Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard

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The "prophet Muhammad" (lowercase 'p')

UrielAcosta seems to be on a mission, systematically searching through Wikipedia to find "[p]rophet Muhammad" and remove the word "prophet" (even if it's in lowercase), with the edit summary: Removed religious bias per MOS:PBUH because he's not Wikipedia's prophet.

The latter link points to NPOV policy.

I and other editors have queried these edits on UrielAcosta's talk page, but UrielAcosta disagreed and soon after, s/he deleted the talk page entries, and continued to make these mass edits.

My mild objection, as a non-Muslim, is that "prophet" (lowercase 'p') is descriptive and informative, and is in accordance with MOS, so when the word "prophet" has been removed, I've instead re-added it as "Islamic prophet Muhammad" (for greater clarity). To me, this is no different than referring to "the novelist Doris Lessing", or "the British politician Rishi Sunak".

MOS:MUHAMMAD actually says this: recommended action is to simplify and NPOV to just "Muhammad" except when it is the first reference in an article, or the first reference in the lead, in which case it may be rendered as "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" if necessary.

I'd appreciate the input of other editors here, please. Thanks. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 09:20, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

• Pertinent discussions held on this subject with UrielAcosta] arehere and here. I addressed the rationale "because he's not Wikipedia's prophet" by observing Pablo Escobar is not Wikipedia's drug lord, but it wouldn't be wrong to write of somebody, "It was on his trip to Panama that he became acquainted with drug lord Pablo Escobar.". Their bizarre response: ... you are 100% incorrect: Pablo Escobar IS Wikipedia's drug lord, because "drug lord" has a specific definition in English and Escobar qualifies under that definition. I mean, huh? (Have you ever heard Escobar described as "Wikipedia's drug lord"?) Then I pointed out that WP:PBUH explicitly provides for the usage that they've been obliterating, distinguishing honoring someone from merely identifying them in context on first mention, and it fell on deaf ears. When I saw that UrielAcosta had taken this campaign up again with vigor after having been reproved by at least three people, I was ready to report them to WP:ANI or somewhere, so I thank User:Esowteric for raising it here. Largoplazo (talk) 11:43, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
• Relevant discussion: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles#NPOV usage of "the prophet Muhammad" or "the prophet" Some1 (talk) 11:54, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
• I've instead re-added it as "Islamic prophet Muhammad" (for greater clarity). Did UrielAcosta revert these edits (by removing "Islamic prophet")? If they did, then that would be against what MOS:PBUH recommends (i.e. adding "the Islamic prophet" if necessary for clarity purposes). If they didn't revert, then they're just following what MOS:PBUH recommends. Some1 (talk) 12:14, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

  No, they changed "prophet Muhammed" to "Muhammed", but left alone my later changes to "Islamic prophet Muhammed". However, they did this to the first (or only) mention of the name Muhammed in the two articles that were on my watchlist that were affected. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 12:19, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

  The only reason I bring this up is that these are mass edits, so a whole lot of people may either not notice the changes or choose to change the entries to "the prophet Muhammad", when they could either be left alone or the passionate editor could make the changes themselves and avoid work for others. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 12:22, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

• I don’t agree with the removal of “prophet” for the first usage of Muhammad in an article because the MOS clearly allows for the usage in that case. That being said, I don’t think it’s necessary to go back and add it to articles where it was removed. I don’t agree that “Muhammad” (with the wikilink) would cause confusion to the reader. Mokadoshi (talk) 12:16, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks, but how many Wikipedia articles would simply name Rishi Sunak because users could easily click on the link to find out who he is or what he is, when it is far simpler and more informative to refer to them in the first instance as (say) British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak? Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 12:43, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

  I don’t think specifying “British Prime Minister” is necessary every time. In some cases it is helpful, like the usage of “Senator Obama” verses “President Obama” can clarify the period of his career when an event occurred. I don’t think it’s an appropriate comparison to this case. Probably a better comparison would be “author J.K. Rowling” verses just “J.K. Rowling” and the former seems to be rare. Mokadoshi (talk) 13:56, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

• I've been asked to give my two pennies worth on this matter as I was made aware of Uriel Costa's editing on Bust of Abd al-Rahman III, Cadrete, a page I had created. I did not know, but I was barely surprised, that Uriel Costa then went on to make the same edit on a variety of other pages. This is my view on the matter:
  The page I saw related to a Muslim monarch. Monarchs are known by their given name. Removing "prophet" before Muhammad could be confusing as many monarchs, including in Islamic Spain where I was writing about, were also called Muhammad.
  I just put "prophet" as a disambiguator. I think it's quite clear in the context we were not talking about a prophet of the Mormons. Uriel Costa removed this completely, he did not even negotiate by saying "Islamic prophet".
  You could say that the majority of the world does not see Muhammad as a prophet, nor has any human been peer-reviewed to be a prophet. But at the same time, we have the page at Guru Nanak when the majority of the world has probably not even heard of him, and no independent study has proven that he had more spiritual wisdom than anyone else in the world. The term Pope comes from "father" and the majority of the world does not see him that way, but we still title the page Pope Francis.
  My previous edit was not endorsing Islam, a religion I do not follow, and instead of making it more specific, getting rid of "prophet" completely made it less specific. Unknown Temptation (talk) 16:14, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

  "Pope" clearly means that he has a particular role in the Catholic church. Similarly for other examples given. Simply "prophet" is an assertion in the voice of Wikipedia which a majority of people would disagree with. "Islamic prophet" implicitly says that Islam considers him to have that status/role/capability. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:30, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

• The problem we are having here is that in those cases when it is necessary or even simply better to clarify (this often depends on context and background knowledge of subject matter), UrielAcosta is still systematically removing it based on a literal reading of MOS:PBUH, to the point of edit warring over it, without engaging in substantial discussion.
  An example of where mentioning "prophet" was better because of subject matter context is here, an example of where it was necessary to disambiguate from other Muhammads named in the article here (cf. [1]).
  In my mind, because the problem is an overly literal reading, the solution to this is to update MOS:PBUH and have it explicitly allow "the prophet Muhammad" in cases where it is needed for disambiguation or clarification. My own proposal to simply always allow it (because all relevant RS are in fact using it constantly and casually) was perhaps too ambitious, but simply instating Some1's counterproposal here would already solve a lot of the issues (Some1's proposal, but adjusted to lowercase 'prophet'):

  (The) Holy Prophet in place of, or preceding, "Muhammad" — recommended action is to use just "Muhammad" except when it is the first reference in an article, or the first reference in the lead, in which case it may be rendered as "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" if necessary. In cases where ambiguity or confusion exists, the "prophet Muhammad" or "the prophet" may be used as a variation on "Muhammad".

  Regards, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 16:32, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

  Re "overly literal reading"—except for the part about continuing to ignore except when it is the first reference in an article, or the first reference in the lead, in which case it may be rendered as "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" if necessary even when it's pointed out to them point-blank. The reason Muhammad gets his own provision in the first place is because of a matter very specific to him: the practice of some people of writing "PBUH" after every use of his name, and referring to him as "the Prophet Muhammad" or even just "the Prophet" on every occasion. There's nothing about the provision that suggests that Muhammad is less deserving than anyone else in history of being introduced in a text in the way that people are very commonly introduced, by the use of context. If anyone's being non-neutral, it's UrielAcosta, for deeming Muhammad not to deserve to be identified in such a manner. Largoplazo (talk) 16:46, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

  I agree that they are deliberately ignoring the part of the MOS that they don't seem to agree with. Their he's not Wikipedia's prophet breaks the very policy that they are citing as an excuse to expunge the word from every article. M.Bitton (talk) 16:53, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

• The changes en masse by UrielAcosta are unhelpful at best as they needlessly create a lot of work for others. M.Bitton (talk) 16:37, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

  I'm in agreement with the responses expressed by @M.Bitton, @Largoplazo, and @Apaugasma. It's evident that there's an issue of overzealous editing on the part of UrielAcosta. As others have noted, even in cases where, for purely practical reasons as MOS allows, it was better to leave a term rather than removing it. I would encourage @UrielAcosta to take a breather and once again go through WP:5P5, if it might provide a newfound sense of direction and clarity. StarkReport (talk) 16:54, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

• We had this one at Regency of Algiers also. I am not certain if UrielAcosta realizes just how many people can be named Mohammed in an article that covers 400 years of North African history, but this was righteously reverted by the article's primary author. I urge UrielAcosta to get a grip and find another mission. Elinruby (talk) 05:57, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

This is the place where we refer to the Islamic prophet Mohammed. I believe that before Uriel Acosta came along it possibly said the Prophet Mohammed, This may be slightly better but seems like a really silly thing to spend time on, like arguing about whether Joan of Arc's visions were real. The thing to do is report the claim without endorsing, it, yes? [2] The sharifs were a religious nobility who claimed descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and often members of the Naqib al-ashraf institution of the Ottoman Empire.[405] I spent a LOT of time on this section and made zero claims about Mohammed in wikivoice. I am not real upset about this either way but I consider myself an interested party and I oppose a mandatory naked Mohammed. Please ping me if this escalates. Going on a rampage about the word prophet is bigotry to my mind, just like it would be to insist on a disclaimer in an article about the visions of Joan of Arc or the incarnations of Vishnu.

This is merely what some people believe or believed at some point, period, end of story, and I submit that it is neither possible nor desirable to explain a religious dynasty whose power stemmed from its claim of descent from the prophet Mohammed without mentioning the prophet Mohammed. If some people feel that we need to specify that he was an Islamic prophet rather than a Hindu or an Buddhist or a Catholic prophet, ok fine, whatever.

Btw, ctl-f finds 21 instances of "Mohammed" in that article, a few of whom are mentioned more than once, and at least one of whom is the author of a reference. I think a serious count would give use ten or eleven men named Mohammed plus some honorific. Elinruby (talk) 10:23, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I fail to see why uses of the word prophet [Name] should be considered improper or require editing out when talking about a figure (notwithstanding their historicity) identified by a sufficiently significant amount of people as a prophet of their religion, creed, or belief system — especially, if it serves purposes of disambiguation. And I disagree with @North8000′s assessment of a distinct treatment of the epithets pope and prophet, since both are similar religious positions, claiming to form a bridge between the divine and humankind. The position of pope is as limited and debated among Christian creeds as the question of “Who is the real, final, ultimate prophet?” is in various branches of Islam. Konanen (talk) 15:03, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Shooks, I did not intend this to be a reply to @Elinruby, sorry. Konanen (talk) 15:03, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Respectfully, IMO your argument against my point has flaws. The widespread meaning of "Pope" is a particular position in the catholic church. Saying "Pope" in the voice of Wikipedia means that they hold that role in the Catholic church. The claim in the voice of Wikipedia does not go any further than that. An atheist can take it to mean only that. An unattributed statement in the voice of Wikipeda that someone is a prophet is a statement in the voice of Wikipedia goes far beyond just saying that they have a particular role in a a particular religion. Simple attribution of the statement to Islam solves all of that. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:35, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

For statements like "Joshua was a prophet who [...]" or "when the prophet Muhammad came to Mecca [...]", if the implication of the statement is 'hey, this is the prophet of God, so better listen to him', then it's obviously religiously non-neutral and problematic. If the implication of the statement is 'this figure is considered a prophet in the religion(s) we are talking about in this context', then it's perfectly fine. Not only perfectly fine, but also often necessary, because the status of these figures as prophets is often an important part of the encyclopedic information we are trying to convey. The current restrictions in MOS:MUHAMMAD often make this difficult or impossible. Readers are intelligent enough to pick out the intended implication, they don't need the current censorship to get that we are not declaring these figures to be actual prophets in wiki-voice, nor are the relevant RS who are all of them (the challenge made here to find an exception still stands) routinely referring to Muhammad as "the prophet" or "the prophet Muhammad". ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 12:32, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

@Apaugasma:You made a good point there which I think is that these are often obviously (just) statements by Islam rather than statements by / in the voice of Wikipedia. North8000 (talk) 16:17, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Removing "The Prophet" in this way appears to be agenda driven. I am not a Muslim and I see no issue with the phrase being "The Prophet Muhammed" being used when it is referencing the founder of Islam Elmmapleoakpine (talk) 15:23, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

As noted above, I'm in agreement with inclusion of the word but, used in this way, "prophet" is a common noun and shouldn't be capitalized. Largoplazo (talk) 19:27, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree. "The prophet Mohammed" is ok but "The Prophet Mohammed" runs afoul of MOS:MUHAMMAD specifically and more broadly MOS:HONORIFIC. In fact it would be better to say "the Islamic prophet Mohammed" and that is what the guidance says: except when it is the first reference in an article, or the first reference in the lead, in which case it may be rendered as "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" if necessary. If this were equivalent to "The Pope" it would be phrased just as "The Prophet" when obviously Mohammed doesn't occupy the proper noun of "The Prophet" in English. —DIYeditor (talk) 00:38, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Rent control in the United States and Rent regulation pages

There is a long-standing dispute over pages [3] and [4].

The dispute concerns the following statement: ‘There is a consensus among economists that rent control reduces the quality and quantity of rental housing units’.

The statement was added by Snooganssnoogans on 24 December 2020 at 14:54, without prior discussion on the talk page.[5]

Several editors have shown opposition and/or raised concerns about the veracity and/or neutrality of such statement and/or the sources provided, as can be seen in the talk pages [6] and [7], evidencing that there is no consensus among editors on the content of the page.

Several users act as custodians of this page, systematically deleting references to indexed scientific articles, or reverting edits by users contrary to their views (e.g. this scientific reference [8], was deleted here [9]).

Several users have been targeted and banned by editors who oversee the site, accused of vandalism by those who uphold an statement that was unexpectedly added to the article without previous discussion in the talk page.

It appears that the sentence lacks the required consensus and does not seem to adhere to a neutral point of view.

139.47.66.252 (talk) 22:06, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Courtesy links:

• Rent regulation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Rent control in the United States (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• 2021 NPOVN discussion with formal closure about both articles at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard/Archive 89 § Rent control: "on consensus among economists"
• 2019 RfC at Talk:Rent regulation/Archive 1 § RfC about describing extent of disagreement
• After that RfC, most discussion about "Rent regulation" is on its talk page proper.
• "Rent control in the United States" discussions begin at Talk:Rent control in the United States/Archive 1 § A Philosophical Reminder.
• The discussion on Talk:Rent control in the United States itself is from 2022 with the exception of one comment.

Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 04:22, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

The 2021 NPOVN closure does not appear to reflect any consensus. It explicitly states that the statement in question should be replaced or rephrased, and no such correction has been made or allowed since. 139.47.66.252 (talk) 11:57, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

This is not so much 'a long-standing dispute' as a single IP-hopping editor who periodically shows up to attempt to blank parts of the article and make repetitive arguments and/or personal attacks on the talk pages. Talk:Rent regulation had to be semi protected because of this a few months ago. They have gotten many, many responses on the relevant talk pages, but the WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT continues nonetheless. MrOllie (talk) 12:16, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

PS: This IP is almost certainly Pedrote112 (talk · contribs) evading their block again. MrOllie (talk) 12:54, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Is this yet another attack by this user on anyone who does not think like him/her in order to prevent the article from being reviewed? 139.47.66.252 (talk) 15:17, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't see problems here. This removal seems justified, if it's an individual study it should be added to the body of the article and not to the lede, unless it's super-transformational and has overturned the scientific consensus, which I doubt. Alaexis_¿question? 20:54, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

What scientific consensus? There is neither scientific consensus nor consensus among editors. Why do you consider it legitimate to withdraw this scientific article and other articles that have been cited on the talk page?88.12.251.41 (talk) 15:01, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

The consensus documented in the cited sources. Pretending that those sources don't exist isn't going to work. Nor will you be able to undermine them by citing minority viewpoints or individual data points. MrOllie (talk) 01:45, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

The statement as presented is implicit OR. It implies that the purpose of rent control was to increase the quality and quantity of rental units, and therefore the policy was a failure.

To provide an example, the average cost of a one bedroom apartment in Toronto, where new buildings are not subject to rent control, is CAD2,513. But many tenants are paying half that or less because of rent control for the same or greater square footage. Not many of them are moving to new units that offer newer stoves and refrigerators. TFD (talk) 02:17, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Snooganssnoogans, I wonder if you could comment on this. TFD (talk) 02:30, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

The statement is yours, you added it without prior discussion in the talk page. You are the one that has to gain a consensus that doesn't exist. 2A02:9130:9435:1805:DDDA:5696:E2AD:B4F7 (talk) 12:07, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

The statement was added by Snooganssnoogans without any previous discussion in the talk page. 88.12.251.41 (talk) 15:34, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Weaponization of antisemitism

Could someone review this article and this discussion (Talk:Weaponization of antisemitism#Adding POV and POV LEDE tags) for whether or not NPOV violations exist or if the POV tag belongs on the article. Thank you, IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 18:57, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

It's a terrible article, so would really benefit from the engagement of non-involved editors. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:17, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Just finished an RM on the title, no consensus. Not that terrible imo but I suppose mileage may vary. This has been here since 4 May and it was at the OR noticeboard as well without much reaction so while there is always something to fix, maybe not so much. Selfstudier (talk) 15:33, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree with @Bobfrombrockley, the articles sourcing issue combined with the plethora of other problems discussed on the talk page combined with the RM problems are not inspiring my confidence that this article will (or maybe even can) be modified to resemble a NPOV. FortunateSons (talk) 20:08, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Need some patient people at Jordan Peterson

I have just spent a couple of hours I will never get back at this page explaining:

• What is a revert
• What is a one-revert restriction on a page
• What it means to have a personal one-revert restriction
• What is another editor's talk page comment
• What is Wikivoice and why we do not use it to say "politically correct"
• Why we don't randomly name drop politicians in an article about a YouTube misogynist
• Why this is even more so when the politician in question is the once and likely future premier of Alberta, who is female.
• Why it really doesn't matter how we as Wikipedia editors think she should feel about the mention
• Why the alleged billions of times the misogynist Youtuber's videos have been played matters not at all
• Why his alleged ranking at some download site doesn't matter either
• What is precedent in a common law legal system

The following remain to be addressed:

• use of student newspaper in an evaluation of his research
• Article variously says he resigned, was no longer on the faculty, was asked to resign or put teaching on hold temporarily due to other project.
• What is ONUS and who has it
• Whatever this is: Peterson's work has generated billions of views from all over the world. Meanwhile, Rachel Notley is some minor politician in Canada. How many people outside of Canada knows about her or cares about her? Remove her from the article if you want. Obscure people shouldn't be allowed to parasite on the success of famous people. Trakking (talk) 10:28, 16 May 2024
• whatever this is also: Some people are trying hard to make this encyclopedic article be much more sensational and provocative than it ought to be. Trakking (talk) 22:33, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

and much more. I am sure I am forgetting stuff. Did I mention that a lot of the sources seem to fail verification? I have not yet run Wikiblame though. Please send whisky and psychiatrists. The editor mentioned a above is swedish and rather new. The other is @Springee:. Elinruby (talk) 12:23, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

@Trakking: Elinruby (talk) 12:24, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah the comment about Notley had me entirely confused. I'm already there but more hands make light work. Simonm223 (talk) 12:46, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Re "an article about a YouTube misogynist" -- in fact it's an article about Jordan Peterson. Re Rachel Notley: the mention has existed in the article since at least May 2017, but I didn't interpret the talk page comments as firmly opposing removal. I won't post there since I know that people can be tbanned for doing so. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:26, 16 May 2024

Yes. that is the YouTube misogynist in question. Elinruby (talk) 19:46, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Not sure we should be sending additional psychological professionals, seeing what carnage has been wrought by just one of them. 🤔 jp×g🗯️ 08:39, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

I mean the College of Psychologists of Ontario are deeply embarrassed by him. Simonm223 (talk) 12:24, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

update:Various shiny objects have distracted me from this. Possibly the one-revert question has been addressed; I at least have had an answer that satisfied *my* questions about this for now. I do not know if the other editors on the talk page agree. I remain preoccupied and busy RL. Some of those editors have said that they don't see why mentioning Notley is a PoV problem, but on the other hand they do not object to the mention being removed. Removing it would resolve that matter in my eyes. If that has not happened I may do that sometime soon. As far as I know the rest of this remains unaddressed. Elinruby (talk) 10:33, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

@Elinruby: You really ought keep your (potentially defamatory) personal opinions about BLPs to yourself. "Misogyny" and "misogynist" appear only twice in the article currently and not in a way that would lend to them being listed in the lead along with "psychologist, author, and media commentator". I daresay maybe you ought not edit articles you have such strong opinions on if you feel compelled to use the slurs when discussing the person. This is no reflection on my personal opinion of Jordan Peterson. I don't like misogyny or misogynists, and I don't know much about Peterson other than that it is definitely not someone I would take advice from. I just think you are pushing the limits of WP:BLP and might be edging into having your comments refactored:

• Do not label people with contentious labels, loaded language, or terms that lack precision, unless a person is commonly described that way in reliable sources. Instead use clear, direct language and let facts alone do the talking.
• Remove immediately any contentious material about a living person that: 2. is an original interpretation or analysis of a source, or a synthesis of sources
• WP:LIBEL

—DIYeditor (talk) 00:54, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

@DIYeditor: can you restate that please? I think I must be misunderstanding you. Elinruby (talk) 04:04, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

At the least it looks biased to me to be bad-mouthing a living person beyond what the article describes the person as being. Maybe it's true (or not), but to me "misogynist" is a strong and potentially defamatory label to use, and it doesn't seem to be widely applied to him from what his article says. Is it necessary, useful and appropriate to express distaste for the subjects of articles? —DIYeditor (talk) 08:28, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I think the issue here is that you have posted a legal threat and a personal attack from what his article says. You do understand that I posted here because I was questioning the article's neutrality? It does indeed say, based on the subject's YouTube posts and some hagiography in student newspapers, that he is essentially the second coming of Carl Jung, to the point of including the Carl Jung navbar in the article. I thought the above was a decent start on the article's problems, but we can discuss misogyny if people want. I would have thought that this was obvious from the use of the word on RS, the description of women in his own voice as "witches" and forces of chaos, and his contention that they are responsible for murders by incels, a situation to be remedied by what he calls "mandatory monogamy." I will be happy to provide sources for these statements, and yes, I agree, actually, that they are not in the article. Or weren't the last time I looked.Elinruby (talk) 01:00, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Actually, here, let me by all means introduce some sources into this conversation. Sources include but are not limited to:

• Grant Maxwell (February 20, 2018). "Why Are So Many Young Men Drawn to Jordan Peterson's Intellectual Misogyny?". American Philosophical Association.
• Nellie Bowles (May 18, 2018). "Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy: He says there's a crisis in masculinity. Why won't women — all these wives and witches — just behave?". New York Times. "He was angry at God because women were rejecting him," Mr. Peterson says of the Toronto killer. "The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That's actually why monogamy emerges. Mr. Peterson does not pause when he says this. Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn't make either gender happy in the end.
• Burgis, Ben; Bongard Hamilton, Conrad; McManus, Matthew; Trejo, Marion (2020). Myth and Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson. John Hunt Publishing. ISBN 1789045541. His willingness to say misogynistic and transphobic things, and support patriarchal institutions is damning
• Nesbitt-Larking, Paul (July 2022). "Constructing narratives of masculinity: Online followers of Jordan B. Peterson". Psychology of Men & Masculinities. 23 (3): 309–320.
• Hadley Freeman (23 May 2018). "Jordan Peterson may be a 'public intellectual', but his latest theory isn't very clever: The academic believes violent men can be cured by the love of a good woman through enforced monogamy. And he can't understand why people are laughing at him?". The Guardian. Peterson felt compelled to blog about it, explaining in his usual "Look, you may not like it, but I'm just stating the scientific truth, guys" tone, that he wasn't advocating the "arbitrary dealing out of damsels to incels", just that scientific facts show that "socially enforced monogamous conventions decrease male violence". How any of this explains his theory that feminine is chaos and masculine is order was left unexplored
• Bethan Iley. "From Andrew Tate to Jordan Peterson, a phoney zero-sum-game argument sits at the heart of anti-feminist backlash". The Conversattion UK. Take Peterson's conceptualisation of order and chaos as reflecting masculinity and femininity...to raise these issues as an argument against more freedom for women is to feed the false idea that men and women are battling for power
• Revesz, Rachael (21 January 2018). "Misogynistic abuse against Cathy Newman is a symbol of the backlash against the MeToo movement: When white men feel they are losing power, any level of nastiness is possible – and much power has been ceded of late". The Independent. No matter what she would have asked, a woman daring to question his expertise was bound to have ramifications. Especially in 2018.
• SANNEH, KELEFA (March 5, 2018). "SORT YOURSELF OUT, BUCKO". Vol. 94, no. 3. New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. When he does battle as a culture warrior, especially on television, Peterson sometimes assumes the role of a strident anti-feminist, intent on ending the oppression of males by destroying the myth of male oppression. (He once referred to his critics as "rabid harpies.")
• Charlotte Lydia Riley, ed. (20 November 2020). "Jordan Peterson, the alt-right and neo-fascism". The free speech wars. doi:10.7765/9781526152558.00027. ISBN 9781526152558. women of colour calling out racism are routinely 'shut down' for 'incivility'. A guide to free speech politics in the age of Peterson, this chapter shows how inescapably raced, classed and gendered the exclusionary practice of 'free speech' really is, and what this tells us about liberalism's inadequacy in responding to neo-fascism.
• Southey, Tabatha (November 17, 2017). "Is Jordan Peterson the stupid man's smart person? Tabatha Southey delves into University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson's work and finds his secret sauce—and what makes his work unnerving". Maclean's. What he's telling you is that certain people—most of them women and minorities—are trying to destroy not only our freedom to spite nonbinary university students for kicks, but all of Western civilization and the idea of objective truth itself. He's telling you that when someone tells you racism is still a problem and that something should be done about it, they are, at best, a dupe and, at worst, part of a Marxist conspiracy to destroy your way of life. Peterson says he only thinks of it as a "non-violent war." But when you insist the stakes are that high, the opposition that pernicious, who's to say where the chips will fall?
• Annabelle Dufourcq; Annemie Halsema; Katrine Smiet; Karen Vintges, eds. (2024). "Power, Sex, and Myth: Beauvoir, Paglia, and Peterson". Purple Brains: Feminisms at the Limits of Philosophy. Radboud University Press. p. 67. doi:10.54195/HSOV8373. ISBN 978 94 9329 639 8. The known stands for order, form, and culture, symbolically linked to the masculine. The unknown is chaos, substance, and nature, symbolically associated with the feminine. Chaos is origin, source, mother, matter, and order must restrain and shape that chaos.
• Mannella, Francesco (2020). "General Insights From: "The Intellectual Dark-Web": A Case Study of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro". Intersect: The Stanford Journal of Science, Technology, and Society. 14 (3). Stanford University. they can be watched for hours espousing conservative doctrine to their predominantly male, adolescent audience in hopes of maintaining the status quo, and eschewing activism (Weiss & Winter, 2018). There are quite a number of figures in this group; however, this paper will be focusing primarily on the two most notable members: Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. Elinruby (talk) 01:00, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Not sure where I think the issue here is that you have posted a legal threat and a personal attack came from but what you've listed looks like good groundwork for inclusion in the article. —DIYeditor (talk) 05:02, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I am not particularly interested in pursuing the matter, but "maybe you ought not edit articles you have such strong opinions on if you feel compelled to use the slurs" does assume I said this with no basis, and you did say I was committing libel. But fine; apparently you now think otherwise. Glad to hear it, and glad we got that cleared up. I am still preoccupied with a different problem, but my primary concern, above and beyond all this background, is that the article devoted a great deal of real estate to quoting his very fringe statements about Bill C-16 and most likely still does Elinruby (talk) 07:59, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

WP:LABEL is quite clear that “misogynist” is a value-laden label to be avoided unless widely used by reliable sources. If the source evidence is insufficient to state it in wikivoice in a BLP, then it should be avoided on Talk too, per WP:BLPTALK. A personal attack against the subject of the article, even if you think it is justified, is WP:BATTLEGROUND noise that doesn’t help make content decisions. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 08:33, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Ok, apparently you have not noticed the dozen sources above. The article still extensively quotes the subject making extremely hyperbolic statements, in addition to his advocacy of involuntary sexual servitude for women. But by all means, let's debate whether it is polite to include some secondary sources in the article that say so. Elinruby (talk) 09:09, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Do those reliable sources widely state, in their own voice, that the subject is a misogynist? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 09:11, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

feel free to click handily provided links. I would start with the New York Times. They are also afaict all extremely RS, certainly better in any event that the student newspapers currently in the article. More sources exist to say that the subject's claims about Canadian constitutional law are to put it politely only tenously related to fact, which is actually the primary concern. The stuff about women is opinion, no matter how alarming it is that somebody with his reach has been saying this stuff. Elinruby (talk) 09:24, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I checked a couple, and have now checked the NYT source too. It doesn’t call him a misogynist. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 09:31, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Only three of those sources explicitly mention the term misogyny—one is some random blog, another is a polemic book called ”A leftist critique,” and the third does not even apply the term to Jordan Peterson specifically; it just simply states that ”well, there’s misogyny on the internet.” This post is a clear example of WP:OR and WP:BATTLEGROUND. Trakking (talk) 09:30, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

(ec) I see this escalated while I was typing. That "random blog" has an editorial policy and a submissions process and is published by a professional organization. And yeah, the NYT times only quotes him saying that the solution to a guy running over random pedestrians is "mandatory monogamy" for women with men who might do such things. Speaking of polemic. The book is a published source that beats a student newspaper any day, and the source you are dismissing as "there's misogyny on the internet" has his name in the title, so.... not so much. But I am always happy to hear from an editor who thinks that a former provincial premier is somehow "parasiting" the subject by being mentioned in his Wikipedia article. Have you removed that mention yet, Trakking? Surely if I want it gone and you think it's parasitic, a meeting of the minds is possible somewhere? But Macleans, the Guardian and the other sources all talk about hateful statements about women and pretty much everyone who is not an incel white male, so... OR is a pretty ridiculous dismissal, given that all of these sources are better than 90% of what's in the article now, ie mostly YouTube and student newspapers. But without getting into the article's current content, if it's reliably sourced, it ain't OR. As opposed for example to quoting the subject on what his expertise is, even though he doesn't seem to be the lead author of many of those articles at all. So how about we talk about what he says about the law, hmm? Elinruby (talk) 10:00, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Trying to log in but keep kicking to other places 2600:100A:B03C:8E18:0:34:799D:E901 (talk) 11:38, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Misandry neutrality

A debate about the Misandry article is ongoing at Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard. I welcome as many people as possible to chime in about how the article should be phrased as possible. Thank you. ImmersiveOne (talk) 20:41, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Sabra (character)

This may count as vandalism, but this IP user has been adding things like this onto this article. BOZ (talk) 22:07, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Irgun

See [10]. I reverted a similar edit a few days ago. The issue I see is do we describe the Irgun in articles the way their article does or does Wikipedia call then terrorists. Doug Weller talk 17:20, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

See King David Hotel bombing which is what the Irgun is notorious for, obviously terrorism, and the attack is described in the lead as a "terrorist attack". In the section Terrorism, it says "The bombing has been discussed in literature about the practice and history of terrorism. It has been called one of the most lethal terrorist attacks of the 20th century." When a preponderance of sources are all unequivocal about calling it terrorism, it's terrorism.

I see an editor objected on the grounds that we don't do that for Hamas but there is no unanimity of sourcing for that (the BBC being one notable example of a refusal to call them that). Selfstudier (talk) 17:41, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

The way Irgun describes them is, imo, fine. This was (to my knowledge) way before proscription was a thing, so it's probably the best we're going to get if we're never going to be able to say "described by A, B, and C as a terrorist org". Extending that, however, to Ze'ev Jabotinsky is a bit weird to me. Although al-Qaeda's designation is mentioned on Osama Bin Laden. Yr Enw (talk) 18:26, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

The same editor who adds mentions of terrorism to Irgun-related articles also removes mentions of terrorism related to Palestinian factions [11]. However, when reverted, they label the revert as "vandalism" [12]. This could indicate a possible conduct issue. ABHammad (talk) 07:55, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I have a similar view to Yr Enw in cases like this. Also, I'm a fan of aligning contentious labels to the labeling used in main articles about the thing being given a contentious label in another article. And if you are going to avoid the use of Wiki-voice via words like "proscribed", it seems better to say who is doing the proscribing. I'm not a big fan of the fuzzy wording "unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject" in WP:TERRORIST as a decision procedure because, in practice, editors can't/don't do enough sampling. Not using contentious labels in wiki-voice or without some kind of attribution is a simple solution. Sean.hoyland (talk) 08:29, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

“not using contentious labels in wikivoice or without some kind of attribution is a simple solution”. This is my preferred interpretation of MOS:TERRORIST, and imo the only possibly impartial way of dealing with terrorist designations. But the guidance is, as you note, quite reliant on editors making editorial judgements. It’s unlikely to get resolved anytime soon either, as when I tried to get consensus on the VP for a more explicit guideline that would align with this, it wasn’t very forthcoming. Yr Enw (talk) 10:34, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

In practice, in Wikipedia, for understandable reasons, editorial judgement can be difficult to distinguish from convenience sampling. Sean.hoyland (talk) 12:53, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps but the rule as it stands (I don't agree with it either but there it is) says that if there is a preponderance of sourcing, we go by that. If there is alleged insufficient sampling, editors will have to work out a consensus on that, same as anything else. Selfstudier (talk) 12:58, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

This is true. I think we have made some progress towards neutrality though. When people in my family would tell stories about their time in Palestine in 1947-48, any mention of Irgun might be accompanied by slightly confusing statements like 'scum of the Balkans'. Of course, this was back in the days when making sweeping and/or offensive and/or inaccurate statements about 'foreigners' was fine. Sean.hoyland (talk) 14:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Wasn't Irgun self-described as terrorists? They were formed as "restraint breakers" specifically to carry out unprovoked violent attacks against Palestinians and British as part of a campaign of political violence. They promoted terrorism, were self-described terrorists. They publicly celebrated their terrorist identity. They had a goal and their chosen path was the path of violent unconstrained terrorism, and they were proud advocates of this. Fanccr (talk) 03:46, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Fanccr, your comment is inconsistent with the WP:ARBECR rule. A quick look at your contributions suggests that you might need to (re)read that and the information on your talk page. If you have sourcing that supports the "self-described terrorists" statement, you can submit it with an edit request at the Irgun article's talk page using WP:EDITXY as a guide. Even if true, I would still favor attributing the label to them rather than using wiki-voice. Sean.hoyland (talk) 04:46, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, same. The problem with their suggestion is that it assumes readers will understand what the Irgun itself meant by the term, which I don’t think they will. Yr Enw (talk) 07:56, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree with @Yr Enw here. In an article about a different topic, appending a contentious qualifier like terrorist can be done only if that's what RS do. The onus is on the editor who adds this. Alaexis_¿question? 06:47, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Including death parameters in the infobox for BLPs

I tried removing the "death date" and "death place" parameters from the infoboxes on BLPs (e.g. [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20]), but the removals have been reverted. The vast majority of BLPs do not include such parameters. The infobox for the Joe Biden article, to cite a high-profile example, does not include parameters for death. Neither does the Taylor Swift article, to cite another high-profile example. Why should some BLPs include death parameters and others not? Seems morbid and downright prejudicial. Ieonine (talk) 23:34, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

The unused parameters aren't seen by the reader..... we consider this a cosmetic edit pls review WP:COSMETICBOT. Moxy🍁 23:41, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

But they are seen by the editors, and the implication is shady. Ieonine (talk) 23:50, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Every subject of a BLP will die someday. I would argue that there is no good reason to remove empty death parameters from articles that have them or to add empty death parameters to articles that don't. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:43, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Then why isn't there an across-the-board policy addressing this? To cite some more high-profile examples, look at the infoboxes for Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Madonna. Nowhere does it list "death date" or "death place". So why should some BLP infoboxes include death parameters and others not include death parameters? There's no equality in that. Ieonine (talk) 23:47, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

What matters is that for all of these BLPs, the death fields are empty and don't show in the page. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:55, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Again, this is prejudicial. Who decides which BLPs should have death fields and which shouldn't? Ieonine (talk) 23:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

They are irrelevant if they are not seen. I suggest you find something productive to do. Moxy🍁 00:02, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

In what way are they “prejudicial”? Who exactly is harmed by the fact that some BLP infoboxes have this (empty and hidden) parameter while others do not? And what is that harm? Blueboar (talk) 00:38, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

It's not really hidden. Anyone who clicks the edit button can see it. If there was a BLP page about me that had a "death date" field I'd take offense. The harm is implication of imminent death. To insist certain BLPs must contain this stigmatic mark while other BLPs get off scot-free, is unbalanced, unfair, and prejudicial; a double standard. Does this answer your question? Because none of you have answered mine: Why are some BLPs exempt from containing this awful text and others aren't? Ieonine (talk) 05:20, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Meh… having a field for date of death that is empty does not imply an imminent death… just an eventual one. We will all die at some point (hopefully a long time from now). No need to change. Blueboar (talk) 13:30, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

If it ain't broke, don't fix it Cambalachero (talk) 01:54, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

These unused parameters are appropriate and will be useful for reference when the person does die. The infoboxes are not only for living persons AFAIK, but a variety that might be used for living or dead people. —DIYeditor (talk) 00:58, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Article title should be renamed Hokkaido Colonization Commission

The title of Hokkaidō Development Commission should be renamed to Hokkaido Colonization Commission. The National Archives of Japan [21] officially refers to it as the "Colonization Commission," so that should be the title instead of "Hokkaidō Development Commission." While some sources may use the latter, giving more weight to the National Archives' designation aligns better with Wikipedia's rules, avoiding WP:UNDUE emphasis on other sources. the lede sentence "The Hokkaidō Development Commission (開拓使, Kaitakushi), sometimes referred to as Hokkaidō Colonization Office or simply Kaitakushi, was a government agency in early Meiji Japan." would also need to be rewritten because it is incorrect to say that the commission is sometimes referred to as Hokkaido Colonization Office when it was the official name. talk page: [22]

• Actually, our rules DON’T favor “official names” over the names used in sources. See: WP:COMMONNAME. Blueboar (talk) 13:40, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

that's fair enough, but guidelines also state, "When there is no single, obvious name that is demonstrably the most frequently used for the topic by these sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering these criteria directly." there are also plenty of other sources that use Colonization Commission. consensus needs to be reached as to which title is best for the article.(see talk) LilAhok (talk) 20:13, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Animal stereotypes of Palestinians in Israeli discourse/Animal stereotypes of Jews in Palestinian discourse

I recently came across these two newly created articles and they are both deeply problematic and subject to what look like intense back and forth editing. Do non-involved editors think NPOV versions could be made from either of them? BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:25, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Dismal articles, the pair of them. Might do something with them if merged into one article...maybe. Selfstudier (talk) 18:30, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

I think the "Animal" word should be dropped from both article titles, since apart from animals there's also "cavemen", "beasts", "morons", "vampires", "bacteria", "cancer", "germ".

I haven't checked sources much, but the sentence At times, denigrators can allow that they are human: Yonathan Netanyahu considered them cavemen while the Likud MP Oren Hazan allows that Palestinians are human, but only in so far as they are morons. appears to fail WP:NPOV, as the cited quotes (as provided in the footnotes) don't appear to say anything about allowing to be considered humans. NicolausPrime (talk) 18:54, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Selfeditor, I'm afraid that just as in the real world conflict a two-articles solution is more realistic than a one-article solution... Vegan416 (talk) 19:31, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Selfeditor? K, doesn't sound so bad. Anyway its not the solution that's the problem, its the occupation. Selfstudier (talk) 19:34, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

NOTFORUM. What I mean is that the number of arguments and back and forth editing would likely be much higher in one article than in two articles. Vegan416 (talk) 19:39, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

I think a theoretical NPOV version is possible, but I agree that a merger might be more promising. The primary issue will likely be due weight and FALSEBALANCE, and I don’t envy whoever will have to adress the inevitable discussions that will emerge. FortunateSons (talk) 19:42, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Are animal stereotypes singularly notable in partisan discourse in the I/P debate, beyond the usual dehumanization inherent in similar debates? (Not like you have to go far to find someone calling someone similar in the US.) If the answer is no, the articles shouldn't exist at all, and having them around is just asking for COATRACK and battleground issues. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:48, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

That’s a good question. I’m honestly not sure, and also don’t know how we would measure that, particularly considering the linguistic and cultural complexity involved. Subjectively, I would say probably yes, but that’s worth very little. FortunateSons (talk) 19:53, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs Animal stereotypes are very common, certainly with regard to caricatures of Palestinians, and are sufficiently impressive to have formed part of the evidence presented by South Africa (pp.59ff.) in its recent case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. The point is, at least for that article, they are all documented by core figures in the Israeli state, and not simply off-the-cuff remarks by the usual lunatic or fanatical fringe. I'll ignore the other article, which is unretrievably bad, and am surprised that the two, one written with stringent method, the other without any semblance of the same, could be viewed interchangeably as 'dismal'. 'Animal', lastly, refers to the 'animal kingdom', the realm of existing organic beings, as opposed to the plant kingdom. I thought everyone knew that, or has the kindergarten curriculm changed its views about this in the last half century?Nishidani (talk) 21:10, 21 May 2024 (UTC).

I don't see the complaint as being a useful bellwether. It's not just about calling Palestinians animals, that specific part is a very small section of a very, very long complaint, and it's specifically about the language Israel's leadership is using in the context of whether they're calling for genocide. That doesn't equal "we need to have an article about all the bad things one side in a conflict is calling the other". If that were the benchmark, you could write that sort of article about literally any conflict on earth. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 21:20, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Articles are dictated by many things. In my case, I wrote that when, over a decade, my personal file on such theriomorphic imagery (this is an important topic in scholarship) grew to such a length I wrote it up, for my own curiosity. On October 7th a veritable tsunami of zoomorphic vituperation hit the front pages, with many articles noting this upsurge in animal stereotypes. Some time after that an editor tried to write that article, and it was up for AfD, understandably so since it was poorly written. So I asked the deleters for a few days, and produced more or less the article we have, out of those old research files. For students of antisemitic history there is a substantial scholarly literature on the use of animal stereotypes for the Jews by their historic persecutors, most recently the erudite Jay Geller's,Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews, to name but one. So, to my mind, the article's justification is that, despite frequently (as a student of these things) noting for well over a decade the frequency of zoomorphic dismissals of Palestinians, even those outraged by the attacks on Palestinians as 'animals' appear to have scant familiarity with the history of such terminological usage. If wikipedia, drawing on scholarship, can set some order, context and detail into this glossed over but well attested manner of speaking, it is doing its encyclopedic job. I couldn't care a fuck about the politics, except that most discourse in this area reflects a strong desire to control narratives, usually by excluding important things from the record. I do care about seeing that the vast literature on antisemitic stereotypes generated these last decades polemically against the Muslim world does not sweep from sight the substantial documentation, systematically ignored until recently, on Israeli stereotypes about Palestinians.Nishidani (talk) 21:40, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

The starting point is whether a subject is notable, hence why I asked my original question. I'm not seeing anything in either article at first blush that suggests they are anything more than cobbled-together coatracks with news articles and books saying "this person said bad thing about that group" with the obvious purpose of grinding axes. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 21:57, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

A subject is notable when secondary sources - scholarly books and articles in particular-cite the topic frequently or deal with it in more than en passant length, as do Bar-Tal and Teichman (2005), Bruneau and Kteily (2017), Chomsky (1883), Gerteiny (2007), Peteet (2005) and Pugliese (2020). Then we have a large number of articles that report instances of the phenomenon. The new topic of the programmatic raping of Israeli women putatively organized by Hamas on Oct 7 is 'cobbled together' from claims and anecdotes that emerged in those first few days. There is so far, no forensic study and overview of those claims available (the one attempt to do so in the NYTs was pulled to pieces almost immediately), unlike the case with these two articles. No one is questioning the notability of the latter as a topic - the only dispute is whether it is an allegation or a fact. 'Cobble together' is a wholly inappropriate term of dismissal, implying that a motif observed is a subjective construction, not present in the objective field described. The pattern, per secondary sources, zoomorphic denigration, is confirmed by the scholarly analyses of these discursive traits characteristic of both Israeli and Palestinian speech. In this sense, the articles are perfectly consonant with normative work on wikipedia. Nishidani (talk) 07:42, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs, "If that were the benchmark, you could write that sort of article about literally any conflict on earth". Why not? By all means, anyone is invited to write a similar article about any international conflict on earth. Provided of course that they can find enough material about it in reliable sources. In the case of the two articles under discussion here, there seems to be a deluge of such sources. I'm not so sure if this is true about all other conflicts, but I didn't really check. But anyway if wikipedia has many articles about individual race horses and many articles about the diplomatic relations of each pair of countries in the world (such as Barbados–Suriname relations) than why not have many articles about the particular kinds of dehumanization that exist in each international conflict in the world? Vegan416 (talk) 06:30, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

It's only my personal opinion but when I say "dismal", I am not referring to the quality of the articles but to the subject matter itself. Selfstudier (talk) 21:40, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

All history is dismal in that sense, as noted historians have said on numerous occasions. I have to grit my teeth every day just to force myself to maintain some contact with contemporary events by reading newspapers. One recompense for being dead is that, despite no longer having a cup of tea and a fag of a morning, the molecular combination that conjures up a sense of duty to keep oneself informed of the world, will have decomposed, extinguishing the material basis for that burdomsome faculty, and that thought gives me a sense of relief.Nishidani (talk) 21:46, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Selfstudier (or Selfeditor), since when do we propose to censor articles just because their subject matter is dismal? See Wikipedia:UNCENSORED Vegan416 (talk) 06:19, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

That's my opinion, whether other editors agree with it remains to be seen. If it were down to me, I would merge and simplify but there is at least one editor querying whether these articles even deserve to exist. Selfstudier (talk) 09:34, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

(could-be-perceived-as) Racist content

This may be the wrong place to ask, but can someone please look at Biophilia hypothesis and more specifically Indigenous Perspectives on the Human-Nature Connection? It is some weird noble savage-type (could-be-perceived-as) racism.

People did not live in balance with nature, balance was imposed upon them by nature. "Indigenous" people were and are human, with all the same flaws. They overhunted certain species into near-extinction and were just as familiar with the concept of greed as we are. Romanticizing them as noble savages is not just incorrect; it (could-be-perceived-as) racist.

The noble savage (Do we not have an air quotes template?) lives in peace only with those species that have never been vulnerable to mankind's population growth. Polygnotus (talk) 23:21, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

If the cited sources don't use the term "biophilia", then that section is probably WP:OR. I haven't managed to check this yet as most of the sources are paywalled.

I would wait before calling it racist. I suspect that this section was just written to promote indigenous perspectives, not to romanticize them in the way the concept of noble savage did. NicolausPrime (talk) 00:30, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Good point, thank you! I will call it "could-be-perceived-as racist" instead. But it is entirely possible to do could-be-perceived-as racist stuff with great intentions. Polygnotus (talk) 00:35, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The overhunting of large animals in North America (which I'm assuming you're referencing) is actually disputed! There's growing evidence it was due to climate change instead. See: https://www.science.org/content/article/what-killed-great-beasts-north-america Sock-the-guy (talk) 19:07, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

That, while interesting, was not what I was talking about. Polygnotus (talk) 19:22, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

If there was a way to "promote" the beliefs of indigenous people, that section reads like that. It's sorta starting at the wrong place, and should likely introduce the reasons why such groups had to live in harmony with nature, and then move on to why their beliefs can center around that. Masem (t) 19:31, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The racism angle is a distraction: if something is racist it must be removed. Unless we are racists, we must agree with you.

This article is about a theory and every claim in it should be presented that way. Furthermore, sources should always be about the theory. It's not our role to find sources to support or debunk the theory. If the proponents say noble savages are biophilic, the article should report that. If they don't, it shouldn't. If sources say the theory is racist, the article should report it. If they don't, it shouldn't.

It shouldn't be difficult to summarize the literature, explain its degree of acceptance, and present opposition and its support, without getting into arguments about racism.

TFD (talk) 03:51, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Mermaids-Section on GIDS

• Mermaids (charity) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Article: Mermaids (charity) Putting this here possibly too early but I'd rather that then let this descend into squabbling. There's been some back-and-forth on this section and I'd like it to see a more broad audience, especially because I have little experience with wiki policy in general. I don't see how phrases like 'dealings with' and 'lobbying' are neutral especially when sourced from an opinion piece and book. The source I found also disputed what was written in the paragraph, so I'm unsure that stating these sentences as fact is even the right way to go about it. Sock-the-guy (talk) 16:32, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The "book" is a glowingly-reviewed, award-winning publication by a well-respected investigative journalist specifically about what went wrong at GIDS. This is a high quality secondary source. The quote the text is:

But demands for change grew more vociferous from the mid 2000s. Along with Mermaids, the Gender Identity Research and Education Society - GIRES - lobbied hard for GIDS to lower the age at which they'd consider treating children with puberty blockers.

This is reflected accurately in the article. I think you were premature in bringing this barely-discussed content dispute to NPOV. Void if removed (talk) 11:28, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Unsure how being overly cautious in getting more eyes and input on a topic is a bad thing, or as you said on the talk page, not assuming good faith. I thought it would be helpful to get the opinions of people who don't almost entirely edit only British trans-related topics as they might be better at discussing what a neutral point of view is.

Anyone can write a book, or be an 'investigative journalist.' From my understanding, that's not what makes a source reliable or unbiased. The author has a clear POV from her other writings and social media that should be considered. Using this book is just repeating the opinion of a person, not citing a reliable source. Sock-the-guy (talk) 16:56, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

The book is not an opinion piece. If we are not allowed to use the work of investigative journalists, we would not be allowed to use any news publication as a source. Sweet6970 (talk) 11:48, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

We don't use the 'investigative journalism' from PragerU either Sock-the-guy (talk) 15:43, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Investigative journalism is a primary source. It requires secondary sources to establish weight. If it is ignored, then the article should ignore it. If it is reported, then only what is reported has weight for inclusion. TFD (talk) 03:57, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I don’t see how this makes sense. Reputable newspapers are treated as suitable sources for facts. We don’t need a secondary source to report on a newspaper report before we can use a newspaper report as a source. And the book itself is so significant that it has its own article: [23] And the comparison with PragerU does not make sense. Sweet6970 (talk) 16:37, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

The book is the definitive factual account of the collapse of GIDS. It is not opinion. It is not 'PragerU'. It is a meticulous, fair, balanced, significant, and very well regarded secondary source. Barnes' original Newsnight investigation prompted the NHS service review that resulted in its closure, so kind of the exact opposite of "ignored" .

The source has been brought here because apparently it is not neutral. Here's what reviews say:

The Guardian:

A journalist at the BBC’s Newsnight, Barnes has based her account on more than 100 hours of interviews with Gids’ clinicians, former patients, and other experts, many of whom are quoted by name. It comes with 59 pages of notes, plentiful well-scrutinised statistics, and it is scrupulous and fair-minded. Several of her interviewees say they are happy either with the treatment they received at Gids, or with its practices – and she, in turn, is content to let them speak. Such a book cannot easily be dismissed. To do so, a person would not only have to be wilfully ignorant, they would also – to use the popular language of the day – need to be appallingly unkind.

Times Literary Supplement

Hannah Barnes’s scrupulous research is a painful, important reminder

Financial Times

A book about the Tavistock could easily have been a howl of outrage. But Hannah Barnes has written a meticulously researched, sensitive and cautionary chronicle.

The Times (Book of the Week)

Her account is sober, rhetoric-free and meticulously researched

Void if removed (talk) 19:31, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Ah yes the notoriously neutral and balanced UK press that never does anything transphobic thought the book was "scrupulous and fair minded." That's not the glowing set of endorsements you seem to think it is. Simonm223 (talk) 12:26, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Making unevidenced allegations against the entire UK press is not a serious argument. The Guardian, the Financial Times, and the Times all have green ticks at WP:RSP. And these 3 newspapers have different political positions. Sweet6970 (talk) 22:58, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

There is some misunderstanding of our use of news sources above. A re-read of WP:Primary might enlighten some of you. Most 'news' articles on events that are current (to the writing) are primary sources, not because they are in newspapers, TV, etc, but because they deal with ongoing events at the time of writing, relying on re-published primary accounts with little rigourous analysis, interpretation or other marks of good secondary sourcing. Investigative journalism (when done properly), even when dealing with current/recent events, most often tips over into secondary sourcing WP:SECONDARY because they often contain analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis from primary sources. A book, written significantly after the event, written by an investigative journalist who collects, evaluates, interpretes from primary accounts. Interviews, primary source material etc, is almost always going to be a reliable secondary source as per the criteria our guidelines and polices describe. The only reason it would be unsuitable is if the author's reputation was unsound or they were unqualified. That doesnt appear to be the case here. "Investigative journalism is a primary source" is not only both wildly incorrect per our policies and guidelines, but also the almost exact opposite of the reality outside of tabloid journalism. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:57, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Lacking Balance

• Michael Shellenberger (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Several editors have engaged in tactics to modify the page of Michael Shellenberger in a biased direction with intent to diminish his accomplishments. My own work has not been to cheerlead. I have simply asked for the Times Environmentalist of the Year Award to be recognized as such. I have notified several editors because they have coordinated together on the talk page. M.boli has given too little weight to the award, stating that what the times articles writers liked about Michael Shellenberger and Nordhaus is more important than acknowledging it as an award. NewsAndEventsGuy, M.boli, and Dumuzid have repeatedly taken down my edits. Dumuzid further gives the award too little weight, insisting it was not an award, justifying such with a citation from the Times article trying to claim it was a special report and not an award. LuckyLouie cited a paragraph from Shellenbergers' wikipedia article to prove the article these editors are working on is not biased. The quote is irrelevent as it ignores all the slanted portions throughout the article. NewsAndEventsGuy and Valjean have accused me of edit warring for pointing out these biases.  Shellenberger won an award and however editors on wikipedia may feel about him, giving this matter due weight, staying neutral, and not missing the point are the correct things to do. Michael Shellenberger (Talk) Brahman12 (talk) 17:56, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I haven't seen anything to indicate several editors have been coordinating to bias the article. But if you have evidence, it sounds like something you should report to WP:AN/I.

• Regarding the Times Environmentalist of the Year Award. There is no such award. There is something called "Heroes of the Environment 2008, A special report on the eco-pioneers fighting for a cleaner, greener future". It is not an award, it is a list of people Time Magazine has chosen to highlight for their role in environmental activism in a special report for that year. Here's the full list for 2008.
• Far from being suppressed, Shellenberger's 2008 inclusion on the list is noted in the existing text of the article at this time: In 2007, Shellenberger and Nordhaus published Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. The book is an argument for what its authors describe as a positive, "post-environmental" politics that abandons the environmentalist focus on nature protection for a new focus on technological innovation to create a new economy. They were among 32 of Time magazine's Heroes of the Environment (2008) after writing the book and received the 2008 Green Book Award from science journalist John Horgan.

- LuckyLouie (talk) 18:39, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

LuckyLouie, you haven't addressed the points made by MysticMagpie on the talk page nor has any of the other editors addressed the points made. Brahman12 (talk) 16:46, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

"Regarding the Times Environmentalist of the Year Award. There is no such award." seems to be a direct refutation of part of the claim. Slatersteven (talk) 16:52, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

you haven't addressed the points made by MysticMagpie nor has any of the other editors addressed the points made. They are addressed directly on the Talk page by another editor, Zenomonoz: "We don't use dictionary definitions to label things "award". That is WP:SYNTH. Time does not call it an award, so WP:STICKTOSOURCE". And I have to agree with him, your refusal to get the point is getting WP:TENDENTIOUS. See WP:DROPTHESTICK. - LuckyLouie (talk) 17:12, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that it is not an award. You have not proven such. Brahman12 (talk) 18:37, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Brahman12, the burden of proof is on anyone who wants to add or restore material. See WP:BURDEN, which is part of our Verifiability policy. In short, if you want to claim that Michael Shellenberger won a "Times Hero of the Environment Award", then you need to find a source that directly and explicitly says that. The Time source that you added here does not do that. Woodroar (talk) 21:02, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

The section in Shellenbergers article that should have the times award is 'awards and recognition' and the editors on the talk page won't acknowledge the award he won there. You're using the rules on Wikipedia to enforce Orwellian doublespeak. Brahman12 (talk) 02:16, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the notification. And accusing others of "Orwellian doublespeak" when your stated is position is "NO, you have to prove he DIDN'T win an award" is rather rich. Dumuzid (talk) 02:31, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Are you referring to Heroes of the Environment? Moxy🍁 02:31, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

That is indeed what we're talking about, at least to my understanding. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 19:17, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I have not been notified of this discussion, as required. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:34, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

To be clear, neither was I, if my sarcasm was not clear above. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 19:16, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

References

Adding back POV tag without ongoing discussion or attempts to fix the perceived problem with the article

An editor keeps adding the maintenance tag to European Court of Human Rights despite no consensus that he is right about the perceived issue or any attempt to fix it. Last time I checked the tag is supposed to be for ongoing improvement not a badge of shame. What is the appropriate response to incorrect use of the tag? (I tried reverting but don't want to get into an edit war) (t · c) buidhe 17:34, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

There is no requirement that someone needs to fix the issue that they're tagging. The only requirement according to WP:NPOVD is to start a discussion that clearly explains the issues that need fixing. They seem to have done so on the Talk page, so I don't think it's an incorrect use of the tag. Whether their argument has merit or not, or whether the editor is being disruptive or not, is a different matter. I hope people other than you two can weigh in on the content dispute on the Talk page. Mokadoshi (talk) 04:07, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

@Mokadoshi, would it be possible for you to weigh in your inputs to next section related to the article Jinn, too. That would be helpful. Bookku (talk) 06:08, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

POV tagging @ article Jinn, be retained or removed?

• Jinn (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

The pre-RfC stage was and is almost supposed to proceed for RfC formatting step, but an additional content issue came up about DUE/UNDUE relevance and fringe-ness at Talk:Jinn#Comparative mythology, Due, Fringe or Undue?. for discussion and initial inputs have been received.

Two side issues have cropped up is one user removed section Jinn#Comparative mythology and also tagged article for POV another user reverted the same.

• First instance of POV tag and removal, the second instance.
• @ VenusFeuerFalle and @ TheEagle107 please state your concerns, Why you want POV tag or not, in max. 150-200 words, since DR is any way soon to proceed at RfC stage.

also Pre-RfC stage info:
Also A user has proposed updates for consideration at this sand box for the article Jinn. As a discussion facilitator fyi a WP:DUE discussion (some aspects may touch WP:Fringe) is at Talk:Jinn#Pre-RfC stage's WP:RSN#Hachette Livre and WP:ORN step. After RSN and WP:ORN step, RfC formatting is likely to be discussed at Talk:Jinn#Pre-RfC in a new sub section.

• While article soon to go for RfC, Input requesting questions at this stage are:

a) Whether POV tag should be retained or removed?

b) Whether section Jinn#Comparative mythology be there or in removed state until RfC consensus is achieved?

C) Help in RfC formatting too welcome.

Well I am myself playing a just discussion facilitator role up til now. Bookku (talk) 17:00, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

To be honest, I do not think we should give the user that much credit. The User is constantly shifting the debate more and more into their direction. There has been no issue that so ever. Their original claim that "jinn are essential to islam" they claimed not to be part of the article is actually part of the article. Then the user claims to be ignored, which is a lie, in fact, they ignored all replies. Then they added a template, without the template even being appropriate. There is one issue raised after the other, and before one is even solved, the User rises another. At this point, I assume it is part of their strategy to push their own viewpoint, making so muhc trouble until people forget what it was about. Therefore, although you have my regards for your dedication to solve this issue, I do not plan to further invest time or energy to taht matter. We do not need to answer every absurd request, I always linked wiki guidlines to each action I did. Just because the user choose to ignore them and raising another dispute, does not mean I need to conform. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 17:15, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

The user insists on his opinion without any evidence and without showing a single source that proves his point of view, while I presented many sources on the talk page. The user is biased towards a certain point of view that is against the mainstream views, plz see: Talk:Jinn#Cherrypicking?.--TheEagle107 (talk) 18:09, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

There are two other Muslim world related sections having live discussions / at least some participation. I wonder why still no inputs for this section? Bookku (talk) 09:08, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

• @Masem:, @Slatersteven: You seem to be most editing and recently active on this notice board hence pinging you, also because, actually DR is mostly proceeding in ideal structured manner but users lately bit nervous. An early guidance / inputs shall be helpful I suppose hence requesting your inputs. Bookku (talk) 17:55, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Misinformation from Israeli officials

There is some NPOV controversy in Misinformation in the Israel–Hamas war, particularly the Reliability of Israeli officials as sources section. A discussion was (improperly?) started by non EC users, suggesting the extreme option of nuking the section. It would be good to get more input from non-involved and EC editors.

My (involved) opinion is that the section does have a serious WP:WEIGHT issue. Editors have continually been expanding the section without enough consideration of significance, relevance, proportionality, or redundancy. For example, the section currently includes four separate quotes (three in the intro + the Qatari PM) that express a general skepticism about Israel's truthfulness, without getting into specifics.

There's also a lack of coverage about misinformation from the other side of the war, such as Hamas' statement that Oct 7 fighters "only targeted the occupation soldiers". So there may be WP:PROPORTION and WP:STRUCTURE issue, but this would be easy enough to address if the Israeli section wasn't so lengthy.

I've trimmed some content from the Israeli section, and I'd be inclined to trim a lot more still, but it might not be appropriate without more input. What's the right balance here? — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 18:17, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

The section contains several pretty clear-cut examples of statements made by Israeli officials that turned out to be not true (Attacks on Palestinians evacuating Gaza City and the white phosphorus incident), so the section should be kept.

Including information in a section called Misinformation is pretty much equivalent to stating it in wikivoice. We should not do it unless we have multiple RS calling something "misinformation" or at least explicitly contradicting the words of Israeli officials.

Much of the current content should be removed as it's not described as misinformation by RS, for example:

1. analysis by the BBC found that video released by the Israeli military following the Al-Shifa Hospital siege had been edited [24] - no mention of misinformation
2. In March 2024, the Israeli army said it had "fired precisely" at individuals who posed a threat to soldiers during the Flour massacre; however, a United Nations team investigating the massacre's aftermath stated there was evidence of heavy shooting of civilians by the IDF. [25] - no mention of misinformation, "heavy shooting" and "precise fire" are not mutually exclusive

etc. etc. Alaexis_¿question? 19:12, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

I replied to your cross posting of this uh..., at the article talk page. Selfstudier (talk) 22:18, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

xDanielx tried to confront me for creating a paragraph about an attack the IDF launched against a church in Gaza in December. This ultimately didn't end well for him, as can be seen here. I'm saying this because it shows he's coming here for begrudging the mere existence of a section on Israeli misinformation, and not because he has serious objections to the quality of the contributions and the sources they use. His objections are all about preserving the side he sympathizes most in this conflict. Peleio Aquiles (talk) 22:12, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

For context for others, User:Peleio Aquiles added some of the content in this section which I expressed accuracy concerns about, see also here. I don't think we need to get into accuracy concerns here though; the overarching concern here is WP:WEIGHT.

They also removed my Template:Unbalanced section tag twice. I thought was an appropriate way to draw attention from some non-involved editors, no?

There have also been WP:CIVIL and WP:FAITH issues, but this probably isn't the place for that. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 23:02, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

That first conversation we had also serves as proof of the astonishing capacity you have to selectively read sources and not see an argument that occupies prominent space in the text, when such blindness serves a certain purpose. Admittedly, not seeing that Channel 4 had consulted independent sources who refuted the Hamas fake phone call Israel presented was not as bad as not seeing that Layla Moran had given very extensive details in two separate links employed as sources in the entry of how the Israeli army had harassed, starved and killed Christians at the Holy Family church, a bizarre failure that you have not yet explained, but that you should in the name of encouraging good WP:FAITH, since it doesn't seem possible for a patient and honest reader to have missed all this content.

I am amused by the suggestion you're holding back on the editors of that page by not addressing issues of accuracy right now. I have the impression that had you had any such serious complaints, you wouldn't have wasted your time with that quixotic performance against the paragraph on the Holy Family church siege.

Your attempt to impose the Unablanced tag over the Israeli misinformation section should be rejected for two reasons: first, because it clearly presupposes the view that Wikipedia needs to pretend that all sides in a given conflict are equally given to lying, a rule that is not observed in articles on similar topics, such as desinformation on the Ukrainian conflict, where the section on Russian disinformation is much longer. And second, because it makes no sense to impose this tag on the section on Israeli disinformation, which thematically has no obligation to provide content on alleged disinformation on the part of Palestinian militias.

If you don't like how lengthy the Israeli disinformation section has become, you could follow the advice other editors have already given you and start a section on Hamas or PIJ disinformation, something that as far as I know you haven't been prevented from doing by anyone there. That you haven't done so yet is perhaps because you don't know of any examples of such misinformation, in which case imposing the Unbalanced tag the way you're doing amounts to punishing other editors for doing work that you can't do. Peleio Aquiles (talk) 10:38, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Peleio Aquiles, in ARBPIA, your tone is like wearing a hat that says "topic ban me". All the personal stuff is unnecessary. You can save yourself some typing by leaving it out. Sean.hoyland (talk) 11:00, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Use of contentious labels in lead of an article

There has been NPOV controversy on-going about the Reiki article on its Talk Page, which is nothing new (I have read through all archives of the talk page to get a better picture, and it has been an on-going debate for nearly 20 years).

I specifically find the use of the word quackery in the lead objectionable, which seems unduly loaded and wilfully placed in such a prominent position, as well as further uses of WP:WTW throughout the article. Taken into consideration in its entirety, the article reads as though it had been written by someone with a personal vendetta against the topic.

Input from other editors would be appreciated. Thank you! –Konanen (talk) 17:22, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Maybe it could be more specific as to labeled quackery by whom (scientists? journalists? quacks?) but I don't see the problem with it. If it is medical pseudoscience, it is quackery, isn't it? Anyway, we aren't saying it in Wikipedia's voice, we're pointing out that it has been characterized as such by presumably relevant persons to the topic. —DIYeditor (talk) 01:03, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I have addressed the question of labeled quackery by whom in the Talk page, where I pointed out that one of the two references attached to quackery did not even use that term, and that the other reference was of questionable reliability:

The other reference tagged to the word quackery, however, does attribute said word to Reiki. Yet that source amounts to nothing more than a WP:QUESTIONABLE rant opinion piece whose inclusion in the lead definitely skews the balance of the article unduly.

–Konanen (talk) 12:53, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Makes sense. —DIYeditor (talk) 20:33, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

@DIYeditor; agree. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 16:32, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

See below about "parity of sources". SBM is an excellent source for this subject -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:13, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree that "quackery" is falling a bit into slang even if it is commonly used. It's already labeled as pseudoscience, and to me, the context to be added is why it is called that. All that is there, and can be achieved with a rewrite as: Reiki is a pseudoscience. It is based on qi ("chi"), which practitioners say is a universal life force, although there is no empirical evidence that such a life force exists. Clinical research does not show reiki to be effective as a treatment for any medical condition, including cancer, diabetic neuropathy, anxiety or depression. There is no proof of the effectiveness of reiki therapy compared to placebo. Studies reporting positive effects have had methodological flaws. Reiki is used as an illustrative example of pseudoscience in scholarly texts and academic journal articles. Masem (t) 01:11, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't have a personal vendetta against the topic. Even had a friend that was into it years ago. However I consider it to be "quackery" as it is pseduoscience. However as mentioned probably best to use the term pseudoscient unless there is a WP:WEIGHT of WP:RS calling it "quackery" in which case it would not be a WP:NPOV probablem to do likewise in the article. TarnishedPath^talk 02:13, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Seems easier to take it as a writing quality problem than a NPOV problem. "Reiki is a pseudoscience, and its practice has been characterized as quackery" is a pointless tautology. Also not sure why pseudoscience/pseudoscientific needs to appear 3 times in the lead in quick succession. CMD (talk) 02:19, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

"Its practice has been characterized as quackery" must be cited to a source that says its practice has been characterized as quackery, not just sources that call it quackery. Otherwise if violates WEASEL and NOR. TFD (talk) 00:47, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Nearly every definition of "quackery" includes things like deliberate misleading, deliberate pretending and fraud. IMO this should not be in the article much less in the lead. The lead should be a summary of the body of the article, and there is nothing about such aspects in the article. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:43, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I can see a very strong consensus here. I agree with you all. Thanks so much for the helpful comments:

@Konanen, “quackery ... objectionable”

@TarnishedPath, “probably best to use the term pseudoscient unless there is a WP:WEIGHT of WP:RS calling it "quackery" in which case it would not be a WP:NPOV probablem”

@CMD, “ "Reiki is a pseudoscience, and its practice has been characterized as quackery" is a pointless tautology. Also not sure why pseudoscience/pseudoscientific needs to appear 3 times in the lead in quick succession”

@TFD, “..”quackery" must be cited to a source that says its practice has been characterized as quackery, not just sources that call it quackery. Otherwise if violates WEASEL and NOR”

@North8000, “Nearly every definition of "quackery" includes things like deliberate misleading, deliberate pretending and fraud. IMO this should not be in the article much less in the lead.”

. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 16:50, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Add back ping...

@Konanen, @TarnishedPath, @Chipmunkdavis, @The Four Deuces, @North8000 --Dustfreeworld (talk) 19:26, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

SBM is an excellent RS for this type of topic. Per Wikipedia:Fringe theories#Parity of sources, opinions and writings of mainstream authors have more due weight than the writings of promoters of fringe practices, and that includes all of alternative medicine. See also Wikipedia:Fringe theories#Due and undue weight. Beyond that, when in doubt, use attribution. More due weight means, among other things, the amount of content and the prominence of mention. Criticisms belong in the lead. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:13, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I believe our article should state clearly that Reiki is not a replacement of conventional medical treatment, and that it can involve non-standard financial costs. However,

Imagine, if, I say if, you were one of the good-faith Reiki practitioners who has never intended to deceive (you genuinely believe that you are helping others). One day you come home from work, and your children ask you,

“Dad (/Mum), my classmates said what you are doing is quackery and pseudoscience. You are bad and you are deceiving people. You aren’t doing good work as you’ve told me, is it? They said it’s what Wikipedia said!”

Is that OK? --Dustfreeworld (talk) 19:09, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes. NPOV does not mean that Wikipedia should avoid reporting the facts. Quacks need not be deliberate frauds - sometimes they are just well meaning but ignorant folks who have avoided educating themselves. That doesn't mean we should avoid doing so on Wikipedia. MrOllie (talk) 19:22, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes. -

Quacks need not be deliberate frauds - sometimes they are just well meaning but ignorant folks who have avoided educating themselves.

I don’t think so. That’s your personal opinion.

From our own definition:

Quackery, often synonymous with health fraud, is the promotion of fraudulent or ignorant medical practices. A quack is a "fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill" or "a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to have skill, knowledge, qualification or credentials they do not possess; a charlatan or snake oil salesman"

--Dustfreeworld (talk) 19:40, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

"ignorant medical practices"—from the definition just given. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:54, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Ignorant is right there in what you quoted. MrOllie (talk) 19:55, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

“Unambiguous exposés of quackery will inevitably appear rude to some people and hurt some feelings. This is a fact of adult life.” Quoted from PMID: 15208545. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:07, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Great Barrington Declaration

Article: Great Barrington Declaration

I'd like to bring the forementioned article to the attention of the noticeboard.

Issues:

• The article content seems to have a clear bias of criticism against the declaration.
• The article has multiple paragraphs where sentences read more like an editorial, not a factual wikipedia article
• The editing history on the article shows a continuous reversal of seemingly factual edits made by other editors

Examples:

A few examples (pasted from the article verbatim, problematic sections bolded):

• "It claimed harmful COVID-19 lockdowns could be avoided via the fringe notion of "focused protection", by which those most at risk of dying from an infection could purportedly be kept safe while society otherwise took no steps to prevent infections" - Negative bias in framing the content. Multiple reverts in the edit history regarding different editors attempting to remove the "fringe" claim in its current phrasing.
• "By October 2020, many of these things had already happened in some parts of the world, but likewise were being restricted elsewhere; for instance the UK saw quarantines of students, travel advisories, restrictions on meeting other people, and partial closures of schools, pubs and restaurants." - An editorial-like sentence that appears under the "Background and content" section. The content section should focus on the content of the declaration, not editors adding their own interpretations of the context.
• "The declaration does not provide practical details about who should be protected or how they can be protected. For instance, it does not mention testing any people outside of nursing homes, contact tracing, wearing masks, or social distancing. It mentions multi-generational households but does not provide any information about how, for example, low-risk people can get infected without putting high-risk members of their household at risk of dying." - Again, the whole paragraph is an editorial and WP:OR
• "The declaration does not provide any references to published data that support the declaration's strategy." - Again, with the phrasing used, this is WP:OR. A single source provided as reference to the claim is a newspaper article. At the very least, this should be phrased as "Critics have claimed that the declaration does not provide any references to published data that support the declaration's strategy. I will attempt to correct this and will see how long the correction will remain.

~~~~

Saltsjöbaden (talk) 19:29, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

This is too misleadingly framed to result in well-informed outside opinions. Much of what is described as editorial opinion or original research is pulled directly from reliable sources. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:35, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Another example of non-NPOV behavior by editors can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Great_Barrington_Declaration#Signatories Saltsjöbaden (talk) 20:20, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

After reading the content and checking the cited sources, the article looks neutral to me—in that it neutrally summarizes what reliable, secondary sources say, and it gives prominence to available mainstream viewpoints over fringe viewpoints. I'll also say that highlighting a list of signatories that aren't highlighted in secondary sources is a great example of an edit that should be reverted on sight, not only for NPOV reasons but BLP as well. Woodroar (talk) 20:55, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I think this is a case of Wikipedia:NPOV means neutral editing, not neutral content.

@Saltsjöbaden, when nearly all of the reliable sources say that this proposal is vague, unworkable, will result in hospitals collapsing, increase the total number of deaths, etc., then the Wikipedia article is required by policy to reflect this dominant view as being the dominant view. It is not "neutral" to pretend that both views are equally plausible.

About your claim that editors adding their own interpretations of the context: It is a fact that you can't have the schools open for in-person instruction of all kids and still keep all high-risk adults (aka their teachers, almost half of whom qualified as high-risk) at home. It is a fact that you can't have all kids in school and keep their high-risk family members from being exposed to the germs that the kids will share at school. In the US, about 20% of kids live in multi-generational homes. "Go to school" and "Nobody living with Grandma (or the baby) should go anywhere" are mutually exclusive options. These are not "my interpretations"; these are things that come from reliable sources. They are also facts, not opinions. It is not "editorializing"; it is "explaining".

We could go further: I understand that there are sources saying that the reason GBD doesn't provide any details is because they knew (or ought to know) that this was not workable in practice, but they wanted to make a political splash despite knowing that their whole idea was bad. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

• Really hard to see anything failing NPOV here. The letter was strongly criticized by experts in medicine and virology, among other sciences. It's ideas may have some possible credibility but there stances were unproven and went against the prevailing scientific thought. As such it is presented in the correct tone to reflect that it's claims are dubious, rather that yet proven

Masem (t) 18:52, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I feel an edit war simmering

Dadude sandstorm keeps changing Ursula Andress' longstanding infobox photo to an unrecognizable photo taken in her teens [26] [27] (around a decade before she even became famous, by the way).

Everyone knows that BLP infoboxes should use modern photos. I can already tell from the vocabulary in the second edit summary that the odds of this user being reasonable are slim. Any of you willing to take the reigns? Ieonine (talk) 19:58, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Hey, @Ieonine. Thanks for the report. Have you ever started any Wikipedia:Requests for comment? It's not difficult. Try a question like "Which image should be used in the infobox?" You might give people a link to c:Category:Ursula Andress and to whichever guidelines you think are relevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:52, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Gaza Health Ministry

Some non-involved editors would be welcome at Gaza Health Ministry.

The context is essentially

• Israel and the US expressed unspecific doubts about GHM's casualty data.
• Organizations like the UN say the GHM's data has historically been reliable.
• Two peer-reviewed articles published in The Lancet did not find evidence of inflated or fabricated data.
• Later, statistics professor Abraham Wyner wrote in Tablet (magazine) that the data contained irregularities, such as a strong negative correlation between male and female deaths.
• Later still, Michael Spagat wrote about GHM's "declining data quality", explained by a shift to user-submitted reports as hospitals have closed.

The current lede is unbalanced, emphasizing the sources that say the data is reliable, while not mentioning opposing viewpoints at all. My various attempts to include brief mentions of the latter (even just "received significant attention and scrutiny") have been reverted.

The argument seems to be that the two peer-reviewed Lancet articles trump non-peer-reviewed sources, making opposing viewpoints somewhat fringe. However, the two Lancet articles are older, and focused on very different aspects of the data. In some sense they support opposing narratives, but they absolutely don't contradict one another.

The current article also quotes a blog comment by "Ken M", with speculation about how the irregularities noted by Wyner might be explained. My attempt to remove that was reverted as well. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 17:56, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I think you might want to reflect on the concept of Materiality (auditing). No source I've seen thinks the GHM data is dramatically wrong. It's even possible that it's an undercount (e.g., bodies that haven't been found in the rubble yet). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:56, 5 June 2024 (UTC)