Hello NATTO! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. If you decide that you need help, ask me on my talk page, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Below are some recommended guidelines to facilitate your involvement. And remember, no question is "stupid"; if you have anything, absolutely anything that you'd like to know, feel free to drop on by and leave me a message!:D Happy Editing!
Thanks for finding the link. It sounded correct enough, but I couldn't find precisely that wording. Good you found it. Verifiability is important, especially in criticisms of living persons. Even then one must be careful.
Jimbo Wales has some interesting things to say about criticisms of living persons:
"..... editors who don't stop to think that reverting someone who is trying to remove libel about themselves is a horribly stupid thing to do." - Jimmy Wales [1]
"If you see an unsourced statement that would be libel if false, and it makes you feel suspicious enough to want to tag it as [citation needed], please do not do that! Please just remove the statement and ask a question on the talk page." - Jimmy Wales[2]
Steve Bennett wrote:
> I'm happy to be corrected, but I was under the
> impression that as long as we can convey that the information is not
> guaranteed accurate (by the use of cite tags), then "speculative"
> information is better than none.
Absolutely not. Real people are involved, and they can be hurt by your words. We are not tabloid journalism, we are an encyclopedia. - Jimmy Wales[3]
Philip Welch wrote:
> On May 18, 2006, at 2:48 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>> If we don't want unsourced material, why have we tolerated it so long?
>>
>> This could be a change in what's considered acceptable rather than an
>> eternal law. Early in Wikipedia's development, we took what we could
>> get. Now that we have a crapload of content, we can set stricter rules.
Absolutely.
We have how many new articles a day? If people had the good sense to nuke 100 articles a day, just on the grounds of being BAD in the sense we are discussing (having unsourced claims about living people which would be libel if false), our growth rate would hardly suffer at all.
We are a massively powerful text generation engine. People have to drop the idea that every little tidbit is precious. Crap is crap. Yank it. - Jimmy Wales[4]
Just to clarify. i noticed that tehre are some people very close to this subject commenting on this page. i had never heard of barratt untill recently and I'm not even sure how I stumbled across the page. i would like to think the comments i have made to date are from an outside perspective. Please don't think i am in any camp with regard to this issue. David D.(Talk)08:32, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've read your edits and find them well sourced; too bad some others have a specific point of view which causes them to delete factual and well documented statements. RalphLendertalk16:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi David. To make sure I understand: You have invited two editors, one at each end of the spectrum for a second opinion, I assume on the ABMS data. So now we have Fyslee, yourself and one of the two invited editors, an myself.... NATTO22:08, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am staying out for a while since I have said my piece, but I am interested to hear their opinions. Tim and Peter are both working on the homeopathy article. Peter is trained in homeopathy, Tim is a scientist. They have both worked together to make the article as NPOV as possible. I thought it would be more productive to ask people who are familiar with the alternative medicine field. David D.(Talk)22:10, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
FYI, below is the message i left on their respective talk pages.
Hi Tim and Peter, I am wondering if you could both inject a second opinion with respect to an ongoing discussion at the Stephen Barrett page. I have chosen to seek your opinion since you both represent differing views with respect to alternative medicine but are both reasonable editors, as proven by your excellent collaboration on the homeopathy page. I would like you to focus on one paragraph only. It is in the Licensure_and_credentials and reads as follows:
Barrett's critics cite that he failed part of his medical board certification exams in 1967 and never retook them as evidence that he cannot claim to be a medical expert.[5] When Barrett retired in 1993 about 81% of physicians were Board certified according to the American Board of Medical Specialties.(PDF).
There are two schools of thought here:
The first is that the latter sentence is relevant to whether Barratt is a medical expert. It is verifiable data, no claim is made that the data supports the views of the critics or not, that is up to the reader.
The second is that the latter sentence should be removed since it seems to be original research.
There has been much discussion on this topic both currently and in the archive, one of many sections in the archive is here. I feel the discussion has reached a stalemate, although, possibly an injection of new ideas could lay this to bed so we can move onto other parts of the article. Thanks for your time.
Barrett
Howdy, I wanted to encourage you to discuss the changes you were making on the Stephen Barrett page. I put my reasons for reverting the changes there. Feel free to write a note on the bottom of my talk page, User_talk:TeaDrinker, if you need ot get in touch with me. Sincce I reverted it twice, I will give the obligatory link to the three revert rule. We are both bound by it, of course. Thanks, --TeaDrinker23:37, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Teadrinker. Please stop reversing my edits without even taking the time to check the facts. This is a guerilla attitude and eminently biased. Please provide valid reasons. NATTO23:39, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the note. I realize, rereading my message, that I was unclear. I started a discussion on the talk page, here specifically to discuss the changes you made. I was trying to encourage you to contribute to that discussion, but realize now I did not include a link to it. Sorry for the confusion. Thanks, --TeaDrinker23:44, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Teadrinker. If that is the way you encourage Wiki editors to discuss issues you really need to work on it. You just drop in from nowhere and start bulk reversing and then claim you want to encourage discussion.... You can well report the 3RR with that sort of behaviour NATTO 23:56, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps I was unclear. I reverted to the prior version because I thought the edits you were making were not neutral point of view. I did not, however, want to do so without discussion. As such, I wrote my reasons for the revert on the talk page of the article, Talk:Stephen Barrett. I did not, of course, revert simply to encourage discussion. The purpose of my message was to let you know that (a) I had made the change and (b) there was a talk page discussion about the edits. My link to WP:3RR is simply cursory, in case you had not seen the rule before. I will, of course, abide by it. Thanks again for the work, --TeaDrinker00:05, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Teadrinker. The above example is just one. I appreciate your point of view however if there was an identical item critical of Barrett placed twice in the same article, you would likely say it is redundant... Thank you for acknowleding that it takes time to do edits. Of course if you had taken the time to do it the same way instead of simply choosing to bulk reverse than we would not be having this discussion. By the way I have also posted a reply on the talk page of the article. NATTO 00:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Teadrinker. No your answer is clear. It is the way you handled it that I question. You have done wholesale reversals of edits including the ones which were done for technical reasons or to bring more balance to the item. Ex: Barrett has been accused by Tim Bolen (who, in his own words, is "hired by clients to deal with their public relations component of when they may be attacked by medical board or similar entity." [14]) of bias, and being part of a conspiracy to suppress innovative forms of treatment. [15] AND Tim Bolen himself has no educational qualifications beyond High School and, in his words, is "hired by clients to deal with their public relations component of when they may be attacked by medical board or similar entity." If you had done selective reversal that would habe been appropriate but that is not waht you have done. NATTO 00:26, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I can appreciate how this seems to be difficult, since you put so much time into making the edits. It is generally fairly difficult to selectively revert changes (what I was doing was restoring an earlier version of the article, then editing it to keep some of your changes). You make a valid point about Bolen, however removing reasons why he may not be a reputable source probably should still be in the section, in my view. I still think we can come up with a good solution on the talk page. Thanks again for the note. --TeaDrinker00:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Teadrinker. The above example is just one. I appreciate your point of view however if there was an identical item critical of Barrett placed twice in the same article, you would likely say it is redundant... Thank you for acknowleding that it takes time to do edits. Of course if you had taken the time to do it the same way instead of simply choosing to bulk reverse than we would not be having this discussion. By the way I have also posted a reply on the talk page of the article. NATTO 00:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:TeaDrinker"
thanks for your comments about folks like barrett and homeopathy; i do not think it has so much to do with the nature of matter as the nature of hatred and a deeply ingrained prejudice founded, as they are, upon an unbending, dogmatic adherance to scientific materialism as an absolute belief system that is neutral [joke!], profit-free [joke!] and universal in its application. These breed an intolerant arrogance bordering on religious zealotry...such people amount to a fraction of 0.1% of humanity yet they believe their case is proven and the rest of humanity should wake up and join their ranks. Well it just aint gonna happen. Life is far richer & more complex [thankfully] than the simplistic models science geeks would have it and that disappoints them hugely. Things like alt. med. enrage them because they see their precious belief system seriously challenged. They refuse to accept these therapies work and then call it placebo...but there can be no such thing as placebo if their molecular paradigm is so absolute! How can placebo be based on 'suggestion' if there is no 'mind' there are just molecular movements in the brain? their paradigm does not adequately cover very much of the 'real world' they allege to be in and preach about. best wishes in your efforts. Peter morrell07:49, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Peter, sadly your analysis is correct. Science in itself is only a tool with it's limitations. It is a valid tool as long as it is used properly. There are those in search of dogmatism that have made it a religion in the same way that they have used other religions in the past to negate true awareness and spiritual growth. Stay above the fray Peter :-) NATTO 16:02, 15 September 2006 (UTC) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Peter_morrell"
I'd like to understand why you removed the link with the comment "External links - removed link to the page saying click on *** to order from Amazon.com as per WP:EL)". I can't find any such link on the page. --Ronz04:43, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I see what you did now - I was a bit confused with all the rearrangement. How strongly are you against the link you removed? --Ronz19:59, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply. Yes, I like how you arranged them over what I did. I only added them to the top because it left the rest of the organization intact without adding yet another category. As for WP:EL, I'm still debating between the added value and WP:IAR in that context vs the fact that the books in the list do have links to Amazon. --Ronz20:53, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
