be considered "genocide", "democide", "politicide" etc, (and, according to others, cannot).
By contrast, the article tends to become a collection of all cases of premature mortality under Communist rule, and even a single mention of certain case by one scholar apperars to be sufficient for its inscusion into the article. In my opinion it is
WP:FRINGE and
WP:SYN.--
Paul Siebert (
talk) 23:05, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Re: Blueboar (1, 2, 3)
So you asked for one, I've given you three. There are lots more, but they do tend to focus on 1 or 2 countries at a time, and some just mention the ideological reasons in passing. Smallbones ( talk) 23:34, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
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help)This subject is outside my area of expertise. I've made a few comments based on the title of the article on the talk page. I find the title objectionable, because it sounds like red-baiting and sounds unencyclopedic. I find titles such as anti-communist mass killings, or Christian mass killings, or Moslem mass killings equally objectionable. To single out any group, and then say only bad things about it, is wrong. Rick Norwood ( talk) 21:10, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
I used Google scholar to search for the exact phrase "Mass killings under communist regimes" and also "Mass killings by communist regimes". There were zero hits in both cases. Rick Norwood ( talk) 21:52, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure that the examples you give are names of areas of study. That is only the case if Valentino, to take one example, claims that communist mass killings are different in character from other mass killings throughout history. In the quote above, he does make some extraordinary claims, but it is not our place to review his book, only to decide where to report his views. There are two questions. First, is "communist" is an adjective, like "New York" would be in the phrase "New York crime statistics", or is "communist mass killings" a subject different from other mass killings. Second, is this a mainstream view, and is there a commonality between the various authors cited above, or is it just Valintino's view, in which case it belongs in an article on Valintino. Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:00, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
Although the latest edit here] was introduced as a compromise, I still see it as OR as no evidence is given that the scholars in question have mentioned LDS 'Reformed Egyptian' or compared it to other scripts. The second paragraph is probably more of an RS issue, I don't see how we can use a character from a religious story as a source in this way. Dougweller ( talk) 20:30, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Could editors please check militant atheism with respect to original research. There are many problems with the article obviously, but I'm interested in the sentence from the lead: Recently, the term has been used to describe atheists such as Richard Dawkins,[2] Sam Harris[3] and Daniel Dennett.[4] The sources used to back up this statement are not sources about the usage of the term, but are instances of such usage. It seems to me that Wikipedians have engaged in amateur lexicography to observe how the term is applied in media; however, this kind of backing up a statement by way of example is fairly common on Wikipedia. For example, I've seen statements like John has published five papers backed up by means of citing the five papers rather than using a secondary source, such as a biography. It would be nice if people here could clarify where the line should be drawn. Thanks, 77.4.42.172 ( talk) 14:46, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
This is a synthesis of uses of a term, rather than a summary of sources that discuss the term. It's clearly WP:NOR. Jayjg (talk) 03:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Greetings,
This one should be pretty easy and straightforward. In this section of the Avatar (2009 film) article I added the following revision (shown here in bold), citing Cameron's own published statement:
The look of the Na'vi, the characters native to the world depicted in the film, was inspired by a dream that Cameron's mother had long before he wrote Avatar. She dreamt about a 12-foot-tall blue woman and he thought "that's kind of a cool image". So in 1976 or 1977, he put into his first screenplay a planet with a native population that was 12 feet tall and blue, and "gorgeous", which later became the basis for the Na'vi in Avatar. [1] Also, Cameron said that he just liked the color blue and its conceptual connection to the Hindu deities, [2]
and then clarified it by references to reliable academic sources:
alluding to the fact that principal deities in Hinduism, such as Vishnu and Krishna, are traditionally depicted as dark-blue. [3] [4]
The reason for this clarification was that, based on the Cameron's phrase alone, an average reader unfamiliar with Hinduism is likely to think that all 33 million Hindu deities are blue, which is false, or to be left simply wondering about the "conceptual connection". Therefore, in order to clarify Cameron's statement I provided two academic references showing that some deities in Hinduism are indeed blue and that they happen to be the principal ones.
Another editor disagreed with the clarification starting with "...alluding to", opining it to be OR, and removed it. A discussion ensued here here. On his suggestion I am taking the issue to this notice board, seeking to be educated about the application of WP:NOR in this particular case. Regards, Cinosaur ( talk) 02:09, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Hi. I'm the other editor that Cinosaur referred to above. I added a {{reflist}} here so access to the above sources is more convenient:
themes
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).The OR problem I saw was with sources [3] and [4] that are used to support the statement. These sources do not directly relate to the topic of the article, which is Avatar (2009 film). Please note the 2nd paragraph of the lead of WP:NOR.
-- Bob K31416 ( talk) 06:04, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Bob K31416 is correct here. The sources used for citations 3 and 4 are not directly related to the topic of the article, the movie Avatar. Their inclusion, and the material based on them, is original research. Jayjg (talk) 03:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Already under discussion at Talk:WrestleMania 23, Wikipedia:Content noticeboard#WrestleMania 23, and a thread or two at WP:AN/I. – Luna Santin ( talk) 20:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
"WWE (the promotion holding the event) and Ford Field (the arena hosting the event), among many others, give one number for the attendance of the event. Wrestling reporter/dirt sheet writer Dave Meltzer looked at WWE's financial reports (WWE is a publically traded company and thus have to release this info to the public) and used to numbers to come up with his own attendance number for the event without having any sources to back him up. This is the first issue, whether to even use his number as a footnote since he based the number on how much money WWE made from merchandise sales. The second issue is less contentious and is what the wording should be IF a footnote is include." - RfC taking place at Talk:WrestleMania 23#RfC
There is an RfC taking place at Talk:WrestleMania 23#RfC regarding the inclusion of the statement: " Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter stated an attendance of 74,687." This is a verifiable statement, since it is sourced to Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Several editors (particularly User:JzG claim that it is a violation of WP:OR. The arguments being used are (1) that it ends with a 7, and statistics that end with a 7 can't be trusted, (2) that it is not within an unspecified margin of error, (3) that it is the result of a mathematical calculation, and so forth. I believe that reporting Meltzer's statement in a neutral manner does not consitute original research—there is no synthesis, no interpretation, and no extrapolation. In fact, I believe that a Wikipedia editor making determinations about the accuracy of a number based on their belief that it contains too many significant figures is the true case of original research in this situation. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks, GaryColemanFan ( talk) 06:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Is it a violation of WP:NOR to say that something is at the top or bottom of a list? There's a dispute at a university article over whether we can say that Tier 4 is the lowest tier in the " U.S. News & World Report College and University rankings", and whether we can say that it has the highest tuition in its category. See Talk:Maharishi University of Management#Ranking. Will Beback talk 18:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
There's a discussion going on at Talk:ADE 651 about whether the image on the right can be used to illustrate an article about the ADE 651, a controversial detection device. The image is sourced to the US Navy; however, the original caption does not describe what the device shown in the subject's left hand is. Another editor believes that it shows "an ADE 651 or similar device". This is quite possibly the case, but I'm wary of using this image considering that the angle is poor - it only shows a rear view, so most of the device is concealed from view - and there is no reliable source to describe what the subject is holding. Would it be original research to use the image to illustrate a topic that is not discussed in its original caption? -- ChrisO ( talk) 00:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
If someone could take a look at the following sections of these articles as in my opinion there is some rampant original research going on and attempts to remove it have been reverted. The short story as all reliable sources are reporting it ( [18] [19] [20] [21]) is that the IPCC claimed that Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 based on an unconfirmed interview with one scientist and that this date turned out to be wildly false. User:William M. Connolley says that sources such as the New York Times, New Zealand Herald, ABC News, and the Sunday Times are all "badly wrong" and "clueless". Instead, Connolley has proposed his own rather novel interpretation of events which can be read here: [22]. In short, he claims that the IPCC meant to cite the date 2350 which is found in a third primary source that the IPCC never cited. This conclusion is not cited by any reliable sources (I am still yet to see any secondary source that mentions the date 2350 in the context of this), but the assertion has been reverted back in and OR tags have been removed. See talk at: Talk:Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#2035.2F2350.3F. Please note that IPCC is currently fully protected and both articles are under sanctions including a 1RR restriction. Oren0 ( talk) 06:50, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Or just follow the citations from the IPCC report itself. Here is the WWF 2005 report, which might need to be cited in the article though. 83.86.0.82 ( talk) 13:33, 25 January 2010 (UTC)In 1999, a report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) stated: "glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high"
WP:Synth question at Talk:Mark_Weisbrot#Synthesis - somebody experienced with this please help clarify. Thanks. Rd232 talk 00:17, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Recent edits to Bismarck, North Dakota have introduced various problems into the article. Chief among my concerns is that the edits, which are completely unsourced, are almost entirely original research. If the OR concerns can be addressed effectively, other problems, such as neutrality, grammar, and style, can be tackled. Several of the most problematic passages are excerpted here. An RFC filed almost 72 hours ago has generated no response as of yet. I would greatly appreciate more eyes on this. Rivertorch ( talk) 05:12, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
POV push by User:RockandDiscoFanCZ regarding a notion about "Post-Disco" as a specific genre of music, despite many requests on the talk page for an RS source to support the claim.
The article was recently considered for deletion, where similar observation's were made. I'm interested in hearing other views on this, should there be any. Cross-posted here Semitransgenic ( talk) 23:53, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
I've started a RfC on my proposal for dealing with one of these articles, where the discussion has been particularly heated. My proposal is not specific to that kind of software, so hopefully the result of the discussion can be used as a precedent for all similar articles. In my experience, this type of articles sometime include original research, e.g. [30]. Please participate at Talk:Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients#A way forward. Pcap ping 15:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
The Detailed annual history section of the World Universities Debating Championship page looks like OR, can someone more experienced than me have a look and recommend a cause of action ? Codf1977 ( talk) 08:34, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Jonny Greenwood ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Some users, I'm guessing fans of Greenwood, are insisting that the section "Equipment Used" be kept in the article although the information is completely unsourced. Severeal users have removed the section for that reason, but it's been reverted every time. It's starting to turn into a bit of an edit war. Any advice? TheTwoRoads ( talk) 07:56, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
I could use some eyes and hands, here. I have an editor Gun Powder Ma ( talk · contribs) who's been obliquely pushing (so far as I can tell) the idea that the Taijitu - the Yin Yang symbol from Chinese philosophy - was actually adopted from the Romans. He's got some Roman shield patterns that are of roughly the same form but a few hundred years earlier, one author (an italian Lit Crit guy, I think, named Monastra) who has been offering up the similarity as an 'intriguing possibility', a couple of minor reference from odd sources (e.g. a footnote in an article on the roman shield patterns in a museum journal), but he's trying to parlay this into making a huge splash for the European symbolism in an article that is ostensibly about the Taoist figure.
I opened an RfC, but the only person who's responded to date is Pyrrhon8 - my own personal (low-grade) wikistalker (no worries, it's kinda cute). if people could take a look and help put these sources into some kind of proper balance, I'd appreciate it. -- Ludwigs2 20:37, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
A review article in the journal Pediatrics on research on the use of meditation as an intervention among youth includes 16 studies on meditation. A two-page table in the review presents all 16 studies and gives details about each. Of these 16 studies, 6 are on Transcendental Meditation. The table shows that 5 of these studies on Transcendental Meditation are randomized controlled trials and 1 is a before/after study. In representing information from this review in the article on Transcendental Meditation, I wrote, " Of the 6 TM studies, 5 were randomized controlled trials." Is this original research? Thank you. TimidGuy ( talk) 22:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks much, Johnuniq. It was meant to introduce the research in the review that's specific to TM RCTs. Here's how it had been written: "A 2009 review of 16 pediatric studies on meditation that included 6 studies on Transcendental Meditation found that meditation in general "seems to be an effective intervention in the treatment of physiologic, psychosocial, and behavioral conditions among youth."[64] Of these 16 studies 5 were uncontrolled. Of the 6 TM studies, 5 were randomized controlled trials. A primary outcome of the randomized controlled trials on Transcendental Meditation was the reduction of hypertension and improvement in vascular function relative to health education, as well as reductions in absenteeism and attentional problems. The review said that because of limitations of the research, larger-scale and more demographically diverse studies need to be done to clarify treatment efficacy."
Should I simply leave out the sentence that counts the number of TM RCTs? And also the total number that were TM? (The count of 16 studies and 5 uncontrolled was explicitly in the review.) TimidGuy ( talk) 12:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
It's what it says, just pictures of flags with body parts/people/statues etc. Pure OR, is there any reason to keep it? Dougweller ( talk) 08:26, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
And created by the same editor, Gallery of flags with writing, while others have created Gallery of flags with plants, Gallery of flags with weapons, Gallery of flags with animals, Gallery of flags with headgear and Gallery of bordered flags Dougweller ( talk) 08:34, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
IP is unhappy with research that says burials are examples of human sacrifice and is insistent that an alternative view, that they were something to do with early medicine, be added. I keep asking him for references that back this claim but as you can see from the IP's talk page User talk:207.172.10.203 he has no references but simply asserts that the reliable sources are just opinion. He has added material to the article's talk page he wants in the article but he is using references that assert the idea of human sacrifice to reference a statement about early medicine, which is definitely not in the source. Now he's adding pov tags to the references. As there seems little interest in this article, it would be useful to have an opinion as to whether I've got it wrong or some advice as to what to do now if, as I believe, the IP simply wants to add OR. I'd like to persuade him of my case (if I'm right) and could use some help. He seems to be arguing in good faith and I wouldn't want to lose him if he can be persuaded to follow our OR guidelines. Thanks. Dougweller ( talk) 21:19, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
The Airport bus reference section seems to be composed partly of flickr links. Is this legit under Wikipedia policy?-- 293.xx.xxx.xx ( talk) 09:16, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
There is a dispute about whether the War in Iraq article should have the war on terrorism term in the infobox. Please check Iraq_War#NPOV_dispute_-_POV_term_used_in_the_conflict_infobox and comment there. -- JokerXtreme ( talk) 23:27, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I've phrased the first paragraph of criticism towards a quite controversial journalist with 3 sources that note his articles to often raise controversy.
Nableezy, believes that putting the Der-Spiegel source into this line for the criticism section "is OR, specifically SYNTH, for you to use publications that do not criticize Levy and connect that to criticism of Levy." [31]
The text above shows notability of controversy. Other sources and comentators are used for actual "He has been criticized by..." criticism.
Would appreciate some external perspective here. Jaakobou Chalk Talk 02:40, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Currently the IRFU use a flag which contains a copyrighted logo see here as such it can't be used expect as WP:FU. A number of users have suggested we create a flag/icon or use the File:Four Provinces Flag.svg for the IRFU and it's teams. It is mine and others contention that this is breech of WP:OR/ WP:OI as it invents a flag/icon or invents an association which doesn't exist between the IRFU, its teams and a flag Gnevin ( talk) 09:13, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
I could use some eyes on Yellowface - editor Nemogbr seems intent on inserting the term "racebending" into the article - I've gone back and forth with him on this several times, as he also seems to have been promoting a website called "racebending.com" in the past. The problem is, most of his claims seem like original research or POV-pushing, and while he throws a lot of links up to justify his actions, checking those links shows (when the links are valid) no significant coverage of the term, or in most cases, not even a mention of it. He continued to revert to his preferred text, adding even more mentions of the term, even though that text is not backed up by any valid or reliable third party sources. I've tried discussing it with him on his talk page, but he only claims that his links are valid. Help would be appreciated... TheRealFennShysa ( talk) 16:31, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Contested as original research is the wording, "The institute has received federal funding through the political support of Nevada's senators John Ensign [33] and Harry Reid, [34] [35] the latter a close personal friend of Harvey Whittemore. [36] [37]
Argument on talk page it is not OR: Talk:Whittemore Peterson Institute#08 February 2010 edit summaries
No valid reason given to exclude the support of John Ensign and Harry Reid, or Whittemore's ties to either. That's still the case. Both appropriated funds, both are beneficiaries of HW's largesse, both are friends, Reid is a close friend. Relevant, well sourced.
Argument on talk page it is OR: Talk:Whittemore Peterson Institute#Reference Packing
The John Ensign source indicates a funding request. There is no indication the proposed funding legislation was passed, or money was received by the institute (WPI). The Reid sources state the money is for The Center for Molecular Medicine at The University of Nevada School of Medicine. The institute is only part of the The Center for Molecular Medicine. The institute is collaborating with researchers at The University of Nevada School of Medicine. [38] To state WPI received money on the basis of these sources is WP:OR. The two sources talking about the Reid friendship do not mention WPI. The friendship material in the article leads the reader to believe friendship is a factor in the funding. H.Reid has been supporting CFS long before the WPI was conceived. [39] The friendship material is WP:SYNTH.
Ward20 ( talk) 04:19, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
There's been a drawn-out dispute over the inclusion of a cultural reference in the article about the South Park episode Butters' Bottom Bitch. The essence of the discussion is whether an allusion to a living person, in this case the real-life pimp "Bishop" Don "Magic" Juan should be mentioned in the article although it is not explicitly mentioned in professional commentary of the series.
Dream Focus and I believe the allusion is too obvious to be dismissed as run-of-the-mill original research or synthesis while Gigs AniMate and especially Alastairward believe it should be removed. Presently, the dispute has stalled after low-level edit warring between myself and Alastairward. Both of us have been frustrated by the lack of progress, and I was concerned enough to file a Wikiquette alert. There the lack of progress was recognized, but it was stressed that there had been no deliberate incivilities and that we should try taking the issue here.
Peter Isotalo 10:28, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
It's OR. You cannot assume the reader will know anything about Juan (I'd wager that most people don't). From WP:PRIMARY: "A primary source can be used only to make descriptive statements that can be verified by any educated person without specialist knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source. Do not make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about material found in a primary source" -- NeilN talk to me 23:52, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
I have concerns about WP:NOR, WP:NEO and (arguably, but not such a priority) WP:CIRCULAR on the Dunning-Kruger effect article.
First, note that none of the article's sources mention the phrase "Dunning-Kruger effect". There is plenty of psychological research on these superiority effects (see Illusory superiority, Self-enhancement or Positive illusions) so there's a legitimate question of whether there is a separately notable phenomenon here.
The article exists now because it was de-merged from Illusory superiority. The justification given in the edit summary was that "the effect is composed of illusory superiority and illusory inferiority". This doesn't seem to be based on sources, and it at least looks like the "effect" was re-defined on the fly simply to justify the existence of the article on WP. "Illusory inferiority" looks like a WP:NEO.
The term itself seems to have originated on Wikipedia. Neither the article's initial creation as "Dunning-Kruger Syndrome" or subsequent renaming to "Dunning-Kruger effect" seem to be based on sources, and I haven't found sources that pre-date the appearance of these terms on WP. However, this isn't the focus of my complaint. Since I first raised the issue and merged the article into Illusory superiority, it was pointed out that some peer-reviewed sources use the phrase "Dunning-Kruger effect". They seem to come after the term's invention on WP, but I'm personally not so bothered about that. However, the article itself does not seem to be based on these sources so we've no indication that the "effect" defined in the article is not OR.
For completeness, here is where I first raise the OR issue: Talk:Dunning–Kruger_effect#Title_constitutes_original_research and here is the merge discussion: Talk:Illusory_superiority#Merge_Dunning.E2.80.93Kruger_effect_into_this_article and Talk:Illusory_superiority#Delusion.2C_not_illusion
I would normally pursue this purely through article talk, but I'm being opposed by a couple of editors whose arguably uncivil tone and rather free interpretation of policy suggest that this will just become an edit war. One of them is User:Michael C Price, who performed the de-merge described above. He has already twice removed the OR tag. Thanks in advance for any comments. MartinPoulter ( talk) 15:48, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
I believe this edit to Gregorian calendar is original research. The editor adding the material has already been informed of the original research at Talk:Conversion between Julian and Gregorian calendars, where he or she posted an earlier version of his or her conversion process. Jc3s5h ( talk) 21:05, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
62.31.226.77 ( talk) 22:13, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
::::When you say "false" information... are you saying that the calculation results in an inaccurate conversion?
Blueboar (
talk) 15:11, 17 February 2010 (UTC) Nevermind... my question was answered on the article talk page.
Blueboar (
talk) 15:17, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
The article on Secret societies needs a lot of attention. Due to inconsistent inline citation, it is very difficult to know what is and is not sourced... so we have difficulty distinguishing what is and is not OR. That said, there is a lot that sure appears to be OR to me. Blueboar ( talk) 15:18, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
The article Criticism of American foreign policy is full of highly POV, uncited statements like But many of the good things and positive influences it has had have a tendency to be overlooked, as the news media has a tendency to accentuate negative results particularly when they're more attention-getting and tends to focus on critics, while overlooking subtler, slower, and more benign but positive aspects of foreign policy which are less likely to sell newspapers., and U.S. taxpayers are seen as subsidizing the defense of allied peoples who fail to carry their fair share of defense spending., and In the history of the world, the U.S. has an enviable record of accommodating peoples from around the world , and so on ... The author (the entire page was almost created by a single author) has mixed these statements in with several claims that he has cited, in order to make it look as if the article is well-sourced, and not OR. But both the numerous uncited OR statements such as the above, the choice of wording, the structure of the page (such as the categories that the author stated that most arguments fell into, without citing a reliable source that says that these categories are appropriate), and the choice/selection of topics covered are unacceptably biased and unsourced. I just noticed this article, and am about to have to step away from the Internet for a few days, but wanted to notify other people so they can start working on this as well. I'll get to it when I return. Thanks -- Jrtayloriv ( talk) 05:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't think this is salvageable. The references cited often to not draw the conclusions cited in the article. WP:SYNT violations galore. I've sent it to AfD. Pcap ping 15:30, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
This section consists entirely of legal analysis conducted by some Wikipedians on the talk page. I think it should be removed. Pcap ping 15:20, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion at Scientific opinion on climate change concerning a statement in the lead "No scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion since the American Association of Petroleum Geologists adopted its current position in 2007." which is repeated later in the article here. Both statements use this(PDF) source. The source is incredibly weak, especially for the strength of the statement it is backing up. The quote is from an editorial concerning a review of Michael Crichtons last book and seems totally inapropriate for the way it is being used in the article. There are also WP:SYNTH issues since the source states only the AAPG(American Association of Petroleum Geologists) dissents then cites a statement by the AAPG saying they believe in Global Warming. The article is basically a collection of statements by various organizations affirming that global warming is occuring. The article uses the obove statement to avoid having any discussion of dissenting views which a significant NPOV problem especially given the very weak nature of the source used. I brought up this issues as part of a larger discussion and there seems to be no progress being made in the current discussion. The eyes and opinions of some editors experienced in these matters would be greatly appreciated. Voiceofreason01 ( talk) 15:08, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Following on from the discussion about the article Scientific opinion on climate change and it being a possible content fork, I am seeking some input from other editors about the unsourced content in the hatnote and lead of the article that define this topic. The current version of the hatnote and lead read as follows:
Scientific opinion on climate change is given by synthesis reports, scientific bodies of national or international standing, and surveys of opinion among climate scientists. This does not include the views of individual scientists, individual universities, or laboratories, nor self-selected lists of individuals such as petitions. National and international science academies and scientific societies have assessed the current scientific opinion, in particular on recent global warming.
The problem I have with this lead are as follows:
My view is that no matter how innocuous the lead is, it is wholly unsatisfactory for an article topic to be defined by analytic or evaluative claims that that are based on original research. My conclusions are that:
In short, the basis for inclusion of this topic as a standalone article is based on original research. Clearly there are several editors that disagree with the assertion that this article is a content fork (fair enough), but if the main issue is disputed, then at least consider the symptoms that are the badge of a content fork. The hatnote and lead to this article are original research, and do not define the article's subject matter in any meaningful way. Has any editor a view on this matter? Am I mistaken? -- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 15:22, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
- Scientific opinion on climate change is given by synthesis reports, scientific bodies of national or international standing, and surveys of opinion among climate scientists. This does not include the views of individual scientists, individual universities, or laboratories, nor self-selected lists of individuals such as petitions.
I don't follow all of this, but preliminarily: is the dispute mainly over whether there are groups that dispute the predominant view, or is it mainly over whether individual scientists can be excluded from "scientific opinion," or is it impossible to simplify the dispute in this way? At least to me, the first thought is that it seems odd to suggest that "scientific opinion" refers only to the collective view of large groups. Intuitively, "scientific opinion" could either be any opinion that is grounded in the scientific method, or it could refer to the opinions of those considered scientists. I wouldn't think that "scientific opinion" would only regard the statements of groups. Or am I missing the point? This wouldn't necessarily be a concern with the scope of the article, merely a suggestion that the text might be clarified not to suggest a predominant view that "scientific opinion" is a sort of republican process in which only large groups have standing. Mackan79 ( talk) 23:52, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
{undent} I can't find where it says that part about "all major scientific insitutions", can you provide a direct quote or a page number? However, page 2 says that "the scientific community, with the exception of a few contrarians..." and that chapter Dmcq referenced makes numerous references to a scientific consensus, page 76 seems to be a good one. With some minor rewriting to the article either of these two sections of the text would be excellent sources and we could drop the offending AGU source altogether. Voiceofreason01 ( talk) 15:20, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Scientific opinion on climate change.... does not include the views of individual scientists, individual universities, or laboratories, nor self-selected lists of individuals such as petitions.
{undent}Naming conventions are there to ensure that articles are not inherently biased, are clearly written and accurately represent the content of the article. This article seems to satisy those requirements. From Wikipedia:NPOV#Article naming: "...which helps ensure a neutral view (for example, renaming "Criticisms of drugs" to "Societal views on drugs"). Neutral titles encourage multiple viewpoints and responsible article writing." The title "Scientific opinion on Climate Change" is meant to differentiate this article from Climate Change Consensus. Since both articles seem to cover distinct material I don't see a problem with WP:FORK here. Naming conventions do not require that the article name be specifically used in sources. The section of policy that you have quoted seems to refer specifically to wider controversy concerning the topic of the article, it doesn't apply directly to disputes on wikipedia. As an example there are some towns in Europe that have both a French and German name, the policy you quoted would be used to resolve which name should be used for the article. Can you cite specifically from policy why you feel the name of this article is inappropriate? Also what specifically about the article is original research? Voiceofreason01 ( talk) 17:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC) WP:NAME says "While not always possible, the ideal title is:" before that bit quoted. It is not a requirerment, that bit is guideline. Titles don't have to be ideal in every way. And as for Wikipedia:NPOV#Article naming Voiceofreason01 said it all. There is no neutral point of view problem about the article name. And following on about the bringing back to earth about OR I'll have to say my answer is just informative and has little to do to do with the purpose of the noticeboard. Dmcq ( talk) 17:20, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Hello. Here is the context for the following issue. Facts: Rush Limbaugh used the term "phony soldiers" when talking to a caller about soldiers and war critics. Limbaugh claims that he was referring to one actual fake soldier and not real American soldiers. His explanation is hardly implicit because at the time he used the term, "phony soldiers", there had been no mention of Jesse Macbeth, the fake soldier he claims to have been talking about. Limbaugh finished his conversation with the caller and two minutes later, for the first time, mentioned Macbeth. United States Senators, Media Matters, and many others roundly criticized Limbaugh for this and claimed that he was calling our own troops "phony" for criticizing the war. In a nutshell, that's what happened. I am making no claim as to what Limbaugh meant- I am merely stating the facts of the case. The article, before being changed, presented the facts and explained the positions of both sides (Limbaugh and his critics). I also included a link to Limbaugh's website which shows the actual transcript from his conversation with the caller and his comments afterwards.
Now here is the problem:
A certain user ( Chelydra MAT This cursed Ograbme!) has taken it upon himself to change well sourced, accurate, impartial info to original research. Here is the first diff [48]. If you check his source, komonews?, [49] you will see that it does not say ONE word about what he proposed that it said. The statement chelydramat made while sourcing komonews is not accurate and is merely parroting the defense offered by Rush Limbaugh (basically using Rush's explanation/opinion of what happened instead of just describing what actually happened). Since komonews did not even mention Limbaugh I would argue that it is clearly original research. I tried to explain this to chelydramat on the talk page [50], but that didn't stop chelydramat from reverting [51]. He included his same original research, but this time he provided no source saying, "The old source isn't really needed here so I won't use it again."
All I want is for the article to have a NPOV and just state what happened using accurate sources.
It is now devolving into an edit war and I would like some outside opinions. -- Brendan19 ( talk) 05:59, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Note: I now have 5 sources which support what I wrote. [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] -- Brendan19 ( talk) 06:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
I would say WP:EFFECT and WP:PERSISTENCE and WP:NOT#NEWS comes into play. If people are still talking about this incident in a few months, then it makes sense to include; otherwise, there are severe WP:RECENTISM problems. There's no evidence (yet) that this incident is encyclopedic, though the McNabb incident surely is. THF ( talk) 02:44, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
It was mentioned again in a 2008 piece a year after the incident, so I stand corrected. Perhaps using that reliable secondary source to provide NPOV balance against the bogus MMA slur will resolve the issue, incidentally. THF ( talk) 05:35, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Le Monde
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).7th-eye
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).This page is an archive. Do not edit the contents of this page. Please direct any additional comments to the current main page. |
Hi folks, came across this on at WP:FEED and I am not quite sure what to make of it. It reads like an essay/OR but before send it to Afd I would like input from others. Thanks. – ukexpat ( talk) 16:36, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
We have an editor here who wants to insert "The Book of Genesis predates Christianity and forms part of the Torah, a Hebrew Jewish scripture and therefore creationism based on Genesis owes more to Judaism than to Christ's own teaching." He argues that this is not OR and he doesn't need a source on the basis that this is a logical conclusion (although he uses more words than I have). He compares this to an earlier argument he had where he was asked for a source to prove that a in the UK losing your job doesn't mean you lose your health care. 4 editors disagree with him. I'll try to move the argument here, which is where the rest of us think it should be. Dougweller ( talk) 18:03, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) " The only purpose ... is to essentially make the claim "The Jews are responsible for the culture wars"" What????? It says no such thing! It merely is highlighting the fact that certain Christians have a different opinion how to interpret what is essentially a Jewish era rather than a Christian era text. -- Hauskalainen ( talk) 02:24, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
I've think we've reached the question we really want people on this noticeboard to comment on, namely:
Is the statement "The Book of Genesis predates Christianity and forms part of the Torah, a Hebrew Jewish scripture and therefore creationism based on Genesis owes more to Judaism than to Christ's own teaching." either
- an instance of a novel synthesis or
- an instance of a routine calculation?
Could we please see some input below from people who haven't yet commented on this issue. Gabbe ( talk) 13:04, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
The idea that Creationism is anything other than Christian is not supported by the sources. Christians use the Old Testament in ways that Jews do not. Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:34, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
The definition of WP:OR requires that the disputed statement's purpose is "to advance a position" (and presumably one that is disputable). If that is the case in this case, what is the "position" I am accused of advocating? And why is it disputable? The purpose of the statement is merely to point out that Christians founding their belief on the contents of Genesis are doing so using a document that is not in essence of their own religion. Sure it is based on a text which both Christianity and Judaism accept as part of their beliefs. But because the essence of Christianity as areligion which marks it out from Judaism comes from the teachings of Cgrist as reported in the Gospels, and the other writings and ideas in the New Testament and by later Christian scholars, if the main source of certain Christians' belief in creation is Genesis then the source is essentially one that is from Judaism. I am curious to know there are people out there who seem to object to this. I am sure it is not because there is no WP:RS to say this and I am fairly sure they don't really believe that this is WP:OR or else they would put up an argument that would defeat the logic. So it was with the health care issue. Nobody tried to demonstrate that losing a job in the UK would result in a loss of health insurance coverage. The argument about WP:OR was put up by editors in the US who did not like the fact that in their own country it was quite normal to lose health insurance coverage when a person lost theor job. No British writer would ever claim the same thing that I wrote because it is so obvious, and as far as I could see no American writer had ever said that about the UK. Just because nobody had ever said it did not make it challengeable. Sheer logic holds it to be true (because national health insurance coverage in the UK is related to legal residency and not to emplyment status). Anyhow, I challenge anyone to tell me what the "position" is that I am supposedly trying to advance. -- Hauskalainen ( talk) 15:40, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
I'd oppose this statement on the grounds that it is unnecessary and argumentative (and frankly because it misses the point), but it clearly is not original research. I can find any number of sources who point out that the Council of Nicaea gathered texts from the Judaic (and early Christian) traditions and chose which to include in the Bible. Jewish traditions that made the cut went into the old testament; teachings of Christ and his followers that made the cut went into the new testament; all were considered (after that) to be divinely inspired Christian teachings. This is all well documented. does Hauskalainen need to find some scholar who is oafishly pedantic enough to point out that - hey! - genesis is included in the old testament? "No Original Research" does not mean that we need to edit like mindless, drooling idiots. let's not water down wp:OR to deal with situations like this.
@ Hauskalainen: you missed the point because regardless of Genesis' roots in Judaic tradition, it is now firmly and irrevocably a Christian doctrine, with meanings and implications in Christianity that the Talmud story does not share. you might as well try to tell Buddhists that they are all really Hindus. -- Ludwigs2 00:13, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) I have reinstated this noticeboard posting because I still do not regard the discussion as fully closed.
I note the User:Ludwigs2 actually agrees with me that this cannot be WP:OR because there is much evidence to show that there are sources which fundamentally show the truth in the statement. Now he is right in the sense that it is a bit pedantic to point out that Genesis emmanates from Judaism rather than Christianity and I agree with this editor that Christians have adopted the 'old book' and that this today forms part of the basis of Christian belief. The statement that I made does not actually dispute this and I would be agreeable to adding a qualifier to the statement to this effect to mollify those who seem to be claiming that I am impying that Genesis is not part of Christian theology (which I am not. It clearly is, though the interpretation of the creation story in Genesis varies widely with most Christians worldwide rejecting a literal interpretation). I agree with Hans that the last element of the statement could be regarded as WP:SYN and that is why I am open to amending the last element of the statement (because clearly I have no WP:RS to show that others have examined the degree to which Creationists basing their belief on creation as described in Genesis turn to sources other than Genesis itself). This is the issue which User:Professor marginalia raises. But this is not the real issue. I am saddened that this dispute was brought to this noticeboard before we had completed the discussion at TALK as I was going to modify the second part of the statement.
The issue really is that some Christian Creationists take a literal interpretation of this part of the Talmud, which is a document predating the Christian era (even though they are included as an inclusive part of Christian thelogy). Hans does not address the WP:NOR issue on that fundamental issue, though he seems to believe as I do that it is mostly American Christians who have taken the stance that Genesis must be defended as literal truth. majority of Christians worldwide seem happy to accept evolution and therefore do not defend a literal interpretation of Genesis. And I agree with him that most Jews seem to take the same stance. Hence we have a situation where there are certain Christians choosing to take a literal interpretation of Genesis (an essentially pre-Christian text) which most Jews and most other Christians choose not to do. This is what I think needs to be conveyed to the WP readership because it has an intrisic truth based on the origin of Genesis and the views of the majority of Jews and most Christians in the world (though perhaps not in the USA).
For people like me, coming from a Christian background which rejects a literal interpretation of Genesis without rejecting the notion that God exists or somehow shapes creation) this is a fundamental observation that needs to be made because it is so curious that certain fundamentalist Christians (mostly in the USA) cling to a belief that is not really essentially Christian or even essential to Christian faith (seen from the majority perspective of Creationism as an observer not sharing this belief). It represents a POV that is not in the article currently and all POVs should be represented in the article.
Most Christians in my part of the world look upon these extreme fundamentalist with some curiosity because a literal interpretation of the creation story is not an essential part of our faith. True, I have not come up with a source which actually says this but I am sure that this will be easy to do.
I would like reviewers here to concentrate on the issue of how the article can state the odd situation that there are some Christians which take a narrow interpretation of a document which is, in its origins, a document from Judaism , and which is not interpreted in this way by the majority of other Christians or indeed by most Jews. That is the key issue here. Too many editors are focussing on the last sentence which I am prepared to change or modify to accommodate those concerns (because I understand that they are valid and that the last element of the statement is not sustained).-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 19:28, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
"Few Jews or Christians in most places around the world now take a literal interpretation of creation as described in Genesis, a document that predated the Christian era. This trend has followed the development of a growing body of evidence from evolutionary biology, geology, and cosmology which tells a different story. However, in the United States, it is Christians and not Jews that are the force behind the revival of creationism."
Most of this is said elsewhere in the article with references except the pointing out that Genesis predates the Christian era. This is not difficult to prove. The article already says that most jews do not take a literal view of Genesis but the purpose of the phrase I wanted to add is maintained. i.e. the origin of Genesis in Judaism but the fact that is that it is Christians rather than Jews that are trying to adhere to a document that predates the Christian era. -- Hauskalainen ( talk) 22:27, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Re-reading the section, I see that in effect this is what the section reads. I think I will drop the discussion. Thanks to all those who contributed.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 06:36, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
Snap! I was hesitant about bringing this here until I saw the entry above. What's the best thing to do with this, which looks like pure OR? Dougweller ( talk) 13:56, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
There are reference "citations" to comments made by various persons, but no actual citation of where those comments were made or where they can be verified. I'm not sure how to approach this, which seems an example of OR. Monkeyzpop ( talk) 11:25, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
Over on Talk:Roxburgh_Branch we're having a discussion about the use of primary sources and the context in which they can be used. The documents being cited as primary sources and therefore leading to parts of the article being possible OR, are corporate files that used to be privately held by the corporate body for its business use and are now widely accessible through a document archive. The discussion on the page has examined every aspect of the extent to which such materiable might be useable on Wikipedia, where a secondary source has not been determined.
There is certainly a need to determine an appropriate context, if any, for the use of such primary sources in this way. I interpret the policy Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources as being one that devolves the verifiability to the reader but at the same time the author must be sure that it is possible for the reader to verify the claims made; otherwise it is OR. In the case of internal corporate files of an organisation, particularly those of a historical nature going back over many years (40 in this case) it might not be possible for a reader to make any kind of verification at all. PatrickDunfordNZ ( talk) 07:35, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Unpublished dissertations and a manuscript are given unusual prominence by an editor or editors with very similar IP addresses. The editor has not replied to questions or objections, but has stated that "Warning: Editing war: References to Bruni, Jalaluddin and Nguyen are repeatedly removed and WILL repeatedly be put back in again". Thank you. Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( talk) 20:35, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
there are ongoing concerns on Talk:Lia_Looveer. We have 3 sources:
In my view, this is a rather strange situation in which both supporters and detractors of the subject of the article seem to be happy that the article about that person exists (each hoping to push the article to a certain direction, based on scant evidence), while the best course of action might well be to revisit the AfD on the basis of a more systematic assessment of whether the article meets the notability criteria or not. Cs32en 08:13, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
I believe the aforementioned article is too much based on original research and personal interpretations of certain users, as well as giving undue weight to minority views. Furthermore, it it inconsistent with other articles about the subject. There was previously a decision to merge this article with Proposals for a Palestinian state. On July 2009 this article was "revived" by certain users. The article underwent many changers ever since. The current version is highly problematic, as it suggests that a state called Palestine already exists (an issue highly contested and controversial) and that it is the successor of the British Mandate of Palestine (a very unusual view among scholars). Any recent attempts to change the article was rejected, and the explanations on the talk page seems to me as if certain users try to push personal interpretation of sources into the article, in a way that resembles an academic thesis rather than a Wikipedian article. DrorK ( talk) 03:50, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
user 96.242.163.70 created the article: Grandfather of India
I suspect this may be original research. First, there are no references. It also reads very POV. Also, the comments by the editor on the discussion page intro imply original research: “I beleive this is a very important history issue and needs active discussion in veiw of unrevealed historical facts.” and “as a student of History of Indian History, I beleive the issue needs to be re-examined by historians in veiw of the facts revealed. The history needs to be re-written.”
Of course Wikipedia isn't the place to re-write history.
The material has also infiltrated several other articles. In Swami Dayananda Saraswati the editor changed “Some now revere him as Rashtrapitamah (Grandfather of the Indian Nation” to “That is why the Indians now revere him as Rashtrapitamah (Grandfather of the Indian Nation)” There is a substantial difference between the two statements.
The only reference to his being called the “Grandfather of India in ANY wikipedia article is: Rajender Sethi, "Rashtra Pitamah Swami Dayanand Saraswati" published by M R Sethi Educational Trust Chandigarh. Since the author and publisher appear as the same name could this be self-published? BashBrannigan ( talk) 19:54, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
I forgot to mention, I was also wondering if I should have nominated the article for Speedy Deletion, but I wasn't familiar with the process. BashBrannigan ( talk) 01:25, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Can someone add this to their watchlist? User:Terryalan keeps adding original research here and here. In the second reversion, he basically admits it is original research. 216.117.11.39 ( talk) 13:29, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Naluboutes,Nalubotes Aeria Gloris,Aeria Gloris 18:28, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
There is repeatedly inserted a category without naming any source, just by conviction. Could someone help here? The discussion is taking place on Talk:Spiral_Dynamics#removal_of_.22new_age.22_category and Talk:Spiral_Dynamics#The_new_age_issue. Thanks, -- Pevos ( talk) 20:42, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Please forgive the intrusion gentlemen but does Ken Wilbur have a degree in psychology or psychiatry or philosophy or sociology? Also Professor whomever aside.. Wilber is known as a new age person..An example from Salon..
would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the 'edge of history.' There would be a real New Age."
- Ken Wilber, Up From Eden, pg. 328
Again forgive the intrusion but uh that find was just by typing in Ken Wilber into google which then added the words New Age to my entry. As the Ken Wilber New Age debate has already happened and for the sake of balance and fairness the label was removed from his wiki article. It has not changed peoples perception of him and his views.
LoveMonkey (
talk) 18:55, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
(e/c) ugh, this is not my day for peaceful coexistence with others...
@snowded & lovemokey: don't misunderstand me; I didn't say that Wilber and II were scholarly/academic. He has a Master's in psychology, I think, and he's very well-read, but that's about it. I only said that they take an analytical approach that is not typical of New Age thinking (which tends towards emotional/'oceanic' thought). My concern with the label is that outside of 'actual' new age domains, the term 'new age' is usually used as a mild pejorative (along the lines of Schwartzenegger's "girlie-man" comments). LM, note that that's precisely the tone of the reference you gave. I would hate to see Wilber's/II's defense against (what they perceive as) an erroneous insulting term be used as proof that the erroneous insulting term actually applies. They don't use typical New Age thinking, they don't self-identify as New Age - they shouldn't be categorized that way without some decent reason.
@Gothean: I've run across you before (on Ramakrishna, I think), and you had the same spiteful, didactic, tendentious editing style that you showed in this post here. please play nice. -- Ludwigs2 19:07, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Well. Ken Wilber's theory is not peer reviewed as far as I know (if so please post where and when that happened-pretty please with money on top). As for Snowded, well me and him and his buddy User:Peter Damian are not buddies. But Snowded is right here. So I support him (hell they got me a 24 hour ban so I have no pony in the race). As his comment about the source. It appears to be backward as again, Ken Wilber's work as far as I know is not peer reviewed he's not an academic authority on this, his stuff is pop culture and has no academic weight as far as know (no disrespect Ken, I loved your stuff on the Matrix special edition (<; LoveMonkey ( talk) 19:56, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
As I have mentioned on its talk page, much of the article on the company that I represent (and therefore have a conflict of interest regarding), Hill & Knowlton, is POV and requires references and citations from reliable sources. So far, none of the article's editors have responded to my call for the article to be checked for its neutrality and references improved/unreliably sourced material removed.
I can therefore only assume that the editors of this article are trying to make my organisation look bad by not presenting either a neutral or well-balanced point of view, supported by reliable sources.
As my COI restricts me from directly editing the article, I am therefore reaching out to this community of editors in the hope that someone with an independent position will review the article for unreferenced original research and edit it accordingly.
Niall Cook (Hill & Knowlton) 13:55, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
It has been asserted that Mass killings under Communist regimes is a coatrack, synthesis, and thus original research.
The argument placed for this is that:
The article makes no claims which are SYNTH, and this is now procedure for the sake of procedure. I was accused of SYNTH and OR for this Talk page post
[9] contains no OR or SYN, and is not even in the article for any such claim to be made. As the premise is faulty, this is not a "counter argument" of any kind or sort, and immediately follows the post from Fifelfoo.
Collect (
talk) 01:00, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
I'll just repeat the examples I've given on the talk page to show that no matter what evidence is shown some editors continual cry "Synthesis, synthesis."
I asked who they would consider to be mainstream scholars in the area and they answered Benjamin Valentino and Helen Fein:
The "synthesis" and "original research" arguments they harp on for deleting this article are pure nonsense.
Responding to Collect above, Collect's diff of their talk contribution is a perfect example of SYNTH and OR by listing in proximity. By listing unrelated items, without a RS'd structural explanation for the list, an implied commonality is created. While this was a talk page contribution, it is a beautiful miniature example of the SYNTH problem with the main article. Fifelfoo ( talk) 01:10, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Terminology:
In response to questions:
Responding to Blueboar:
Although there is no academic literature connecting mass killings with Communist regimes, there is a non-academic theory that communist ideology leads to mass killings. The theory was developed by theorists who equate communist killings with Nazi Germany ( moral equivalence). The theory has its immediate origins in holocaust denial, but instead of denying the holocaust (holcaust trivialization), it equates the crimes of communists with the natural reaction of Europeans against the "Jewish threat". Many Eastern European advocates of the theory were upset when their governments apologized for their involvement in the holocaust because the Jews had not apologized for causing WW2. The main point is that while Nazis may have killed 6 million (although that is questioned) the Jewish communists killed 100 million. Communism is equated with Jewishness although some versions replace Jews with Russians.
Originally I voted to delete this article because of its inherent POV, OR, and SYN problems. However on reading more about its significance in far right ideology I think it is a legitimate article.
The Four Deuces ( talk) 22:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
The "Terminology" section is composed of some statements that do not reflect adequately the sources, and thereby create a distorted picture. In the second section's paragraph
a Valentino's definition of mass killing is provided that is supplemented with a detailed description of one chapter of his book that is devoted to mass killings in three Communist countries. This fragment is intended to create an impression that Valentino developed a "Communist mass killing" concept, what is obviously false, because he clearly wrote in the same chapter that "Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as Communist or been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing." My conclusion is that the second para is SYNTH.
The third para
is, probably, the most vague way to present a very clear authors' conclusion ("It would therefore appear (assuming for the moment that there are not any big measurement biases) that autocratic regimes, especially communist, are prone to mass killing generically, but not so strongly inclined (i.e. not statistically significantly inclined) toward geno-politicide."). In other words, Wayman and Tago simply state that there is no statistically significant linkage between genocide and Communism, although some connection between autocracy and mass killing does take place. My conclusion is that this para is pure OR. One way or the another, this para deals with connection between Communism and mass killing, not with terminology.
A fourth para ("Helen Fein a founder and the first President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars has termed the mass state killings in the Soviet Union and Cambodia as the "Soviet and Communist genocides and Democide".") also pretends to create an impression that Helen Fein put forward the term "Soviet and Communist genocides and Democide". In actuality, according to Fein's own words ""However, while totalitarian states have been more likely to commit genocide than are other states, most cases of contemporary genocide since World War II were committed by authoritarian, not totalitarian states, and are not ascribable to ideology." it is impossible to speak about genocide or democide as something pertinent to Communism. My conclusion is that the para is pure OR.
The fifth para ("In his book The killing trap: genocide in the twentieth century Manus I. Midlarsky compares similarity of killings of Stalin with those of Pol Pot.") is quite obscure for me because it has nothing to do with terminology.
The sixth para ("Communist states are alleged by some genocide scholars, such as Daniel Goldhagen and Benjamin Valentino, to be responsible for deaths far in excess of any other regime type") deals with the number of Communists' victims and also has nothing in common with terminology.
Summarising all said above, the whole section pretends to create an impression that some special terminology exists that describes Communist mass killings. I believe I was able to demonstrate it is absolutely false.-- Paul Siebert ( talk) 03:23, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Obviously, the "terminology" section is only the emerged part of the iceberg. AFAIK the article's previous name was
Communist genocide. The article was renaimed to avoid deletion (if I am not wrong). I personally have no major objection against the old name (as well as against the present one) provided that, but only provided that the article combined only well established cases of mass murders and genocide (Cambodia, Stalin's Great Purge, etc) and briefly mentioned other cases of preventable prematutre deaths that, according to some scholars, can be considered "genocide", "democide", "politicide" etc, (and, according to others, cannot).
By contrast, the article tends to become a collection of all cases of premature mortality under Communist rule, and even a single mention of certain case by one scholar apperars to be sufficient for its inscusion into the article. In my opinion it is
WP:FRINGE and
WP:SYN.--
Paul Siebert (
talk) 23:05, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Re: Blueboar (1, 2, 3)
So you asked for one, I've given you three. There are lots more, but they do tend to focus on 1 or 2 countries at a time, and some just mention the ideological reasons in passing. Smallbones ( talk) 23:34, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
{{
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help)This subject is outside my area of expertise. I've made a few comments based on the title of the article on the talk page. I find the title objectionable, because it sounds like red-baiting and sounds unencyclopedic. I find titles such as anti-communist mass killings, or Christian mass killings, or Moslem mass killings equally objectionable. To single out any group, and then say only bad things about it, is wrong. Rick Norwood ( talk) 21:10, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
I used Google scholar to search for the exact phrase "Mass killings under communist regimes" and also "Mass killings by communist regimes". There were zero hits in both cases. Rick Norwood ( talk) 21:52, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure that the examples you give are names of areas of study. That is only the case if Valentino, to take one example, claims that communist mass killings are different in character from other mass killings throughout history. In the quote above, he does make some extraordinary claims, but it is not our place to review his book, only to decide where to report his views. There are two questions. First, is "communist" is an adjective, like "New York" would be in the phrase "New York crime statistics", or is "communist mass killings" a subject different from other mass killings. Second, is this a mainstream view, and is there a commonality between the various authors cited above, or is it just Valintino's view, in which case it belongs in an article on Valintino. Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:00, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
Although the latest edit here] was introduced as a compromise, I still see it as OR as no evidence is given that the scholars in question have mentioned LDS 'Reformed Egyptian' or compared it to other scripts. The second paragraph is probably more of an RS issue, I don't see how we can use a character from a religious story as a source in this way. Dougweller ( talk) 20:30, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Could editors please check militant atheism with respect to original research. There are many problems with the article obviously, but I'm interested in the sentence from the lead: Recently, the term has been used to describe atheists such as Richard Dawkins,[2] Sam Harris[3] and Daniel Dennett.[4] The sources used to back up this statement are not sources about the usage of the term, but are instances of such usage. It seems to me that Wikipedians have engaged in amateur lexicography to observe how the term is applied in media; however, this kind of backing up a statement by way of example is fairly common on Wikipedia. For example, I've seen statements like John has published five papers backed up by means of citing the five papers rather than using a secondary source, such as a biography. It would be nice if people here could clarify where the line should be drawn. Thanks, 77.4.42.172 ( talk) 14:46, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
This is a synthesis of uses of a term, rather than a summary of sources that discuss the term. It's clearly WP:NOR. Jayjg (talk) 03:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Greetings,
This one should be pretty easy and straightforward. In this section of the Avatar (2009 film) article I added the following revision (shown here in bold), citing Cameron's own published statement:
The look of the Na'vi, the characters native to the world depicted in the film, was inspired by a dream that Cameron's mother had long before he wrote Avatar. She dreamt about a 12-foot-tall blue woman and he thought "that's kind of a cool image". So in 1976 or 1977, he put into his first screenplay a planet with a native population that was 12 feet tall and blue, and "gorgeous", which later became the basis for the Na'vi in Avatar. [1] Also, Cameron said that he just liked the color blue and its conceptual connection to the Hindu deities, [2]
and then clarified it by references to reliable academic sources:
alluding to the fact that principal deities in Hinduism, such as Vishnu and Krishna, are traditionally depicted as dark-blue. [3] [4]
The reason for this clarification was that, based on the Cameron's phrase alone, an average reader unfamiliar with Hinduism is likely to think that all 33 million Hindu deities are blue, which is false, or to be left simply wondering about the "conceptual connection". Therefore, in order to clarify Cameron's statement I provided two academic references showing that some deities in Hinduism are indeed blue and that they happen to be the principal ones.
Another editor disagreed with the clarification starting with "...alluding to", opining it to be OR, and removed it. A discussion ensued here here. On his suggestion I am taking the issue to this notice board, seeking to be educated about the application of WP:NOR in this particular case. Regards, Cinosaur ( talk) 02:09, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Hi. I'm the other editor that Cinosaur referred to above. I added a {{reflist}} here so access to the above sources is more convenient:
themes
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).The OR problem I saw was with sources [3] and [4] that are used to support the statement. These sources do not directly relate to the topic of the article, which is Avatar (2009 film). Please note the 2nd paragraph of the lead of WP:NOR.
-- Bob K31416 ( talk) 06:04, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Bob K31416 is correct here. The sources used for citations 3 and 4 are not directly related to the topic of the article, the movie Avatar. Their inclusion, and the material based on them, is original research. Jayjg (talk) 03:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Already under discussion at Talk:WrestleMania 23, Wikipedia:Content noticeboard#WrestleMania 23, and a thread or two at WP:AN/I. – Luna Santin ( talk) 20:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
"WWE (the promotion holding the event) and Ford Field (the arena hosting the event), among many others, give one number for the attendance of the event. Wrestling reporter/dirt sheet writer Dave Meltzer looked at WWE's financial reports (WWE is a publically traded company and thus have to release this info to the public) and used to numbers to come up with his own attendance number for the event without having any sources to back him up. This is the first issue, whether to even use his number as a footnote since he based the number on how much money WWE made from merchandise sales. The second issue is less contentious and is what the wording should be IF a footnote is include." - RfC taking place at Talk:WrestleMania 23#RfC
There is an RfC taking place at Talk:WrestleMania 23#RfC regarding the inclusion of the statement: " Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter stated an attendance of 74,687." This is a verifiable statement, since it is sourced to Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Several editors (particularly User:JzG claim that it is a violation of WP:OR. The arguments being used are (1) that it ends with a 7, and statistics that end with a 7 can't be trusted, (2) that it is not within an unspecified margin of error, (3) that it is the result of a mathematical calculation, and so forth. I believe that reporting Meltzer's statement in a neutral manner does not consitute original research—there is no synthesis, no interpretation, and no extrapolation. In fact, I believe that a Wikipedia editor making determinations about the accuracy of a number based on their belief that it contains too many significant figures is the true case of original research in this situation. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks, GaryColemanFan ( talk) 06:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Is it a violation of WP:NOR to say that something is at the top or bottom of a list? There's a dispute at a university article over whether we can say that Tier 4 is the lowest tier in the " U.S. News & World Report College and University rankings", and whether we can say that it has the highest tuition in its category. See Talk:Maharishi University of Management#Ranking. Will Beback talk 18:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
There's a discussion going on at Talk:ADE 651 about whether the image on the right can be used to illustrate an article about the ADE 651, a controversial detection device. The image is sourced to the US Navy; however, the original caption does not describe what the device shown in the subject's left hand is. Another editor believes that it shows "an ADE 651 or similar device". This is quite possibly the case, but I'm wary of using this image considering that the angle is poor - it only shows a rear view, so most of the device is concealed from view - and there is no reliable source to describe what the subject is holding. Would it be original research to use the image to illustrate a topic that is not discussed in its original caption? -- ChrisO ( talk) 00:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
If someone could take a look at the following sections of these articles as in my opinion there is some rampant original research going on and attempts to remove it have been reverted. The short story as all reliable sources are reporting it ( [18] [19] [20] [21]) is that the IPCC claimed that Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 based on an unconfirmed interview with one scientist and that this date turned out to be wildly false. User:William M. Connolley says that sources such as the New York Times, New Zealand Herald, ABC News, and the Sunday Times are all "badly wrong" and "clueless". Instead, Connolley has proposed his own rather novel interpretation of events which can be read here: [22]. In short, he claims that the IPCC meant to cite the date 2350 which is found in a third primary source that the IPCC never cited. This conclusion is not cited by any reliable sources (I am still yet to see any secondary source that mentions the date 2350 in the context of this), but the assertion has been reverted back in and OR tags have been removed. See talk at: Talk:Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#2035.2F2350.3F. Please note that IPCC is currently fully protected and both articles are under sanctions including a 1RR restriction. Oren0 ( talk) 06:50, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Or just follow the citations from the IPCC report itself. Here is the WWF 2005 report, which might need to be cited in the article though. 83.86.0.82 ( talk) 13:33, 25 January 2010 (UTC)In 1999, a report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) stated: "glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high"
WP:Synth question at Talk:Mark_Weisbrot#Synthesis - somebody experienced with this please help clarify. Thanks. Rd232 talk 00:17, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Recent edits to Bismarck, North Dakota have introduced various problems into the article. Chief among my concerns is that the edits, which are completely unsourced, are almost entirely original research. If the OR concerns can be addressed effectively, other problems, such as neutrality, grammar, and style, can be tackled. Several of the most problematic passages are excerpted here. An RFC filed almost 72 hours ago has generated no response as of yet. I would greatly appreciate more eyes on this. Rivertorch ( talk) 05:12, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
POV push by User:RockandDiscoFanCZ regarding a notion about "Post-Disco" as a specific genre of music, despite many requests on the talk page for an RS source to support the claim.
The article was recently considered for deletion, where similar observation's were made. I'm interested in hearing other views on this, should there be any. Cross-posted here Semitransgenic ( talk) 23:53, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
I've started a RfC on my proposal for dealing with one of these articles, where the discussion has been particularly heated. My proposal is not specific to that kind of software, so hopefully the result of the discussion can be used as a precedent for all similar articles. In my experience, this type of articles sometime include original research, e.g. [30]. Please participate at Talk:Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients#A way forward. Pcap ping 15:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
The Detailed annual history section of the World Universities Debating Championship page looks like OR, can someone more experienced than me have a look and recommend a cause of action ? Codf1977 ( talk) 08:34, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Jonny Greenwood ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Some users, I'm guessing fans of Greenwood, are insisting that the section "Equipment Used" be kept in the article although the information is completely unsourced. Severeal users have removed the section for that reason, but it's been reverted every time. It's starting to turn into a bit of an edit war. Any advice? TheTwoRoads ( talk) 07:56, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
I could use some eyes and hands, here. I have an editor Gun Powder Ma ( talk · contribs) who's been obliquely pushing (so far as I can tell) the idea that the Taijitu - the Yin Yang symbol from Chinese philosophy - was actually adopted from the Romans. He's got some Roman shield patterns that are of roughly the same form but a few hundred years earlier, one author (an italian Lit Crit guy, I think, named Monastra) who has been offering up the similarity as an 'intriguing possibility', a couple of minor reference from odd sources (e.g. a footnote in an article on the roman shield patterns in a museum journal), but he's trying to parlay this into making a huge splash for the European symbolism in an article that is ostensibly about the Taoist figure.
I opened an RfC, but the only person who's responded to date is Pyrrhon8 - my own personal (low-grade) wikistalker (no worries, it's kinda cute). if people could take a look and help put these sources into some kind of proper balance, I'd appreciate it. -- Ludwigs2 20:37, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
A review article in the journal Pediatrics on research on the use of meditation as an intervention among youth includes 16 studies on meditation. A two-page table in the review presents all 16 studies and gives details about each. Of these 16 studies, 6 are on Transcendental Meditation. The table shows that 5 of these studies on Transcendental Meditation are randomized controlled trials and 1 is a before/after study. In representing information from this review in the article on Transcendental Meditation, I wrote, " Of the 6 TM studies, 5 were randomized controlled trials." Is this original research? Thank you. TimidGuy ( talk) 22:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks much, Johnuniq. It was meant to introduce the research in the review that's specific to TM RCTs. Here's how it had been written: "A 2009 review of 16 pediatric studies on meditation that included 6 studies on Transcendental Meditation found that meditation in general "seems to be an effective intervention in the treatment of physiologic, psychosocial, and behavioral conditions among youth."[64] Of these 16 studies 5 were uncontrolled. Of the 6 TM studies, 5 were randomized controlled trials. A primary outcome of the randomized controlled trials on Transcendental Meditation was the reduction of hypertension and improvement in vascular function relative to health education, as well as reductions in absenteeism and attentional problems. The review said that because of limitations of the research, larger-scale and more demographically diverse studies need to be done to clarify treatment efficacy."
Should I simply leave out the sentence that counts the number of TM RCTs? And also the total number that were TM? (The count of 16 studies and 5 uncontrolled was explicitly in the review.) TimidGuy ( talk) 12:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
It's what it says, just pictures of flags with body parts/people/statues etc. Pure OR, is there any reason to keep it? Dougweller ( talk) 08:26, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
And created by the same editor, Gallery of flags with writing, while others have created Gallery of flags with plants, Gallery of flags with weapons, Gallery of flags with animals, Gallery of flags with headgear and Gallery of bordered flags Dougweller ( talk) 08:34, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
IP is unhappy with research that says burials are examples of human sacrifice and is insistent that an alternative view, that they were something to do with early medicine, be added. I keep asking him for references that back this claim but as you can see from the IP's talk page User talk:207.172.10.203 he has no references but simply asserts that the reliable sources are just opinion. He has added material to the article's talk page he wants in the article but he is using references that assert the idea of human sacrifice to reference a statement about early medicine, which is definitely not in the source. Now he's adding pov tags to the references. As there seems little interest in this article, it would be useful to have an opinion as to whether I've got it wrong or some advice as to what to do now if, as I believe, the IP simply wants to add OR. I'd like to persuade him of my case (if I'm right) and could use some help. He seems to be arguing in good faith and I wouldn't want to lose him if he can be persuaded to follow our OR guidelines. Thanks. Dougweller ( talk) 21:19, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
The Airport bus reference section seems to be composed partly of flickr links. Is this legit under Wikipedia policy?-- 293.xx.xxx.xx ( talk) 09:16, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
There is a dispute about whether the War in Iraq article should have the war on terrorism term in the infobox. Please check Iraq_War#NPOV_dispute_-_POV_term_used_in_the_conflict_infobox and comment there. -- JokerXtreme ( talk) 23:27, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I've phrased the first paragraph of criticism towards a quite controversial journalist with 3 sources that note his articles to often raise controversy.
Nableezy, believes that putting the Der-Spiegel source into this line for the criticism section "is OR, specifically SYNTH, for you to use publications that do not criticize Levy and connect that to criticism of Levy." [31]
The text above shows notability of controversy. Other sources and comentators are used for actual "He has been criticized by..." criticism.
Would appreciate some external perspective here. Jaakobou Chalk Talk 02:40, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Currently the IRFU use a flag which contains a copyrighted logo see here as such it can't be used expect as WP:FU. A number of users have suggested we create a flag/icon or use the File:Four Provinces Flag.svg for the IRFU and it's teams. It is mine and others contention that this is breech of WP:OR/ WP:OI as it invents a flag/icon or invents an association which doesn't exist between the IRFU, its teams and a flag Gnevin ( talk) 09:13, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
I could use some eyes on Yellowface - editor Nemogbr seems intent on inserting the term "racebending" into the article - I've gone back and forth with him on this several times, as he also seems to have been promoting a website called "racebending.com" in the past. The problem is, most of his claims seem like original research or POV-pushing, and while he throws a lot of links up to justify his actions, checking those links shows (when the links are valid) no significant coverage of the term, or in most cases, not even a mention of it. He continued to revert to his preferred text, adding even more mentions of the term, even though that text is not backed up by any valid or reliable third party sources. I've tried discussing it with him on his talk page, but he only claims that his links are valid. Help would be appreciated... TheRealFennShysa ( talk) 16:31, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Contested as original research is the wording, "The institute has received federal funding through the political support of Nevada's senators John Ensign [33] and Harry Reid, [34] [35] the latter a close personal friend of Harvey Whittemore. [36] [37]
Argument on talk page it is not OR: Talk:Whittemore Peterson Institute#08 February 2010 edit summaries
No valid reason given to exclude the support of John Ensign and Harry Reid, or Whittemore's ties to either. That's still the case. Both appropriated funds, both are beneficiaries of HW's largesse, both are friends, Reid is a close friend. Relevant, well sourced.
Argument on talk page it is OR: Talk:Whittemore Peterson Institute#Reference Packing
The John Ensign source indicates a funding request. There is no indication the proposed funding legislation was passed, or money was received by the institute (WPI). The Reid sources state the money is for The Center for Molecular Medicine at The University of Nevada School of Medicine. The institute is only part of the The Center for Molecular Medicine. The institute is collaborating with researchers at The University of Nevada School of Medicine. [38] To state WPI received money on the basis of these sources is WP:OR. The two sources talking about the Reid friendship do not mention WPI. The friendship material in the article leads the reader to believe friendship is a factor in the funding. H.Reid has been supporting CFS long before the WPI was conceived. [39] The friendship material is WP:SYNTH.
Ward20 ( talk) 04:19, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
There's been a drawn-out dispute over the inclusion of a cultural reference in the article about the South Park episode Butters' Bottom Bitch. The essence of the discussion is whether an allusion to a living person, in this case the real-life pimp "Bishop" Don "Magic" Juan should be mentioned in the article although it is not explicitly mentioned in professional commentary of the series.
Dream Focus and I believe the allusion is too obvious to be dismissed as run-of-the-mill original research or synthesis while Gigs AniMate and especially Alastairward believe it should be removed. Presently, the dispute has stalled after low-level edit warring between myself and Alastairward. Both of us have been frustrated by the lack of progress, and I was concerned enough to file a Wikiquette alert. There the lack of progress was recognized, but it was stressed that there had been no deliberate incivilities and that we should try taking the issue here.
Peter Isotalo 10:28, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
It's OR. You cannot assume the reader will know anything about Juan (I'd wager that most people don't). From WP:PRIMARY: "A primary source can be used only to make descriptive statements that can be verified by any educated person without specialist knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source. Do not make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about material found in a primary source" -- NeilN talk to me 23:52, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
I have concerns about WP:NOR, WP:NEO and (arguably, but not such a priority) WP:CIRCULAR on the Dunning-Kruger effect article.
First, note that none of the article's sources mention the phrase "Dunning-Kruger effect". There is plenty of psychological research on these superiority effects (see Illusory superiority, Self-enhancement or Positive illusions) so there's a legitimate question of whether there is a separately notable phenomenon here.
The article exists now because it was de-merged from Illusory superiority. The justification given in the edit summary was that "the effect is composed of illusory superiority and illusory inferiority". This doesn't seem to be based on sources, and it at least looks like the "effect" was re-defined on the fly simply to justify the existence of the article on WP. "Illusory inferiority" looks like a WP:NEO.
The term itself seems to have originated on Wikipedia. Neither the article's initial creation as "Dunning-Kruger Syndrome" or subsequent renaming to "Dunning-Kruger effect" seem to be based on sources, and I haven't found sources that pre-date the appearance of these terms on WP. However, this isn't the focus of my complaint. Since I first raised the issue and merged the article into Illusory superiority, it was pointed out that some peer-reviewed sources use the phrase "Dunning-Kruger effect". They seem to come after the term's invention on WP, but I'm personally not so bothered about that. However, the article itself does not seem to be based on these sources so we've no indication that the "effect" defined in the article is not OR.
For completeness, here is where I first raise the OR issue: Talk:Dunning–Kruger_effect#Title_constitutes_original_research and here is the merge discussion: Talk:Illusory_superiority#Merge_Dunning.E2.80.93Kruger_effect_into_this_article and Talk:Illusory_superiority#Delusion.2C_not_illusion
I would normally pursue this purely through article talk, but I'm being opposed by a couple of editors whose arguably uncivil tone and rather free interpretation of policy suggest that this will just become an edit war. One of them is User:Michael C Price, who performed the de-merge described above. He has already twice removed the OR tag. Thanks in advance for any comments. MartinPoulter ( talk) 15:48, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
I believe this edit to Gregorian calendar is original research. The editor adding the material has already been informed of the original research at Talk:Conversion between Julian and Gregorian calendars, where he or she posted an earlier version of his or her conversion process. Jc3s5h ( talk) 21:05, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
62.31.226.77 ( talk) 22:13, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
::::When you say "false" information... are you saying that the calculation results in an inaccurate conversion?
Blueboar (
talk) 15:11, 17 February 2010 (UTC) Nevermind... my question was answered on the article talk page.
Blueboar (
talk) 15:17, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
The article on Secret societies needs a lot of attention. Due to inconsistent inline citation, it is very difficult to know what is and is not sourced... so we have difficulty distinguishing what is and is not OR. That said, there is a lot that sure appears to be OR to me. Blueboar ( talk) 15:18, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
The article Criticism of American foreign policy is full of highly POV, uncited statements like But many of the good things and positive influences it has had have a tendency to be overlooked, as the news media has a tendency to accentuate negative results particularly when they're more attention-getting and tends to focus on critics, while overlooking subtler, slower, and more benign but positive aspects of foreign policy which are less likely to sell newspapers., and U.S. taxpayers are seen as subsidizing the defense of allied peoples who fail to carry their fair share of defense spending., and In the history of the world, the U.S. has an enviable record of accommodating peoples from around the world , and so on ... The author (the entire page was almost created by a single author) has mixed these statements in with several claims that he has cited, in order to make it look as if the article is well-sourced, and not OR. But both the numerous uncited OR statements such as the above, the choice of wording, the structure of the page (such as the categories that the author stated that most arguments fell into, without citing a reliable source that says that these categories are appropriate), and the choice/selection of topics covered are unacceptably biased and unsourced. I just noticed this article, and am about to have to step away from the Internet for a few days, but wanted to notify other people so they can start working on this as well. I'll get to it when I return. Thanks -- Jrtayloriv ( talk) 05:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't think this is salvageable. The references cited often to not draw the conclusions cited in the article. WP:SYNT violations galore. I've sent it to AfD. Pcap ping 15:30, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
This section consists entirely of legal analysis conducted by some Wikipedians on the talk page. I think it should be removed. Pcap ping 15:20, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion at Scientific opinion on climate change concerning a statement in the lead "No scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion since the American Association of Petroleum Geologists adopted its current position in 2007." which is repeated later in the article here. Both statements use this(PDF) source. The source is incredibly weak, especially for the strength of the statement it is backing up. The quote is from an editorial concerning a review of Michael Crichtons last book and seems totally inapropriate for the way it is being used in the article. There are also WP:SYNTH issues since the source states only the AAPG(American Association of Petroleum Geologists) dissents then cites a statement by the AAPG saying they believe in Global Warming. The article is basically a collection of statements by various organizations affirming that global warming is occuring. The article uses the obove statement to avoid having any discussion of dissenting views which a significant NPOV problem especially given the very weak nature of the source used. I brought up this issues as part of a larger discussion and there seems to be no progress being made in the current discussion. The eyes and opinions of some editors experienced in these matters would be greatly appreciated. Voiceofreason01 ( talk) 15:08, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Following on from the discussion about the article Scientific opinion on climate change and it being a possible content fork, I am seeking some input from other editors about the unsourced content in the hatnote and lead of the article that define this topic. The current version of the hatnote and lead read as follows:
Scientific opinion on climate change is given by synthesis reports, scientific bodies of national or international standing, and surveys of opinion among climate scientists. This does not include the views of individual scientists, individual universities, or laboratories, nor self-selected lists of individuals such as petitions. National and international science academies and scientific societies have assessed the current scientific opinion, in particular on recent global warming.
The problem I have with this lead are as follows:
My view is that no matter how innocuous the lead is, it is wholly unsatisfactory for an article topic to be defined by analytic or evaluative claims that that are based on original research. My conclusions are that:
In short, the basis for inclusion of this topic as a standalone article is based on original research. Clearly there are several editors that disagree with the assertion that this article is a content fork (fair enough), but if the main issue is disputed, then at least consider the symptoms that are the badge of a content fork. The hatnote and lead to this article are original research, and do not define the article's subject matter in any meaningful way. Has any editor a view on this matter? Am I mistaken? -- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 15:22, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
- Scientific opinion on climate change is given by synthesis reports, scientific bodies of national or international standing, and surveys of opinion among climate scientists. This does not include the views of individual scientists, individual universities, or laboratories, nor self-selected lists of individuals such as petitions.
I don't follow all of this, but preliminarily: is the dispute mainly over whether there are groups that dispute the predominant view, or is it mainly over whether individual scientists can be excluded from "scientific opinion," or is it impossible to simplify the dispute in this way? At least to me, the first thought is that it seems odd to suggest that "scientific opinion" refers only to the collective view of large groups. Intuitively, "scientific opinion" could either be any opinion that is grounded in the scientific method, or it could refer to the opinions of those considered scientists. I wouldn't think that "scientific opinion" would only regard the statements of groups. Or am I missing the point? This wouldn't necessarily be a concern with the scope of the article, merely a suggestion that the text might be clarified not to suggest a predominant view that "scientific opinion" is a sort of republican process in which only large groups have standing. Mackan79 ( talk) 23:52, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
{undent} I can't find where it says that part about "all major scientific insitutions", can you provide a direct quote or a page number? However, page 2 says that "the scientific community, with the exception of a few contrarians..." and that chapter Dmcq referenced makes numerous references to a scientific consensus, page 76 seems to be a good one. With some minor rewriting to the article either of these two sections of the text would be excellent sources and we could drop the offending AGU source altogether. Voiceofreason01 ( talk) 15:20, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Scientific opinion on climate change.... does not include the views of individual scientists, individual universities, or laboratories, nor self-selected lists of individuals such as petitions.
{undent}Naming conventions are there to ensure that articles are not inherently biased, are clearly written and accurately represent the content of the article. This article seems to satisy those requirements. From Wikipedia:NPOV#Article naming: "...which helps ensure a neutral view (for example, renaming "Criticisms of drugs" to "Societal views on drugs"). Neutral titles encourage multiple viewpoints and responsible article writing." The title "Scientific opinion on Climate Change" is meant to differentiate this article from Climate Change Consensus. Since both articles seem to cover distinct material I don't see a problem with WP:FORK here. Naming conventions do not require that the article name be specifically used in sources. The section of policy that you have quoted seems to refer specifically to wider controversy concerning the topic of the article, it doesn't apply directly to disputes on wikipedia. As an example there are some towns in Europe that have both a French and German name, the policy you quoted would be used to resolve which name should be used for the article. Can you cite specifically from policy why you feel the name of this article is inappropriate? Also what specifically about the article is original research? Voiceofreason01 ( talk) 17:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC) WP:NAME says "While not always possible, the ideal title is:" before that bit quoted. It is not a requirerment, that bit is guideline. Titles don't have to be ideal in every way. And as for Wikipedia:NPOV#Article naming Voiceofreason01 said it all. There is no neutral point of view problem about the article name. And following on about the bringing back to earth about OR I'll have to say my answer is just informative and has little to do to do with the purpose of the noticeboard. Dmcq ( talk) 17:20, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Hello. Here is the context for the following issue. Facts: Rush Limbaugh used the term "phony soldiers" when talking to a caller about soldiers and war critics. Limbaugh claims that he was referring to one actual fake soldier and not real American soldiers. His explanation is hardly implicit because at the time he used the term, "phony soldiers", there had been no mention of Jesse Macbeth, the fake soldier he claims to have been talking about. Limbaugh finished his conversation with the caller and two minutes later, for the first time, mentioned Macbeth. United States Senators, Media Matters, and many others roundly criticized Limbaugh for this and claimed that he was calling our own troops "phony" for criticizing the war. In a nutshell, that's what happened. I am making no claim as to what Limbaugh meant- I am merely stating the facts of the case. The article, before being changed, presented the facts and explained the positions of both sides (Limbaugh and his critics). I also included a link to Limbaugh's website which shows the actual transcript from his conversation with the caller and his comments afterwards.
Now here is the problem:
A certain user ( Chelydra MAT This cursed Ograbme!) has taken it upon himself to change well sourced, accurate, impartial info to original research. Here is the first diff [48]. If you check his source, komonews?, [49] you will see that it does not say ONE word about what he proposed that it said. The statement chelydramat made while sourcing komonews is not accurate and is merely parroting the defense offered by Rush Limbaugh (basically using Rush's explanation/opinion of what happened instead of just describing what actually happened). Since komonews did not even mention Limbaugh I would argue that it is clearly original research. I tried to explain this to chelydramat on the talk page [50], but that didn't stop chelydramat from reverting [51]. He included his same original research, but this time he provided no source saying, "The old source isn't really needed here so I won't use it again."
All I want is for the article to have a NPOV and just state what happened using accurate sources.
It is now devolving into an edit war and I would like some outside opinions. -- Brendan19 ( talk) 05:59, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Note: I now have 5 sources which support what I wrote. [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] -- Brendan19 ( talk) 06:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
I would say WP:EFFECT and WP:PERSISTENCE and WP:NOT#NEWS comes into play. If people are still talking about this incident in a few months, then it makes sense to include; otherwise, there are severe WP:RECENTISM problems. There's no evidence (yet) that this incident is encyclopedic, though the McNabb incident surely is. THF ( talk) 02:44, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
It was mentioned again in a 2008 piece a year after the incident, so I stand corrected. Perhaps using that reliable secondary source to provide NPOV balance against the bogus MMA slur will resolve the issue, incidentally. THF ( talk) 05:35, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
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