Talk:Astrology

Please read before starting Welcome to Wikipedia's Astrology article. This represents the work of many contributors and much negotiation to find consensus for an accurate and complete representation of the topic. Newcomers to Wikipedia and this article may find that it's easy to commit a faux pas. That's OK — everybody does it! You'll find a list of a few common ones you might try to avoid here. The sections of the WP:NPOV that apply directly to this article are: Pseudoscience ♦ Due and undue weight ♦ Making necessary assumptions ♦ Giving "equal validity". These policies have guided the shape and content of the article, and new arrivals are strongly encouraged to become familiar with them prior to raising objections on this page or adding content to the article. Other important policies guiding the article's content are 'No Original Research' (WP:NOR) and 'Cite Your Sources' (WP:CITE). Since the nature of this topic has been deemed controversial, all contributors are asked to please respect Wikipedia's policy No Personal Attacks (WP:NPA) and to abide by consensus (WP:CON). When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Also remember this "Discussion" page is only for discussion on how to improve the Wikipedia article; it is not to be used as a soapbox, or for comments that are not directly relevant to the content of article.

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Zodiac lucky numbers

How many times should one try this numbers? Teboho da voice (talk) 10:18, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

One less than zero. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:30, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Request for external link - Renaissance Astrology

Can I add the following to the External Links section?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007nmym

It links to a 2007 podcast discussion from the BBC Radio 4 program In Our Time. The program's host moderates a discussion between three British academics on the role of astrology in the worldview of the European Renaissance. The discussion is academically credible, draws on evidence of the time, and adopts an objective point of view.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Iacobus (talk • contribs) 03:27, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Source 13 is a dead link.

Source number 13 looks to be a dead link to a pdf that doesn't exist any more. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.190.41.61 (talk) 19:22, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

I found one pdf link but which may be a copyright violation, so I removed the link and added the doi reference which should lead to it via a university. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 00:04, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Fronting the pseudoscientific aspect of astrology

It seems to me that the fact that this is a pseudoscience is burried too far down. I have tried to introduce it quite early, but my edits have been reverted by User:FreeKnowledgeCreator. The approach I took was the same you find it articles such as phrenology, Feng shui, homeopathy, and reiki. You will see that two of them start by saying the it is a pseudoscience, as I did with astrology. The others say it in the next sentence or very soon after.

In his reversion, User:FreeKnowledgeCreator claims that "we need to start by explaining its specific features, not a feature it shares in common with many other things." This doesn't pan out. Such a claim precludes introductions like "The Invisible Man is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells", which are obviously ubiquitous. Moreover, the revision simply replaces "a pseudoscience" with "the study", which itself is a feature shared in common with many other things. Any argument that the study is then modified by the of prepositional phrase is matched by the argument about the phrase following pseudoscience.--Brett (talk) 20:09, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Please stop trying to fix problems that do not exist. The lead is fine as it is. Anyone reading it can see that astrology is considered pseudoscience. The first sentence of the lead ("Astrology is the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial objects as a means of divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events") is clearly written; your preferred version ("Astrology is a pseudoscience, the goal of which is to find a means of divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the movements and relative positions of celestial objects") is needlessly contorted. It is not even properly accurate, as astrologers believe they already do have a "means of divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events", as opposed to believing that they need to find such a means. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:18, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

@FreeKnowledgeCreator:Your excuses keep shifting. I disagree that there is no problem. If someone reads the first paragraph only, which is not unlikely, there is nothing at all there to suggest that this is a pseudoscience. That's a problem. It's a problem recognized and dealt with on other pages related to pseudoscience. It should be dealt with here too.--Brett (talk) 17:27, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, the approach of "burying the lead" in this article comes from a decision by Second Quantization (possibly while bringing the article to WP:GA status?) with the idea of seeing whether believers could be drawn in to read a bit more of the article instead of having a knee-jerk rejection that would lead them to stop reading entirely. Plausibly, it could also reduce the amount of effort required by editors to maintain the article. It might be possible by now to see if this approach has been more effective at correcting misinformation, although I'm not sure what data we could use to test that.

Since it's a pretty important question, if data for an analysis isn't available one approach would be for Wikipedians to run a study ourselves, or else find some scientists who study Wikipedia and might be interested in finding out. This sounds like something that Doc James might be interested in, or he might know how to either do it or find someone to do it. (Despite this not inherently being a medical topic, the issue itself is of course very relevant to certain parts of the medical topic area.) It might also be that there are already analogous studies addressing the question in the psychological literature that we could use to make a judgement. Sunrise (talk) 16:14, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Hum, an interesting question User:Sunrise, "Does calling out a pseudoscience lower in the lead result in greater or less engagement / vandalism?"

Once could take all pseudoscience article, see which are in what format, than look at both vandalism and the number of subsequent headings opened (the second being a marker of engagement).

One would both need to take into account variations in readership and quality between the two types of articles as I image those both affect the amount people read / vandalism. Could be an interesting study. However I do not think I have the ability to take it on. Will keep it in mind if I come across a student looking for a project :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:22, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed these updates when I replied. I agree that it is an emperical question as to what works. Unless we can turn up some data, though, I think we should follow the conventional wisdom: don't bury the lede.--Brett (talk) 17:31, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Leads are intended to be written as summaries that can stand in themselves, per WP:LEAD: "The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents." Worrying that people will read only part of the lead, and therefore not realize that astrology is considered pseudoscience, is an utterly baseless concern. That concern might possibly make sense if the article's lead were unusually long, but it isn't - it consists of only two reasonably short paragraphs. So we should simply follow the relevant guideline.

I note that Brett simply ignored my point that his proposed wording is not factually accurate. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:55, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

The accuracy of the claim @FreeKnowledgeCreator: makes about a particular wording is not relevant to the discussion about whether to mention pseudoscience in the first few sentences. In the guidelines about the lead, it says specifically that "the notability of the article's subject is usually established in the first few sentences," not somewhere down near the bottom of the second paragraph. Moreover, "the emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic," and the fact that this is a pseudoscience is really important. If we can agree that the characterization should be more prominent, then we can work on finding appropriate wording.--Brett (talk) 12:59, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

After reading this talk page I think that the lede should mention PS. Other fringe articles do. See Acupuncture or any of the titles in this.--Akrasia25 (talk) 12:26, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

The lead does mention this, just further down, after its explanation of what Astrology is. Explaining what a thing is before people's attitudes to it is standard narrative order and gives readers a handle on why attitudes have formed this way. It is very hard, also, to allow anyone to make up their own minds when you have stamped an opinion on the subject in the first sentence. It is normal to describe a thing before stamping opinions on it. Britmax (talk) 12:44, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Again, "the notability of the article's subject is usually established in the first few sentences," not somewhere down near the bottom of the second paragraph. As Akrasia25 says, have a look at other pages. See, for example, alchemy or ancient astronauts.--Brett (talk) 02:54, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

PS is not an opinion, it is a fact about Astrology as every study has proven. It is as important to put in the first sentence. Whatever your opinions are about Astrology, the lede without this says that you can determine the course of human events thru the stars --Akrasia25 (talk) 13:04, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

• Following the example of "X is a (genre) (thing) that Y," "Astrology is the pseudoscientific study of the yadayadayada..." would be the best phrasing.

"Astrology is a pseudoscience, the goal of which is..." would be like saying "Star Wars is science fiction, presented in movie format, about..."

Or, following the example of alchemy, something along the lines of "Astrology was a protoscientific study of celestial objects that became a pseudoscientific means of divining information..." Ian.thomson (talk) 18:29, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

I completely agree. That is where I started. But then User:FreeKnowledgeCreator reverted the edit with the comment that this implies a non-existent scientific study thereof. The argument strikes me as silly, but rather than argue, I tried to adjust the wording. The goalposts keep moving though.--Brett (talk) 19:10, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

The science would be astronomy. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:11, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Again, I agree. But, their argument goes, that's not the scientific study of divining the future.--Brett (talk) 19:18, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

The most important thing about Astrology is that it is PS. It is completely part of the 'definition' or essence about it that horoscopes are on the same page as the cartoons. The rest of its definition follows after that. Also, we are writing an encyclopedia of truth and we should not be afraid that someone will try to vandalize it. WP has many tools and editors and page protections to prevent that from happening. It might be interesting to see if vandalism happens less if we bury the lede but it would not change my opinion that PS should in some way be in the first sentence. I really can not understand why some editors want to argue this discussion on the Astrology page when less clear situations exist on other PS topics. And finally I agree with Brett that the goalposts are changing. What about something like what ian.thomson suggested "Astrology was a protoscientific study of celestial objects that became a pseudoscientific means of divining information..." --Akrasia25 (talk) 03:45, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

There’s probably a due weight issue in comparing this article to acupuncture. The pseudoscience mention in the acu article gets a bump because (as it claims to be a medical treatment), lots of doctors take the time to publish reports stating that it’s a PS bag of crap. Astrology is more concerned with what color shoes you ought to wear when you go out to day and as such, is crapped on by scientific publications from a height far closer to ground level. I don’t think a comparison of alt-med articles is a reason to bring this article “in line”. A case by case analysis is due. If there’s really a massive preponderance of sources discussing the pseudoscientific nature of this subject, then it probably belongs further up in the lead. If sources focus more on the historical aspects, then those should take precedence. I recently brought up the article shamanism as an example, in which pseudoscience isn’t really mentioned, despite there being lots of it associated with the practice. The reason for this is that is isn’t discussed in scientific terms that much. Perhsps when glassy eyed crystal chuckers work out a way to market it within the medical community and end up poisoning people, then we’ll start calling that pseudoscience too. Edaham (talk) 05:35, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Factual accuracy

Akrasia25, in regard to this edit, it seems I have to point out again that the wording it introduces ("Astrology' is a pseudoscience, the goal of which is to find a means of divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the movements and relative positions of celestial objects") is not factually accurate. No, astrology does not have as its "goal" finding "a means of divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the movements and relative positions of celestial objects" because astrologers already believe they possess such a means. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 20:54, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Again, the particular wording is not at issue, so the claim is somewhat besides the point. You could easily reword it to "goal of which is to divine". --Brett (talk) 02:49, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

No, because that is not the goal. As FKC says, Astrologists think that they have already found this method: they call it "Astrology". Britmax (talk) 12:37, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

The goal of physics is to understand the physical world. The fact that we understand some of it already or that we have a method for doing so does not alter that. Astrologers don't think they have already divined everything that will ever happen in the future. The statement is true as given.

Also, as I observed above, the goalposts keep shifting. In your revert, you said it's not about the meaning, just that you can't have everything in the first sentence. Now it's about the meaning. If that's really the case, then be cooperative and suggest some wordings that you might accept rather than forcing me to play guessing games trying to figure out what excuse you're going to make up next.--Brett (talk) 19:16, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

I think you are concatenating two arguments here, which is why you think the goalposts are moving. "Astrologers are not looking for this, because in Astrology they think they have found it" is a different argument from "Astrology should/should not be called a pseudoscience in the first sentence". Britmax (talk) 20:12, 9 March 2019 (UTC)