Talk:Men Going Their Own Way/Archive 2

Large removals

If editors are keen for removals of sections of the article, can they please detail their reasons why here? Blanket removal without any discussion can be construed as vandalism to enforce a specific POV, which I'm sure is not the case. For the sake of a good article, can we discuss and collaborate here. Berocca Addict (talk) 21:02, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

General remark: if User:Geni does not wish to add {{citation needed}} tags to specific items, and instead prefers a single banner at the top of the page, then it is impossible to know which specific sentences require improvement according to him/her. —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight^(talk). 22:39, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Definition section

Kay Hymowitz doesn't recommend anything so we can't claim he does. The panampost blog looks to be a pretty appalling source but explicitly describes MGTOW as a movement so the claims that it isn't are inconsistent with the cited sources. MGTOW is a primary source and there is no particular reason to quote it.©Geni (talk) 21:12, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

False, Hymowitz states "Check out the websites" which is the imperative form of the verb "to check out", the form which is used for giving "commands", "advice" (recommendations), and "exhortation". The reason to use MGTOW.com as a source is because it is quoted by at least three different secondary sources as being a relevant source about MGTOW. In the future please add {{citation needed}} tags to the page instead of deleting things. Almost all of the things you deleted can indeed be sourced, but cannot be done immediately, it will take some time. —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight^(talk). 21:37, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

"Recommended" however adds a positive tone that isn't there in the original. I only use citation needed tags when the text has no other issues. In this case there are pretty consistent POV problems.©Geni (talk) 22:03, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

You are misconstruing "Kay Hymowitz recommends these websites" (which is indeed a false claim) with "Kay Hymowitz recommends examining these websites" which is an accurate claim. —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight^(talk). 22:08, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Basic concepts

The first sentence is unsupported and in any case anyone seriously doing that would be required to live on Mount Athos (even then they would fail due to treaty arrangements with countries that have female heads of state). The cnsnews source doesn't talk about MGTOW.©Geni (talk) 21:18, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

It does not state "complete avoidance of ALL legal entanglements", just "avoidance of legal entanglements". It was implicit that this refers to "some legal entanglements" because it is followed by a clarifying clause which enumerates the three basic legal entanglements. Also, the cnsnews source is meant to place MGTOW in proper historical and cultural context. Why must every reference in the article mention the lemma of the article? What Wikipedia policy is this? —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight^(talk). 21:43, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

But the sentence doesn't say some. As for the proper historical and cultural context there is no source for that being its proper historical and cultural context. Plenty of other things are going on in 2015.©Geni (talk) 22:07, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

(1) It did not say "some" because it is evident from context. In any case, rephrasing this sentence would be a better approach than deleting entire sections. Striving to avoid legal entanglements with women is the cornerstone of MGTOW, therefore the article cannot be without it. Again, there are sources for this. (2) And how are general statistics about men avoiding marriage not relevant to an article about men avoiding marriage? The herbivore men article also includes general statistics of this kind, such as: "In a 2011 poll of Japanese boys aged between sixteen and nineteen, 36% of the boys said they were not interested in having sex". —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight^(talk). 22:30, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

What MGTOW are not

Unsourced and not really encyclopedic.©Geni (talk) 21:20, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Again, please in the future please add {{citation needed}} tags to the page instead of deleting things. Almost all of the things you deleted can indeed be sourced, but cannot be done immediately, it will take some time. Also, "not encyclopedic" is a vacuous argument. —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight^(talk). 22:02, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Again I only add citation needed tags when there are no other problems. This is not a deletion discussion so the problem of things not following an encyclopedic tone should not be ignored. Its also fairly easy to find sources that counter the claims made (for example the claim not to be anti feminist.©Geni (talk) 22:14, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

You are wilfully misquoting what what written. The article never stated that the MGTOW philosophy was "not antifeminist", but "not synonymous with antifeminism". MGTOW is (of course) (also) antifeminist, but not restricted thereto. MGTOW criticism of antifeminists can be found, for example, in the references on The Conservative Woman. Also, while that "page is tailored to deletion discussion, be that of articles, templates, images, categories, stub types, or redirects, these arguments to avoid may also apply to other discussions, such as about deleting article content, moving pages, etc." —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight^(talk). 22:20, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

"Also, "not encyclopedic" is a vacuous argument." Not remotely. We are meant to be WP:here to build an encyclopedia, utilizing encyclopaedic tone. Not withstanding the essay you linked to (and do take not that it is an WP:essay, not a WP:guideline, and thus does not have any claim to reflecting any broad community consensus), you're going to find as you gain more experience on this project that it is a very frequent comment made when the balance of an article, or a particular element, is broadly off-kilter with regard to our quality standards and this imbalance arises from inconsistency with multiple areas of policy and community consensus. That's not to say that this frees the criticizing party from also providing specific details as to where the article departs from our content guidelines--they absolutely must if they want their opinion to carry weight in a content guideline, but in this case Geni absolutely did--"unsourced" is as substantive a critique as you will get, and particularly relevant given the controversial and OR nature of the content we're looking at here.

Nor is it by any means the only concern to be had with this article in its current form. There are some massive issues with WP:Neutral point of view, WP:Original research, and WP:Synthesis going on here. There are large stretches which seem to reflect your perspectives on the matter which employ absolutely no sourcing and others that are patched together from a pastiche of WP:primary sources--and no, the exceptions, which you have referenced here a couple of times, that we sometimes make for primary sourcing in niche circumstances do not by an large cover the usage that has be employed here, and certainly nowhere near to the extent that you have leaned on them; more on that in the section below. The article on the whole reads likes a personal essay on the matter, predicated largely on similar opinions from primary sourcing, rather than an objective encyclopaedic article based on reliable, secondary, and (particularly relevant in this instance) independent sources.

All of which is not to say that the article can't be salvaged an maintained. But you're going to have to be more receptive to criticism, even when its broad. You definitely haven't crossed any lines into into incivility, but there is a general sense of combativeness in your responses here to editors who generally have massively more experience than you do in our content and sourcing standards. Try to look at this situation from the perspective of your fellow editors: you have just over a months-worth of expertise in Wikipedia editing (as an autoconfirmed user in any event), you've apparently come here with the single purpose of making this article (which is often an indicator that a person is more interested in utilizing Wikipedia to promote their point of view on a topic than in conforming the community standards here for the improvement of the encyclopedia), and you are clearly still familiarizing yourself with some of our most basic policies--and yet none of this has stopped you from adopting firm stances on particular sources and elements of the content, sometimes adopting a tone that is almost lecturing.

No one is presently promoting the article for deletion, but you really should try to accept some outside input here that it needs a lot of work before it meets our verification, neutrality, and general quality standards. Remember, this is a collaborative project and sometimes its hard to see the content you have worked very hard on get paired down or altered significantly (especially at the beginning, when those cuts and alterations can be considerable), but I can tell you that if you work through the issues being raised here with other editors, you're probably going to be happier and prouder of the article at the other side of that process. And you'll definitely feel you've gained more competence as an editor than if you dig in your heels. Sorry if this all sounds a bit preachy, but I'm genuinely trying to give you the best advice I can here to keep the discussion from getting more contentious than it is likely to be, given the subject matter alone. Snow ^{let's rap} 03:02, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

I concur with the removal of this section. It's framed as advocacy beginning from the title. It's presenting a specific POV of disputing particular critical viewpoints of this movement. In addition, it contains a number of sources which do not meet WP:RS criteria. Gamaliel (talk) 00:45, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree, this section as it was written was WP:SYN and where supported was mostly be WP:primary sources.

History of MGTOW

Repeatly cites blogs that do not meet our reliable sources standards.©Geni (talk) 21:26, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

According to current Wikipedia policies, Primary sources may under certain conditions be used as reliable sources. I could go through the criteria point by point why these apply in this case. —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight^(talk). 21:40, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

That wouldn't let you use a 21st century blog as a source for events in the 19th century.©Geni (talk) 22:15, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

That is a good point, but it is a tertiary source, not a primary source, and it includes secondary sources, which can be incorporated into the article, all in due time. —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight^(talk). 22:32, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Addendum: It appears Wikipedia policy also allows certain Wikipedia:TERTIARY sources, but it is not sufficiently clear to me under what conditions. —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight^(talk). 22:55, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, policy and community consensus does allow for the use of primary sources in very constrained contexts, but personal blogs are virtually universally rejected as failing to meet our WP:reliable sources standards, for a great variety of reasons. Furthermore, utilizing primary sources which are not independent of the subject of the article to validate claims within that same article is also generally proscribed. Far from being exceptions to the guidelines prohibiting the use of primary sources, the PS that you want to utilize here (and the context in which you'd like to use them) very much align as examples of exactly why we do not allow primary sourcing. You're basically using WP:synthesis to create a composite voice of the blogs, forums and websites that make up this movement, and allowing that voice to become the manner in which the subject matter is defined here. That's pretty much the opposite of our goals as Wikipedians. We want reliable secondary sources which discuss the subject matter from the outside and we don't want to make leaps in our conclusions; we want each statement or claim to be explicitly and directly backed by one of these high-quality sources.

Also, please note that your "well, it's just a matter of time" argument does not have any traction under policy. The "give us some time for improvement" argument is valid in WP:AfD discussions, but does not apply to points of WP:Verification. If there is any claim which is unreferenced to a WP:reliable source, then that statement can be removed at any time by an editor that doubts it's veracity and whether it can be sourced. The onus would then be upon you, as the party who wants to maintain that content, to find an appropriate reliable source and then re-introduce it (generally with discussion). We give people time to improve flawed articles, but we do not allow unverifiable content, outside of some niche exception for robustly uncontroversial common knowledge. Snow ^{let's rap} 03:02, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

These are not the conditions which such sources may be used. Primary sources can supplement secondary sources, they cannot be used to source entire sections or to frame the article to push a particular POV. Gamaliel (talk) 00:46, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Praise

This article is good. I will start a separate section talking about ways to improve it, but first wanted a praise section for all who've worked on it, as they've filled a sorely needed lacuna on Wikipedia with a very good start.

I want to do this because starting with a critique without first doing the opposite fends off WP:BACKUP problems, which are the bane of Wikipedia. Chrisrus (talk) 03:41, 28 December 2015 (UTC)