Talk:Tim Ferriss

Advertising Through Wikipedia?

Reading this bio gives me the overwhelming urge to want to buy Ferriss's book. So that means it's pretty effective advertising, disguised as an encyclopedia article. Kudos! Dollarwizard (talk) 03:52, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

No kidding. It's a puff piece. Marketing bullshit. This cannot be taken seriously. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.116.7.92 (talk) 21:21, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, the page, as it stands is a joke. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.12.200.50 (talk) 10:47, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Heh. I've been on a quite lovely six-month mini-retirement myself. Try it, you'll like it. Yworo (talk) 03:14, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

There are some interesting points on semantics of "work" in this blog http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/01/08/5-time-management-tricks-i-learned-from-years-of-hating-tim-ferriss/. I don't know if it could help make this page less like an advetisement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.123.56.141 (talk) 14:37, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Sentences like this make me cringe: "Leah Busque, the founder of TaskRabbit, called the airline ticket she bought to meet Ferriss "the best $750 I ever spent." - Of course she says that, Tim Ferriss is one of the biggest investors in Task Rabbit. This sentence has nothing to do in a "Reception" section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.85.142.10 (talk) 21:24, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this is advertising-CarryLedg

Spelling

"This involves breaking what he calls "outdated assumptions" and finding ways to be more efficient EFFECTIVE so that 'work' takes up less of people's time.[8]"

He focuses on effectiveness, not efficiency. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.82.8.149 (talk) 12:29, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

redirect

Shouldn't be a redirect so I've removed that.... also it can be added to the article that is appeared on both StyleLife and David DeAngelo interviews. Mathmo ^Talk 11:29, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with giving free advertising to those two, so I'm going to remove the mentions of David Deangelo and StyleLife (unless somebody's already removed them). Dollarwizard (talk) 03:52, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Another author "Tim Ferris"

There's another author with a similar name who's had some bestsellers. Should this page have a reference to that one? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Ferris To many people, he's better known. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.234.189.161 (talk) 20:55, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

multilingual

His blog says "He speaks six languages". Do we have an independent source on that? 218.88.36.144 (talk) 11:27, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Independent Sources

Speaking of independent sources, are there any independent sources for his National Chinese Kickboxing Championship? Of the three in the article, two point to his own blog and the third points to a CNBC profile that sounds like it was provided by his publicist. 218.214.148.59 (talk) 09:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, this needs sourcing. Exactly *which* "national Chinese kickboxing championship," where, and when? Sounds dubious. This whole article reads like spam. Note that he admits to pushing his first book by hiring low-wage people to post on blogs, promoting it. Why wouldn't he do the same on Wikipedia? Note also the critique of him by a fellow blogger, Penelope Trunk. She concludes: "The idea of time management only matters in relation to how important the stuff is that's competing for your time. The stuff that makes time management the most difficult is relationships. Which Tim does not excel in. [...] Tim is all about time management for achievement and winning. But there are not trophies or measurements for relationships. There is only that feeling that someone is kind. And good. And truly connected. And Tim is not." [1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benefac (talk • contribs) 15:38, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Controversy and Claims

Ferriss makes several unsubstantiated claims in his book:

• That he is a National Chinese Kickboxing champion.
• That he has been a "Cage fighter in Japan, vanquisher of four world champions (MMA)" These fights are not sufficiently substantiated by Ferriss [2] and appear in no MMA databases.

According to the Antoverlord blog, Ferriss' book received numerous five star reviews on the day of its release, prompting the blog author to suspect inappropriate gaming of Amazon.com's rating system. The blog author further speculates that Ferriss has perpetuated a Confidence trick in the mode of Aleksey Vayner, but concedes that he has not actually read the book.

According to TED.com, Tim is a f r a u d who has lied about his swimming ability.

Why do people keep deleting this? It is all true--why do so many wikipedians hate Truth? Who are they working for?

The only thing I read about Tim's swimming ability is this: Here's a quote from 4HWW 2009: Pg 34, paragraph 2: "My body is designed to lift heavy objects and throw them, and that's it... I tried swimming and looked like a drowned monkey." And the TED talk is where he also referenced his fear and discomfort with swimming, while showing how learning pro techniques helped him overcome that fear. The TED site you cited promotes him. -Katya — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.129.29.2 (talk) 16:20, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I just came to this article specifically looking for the "Controversy" section. It is very relevant and necessary, and fanboys should not be deleting any properly cited content. (Heroeswithmetaphors) talk 01:16, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Controversy and Claims

Ferriss makes several unsubstantiated claims in his book:

• That he is a National Chinese Kickboxing champion.
• That he has been a "Cage fighter in Japan, vanquisher of four world champions (MMA These fights are not sufficiently substantiated by Ferriss [3] and appear in no MMA databases.
• That he is "Advisor to more than 30 world record holders in professional and Olympic sports" (not substantiated).
• That he has been a "Cage fighter in Japan, vanquisher of four world champions (MMA)" and a "National Chinese kickboxing champion" (not substantiated).
• That he created a chain of gyms in China before being forced to close them down by local gangsters (not substantiated--Ferriss refuses to name the gym or its location).
  • in the book is nothing about China —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.19.156.148 (talk) 11:20, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
• That he was an actor on a hit TV series in mainland China and Hong Kong (not substantiated--no trace of video nor listings and Ferriss will not name the show).
• In an article on his blog, Ferriss claims to have gained 34lbs of muscle in 4 weeks, with a total gym time of just 4 hours (not substantiated)

Ferriss' book received numerous five star reviews on the day of its release, prompting the blog author to suspect inappropriate gaming of Amazon.com's rating system. The blog author further speculates that Ferriss has perpetuated a Confidence trick in the mode of Aleksey Vayner.

Respected TED member Max Hodges noted that Tim Ferriss's claims regarding his swimming ability are completely fraudulent. TED Members thanked Max for pointing out Tim's fraud "Ah...you're a genius. Now I feel disillusioned. Thanks Max." and many lamented that TED is ruining its credibility.

Please provide reliable, verifiable sources for this information. Without such references, it cannot be included in the article. Thank you. --Alan (talk) 16:46, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you Alan.

The onus is on Tim to back his words up with reliable, verifiable sources. Do you not agree? Or can one just make a claim and the moment it gets out on the internet, it is just the truth.

I am willing to take this to the top of Wikipedia, Crown Publishing, and Random House publishing, in which case I will request your full name and association with Wikipedia/Tim/Crown.

I am currently penning a paper on Wikipedia and its relationship with corporate entities and interests, and I would like to include your work, actions, and opinions in my paper.

Alan--are you of the opinion that Tim Ferriss can say anything he wants and never provide any verifiable resources, and the world must accept it as the gospel truth as Tim is backed by major corporate interests. Alan--in your opinion, is this how Wikipedia works?

The references and verifiable sources for Tim's outlandish claims are Tim's blogs and books. Are these not good enough references? I am not sure what more you want. Indeed, the outlandish claims have no other sources but for Tim's work, and that is what makes them outlandish. Because Tim is a #1 bestselling author in the NYT and WSJ, this is major news. He and his publishers are making millions on unverifiable claims, and this is news and of great interest to the general public. The claims are Tim's and they are set down in stone via the printed word, authored by Tim, to be found in his book and blog. What more would you like to see?

Would you agree, Alan, that the spirit of Wikipedia is to speak the Truth? Or is it to be used as a branch of Random House and financial interests.

Thank you for your time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.0.157.163 (talk) 17:03, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Alan--please let me know what you would like to see from me in the way of sources and I will be more than happy to provide you with it, inlcuding your own preferred format.

Thanks for your time Alan.

Best, :)

The material currently in the article appears to be properly sourced and referenced. It is therefore upon you to provide proper sources and references for any material you intend to add to the article, in accordance with Wikipedia's standards. See WP:V, WP:OR, WP:SYN, WP:SOURCES.

Your efforts are furthering the appearance of a conflict of interest you may have with the topic of the article (see WP:COI for restrictions on editors).

Finally, your statements above regarding your willingness to "take this to the top" are a violation of WP:LEGAL.

As to including my statements in a published paper, I have no problems with such, so long as the paper is released in accordance with the Creative Commons License model (see Creative Commons license for specific rights granted).

--Alan (talk) 17:19, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Alan, your words "Your efforts are furthering the appearance of a conflict of interest you may have with the topic of the article" are an unjustified POV and have no place on wikipedia. Please tone down the hate speech and ad hominem attacks. Thanks in advance.

Alan--America is a free country and one is allowed to take things to the top of any organization. Are you suggesting that America is no longer a free country? Who rules us now?

Alan--are you requesting that I provide exact page numbers for Tim's outrageous claims? Is that all that is missing?

Please let me know, and I will gladly serve your desires.

I am still puzzled as to the emotional hatred your words are seething with.

I am more than happy to fulfill all your wishes and desires.

So would you like the exact page numbers? I can get this easily for you.

Thanks for your time Alan. I enjoy working on you in resolving this issue, and I do appreciate you toning down the stridency of your phraseology. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.0.157.163 (talk) 17:28, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Alan--please stop trying to get be banned from wikipedia for the simple act of adding truth to wikipedia pages, by labeling the simple act of speaking truth as "vandalism." Indeed, truth is treason in an empire of lies, but Alan, Wikipedia is not an empire of lies, and thus truth cannot be deemed vandalism. Thanks again for your time, and thanks again for claimng down a bit and refraining from trying to get be banned for your own private and perhaps corporate reasons. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.0.157.163 (talk) 17:31, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe I am being extremely civil and professional. But I am also pointing out specific areas of Wikipedia standards that both your proposed edit and your commentary in this article's talk page, as well as that for The 4-Hour Workweek, have violated.

It's clear that any position contrary to your own is untenable to you, and you have yet to seek consensus regarding the inclusion of your material. I therefore take the latter into my own hands, as follows below. --Alan (talk) 17:39, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

RFC

Saw this at RFC. The "criticisms" section that is the current subject of a revert war doesn't appear to be properly sourced. If you have a source calling Ferriss' claims into question, please bring it forward. Do you? Otherwise this information doesn't have a place in this article. It's not enough that someone who edits Wikipedia doesn't believe him. Wikipedia's standard for inclusion is verifiability, not truth. — e. ripley\^talk 17:03, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Verifiability is a glaring weakness in Wikipedia's accuracy. All one needs to do is have information published in a book, and presto! There's your verified source. If you followed the controversy regarding some Rush Limbaugh quotations a few months ago, there was the same thing. The sources of the racist quotations came from a book of dubious accuracy, but because they were in the book, they were able to remain in the article until Limbaugh finally threatened to sue.

I think it would be interesting to convince a Random House editor to have my own autobiography published, and I'll include some crazy things about myself in the book, and then I'll have my own Wikipedia article with "verified" sources. :P Hanxu9 (talk) 23:33, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

By the way, it is interesting that you quote Wikipedia's "Verifiability" policy. Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SELFPUB Hanxu9 (talk) 23:41, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

You misunderstand. The verifiability policy works in conjunction with the reliable source policy. So, a fact must be verifiable AND located inside what is considered a reliable source, which almost always excludes things like self-published works that would be easy to game, as you note. — e. ripley\^talk 15:56, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Self published sources

Is linking to his blog really necessary for the best seller info? Same goes for the Loic Le Meur interview, wouldn't it be better to link to the youtube clip directly? Also, linking to his uStream account seems, to me at least, to be against WP:SELFPUBLISH/WP:BLPSPS. 85.24.132.48 (talk) 10:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

If the material in the self-published sources is solely about himself, then it's fine. If he's airing opinions about others, then that particular material and citations should be removed. Yworo (talk) 03:17, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Spent the 15 minutes needed to either find replacement references, or clean up the problematic passages. If you've never read WP:BEBOLD, you might want to consider it before using templates that distract from readability and add no information to an article. Hal (talk) 00:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Upcoming Books

Is there any information about upcoming books from this author? --voodoom (talk) 01:20, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Blog contributor list

This article is about a person. A list of luminaries who have written for a blog is not encyclopedic information about the person. Create the article about the blog if it meets the pillars. Also, WP:BRD. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:03, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Original research removed

I have removed a bunch of original research from the article that frankly seems irrelevant. If the sentence says that "he claims" something, there's no need to go on and say "but it's never been verified"; it's presented in the article as a claim, not a fact. The bits about websites not mentioning him are, again, pretty much a textbook example of original research. The inclusion of these "rebuttals" does not serve a purpose other than to paint him as a liar, which he may well be, but it's not for us editors to come up with the evidence for it. If there's some secondary source that specifically brings up these inconsistencies in what he says about himself, then by all means include this source. Otherwise, the article risks becoming a set of claims and counterclaims which is not encyclopedic at all. ... discospinster _talk 23:37, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Interestingly, almost all of those edits have come from one person who contributes from various anonymous IP addresses that are all traceable to the Hartford, Connecticut area. Terence7 (talk) 18:06, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

I also agree, but I'd also be cautious about stating Ferriss's claims as fact if there is reason to doubt them, as User:Theo Buckley is attempting to do. We know perfectly well that even writers in places such as the NYT will happily repeat what they think are plausible claims from plausible interviewees without doing any fact checking, especially when the main subject of the piece is not (for example) martial arts, but "look how interesting this person is". – Smyth\^talk 03:54, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

OK, having checked the websites in question, I would not say there is any reason to doubt his claim, since those sites do not appear to mention any tournament which could be identified as the "1999 USAWKF national championship". The USAWKF's own website does not appear to have records going back that far. So "he claims he was" is too weak", "he was" is too strong, "he states he was" is just fine. – Smyth\^talk 05:35, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Theo Buckley - bad faith edits

The last 4 edits by "Theo Buckley" or whoever that Tim Ferriss fanboy actually is, are completely biased. They are an obvious attempt to whitewash the article, remove anything critical of Ferriss, and insert numerous poorly sourced supportive statements about Ferriss. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.72.203.165 (talk) 01:42, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

He hasn't removed anything, and I don't see anything to object to in what he added. – Smyth\^talk 13:33, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Clean-up

I've been adding sources and wikifying a few things on this page, but it still has a ways away to go to become a "good" article. Which based on the number of references, we should be more than able to achieve. In particular, there is a lot of positive and negative criticism (and a few misplaced weasel words) interspersed throughout the article, when it should really be centrally located in a Reception section. I'll keep fixing a few things over the coming days - just wanted to let the editors who have been providing helpful edits know. Theo Buckley (talk) 21:21, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Seems kind of ridiculous that 1/3 of the 4-Hour Body section is devoted to a random question that Tim was asked in an interview. Makes way more sense on the 4-Hour Body page under "Synopsis" if there's no opposition. Theo Buckley (talk) 02:02, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. It is better in The 4-Hour Body rather than here. (Heroeswithmetaphors) talk 12:31, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Gaming Wikipedia

This Ferriss Guy managed to game Wikipedia as well. Despite the immense controversy around this guy and his extraordinary self-claims to greatness, the article sounds like a puff piece and an advertisement for this guy. 109.186.109.222 (talk) 15:56, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Ah another person who vehemently complains about unverified self claims yet does the exact same thing by claiming this entire article is a puff piece/advertisement for Tim and yet for someone so arrogantly certain he/she does not provide one citation or one iota of evidence that Tim has lied in his book or this article is advertisement for him. If you provided some form of evidence I for one and many others would not only agree with you but be happy to help you in your endeavors. Until then consider the following

There are many things about Tim which are substantiated and credible, most are in this article. To ignore all that and focus on your unproven claims is not only POV but an acute form of deluded psychosis. (77.100.152.52 (talk) 07:04, 11 February 2013 (UTC))