Template:Did you know nominations/Ossian D'Ambrosio

Ossian D'Ambrosio

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• ... that Ossian D'Ambrosio regards his involvement in both modern Druidry and heavy metal music as good for his personal balance? Source: La Stampa ("Come Ossian riesca a conciliare tanta oscurità con la sua attività druidica alla festa celtica è presto spiegato. «La donna ha quattro archetipi, l'uomo soltanto due: una parte oscura e una solare, l'inverno e l'estate, lo sciamano e il cacciatore. Quando suono emerge la prima parte, quella più notturna, questo mi permette di stare in equilibrio." [How Ossian manages to reconcile so much darkness with his druidic activity at the Celtic festival is soon explained. 'The woman has four archetypes, the man only two: a dark and a sunny part, winter and summer, the shaman and the hunter. When I play the first part emerges, the more nocturnal one, this allows me to stay in balance.])
  • ALT1: ... that Ossian D'Ambrosio, the founder of a modern druid group in Italy, first approached modern Paganism through heavy metal music? Source: World Religions and Spirituality Project ("In 1988, he founded the Opera IX, a black metal band that is among the most long-running in Italy. This bond with music is very important to him, because it is through this musical genre that he approached paganism for the first time during his adolescence, thanks to the lyrics of various foreign bands.")
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Promethean gap

Created by Ffranc (talk). Self-nominated at 10:05, 3 August 2022 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited: - Possible issue with the citation on the second hook
• Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Of the two I think the second hook is the more interesting one, however the source used for that hook (which has only been discussed briefly at RSN is being flagged as having questionable reliability via the User:Headbomb/unreliable script. It appears to be an encyclopedia that is itself citing other sources, but it does appear to be a less-than-stellar source. Would you be able to find a different source that supports this content? That's the only potential issue I can find. Aoidh (talk) 23:01, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Added a supplementary Italian-language source ("...l'autore, che da tempo di occupa di occulto, prima come musicista della seminale band di pagan metal Opera IX, poi come druido e organizzatore del raduno celtico di Beltane." [...the author, who has been involved in the occult for a long time, first as a musician of the seminal pagan metal band Opera IX, later as druid and organizer of the Celtic Beltane gathering.] But I also kept Wrldrels, because I don't see what the problem is, and per WP:RSUE we should prioritise English-language sources. Wrldrels is written and edited by scholars and neutral in content and tone. In the link you posted the criticism consists of guilt by association with Massimo Introvigne and his organisation CESNUR. A quick search gives the indication that Wikipedia's problem with CESNUR has to do with its coverage of Scientology. There was a wave of interest in that on Wikipedia and other parts of the Internet in the late 2000s, and apparently CESNUR wasn't deemed critical enough. Whether that's a fair assessment or not, Wrldrels isn't CESNUR, the article here isn't by Introvigne, and the new religious movement here isn't Scientology. Ffranc (talk) 11:26, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

I did a little more digging and it does seem like you're right that the CESNUR link is the issue with World Religions and Spirituality Project, which I was fine with discounting initially but I did more digging and it turns out that one of the two authors of your source is Stefania Palmisano, who it turns out serves on the CESNUR board of directors (the other author is a grad student). Given CESNUR's apparent biases in the area that this source is discussing, I don't think we can use it as a reliable source, especially per WP:SCHOLARSHIP as I could find no evidence of it being reviewed by the wider academic community in any way. Unfortunately the lastampa.it source doesn't say he approached modern paganism because of music, just that he was a musician before he was a druid and organizer. If possible I would suggest finding a more solid source for the second hook, but how about this for a hook:

• ALT2: ... that Ossian D'Ambrosio is an Italian heavy metal musician, artisan jeweler, journalist, and modern Druidry organizer?
• ALT3: ... that Ossian D'Ambrosio is a jeweler, an ecological modern druid organizer, author, journalist, and the founder of a symphonic heavy metal band?

It's interesting that he does all of those things and might be a good alternative to the hooks above. Do you think you'd be able to find a source for the journalist part that isn't the the WRSP source? - Aoidh (talk) 00:01, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm fine with any of the alts. I removed "journalist" from the article and switched to "writer" in the lead, since he has written two book. The one other source I found for journalism only mentions that he writes for his organisation's publication, so it might be limited to that, and then it's not really worth mentioning.

But I still don't buy that there's any problem with the WRSP. The academic credentials are clearly there, and if there is to be an exception you need to provide something more substantial than guilt by association with CESNUR. Stefania Palmisano is an associate professor at the University of Turin and responsible for various academic publications. WRSP is directed by David G. Bromley, a professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University, which publishes the website. Lots of mainstream scholars are or have been involved in CESNUR in various capacities, because it's a prominent institution within the study of new religious movements. Having a connection to CESNUR doesn't mean that the credibility and reliability of other publications suddenly disappear, as if CESNUR carries some kind of plague that everything else must be kept at a safe distance from. Evidently, that isn't how scholars treat it: neither Palmisano, Bromley nor the Virginia Commonwealth University are treated as suspicious and unreliable. Ffranc (talk) 13:22, 11 August 2022 (UTC)