Aleksander Werner edit

Thank you for your help! Thank you also for your feedback!

I will keep on working. And I again apologise for my Wikipedia newbie-ness. I do find it hard. Its getting easier though!

After you submit - if you keep working on the article before someone looks at it, will they see the most updated version? Or should you submit again?

With the press release: I have the piece of paper... could scan it in... is this just not okay and should I just cut anything I have from this source?

Thanks again.

Lisafoster8 (talk) 11:13, 26 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

You can keep working on the article while it's awaiting review; the more you improve it now, the greater the chances of success. Reviewers will always look at the most recent version of the draft. Submitting it again would place it at the end of the queue again.
Press releases are not reliable sources because they are not subject to fact-checking or editorial oversight; the issuer can make her press release say whatever she wants it to say. In this case it seems to have been issued by someone related to the retrospective; thus it would not be an independent source either. Neither problem would be alleviated if you uploaded a scan of the press release. Huon (talk) 17:55, 26 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for that information! I will take it out!

Lisafoster8 (talk) 11:36, 3 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

new article edit

Hi Huon, is this better? Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund Malke 2010 (talk) 21:07, 1 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

I just noticed that the Time opinion piece is by Jenny Beth Martin herself: Obviously not an independent source. Since we apparently cite it only for stuff also contained in the other sources, I'd remove it outright. The article still reads more like a mission statement than like an encyclopedia article, I'd say - I'd merge it into the main Tea Party Patriots article. Huon (talk) 22:51, 1 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Hi Huon, there's quite a bit more material to add in. I'll finish it off tomorrow. I'll change out the opinion piece now. Thanks so much for helping, I really appreciate you taking the time here. Malke 2010 (talk) 02:15, 2 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Sanjay_Arora edit

Hey Huon, How are you. This article was rejected due to lack of references. I have fixed it. Could you please look at it and confirm the creation. As always thanks for your timeBbry2 23:05, 2 March 2013 (UTC)Lcarg2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lcarg2012 (talkcontribs)

I'm sorry it took me so long. Unfortunately I'm not quite prepared to accept the article. While the Times of India and the India Post are reliale sources, major parts of the draft are based on less reliable sources or don't cite any sources at all. For example, I couldn't confirm that Arora emigrated to the US in 1999 - the only source that mentioned a date was a blog (not reliable anyway), and the 2011 blog post said he emigrated "ten years ago". We'd need quite some editing to weed out the dubious sources (I already removed that blog) and to make sure the draft's content is based on what the good sources have to say about Arora. Huon (talk) 00:05, 5 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Robert Lombardo. Review of changes and feedback please. edit

Thanks Huon. I'm really, really new at this and am struggling along. As if my old age didn't interfere enough, I have a traumatic brain injury from an auto accident which gets me even more confused sometimes. Trying to contribute to Wikipedia is one of the ways I'm trying to deal with this. And it's not an excuse, it's just a reason. I think I understand your comments and your further requirements. I'll keep digging. I won't submit it again until I've got some additional solid information. Thanks again for checking out my sources. This whole Wiki project is just an amazing thing to me. And for me at least, it's an honor to participate.Final4one (talk) 22:55, 4 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

I'm happy to help. If there's anything else I can do, please don't hesitate to ask me here at my talk page. Of course you can also use the {{help}} template again - that might yield a faster reply when I'm not online. Huon (talk) 00:19, 5 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

AfC question edit

I noticed that you're answering a lot of questions at AfC, so I'll ask you one about the process itself. What happens, or needs to happen, when an AfC submission is declined and the editor working on it keeps plugging away. I'm referring to I-35 exit list specifically. Thanks. –Fredddie 23:31, 5 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Good question. At the AfC help desk we've explained to him in great detail that we simply will not accept the draft he's writing, and Imzadi 1979 also told them so in no uncertain terms on their talk page. Since the draft currently isn't submitted for review, I'd ignore it and treat it as that user's sandbox. We cannot prevent the user from wasting their time in this fashion, and we can hope that they'll later use the familiarity with US highway templates they'll gain to good effect.
If the user repeatedly re-submits the list for review, we might ultimately have to delete it for being disruptive (via WP:MFD), but that hasn't happened yet, and before we go that route we should probably leave another note about the user's disruptive behavior at their talk page. Huon (talk) 00:23, 6 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
OK sounds good. Thanks for the reply. –Fredddie 01:10, 6 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Harmless Harvest (2)‎ edit

Thank you so much for your quick answer to my question at the Help desk and for your suggestions for my article. I've made some improvements and resubmitted following your advice. Thanks again! Jolfy (talk) 23:35, 5 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

RFC edit

Hey,
We are having some problems with Jinnah's religion. Can you comment on the talk page so that we can end this debate once and for all. Thanks
--Inlandmamba (fruitful thought) 21:23, 7 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the help with Canada's Handyman Challenge edit

Hi Huon, Thanks so much for the help with the article last week. It was really great to have someone right there to answer questions. From the sounds of it, you do that for a lot of people, which is really great. I noticed after submitting another article that there is a huge backlog for reviewing articles. I was wondering if that was something I could work towards helping with, since it seems to be quite a lot to do. Do you have any advice? (ProliferatingJade (talk) 07:33, 9 March 2013 (UTC))Reply

Hello ProliferatingJade, I'm sorry it took me so long to reply, especially as you're offering help with the severely backlogged AfC reviews. There are no formal requirements for reviewers, though you should obviously be familiar with Wikipedia's notability guidelines, with WP:NOT and WP:COPYVIO. There are also reviewing instructions available, and you may want to use the Helper script which can be activated via Preferences → Gadgets → Yet Another AFC Helper Script: easily review Articles for creation submissions and redirect requests. I don't use the script myself, so I cannot tell you much about it, but I believe it automatizes many of the tasks involved in reviewing, such as notifying the author or updating the list of accepted submissions. It may even clean up accepted submissions, but I don't guarantee for that. Huon (talk) 23:34, 11 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks Huon. I took a look at the requirements and they include having some 200 edits under your belt. I am over halfway, but still have quite a few to go. I think I will do a bit more article editing and then look again at participating in AfC reviews. I've copied your advice to my sandbox for future reference. (ProliferatingJade (talk) 03:51, 16 March 2013 (UTC))Reply

Bit of a tangle at the AfC Help Desk edit

Hi Huon, could you take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk#Review of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The Organization Workshop. The editor has got himself into a bit of a tangle with duplicate drafts, OTRS permissions, etc. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 14:44, 11 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

I'll take a look and reply at the AfC help desk; Rafael Carmen is by now emailing me and seems to have sent the OTRS mail, though from what I see it's so vague that the OTRS people will find it difficult to ascertain which Wikipedia content it's meant to refer to. Huon (talk) 15:12, 11 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Re : No copyright violation edit

Hi Huon,

This is the link to my article : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Nikhilesh_Gupta And this is the page where you felt had duplication : http://indianactor.webs.com/

Unfortunately, the content is different. Somebody had used my wiki article to put up on the page which I have already asked them to take it down. There is no copyright violation involved. I had submitted my article almost 2 weeks back & have put in a lot of effort to put this together. This is solely my work.

Can you please ensure that it goes through ? Please !

Thanks, Ritwika (Ritzdotcom (talk) 11:02, 12 March 2013 (UTC))Reply

"Small cuboctahedron" edit

I see that you created a redirect from "small cuboctahedron" to "cuboctahedron". I believe it would be more helpful if the redirect went to "small cubicuboctahedron". I propse changing it, unless you explain why I shouldn't. Maproom (talk) 19:45, 13 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Not much of an objection from me. I just created it per a request at WP:AFC/R. Huon (talk) 22:49, 13 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

A barnstar for you! edit

  The Barnstar of Diligence
I noticed that of the 47 sections at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk, you've responded to 31 of them! Wow! Howicus (talk) 13:21, 15 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Florence Mildred White edit

Hello Huon. Name correction. Thank you for changing the Title of my Article for Creation. I didn't expect a reply so quickly! I note your comment on 'Police Records' needing expanding and this will be done before I submit the article. Still on a bit of a learning curve, but advice always welcome.

109.149.206.191 (talk) 20:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

TimothyWF (talk) 19:52, 17 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

The Brothers, Egypt edit

Please look at Talk:The Brothers, Egypt. Thanks. Alex Vasenin (talk) 16:04, 18 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Done. Huon (talk) 17:04, 18 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Talkback edit

 
Hello, Huon. You have new messages at Freebirds's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Kirsten L. Abrahamson page edit

Nimuaq's talk page. I had a discussion with the above noted editor who reviewed the article a couple of times. His last message to me was that he felt that it was ok to be published. Kanuk (talk) 21:36, 24 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Nimuaq did comment on the need for cleanup. I fully agree with that sentiment - as I said I'm tempted to do some pretty radical cleanup myself. Huon (talk) 21:43, 24 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

A barnstar for you! edit

  The Barnstar of Diligence
Thanks for the speedily implementing an edit requested on IRC. :D Exercisephys (talk) 22:16, 26 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks! That was no big issue. Huon (talk) 22:43, 26 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Weird Afc Cases edit

 
Hello, Huon. You have new messages at Anne Delong's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Anne Delong (talk) 14:05, 28 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Re: to flu shot cons edit

Thank you for your response. It's helpful, but please consider my following rebuttal.

Putting aside the less credible sources of the 12, why does a random Wikipedia editor have so much greater credibility for objective research than reputable media sources such as CNN, Washington Times, Forbes magazine, well-established experts/authors such as Dr. Mark Hyman, etc., etc.? Doesn't the latter have greater credibility for accessing the main journals and reporting about their entire balance? We aren't even allowed original research because we don't have the credibility for reporting it; a credible newspaper or magazine or author does have credentials. If a magazine says "thousands of journals have made (point)", is a WP editor supposed to track down the 1000s of journals in order to confirm this? A credible source doesn't have to list every reference they utilized for the article; there's a huge amount of trust we can place in entities who've earned it. There are so many studies about just about everything that anybody can make a case by tracking down specific evidence while leaving out other evidence. E.g., 2 articles I list point out that the CDC's advisory committee on the flu shot have a financial interest in promoting it. That tiny fact casts allllll the statements and research by the CDC in a questionable light. You might even say it discounts the CDC for being a credible source entirely by WP standards.

That said, the general medical community as a whole is itself intrinsically questionable, as the flu shot is something that the community in general sells. How is this general consensus by people selling something any different than a manufacturer of a medication or vitamin supplement assuring people that they're own research of their own product proves it works? I read two statistics that said that said 50% of doctors do not receive the flu shot (one of them said even higher than 50%). That (somewhat) discredits statements made by all those doctors, as their behavior does not back up their stated opinions to patients and journals.

Obviously the medical community in question is enormous and contains much objective research, but how much? 1/3? 1/2? 2/3? The article is about 99% pro- flu shot. It's not just the ratio of pros to cons in the short "side effects" section, it's the enormous skyscraper column of text of the article that pits against the 1% cons (or whatever). The controversies outlined by the more credible though granted secondary sources I list, create enough bulk for a quite substantial cons section to balance the 99% propaganda. If you look at the talk page there are multiple other people expressing the same thing I am, that the article is not balanced by sheer weight ratios.

For a good example of balance of controversy, consider the mobile phone cancer article. This is a very similar topic, yet it has an enormous article dedicated to the controversies and cons. Note that the WHO's statement that mobile phones cause cancer has been debunked by recent conclusive studies. This gives the minority that opposed the WHO with little or no medical journal evidence credibility for gauging the truth in such matters, and lessens the credibility of the WHO to make statements denying dangers of what it's reporting about or has investigated itself. Together with the financial interest of the CDC, this casts all the statistics in the flu shot article researched by the CDC and WHO, i.e. all this research you say is credible, in a questionable light. Hence, when uninvolved and objective parties like XYZ news source report negatively, this in some ways and cases (clearly not all) is more objective/credible reporting than the top dogs' statements.

Thanks for any reply. Squish7 (talk) 06:40, 29 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

I could reply in detail here, but I don't see how a private side discussion will be helpful - we should centralize the discussion at Talk:Influenza vaccine. Huon (talk) 16:00, 29 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
I started to think that too. I've copied our discussion onto the page with a note where it came from. Please feel free to reply there (it's the second to last section, my suggested section for the main article being the last). Squish7 (talk) 02:52, 6 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

WP:OWB edit

Hi, Thanks. But those issues do not bother me at all. I know how that will go, so do not even pay attention; I looked now and NY Brad said it pretty well. But thanks anyway. History2007 (talk) 10:31, 30 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thank you! edit

So good of you to respond to my request. Thanks for the advice which I've acted on. Much appreciated. Kim Traynor | Talk 23:30, 30 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Blak Prophetz edit

Hi Huon, It was good to chat to you yesterday, unfortunately my page has been deleted, even though we found reliable resources some dude just erased the whole page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blak_Prophetz. Candy H (talk) 13:56, 31 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

For all I can tell you didn't add the sources to the article. The lone online source we found might have helped, but it wouldn't have sufficed on its own, so we would have needed evidence of the print sources.
In some ways what happened to the article was fortunate. It was speedily deleted, which is easier to overturn than a deletion via the discussion at WP:Articles for deletion/Blak Prophetz. In particular, reposting an article that's the virtually same as one deleted via a deletion discussion is itself a speedy deletion criterion. On the other hand it may well be concluded that the deletion discussion, to which the deleting admin referred in his deletion comment, had reached a consensus and should be considered as valid in favor of deletion. (As an aside, while deletion discussions technically are not a vote, it's customary to leave just one comment per person marked keep or delete - all others should be marked comment or something like that.) You can repost the article, but you should make doubly sure that it shows evidence of significant coverage in truly reliable sources. My advice would be to go through the Articles for creation process where you create a draft that experienced editors will review. That may take weeks, but when a reviewer accepts the submission and moves it into the mainspace, chances are much lower that it will be up for deletion again. If you have activated the email feature you can ask the deleting admin (Jimfbleak) to send you a copy of the deleted article, but it may be better to write a new article from scratch based on the new sources. If that's any consolation, the Mentos fruity 3 article you pointed out in the deletion discussion was also speedily deleted by the same admin. Huon (talk) 15:06, 31 March 2013 (UTC)Reply


Thanks Huon, No problem..It would appear that there is a very thin line of the meaning of the term Reliable Sources as mentioned before, many people who have submitted articles and had them deleted or speedily deleted from statements stated by so called established writers who do NOT have a real insight or interest in the subject of the article, Yet their investigation is somewhat based on 'first glance'. My Mentos Fruity 3 article was swiftly labelled promotion because it would have caused the accuser to have had to accept that there is outside evidence which unfortunately would have upset his pride and the article in question would have shown him truth. Remember, I'm new and "inexperienced' therefore my voice will be powerless within the realms of older members or staff. As a student with an interest in British Hip Hop music I wanted to submit and increase the knowledge of the movement which occurred in the UK but this lock-down reminds me of the banning of black history in Africa, oh and yes I was there and involved not that it matters I read African books in secret in my youth.

I'm not happy that my article has been deleted because I believe that the term consideration for deletion or speedy deletion is not a process but a Rank There is no discussion, just accusations by these so called experience contributors, yet assistance or real help is zero.

If there was any neutrality in research then Wikipedia should not have deleted an article which clearly points to a valid website source(s) which shows real and physical newspaper cuttings http://www.blakprophetz.com/the-history.asp which would and could have been verified had the request been made. It would appear that Wikipedia accepts decisions before requests or suggestions or even that of HELP and would rather provide the allowance of a Keyboard Warrior to point the finger from which authority can be granted based on how many aliens they can shoot in space invaders.

The process needs looking at in my opinion as Wikipedia's methods of communication is complicated and not easy for the average none geek understand. There are far too many references to hyperlinks with more links to hyper links which confuses and bamboozles the average person. Hence the common phrase, manuals are never written by people.

To think I was called "viciously insulting and wrong on the facts" is amazing. "May the man in the orange T-Shirt have a Barnstar biscuit I think he feels left out". If all of what I wrote in my deleted article is deemed wrong and none factual then this opinion in itself is somewhat biased as the only power such a statement has is within the realms of this website itself as in the real world, Mentos Fruity gum exists and so does an actual advert with that song. I've just told Wikipedia that there's something out there it doesn't know about but for some odd reason someone with a barnstar biscuit says it doesn't. So I now you know that I'll never qualify for a brown Barnstar sticker.

Anything that's on paperback and Not in electronic form on a website like the Rolling Stone or Fox News will and could be deleted by dudes on a keyboard. If my account is not deleted from my vicious and insulting comments, then I shall submit another article with the help of someone who walks outside into the real world every now and then. Thanks Huon, sorry for the long paragraph but as much as some people may not want to believe it, There are people out there that disagree with this process in Wikipedia. Candy H (talk) 16:10, 31 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Rollback edit

Any reason why I shouldn't give this to you? ~ Amory (utc) 01:11, 2 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

None that I'm aware of, thank you for the offer. Huon (talk) 01:21, 2 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
  ~ Amory (utc) 01:28, 2 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks again! Huon (talk) 01:52, 2 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

SPI edit

FYI: This SPI case may relate to an IP 140.211.82.5 which had interacted with you somewhere and it was not obvious at all. History2007 (talk) 18:05, 2 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

I interacted with User:Minorview sometime last summer, and while I found them rather hard of hearing, at that time I wouldn't have guessed they were Humanpublic. The IP apparently just added a broken image link to an article which I reverted, but in retrospect it's rather ovious that it is both Humanpulic and Minorview. Socking on an ArbCom case seems a rather bold idea. Good riddance. Huon (talk) 18:39, 2 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
I had not even seen that diff. But I have a feeling these are not the only puppets and there are others, because when applying, Humanpublic sounded lost and asked for advice, etc. while the same IP had shown familiarity with Wiki procedures before. So my feeling is that there are other accounts. I am not sure if Blake'sMistress is one or not because has too few edits, but I have a feeling there are others out in Oregon (where the 2 IPs are) and there may also be WP:MEAT cases. Anyway... History2007 (talk) 18:58, 2 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
By the way, you did revert the IP (which is Human's obvious IP) but these accounts edit so closely that it is hard to remember what happened. History2007 (talk) 10:13, 4 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Invitation to WikiProject Breakfast edit

 
Hello, Huon.

You are invited to join WikiProject Breakfast, a WikiProject and resource dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of breakfast-related topics.

To join the project, just add your name to the member list. Coolboygcp (talk) 05:09, 6 April 2013 (UTC)Reply


Petermdy001 edit

Hi Huon, the article I am contributing is flagged as considered for deletion. I am aware that it is because of no citation. We have one local newspaper article that described the school. However it is not online source. Could I upload the photo to wiki and put that in citation? Another sources are School's Paying Homage Ceremony photos on facebook page. These photos show that the school really exists. As I stated in the discussion of deletion of the article, our country internet penetration is low and it is just opened to foreign media. Therefore it is hard to collect sources that are online. What should I do in order to keep the article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Petermdy001 (talkcontribs) 01:26, 8 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

A single local newspaper article is not enough to establish the school's notability. Facebook pages are not reliable sources and thus do not contribute to notability at all. You would have to show that it has received significant coverage in multiple reliable, published sources. Such sources need not be available online, but you should provide enough information to allow our readers to look them up in a library. I do not think middle schools usually satisfy this standard; that's not an issue of internet availability. Huon (talk) 03:49, 8 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Talk pages edit

I saw you commented on the development of the John Call Cook article. The improvement of an article should be discussed at the relevant talk page, not at the article itself; I've thus moved your comment to Talk:John Call Cook#Empty section. I hope you agree that keeping the discussion out of the article proper is rational and not detrimental to the article. Yours, Huon (talk) 22:33, 8 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Please explain how moving the explanation to the comment of the article's incompleteness, is rational. The article could be much more, that is clear. So either the Empty section bullet should be in Talk (by your logic), or my response should be on the main page responding to the Empty section bullet. As it is, there is no apparent response nor explanation for the Empty section bullet, to the casual reader, when there are very good reasons for the incompleteness. The issues of your biased actions and poor judgment Huan, are presently under appeal, and for that reason alone, you have absolutely no business editing any of my work. All of your edits to my work are in the dispute resolution process. How you can do this at this time, is further evidence of your lack of qualification to be a privileged editor. I am moving the response back. CACook7 (talk) 23:01, 8 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
I have replied on the "article or talk page" issue in detail at Talk:John Call Cook#Empty section. Regarding our differences on my recent Cook-related edits, I don't think you used any of the standard dispute resolution venues. If you want to go that route, the dispute resolution noticeboard may be a good place; please keep me informed of the dispute resolution steps you take. However, as nonsenseferret said, my edits, both to the various redirects and disambiguation pages and regarding the latest talk page issue, were all based on Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. For example, I mentioned that if you want John C. Cook moved to John Calhoun Cook, you should have a look at WP:Requested moves and follow the procedure outlined there for potentially controversial moves. Personally I might be open to persuasion that Calhoun is not the primary topic for that title, though the Google News search I did favored him, and even if we moved the Calhoun article we would probably not turn John C. Cook into a disambiguation page for the two of them but rather redirect it to the existing disambiguation page at John Cook. As an alternative, if John Call Cook was more commonly known as just "John C. Cook", how about moving that article to John C. Cook (physicist) or something like that? Huon (talk) 01:04, 9 April 2013 (UTC)Reply


Discussion at the Administrators Noticeboard edit

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Humblesnore (talk) 08:49, 9 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

ALPAO edit

Hello Huon, Thank you very much for your feedback and explanation about my previous page for ALPAO. I added several other references. Do you think that the page ALPAO (here) may now be good enough for starting to publish it ? Thank you again and in advance for your help. -- Hardoche (talk) 09:00, 10 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

How do you know if it's submitted? edit

Hi, Huon.

Just a quick question, I tried to look for the "yellow banner" that Someguy 2112 was talking about...

I don't see it... So... how do I check if my article is submitted?

Where do I look?

Anyhow, just a question, if there are 3 details in the article that has the exact same source that confirms all 3 details, is it okay to put the same reference source more than once?

Thanks!

ZeYap (talk) 03:26, 12 April 2013 (UTC)ZeYapReply

I have submitted the draft for review. That's done by adding {{subst:submit}} to the very top. I've also done some copyediting and tidied up the news sources. See WP:CHEAT for a cheat sheet and WP:References for beginners for the reference layout. In particular I combined the reference you used twice; that's done in two parts: At one occurence, name the reference: <ref name=SomeName>Source</ref>. At all other occurences, instead or repeating the full reference, just use this code: <ref name=SomeName />. You must have the slash at the end; otherwise that will be interpreted as the start of a new footnote, and all text afterwards will be interpreted as part of that footnote (and thus won't be displayes properly, if at all). Huon (talk) 04:05, 12 April 2013 (UTC)Reply


Dear Huon,

Since I don't see a reply button, I hope clicking "Edit" would let you see my message...

Thanks alot for helping me on this; it's very nice of you.

And also, thanks for trying to get the whole htlm thing explained to me... I'll do my best on that. I really hope the article will be a "Go". You really saved me a LOT of grief. Thank you again! ZeYap (talk) 05:07, 12 April 2013 (UTC)ZeYapReply

A barnstar for you! edit

  The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
Awarded for your endless work helping new editors, across many different fora. Do remember to sleep or eat occasionally! --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:13, 14 April 2013 (UTC)Reply


Please Help edit

Hello, how can I revert my today's edit.I wanted to replace a reference link with a link but mistakenly replaced with another and I can't remember the link.Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/KingsRoadPlease help. Arghya Roy (talk) 13:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

I'd suggest looking through the page history (which you can access via the "View history" tab next to "Read" and "Edit"). That will show all edits to the page; by clicking on a datestamp you can see old revisions, you can also compare revisions, and you can undo revisions if there are no newer edits to the same text. When you compare an two non-consecutive revisions (say, these revisions) you'll also find an "undo" link at the top: Latest revision as of 15:42, April 15, 2013 (edit) (undo) That will revert the displayed changes (again, if there are no newer edits to the same text). Huon (talk) 14:21, 15 April 2013 (UTC)Reply


Thank you so much, I just forgot about that. Arghya Roy (talk) 14:38, 15 April 2013 (UTC)Reply


  The Guidance Barnstar
Thanks for your helping hand! Arghya Roy (talk) 15:57, 15 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Dina Rae edit

That is my own page, there used to be a page about me on here but it got deleted. Miss.Dina Rae (talk) 22:08, 15 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

I'm not quite sure how I may be of assistance. Could you please elaborate? Huon (talk) 00:27, 16 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
There used to be a page about me and it got deleted 'cause I didn't have a debut album out yet then, and 'cause most of the stuff people write on here isn't reliable, I decided myself; to write a page about me that I know is based on me 100% truthful amd was wondering how to get it published on here. Miss.Dina Rae (talk) 19:46, 17 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Wikipedia strongly discourages writing an autobiography because it's very hard to maintain neutral about oneself. Furthermore, all Wikipedia content should be based on reliable sources that are independent of the subject, such as newspaper articles about you or articles published in reputable music magazines. Your personal knowledge, no matter how accurate, is not an acceptable source for Wikipedia. If you really want to write the article about yourself and have the required third-party sources on which to base it, you could do so in your sandbox and submit it for review by an experienced editor by adding {{subst:submit}} to the top. However, due to the conflict of interest problems I explained above it may be better to wait until someone else writes an article about you. Huon (talk) 20:11, 17 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brad Zellar edit

I have reworked the article Brad Zellar. Please have a look over and re-assess the article at the AFD. You may still feel that it does not meet the guidelines, but I have done some work that I think addresses many of your concerns and made some important discoveries about this author. Mkdwtalk 08:29, 16 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

A kitten for you! edit

 

Hello, thanks for reviewing Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/KingsRoad.I have made some changes.Could you please visit the link again and strikethrough my mistakes so that I can fix them or I won't mind if you do some fixes of your own :)

Arghya Roy (talk) 15:31, 16 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Your weird message to me edit

You didn't revert+ that is a talk-page, not Sandbox.--Penssail (talk) 21:04, 17 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

I wanted to revert, but somehow screwed up. And despite the exact namespace, the page was deliberately created by an admin to allow the user to work on the draft. Huon (talk) 21:59, 17 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Pass a Method's edits at the Jesus article edit

I didn't agree with the recent edits made by Pass a Method at the Jesus article. Can you voice your opinion at the talk page? --FutureTrillionaire (talk) 01:48, 19 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Category:Sport in Portarlington, County Laois edit

Category:Sport in Portarlington, County Laois, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:30, 19 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

A barnstar for you! edit

  The Barnstar of Diligence
Thank you for all of your efforts in #wikipedia-en-help. Legoktm (talk) 01:27, 22 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

A token of appreciation for you! edit

  Award of Patience
For your efforts in sorting out all of my mixups. —Anne Delong (talk) 10:57, 22 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks so much for your help, sorry it took me so long to figure out how to reply to you! Best Wishes, Marion Simons (talk) 13:00, 22 April 2013 (UTC)Marion SimonsReply

Dnyanesh Maharao edit

Hi, I checked the Marathi references as requested and those are in respected Marathi language newspapers. Mr. Maharao seem to be a journalist and a writer of notability in Marathi language. However, prior to your email, I did not know who he was. I hope this helps in keeping the article. Let me know if you need additional help. Regards. Jonathansammy (talk) 21:23, 22 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! I've accepted the draft. Huon (talk) 21:32, 22 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Reply to your Reply of Articles for Creation Help Desk question on Yael Neeman edit

Hi Huon, I replied to your comments on the page Wikipedia: WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk#Article about Yael Neeman. I'd appreciate your thoughts. Thank you! Zahar65 (talk) 04:01, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Uploading Images for Approval of Authenticity/Citation - Golden Rule edit

Hello,

I need to upload images to PROVE that the authenticity of "Town Diary" has citations of reference as to the movie's quality, authenticity and positive reviews by a 3rd party. Yet, when i go to upload the images to prove this point the form does recognize the movie - "Stphughes/Town Diary" and cannot find this article. Therefore, I cannot proceed as I cannot upload the images that are needed to prove that this movie is well received by critics and film festivals.

Can anyone please help?

Thanks,

Stephen Hughes Editor for Jack Kenny - Producer/Director/Author/Owner of "Town Diary" the movie. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stphughes (talkcontribs) 00:04, 26 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

For that purpose you don't need an image; instead you must cite the third-party reviews so our readers can look it up. Where were they published, and when? Could I find those references in a library?
I assume the image you want to upload is the film poster which isn't freely licensed? Wikipedia can accept such images only if they are used in articles proper; a draft is not enough. Thus you cannot upload the copyrighted image yet. There are additional criteria non-free content must satisfy; see WP:NFCC for details. Huon (talk) 00:25, 26 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Nomination for merchandising award edit

 
I thought that you deserved something a bit extra for all of the amazing work you've done for the project.
I've nominated you for a gift from the Wikimedia Foundation!

--Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:33, 27 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

CFD talkback edit

 
Hello, Huon. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 April 28#Category:Towns_and_villages_in_India.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:29, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Re:RfC bot edit

Yesterday, you advised me to update the RfC (bot) request that I used. I can report that this did, in fact, work. [1]

If it doesn't get any more opinions, what would you suggest? WykiP (talk) 11:38, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the update. I'd say that if no one else replies before the RfC is over, there's no consensus to implement such a change. I've left a note at WP:VPP to attract more input. Huon (talk) 13:13, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
2 more helpful replies already, I presume from the WP:VPP. WykiP (talk) 17:36, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
 
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You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

review comments for Rittenhouse Elemntary School edit

Howdy Huon,

Thanks for your comments. I am brand new to Wikipedia and admittedly fairly lost and confused, and quite frankly I don't even know how my article got "live". But, there it is. All of the Wikipedia folk have bent over backward to help me with my first article (Rittenhouse Elementary School), and now I can add you to the growing list of people keeping me on the straight and narrow. Thanks for your help gagegsGagegs (talk) 03:20, 30 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Human growth edit

Professor, please disregard the part in the box about seeking help on the specific editor's talk page, for you have, of course, already done that. Joys! – PAINE ELLSWORTH CLIMAX! 15:37, 30 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi, We thank you for your suggestion that our entry titled "human growth" is actually a subset of "human development (biology)" and that we should rather expand the latter entry instead of creating a new entry but, as recognized international experts in the field of "human growth and development", we know that the way in which human development has been portrayed on the current Wikipedia entry is at odds with the science of human growth and, indeed, is misleading. We have created the entry "human growth" because human development is actually a subset of human growth. As evidence to support this statement index medicus/pubmed returns 831,452 articles on "human growth" and only 339,975 articles on "human development". Human growth, rather than human development, is a core science with a clear focus on the growth of the child whilst human development is a broad category encompassing the development not only of the child but also communities and nations in both social and economic contexts. To describe human growth as human development (biology) is inaccurate. We note that the present entry on "human development (biology)" has not been updated in over five years and the information it contains in the light of advances in research in human growth is out of date but the critical point is that the title "human development (biology)" is inappropriate for the information contained therein. We would appreciate it if you would reconsider your rejection of our entry and advance our entry on "human growth".

Professor Michelle Lampl, Emory University, USA; Professor Noel Cameron, Loughborough University, UK.Hgrowth (talk) 14:44, 30 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Dear Professors Lampl and Cameron, allow me to address several issues. First of all, Wikipedia does not allow the shared use of accounts: One account, one user. See WP:ROLE for the relevant policy. I would thus strongly advise you to create individual accounts instead of sharing one.
Secondly, I don't have any special rights or authority on Wikipedia, and I won't personally review your draft when it is submitted (the "not currently submitted" message box has instructions for submitting the article); thus you can freely disregard all my advice if you so choose, but I would not at all be surprised if the reviewer also referred you to our human development (biology) article.
Thirdly, of course I'm aware that the term "human development" has additional meanings besides the biological; that's why we also have an article on human development (humanity) that deals with the socio-economic aspects. Since Prof. Lampl's web page gives one of her specializations as "Human growth and development" while Prof. Cameron's research is given as "Normal and abnormal growth and development of children", with particular focuses on the "development of bone mass and skeletal maturity", "early determinants of pubertal development" and "adolescent development and environmental pollution" among others, I don't quite see why you would be that opposed to using the term "development". I couldn't reproduce your PubMed results; my own searches gave 16588 results for "human growth" as opposed to 19409 results for "human development" (not that I would assign much weight to PubMed search results in determining the relative significance of topics). I'm not a biologist, but I would have assumed that "development" is the more general term because even reduced to its biological meaning it includes, say, the hormonal changes of puberty which, while certainly related to growth, have far wider implications than those. Thus I would have thought human growth to be a sub-topic of human development in the biological sense, and it seemed appropriate to me to cover growth in a (large) section of the "development" article.
Fourthly, you are of course correct in noting that the current article on development is in dire need of improvement; all the more reason for experts like yourselves to edit it. It may be badly outdated - surely you can bring it in line with the state of the art? As an aside, while that may not be evident at a glance, it has been edited throughout the past few years (though the bulk of the content may indeed be five years old). Conversely eight of your own draft's eleven citations are 20th century papers, the oldest a 1957 book. Apparently one of your two 2012 sources even deals with mice, not with humans! Are those really the best sources on the advances in research in human growth?
Fifthly, a technical issue: You currently have used HTML superscript to create footnotes. Wikipedia allows the quick and easy creation of well-formatted footnotes where the superscript actually links to the footnote; that's explained at WP:Referencing for beginners. You may want to have a look. If you don't want to bother with that, of course you can also continue with your current citation style and someone with more editing experience will tidy up the references for you. Huon (talk) 16:57, 30 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Your opinion/input please edit

Hi Huon. I'd really appreciate it if you would look into the issue I've raised at WT:WikiProject Articles for creation#Incorrect approval of a draft. Thanks Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:56, 30 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

I can take a look, but I'd give Mdann52 some time to reply and explain his reasons. Maybe he was still involved in cleanup when you took care of the article's problems. It might be best to centralize the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Incorrect approval of a draft. Huon (talk) 19:06, 30 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Salad anyone? edit

I am not yet sure if a salad is on the menu ... But you never know. Ross was one of his favorite items, and I just have a feeling but no solid proof yet. History2007 (talk) 15:50, 1 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

WT:Articles for creation/Libertad Green edit

Libertad Green is notable enough to have a Wikipedia article. When you Google the name of an art form without any other keywords, for over a year, and consistently get a thumbnail of someone with a link to their YouTube video in which they demonstrate that art form, that's notable, and certainly more notable than Eamon, whose Wikipedia article was fully approved without any warnings when it had zero references and only one external link, which was to his MySpace. Even now, his most notable works of "art" are titles such as "Fuck It," which include the "lyrics" "Fuck you, you 'ho'!"William Mortensen Vaughan, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant (Retired) (talk) 16:01, 3 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Regarding Eamon, I assume you speak of Eamon (singer); if not, please provide a link. Three comments on that article: Firstly, Eamon was featured by MTV (that's not just a self-published biography), and his 2003 single was a no. 1 hit in several European countries. Thus Eamon satisfies the notability guidelines of WP:MUSIC, though the article is in a pretty bad shape. Secondly, the article is old; it was created in 2004. Since that time our standards have become stricter, I believe. Thirdly, while other problematic articles may exist, that's no reason to create more; each submission must stand on its own merits.
Green, on the other hand, decidedly lacks significant third-party coverage in reliable sources. That, not Google search results, would be required for notability on Wikipedia. Huon (talk) 17:18, 3 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Oddly, some lyrics including the word "fuck" are notable in and of themselves; although I couldn't be bothered looking further than You're Gonna Get Your Fucking Head Kicked In. (There are quite a few Wikipedia articles containing the first variant of that word I looked for - most of them are, indeed, works of "art".) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:11, 3 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Disambiguation link notification for May 4 edit

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Christ edit

Do you feel like getting Christ to be a GA? It is stable, and I think will pass GA pretty easily. It will also make it look good and buy it additional stability. I will do a FAQ for it soon as well. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 22:11, 8 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

That article is rather far outside my area of expertise; I could offer little beyond technical assistance (say, tidying up references if necessary). At a very quick glance I'd agree that GA should be easy. Does that article need a FAQ? The talk page archive is comparatively small, and I don't see any oft-recurring questions. It might be easier to slow down archiving so that a few additional topics remain on the main talk page. Huon (talk) 22:33, 8 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yes, there is little contention there. There were just 2-3 threads in a year. The FAQ will be short, but I am doing a few FAQ's this week, so I thought I would do one there too. I will do Josephus, Tacitus, Historicity, etc. I said I would do historicity a while ago, then got side tracked. I thought of asking for your help because you fixed Josephus so well with the references. If you could do the Harvard thing here, I can manage the rest. If the refs are right, it should pass really easily, I think. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 22:41, 8 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
OK, I'll take a look at the references tomorrow. Huon (talk) 22:44, 8 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. History2007 (talk) 00:27, 9 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

A cheeseburger for you! edit

  You must be especially hungry from helping all those users on IRC. Command and Conquer Expert! speak to me...review me... 01:07, 9 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi Huon, Thanks for the review of the article. I've updated it with more citations and omitted sections that weren't relevant.

A barnstar for you! edit

  The Original Barnstar
For being an awesome stalker by helping editors on my talk page   930913(Congratulate) 19:40, 9 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thank you! edit

Hello Huon! Thank you, so much, for answering my questions. I'm new to wiki and this was my first article. I added references and did the piped links and have re-submitted. your talk page is very interesting and it looks like you are a real wiki pro!

-)

Stanley Eisen — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stanleyeisen (talkcontribs) 14:23, 11 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for you help with Erick Miller page edit

CHECK out the sources now. Added many more third party references and cites. Thanks for your help. 301man (talk) 23:54, 11 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The Jamkhed Model: The Village Health Worker edit

Dear Huon:

I was reading this article Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The Jamkhed Model: The Village Health Worker and I found a duplicate in the "Speedy deletion" web site. This probably means that is has been deleted before, but I'm not sure why. —Anne Delong (talk) 14:21, 12 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

The article that was speedily deleted was Village Health Worker. It was deleted by RHaworth, and the given reason was "A1: Not enough context to identify article's subject". I'm not sure I agree with that rationale, but the draft's topic is already covered at Comprehensive Rural Health Project. I've thus declined the draft. Huon (talk) 16:13, 12 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! —Anne Delong (talk) 16:18, 12 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Redirect request for Bunga Dyah edit

Greetings. Thanks for reviewing my request for a redirect for "Bunga Dyah". I admit that the use of several spellings has made things quite confusing. Bunga Dyah, Red Avalokiteshvara and Rato (Red) Matsyendranath, Rato (Red) Machhendranath refer to the same god, as per this source

http://books.google.com.np/books?id=l3KmWbcq5foC&pg=PA116&dq=bunga+dyah&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WMOQUYmMJ8T7rAfcvYHQAQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=bunga%20dyah&f=false

and

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/nepal/around-the-kathmandu-valley/patan/sights/religious-spiritual/rato-machhendranath-temple

"Bunga Dyah" is the accepted current spelling for "Bunga Dyo". Similarly, the spellings Matsyendranath, Machhendranath and Machhindranath are being used interchangeably. Rato Machhendranath means Red Machhendranath, as can be seen here

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Red+Rato+Machhendranath

I hope you will reconsider my request for a redirect and approve it. Karrattul (talk) 11:09, 13 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for giving a source that connects the two names; I have created the redirect. Huon (talk) 02:15, 14 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Many thanks. Karrattul (talk) 11:15, 15 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Many thanks edit

Many thanks for the clarification which you left on my userpage, ACEOREVIVED (talk) 14:46, 13 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

Newsletter edit

Hi, I noticed you are not on this list. From June 2013 there is a new "in focus" format, book reviews, etc. that refer to some articles of interest. Please just take a look at the June issue (should be released soon) and see. They are also offering a 3 month money back guarantee deal next week. History2007 (talk) 17:33, 15 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

To be honest Christianity isn't really within my area of expertise nor am I that interested in the topic beyond the historical aspects. I admire your work, will do the technical stuff like reference templates, and will happily support well-sourced articles against POV-pushers, but I couldn't really help writing new content. For example, many parable articles desperately need to be rewritten, but I wouldn't even know where to look for reliable sources (beyond "in a library", heh). Thus I don't think the newsletter is of that much interest to me. Thanks for bringing it up, though. Huon (talk) 18:31, 15 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
No worries at all. Take care. History2007 (talk) 19:16, 15 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

A barnstar for you! edit

  The Barnstar of Diplomacy
Thank you for helping me resolve the issue with User:Kugirl1986/Joshua Lyons on #wikipedia-en-help, and for your ability to handle that other guy talking trash =P you're the best — MusikAnimal talk 15:09, 17 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

External Link section updated for the article Om Swami edit

Hello Huon,

We have added three new links to the External Link section of our article "Om Swami". More edits will follow to meet the criteria and keep the article alive. Please do let us know if any specific modification might work in our favor.

Thanks, Pavani (Pavani Om (talk) 19:30, 17 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

You may want to comment at WP:Articles for deletion/Om Swami, the deletion discussion for the article. However, I don't think any of those three external links will be considered a reliable source that's independent of the subject - they look like self-published author profiles and a blog post by Swami himself to me. Huon (talk) 19:50, 17 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Yesterday's Discussion edit

I know you can't help with The New Nintendo Nightmare (the name is a work in progress), but I remember asking you if you know any user who could help? I would have stayed long enough for you answer, but I fell asleep. X(

TheUnknownNinjaNN2 (talk) 22:44, 17 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

See WP:What Wikipedia is not. I don't know if other editors could help you, and Wikipedia isn't the correct venue to seek such help. Huon (talk) 00:17, 18 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Organization Workshop review edit

Very grateful for your reply Huon! After all those months of work I put in, this sudden and rather poorly explained 'sea of red ink' poured over my exercise book, combined with an equally puzzling 'non-comunicado' was having an increasingly alarming effect, to the point of giving me heart palpitations (I am getting a day older!) So, so very grateful again for your prompt and comprehensive reply (Rafaelcarmen 18:44, 18 May 2013 (UTC))

I'm currently discussing Mutualawe's reviews with other experienced editors, and it currently looks as if we may have to re-do them all. I don't guarantee that your submission will be accepted if we do so, but even if it's not accepted you should end up with a more helpful explanation of what should be improved. Huon (talk) 19:05, 18 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Dear Huon: thank you for your latest message (re: Mutualawe) (above 19:05)

I am hereby (below) replying to your query (+- 1/2h ago) on the Help page re: Your query: I have replied at your talk page, but I'm not sure what you mean when you say your username has been disabled. You are obviously still able to edit, so you haven't been blocked. You never had a user page to begin with, so nothing has been deleted. Could you please elaborate? A: 20.25hrs local: Dear Huon: so sorry: crossed messages, by now, I am afraid, as, soon after I posted on Help page(re: your response above) I received your very welcome explanations on my Talkpage: so everything is explained now: of course, - how did I not realize -: the ‘green’ label only appears AFTER I press the resubmit button!! – Problem was: at one point this afternoon, it suddenly struck me that the entire top of the page, -including my username, was covered in (blood) (!) red. This must have triggered ‘Panic Stations’! Sorry for having given you this extra work, but, again, your clarifications are more than welcome! (Rafaelcarmen 19:30, 18 May 2013 (UTC))

If I may drop 2c here: Mutualawe's review of the Organization Workshop draft was quite frankly incompetent. IMHO it should be reverted and Mutualawe needs to be formally warned about doing reviews beyond his/her competence. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:44, 18 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Re 19:44hrs: If I may drop 2c here: Mutualawe's review of the Organization Workshop draft was quite frankly incompetent. IMHO it should be reverted and Mutualawe needs to be formally warned about doing reviews beyond his/her competence. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:44, 18 May 2013 (UTC)er

A: Thank you so much for this, Roger! I ‘moved mountains’ and burned midnight oil to make the article transparent to the average reader, in accordance with Roger's principal recommendation, last time around. And now this. . . Thanks again for your comment, dodger67 (Rafaelcarmen 19:57, 18 May 2013 (UTC))

User:Kelapstick/AfC Issues edit

Hi Huon, when you have a moment I wold like to have a word with you regarding Somehow Hollow, I think it should be moved back to AfC space, however I saw you did some copyediting on it, so if you are happy with it in the article space I am good with that. In other news, the list is complete (excepting Something Hollow). Cheers, --kelapstick(bainuu) 13:12, 19 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, impressive! I wasn't quite sure whether that band might be notable, but given your opinion and FoCuSandLeArN's comment on the unreliable sources I have moved it back to AfC space and notified the author. Huon (talk) 18:39, 19 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Excellent, I think that we can call this one a wrap. I am going to be inactive for about four weeks starting Wednesday (minor edits, communication, and reverts possibly) if you could keep an eye on that fella's contributions and see if anything comes up I'd appreciate it. Thanks for the help with this. --kelapstick(bainuu) 18:59, 19 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

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Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Yael Neeman edit

Hi Huon, I have added more questions to your response of May 19. Thank you Zahar65 (talk) 05:46, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Yael Neeman edit

Hi Huon, I have added more questions to your response of May 19. Thank you Zahar65 (talk) 05:46, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

The Organization Workshop edit

Thanks again, Huon, for your time and effort.At least the technical hitches have been sorter out now. Post-Mutualawe my MfC page looked a real mess, painted in deep-red all over, with all the usernames of previous reviewers replaced(!) by mutualawe’s address which, in turn, said that he ‘does not exist’, and including my own username which did ‘not exist’, either. That caused, I must confess, a moment of panic. Thanks again for your help. At least my AfC page is now back to normal, although all those red blots don’t do me any favors: I just saw Maproom use the term “psychobabble”, originally used by dodger, and AFTER a full three weeks I spent specifically to take all the ‘psychobabble’ out? In view of this, is it really necessary for all those previous reviewers’ assessments, -- now redundant – to remain on plain view? What happens if they are deleted, or is it possible, feasible to delete? I am now regrouping for resubmit. (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 05:57, 20 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

The Organization Workshop 20 May edit

Re: Previous today: the (Permanent) ‘red marks’ against my AfC (on my present Sandbox page). Re: 1. Maproon 19 May comments (on my Talkpage) that: "The Organization Workshop" – it was a long string of psychobabble". Maproom (talk) 23:01, 19 May 2013 (UTC) 2. DGG 28 Feb Submission declined on 28 February 2013 by DGG (talk). Comments: “Too much of this is promotional for the organization. Avoid buzz words “ 3. Dodger67 (talk). Comments: “ After reading this very heavy mass of psychobabble”. My Comment: what struck me most was Maproon’s recent reference to ‘psychobabble’, after a full three weeks of cleaning up the text specifically with this comment in mind and after the text was made transparent for the average reader. From what I can see, Mutualawe (talk)’s latest (18 May) basis for declining the AfC re: “(no) neutral point of view/peacock terms/no independent sources” is too reminiscent of previous reviewers’ now historic assessments of now redundant versions of the AfC. Might I just venture to surmise that, if all those historic comments have to remain in place, the temptation for future reviewers to dismiss the text out of hand, after having read the preliminary, introductory ‘red marks’, is all too powerful, especially, -- as maproom now tells me, -- for Reviewers who "‘do’ “200 AfCs in one go”? Therefore my question again: what about deleting these historic and for my AfC unnecessarily deleterious comments, from my sandbox? Thanks (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 07:50, 20 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

The Organization Workshop 20 May 13 Fyi edit

Re: today 20 May 2013 The latest version of the proposed article on "The Organization Workshop" is still hopeless. It starts "The Organization Workshop (OW) is an experiential learning event ..." Ok, so if it's an event, why doesn't the article when and where it happened? I think it's not really an event. Maybe it's a series of events. Maybe it's an organisation that runs events. But the article dives straight into jargon, without saying what the Organization Workshop actually is. Maproom (talk) The Organization Workshop Post Scriptum 20 May [edit] EVENT: a: something that happens : occurrence b: a noteworthy happening c: a social occasion or activity. LEARNING EVENT: UCL is committed to the continuing professional development (CPD) of all staff. In order to facilitate this, staff are entitled and expected to undertake a minimum of 3 learning events per annum (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 10:02, 20 May 2013 (UTC))(Rafaelcarmen (talk) 10:14, 20 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

How about saying "OW is a type of experiential learning event..."? That avoids creating the mistaken idea that it is a specific once-off individual happening and is actually a much more accurate description. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

The Organization Workshop 20 May 14:45hrs) edit

Dear Huon: re: the nefarious effects of those pesky ‘red boxes’ on top of my present AfC Sandbox Re: Mafroom’s comments (on the AfC - he's been great fixing the tech hitch) Re: “I have absolutely no idea what it actually IS” (dodger67 18 April). It would appear to me now that BOTH Mafroom’s ‘psychobabble’ and ‘dont know what it IS’ comments (19May)have been 'lifted'/copied and pasted from dodger in my red box. However much I rewrite I do not seem to have a hope in hell as long as those red boxes are there.

PS today: ==The Organization Workshop [edit] Indeed. An event may be a learning event. My point was that an event is something that happens, with a place and a time. If "The Organization Workshop" happened at a place and a time, you should give details. Incidentally, you have edited my previous posting here so as to mangle its formatting. I wish you wouldn't. Maproom (talk) 11:14, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

The Organization Workshop [edit] Re: "MAY BE" Sorry, Maproom: the text does NOT say "may be" - The text says that the OW IS (is) a 'learning event', and an 'experiential' one, at that. It could not be clearer. No buzzwords, no babble. Just plain language (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 12:31, 20 May 2013 (UTC))

The Organization Workshop - Round 6 today edit

Dear Huon: re your recent edit on my AfC sandbox. Wow! I am impressed. You really putting your heart in this! The main problem remains, though, that, whatever finely tuned definition I/we may come up with, the first thing the next reviewer will stumble upon – as illustrated by Maproom – will be, among others, dodger’s ‘don’t know what it IS’ and ‘babble’etc red box? (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 17:50, 20 May 2013 (UTC)) cReply

There seems to be quite some confusion all around. For example, Maproom seems to assume that the Organization Workshop was a one-off event, while in reality it is a type of events. The wording Roger suggested above may help clarify that. I also share Maproom's doubts about the word "experimental". What is that supposed to mean? Who is experimenting, the event organizers or the participants? How?
The first few sentences should give the reader a rough idea of what an Organization Workshop is, and in my opinion, they didn't do so. I have reworded them a little for more clarity. Also, some of your footnotes look more like side remarks than like the sources one would expect. I've turned the one about the Spanish name into a parenthetical, but the "size" footnote could do with some sources for verification. When and where was the 850+ participant OW held? Which source states that the size minimum is 80 participants?
At times the draft's tone is rather essay-like. Take for example this statement: "In other words, people cannot be 'taught' to organize by talking to or at them or merely 'pretending' to be 'doing enterprise management'." Is that OW's working hypothesis, or a widely accepted fact in social psychology? I would expect the former, but it's written like the latter. In either case it would require a reliable source. Or the very last sentence: "A closer reading may reveal that Génesis was, rather, an enactment of the author’s personal interpretation of an OW." - the footnote indicates that this interpretation is your personal one, not one based on published third-party sources. That would be original research, which we should not engage in.
Regarding the past review results, they should usually be kept as a historical record until the draft is accepted (also, the oldest "submission declined" message box contains the instructions for re-submission). Technically you can remove them, but I wouldn't do so - basically, reviwewers should be able to see what problems were identified in the past, and then check whether they were addressed. In this case, the result obviously was "still not good enough". I can't speak for all reviewers, but they should read the draft anew or at the very least check anew if the old issues have been addressed or not, not just decline again for the same reasons - that would be rather pointless. Huon (talk) 17:54, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

19:20hrs First a Clarification, Huon: ex•pe•ri•en•tial ( k-spîr - n sh l) adj. Relating to or derived from experience. ________________________________________ ex•pe ri•en tial•ly adv. The text does not say ‘Experimental’ (Learning Event). It says it is an "experientIAL Learning event". The fact that in the old days the OW was known as ‘Experimental Workshop’ (EW) does not alter the fact that it is, and always has been, an experientIAL Learning Event. The title EW fell in disuse a few decades ago, partly due the confusion (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 18:20, 20 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

A clarification

Ouch! Sorry, I completely misread "experiential" as "experimental". My bad. Huon (talk) 18:30, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
I've reworded that to "... where participants master new organizational knowledge and skills through a learning-by-doing approach." I believe that's what "experiential" was supposed to mean? Huon (talk) 18:40, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

19:50hrs 19:35hrs Quote, re: RE: A closer reading may reveal that Génesis was, rather, an enactment of the author’s personal interpretation of an OW." - the footnote indicates that this interpretation is your personal one, not one based on published third-party sources. That would be original research, which we should not engage in.

Yes, Huon, I had just opened my laptop last Saturday to do this last and ultimate edit, - this very one! - when I found that Mutualawe had been just one step ahead of me and cut me off! --(NB as 1 of the 200-odd AfCs he reviewed in the space of 5hrs, Maproom tells me - how many min/sec did that leave for my text? 300min : 200 = 1,5min exactly - great ) -- I am/was all too aware of the ‘personal’ inference of this caption and was about to delete this entire final Joshua 'Fisher' ref . Too late! (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

20:00hrs:Re: quote: 1 of the 200-odd AfCs s/he reviewed in the space of 5hrs, Maproom tells me - how many min/sec did that leave for my text? 300min : 200 = 1,5min exactly - great ) Dear Huon: it is quite clear that all Mutualwe was able to ‘read’ in 1.5 min were dodger’s and DGGs obsolete comments. As confirmed by the Maproom experience, this, if anything, proves that it would be utterly irresponsible to leave those obnoxious red boxes to the whims of the next reviewer. I am really and truly concerned by all this accumulated obsolete red ink (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 19:02, 20 May 2013 (UTC)}Reply

Mutualawe didn't do 200 reviews in those five hours, but 69, and they all have been double-checked by now, with several of them reverted and others endorsed. We all agree that Mutualawe hasn't operated in the way we expect our reviewers to work. I can only apologize for that; one of the disadvantages of "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" is that sometimes people edit without the requisite level of competence. Huon (talk) 19:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

20:15hrs: well, that's 4min and 34 sec, then. . .(Rafaelcarmen (talk) 19:16, 20 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

20:40hrs QUOTE: I've reworded that to "... where participants master new organizational knowledge and skills through a learning-by-doing approach." I believe that's what "experiential" was supposed to mean? Huon (talk) 18:40, 20 May 2013 (UTC) A: Yes, that's correct, Huon. The Revans book in 'further reading' section points to this. The OW, however is grounded in 'objectivized activity' a 'Psychobabble' frightening that I have desisted from bringing it up again. It is true, though, that this is - as Engestrom would concur - the scientific foundation of the OW large group method. - but that will have to wait for another article (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 19:43, 20 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

21:00hrs QuOTE: Is that OW's working hypothesis, or a widely accepted fact in social psychology A: One of the reasons why the OW Social Psychology has been encountering so many headwinds (and mis/mal comprehension) over the decades is that it is a ‘minority’ social psychology, completely at odds with ‘mainstream’, dominant, ‘small group’, behaviorist Lewinian Social Psychology. OW social psychologyis based on the ‘Russian School’ -- (that got me in trouble, too, remember, so I had to drop that too!!) -- ‘objectivized activity’(Gegenstaendliche Taetigkeit) Social Psychology. But all this will have to wait for a next article. I had tried to cram all this in my first draft but was mercilessly cut down by dodger’s psychobabble killer sword. ouchhh (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 20:00, 20 May 2013 (UTC)) 21:20hrs: QUOTE: Technically you can remove them, but I wouldn't do so - basically, reviwewers should be able to see what problems were identified in the past, and then check whether they were addressed. In this case, the result obviously was "still not good enough". I can't speak for all reviewers, but they should read the draft anew or at the very least check anew if the old issues have been addressed or not, not just decline again for the same reasons - that would be rather pointless. A: Maproom, over the weekend, did exactly that: he virtually copied and pasted two of dodger’s most 'notorious' comments, without apparently having given it any further thought. You will see that my draft has about 1,000 edits and countless, countless hours of work input. This is then ‘weighed’ against a reviewer’s 4min 34sec attention span. It is a terrible, terrible wager: not ‘Russian School’ but Russian roulette! (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 20:21, 20 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

Being in the minority is not by itself a problem. Bluntly stating that the majority approach doesn't work, without qualification and without any sources to back it up, is a problem. I expect the majority would disagree with that claim.
I remember commenting on the Russian School issue, but I didn't mean to imply that it should be removed - if we have reliable sources connecting OW to the Russian School and even an article we can link to that provides additional background information, so much the better. Huon (talk) 20:29, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Order of the Beak edit

Hi Huon, Thank you. Here are some links to Order of the Beak: http://discogs.com/artist/Order+Of+The+Beak http://www.myspace.com/orderofthebeak http://www.facebook.com/orderofthebeak http://www.hikikomori-records.com http://brainwashed.com/weddle/reviews/666.html http://www.allmusic.com/album/release/invisible-route-666-mr0000356431/credits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Records

Ianlee73 (talk) 20:25, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

None of those are reliable sources that are independent of the subject - well, arguably Discogs and Allmusic are, but track listings are not significant coverage. Those sources don't establish that the band is notable, and they cannot serve as the basis for an article. That would require newspaper articles about the band or reviews of their work published in reputable music magazines. Huon (talk) 20:40, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

The ads edit

I looked at some older versions. Someone removes the ads and someone puts the ads back. I think that person must be a teacher/principal of the school that it is advertising.SHZ and don't forget to sign my guestbook!!! 22:58, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

For all I can tell the spam was added with these edits almost a year ago. The account who added them hasn't been active since. I have added the Archdiocese article to my watchlist and will keep an eye on it in case the spam returns. Huon (talk) 23:08, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

The Organization Workshop 21 May ctd edit

QUOTE (huon): Being in the minority is not by itself a problem. Bluntly stating that the majority approach doesn't work, without qualification and without any sources to back it up, is a problem. I expect the majority would disagree with that claim. I remember commenting on the Russian School issue, but I didn't mean to imply that it should be removed - if we have reliable sources connecting OW to the Russian School and even an article we can link to that provides additional background information, so much the better. Huon (talk) 20:29, 20 May 2013 (UTC) A: Hi Huon: I see that was one of the comments you posted last night. I picked it up this morning. Ref 5 in the revised version gives two such reliable sources: re: 1) Ref 5 ^ re, eg, Morais, Santos de, Clodomir, (1987) Condiciones objetivas y factores subjetivos(transl:Objective Factors and subjective Conditions) PhD Thesis, Rostock GDR p.19-23; Labra, I. (1994)Por uma Psicologia Social Cientifica (Transl: For a Scientific Social Psychology) IATTERMUND Brasilia. Both authors discuss the theoretical underpinnings of the OW. 2). One of the problems with dominant paradigms/ ideologies – re the Catholic Church – is that ‘outside them’ there is nothing but darkness, ignorance and damnation. Re: “Extra Ecclesiam (catholicam) nulla salus” Minority ‘protestant’ groups have all the trouble of the world to be allowed to have their little mouse voices heard, let alone understood, as they are in constant danger of being swamped and dismissed as ‘non existent’ or balderdash/babble. To my knowledge, nowhere in the article is it bluntly stated that “the majority approach does not work”. But the article does its best to make plain to the reader that, indeed, there IS such a thing as “Another” Social Psychology. (There is some irony in the fact that ‘Small Group’ Psychology declares itself a ‘social’ Psychology. ‘Social’, one would have thought, ought to be a qualification reserved for ‘Large’ groups?). And it also does its best to make plain that the Social Psychology the OW relies on is ‘different’ ie it is of the Large Group, not ‘small group’, dominant tradition . No ‘Small Group’ behaviourist Lewinian Social Psychologist would ever put it in their heads to attempt to keep a large group of 300 (often Lower Level of Education) people (and in some cases 1,000 plus) productively occupied for a period of 30 days. That does not mean that small group psychology ‘does not work’. It simply means that it never can be or has even been attempted. That would be tantamount to trying to move a 40ton truck with a motorbike engine. To move that truck you need Large Group Social Psychology principles. One is not a critique of the other. The both ‘do’ work, within their own domain. And the OW has a 40 year history of proof that, within its (Large Group) domain, it does work. (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 04:50, 21 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

08.30hrs: Post Scriptum previous: Here are two other sources (re: OW ‘Russian School’ roots) which might be easier to tackle by anglofone readers: Andersson, G. (2004) Unbounded Governance Open University UK; Andersson, G (2013) http://www.freeflyflow.co.za/seriti/phocadownloadpap/unbounded_organization/chapter_8_activity_theory_1012ga1.pdf ‘’Unbounded Organization”] especially p 5. ss; There is, of course always the English text of A Future, (I saw a couple of reviews which presume that the original was written in Spanish - as a matter of fact, the English original was translated into Spanish and Portuguese) in particular Chapter especially chapters 2, 3. and 4 (Chapter 3 was written by de Morais himself) (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 07:34, 21 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

The Organization Workshop Y'day's Query edit

QUOTE: (huon 20.05) “The "size" footnote could do with some sources for verification. When and where was the 850+ participant OW held? Which source states that the size minimum is 80 participants? 1) The (very experienced) OW practitioner Ivan Labra (his wife Isabel, also OW practitioner, died in 2009) tells me the following: “I would quote the ‘Meriting’ OW (Rustenburg) South Africa, (2009)(*) with 450 participants and Matzinho in Mozambique (1992)(**) with 850”. (emailed Correo enviado utilizando el servicio BlackBerry de Entel PCS 23 April 2013) (*) Merting: see seriti webpage http://www.seriti.org.uk (**)Working with large groups is a distinct characteristic of the OW method. In the picture, part of the 830 internally displaced people participating in the Matzinho Organization Workshop, Manica Province, Mozambique, April 1992. It was sponsored by Norwegian People’s Aid. (Ivan Labra) Matzinho is mentioned in several ‘older’ accounts of the OW, a.o. ‘A Future’(2000) p 96 and Andersson (2004) 2) The ‘80’ number is a bit more difficult to explain. It is the result of a (recent) consultation process with OW practitioners who were consulted about the numbers to put in for the Wiki article. True, most of the guidelines state the number ‘40’ as the absolute minimum. However, during the consultation it was felt that ‘40’, even though legitimate, leans more to the ‘small’, than the ‘large’ group, which the OW is all about. The emphasis is not on ‘small’ but ‘large, larger, largest’. Also, OW practitioners tell me that, in actual field practice, the strict minimum of ‘40’ only rarely applies. The numbers, in most of the thousands of OWs that were run, are more likely to average about 120 to 150, but many OWs have a much larger number of participants. So, to convey to the readers the idea of ‘large’ (rather than ‘small’) the consensus was, that, in actual field practice, the minimum actually is 80. PS: If the above account is not acceptable for Wikipedia purposes, by all means, let’s stick to ‘miminum 40’ -------- re: all these sources refer to a minimum of at least 40: Notes to a Theory of Organization (TO) (Sources in print)1.Apuntes sobre Teoría de la Organización (1980) Instituto Nacional de Capacitación Sector Agropecuario - Mexico 2.Notes to a Theory of Organisation – (1988) English translation by Ian Cherrett ETC Newcastle UK 1992 3.Teoria de la Organización Para Talleres de Generación de Empleo (1990) ILO Office for the PREALC Project, Panama City, Panamá 4.Elementos de Teoría da Organização (2000) Ediciones IATTERMUND Brasília. Brasil 5.Apuntes Sobre Teoria de la Organización (2002) Cámara de Disputados – Pronagei Mexico 6. Apuntes Sobre Teoria de la Organización (n.d.) Comisión de Fomento Cooperativo Mexico City. Mexico 7.Theory of Organisation (2000) Communication Link Trust, Harare, Zimbabwe & University of the North & DCR, Jo’burg South Africa 8.Communications Link Trust “OW DIRECTOR’S MANUAL: The Organization Workshop – Introduction to the Social Scale Capacitation Method” (Labra I&I) (n.d.) 9.On the Didactics of the Theory of Organisation (Jan 2007) I & I Labra – Panamá 10.Communications Link Trust (Carmen, Labra,I&I) “Notes to de Morais Theory of Organisation – PP Lecture Series for use during ‘Field’ Organisation Workshops” (CD Rom & Glossary to the T.O. Lecture Series accompanying the PP Speakers’ Notes – Marsh Farm Luton Facilitators’ Enterprise (FE) – in Preparation) CARTOON VERSIONS 1. Organisation Theory (1986-88) Carrtoon Series in WORKTEAM/LIMA Gabarone – Botswana 2.Elementos de Teoría da Organização (1988) Cartoons based on the ‘Apuntes’ Drawings: Cecília Azofeifo Editor: Miguel Sobrado produced for FAO – UNDP - SUDECO - EMATER, Brasil 3. Elementos sobre a Teoría da Organização (n.d.) “O que é a Organização” Cartoons based on Apuntes Produced for Trabalhadores Rurais SEM TERRA Conclusion: In field practice, the average is 120, the minimum 80. In Clodomir’s original guidelines about the OW (re: above) the number indicated is 40. (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 08:27, 21 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

PS: "MAPROOM": Quote 20 May (huon) There seems to be quite some confusion all around. For example, Maproom seems to assume that the Organization Workshop was a one-off event, while in reality it is a type of events. Quote (Maproom) Ok, it is an event, that much is now clear. So the article should say when and where it happened. However "experiential" is not at all clear, it conveys no meaning. Maproom (talk) 13:41, 20 May 2013 (UTC) The Organization Workshop [edit] Sorry, Maproom, you have been great helping me with the technical glitch but this leaves me speechless (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 13:53, 20 May 2013 (UTC)) PS: On 20 May Maproom wrote: "The Organization Workshop" – it was a long string of psychobabble conveying almost no meaning” – RE: Wondering whether I am paranoid for fearing that the next Reviewer, more likely than not, may ‘pounce’ again on the same (dodger) comment and not bother reading any further, having concluded that ‘there cannot be any meaning (??) in any of this babble’ ? (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 09:58, 21 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

The Organization Workshop - Query edit

12:30hrs: QUERY. Hi, Huon: I just made just one (1) edit in the last sentence of the AfC (the Joshua Fisher critique), the one I had planned to make last Saturday. However, as there are still a couple of issues pending (re: eg my entries on Huon talk page yday and today) I am wondering whether I should wait until these are resolved? taa (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 11:31, 21 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

neuGRID edit

Thank you for you advices. I only have one more question: haw can I remove the other articles on neuGRID on the contriution page? Thank you Dariagen (talk) 12:56, 21 May 2013 (UTC)dariagenReply

What other articles? There's but one, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/neuGRID. Your contributions page, if you mean that, lists all edits you have ever made to Wikipedia (excluding edits to pages that have been deleted) and thus shows some old versions, but there's nothing to be done about that - it's a historical record, not a list of different live articles. Huon (talk) 14:39, 21 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Yes I was talking about the list of all edits. Thank you very much. Dariagen (talk) 10:14, 22 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

The Organization Workshop additional Matzinho edit

16:15hrs Quote "About 850 participants crowded around our improvised shelter. The loudspeaker, generator and overhead projector worked well. Normally we spend just five minutes in an opening speech before moving on to the next stage, in which the participants organize themselves" ----------------------- At the invitation of Redd Barna Mozambique RBM, the Southern Africa Development Trust (SADET), Harare, Zimbabwe, facilitated an Organization Workshop in April 1992, in a settlement of displaced people in Manica, Mozambique. The original version of this article appeared in the Redd Barna Mozambique annual report 1992-1993 (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 15:18, 21 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

Hello Rafaelcarmen, I'm sorry for being rather slow to reply. The sources you provided here sound good to me. If the lower end of 40 participants is not relevant in practice, but there are no published sources that say so, my suggestion would be to omit a lower number altogether and instead to either try and find a citation for the typical number of participants, or to just add information on a few example OWs with the number of participants: "In 1992 the Norwegian People's Aid sponsored an OW for 830 internally displaced people in Mozambique.<ref>Source, possibly a Norwegian newspaper? Or Andersson?</ref>" That connects information on the sponsor, the size, the time and the place. The consensus of OW practitioners you spoke with, however, unfortunately is not a reliable source by Wikipedia's standarts (basically, if I claimed to have spoken to the same experts and to have been told that 100, not 80, is the lower end, how could our readers tell that you're right and I'm wrong?).
My "boldly stating that something doesn't work" comments referred to the article's claims that "people cannot be 'taught' to organize by talking to or at them or merely 'pretending' to be 'doing enterprise management'", which I (probably incorrectly) took for a comment on other attempts to achieve goals similar to the OW's. That statement must either be qualified as OW's working hypothesis (and Santos de Morais would be an adequate source for that), or it should be supported by very good sources, preferably a paper not by OW practicioners.
Wikipedia doesn't have a problem with articles on "minority viewpoints"; we have articles on all kinds of topics that clearly belong to the fringe of science, much more so than activity theory or OW which, for all I can tell, is just an area of social psychology that few people bother with, not something that's actively ridiculed on principle (such as, say, the Flat Earth Society or cryptozoology). Such a topic of minority interest will be more difficult to source, but that doesn't seem to be your article's problem - you have quite a few reliable sources. Even if the majority did reject the OW's theoretical underpinnings (instead of just ignoring them or being ignorant of them), that still wouldn't preclude us from having such an article; it would just mean that we have to report that it is indeed a minority viewpoint that doesn't represent the academic consensus on the issue. Huon (talk) 01:16, 22 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

The Organization Workshop 22 May edit

08:55hrs: QUOTE: (huon) My "boldly stating that something doesn't work" comments referred to the article's claims that "people cannot be 'taught' to organize by talking to or at them or merely 'pretending' to be 'doing enterprise management'", which I (probably incorrectly) took for a comment on other attempts to achieve goals similar to the OW's. That statement must either be qualified as OW's working hypothesis (and Santos de Morais would be an adequate source for that), or it should be supported by very good sources, preferably a paper not by OW practicioners. ------------------------------------------A:Hi Huon – yes, I realize there is a time lapse – we probably are not on the same continent. Happy to hear from you again, though. ------- Indeed, re-reading the “Field of Study” section, I realize that, the way the text is sequenced, the reader may, actually, get the impression that I am ‘rubbishing the whole shebang’/‘the other side’! In actual fact, the sentence ‘people cannot be taught to organize by talking to them or at them’ is an extrapolation of the common sense Correia (A Future p.46) quote that ‘to learn how to ride a bike, you need a bike to ride on’, ie, people cannot be taught by taught a hands-on skill – like bike riding - merely by talking to them or at them’. This is not a theoretical hypothesis but simple common sense: no amount of classroom-based talking sessions and lectures about ‘how to’ drive a car will stop you from causing the most horrible of accidents – eg trying to ‘locate’ the brake and stepping on the accelerator - the very first time you take an ACTUAL car onto the road. This is a principle so blindingly obvious that it does not need to be supported by learned professors or academic articles , although the Finnish Activity theorist and internationally renowned authority Yrgo Engestrom ----- would not be a bad bet when it comes to scientific explorations (of the Activity principle the OW practice is based on) - (see: ‘Further Reading section: Engeström, Y. (2009) Learning by Expanding: Ten Years After Marburg BdWi-Verlag - NB. Although Engeström, -- since 1987 a key internationally-renowned Activity authority -- does not have any known associations with the activity-based OW --, his 'Activity Triangle' goes a long way in elucidating OW processes - re: Andersson, G. 'Engeström's Third Generation Contributions: a Concept of Activity Systems' in: Andersson, G (2013) p. 38ss.). As for the ‘common sense’ bit, see eg re: “You cannot learn how to drive a car without a car and lots of practice behind the wheel…a book will not teach you ! by: O Shaughnessy. In other words, no such misapprehension may have ensued if the sentence had started, NOT with a reference to Small Group Social Psychology, but with the sentence: “You cannot learn how to ride without a bicycle to ride on”. In a re-arranged, misapprehension-avoiding text which says that the OW is Activity-based, it is a way of practicing social psychology generically different from behaviorist Social Psychology,( such as group dynamics, interpersonal relations and simulation-based training approaches) could then have followed. The entire emphasis would then have been on the fact that ‘Activity-based’ Social Psychology is different. (Or would ‘A different’ /‘Another’ Social Psychology have been even clearer? ). And because Activity-based SP is different, it is able to work successfully, - as, by the way, all social psychology which is genuinely ‘social’ ought to (be able to) do? -- , with large groups ----- (re: my 40-ton truck metaphor – there are indeed, to my knowledge, no examples of behaviorist Social Psychology ‘events’ (! re: maproom) matching OW Activity-based results because such attempt, - be it only for common sense reasons – was never made.) --------------( Incidently, that is where the ‘actual field practice 80 participants minimum’ number comes from: ‘Small Group’ psychology, at a pinch, might conceivably ‘attempting something’ – say a ‘Simulation’ event? - with a group as ‘large’ as 40. But keeping a group of 80, 300, 500 etc (of often LLE lower levels education) people productively engaged in actual, real enterprises for 30 days would be just. . . well, back to the motorbike engine and the 40-ton truck. All we definitely do know is that in the OW – for very precise activity-based reasons --, does ‘work’ in environments like these.)-------- This sentiment, that ‘you need a bike to ride on’ is then further extrapolated in the following sentences in the ‘Field of Study’ section, quote, re “Although similar to vocational on the job training, the difference with OW-based learning is that it is autonomous - (or 'self' learning/training) - ie with the instructor playing a merely subsidiary role”. The need for ‘an actual bicycle’ (= ‘Object’) is furthermore reinforced again by the ‘Capacitation’ footnote #6 re: 6: ^'Capacitation': in the English Dictionary routinely translated as 'training' -although the term mentally or physically ‘incapacitated’ does exist in English. The OW requirement of a 'common resource pool' - (in practice: an Inventory handed over to the Participants’ Enterprise - see eg A Future p.68, and elsewhere) - from which the participants, as a group, need to draw, ‘suggests’that work projects (enterprises) can only be realised by means of a division of labor. The interaction with the object, mediated by the Organization Workshop, has, over and again, been shown to change the mindset of the individual participants towards a new organizational and entrepreneurial consciousness: they become, or are ‘capacitated’.------ CONCLUSION: I will now work on re-writing, or rather, re-arranging the sentence sequence of this caption and show you the result later. I will also come back, some time later, on the other responses you gave and come up with (a) suggestion(s) for rearranged text. Many thanks again for your time, Huon!

12:55 Hi Huon: Sorry for the slightly over the top above explanations - I notice that it is difficult to transmit a true, complete copy of my sandbox AfC text (problem: refs dont come thru) on a Talk page, but the rewrite of the "Field of Study" section (not 100% definite yet) is available on my http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/The_Organization_Workshop&action=submit. I am also working on a further response to the huon comments I received this morning (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 11:59, 22 May 2013 (UTC))Reply


19:10hrs FOR YOUR INFO (Re: This morning's exchange on "Field of Study" redraft - and as appearing on my present AfC page.

Field of study

de Morais’ initial observation was that people, forced by circumstances and sharing one single, common pool of resources, learn to organize in a complex manner, i.e. involving a division of labor. This observation, gleaned from a clandestine seminar on Land Reform held with a large (60) group of activists in an ordinary Recife town house in the period of Brazil's 1960s dictatorship, and in which de Morais participated, was the inspiration and starting point for the design of what eventually was to become the Organization Workshop (OW).[3]. Building on this, subsequent Moraisean practitioners corroborated de Morais’ original finding that “organization” is not taught but “achieved” by a properly composed large group. The OW 'Field of Study' in the broadest sense is Social Psychology, the discipline that bridges the gap between Psychology and Sociology. 'Broadest', meaning that 'activity-based'[4] large group Social Psychology is generically different from behaviorist small group Social Psychology. 'Activity' means that, for people to learn, a real 'object' has to be actually present or, as Jacinta Correia puts it: 'to learn how to ride a bike, you need a bike to ride on' [5]. Thus, for a large group to learn how to manage a complex enterprise -(which is what is needed for well-functioning community organization) - it has to have a complex enterprise to manage. In the OW context, means that a group averaging 200 to 250, many of whom often with lower levels of education, are actively engaged, for an entire month, in (a) real productive or service provision enterprise(s). Although similar to vocational on the job training, the difference with OW-based learning is that it is autonomous - (or 'self' learning/training) - ie with the instructor playing a merely subsidiary role. In its ‘latino’ place of origin this approach is known as the ‘Método de Capacitación Masiva’(MCM) [6] or 'Large Group Capacitation [7] Method' (LGCM).[8]


References


3. For an account of the Recife 'seminal' event, see eg A Future p1 ---

4. re, eg, Morais, Santos de, Clodomir, (1987) Condiciones objetivas y factores subjetivos(transl: Objective Conditions and subjective Factors) PhD Thesis, Rostock GDR p.19-23; Labra, I. (1994)Por uma Psicologia Social Cientifica (Transl: For a Scientific Social Psychology) IATTERMUND Brasilia. Both authors discuss the theoretical underpinnings of the OW. ---

5. A Future (2000) p.46 ---

6. re, eg “Un sendero metodológico efectivo para la capacitación masiva” (transl: An effective methodological approach to large group capacitation) in: Sobrado & Rojas (2006) América Latina Euna, Costa Rica p.193-218; “A Metodología de Capacitação Utilizada” (transl: The Capacitation Method Used), Chapter III, in: Monteiro, S.T. (1990) A Capacitação para formação de Empresas Asociativas (transl: Capacitation for the Formation of Associative Enterprises) IATTERMUND, Br.; Preliminary Observations on the MCM/Large Group Capacitation Method. ---

7. 'Capacitation': in the English Dictionary routinely translated as 'training' - although the term mentally or physically ‘incapacitated’ does exist in English. The OW requirement of a 'common resource pool' - (in practice: an Inventory handed over to the Participants’ Enterprise - see eg A Future p.68, and elsewhere) - from which the participants, as a group, need to draw, ‘suggests’ that work projects (enterprises) can only be realised by means of a division of labor. The interaction with the object, mediated by the Organization Workshop, has, over and again, been shown to change the mindset of the individual participants towards a new organizational and entrepreneurial consciousness: they become, or are ‘capacitated’ ---

8. On (critical/organizational)'Consciousness', see, eg, Correia, J. "From Paulo Freire to Clodomir Santos de Morais: from Critical to Organizational Consciousness" in: A Future 2000 p.39-48. (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 18:20, 22 May 2013 (UTC))Reply


19:50hrs: QUOTE ref 1^ at least 80 with known instances of 850 and more participants, as many as local conditions will allow. <-- I am still chewing on how to properly reword/verify this. Am already told that 'small' number '40' "outrageous" - not at all common field practice. Even the original 'event' (in Recife, there you go, maproom!) there were 60 cramped in a small house. Should come up with something 2morrw (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 18:52, 22 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

Thanks for the clarification; I think the "Field of study" section is much improved. In particular, I feel by now our readers will be able to tell whether some event is an OW if it doesn't come with that label, and the added historical details on the Recife event also are nice and show that . One minor quibble that may not be all that relevant to the OW article: I'm not that sure that "simulation can't teach people to organize" is common sense. As an example I'd point to the Model United Nations - obviously simulations - which do teach the participants something. I'm have no idea about the theoretical underpinnings for the Model UN (or if they have any at all, it's definitely not small-group sociology), but it does appear a no-bike teaching approach to me. Thus I'd suggest qualifying that line: "OW practicioners hold (or "Activity theory holds"?) that people cannot be taught to organize by talking to or at them or merely simulating enterprise management", with Correira and/or Engeström as sources. Huon (talk) 19:50, 22 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

22:30 hrs: Thanks for this, Huon, looks like we're getting there at last, but you have no idea how many attempts it took: I have to constantly re-read and re-read with "granny's'" (and maproom's!) glasses on, and then say, nope, and start all over again from scratch. . . As for "I'm not that sure that "simulation can't teach people to organize" is common sense": that was all part of this morning's rather breathless chase after the rootcauses, and you will see that none of this is part of the discussion any more: unnecessary ballast for granny comprehension. Also: once bitten, twice shy. All this took me far longer than I had expected but I will take another (refreshed, overall) look tomorrow. (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 21:40, 22 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

The Organization Workshop May 23 edit

Re: 'Numbers' game (previous postings) re: my first attempt this morning: Ref #2. Number of Participants: de Morais’ own guidelines, contained in his widely distributed ‘Notes on Theory of Organization’ re-issued in many countries at different times and a variety of formats -- eg ‘’Apuntes sobre Teoría de la Organización’’Instituto Nacional de Capacitación Sector Agropecuario – Mexico (1980)/’’Notes to a Theory of Organisation’’ English translation by Ian Cherrett ETC Newcastle UK (1992) --, state that participants ought to be ‘no fewer than 40, with no upper limit’, in other words as many as local conditions will allow. With a 120-150 average number, at least one example on record cites 850 (Redd Barna Mozambique 1992-3 Report/The OW LGCMethod Integraterra p.21). More recently OW practitioners have insisted on a de facto starting number of 80, reThe OW LGCMethod Integraterra p.5).(Rafaelcarmen (talk) 08:57, 23 May 2013 (UTC))Reply


09:00hrs: err, botched - doing this over again: Ref#2 Number of Participants: de Morais’ own guidelines, contained in his widely distributed ‘Notes on Theory of Organization’ re-issued in many countries at different times and a variety of formats -- eg ‘’Apuntes sobre Teoría de la Organización’’Instituto Nacional de Capacitación Sector Agropecuario – Mexico (1980)/’’Notes to a Theory of Organisation’’ English translation by Ian Cherrett ETC Newcastle UK (1992) --, state that participants ought to be ‘no fewer than 40, with no upper limit’, in other words as many as local conditions will allow. With a 120-150 average number, at least one example on record cites 850 (Redd Barna Mozambique 1992-3 Report/The OW LGCMethod Integraterra p.21). More recently OW practitioners have insisted on a de facto starting number of 80, reThe OW LGCMethod Integraterra p.5).(Rafaelcarmen (talk) 09:02, 23 May 2013 (UTC))Reply


15:40hrs Dear Huon: would I be able to run this past Wikipedia censorship or should I just delete it? taa. RE: The anthropologist Josh Fisher’s 2010 exhaustive 'Génesis' case study[34] can be counted as a critique of the OW in that 'the first test case in Nicaragua' failed [35], even when there is no mention in the article of the OWs Clodomir Santos de Morais ran in that country under COPERA in 1980. [36]-------------------------------References------------34.“Building Consciousness: The Organization Workshop Comes to a Nicaragu an Cooperative” Anthropology of Work Review,(2010) 31(2)--- 35.quote: 'The story of the Génesis OW, however, is not one of success'. p.71 -----36.ref #27 above.--------------- NB: This "Controversy" Section was included as a response to DGG's original comments on. . . errr quite some time ago(Rafaelcarmen (talk) 14:44, 23 May 2013 (UTC))Reply


16:20hrs - re: "Controversy" - now THIS is controversy strictly out of bounds on wiki pages: QUOTE huon 22.05 “I feel by now our readers will be able to tell whether some event is an OW if it doesn't come with that label” -------A: The irony is that Fisher’s Genesis DOES come with that label, even with neonlights attached, but when you read what he wrote one cannot recognize "it" as anything of the kind. And then he has the cheek to declare that ‘the OW failed’. Yes, some ignorant bungling contraption which he cobbled together and to which he stuck the title ‘OW’ failed. With his "first" (1st) testcase in Nicaragua he presents himself a bit as the first mount Everest conquerer, yet, he is totally ignorant of the genuine first series of test OWs that were run in Nicaragua in 1980, he apparently does not know de Morais, probably never even read Clodomir’s Apuntes sobre Teoria, nor does he seem to know a single OW practitioner, nor had any of the latter even heard of him before he came out with that article on a test case which he baptised ‘OW’, taking the name of de Morais in vain in the process. If you ask me he should be prosecuted for plagiarism or at the very least copyright infringement!(Rafaelcarmen (talk) 15:26, 23 May 2013 (UTC))Reply


PS: Fisher: I could unfortunately not find any 3rd party review of Fisher's Genesis, either pro or contra. Although none of the above will of course appear on wiki pages, I already 'sense' that, seeing this as a 'hot potato', wikipedia'd rather be safe than sorry, and advise 'delete'? (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 18:55, 23 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

Yes. Wikipedia doesn't mind reporting on academic disputes, but it's not the right forum for such a dispute. If there are no third-party reviews of Fisher's work I'd suggest one of two possible paths: Either omit Fisher altogether (that's the easy path), or precisely describe what Fisher did, and that he called it an Organization Workshop - hopefully the well-sourced description of what an OW should be will show where Fisher went wrong. However, we cannot just supply our own opinion on why it was not a proper OW, and we cannot even cite a source which says "An OW has property X" and another which says "Fisher didn't have property X" and thus conclude "Fisher didn't do an OW" - that would be considered original synthesis, a special form of original research and something prohibited by that policy. So mentioning Fisher might lead into sort of a minefield, especially as you obviously feel strongly about his results. Huon (talk) 19:42, 23 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

21:20hrs: Thanks again for this Huon. It’s all terribly frustrating, but wiki indeed is not the forum for fights, only third party reports on reports on fights. On the other hand, I only (very) recently found out that Clodomir never took out property rights/copy rights/inventor’s patent, or whatever you call it, on his product. That leaves him, and his product, open to snakeoil sellers, opportunist charlatans and academic kudo-chasers (good luck to you, Joshua!) Look eg at this character: http://www.slideshare.net/peregrino/leos. He has obviously thrown a flimsy camouflage veil over “his” ‘Laboratorio Experimental’ (good luck$ to you, too, Jesús María Martínez Zuñíga) but does he mention de Morais even once in his slides? Nope, sir. Well, I think you are right Huon: in the absence of 3rd party activity, I am snookered. . I should have attacked him myself, but then DGG would have crossed me out for having ‘closely paraphrased’ or worse, for having copied(from myself(...digdig!) It’s very, very frustrating. I could, of course, mention him as one of the critics, without any qualification. But why give him even more (undeserved) kudos? I’ll have to sleep over this. Both deleting him and leaving him (without qual.) are a pain. --------------------------PS: I sent you also, earlier today, copy of the rewrite of the ‘OW participant numbers’ footnote (40, 80, 350) As you do not mention it, I presume it passes the (verification) test ? (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 20:26, 23 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

The sources for the numbers indeed looked good to me, with the possible exception of those published via Integraterra. The Integraterra website doesn't quite inspire confidence in that publisher, to put it mildly. Have those reports been published in another venue? Huon (talk) 21:57, 23 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Friday 08.05: Understood, Huon. I have now decided to leave Fisher in the Controversy section, but without any further qualification. Readers should be clever enough to notice the 1980 Nicaragua COPERA OWs and to put 2 and 2 together ie that Genesis was a poorly-managed one-off and by no means a 'first' in Nicaragua, as he claims. Genesis also completely got the wrong end of the stick: OWs do not 'go to' Cooperatives as Fisher's banner headline proudly proclaims: OWs generaate (create) new Cooperatives and Associative enterprises (hence the 'Germinadora' regional project in Costa Rica). As for the numbers game, ok, will have to build on something more solid. de Morais' manual says: no less than 40 and no upper limit. And that upper limit has always leant towards the higher, rather than to the lower figures. I was personally present eg at the graduation of 850 course OW participants + 150 TDEs (OW specialists) in the Palacio Nacional in Guatemala City in December 2000. But go and find the url link for this. . . The fact that 110,000 people participated in OWs in Brazil between 2000 and 2002 alone is also on record. The problem is either pinpointing solid links or, as in the case of Fisher, put up and shut up. (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 07:45, 24 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

Talkback edit

 
Hello, Huon. You have new messages at Nardisoero's talk page.
Message added 23:44, 21 May 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.Reply

Jetstreamer Talk 23:44, 21 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Well, Did You Evah! edit

If you ever think of running for admin, kindly let me know so that I can support you. You now have a new fan. -The Gnome (talk) 23:24, 24 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I'm honored, but if you refer to User:BracketBot, that wasn't my work. I'm just stalking A930913's talk page and help replying to the various "why did BracketBot leave a message" questions. Huon (talk) 00:18, 25 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Bots aren't really where it happens. I like to think that the people who do the work should have the tools to do the work.
You may resist this idea, of course :) Either way, let's take it slowly. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:05, 25 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

thereto edit

Should we perhaps avoid the word "thereto"? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:03, 25 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Sysflash edit

I see he's been reblocked. Perhaps we should have made it clearer in unblocking him that it was up to him to request the username change—he could have thought it was automatic. Daniel Case (talk) 13:59, 25 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Arguably yes (to me your comment seemed clear enough), but I'd say his unblock request about "not repeating the edits that got him blocked" turned out less correct than we'd have hoped anyway. Huon (talk) 14:03, 25 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

The Organization Workshop - last Friday talk stream ctd edit

Thanks to your insistence I find more solid/alternative 'venues' I have now discovered urls I myself did not know of (incl onne with 1000 participants)- it is very slow, hardslogging work, though - that's another weekend gone (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 14:36, 25 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

For what it's worth, I do appreciate the massive amounts of work you're investing. Huon (talk) 14:41, 25 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

18:00hrs: Muito obrigado! Re: "that" url: SENAC FORMA MAIS DE MIL ALUNOS EM GUAJARÁ-MIRIM em 04/02/2013 By the way, in the text I have translated all 'non-english' - I presume 'own translos' are ok for wiki? ' I 'only' speak 5 languages) (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 17:03, 25 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

The Organization Workshop edit

Hello, Huon: I think the revamped AfC is now ready for viewing. I would very much appreciate if you could please pay it a visit @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/The_Organization_Workshop (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 15:44, 28 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

Help me reply edit

Thanks for getting back to me.

Sorry I've obviously not been clear: there are no changes being made to the article at all. All that happens is I get a notification thing (the red number next to my name on the top right menu thing). For example the last 2 I got say "User:Rushton2010/sandbox/draft articles was reviewed by DragonflySixtyseven 13:04" "Lees Priory was reviewed by Deb Yesterday at 17:52". Neither of those users have made any edits to those pages at all.

So I'm all rather confused as to what's going on

User talk:Rushton2010 20:23, 29 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

See mw:Echo (Notifications)/Feature requirements#Started Page - Marked as reviewed: That's the new page patrol who give new pages a quick look to weed out the inappropriate ones; the "reviewed" message is just a sign that someone checked your article for obvious vandalism or similar blatant problems, probably found none, and marked the article as "not obviously inappropriate". To be honest I'm not entirely sure about the purpose of this notification either; it might be helpful to check the page in case the reviewer did leave a tag, but if there are no obvious problems and the reviewer didn't do anything but mark the page as reviewed, so much the better. Huon (talk) 20:40, 29 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
I understand now. Thank you for your help.

Rushton2010 (talk) 22:21, 29 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

The Organization Workshop edit

Hello, Huon - re my postings of Friday 25 May and Monday 28 May. Hope to see you online soon {Rafaelcarmen (talk) 20:37, 29 May 2013 (UTC)}Reply

Proposed Deletion of Pluralistic Rationalism edit

Hi Huon, thanks for identifying problems in the Pluralistic Rationalism article that make it unacceptable in its present form; I hadn't been aware of WP:Synthesis or realized it represented original research. That also means there's consequently only one secondary 3rd party source for establishing notability (Harvard's Promising Practices review of Circle of Reason) that actually mentions the topic "pluralistic rationalism" by name -- and it only does so by citing it as the Circle of Reason organization's espoused and practiced philosophy.
So I agree the article "as is" will need to go back into the blog ether, until such time as additional secondary 3rd party sources cite this actual philosophical movement's notability (rather than my WP:synthetic interpretation of parallel but unaffiliated efforts that mimic its espoused principles). Sorry both I and the article's independent AfC editor didn't catch those omissions and chose to accept, rather than further revise, the article in its AfC stage.
But I would like to ask your pre-consideration and opinion on one conservative possibility to salvage a potentially-notable fragment of this wiki article. Might it be acceptable to rewrite it as a stub retaining the secondary 3rd party source (the Harvard study of nationally-promising interfaith practices) that directly names the "pluralistic rationalism" philosophy espoused by the organization (and notes it as a "promising practice" in theist-atheist dialogue), while merging it with 3 secondary 3rd party notability academic or news sources (Harvard, Star Tribune, MinnPost) plus 1 primary 3rd party notability news source (RH Reality Check) that presents and/or comments on the notable/newsworthy occasions of the organization's practice of this philosophy? True, the philosophy is mentioned by name (i.e., literally) only once, in the Harvard source, not yet in multiple such sources; but the practice of this philosophy, in real life events, by the Circle of Reason is mentioned multiple times, in three secondary 3rd party academic and news sources and in 1 primary 3rd party news source -- which, in combination with removal of all original research/synthesis, might alleviate the WP: concerns you noted. If you think this merger of notable sources for not only the name but also for the practice of the philosophy confers enough notability for a stubbified reference to pluralistic rationalism, here's how it might read (if you green-light my editing it that way an an alternative to total article deletion):

Pluralistic rationalism is the social philosophy espoused [1,2] and practiced [3-7] by the Twin Cities, Minnesota-based international society, The Circle of Reason, which describes the practice as "encouraging reasoning thinking and behavior in all people irrespective of their disparate beliefs, backgrounds, and current ideological or tribal affiliations." [8]
References
1. http://www.pluralism.org/interfaith/twin_cities/practices/secular_bible_study
2. http://www.pluralism.org/interfaith/twin_cities/media/secular_bible_study
3. http://www.pluralism.org/interfaith/twin_cities
4. http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/39916382.html?refer=y
5. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:rFRAaE-923EJ:files.meetup.com/1368609/Assumptions%2520on%2520Marriage%2520Amendment%2520Flyer%2520F.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjstYv_Ms80-Y67oKqNzn0KFd8k5F8KqY-kktSS0liYR2sm8dOdmvScpUMd7DBBRCmt-1d4IkVbAM6dK7lBDkpsw9ho1eeT8oqA8-92sbixq8HidpPZSVzMU27ySwU8gDJjDa26&sig=AHIEtbSxY_37QUBN13o2cg3Or2PeULXNgg
6. http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2012/12/talk-tolerance-and-equality-one-group-still-forgotten-atheists
7. http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2009/02/11/abortion-politics-trump-social-justice-catholic-school/
8. http://www.circleofreason.org

What do you think about the above possible strategy to conserve the 1-notable-source stub of the philosophy name, by merging it with the 3-4 notable sources citing the philosophy's real-world practice in the news? (If the concept is workable in your judgment, I can also tweak the text as you like to ensure direct quotes from all sources, with no remaining trace of original research/synthesis.) Thanks, Fhburton (talk) 21:47, 29 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

This seems even more heavily based on primary sources and synthesis. For example, claiming the secular Bible study the Star Tribune discusses as an example of pluralistic rationalism is purely your own interpretation, not at all supported by the source. The same goes for the Reality Check article, which I doubt is a reliable source in the first place, and for the MinnPost article. Maybe the Circle of Reason satisfies Wikipedia's standards for the notability of organizations; I doubt we can write a well-sourced article on their specific philosophy, though. Huon (talk) 23:46, 29 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
What about a compromise of creating a page on the Circle of Reason organisation, with "pluralistic rationalism" redirecting to it? The organisation itself seems notable enough, and a page on the organisation would necessarily include a description of the philosophy. Should a time come when the philosophy itself merits an article of its own, it could be created and demerged. Ningakpok (talk) 13:37, 30 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Hi Huon & Ningakpok --
Ningakpok, if a rename/move to a The Circle of Reason (TCOR) WP organization article is the final compromise judgement we reach, I have a permutation derived from the below proposed stub#2 version that could be a starting point for a TCOR stub -- although I suspect the social philosophy will ultimately become more noteworthy than the first organization to espouse it; and moreover, all social philosophies are known and understood more through the notable acts of their practitioners, not solely through an abstract description in isolation. (When one discusses Liberation Theology one discusses its "praxis," literally greek for its "practice," in the form of notable religious protests for economic justice; when we discuss Nonviolence we discuss the practice of it no less than the moral edifice undergirding it, to judge its notability -- something to consider when editorially judging the relevance of using notable practices to demonstrate the notability of the social philosophy generating those practices). You may want to read my response to Huon, below, to see how my feedback to him and my below proposed stub#2 form of the Pluralistic Rationalism article might influence your proposal one way or the other.
Huon, putting aside for a moment the separate issue of whether the secondary & primary sources for a stubbed Pluralistic Rationalism article would be adequately numerous/meritorious, after considering your WP:Synthesis objection to the stub#1 version I think I now see the diagrammatic form of your objection -- and how WP guidelines advise a solution to it -- as follows:
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Sourced Facts & Claims about topic philosophy (A), its espousing organization (B) and that organization's activities (C):
A is espoused by B. (Source 1, Harvard)
B claims A is practiced as C. (Source 2, TCOR)
B practices C. (Source 3, Strib)
Examples of WP:Synthesis:
"A is espoused and practiced by B (Sources 1-3)." [THIS IS THE PRIOR STUB#1 VERSION, RIFE WITH SYNTHESIS]
or...
"A is espoused and practiced as C by B (Sources 1-3)." [THIS WOULD BE NO BETTER]
Example FREED of WP:Synthesis:
"A is espoused by B (Source 1, Harvard). B claims A is practiced as C (Source 2, TCOR). B practices C (Source 3, Strib)." [SIMPLY LISTS THE SOURCED FACTS & CLAIMS]
_________________________________________________________________________________________
So a revised stub#2 below, which is patterned on the above FREED diagram (i.e., using WP's own guidelines to eliminate WP: Synthesis & its consequent original research) eliminates those problems:


Pluralistic Rationalism is the social philosophy espoused by the Twin Cities, Minnesota-based international society of theists, atheists, conservatives and liberals, The Circle of Reason [1-4], which describes the philosophy as "communal commitment to basic methodological tenets of a reasoning lifestyle (reality's acceptance, assumption's denial, and emotion's mastery)," and which the society claims is practiced through "encouraging reasoning thinking, behavior and communication in all people irrespective of their disparate beliefs, backgrounds, and current ideological or tribal affiliations" [4]. Local practices of the pluralistic rationalist group have included organizing the "Secular Bible Study" (reasoning dialogues between theists & atheists on the cultural and historical context of the Bible) [1-3,5]; organizing and moderating "Assumptions on the [Minnesota Same-Sex] Marriage Amendment: A Reasoning Forum" for theists, atheists, conservatives & liberals [6,7]; defending a state legislator shunned by the Catholic hierarchy for refusing to pass doctrinal anti-abortion laws [8]; and presenting an address on pluralistic rationalism, "Be Sane - Be VERY Sane!" to the Rally to Restore Sanity Minnesota at the state Capitol [9,10].
References
1. http://www.pluralism.org/interfaith/twin_cities/practices/secular_bible_study
2. http://www.pluralism.org/interfaith/twin_cities/media/secular_bible_study
3. http://www.pluralism.org/interfaith/twin_cities
4. http://www.circleofreason.org
5. http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/39916382.html?refer=y
6. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:rFRAaE-923EJ:files.meetup.com/1368609/Assumptions%2520on%2520Marriage%2520Amendment%2520Flyer%2520F.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjstYv_Ms80-Y67oKqNzn0KFd8k5F8KqY-kktSS0liYR2sm8dOdmvScpUMd7DBBRCmt-1d4IkVbAM6dK7lBDkpsw9ho1eeT8oqA8-92sbixq8HidpPZSVzMU27ySwU8gDJjDa26&sig=AHIEtbSxY_37QUBN13o2cg3Or2PeULXNgg
7. http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2012/12/talk-tolerance-and-equality-one-group-still-forgotten-atheists
8. http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2009/02/11/abortion-politics-trump-social-justice-catholic-school/
9. Whitelist-request the examiner.com 3rd party primary factual Rally to Restore Sanity Minnesota speaker-roster verification source? (www.examiner.com/article/the-twin-cities-response-to-the-rally-to-restore-sanity)
10. Burton Rally for Sanity Speech Minnesota online .pdf source:
The above stub#2 version (or similar text in the same formula) should now be free of WP:Synthesis according to WP's own guidelines and examples.
That leaves only the less formalistic, more individualistic editorial deliberation of how many secondary and 3rd party sources are generally required to merit retention of a WP article of this type and stubbed nature, and how much tolerance is generally offered in such WP articles for informational/definitional information from the topic's original source (TCOR) on the topic philosophy's literal definition and espoused social practice (assuming such information from the primary source is described in the article as only a "claim" of that original source -- as recommended by WP guidelines for handling such original-source material essential to the topic's description).
Because I believe the article's critical earlier defects in WP:Synthesis formulation (and consequent inclusion of original research) are now fixed in this new stub#2, I'm OK with removal of the rapidly looming WP:PROD to allow WP editors like you and Ningakpok to continue deliberating with me on what's sufficient or insufficient regarding the number & merit of 3rd party primary and secondary sources for WP stub articles like this.
(Offhand, I no longer see any real problems with this article's secondary and primary 3rd party sources, nor see this new stub#2 version as unsalvageable after your help, Huon, allowed its reformulation to become structurally free of WP:Synthesis/Original Research. But I'm game to continue discussing its remaining merits/demerits further with you, if you're likewise willing, before the deadline for PROD article deletion this coming Monday June 3, 19:44 UTC. For example, you mentioned that RH Reality Check seemed to you a dubious-quality news source: It is admittedly a primary 3rd party news article and source, rather than a secondary commentary/review source, but RH (Reproductive Health) Reality Check is considered a reputable national clearing-house, like HuffPo, of 3rd party news articles on reproductive freedom-related events, including its being a major national news source on abortion rights activism and legislation; and so it should be OK, should it not, as a supporting informational/noteworthiness source on this pluralistic rationalist society's practices, once the notability of such praxis is already initially indicated by the prior Harvard, Strib, and maybe MinnPost secondary news/commentary/review sources? [FYI, the author of the RH Reality Check news article, Andy Birkey, actually wrote his article as a stringer for The Minnesota Independent, which a few years ago was purchased by The American Independent and subsequently de-linked its archive of local/state news articles; but RH Reality Check, like HuffPo, obtained copyright permission from The Minnesota Independent to permanently reprint and archive its nationally-relevant abortion-news articles at RH Reality Check, again as HuffPo does.])
So, do we keep working up to, and potentially beyond, PRODay on this de-synthesized Pluralistic Rationalism stub, to see if it merits more time to potentially live long and prosper? Fhburton (talk) 14:22, 31 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
I see quite a few problems with the article's sources; I doubt either the Circle of Reason or its philosophy are subject of enough coverage to establish their notability. In particular, I'm not at all convinced the Harvard Pluralism Project's website is a reliable third-party source - academics usually publish in the peer-reviewed literature, not just on their own websites. Has the Pluralism Project done so? Then we should cite those papers. If they failed to properly subject their research results to peer review, we should not cite them at all. Most other sources mention the Circle of Reason and its philosophy only in passing, or not at all. There are also still synthesis problems in the proposed draft; for example, the sixth source is neither reliable nor independent, and the MinnPost opinion piece that's the seventh source mentions neither the Circle of Reason nor pluralistic rationalism (unless we try to cite the comments which are neither reliable nor, in this specific case, independent). Huon (talk) 00:45, 1 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
The Director of The Pluralism Project, Dr. Diana Eck (Harvard Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, and Director, The Pluralism Project of Harvard) has published 165 books, periodicals or other media in the past, which includes 7 printed books; and has published 75 peer-reviewed academic research articles. In addition to Eck's serving as Director and copyright co-owner with Harvard of The Pluralism Project, her co-author on at least one book, Elinor J. Pierce, is the Research Director of the Pluralism Project. Some of their books have been published with the explicit co-authorship of The Pluralism Project, others have been published by The Pluralism Project itself through Harvard Press, or by other academic presses like Columbia University Press, while a few books were published with major non-academic imprints including Harper-Collins and Beacon Press -- all published while Prof. Eck has been Harvard Pluralism Project Director and the website copyright co-owner with Harvard of the Pluralism Project's pluralism.org website resource, which won the Webby-award as the best website resource on worldwide notable practices of religion, interfaith, and pluralism. My understanding is that the purpose of the Pluralism Project website is to create and provide the exact kind of material that Wikipedia most desires for itself as a contemporaneous/modern/nimble encyclopedia: Pluralism.org is the world's most reliable and noteworthy provider of encyclopedic material on recent notable practices of religious pluralism. There is none more authoritative.
A few of the recent examples of the books by Eck and/or The Pluralism Project are:
1. A New Religious America, by Eck, Diana L. (Mar 17, 2009)
2. On Common Ground: World Religions in America, Diana L. Eck, Professor Pluralism Project at Harvard University (Feb 1, 2002)
3. World Religions in Boston / A Guide to Communities and Resources, Eck, Diane L. & Pierce, Elinor J. (Eds.), Publisher: The Pluralism Project / Harvard University (1998)
Consistent with the stellar reputation of The Pluralism Project as an online encyclopedic and academic web resource, there are 110 different Wikpedia articles on religious, interfaith or pluralistic practices that cite The Pluralism Project's research on them as a WP source, via "pluralism.org"; the WP article and proposed stub#2 we are debating would be one among those 110 accepted WP articles. (I haven't looked at all 109 of the other articles to see how many have a PROD or AfD flag, but I'm guessing there aren't many.)
My concern is that it would be an error to dismiss the source-reliability of The Pluralism Project as an online resource for contemporaneous research, or to similarly dismiss as invalidly sourced the 109 other accepted WP articles that cite this same online academic source. Rather, should we not acknowledge that Harvard's Pluralism Project is exactly the kind of online resource that provides recent but academically valid encyclopedic and reportage content on notability, such as on its "Promising Practices" study that cites the pluralistic rationalist TCOR society's unique SBS/FMCOR/atheist+theist dialogue practices?
Once one acknowledges the reliability and respectability of The Pluralism Project as a legitimate and noteworthy 3rd party secondary-tertiary research source, relied on by at least 109 (not PRODed) WP articles on other pluralistic philosophies, practices or groups, I'd think our revised Pluralistic Rationalism stub#2's remaining notability sources (at least including the source wherein Minnesota's biggest newspaper, the Star Tribune, established notability of Secular Bible Study and its atheist+theist dialogues cited by the Pluralism Project study to be one of the local practices of the pluralistic rationalist society, TCOR) should be enough to switch our goal as WP editors from seeking to unilaterally PROD autodelete the article/stub, to now seeking to improve the article/stub with advice from WP editors.
For example, there's no overt textual synthesis conferred to the stub#2 draft by simply its juxtaposing two references, one ref being the MinnPost review of the "lone" conference in the Twin Cities that included atheists+theists as panelists, the other ref providing primary source info confirming that that same theist+atheist conference was indeed sponsored by TCOR (and sponsored as part of its pluralistic rationalist praxis). But to alleviate the formal concern about the MinnPost article's neglecting to explicitly note who the conference sponsors were that achieved the goal of inviting atheists to talk with theists, that the article's writer was so laudatory about, perhaps the reviewer could be requested to confirm retroactively, for the WP article's accuracy, that the sponsor of that conference was indeed TCOR? I recall reading in WP guidelines that that is one way to strengthen citations' precision, if the sources' writers are willing. (All of which, btw, would be more in keeping with WP's recommendation for us as editors to be conservative in seeking to improve a WP article that can be improved, not simply to PROD the article outright when it's clearly evident we have the ability, demonstrated by your own comments, to critically review it well enough to further improve it. If I were to look at the current stub#2 draft of Pluralistic Rationalism de novo, now that it's been dramatically improved in response to your series of objections, I would not see immediate grounds for a PROD anymore. This article no longer reads as unsalvageable. Can we figure out a process to keep critically reviewing it and trying to improve it beyond the PROD deadline?) Fhburton (talk) 07:18, 1 June 2013 (UTC)Reply


I disagree that the Harvard Pluralism Project is not a reliable source, especially on the basis given ("academic establishments should publish peer review papers"). There is nothing in the wikipedia guidelines to suggest that only peer-reviewed papers are acceptable from universities, and it would be unreasonable: peer-reviewed papers are for substantial research; the Pluralism Project is an encyclopaedic attempt to document beliefs in order to facilitate research. Peer review is not a part of the academic process in such cases. It is true that the Star Tribune article does not actually mention that the Secular Bible Study is connected to Pluralistic rationalism and the circle of reason, and although the Harvard Plurality Project makes it clear that this is the case, the Star Tribune article does not seem to add to notability for either the Circle of Reason or pluralistic rationalism. I disagree with using your suspicion about the reliability of Reality Check as a reason for disallowing it, although I am not sure that its mention of the Circle of Reason establishes notability.

I still lean towards the creation of a redirect to an article on the organisation Circle of Reason as a substitution for the pluralistic rationalism article. The Harvard Pluralism Project is a reliable source that devotes significant coverage to it, and its activities have also received coverage, even if they have not always conveniently mentioned the connection. Ningakpok (talk) 01:31, 2 June 2013 (UTC)Reply


Hi Ningakpok and Huon,
I'm willing to make these changes:
1. I can take PROD eve (Sunday) to replace the current PROD-flagged article with a version of stub#2 that's been reformatted (see below) to be a redirect/moved/renamed TCOR "stub#3" -- which would be a drastically improved article (even though, as Huon would note, still imperfect); I might need help on the rename/redirect/move part (never done that before);
2. I will remove before PRODday the improved article's PROD tag to allow either option A) AfD flag to permit deliberation for another 7 days, or option B) WP:Notability flag to potentially extend the time for more editorial contributions & advice beyond 7 days, while I still work both to scrub what's causing Huon's last lingering whiff of WP:Synthesis and to search for further/better sources (see 3. below, for example) that cite TCOR's work (btw, Ningakpok, it's true that both the Strib and Harvard laud the Secular Bible Study's atheist+theist dialogues, among other activities lauded by Harvard, but I presume that two independent sources' accolades of the same group and its practice is a good thing, not a bad thing, because they reinforce the group's and practice's notability;
3. I will e-mail the MinnPost Editor to see if they wouldn't mind e-mailing their writer and the referenced atheist speaker, August Berkshire, to independently verify (by one hopes also editorially noting in their MinnPost news/commentary article) that TCOR indeed organized that one theist+atheist conference the writer lauded as unique. The subsequent ref's conference announcement/speaker-roster pdf would then simply be for supportive documentation of the conference participants from its primary source.
Here's how the submitted The Circle of Reason organization article as an improved & redirect-renamed/moved stub would approximately appear -- even if the improved article ultimately gets mothballed by editors' vote in AfD, it would have a more valid skeletal structure for reintroducing someday, once it's grown even more muscle on its bones:


The Circle of Reason, noted by The Pluralism Project at Harvard as a "promising practice" [1-3], is a Twin Cities, Minnesota-based international society of theists, atheists, conservatives and liberals who espouse the social philosophy of "pluralistic rationalism" [1-4], which the society describes as "communal commitment to basic methodological tenets of a reasoning lifestyle (reality's acceptance, assumption's denial, and emotion's mastery)," and which it claims is practiced through "encouraging reasoning thinking, behavior and communication in all people irrespective of their disparate beliefs, backgrounds, and current ideological or tribal affiliations" [4]. Practices of the pluralistic rationalist society have included organizing the theist + atheist "Secular Bible Study" for reasoning dialogues on the cultural and historical context of the Bible [1-3,5]; organizing and moderating "Assumptions on the [Same-Sex] Marriage Amendment: A Reasoning Forum" for theists, atheists, conservatives & liberals [6,7]; defending a legislator shunned by the Catholic hierarchy for refusing to pass doctrine-based anti-abortion laws [8]; and presenting an address on pluralistic rationalism, "Be Sane - Be VERY Sane!" to the "Rally to Restore Sanity Minnesota" at the State Capitol [9-10].
References:
1. Harvard 1
2. Harvard 2
3. Harvard 3
4. TCOR (primary source, but providing quotes of TCOR's espoused philosophy and how they implement it)
5. Strib
6. MinnPost Conference Review
7. Conference Announcement (primary source, but just supporting info in ref 6)
8. RH Reality Check
9. Whitelist-request examiner.com 3rd party primary factual verification source of speaker roster?
10. Rally Speech pdf and/or COR source (primary source, but providing text of speech noted in roster in ref 9)


OK? -- Fhburton (talk) 09:48, 2 June 2013 (UTC)Reply


A point I didn't think to mention earlier also bears consideration: News and encyclopedic entries on "pluralism" or "interfaith" events are naturally less common, and less thrilling, than, say, news and encyclopedic entries on "warfare." But Wikipedia is not the Encyclopedia of War. To be comprehensive, WP wants to include encyclopedic entries about topics notable within all subject matters of human activity. The very fact that a major Midwest newspaper like the Star-Tribune (with a circulation equal to the Boston Globe's and half of the No. 4-ranked LA Times), even mentions any interfaith practice at all is itself a criterion for notability among such practices.
Moreover, the Strib article itself noted the unusual significance of the unique theist+atheist dialogue practice of SBS, and did so twice -- once in its headline ("Secular Bible Study casts wide net") and once in its lead ("As if it's not unusual enough that Trinity United Methodist Church and the Minnesota Atheists have joined forces to promote a project, wait till you hear what the project is: a Bible study class." The second statement's writing almost calls for an exclamation point.) Neither the headline nor the lead sentence are incidental or insignificant locations in a news/commentary article. They note the dialogues being organized are highly unusual ones. The article also highlighted the rationale -- the espoused value of the practice of SBS organizers bringing theists and atheists together -- when the Strib picked a particular quote from a Secular Bible Study organizer, who said, "We've discerned that people have lost or lack the skills to engage in constructive and respectful dialogue in the context of profound disagreement."
So this news report is not a simple news mention of some upcoming religious meeting. It is a major newspaper noting, in an era of fundamentalist "Zygotes are People" laws v. strong-atheist "God's a Delusion" bestsellers, the doubly-unusual nature of hosting a constructive, non-combative dialogue to bridge the widest chasm of all -- that between belief and disbelief.
(BTW, I found several blogs [none of course included as a source] that were posted around the world by both fundamentalist and strong-atheist websites, after the Strib newspaper article was copied online. Many on both sides of the divide couldn't believe their eyes.) -- Fhburton (talk) 22:18, 2 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

Huon, I just noticed this: you said earlier "This seems even more heavily based on primary sources and synthesis. For example, claiming the secular Bible study the Star Tribune discusses as an example of pluralistic rationalism is purely your own interpretation, not at all supported by the source." This is not the case - it is Secular Bible Study, with capitals, because that is the name of the program. The Harvard Pluralism Project names this specific project and states that it is organised by the circle of reason, and the Star Tribune article is clearly a report on the same program. It's not interpretation and it is explicitly supported by the sources.

These articles (and the uncited blogs) prove that the society and its activities are getting attention from news outlets, academic surveys, and blogger's opinion, and I think justify a Cicle of Reason article. I would recommend it include links to activities of overseas chapters too though. Ningakpok (talk) 23:19, 2 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

Ningakpok, I think Huon's point about WP:Synthesis remaining in the earlier stub#2 proposed draft was that the draft was making a formally-synthetic assertion to say that TCOR's organizing of Secular Bible Study (SBS) was a "practice of its pluralistic rationalism" principles, when the Harvard study only noted that TCOR was "a society for pluralistic rationalism," not explicitly that its principles guided the specific practice of organizing SBS. (For example, I could "be for animal rights," but still eat hamburgers, so it would be synthesis to say, "He is for animal rights, and one of his animal rights practices is to eat hamburgers.") So the correction to that synthesis is made by simply saying the true statements in sequence: "He is for animal rights. His practice is to eat hamburgers," and then just let the readers themselves conclude if I am a man who practices what I preach. That's the exact fix we did in the stub#3 version, and in the above TCOR-article derived from it -- so that stain of WP:Synthesis that Huon alerted me to has since been scrubbed, i.e., "TCOR espouses pluralistic rationalism; they claim the principle is practiced in certain ways. These are TCOR's actual practices..." [Fortunately for TCOR, its practices seem to match what it preaches.])
Time has fled; I will not be able to wait any longer for more editorial comments to improve the article further before it otherwise gets admin PRODed in about 17hrs (8 of which I'll require for sleep.) So I will be enacting the present 2/3 editorial recommendation to use the improvements and latest draft proposals developed in this Talk section to substitute the PROD flagged Pluralistic Rationalism article for a The Circle of Reason organization article, leaving Pluralistic Rationalism as a redirect to it (according to recommended improve/rename/move/PROD-object options in the WP:PROD flag). To any WP editors who visit this article after these changes are made and its PROD flag removed, please be aware that the new The Circle of Reason article will still be undergoing further improvement/refining over the next few days (assuming I can even get it renamed/moved correctly b4 tomorrow), so please be patient about perceived flaws arising from this last-day formatting of revisions discussed over the last week. Your comments on notability concerns will also be welcome, and I'll try to quickly make possible recommended improvements and/or improve sources where needed (regardless of whether the article is given 7 more days on its "life-clock" via WP:AfD flagging, or given added time for further improvement via WP:Notability flagging). Thanks, Ningakpok, for defending elements in the article that we agree may be worthy of keeping; and thanks even more, Huon, for identifying and prosecuting elements in the article that we agree are worthy of deleting. -- Fhburton (talk) 02:57, 3 June 2013 (UTC)Reply


That obviously seems reasonable to me. I would further suggest that Fhburton first makes a sandbox version of the Circle of Reason article as a draft, and lets me a take a look as a neutral observer before publishing it. Ningakpok (talk) 14:09, 3 June 2013 (UTC)Reply


Huon: Ningakpok and I have just removed the PROD tag from Pluralistic Rationalism. The new article is still under some construction (still trying to rename/move the improved article to The Circle of Reason today, and whitelist request one possibly allowable but currently blacklisted source, over the next several days). If you want to revisit this new article to evaluate placing WP:improvement flags, can you give me a few days to try to perform or request the structural rename/move/redirect first? And if you want to place an AfD tag, I'd similarly like a short hiatus to finish the new org article's construction before you list it on AfD. (Best foot forward; besides, I could use a little sleep from last week before we light it up again.) Regardless, thanks again for so significantly improving this article. Even if it doesn't make it out of AfD, it'll be the best corpse I ever saw. -- Fhburton (talk) 20:31, 3 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

The Organization Workshop edit

Hello, Huon - I dont know whether you had a chance to take a look at the revamped AfC - just a moment ago I realized that ref #26 contained (for wiki unforgivable) 'Primary Source' re: 'this can be partly explained' Fortunately I found and added the ref (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 21:58, 29 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

I'm sorry for not replying earlier; I didn't have much to say about Friday's message (you're right that you can translate the sources yourself when you cite the original non-English text as a reference), and I didn't have the time to take a closer look at the article itself.
I'm still not quite happy with several of the footnotes. Let me give some examples:
  • The last one gives a quote and a page number, but to give me a chance to find the source, I'd need the title, the publisher, the ISBN or the name of the journal, ... It's clear from context that the quote is by Josh Fisher, but that too should be mentioned in the footnote.
  • Several footnotes contain much content that would be more valuable in the article proper, especially the third footnote's "size" discussion. Footnotes should usually only contain the source, not the relevant information too. Another example of a footnote that should be worked into the article proper is the 26th which not just gives the sources but discusses them, or the fourth which actually modifies what it's cited for.
  • Several footnotes seem rather off-topic to me, irrelevant to OW itself. This includes especially the 12th - maybe I'm too much of a layperson, but is the etymology of the word "capacitation" really that important to an understanding of OW? So much so that we need to cite dictionaries for related words? If so, this should incorporated into the article itself, but I don't think the article would lose anything if that were shortened or removed.
  • Some footnotes should simply be turned into (parenthetical?) remarks in the text itself - especially the 19th (on the length of lessons) and the 27th (on the "institutionalized left" - that could probably be resolved by directly saying that "Communist countries never embraced OW" or something like that).
For Wikipedia's preferred style of using footnotes you may want to have a look at the Émile Durkheim article, one of Wikipedia's Good Articles which, while a biography, discusses Durkheim's work in some detail. there the footnotes only contain the sources. In your case some quotes (or translations of quotes) would probably be helpful, but I think you're overdoing it somewhat. You may also want to check WP:Referencing for beginners which explains how to easily cite sources such as books or journal articles, but you can also ignore that and leave it to others to tidy up the footnotes - that's not required and won't affect the chances of the draft being accepted.
Regarding the content, I did feel that at times your personal knowledge above and beyond what the sources say shines through - and unfortunately that may lead to claims of "original research" or "essay".
On an entirely unrelated note, I saw this quote: "During the 4 years the PROCCARA Project ran, 13,000 persons were capacitated in 475 Workshops" A quick division gives an average of less than 30 persons per Workshop (unless some persons participated in multiple Workshops). How does that fit with a "legal" minimum of 40 persons? If that's on a national scale, 130,000 persons might be correct? Huon (talk) 23:46, 29 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, Huon - I found your comments this morning - all this is very helpful indeed - I have been aware for some time of the 'inflated' nature of the footnotes as compared to the ‘lean’ main text. I will now be dealing with these and other issues which may pop up in the process . As for the PROCCARA number, I inserted the Van Dam quote at a late stage – without doing the maths - my carelessness!!- because Van Dam can be read on the web. This quote replaced a previous, unlike Van Dam not directly accessible quote. I will now have to try and square this circle – OW sources, by the way, are tricky at the best of times. Some sources, eg, quote PROCCARA having lasted 3 years, others (eg Van Dam) four. The best source would be de Morais himself but his Archive is in Brazil and he would need a team to manage, let alone scan and digitize it, which I think he hasn’t. I will check the relevant Wikipedia examples (Durkheim) and guidelines you cite. Capacitation is indeed such an important concept -- (it has to do with the very core of 'activity' vs 'behaviorism'-based approaches) -- in the OW that it genuinely would need an entire article of its own – trying to ‘squeeze’ it in one (reference-strewn) alinea , I realize, is not attractive to the reader whose main thought may be what the 'complication'/fuss is all about. Just last night I caught myself out on having used ‘personal knowledge above and beyond what the sources say’ and which I had to self correct. The same ‘knowledge surplus’-syndrome may be the cause of the overall ‘inflated’ nature of the reference section: squeezing an essay/thesis writing style into the tight Wikipedia corset is an enduring challenge. Thanks again for the comments.(Rafaelcarmen (talk) 04:59, 30 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

I'll be traveling over the weekend, so it may take a little longer than usual for me to reply in some detail. Huon (talk) 05:41, 31 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Much appreciated for telling me, Huon - I have in the meantime checked up on two of your 30 May comments: 1.) Joshua Fisher's "the first OW in Nicaragua" (!) is on p 71 of the 2010 American Anthropologist Vol XXXI, 2, for which I will, of course, be providing full details (the Pdf is downloadable but I do not want to advertise this fantasist more than what is strictly necessary. 2.) Also, Van Dam's '13,000 in 4 years appears' to be a one-off, the true figures (which were in the earlier version) are 3 years (73-76), 200 OWs and 24,000 participants. Have a pleasant journey (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 06:22, 31 May 2013 (UTC))Reply

OK, it looks to me as if you're well on the way towards resolving all issues, and I don't think I have much more to say about the draft. I hope I'll find the time next week to give it a quick once-over for issues of style, wikilinks and some wording changes (which you'll of course be welcome to revert in whole or in part if you don't consider them improvements. Huon (talk) 01:38, 1 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

Re: yes, I have realized for some time that I need some ingenious/less primitive ways to make internal links to other AfC footnotes, but I have been too preoccupied, till now, with matters of content. I was briefly experimenting this morning with the wikilinks 'thingy', but, so far, with little success. Perhaps I'll crack it. Otherwise I'll have to leave it to your expertise in these matters. Thnx beforehand. (Rafaelcarmen (talk) 09:37, 1 June 2013 (UTC))Reply

Starcounter edit

Thanks for adding the AFC draft template. I've never done such a move before; I'll remember that next time. Pinkbeast (talk) 13:21, 30 May 2013 (UTC)Reply