Talk:Christopher Langan

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Semi-protected edit request on 12 December 2021

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On the article on Christoper Langan, in paragraph 5, Chris's scheduling and transportation problems were NOT at Reed College (where he lived in a dorm). They were rather at Montana state Univ., where Chris worked on a ranch and could only get a ride from a neighbor during afternoon hours. This is described in the book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell, which I have here at home. 71.163.243.166 (talk) 02:01, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. —Sirdog (talk) 03:41, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 31 August 2022

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Change "Christopher Michael Langan (born March 25, 1952) is an American horse rancher and autodidact who has been reported to score very highly on IQ tests.[1] .[3][4][5][6]" to "Christopher Michael Langan is the author of the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe, horse rancher, and autodidact who has been reported to score very highly on IQ tests." Tgoloboy (talk) 12:43, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:57, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

DOB and/or YOB

What are the BLP-good sources for these? Afaict, neither are in Gladwell's book. This [1] says c.1952. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:36, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And, while we're at it, something BLP-good that clearly states he is married to Gina Lynne LoSasso. I didn't find anything. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:37, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Re: a recent counter-revision

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång Yesterday, you undid a recent revision of mine that I think we should talk about.

Your justification was that the source provided was in fact fine. But in reality, it's just one man's interpretation of a single rather ambiguous sentence Chris said on Facebook. It's simply not the case that his interpretation of Chris' words is objectively correct.

The author wrote: "At times, his grandiose delusions reach epic proportions. He’s a 9/11 truther, but with a twist: not only does he believe Bush staged the terrorist attacks, he wrote that the motive was to distract the public from learning the “truth” about the CTMU."

His proof of this was that Chris Langan had said the following on Facebook: "The CTMU has already been "all over the news", mostly at the turn of the millennium (just as promised); then professed Christian GW Bush and his decidedly non-Christian neocon vultures did everything they could to distract everyone by immediately staging 9/11, passing the PATRIOT Act, and invading Iraq and Afghanistan, thus immersing us in these last few years of Middle Eastern bloodshed[...]".

In this context, "did everything they could to" does not necessarily imply that "distracting the public from learning about the CTMU" was a deliberate motive of theirs in "staging 9/11". I asked chatGPT whether it thought the phrasing was clear, and it agreed it was ambiguous. Dylancatlow1 (talk) 15:10, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As Wikipedians, we are supposed to summarize WP:RS, not editor's analysis of WP:RS, with or without chatGPT. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:09, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We don't have to include every claim made by every "reliable source," though. And what makes this a reliable source? At the end of the day, it's just one man's interpretation of a rather ambiguous sentence said on Facebook, which I doubt few had paid attention to until his interpretation was reproduced in this article. Why should readers of this page be presented with it as though his interpretation were objectively correct? It's simply not. Dylancatlow1 (talk) 15:24, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@GorillaWarfare, other interested, care to have an opinion? This concerns these edits:[2][3] Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:15, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At the very least, I think it's reasonable to quote Chris' actual words when presenting readers with "his claim" in this regard. What do you think? Dylancatlow1 (talk) 15:38, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's fine to include, though the sentence should probably be split so as to not be overlong. Dylancatlow1, as Gråbergs Gråa Sång mentions, Wikipedia relies on reliable sources' characterizations of events, not individual editors' characterizations. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 16:35, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]