Talk:Eckhart Tolle

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Eckhart Tolle/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Claritas § 12:53, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Summary

• Is it reasonably well written?

A. Prose quality

B. MoS compliance

• • There are a few sentences which need tweaking - for example:
    • "He describes his childhood as unhappy, especially the years up to age 13, spent in Germany" - sounds odd, needs restructuring.
    • " Tolle gives speeches and workshops, most of which are given in English, but occasionally gives talks in German and in Spanish" - similarly, slightly awkward.
• Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

A. References to sources:

B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

C. No original research:

• Is it broad in its coverage?

A. Major aspects:

B. Focused:

• Is it neutral ?

Fair representation without bias:

• Is it stable?

No edit wars, etc:

• Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

The copyright status of the portrait of Tolle needs to be clarified. It's currently lacking a description. - own work of a user, I'm satisfied that there are no copyright issues.

B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

• Overall:

Pass or Fail:

This article is generally compliant WP:WIAGA, but the photograph of Tolle needs to be copyright tagged, and the prose needs tweaking before it can be awarded Good Article status. I'm therefore putting it on hold. Claritas § 12:53, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

• I've reviewed recent edits made to the article, and I'm satisfied that the main issues with the prose have been sorted, and I'm therefore promoting it. Any editors who may be looking to bring this article to Featured Article status should bear in mind that the FA prose criteria are stricter and more work may be need on this area. Claritas § 18:25, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

• Excellent, Thank you! There may be a problem with the photo now; I'll try to sort that out ASAP Gregcaletta (talk) 01:36, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Claritas is not existent anymore. Article passed in 2010 ... see below on "bias".

Tolle's "genre"

I'm going to suggest removing the "genres" from the infobox. It makes sense to talk about a book being part of a genre, but not to say that a person belongs to a particular genre, so it belongs on the article for the book. I think most biographies of writers tend to leave that part of the infobox blank because it creates too much controversy. Gregcaletta (talk) 00:41, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Personal life and organisation

This article says nothing about his current personal life. The actual mode of life of a "spiritual teacher" is vital. Even the fact that nothing was known about it, would in itself shed light on him as a person. As a friend of mine once said "If you want to know the true worth of a guru - check in his trash bin." If he was almost anyone else in public life we'd know a lot more about his everyday existence. This article (apart from the predictable Christian criticism) reads a bit too like a hagiography.

Also, of course we need to know about the money. With such vast sales and such a high level of activity, there must be serious sums involved - how is all this organised - how much is his personal wealth and how much non-profit? All that sort of thing should be covered and is covered in the articles on other spiritual and quasi spiritual teachers. Compare Prem Rawat just as a random example of a very successful proponent that I have seen recently.

As a matter of record - I am with Tolle on much of what he says, as far as he goes - I have no axe to grind - but biography is about a man's life - not just his work. Finance, in particular, is important in cases like this.Steve M Kane (talk) 09:19, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Criticism and NPOV

There is a lot of critical information about this individual out there. Why is none of that criticism included in this fawning article? Laval (talk) 04:23, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

There are some negative comments on his work in the "Reception" section, which is unusual for a biography. Criticism of his books goes on The Power of Now article or A New Earth. Criticism of an individual does not really make sense, and is certainly not Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia biographies record the factual events of a persons life, not opinions on that person. It unusual that this article contains a "reception" section at all. Most biographies of authors do not. Other than the "reception" section, this article is a list of factual events from his life, with auto-biographical statements in cases where the sources report the information as a quotation rather than as a fact. Gregcaletta (talk) 06:21, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

His notability is mainly because of his books and his books are widely cited, quoted and referenced in the article as part of his "teaching", so likewise criticism is also included for balance.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 18:59, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Influences section

This section is a bit of a mess really but at the moment I'm not sure where to start to tidy it up a bit - any ideas? 79.79.248.118 (talk) 21:44, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

external links

One of the external links is unnecessary. http://owanorthamerica.com/2011/11/09/eckhart-tolle/ (Ananda Giri meeting with Eckhart Tolle) is just a link to a photograph on the One World Academy website with a donate button right next to the photograph. Neither One World Academy or Ananda Giri are mentioned anywhere in the wiki article. I purpose replacing it with http://www.has.vcu.edu/wrs/profiles/EckhartTolle.htm. This academic article contains information about Eckhart Tolle viewed through a religious studies/sociological lens. Atellefsen (talk) 00:47, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I've removed the external link to Eckhart Tolle TV which appeared in the Publications and section because the web page was an advertisement asking for monthly subscriptions and its deletion was agreed upon in a prior discussion.[1] I have amended the same link in the EL section so that the reader is directed to the free content page and not the sales/subscription page. -- — Keithbob • Talk • 19:12, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Name-dropping lists to improve Google rankings?

"Tolle often talks about the relevance of figures in intellectual or popular culture."

As do many people, myself and most of my friends and colleagues included, and, probably, the same goes for most readers of this article - not exactly a significant piece of information about Tolle.

"In A New Earth, he quotes Descartes, Sartre, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Albert Einstein."

He and many, many other authors. Look at the lists in any book that cites sources.

"He has spoken of movies such as Groundhog Day, American Beauty, The Horse Whisperer, Gran Torino, Titanic, Avatar, Being There, and Forrest Gump, and musicians such as Mozart, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones."

So do many, many people, in gatherings from bars to dinner parties.

"Tolle himself has mentioned texts such as the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad Gita and other Hindu scriptures, the Buddhist scriptures, the Old Testament, the New Testament, and A Course in Miracles;"

Many spiritual books quote these and many other obvious sources.

"... he has mentioned various individuals such as Zoroaster, Lao Tzu, Mahavira, Siddhārtha Gautama, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Jesus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Rumi, Meister Eckhart, Hafiz, Rinzai Gigen, Ralph Waldo Emerson; and he has emphasised the mystical schools within religions such as Gnosticism in Christianity, Sufism in Islam, Hasidism and Kabbala in Judaism, Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism, and Zen and Dzogchen in Buddhism. He has met and spoken with Barry Long and Don Miguel Ruiz, and he wrote a foreword for The Diamond in Your Pocket by Gangaji"

Same again!

All of the above examples are so widespread and generic that they show nothing about Tolle to distinguish him from many other best-selling authors in the field. The main function of such lists is to influence search engine rankings. See any work on SEO - search engine optimisation. I would recommend that the lists are severely pruned to contain only items that are especially relevant to the man. That he has "spoken of" the particular Hollywood films listed makes the article almost humerous, rather than serious.