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The "prophet Muhammad" (lowercase 'p')[edit]

UrielAcosta seems to be on a mission, systematically searching through Wikipedia to find "[p]rophet Muhammad" and remove the word "prophet" (even if it's in lowercase), with the edit summary: Removed religious bias per MOS:PBUH because he's not Wikipedia's prophet.

The latter link points to NPOV policy.

I and other editors have queried these edits on UrielAcosta's talk page, but UrielAcosta disagreed and soon after, s/he deleted the talk page entries, and continued to make these mass edits.

My mild objection, as a non-Muslim, is that "prophet" (lowercase 'p') is descriptive and informative, and is in accordance with MOS, so when the word "prophet" has been removed, I've instead re-added it as "Islamic prophet Muhammad" (for greater clarity). To me, this is no different than referring to "the novelist Doris Lessing", or "the British politician Rishi Sunak".

MOS:MUHAMMAD actually says this: recommended action is to simplify and NPOV to just "Muhammad" except when it is the first reference in an article, or the first reference in the lead, in which case it may be rendered as "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" if necessary.

I'd appreciate the input of other editors here, please. Thanks. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 09:20, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pertinent discussions held on this subject with UrielAcosta] arehere and here. I addressed the rationale "because he's not Wikipedia's prophet" by observing Pablo Escobar is not Wikipedia's drug lord, but it wouldn't be wrong to write of somebody, "It was on his trip to Panama that he became acquainted with drug lord Pablo Escobar.". Their bizarre response: ... you are 100% incorrect: Pablo Escobar IS Wikipedia's drug lord, because "drug lord" has a specific definition in English and Escobar qualifies under that definition. I mean, huh? (Have you ever heard Escobar described as "Wikipedia's drug lord"?) Then I pointed out that WP:PBUH explicitly provides for the usage that they've been obliterating, distinguishing honoring someone from merely identifying them in context on first mention, and it fell on deaf ears. When I saw that UrielAcosta had taken this campaign up again with vigor after having been reproved by at least three people, I was ready to report them to WP:ANI or somewhere, so I thank User:Esowteric for raising it here. Largoplazo (talk) 11:43, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Relevant discussion: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles#NPOV usage of "the prophet Muhammad" or "the prophet" Some1 (talk) 11:54, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've instead re-added it as "Islamic prophet Muhammad" (for greater clarity). Did UrielAcosta revert these edits (by removing "Islamic prophet")? If they did, then that would be against what MOS:PBUH recommends (i.e. adding "the Islamic prophet" if necessary for clarity purposes). If they didn't revert, then they're just following what MOS:PBUH recommends. Some1 (talk) 12:14, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, they changed "prophet Muhammed" to "Muhammed", but left alone my later changes to "Islamic prophet Muhammed". However, they did this to the first (or only) mention of the name Muhammed in the two articles that were on my watchlist that were affected. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 12:19, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The only reason I bring this up is that these are mass edits, so a whole lot of people may either not notice the changes or choose to change the entries to "the prophet Muhammad", when they could either be left alone or the passionate editor could make the changes themselves and avoid work for others. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 12:22, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t agree with the removal of “prophet” for the first usage of Muhammad in an article because the MOS clearly allows for the usage in that case. That being said, I don’t think it’s necessary to go back and add it to articles where it was removed. I don’t agree that “Muhammad” (with the wikilink) would cause confusion to the reader. Mokadoshi (talk) 12:16, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but how many Wikipedia articles would simply name Rishi Sunak because users could easily click on the link to find out who he is or what he is, when it is far simpler and more informative to refer to them in the first instance as (say) British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak? Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 12:43, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t think specifying “British Prime Minister” is necessary every time. In some cases it is helpful, like the usage of “Senator Obama” verses “President Obama” can clarify the period of his career when an event occurred. I don’t think it’s an appropriate comparison to this case. Probably a better comparison would be “author J.K. Rowling” verses just “J.K. Rowling” and the former seems to be rare. Mokadoshi (talk) 13:56, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've been asked to give my two pennies worth on this matter as I was made aware of Uriel Costa's editing on Bust of Abd al-Rahman III, Cadrete, a page I had created. I did not know, but I was barely surprised, that Uriel Costa then went on to make the same edit on a variety of other pages. This is my view on the matter:
The page I saw related to a Muslim monarch. Monarchs are known by their given name. Removing "prophet" before Muhammad could be confusing as many monarchs, including in Islamic Spain where I was writing about, were also called Muhammad.
I just put "prophet" as a disambiguator. I think it's quite clear in the context we were not talking about a prophet of the Mormons. Uriel Costa removed this completely, he did not even negotiate by saying "Islamic prophet".
You could say that the majority of the world does not see Muhammad as a prophet, nor has any human been peer-reviewed to be a prophet. But at the same time, we have the page at Guru Nanak when the majority of the world has probably not even heard of him, and no independent study has proven that he had more spiritual wisdom than anyone else in the world. The term Pope comes from "father" and the majority of the world does not see him that way, but we still title the page Pope Francis.
My previous edit was not endorsing Islam, a religion I do not follow, and instead of making it more specific, getting rid of "prophet" completely made it less specific. Unknown Temptation (talk) 16:14, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Pope" clearly means that he has a particular role in the Catholic church. Similarly for other examples given. Simply "prophet" is an assertion in the voice of Wikipedia which a majority of people would disagree with. "Islamic prophet" implicitly says that Islam considers him to have that status/role/capability. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:30, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The problem we are having here is that in those cases when it is necessary or even simply better to clarify (this often depends on context and background knowledge of subject matter), UrielAcosta is still systematically removing it based on a literal reading of MOS:PBUH, to the point of edit warring over it, without engaging in substantial discussion.
An example of where mentioning "prophet" was better because of subject matter context is here, an example of where it was necessary to disambiguate from other Muhammads named in the article here (cf. [1]).
In my mind, because the problem is an overly literal reading, the solution to this is to update MOS:PBUH and have it explicitly allow "the prophet Muhammad" in cases where it is needed for disambiguation or clarification. My own proposal to simply always allow it (because all relevant RS are in fact using it constantly and casually) was perhaps too ambitious, but simply instating Some1's counterproposal here would already solve a lot of the issues (Some1's proposal, but adjusted to lowercase 'prophet'):
(The) Holy Prophet in place of, or preceding, "Muhammad" — recommended action is to use just "Muhammad" except when it is the first reference in an article, or the first reference in the lead, in which case it may be rendered as "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" if necessary. In cases where ambiguity or confusion exists, the "prophet Muhammad" or "the prophet" may be used as a variation on "Muhammad".
Regards, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 16:32, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Re "overly literal reading"—except for the part about continuing to ignore except when it is the first reference in an article, or the first reference in the lead, in which case it may be rendered as "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" if necessary even when it's pointed out to them point-blank. The reason Muhammad gets his own provision in the first place is because of a matter very specific to him: the practice of some people of writing "PBUH" after every use of his name, and referring to him as "the Prophet Muhammad" or even just "the Prophet" on every occasion. There's nothing about the provision that suggests that Muhammad is less deserving than anyone else in history of being introduced in a text in the way that people are very commonly introduced, by the use of context. If anyone's being non-neutral, it's UrielAcosta, for deeming Muhammad not to deserve to be identified in such a manner. Largoplazo (talk) 16:46, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that they are deliberately ignoring the part of the MOS that they don't seem to agree with. Their he's not Wikipedia's prophet breaks the very policy that they are citing as an excuse to expunge the word from every article. M.Bitton (talk) 16:53, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The changes en masse by UrielAcosta are unhelpful at best as they needlessly create a lot of work for others. M.Bitton (talk) 16:37, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in agreement with the responses expressed by @M.Bitton, @Largoplazo, and @Apaugasma. It's evident that there's an issue of overzealous editing on the part of UrielAcosta. As others have noted, even in cases where, for purely practical reasons as MOS allows, it was better to leave a term rather than removing it. I would encourage @UrielAcosta to take a breather and once again go through WP:5P5, if it might provide a newfound sense of direction and clarity. StarkReport (talk) 16:54, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We had this one at Regency of Algiers also. I am not certain if UrielAcosta realizes just how many people can be named Mohammed in an article that covers 400 years of North African history, but this was righteously reverted by the article's primary author. I urge UrielAcosta to get a grip and find another mission. Elinruby (talk) 05:57, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is the place where we refer to the Islamic prophet Mohammed. I believe that before Uriel Acosta came along it possibly said the Prophet Mohammed, This may be slightly better but seems like a really silly thing to spend time on, like arguing about whether Joan of Arc's visions were real. The thing to do is report the claim without endorsing, it, yes? [2] The sharifs were a religious nobility who claimed descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and often members of the Naqib al-ashraf institution of the Ottoman Empire.[405] I spent a LOT of time on this section and made zero claims about Mohammed in wikivoice. I am not real upset about this either way but I consider myself an interested party and I oppose a mandatory naked Mohammed. Please ping me if this escalates. Going on a rampage about the word prophet is bigotry to my mind, just like it would be to insist on a disclaimer in an article about the visions of Joan of Arc or the incarnations of Vishnu.

This is merely what some people believe or believed at some point, period, end of story, and I submit that it is neither possible nor desirable to explain a religious dynasty whose power stemmed from its claim of descent from the prophet Mohammed without mentioning the prophet Mohammed. If some people feel that we need to specify that he was an Islamic prophet rather than a Hindu or an Buddhist or a Catholic prophet, ok fine, whatever.

Btw, ctl-f finds 21 instances of "Mohammed" in that article, a few of whom are mentioned more than once, and at least one of whom is the author of a reference. I think a serious count would give use ten or eleven men named Mohammed plus some honorific. Elinruby (talk) 10:23, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I fail to see why uses of the word prophet [Name] should be considered improper or require editing out when talking about a figure (notwithstanding their historicity) identified by a sufficiently significant amount of people as a prophet of their religion, creed, or belief system — especially, if it serves purposes of disambiguation. And I disagree with @North8000′s assessment of a distinct treatment of the epithets pope and prophet, since both are similar religious positions, claiming to form a bridge between the divine and humankind. The position of pope is as limited and debated among Christian creeds as the question of “Who is the real, final, ultimate prophet?” is in various branches of Islam. Konanen (talk) 15:03, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Shooks, I did not intend this to be a reply to @Elinruby, sorry. Konanen (talk) 15:03, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Respectfully, IMO your argument against my point has flaws. The widespread meaning of "Pope" is a particular position in the catholic church. Saying "Pope" in the voice of Wikipedia means that they hold that role in the Catholic church. The claim in the voice of Wikipedia does not go any further than that. An atheist can take it to mean only that. An unattributed statement in the voice of Wikipeda that someone is a prophet is a statement in the voice of Wikipedia goes far beyond just saying that they have a particular role in a a particular religion. Simple attribution of the statement to Islam solves all of that. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:35, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For statements like "Joshua was a prophet who [...]" or "when the prophet Muhammad came to Mecca [...]", if the implication of the statement is 'hey, this is the prophet of God, so better listen to him', then it's obviously religiously non-neutral and problematic. If the implication of the statement is 'this figure is considered a prophet in the religion(s) we are talking about in this context', then it's perfectly fine. Not only perfectly fine, but also often necessary, because the status of these figures as prophets is often an important part of the encyclopedic information we are trying to convey. The current restrictions in MOS:MUHAMMAD often make this difficult or impossible. Readers are intelligent enough to pick out the intended implication, they don't need the current censorship to get that we are not declaring these figures to be actual prophets in wiki-voice, nor are the relevant RS who are all of them (the challenge made here to find an exception still stands) routinely referring to Muhammad as "the prophet" or "the prophet Muhammad". ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 12:32, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Apaugasma:You made a good point there which I think is that these are often obviously (just) statements by Islam rather than statements by / in the voice of Wikipedia. North8000 (talk) 16:17, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Removing "The Prophet" in this way appears to be agenda driven. I am not a Muslim and I see no issue with the phrase being "The Prophet Muhammed" being used when it is referencing the founder of Islam Elmmapleoakpine (talk) 15:23, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As noted above, I'm in agreement with inclusion of the word but, used in this way, "prophet" is a common noun and shouldn't be capitalized. Largoplazo (talk) 19:27, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. "The prophet Mohammed" is ok but "The Prophet Mohammed" runs afoul of MOS:MUHAMMAD specifically and more broadly MOS:HONORIFIC. In fact it would be better to say "the Islamic prophet Mohammed" and that is what the guidance says: except when it is the first reference in an article, or the first reference in the lead, in which case it may be rendered as "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" if necessary. If this were equivalent to "The Pope" it would be phrased just as "The Prophet" when obviously Mohammed doesn't occupy the proper noun of "The Prophet" in English. —DIYeditor (talk) 00:38, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So is anyone going to get upset if at Regency of Algiers, many sections down in the article where we mention the prophet Mohammed after much discussion of sultans and Muhammeds and Amirs and Hassans and Husseins, I remove the word Islamic? The article has many images that indicate that Islam may well have been the prevalent religion and it seems blindingly obvious what religion he would have been a prophet of. He isn't even the subject of the completely secular statement involved. (quoted above) I am hearing maybe not? Elinruby (talk) 04:26, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you. The context is already well established. For comparison, France has the sentence "The French perfume industry is the world leader in its sector and is centred on the town of Grasse." Chanel No. 5, in contrast, has "... obtained exclusively from the fields of the valley of Siagne above the French town of Grasse." The latter could perhaps have dispensed with "French" but at that point, especially since the immediate topic is operations in the US. In the former the addition of "French" would seem belabored. Similar considerations apply to identifying prophets, priests, nuns, popes, rabbis: no need to say he's the Islamic prophet Muhammad in a place where its explicit statement would lead many to say "Duh". Largoplazo (talk) 16:05, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Belated, but I agree with many above: of course "Islamic prophet Muhammad", "prophet Muhammad", and "Muhammad" should all all appropriate options per common sense, and most editors working on an article are able to judge which of these is appropriate for clarity in a given context. Of course "Muhammad" on its own (linked or not) is insufficient in many, many contexts to avoid confusion, regardless of whether "Islamic prophet Muhammad" is mentioned somewhere above; while "Islamic prophet Muhammad" is needlessly inconcise and redundant in a large proportion of contexts, and can be shortened to "prophet Muhammad" where some disambiguating is still needed. As Apaugasma suggested above, MOS:MUHAMMAD should be amended if it's being understood otherwise.

We should also note that it is absolutely commonplace among English-language academic and scholarly references, including those written by non-Muslim authors aimed at a general audience, to refer to Muhammad as "the Prophet" (in uppercase), the "Prophet Muhammad" etc. As Wikipedia is meant to reflect reliable sources, it is rather counter-intuitive to take a dogmatic view against this, and inserts an unusual hoop for editors writing on the topic to jump through. Lowercase "prophet", as mentioned, should be plenty sufficient for our purposes here. R Prazeres (talk) 17:01, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Rent control in the United States and Rent regulation pages[edit]

There is a long-standing dispute over pages [3] and [4].

The dispute concerns the following statement: ‘There is a consensus among economists that rent control reduces the quality and quantity of rental housing units’.

The statement was added by Snooganssnoogans on 24 December 2020 at 14:54, without prior discussion on the talk page.[5]

Several editors have shown opposition and/or raised concerns about the veracity and/or neutrality of such statement and/or the sources provided, as can be seen in the talk pages [6] and [7], evidencing that there is no consensus among editors on the content of the page.

Several users act as custodians of this page, systematically deleting references to indexed scientific articles, or reverting edits by users contrary to their views (e.g. this scientific reference [8], was deleted here [9]).

Several users have been targeted and banned by editors who oversee the site, accused of vandalism by those who uphold an statement that was unexpectedly added to the article without previous discussion in the talk page.

It appears that the sentence lacks the required consensus and does not seem to adhere to a neutral point of view.

139.47.66.252 (talk) 22:06, 3 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Courtesy links:

Rent regulation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Rent control in the United States (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
2021 NPOVN discussion with formal closure about both articles at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard/Archive 89 § Rent control: "on consensus among economists"
2019 RfC at Talk:Rent regulation/Archive 1 § RfC about describing extent of disagreement
After that RfC, most discussion about "Rent regulation" is on its talk page proper.
"Rent control in the United States" discussions begin at Talk:Rent control in the United States/Archive 1 § A Philosophical Reminder.
The discussion on Talk:Rent control in the United States itself is from 2022 with the exception of one comment.

Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 04:22, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The 2021 NPOVN closure does not appear to reflect any consensus. It explicitly states that the statement in question should be replaced or rephrased, and no such correction has been made or allowed since. 139.47.66.252 (talk) 11:57, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is not so much 'a long-standing dispute' as a single IP-hopping editor who periodically shows up to attempt to blank parts of the article and make repetitive arguments and/or personal attacks on the talk pages. Talk:Rent regulation had to be semi protected because of this a few months ago. They have gotten many, many responses on the relevant talk pages, but the WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT continues nonetheless. MrOllie (talk) 12:16, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PS: This IP is almost certainly Pedrote112 (talk · contribs) evading their block again. MrOllie (talk) 12:54, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is this yet another attack by this user on anyone who does not think like him/her in order to prevent the article from being reviewed? 139.47.66.252 (talk) 15:17, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see problems here. This removal seems justified, if it's an individual study it should be added to the body of the article and not to the lede, unless it's super-transformational and has overturned the scientific consensus, which I doubt. Alaexis_¿question? 20:54, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What scientific consensus? There is neither scientific consensus nor consensus among editors. Why do you consider it legitimate to withdraw this scientific article and other articles that have been cited on the talk page?88.12.251.41 (talk) 15:01, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The consensus documented in the cited sources. Pretending that those sources don't exist isn't going to work. Nor will you be able to undermine them by citing minority viewpoints or individual data points. MrOllie (talk) 01:45, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The statement as presented is implicit OR. It implies that the purpose of rent control was to increase the quality and quantity of rental units, and therefore the policy was a failure.

To provide an example, the average cost of a one bedroom apartment in Toronto, where new buildings are not subject to rent control, is CAD2,513. But many tenants are paying half that or less because of rent control for the same or greater square footage. Not many of them are moving to new units that offer newer stoves and refrigerators. TFD (talk) 02:17, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Snooganssnoogans, I wonder if you could comment on this. TFD (talk) 02:30, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The statement is yours, you added it without prior discussion in the talk page. You are the one that has to gain a consensus that doesn't exist. 2A02:9130:9435:1805:DDDA:5696:E2AD:B4F7 (talk) 12:07, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The statement was added by Snooganssnoogans without any previous discussion in the talk page. 88.12.251.41 (talk) 15:34, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Need some patient people at Jordan Peterson[edit]

I have just spent a couple of hours I will never get back at this page explaining:

What is a revert
What is a one-revert restriction on a page
What it means to have a personal one-revert restriction
What is another editor's talk page comment
What is Wikivoice and why we do not use it to say "politically correct"
Why we don't randomly name drop politicians in an article about a YouTube misogynist
Why this is even more so when the politician in question is the once and likely future premier of Alberta, who is female.
Why it really doesn't matter how we as Wikipedia editors think she should feel about the mention
Why the alleged billions of times the misogynist Youtuber's videos have been played matters not at all
Why his alleged ranking at some download site doesn't matter either
What is precedent in a common law legal system

The following remain to be addressed:

use of student newspaper in an evaluation of his research
Article variously says he resigned, was no longer on the faculty, was asked to resign or put teaching on hold temporarily due to other project.
What is ONUS and who has it
Whatever this is: Peterson's work has generated billions of views from all over the world. Meanwhile, Rachel Notley is some minor politician in Canada. How many people outside of Canada knows about her or cares about her? Remove her from the article if you want. Obscure people shouldn't be allowed to parasite on the success of famous people. Trakking (talk) 10:28, 16 May 2024
whatever this is also: Some people are trying hard to make this encyclopedic article be much more sensational and provocative than it ought to be. Trakking (talk) 22:33, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

and much more. I am sure I am forgetting stuff. Did I mention that a lot of the sources seem to fail verification? I have not yet run Wikiblame though. Please send whisky and psychiatrists. The editor mentioned a above is swedish and rather new. The other is @Springee:. Elinruby (talk) 12:23, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Trakking: Elinruby (talk) 12:24, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah the comment about Notley had me entirely confused. I'm already there but more hands make light work. Simonm223 (talk) 12:46, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Re "an article about a YouTube misogynist" -- in fact it's an article about Jordan Peterson. Re Rachel Notley: the mention has existed in the article since at least May 2017, but I didn't interpret the talk page comments as firmly opposing removal. I won't post there since I know that people can be tbanned for doing so. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:26, 16 May 2024

Yes. that is the YouTube misogynist in question. Elinruby (talk) 19:46, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure we should be sending additional psychological professionals, seeing what carnage has been wrought by just one of them. 🤔 jp×g 🗯️ 08:39, 19 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I mean the College of Psychologists of Ontario are deeply embarrassed by him. Simonm223 (talk) 12:24, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

update:Various shiny objects have distracted me from this. Possibly the one-revert question has been addressed; I at least have had an answer that satisfied *my* questions about this for now. I do not know if the other editors on the talk page agree. I remain preoccupied and busy RL. Some of those editors have said that they don't see why mentioning Notley is a PoV problem, but on the other hand they do not object to the mention being removed. Removing it would resolve that matter in my eyes. If that has not happened I may do that sometime soon. As far as I know the rest of this remains unaddressed. Elinruby (talk) 10:33, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Elinruby: You really ought keep your (potentially defamatory) personal opinions about BLPs to yourself. "Misogyny" and "misogynist" appear only twice in the article currently and not in a way that would lend to them being listed in the lead along with "psychologist, author, and media commentator". I daresay maybe you ought not edit articles you have such strong opinions on if you feel compelled to use the slurs when discussing the person. This is no reflection on my personal opinion of Jordan Peterson. I don't like misogyny or misogynists, and I don't know much about Peterson other than that it is definitely not someone I would take advice from. I just think you are pushing the limits of WP:BLP and might be edging into having your comments refactored:

Do not label people with contentious labels, loaded language, or terms that lack precision, unless a person is commonly described that way in reliable sources. Instead use clear, direct language and let facts alone do the talking.
Remove immediately any contentious material about a living person that: 2. is an original interpretation or analysis of a source, or a synthesis of sources
WP:LIBEL

—DIYeditor (talk) 00:54, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@DIYeditor: can you restate that please? I think I must be misunderstanding you. Elinruby (talk) 04:04, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At the least it looks biased to me to be bad-mouthing a living person beyond what the article describes the person as being. Maybe it's true (or not), but to me "misogynist" is a strong and potentially defamatory label to use, and it doesn't seem to be widely applied to him from what his article says. Is it necessary, useful and appropriate to express distaste for the subjects of articles? —DIYeditor (talk) 08:28, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the issue here is that you have posted a legal threat and a personal attack from what his article says. You do understand that I posted here because I was questioning the article's neutrality? It does indeed say, based on the subject's YouTube posts and some hagiography in student newspapers, that he is essentially the second coming of Carl Jung, to the point of including the Carl Jung navbar in the article. I thought the above was a decent start on the article's problems, but we can discuss misogyny if people want. I would have thought that this was obvious from the use of the word on RS, the description of women in his own voice as "witches" and forces of chaos, and his contention that they are responsible for murders by incels, a situation to be remedied by what he calls "mandatory monogamy." I will be happy to provide sources for these statements, and yes, I agree, actually, that they are not in the article. Or weren't the last time I looked.Elinruby (talk) 01:00, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, here, let me by all means introduce some sources into this conversation. Sources include but are not limited to:

Grant Maxwell (February 20, 2018). "Why Are So Many Young Men Drawn to Jordan Peterson's Intellectual Misogyny?". American Philosophical Association.
Nellie Bowles (May 18, 2018). "Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy: He says there's a crisis in masculinity. Why won't women — all these wives and witches — just behave?". New York Times. "He was angry at God because women were rejecting him," Mr. Peterson says of the Toronto killer. "The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That's actually why monogamy emerges. Mr. Peterson does not pause when he says this. Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn't make either gender happy in the end.
Burgis, Ben; Bongard Hamilton, Conrad; McManus, Matthew; Trejo, Marion (2020). Myth and Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson. John Hunt Publishing. ISBN 1789045541. His willingness to say misogynistic and transphobic things, and support patriarchal institutions is damning
Nesbitt-Larking, Paul (July 2022). "Constructing narratives of masculinity: Online followers of Jordan B. Peterson". Psychology of Men & Masculinities. 23 (3): 309–320.
Hadley Freeman (23 May 2018). "Jordan Peterson may be a 'public intellectual', but his latest theory isn't very clever: The academic believes violent men can be cured by the love of a good woman through enforced monogamy. And he can't understand why people are laughing at him?". The Guardian. Peterson felt compelled to blog about it, explaining in his usual "Look, you may not like it, but I'm just stating the scientific truth, guys" tone, that he wasn't advocating the "arbitrary dealing out of damsels to incels", just that scientific facts show that "socially enforced monogamous conventions decrease male violence". How any of this explains his theory that feminine is chaos and masculine is order was left unexplored
Bethan Iley. "From Andrew Tate to Jordan Peterson, a phoney zero-sum-game argument sits at the heart of anti-feminist backlash". The Conversattion UK. Take Peterson's conceptualisation of order and chaos as reflecting masculinity and femininity...to raise these issues as an argument against more freedom for women is to feed the false idea that men and women are battling for power
Revesz, Rachael (21 January 2018). "Misogynistic abuse against Cathy Newman is a symbol of the backlash against the MeToo movement: When white men feel they are losing power, any level of nastiness is possible – and much power has been ceded of late". The Independent. No matter what she would have asked, a woman daring to question his expertise was bound to have ramifications. Especially in 2018.
SANNEH, KELEFA (March 5, 2018). "SORT YOURSELF OUT, BUCKO". Vol. 94, no. 3. New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. When he does battle as a culture warrior, especially on television, Peterson sometimes assumes the role of a strident anti-feminist, intent on ending the oppression of males by destroying the myth of male oppression. (He once referred to his critics as "rabid harpies.")
Charlotte Lydia Riley, ed. (20 November 2020). "Jordan Peterson, the alt-right and neo-fascism". The free speech wars. doi:10.7765/9781526152558.00027. ISBN 9781526152558. women of colour calling out racism are routinely 'shut down' for 'incivility'. A guide to free speech politics in the age of Peterson, this chapter shows how inescapably raced, classed and gendered the exclusionary practice of 'free speech' really is, and what this tells us about liberalism's inadequacy in responding to neo-fascism.
Southey, Tabatha (November 17, 2017). "Is Jordan Peterson the stupid man's smart person? Tabatha Southey delves into University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson's work and finds his secret sauce—and what makes his work unnerving". Maclean's. What he's telling you is that certain people—most of them women and minorities—are trying to destroy not only our freedom to spite nonbinary university students for kicks, but all of Western civilization and the idea of objective truth itself. He's telling you that when someone tells you racism is still a problem and that something should be done about it, they are, at best, a dupe and, at worst, part of a Marxist conspiracy to destroy your way of life. Peterson says he only thinks of it as a "non-violent war." But when you insist the stakes are that high, the opposition that pernicious, who's to say where the chips will fall?
Annabelle Dufourcq; Annemie Halsema; Katrine Smiet; Karen Vintges, eds. (2024). "Power, Sex, and Myth: Beauvoir, Paglia, and Peterson". Purple Brains: Feminisms at the Limits of Philosophy. Radboud University Press. p. 67. doi:10.54195/HSOV8373. ISBN 978 94 9329 639 8. The known stands for order, form, and culture, symbolically linked to the masculine. The unknown is chaos, substance, and nature, symbolically associated with the feminine. Chaos is origin, source, mother, matter, and order must restrain and shape that chaos.
Mannella, Francesco (2020). "General Insights From: "The Intellectual Dark-Web": A Case Study of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro". Intersect: The Stanford Journal of Science, Technology, and Society. 14 (3). Stanford University. they can be watched for hours espousing conservative doctrine to their predominantly male, adolescent audience in hopes of maintaining the status quo, and eschewing activism (Weiss & Winter, 2018). There are quite a number of figures in this group; however, this paper will be focusing primarily on the two most notable members: Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. Elinruby (talk) 01:00, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure where I think the issue here is that you have posted a legal threat and a personal attack came from but what you've listed looks like good groundwork for inclusion in the article. —DIYeditor (talk) 05:02, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am not particularly interested in pursuing the matter, but "maybe you ought not edit articles you have such strong opinions on if you feel compelled to use the slurs" does assume I said this with no basis, and you did say I was committing libel. But fine; apparently you now think otherwise. Glad to hear it, and glad we got that cleared up. I am still preoccupied with a different problem, but my primary concern, above and beyond all this background, is that the article devoted a great deal of real estate to quoting his very fringe statements about Bill C-16 and most likely still does Elinruby (talk) 07:59, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:LABEL is quite clear that “misogynist” is a value-laden label to be avoided unless widely used by reliable sources. If the source evidence is insufficient to state it in wikivoice in a BLP, then it should be avoided on Talk too, per WP:BLPTALK. A personal attack against the subject of the article, even if you think it is justified, is WP:BATTLEGROUND noise that doesn’t help make content decisions. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 08:33, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, apparently you have not noticed the dozen sources above. The article still extensively quotes the subject making extremely hyperbolic statements, in addition to his advocacy of involuntary sexual servitude for women. But by all means, let's debate whether it is polite to include some secondary sources in the article that say so. Elinruby (talk) 09:09, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do those reliable sources widely state, in their own voice, that the subject is a misogynist? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 09:11, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

feel free to click handily provided links. I would start with the New York Times. They are also afaict all extremely RS, certainly better in any event that the student newspapers currently in the article. More sources exist to say that the subject's claims about Canadian constitutional law are to put it politely only tenously related to fact, which is actually the primary concern. The stuff about women is opinion, no matter how alarming it is that somebody with his reach has been saying this stuff. Elinruby (talk) 09:24, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I checked a couple, and have now checked the NYT source too. It doesn’t call him a misogynist. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 09:31, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Only three of those sources explicitly mention the term misogyny—one is some random blog, another is a polemic book called ”A leftist critique,” and the third does not even apply the term to Jordan Peterson specifically; it just simply states that ”well, there’s misogyny on the internet.” This post is a clear example of WP:OR and WP:BATTLEGROUND. Trakking (talk) 09:30, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) I see this escalated while I was typing. That "random blog" has an editorial policy and a submissions process and is published by a professional organization. And yeah, the NYT times only quotes him saying that the solution to a guy running over random pedestrians is "mandatory monogamy" for women with men who might do such things. Speaking of polemic. The book is a published source that beats a student newspaper any day, and the source you are dismissing as "there's misogyny on the internet" has his name in the title, so.... not so much. But I am always happy to hear from an editor who thinks that a former provincial premier is somehow "parasiting" the subject by being mentioned in his Wikipedia article. Have you removed that mention yet, Trakking? Surely if I want it gone and you think it's parasitic, a meeting of the minds is possible somewhere? But Macleans, the Guardian and the other sources all talk about hateful statements about women and pretty much everyone who is not an incel white male, so... OR is a pretty ridiculous dismissal, given that all of these sources are better than 90% of what's in the article now, ie mostly YouTube and student newspapers. But without getting into the article's current content, if it's reliably sourced, it ain't OR. As opposed for example to quoting the subject on what his expertise is, even though he doesn't seem to be the lead author of many of those articles at all. So how about we talk about what he says about the law, hmm? Elinruby (talk) 10:00, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to log in but keep kicking to other places 2600:100A:B03C:8E18:0:34:799D:E901 (talk) 11:38, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Irgun[edit]

See [10]. I reverted a similar edit a few days ago. The issue I see is do we describe the Irgun in articles the way their article does or does Wikipedia call then terrorists. Doug Weller talk 17:20, 19 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See King David Hotel bombing which is what the Irgun is notorious for, obviously terrorism, and the attack is described in the lead as a "terrorist attack". In the section Terrorism, it says "The bombing has been discussed in literature about the practice and history of terrorism. It has been called one of the most lethal terrorist attacks of the 20th century." When a preponderance of sources are all unequivocal about calling it terrorism, it's terrorism.

I see an editor objected on the grounds that we don't do that for Hamas but there is no unanimity of sourcing for that (the BBC being one notable example of a refusal to call them that). Selfstudier (talk) 17:41, 19 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The way Irgun describes them is, imo, fine. This was (to my knowledge) way before proscription was a thing, so it's probably the best we're going to get if we're never going to be able to say "described by A, B, and C as a terrorist org". Extending that, however, to Ze'ev Jabotinsky is a bit weird to me. Although al-Qaeda's designation is mentioned on Osama Bin Laden. Yr Enw (talk) 18:26, 19 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The same editor who adds mentions of terrorism to Irgun-related articles also removes mentions of terrorism related to Palestinian factions [11]. However, when reverted, they label the revert as "vandalism" [12]. This could indicate a possible conduct issue. ABHammad (talk) 07:55, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have a similar view to Yr Enw in cases like this. Also, I'm a fan of aligning contentious labels to the labeling used in main articles about the thing being given a contentious label in another article. And if you are going to avoid the use of Wiki-voice via words like "proscribed", it seems better to say who is doing the proscribing. I'm not a big fan of the fuzzy wording "unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject" in WP:TERRORIST as a decision procedure because, in practice, editors can't/don't do enough sampling. Not using contentious labels in wiki-voice or without some kind of attribution is a simple solution. Sean.hoyland (talk) 08:29, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

“not using contentious labels in wikivoice or without some kind of attribution is a simple solution”. This is my preferred interpretation of MOS:TERRORIST, and imo the only possibly impartial way of dealing with terrorist designations. But the guidance is, as you note, quite reliant on editors making editorial judgements. It’s unlikely to get resolved anytime soon either, as when I tried to get consensus on the VP for a more explicit guideline that would align with this, it wasn’t very forthcoming. Yr Enw (talk) 10:34, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In practice, in Wikipedia, for understandable reasons, editorial judgement can be difficult to distinguish from convenience sampling. Sean.hoyland (talk) 12:53, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps but the rule as it stands (I don't agree with it either but there it is) says that if there is a preponderance of sourcing, we go by that. If there is alleged insufficient sampling, editors will have to work out a consensus on that, same as anything else. Selfstudier (talk) 12:58, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is true. I think we have made some progress towards neutrality though. When people in my family would tell stories about their time in Palestine in 1947-48, any mention of Irgun might be accompanied by slightly confusing statements like 'scum of the Balkans'. Of course, this was back in the days when making sweeping and/or offensive and/or inaccurate statements about 'foreigners' was fine. Sean.hoyland (talk) 14:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wasn't Irgun self-described as terrorists? They were formed as "restraint breakers" specifically to carry out unprovoked violent attacks against Palestinians and British as part of a campaign of political violence. They promoted terrorism, were self-described terrorists. They publicly celebrated their terrorist identity. They had a goal and their chosen path was the path of violent unconstrained terrorism, and they were proud advocates of this. Fanccr (talk) 03:46, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fanccr, your comment is inconsistent with the WP:ARBECR rule. A quick look at your contributions suggests that you might need to (re)read that and the information on your talk page. If you have sourcing that supports the "self-described terrorists" statement, you can submit it with an edit request at the Irgun article's talk page using WP:EDITXY as a guide. Even if true, I would still favor attributing the label to them rather than using wiki-voice. Sean.hoyland (talk) 04:46, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, same. The problem with their suggestion is that it assumes readers will understand what the Irgun itself meant by the term, which I don’t think they will. Yr Enw (talk) 07:56, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with @Yr Enw here. In an article about a different topic, appending a contentious qualifier like terrorist can be done only if that's what RS do. The onus is on the editor who adds this. Alaexis_¿question? 06:47, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would be cautious with the label in this case, and ascribe it to them were it's due, with the onus being on those who want to include it; as stated by others, this is a case of editorial discretion with all the issues usually associated with that.

Regarding @ABHammads diffs, while I'm generally not inclined to advocate for action being taken due to a singular bad edit, it's probably something to look into or at least keep an eye on, particularly if this is or becomes a pattern. FortunateSons (talk) 08:59, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Including death parameters in the infobox for BLPs[edit]

I tried removing the "death date" and "death place" parameters from the infoboxes on BLPs (e.g. [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20]), but the removals have been reverted. The vast majority of BLPs do not include such parameters. The infobox for the Joe Biden article, to cite a high-profile example, does not include parameters for death. Neither does the Taylor Swift article, to cite another high-profile example. Why should some BLPs include death parameters and others not? Seems morbid and downright prejudicial. Ieonine (talk) 23:34, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The unused parameters aren't seen by the reader..... we consider this a cosmetic edit pls review WP:COSMETICBOT. Moxy🍁 23:41, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But they are seen by the editors, and the implication is shady. Ieonine (talk) 23:50, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Every subject of a BLP will die someday. I would argue that there is no good reason to remove empty death parameters from articles that have them or to add empty death parameters to articles that don't. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:43, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Then why isn't there an across-the-board policy addressing this? To cite some more high-profile examples, look at the infoboxes for Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Madonna. Nowhere does it list "death date" or "death place". So why should some BLP infoboxes include death parameters and others not include death parameters? There's no equality in that. Ieonine (talk) 23:47, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What matters is that for all of these BLPs, the death fields are empty and don't show in the page. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:55, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Again, this is prejudicial. Who decides which BLPs should have death fields and which shouldn't? Ieonine (talk) 23:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They are irrelevant if they are not seen. I suggest you find something productive to do. Moxy🍁 00:02, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In what way are they “prejudicial”? Who exactly is harmed by the fact that some BLP infoboxes have this (empty and hidden) parameter while others do not? And what is that harm? Blueboar (talk) 00:38, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not really hidden. Anyone who clicks the edit button can see it. If there was a BLP page about me that had a "death date" field I'd take offense. The harm is implication of imminent death. To insist certain BLPs must contain this stigmatic mark while other BLPs get off scot-free, is unbalanced, unfair, and prejudicial; a double standard. Does this answer your question? Because none of you have answered mine: Why are some BLPs exempt from containing this awful text and others aren't? Ieonine (talk) 05:20, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Meh… having a field for date of death that is empty does not imply an imminent death… just an eventual one. We will all die at some point (hopefully a long time from now). No need to change. Blueboar (talk) 13:30, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it Cambalachero (talk) 01:54, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

These unused parameters are appropriate and will be useful for reference when the person does die. The infoboxes are not only for living persons AFAIK, but a variety that might be used for living or dead people. —DIYeditor (talk) 00:58, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Use of contentious labels in lead of an article[edit]

There has been NPOV controversy on-going about the Reiki article on its Talk Page, which is nothing new (I have read through all archives of the talk page to get a better picture, and it has been an on-going debate for nearly 20 years).

I specifically find the use of the word quackery in the lead objectionable, which seems unduly loaded and wilfully placed in such a prominent position, as well as further uses of WP:WTW throughout the article. Taken into consideration in its entirety, the article reads as though it had been written by someone with a personal vendetta against the topic.

Input from other editors would be appreciated. Thank you! –Konanen (talk) 17:22, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it could be more specific as to labeled quackery by whom (scientists? journalists? quacks?) but I don't see the problem with it. If it is medical pseudoscience, it is quackery, isn't it? Anyway, we aren't saying it in Wikipedia's voice, we're pointing out that it has been characterized as such by presumably relevant persons to the topic. —DIYeditor (talk) 01:03, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have addressed the question of labeled quackery by whom in the Talk page, where I pointed out that one of the two references attached to quackery did not even use that term, and that the other reference was of questionable reliability:

The other reference tagged to the word quackery, however, does attribute said word to Reiki. Yet that source amounts to nothing more than a WP:QUESTIONABLE ~~rant~~ opinion piece whose inclusion in the lead definitely skews the balance of the article unduly.

–Konanen (talk) 12:53, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense. —DIYeditor (talk) 20:33, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@DIYeditor; agree. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 16:32, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See below about "parity of sources". SBM is an excellent source for this subject -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:13, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that "quackery" is falling a bit into slang even if it is commonly used. It's already labeled as pseudoscience, and to me, the context to be added is why it is called that. All that is there, and can be achieved with a rewrite as: Reiki is a pseudoscience. It is based on qi ("chi"), which practitioners say is a universal life force, although there is no empirical evidence that such a life force exists. Clinical research does not show reiki to be effective as a treatment for any medical condition, including cancer, diabetic neuropathy, anxiety or depression. There is no proof of the effectiveness of reiki therapy compared to placebo. Studies reporting positive effects have had methodological flaws. Reiki is used as an illustrative example of pseudoscience in scholarly texts and academic journal articles. Masem (t) 01:11, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a personal vendetta against the topic. Even had a friend that was into it years ago. However I consider it to be "quackery" as it is pseduoscience. However as mentioned probably best to use the term pseudoscient unless there is a WP:WEIGHT of WP:RS calling it "quackery" in which case it would not be a WP:NPOV probablem to do likewise in the article. TarnishedPath^talk 02:13, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seems easier to take it as a writing quality problem than a NPOV problem. "Reiki is a pseudoscience, and its practice has been characterized as quackery" is a pointless tautology. Also not sure why pseudoscience/pseudoscientific needs to appear 3 times in the lead in quick succession. CMD (talk) 02:19, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Its practice has been characterized as quackery" must be cited to a source that says its practice has been characterized as quackery, not just sources that call it quackery. Otherwise if violates WEASEL and NOR. TFD (talk) 00:47, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nearly every definition of "quackery" includes things like deliberate misleading, deliberate pretending and fraud. IMO this should not be in the article much less in the lead. The lead should be a summary of the body of the article, and there is nothing about such aspects in the article. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:43, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can see a very strong consensus here. I agree with you all. Thanks so much for the helpful comments:

@Konanen, “quackery ... objectionable”

@TarnishedPath, “probably best to use the term pseudoscient unless there is a WP:WEIGHT of WP:RS calling it "quackery" in which case it would not be a WP:NPOV probablem”

@CMD, “ "Reiki is a pseudoscience, and its practice has been characterized as quackery" is a pointless tautology. Also not sure why pseudoscience/pseudoscientific needs to appear 3 times in the lead in quick succession”

@TFD, “..”quackery" must be cited to a source that says its practice has been characterized as quackery, not just sources that call it quackery. Otherwise if violates WEASEL and NOR”

@North8000, “Nearly every definition of "quackery" includes things like deliberate misleading, deliberate pretending and fraud. IMO this should not be in the article much less in the lead.”

. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 16:50, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Add back ping...

@Konanen, @TarnishedPath, @Chipmunkdavis, @The Four Deuces, @North8000 --Dustfreeworld (talk) 19:26, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

SBM is an excellent RS for this type of topic. Per Wikipedia:Fringe theories#Parity of sources, opinions and writings of mainstream authors have more due weight than the writings of promoters of fringe practices, and that includes all of alternative medicine. See also Wikipedia:Fringe theories#Due and undue weight. Beyond that, when in doubt, use attribution. More due weight means, among other things, the amount of content and the prominence of mention. Criticisms belong in the lead. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:13, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I believe our article should state clearly that Reiki is not a replacement of conventional medical treatment, and that it can involve non-standard financial costs. However,

Imagine, if, I say if, you were one of the good-faith Reiki practitioners who has never intended to deceive (you genuinely believe that you are helping others). One day you come home from work, and your children ask you,

“Dad (/Mum), my classmates said what you are doing is quackery and pseudoscience. You are bad and you are deceiving people. You aren’t doing good work as you’ve told me, is it? They said it’s what Wikipedia said!”

Is that OK? --Dustfreeworld (talk) 19:09, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. NPOV does not mean that Wikipedia should avoid reporting the facts. Quacks need not be deliberate frauds - sometimes they are just well meaning but ignorant folks who have avoided educating themselves. That doesn't mean we should avoid doing so on Wikipedia. MrOllie (talk) 19:22, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. -

Quacks need not be deliberate frauds - sometimes they are just well meaning but ignorant folks who have avoided educating themselves.

I don’t think so. That’s your personal opinion.

From our own definition:

Quackery, often synonymous with health fraud, is the promotion of fraudulent or ignorant medical practices. A quack is a "fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill" or "a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to have skill, knowledge, qualification or credentials they do not possess; a charlatan or snake oil salesman"

--Dustfreeworld (talk) 19:40, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"ignorant medical practices"—from the definition just given. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:54, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

“Quackery, often synonymous with health fraud --Dustfreeworld (talk) 12:48, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ignorant is right there in what you quoted. MrOllie (talk) 19:55, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

“Unambiguous exposés of quackery will inevitably appear rude to some people and hurt some feelings. This is a fact of adult life.” Quoted from PMID: 15208545. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:07, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It’s a “Comment” published in 2004 (apparently written by an advocate), not a review, not a meta-analysis, and not a MEDRS / MEDDATE-compliant source at all. Further, “Reiki” was not mentioned in that “comment”. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 12:50, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Let's be clear, are you denying that it is pseudoscience and not shown in any way to be effective? We can go from there. —DIYeditor (talk) 12:59, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not really relevant here, since that's not a medical claim. Also see WP:PARITY, we do not hold debunkers to a higher evidentiary standard than what they're debunking. And finally, WP:MEDDATE does not say what you seem to think it says - it doesn't rule out older sources, it advises looking to see if they have been superseded. Often (particularly in the case of fringey stuff where publications are limited) they have not been superseded. MrOllie (talk) 13:01, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The fact remains, though, that the reference in question is not a secondary source, but merely a comment about something, which makes this a very low quality source. It does not prove quackery or even prove that it is the generally-held view; it merely states an opinion held by the author in a single comment about a topic by one person that is, additionally, unduly disparaging and WP:UNDUE in the lead, if it even belongs in the article at all. It is questionable that it meets notability standards, and rather than being a scientific criticism of the subject matter as required by WP:PARITY, it reads like a rant, see this excerpt:

To be honest, I really didn’t think that could go much lower in terms of promoting quackery, but, damn, did they prove me wrong! Reiki? Seriously? If there are two quackeries battling it out for the title of The One Quackery To Rule Them All, based on their sheer ridiculousness and disconnect from reality, homeopathy is obviously a contender, but so is reiki.

The article ends with:

As for The Atlantic, stop publishing utterly credulous paeans to quackery like this article.

Not at all objective, or calm and collected. I reiterate my opinion in that it has no business in the lead, and its placement within the article at large is debatable, though I could see a point for it.

-Konanen (talk) 15:29, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sources are allowed to be biased per WP:RSBIAS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sceince-Based Medicine has been discussed quite a few times on the Reliable Sources Noticeboard. Although it's not liked by many the consensus has been that it's a reliable source, see WP:SBM for details. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:47, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is (or at least, claims to be) an online encyclopaedia. As such, it is intended to promote knowledge, If that upsets the ignorant, that's their problem, not ours. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:05, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When, sources support it we absolutely should call stuff like this as pseudoscience and explain it's faults. But we are still meant to take a neutral, impartial tone to articles, and words like quackery are unnecessary once you establish it's pseudoscience, and non neutral, as they give rise to a non impartial view in Wiki voice. — Masem (t) 13:40, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you should explain the need for Wikipedia to state that Reiki is pseudoscience to Dustfreeworld. [21] AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:49, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Given their activities on that article only occurred over two days and since then they have been participating here, rather than edit warring or making persistent changes, I would AFG in their actions and that they are learning the ropes of how we work on pseudoscience topics — Masem (t) 15:52, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think Masem is correct. Quackery tends towards name-calling. Pseudoscience (when we use it in the strictly-speaking sense instead of the smear-word sense) imparts information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dustfreeworld has been topic banned. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:00, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: For a better overview of the situation, here is a tally of the current voices that agree with the opinion that there is an issue with the content of the article as it stands (hereunder noted as Agree) vs. those that do not or do not specifically state they agree (which I have counted as dissent, hereunder as Disagree).
If my understanding of your opinion is wrong, please let me know so I can change accordingly! Hence the pings, apologies for the annoyance.

Agree:

@Masem: [22] [23] ([24])

"quackery" is falling a bit into slang even if it is commonly used.

we are still meant to take a neutral, impartial tone to articles, and words like quackery are unnecessary once you establish it's pseudoscience, and non neutral, as they give rise to a non impartial view in Wiki voice.

@North8000: [25]

Nearly every definition of "quackery" includes things like deliberate misleading, deliberate pretending and fraud. IMO this should not be in the article much less in the lead. The lead should be a summary of the body of the article, and there is nothing about such aspects in the article.

@Chipmunkdavis: [26]

"Reiki is a pseudoscience, and its practice has been characterized as quackery" is a pointless tautology. Also not sure why pseudoscience/pseudoscientific needs to appear 3 times in the lead in quick succession.

@The Four Deuces: [27]

"Its practice has been characterized as quackery" must be cited to a source that says its practice has been characterized as quackery, not just sources that call it quackery. Otherwise if violates WEASEL and NOR.

@WhatamIdoing: [28] ([29])

I think Masem is correct. Quackery tends towards name-calling. Pseudoscience (when we use it in the strictly-speaking sense instead of the smear-word sense) imparts information.

~~+ Dustfreeworld (topic banned)~~
+ myself

Disagree:

@TarnishedPath: [30]

However I consider it to be "quackery" as it is pseduoscience. However as mentioned probably best to use the term pseudoscient unless there is a WP:WEIGHT of WP:RS calling it "quackery" in which case it would not be a WP:NPOV probablem to do likewise in the article.

@Valjean: [31]

SBM is an excellent RS for this type of topic. Per Wikipedia:Fringe theories#Parity of sources, opinions and writings of mainstream authors have more due weight than the writings of promoters of fringe practices, and that includes all of alternative medicine. See also Wikipedia:Fringe theories#Due and undue weight. Beyond that, when in doubt, use attribution. More due weight means, among other things, the amount of content and the prominence of mention. Criticisms belong in the lead.

@MrOllie: [32] [33] [34]

NPOV does not mean that Wikipedia should avoid reporting the facts. Quacks need not be deliberate frauds - sometimes they are just well meaning but ignorant folks who have avoided educating themselves. That doesn't mean we should avoid doing so on Wikipedia.

@Tgeorgescu: [35] [36]

“Unambiguous exposés of quackery will inevitably appear rude to some people and hurt some feelings. This is a fact of adult life.” Quoted from PMID: 15208545.

@AndyTheGrump: [37] [38]

This is (or at least, claims to be) an online encyclopaedia. As such, it is intended to promote knowledge, If that upsets the ignorant, that's their problem, not ours.

Perhaps you should explain the need for Wikipedia to state that Reiki is pseudoscience to Dustfreeworld.

Unclear or Neutral:

@ActivelyDisinterested: [39]

Sceince-Based Medicine has been discussed quite a few times on the Reliable Sources Noticeboard. Although it's not liked by many the consensus has been that it's a reliable source, see WP:SBM for details.

@DIYeditor: [40] ([41] [42])

Maybe it could be more specific as to labeled quackery by whom (scientists? journalists? quacks?) but I don't see the problem with it. If it is medical pseudoscience, it is quackery, isn't it? Anyway, we aren't saying it in Wikipedia's voice, we're pointing out that it has been characterized as such by presumably relevant persons to the topic.

Summary of Agreeing Positions:

“quackery” may be unwarranted in this context and especially in the lead
“pseudoscience” being mentioned as often as it is in the article is gratuitous
the existence of both terms in quick succession are superfluous and skew POV
the article may be guilty of WP:WEASEL in some points

As I see it, there is no consensus, but there is lively-enough debate about the points of the matter that it warrants further pursuit. What are editors’ opinions as to the next steps to be taken? Cheers, –Konanen (talk) 11:07, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The sentence in question now reads David Gorski has characterized Reiki as a quackery that is disconnected from reality.[43] The main issue I had with using 'quackery' was that it sounded flippant. As this is now an attributed statement, rather than wikivoice I don't see a problem with it. Recent editing has also solved the repetition of 'pseudoscience'. As both issues are now solved they can't be said to skew POV.
If you have concerns that anything in the article is weaselly I suggest detailing those concerns at the articles talk page, I don't see anything detailed here or the articles talk page. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:19, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your input! I am not sure the lead is the right place to be mentioning David Gorski, Jann Bellamy, Stephen Barrett, or the Catholic Church. None of these individuals or entities have anything to do with Reiki per se. As an example, I’d like to point to the last paragraph of the article about Homeopathy:

In the 21st century, a series of meta-analyses have shown that the therapeutic claims of homeopathy lack scientific justification. As a result, national and international bodies have recommended the withdrawal of government funding for homeopathy in healthcare. National bodies from Australia, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and France, as well as the European Academies' Science Advisory Council and the Russian Academy of Sciences have all concluded that homeopathy is ineffective, and recommended against the practice receiving any further funding. The National Health Service in England no longer provides funding for homeopathic remedies and asked the Department of Health to add homeopathic remedies to the list of forbidden prescription items. France removed funding in 2021, while Spain has also announced moves to ban homeopathy and other pseudotherapies from health centers.

Except for the person who invented the concept, Samuel Hahnemann, no other individual is mentioned in the lead, because it would be WP:UNDUE to do so. A look at other articles in the category of Fringe medicine and science shows similarly well-worded NPOV articles, and I am hard-pressed to find mentions within the lead of any names of individualsnunrelated to the subject matter. I do not think the edits do justice to WP:NPOV, but rather to hide a non-neutral POV behind the shield of WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV. I think the lead, as it is, has not improved, but traded off some problems for others. –Konanen (talk) 11:48, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The lead of homeopathy is full of attributed statements, they may not be individuals but that isn't a big difference. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:10, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not a big fan anywhere of using attributed statements in the lede unless the speaker is an immediately recognized authority (like WHO or CDC), otherwise while you can attribute such things this can play to favoritism, or RGW-ing. Masem (t) 13:15, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ActivelyDisinterested: IMHO, it is a big difference, since the entities linked in the article about Homeopathy are Academies of Science, National Health Services, and the Department of Health & Social Care, which are primarily tasked with weighing in on topics that relate to medical science in conjunction with (public) health (policies). Individuals and the Catholic Church usually are not. –Konanen (talk) 14:55, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Catholic Church runs hospitals and is mentioned in the article directly relating to the articles subject. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:08, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with AD, and add that Reiki isn't really "medical science". This book says "Reiki traditionalists simply claim to channel their god’s divine energy". That's religion, and therefore a fair subject for other religious groups to comment on. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:27, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Konanen, I don’t think your separation of agree/disagree is entirely useful insofar as it doesn’t consider if there is consensus based on nuances. TarnishedPath^talk 13:06, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In general, labels (especially contentious labels) should be attributed in text, unless multiple reliable sources use it. Care should be taken not to give UNDUE weight to any single source’s viewpoint. Avoid using contentious labels in the lead (as they often require further context). Blueboar (talk) 13:27, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
At the moment, I think the main unresolved point is whether "David Gorski called in quackery" needs to be in the lead plus the body, or whether it's sufficient to put it in the body alone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:30, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
These are considerations that can easily be dealt with at the article's talk page. I think it is counterproductive to continue this thread away from those who watch the article. Can we close this now? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:15, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Although I do not agree with the objections, I have removed the mention of Gorski and quackery from the lead. The coverage in the body may be enough. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:26, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Those are great edits! As the article and its lead stand at the moment, I have no substantial objections. I am happy this has found a resolution, thank you for your efforts. –Konanen (talk) 16:33, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You are very welcome.

Let's move the discussion to Talk:Reiki#Lead again and close this thread. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:18, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Great Barrington Declaration[edit]

Article: Great Barrington Declaration

I'd like to bring the forementioned article to the attention of the noticeboard.

Issues:

The article content seems to have a clear bias of criticism against the declaration.
The article has multiple paragraphs where sentences read more like an editorial, not a factual wikipedia article
The editing history on the article shows a continuous reversal of seemingly factual edits made by other editors

Examples:

A few examples (pasted from the article verbatim, problematic sections bolded):

"It claimed harmful COVID-19 lockdowns could be avoided via the fringe notion of "focused protection", by which those most at risk of dying from an infection could purportedly be kept safe while society otherwise took no steps to prevent infections" - Negative bias in framing the content. Multiple reverts in the edit history regarding different editors attempting to remove the "fringe" claim in its current phrasing.
"By October 2020, many of these things had already happened in some parts of the world, but likewise were being restricted elsewhere; for instance the UK saw quarantines of students, travel advisories, restrictions on meeting other people, and partial closures of schools, pubs and restaurants." - An editorial-like sentence that appears under the "Background and content" section. The content section should focus on the content of the declaration, not editors adding their own interpretations of the context.
"The declaration does not provide practical details about who should be protected or how they can be protected. For instance, it does not mention testing any people outside of nursing homes, contact tracing, wearing masks, or social distancing. It mentions multi-generational households but does not provide any information about how, for example, low-risk people can get infected without putting high-risk members of their household at risk of dying." - Again, the whole paragraph is an editorial and WP:OR
"The declaration does not provide any references to published data that support the declaration's strategy." - Again, with the phrasing used, this is WP:OR. A single source provided as reference to the claim is a newspaper article. At the very least, this should be phrased as "Critics have claimed that the declaration does not provide any references to published data that support the declaration's strategy. I will attempt to correct this and will see how long the correction will remain.

~~~~

Saltsjöbaden (talk) 19:29, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is too misleadingly framed to result in well-informed outside opinions. Much of what is described as editorial opinion or original research is pulled directly from reliable sources. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:35, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another example of non-NPOV behavior by editors can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Great_Barrington_Declaration#Signatories Saltsjöbaden (talk) 20:20, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

After reading the content and checking the cited sources, the article looks neutral to me—in that it neutrally summarizes what reliable, secondary sources say, and it gives prominence to available mainstream viewpoints over fringe viewpoints. I'll also say that highlighting a list of signatories that aren't highlighted in secondary sources is a great example of an edit that should be reverted on sight, not only for NPOV reasons but BLP as well. Woodroar (talk) 20:55, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a case of Wikipedia:NPOV means neutral editing, not neutral content.

@Saltsjöbaden, when nearly all of the reliable sources say that this proposal is vague, unworkable, will result in hospitals collapsing, increase the total number of deaths, etc., then the Wikipedia article is required by policy to reflect this dominant view as being the dominant view. It is not "neutral" to pretend that both views are equally plausible.

About your claim that editors adding their own interpretations of the context: It is a fact that you can't have the schools open for in-person instruction of all kids and still keep all high-risk adults (aka their teachers, almost half of whom qualified as high-risk) at home. It is a fact that you can't have all kids in school and keep their high-risk family members from being exposed to the germs that the kids will share at school. In the US, about 20% of kids live in multi-generational homes. "Go to school" and "Nobody living with Grandma (or the baby) should go anywhere" are mutually exclusive options. These are not "my interpretations"; these are things that come from reliable sources. They are also facts, not opinions. It is not "editorializing"; it is "explaining".

We could go further: I understand that there are sources saying that the reason GBD doesn't provide any details is because they knew (or ought to know) that this was not workable in practice, but they wanted to make a political splash despite knowing that their whole idea was bad. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Really hard to see anything failing NPOV here. The letter was strongly criticized by experts in medicine and virology, among other sciences. It's ideas may have some possible credibility but there stances were unproven and went against the prevailing scientific thought. As such it is presented in the correct tone to reflect that it's claims are dubious, rather that yet proven

Masem (t) 18:52, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I feel an edit war simmering[edit]

Dadude sandstorm keeps changing Ursula Andress' longstanding infobox photo to an unrecognizable photo taken in her teens [44] [45] (around a decade before she even became famous, by the way).

Everyone knows that BLP infoboxes should use modern photos. I can already tell from the vocabulary in the second edit summary that the odds of this user being reasonable are slim. Any of you willing to take the reigns? Ieonine (talk) 19:58, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, @Ieonine. Thanks for the report. Have you ever started any Wikipedia:Requests for comment? It's not difficult. Try a question like "Which image should be used in the infobox?" You might give people a link to c:Category:Ursula Andress and to whichever guidelines you think are relevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:52, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that a little premature? It hasn't even been discussed on the talk page yet. It's only between two editors, so Wikipedia:Third opinion would also work. jlwoodwa (talk) 21:14, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The top of Talk:Ursula Andress has an older discussion on the same subject. This apparently has been a bone of contention for a long time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone knows that BLP infoboxes should use modern photos. I'm not sure that's a rule. BLP image selection should consider many factors, and one of those is whether the image represents the subject in a way that is concordant in weight with the rest of the article. This is why we use a picture of Bill Gates as a businessman, not his mugshot, and why we use a picture of Harrison Ford from during his acting career rather than a picture of him as a shirtless carpenter, and why we include a picture of Pope Francis as an old pope rather than as a young priest.

Ursula Andress's notability stems from her work in the 1960s and 1970s, and that's the centre of gravity of the article, so ideally we'd have a photo from that era. The current photo that @Ieonine wants to keep is problematic (too late) and so is the replacement proposed by @Dadude sandstorm (too early). We used to use this one which seems just right. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 09:41, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

old and emaciated are 'unreasonable'?

'I feel an edit war simmering' what an absurd thing to start a NPOV discussion over. I made one edit and one revert. that is all daruda (talk) 11:41, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Last time I checked 1950 was neither in the 1960's or 1970's. Slatersteven (talk) 11:46, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

what is this a reference to? daruda (talk) 12:03, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well the edit warring seemed to be over one from the 50's. Slatersteven (talk) 12:08, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone knows that BLP infoboxes should use modern photos, I disagree. For historical figures (i.e. those dead or retired) we should be using the best quality photo that is most representative of the subject, preferably at a time of peak fame. Curbon7 (talk) 06:50, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

THANK YOU daruda (talk) 09:45, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Gaza Health Ministry[edit]

Some non-involved editors would be welcome at Gaza Health Ministry.

The context is essentially

Israel and the US expressed unspecific doubts about GHM's casualty data.
Organizations like the UN say the GHM's data has historically been reliable.
Two ~~peer-reviewed~~ articles published in The Lancet did not find evidence of inflated or fabricated data. (Edit: turns out the articles are "correspondence" and not peer reviewed, see here and here.)
Later, statistics professor Abraham Wyner wrote in Tablet (magazine) that the data contained irregularities, such as a strong negative correlation between male and female deaths.
Later still, Michael Spagat wrote about GHM's "declining data quality", explained by a shift to user-submitted reports as hospitals have closed.

The current lede is unbalanced, emphasizing the sources that say the data is reliable, while not mentioning opposing viewpoints at all. My various attempts to include brief mentions of the latter (even just "received significant attention and scrutiny") have been reverted.

The argument seems to be that the two peer-reviewed Lancet articles trump non-peer-reviewed sources, making opposing viewpoints somewhat fringe. However, the two Lancet articles are older, and focused on very different aspects of the data. In some sense they support opposing narratives, but they absolutely don't contradict one another.

The current article also quotes a blog comment by "Ken M", with speculation about how the irregularities noted by Wyner might be explained. My attempt to remove that was reverted as well. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 17:56, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think you might want to reflect on the concept of Materiality (auditing). No source I've seen thinks the GHM data is dramatically wrong. It's even possible that it's an undercount (e.g., bodies that haven't been found in the rubble yet). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:56, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree an undercount is plausible. No reliable sources really claim that the total is clearly inflated, just that it shouldn't be considered very reliable, especially recent data from the current war.

Some milder versions of this viewpoint are very mainstream, even uncontroversial. E.g. The Telegraph factually notes that (at the time) ~54% of the data was from hospital sources, with the rest coming from a combination of media sources and a Google form.

I suppose reasonable editors can disagree about materiality, but I think there are also very objective problems here, such as

Framing Roberts' article as a refutation of Wyner's, when it doesn't discuss Wyner's arguments at all, only mentions it once in passing
Using two blog comments to counter some of Wyner's arguments, one from an anonymous "Ken M" with unknown credibility

There has been significant resistance to fixing even the most clear issues like these. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 18:05, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Those blogs are by professors, the first by Lior Pachter, a professor of statistics who dismissed the first argument. The Ken M comment is not in because of whoever they are but because James Joyner, a professor of security studies, said it showed insight. Professor Les Roberts, who is an expert in such matters, has like you say just one comment on Wyner's article - right in the lead: "Israel’s U.N. ambassador and online pundits have purported that the numbers are exaggerated or, as a recent article in Tablet alleged, simply faked. Actually, the numbers are likely conservative. The science is extremely clear." Professor Wyners article was the one in Tablet (magazine) and if that is okay then they're okay too in the article. None of this should be in the lead. NadVolum (talk) 20:27, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As we discussed on the talk page, Joyner included the "Ken M" blog comment in a compilation of quotes and referred to it as an "insight", but didn't engage with it at all beyond that. It still seems like a pretty clear WP:USERGENERATED violation, since the argument is still from "Ken M", not from Joyner.

Right, Roberts mentioned Wyner's article once, and in some broad sense he's arguing in a different direction, but he doesn't respond to any of the specific points Wyner made. I think that makes "Wyner [...] wrote [...] to which [...] Roberts responded" rather misleading.

Not to mention that Pachter's blog post is framed as a refutation of Wyner's "main point", when it really only applies to a single figure. (The text of Wyner's first argument refers to variance in daily deaths, not the cumulative sum that Pachter argues is misleading.) — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 01:42, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lior Pachter, Les Roberts (epidemiologist), and James Joyner all have their own articles and I would hope that they have some idea of what they're doing when they bother to write things. Just seen Wyner also had something from Joshua Loftus, professor of statistics and data science at LSE, saying "One of the worst abuses of statistics I've ever seen" and "shockingly irresponsible" about the article NadVolum (talk) 09:49, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't negate the problems I mentioned. Of those three authors, only one actually engages the content of Wyner's article at all, namely Pachter's criticism of one particular visual that Wyner used. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 18:10, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See the convo I linked below, Wyner's article is a minority view and critiqued. Time to drop this. Selfstudier (talk) 18:15, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Four with Joshua Loftus. NadVolum (talk) 19:34, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And quoting professor Michael Spagat about the data quality declining doesn't justify anything Wyner did. NadVolum (talk) 20:36, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see why Abraham Wyner's article should be given any special prominence over any other sources. It's just an article in a magazine. To make it any more prominent than that seems like a violation of WP:DUE. Silver seren^C 18:13, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure that the Gaza Health Ministry#Other analysis section (where Wyner's magazine article is mentioned) should be in the article at all. The article feels a bit more like a deep-dive into details and he said/she said bickering, instead of an encyclopedic summary of the subject. Also, the article is wildly unbalanced; there are ~1300 words on casualty counts and ~200 words total on everything else. Don't they have, like hospitals and budgets and employees and things like that? We're treating them as if their sole purpose is to count deaths. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
+1 Selfstudier (talk) 08:30, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect the vast majority of coverage of them is in relation to their casualty counts. BilledMammal (talk) 08:53, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you only look at coverage during the last six months and in the popular press, you might be right. But in the 17 years before that, I think there was other coverage. The 2007 doctor's strike gets a few sentences; perhaps someday this, too, will get just a few sentences. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, there should be a lot more about it like how many hospitals and doctors it has/had and it's record in looking after health issues. Do you know of some sort of tag for that kind of issue? NadVolum (talk) 10:17, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Remember this convo? Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_431#Tablet_(magazine)_and_article_by_Wharton_statistician Selfstudier (talk) 10:21, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I remember that okay. There's been responses by academics now so perhaps the business can end. NadVolum (talk) 10:59, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One would hope so. Selfstudier (talk) 11:08, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would be in favor of a WP:SPINOUT article called "Reliability of Gaza Health Ministry casualty data" to correct the balancing issue.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 03:44, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Might be a good idea, put a stop to all this "Hamas run" discussion every ten minutes. Selfstudier (talk) 11:01, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Gaza Health Ministry is fairly short and is a natural place to look about that if a person is bothered. I'm not keen on such a split, at least not without a lot more development of the article. NadVolum (talk) 18:44, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The map in Anatolia[edit]

We seem to have a problem in Anatolia with this map [46]. Only one modern source uses this limited definition of Anatolia (Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary) as far as I'm aware. Most sources define Anatolia as the entire Asian area of Turkey. The sources can be found in the article. This map [47] seems more appropriate. Can we get a few comments on this? There was a previous RfC which wasn't closed Talk:Anatolia#RfC:_Should_the_map_be_changed?. It's currently being discussed here: Talk:Anatolia#The_map_issue_again Bogazicili (talk) 11:45, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The RfC has been requested to be closed [48] yesterday. It's not constructive to open a new discussion on the talk and another one in here when the RfC hasn't been formally closed. Vanezi (talk) 11:52, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't know you requested closure, you didn't say on the talk page. Bogazicili (talk) 11:54, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Excessive? pushback on Disney CEO's comment at The Marvels[edit]

The movie and therefore the article has become a small battleground in the woke vs anti-woke discourse so I think it's appropriate to bring it to this board. Disney's CEO made comments about why The Marvels movie failed, one of which was poor supervision by executives. The supervision part of those comments and the criticism of it is currently taking up a third of the box office section: The_Marvels#Box_office. Here's me initiating the discussion about that Talk:The_Marvels#Do_we_need_so_much_pushback_back_against_Iger's_comment?. It goes on for a very long time so TLDR is that I thought it was excessive, and pointed out how parts of it was actually not in the sources being cited. I kept being told by like 5 editors that it was in the sources, but when I asked where (like half a dozen times), was never told. Eventually it's acknowledged it's not in the sources so the content is changed and additional sources are added.

The issue is that the pushback is even more excessive now, and specifically This came amid a wider narrative in the Hollywood media, which some attributed to Disney, in which DaCosta appeared to be unfairly targeted. is also inappropriate given only one commentator is alleging the director has been unfairly targeted Disney, and only one is alleging the director has been unfairly targeted by the media (the CBR article is saying the "fandom" believes it so I don't think that applies either). The media angle is also wrong to include because this is about Iger's comment and people attacking him for it, shoe-horning another commentator saying there's a media narrative against the director is wrongfully padding the attacks on Iger. Also wrong to state as a fact that DaCosta appeared to be unfairly targeted.

So I believe it's undue weight to give this minor story a third of the box office section, and undue weight for Iger's 16 words insufficient day-to-day supervision by Disney executives during production was partially to blame for the film's failure. to be attacked with 129 words.

These are some options I propose: Disney CEO Bob Iger also attributed the film's failure to the large amount of MCU content that Disney had produced for its streaming service, but he added that insufficient day-to-day supervision by Disney executives during production was partially to blame as well. Some commentators felt Iger was wrongfully blaming DaCosta, noting that The Marvels was not Disney's only 2023 film to fail at the box office.

Disney CEO Bob Iger also attributed the film's failure to the large amount of MCU content that Disney had produced for its streaming service, but he added that insufficient day-to-day supervision by Disney executives during production was partially to blame as well. Some commentators felt Iger was wrongfully blaming DaCosta, noting that The Marvels was not Disney's only 2023 film to fail at the box office and characterized his statement as throwing the director "under the bus". Tikaboo (talk) 17:28, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're not going to like this answer, but after looking over the talk page discussion, my suggestion would be to move on to something else. 10,000 words have been spilt, most of them your own, over a few sentences of reception that will inevitably be rewritten anyway once the MCU editors get started on making Phase 5 a Good Topic. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:40, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm basically in the sunken cost fallacy at this point :) Tikaboo (talk) 02:18, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When can titles contain "massacre"?[edit]

From my reading of policy, the word "massacre" is inherently a non-neutral term that can only be used in the titles under one condition: if it used by a "a significant majority of English-language sources" (WP:POVNAME). In all other circumstances it must not be used. Am I reading the policy wrong?

Recently, I have proposed neutral alternatives for Nir Oz massacre, Tel al-Sultan massacre, Nuseirat refugee camp massacre. One of those involve Palestinians killing Israeli civilians and two involve Israelis killing Palestinian civilians. In each case I get incredible pushback from users saying "massacre can be a neutral term to describe what some sources describe as an intentional large scale killing of defenseless civilians." I agree that a strong case can be made in each case that the perpetrators deliberately and cruelly killed innocents. Yet it is also a fact that the perpetrators (and their supporters) denied doing so. The essence of WP:NPOV is "Articles must not take sides". So calling an event massacre, when a majority of RS don't do so, is taking sides and violates NPOV.

Tagging those making such arguments so they can present contrarian views here Number 57, The Great Mule of Eupatoria, Jebiguess, FortunateSons, Nishidani etc. I would like there to be a single standard on when we call an event a "massacre", regardless of whether the victims are Israelis or Palestinians.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 04:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on what the WP:COMMONNAME is in reliable sources. The My Lai massacre and the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre are widely known by those names, so those are the names that should be used for those events. The same would apply to these events in Gaza; is the term massacre used widely in sources or is it in certain media only or is it not used at all and is an editorial invention, etc. Curbon7 (talk) 04:22, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your reading is correct. If someone is trying to define "massacre" and decide themselves whether it's applicable instead of just going with what the sources call it, then they should probably edit in a different area until they have better familiarity with core content policies. This is not a topic area for editors who are still learning. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:33, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I base this on the fact several Arabic sources refer to the events I am proposing being named “massacres” as such. The problem is that Wikipedia editors only want to refer to English RS, which I have pointed out have a systematic bias, in many cases not being able to pin the blame on Israel let alone refer to a massacre as such. With many Arabic sources referring to dropping 6 tons of bombs over the heads of 195 civilians as a “massacre”, that does not mean it has to be euphemised because an English western “RS” that does not acknowledge Israel as a perpetrator and refers to Palestinians being killed in the passive sense doesn’t call it as such The Great Mule of Eupatoria (talk) 06:26, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) What about sources that are neither English nor Arabic, e.g., El País, Le Monde, La Jornada, Der Spiegel? Do they use the term massacre? NightHeron (talk) 08:52, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They should be used too especially if the situation surrounds an area speaking these language. I only specified Arabic because Gaza is mostly Arabic speaking and because it’s my first language so I usually refer to sources from there The Great Mule of Eupatoria (talk) 09:59, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This simply isn't workable as policy. Even if we ignore recognizability as a criterion, terms do not neatly translate across languages. WP:NC specifies that we limit ourselves to English-language RS for naming conventions largely due to this, I imagine. Remsense诉 13:17, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Which is why I mentioned the other languages. English sources have a repulsive bias in this war and there should be an exception made: for example this sky news article just yesterday

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/eight-israeli-soldiers-killed-inside-gaza-as-palestinian-death-toll-tops-37-000-13153582

Note that it uses active tense (killed) for Israeli soldiers while using passive tense (death) for Palestinian casualties in the same headline. This is juts one example, and with such bias are you really going to expect English sources to call a massacre as such and expect us to use them exclusively? Not to mention that Arabic is one of the main languages in the locale of this war so it is better to use it (alongside Hebrew for balance) in some cases than English The Great Mule of Eupatoria (talk) 14:54, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You haven't addressed any of the concerns I brought up. Remsense诉 14:57, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am explaining the problem with limiting ourselves to English RS, especially surrounding a place where English isn’t the main language The Great Mule of Eupatoria (talk) 15:06, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're ignoring that the fundamental concern is specifically with naming and titling. We use non-English RS happily when characterizing events in prose. Remsense诉 15:19, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I understand translation concerns but we do Help:Interlanguage links all the time. There are excellent translation dictionaries available to assist us. Opening up non-English RS could be the easiest way to solve the issue of WP:Systemic Bias.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 22:44, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a difference between linking between different language articles on something and choosing wording. Sorry, but non-English sources do not, cannot, and should not count for anything in determining what the English name for something is. This is NOT systemic bias, this is just how languages work. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:15, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any Wikipedia policy that says that "non-English sources do not, cannot, and should not count for anything in determining what the English name for something is"? Certainly some cognates in different languages have different meanings. But not always. I believe that massacre in French and masacre in Spanish have meanings and connotations very close to massacre in English. And RS in French- and Spanish-speaking countries would tend to be less biased on Israel/Palestine issues than in English-speaking countries. NightHeron (talk) 11:46, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It does specifically state this in WP:COMMONNAME like I've said, yes. Remsense诉 11:54, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:COMMONNAME says only that Wikipedia "generally prefers" English-language sources for determining names. It doesn't say "always", and in this case coverage in non-English sources is often more neutral and balanced than in English-language sources. NightHeron (talk) 13:04, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At the top of the first body section of NC: Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject. The listed recognizability and naturalness criteria are key issues here. Remsense诉 13:36, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:COMMONNAME says: "generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable, English-language sources)". That is not the same as your statement that "Wikipedia "generally prefers" English-language sources for determining names". It quite clearly says that names are determined from English-language sources and that generally the most common names in such sources will be used. I can see no way to read it the way you are trying to. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:22, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For the specific case of massacre the question is whether or not the rules should be followed. Perhaps this discussion needs to take place elsewhere. Selfstudier (talk) 15:44, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the sentence Khajidha quotes the words "generally prefers" refers to the rest of the sentence. It means that the rule that follows usually applies, but not always. That is, in certain situations there might be a reason to take other factors into account. In this case other considerations are that (1) some other languages have a word for "massacre" that has the same meaning and the same connotations as the English word, (2) the massacres in Israel and Gaza have been extensively covered in the international press, and (3) foreign-language sources are often much less biased than English-language sources. NightHeron (talk) 16:29, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, it says that the most common name is generally preferred. It then states that common names are determned from English language usage. The "generally" doesn't apply to the material in parentheses. This is basic reading comprehension.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:44, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It then says is the operative here. Look, with all due respect, long time editors are well aware of how WP works and if we think that the question being asked was a request to state what the rules say, then one should disabuse oneself of that notion. Selfstudier (talk) 16:58, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Intercept Re the systemic bias problem "Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around. (When the terms appeared in quotes rather than the editorial voice of the publication, they were omitted from the analysis.)" Selfstudier (talk) 17:22, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And the core issue with naming and titling based on non-English sources hasn't been acknowledged at all yet. Remsense诉 17:01, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not uncommon for an editor to notice that most of the sources are biased the same way, and then fight to correct the bias. This is called "righting great wrongs", and people rightly get banned for it. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:15, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's pretty much an aspersion, and wrong headed to boot. Selfstudier (talk) 15:18, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The RGW cliché is as usual meaningless in its lack of cogency. Calling a spade a spade when some clunky consensus asserts it is spoon is just pointing out the obvious that most refuse to admit to. It's not about righting a wrong, but of not making the wrong call. History doesn't make things right. It strives to get things right, not least by refusing to use double standards in evaluating the behaviour of both parties to a conflict.Nishidani (talk) 13:17, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but calling a spade a spade is the real useless cliché here. We don't get to decide what spades are, even when it hurts. Remsense诉 13:38, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We don't get to decide what spades are That's quite comical, linguistically. A spade is a spade because the object accords precisely with its accepted definition, which we ignore to our illiterate peril. To suggest otherwise is to underwrite Humpty Dumpty's theory of semantics, i.e. that any word means just what anyone chooses it to mean — neither more nor less. A massacre is 'the unnecessary, indiscriminate killing of human beings' (O.E.D (1989) vol.9 p.436, col.1) To not apply the word to a situation where multiple deaths of up to 270 people in precisely targeted strikes recur endlessly means that the mass slaughter of bystanders in each of a hundred cases was both 'necessary' and 'discriminating'. A canker in a rose by any other name would still blight and reek. What is anomalous in wiki usage is that we do get to decide what is a massacre (52 Israeli civilians killed in an assault) and what is not a massacre (52 Palestinians killed in a missile strike). The semantic discriminations (in all senses) on wiki here are grounded in ethnic empathy/insouciance, an ethnosemantics, because our rules privilege RS that reflect this bias. Nishidani (talk) 16:01, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm acutely aware of the unsolved problems in the philosophy of language as I was just speaking about. Remsense诉 16:24, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for mentioning me.

I’m assuming you are referring to due to the nature of the event (targeting civilians directly and 'interpersonally') and the coverage, where there is sufficient RS coverage. It's important to note that two of the listed sources (AP, TOI,) use massacre in direct quotes. Other uses (from sources in the article) include:

I listed 18 English-language sources (in total, not just the cited ones) that used the word (and there were 9 listed that didn’t, of which 2 did in direct quotes); could you elaborate on how my reasoning differs from yours?

The first sentence (mentioning the nature of the event) is generally a common argument in such cases, showing that the title fits the content of the article.

In my opinion, my argument showed that the title was used by at the very least the large majority of mentioned English-language RS, a claim that was IMO not sufficiently disproven (though I didn’t have time to file a MR yet, so it’s unclear if I’m right).

I would consider the single standard to be the clear majority of presented English-language RS (with an interesting question being how we count multiple articles from the same source, particularly when the use is inconsistent). FortunateSons (talk) 08:35, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@FortunateSons: I commend you for citing sources, that's great. My objection is to "due to the nature of the event (targeting civilians directly and 'interpersonally')". I don't think its a valid line of argument, and lets see if consensus says otherwise.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 22:34, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Just for the sake of clarity, you don’t mean that my subsumption is implausible, but are asking if such arguments are in general permitted? FortunateSons (talk) 22:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I'm trying to argue that whether to use "massacre" should only be decided based on how common it is on sources (which you did indeed do) not based on whether users think the event's nature matches the definition of massacre (which I felt you implied when you wrote "due to the nature of the event (targeting civilians directly").VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 23:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense. I believe it should be a secondary factor in edge cases, but obviously not primary. FortunateSons (talk) 05:13, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a difference between sources naming/calling something a massacre and their usage of the term, often in quotes/described by. Personally, I would rather not use this word at all but if we do, then we need to acknowledge the reality of systemic bias, whereby media sources are themselves not neutrally using the word.

If we look at Massacre, the first line reads "A massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless." Now WP is not itself a source but that line is sourced to a well known dictionary. By that definition, lots of things that we might describe as "killings" or something else are in fact massacres. The second line reads "It is generally used to describe a targeted killing of civilians en masse by an armed group or person." which is a bit different because "targeted" implies intention; but that line is unsourced afaics.

If we are to use it, and I would rather discourage its use, what I would prefer is some sort of definition that cannot be easily gamed like the first line of the massacre article and the source requirement be that the word is used in the sense of the definition by at least some sources. Selfstudier (talk) 09:13, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Whether media sources aren’t neutrally using the term isn’t for us to decide; to do so would in fact violate WP:NPOV. BilledMammal (talk) 09:20, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is an essay, Wikipedia:Systemic bias. If it exists, we can address it. Selfstudier (talk) 09:39, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NCENPOV is very clear about when we should use massacre; we just need to follow that guideline, and closers need to dismiss !votes that are not aligned with it.

Additionally, editors who consistently apply different standards based on whether the victims were Israeli or Palestinian should be sanctioned for POV pushing. BilledMammal (talk) 09:20, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is a guideline, this discussion is about whether things should change, not just whether things should stay the same. Selfstudier (talk) 09:41, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I'm curious on what grounds we'd change this? Neutral point of view does not mean no point of view. Remsense诉 13:14, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any reason not to treat "massacre" the same way as "terrorist", WP:TERRORIST? Selfstudier (talk) 13:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I actually do there there is a reason: people are different than events. Anyway, WP:TERRORIST says "only when in a preponderance of RS", not "never", which is correct in both cases here. Remsense诉 13:46, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Still a "contentious label" for all practical purposes. Selfstudier (talk) 13:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You won't catch me disputing that. Remsense诉 13:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell, the empirical evidence available via Category:Massacres_in_the_Israeli–Palestinian_conflict suggests that an answer to the question 'When can titles contain "massacre"?' is when one (for new articles) or enough editors want the word in the title. The reasons seem to vary - actually following policy, bias, source sampling problems, reasoning from first principals rather than policy etc. The same practice appears to apply to categorization. The answer to the question 'When should titles contain "massacre"?' seems pretty well covered by policy and is straightforward. So, surprise!, there's often a misalignment between policy and behavior in the PIA topic area when it comes to the word massacre. What tends to happen unfortunately, as far as I can tell, is that editors may notice the word 'massacre' but then often only focus on half of the issue, the half that reflects negatively on their preferred side in the conflict. This is one of the many instances where you see inconsistencies with the Wikimedia Foundation Universal Code of Conduct that prohibits 'manipulating content to favour specific interpretations of facts or points of view'. Sean.hoyland (talk) 09:43, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify "when one [editor] (for new articles)", there are no barriers for editors putting the word massacre in the title of a new article they create. Article titles acquire the wiki-equivalent of inertial mass once the editor hits save. So, there is a kind of asymmetry for this word in terms of the amount of work needed to add it vs change it. Sean.hoyland (talk) 11:18, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with categorization is broader than this; editors add categories that are contentious or even unsupported by sources based on their own assessments in almost every topic area. We're already advised against doing this per WP:CATPOV, but I'm not sure how it can be addressed. BilledMammal (talk) 21:50, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It can be addressed by consistently warning editors who violate it, and applying tbans whenever it becomes tendentious. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:47, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see categorizations that seem questionable pretty often. Questionable for me because I assume categories use wiki-voice. But the statement "The central goal of the category system is to provide navigational links to pages in Wikipedia within a hierarchy of categories." has a sort of paralyzing effect for me because it emphasizes their functional role in navigation. So, when I see contentious categorizations, it's often not clear how to balance content policy with helping people to navigate. Sean.hoyland (talk) 05:25, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What would be nice is if this issue could be addressed in a more global manner to ensure consistency across the topic area, and not just for recent events. I guess there is a near zero chance of that happening. Maybe another approach that could be tried is to address it with pairs of articles, one about A killing B and the other about B killing A where editors need to participate in both RfCs. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:00, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strictly speaking this discussion ought to be about the usage globally not just in the AI/IP topic area, although it seems to be more of an issue there. Selfstudier (talk) 11:19, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Probably, but I think the thread might be asking the wrong question. A different question with the potential to solve multiple issues like this might be, why is it seemingly not possible in practice to enforce or get people to comply with section 3.3 of the Universal Code of Conduct, that prohibits 'impeding or otherwise hampering the creation (and/or maintenance) of content', 'repeated arbitrary or unmotivated removal of any content without appropriate discussion or providing explanation' and 'manipulating content to favour specific interpretations of facts or points of view'? Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:10, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That may happen in the short term but less so over time. Things that are out of whack with policy tend to get corrected eventually. Selfstudier (talk) 13:27, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I used to think that things that are out of whack with policy tend to get corrected eventually. Now I think that might be a faith-based belief rather than an evidence-based belief. I guess it depends on whether 'eventually' includes geological time. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:52, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another factor to consider - do the sources use “Massacre” as part of a name for the event (example: “The Boston Massacre was one of the events that sparked the Revolution”), or merely as a description of the event (example: “The battle of Agincourt was a massacre for the French nobility”.) We need to avoid coining names based on descriptions. Doing so bumps up against WP:NOR. Blueboar (talk) 11:41, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I really agree with this in the broadest sense, but one quickly runs into unsolved problems in the philosophy of language. What is a name, versus a mere descriptor? It generally seems to be acceptable for articles to exist based on phrasal descriptor (History of IBM), even ones that don't have RS dedicated primarily to them, as long as they clear WP:N and WP:SPINOFF. I fear we might poke at the core contradictions of "what even is an encyclopedia" going down this path of inquiry. Remsense诉 14:08, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In this case, it’s quite simple… ask, do sources use “massacre” as a noun or an adjective. To avoid the NOR trap of having Wikipedia “coin” a neoligistic name for the event, we need the sources to use it as a noun. Blueboar (talk) 19:02, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Example articles to test whether this approach would work in practice are Ma'alot massacre and Lod Airport massacre where editors have cited sources next to the titles. A practical issue seems to be that editors don't assign equal weight to the presence and absence of terms, maybe because search works so well as a confirmation bias tool for presence-of-a-term focused searches. Sean.hoyland (talk) 16:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NCENPOV tells us that we can use "massacre" when it is a generally accepted word used when identifying the event, even when it isn't part of the WP:COMMONNAME. BilledMammal (talk) 21:51, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@BilledMammal: how do you define "word" in that context? For example, do "attack", "attacked" and "attacking" all point to the article being titled with the word "attack"? Or only the noun counts? VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 22:32, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given that the intent is to tell us whether a word is generally accepted, I would interpret it as any word used by the source in their own voice. BilledMammal (talk) 22:36, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Massacre" is an inherently emotive word, and is often used as such whether or not it might also apply neutrally. It can be very tricky to disentangle such cases. Manual opinion about whether or not an event meets X or Y definition should not be a determinant, unless explicitly arguing for a descriptive title. I'm not familiar with the sources in question, but agree with Curbon7 that it has to be a very strong common name, such as their examples, for which the commonness of the name extends widely beyond sources of a particular view (in other words, providing lists of sources that do use a term is not by itself too helpful, as it can be done even with minority terms, or even plurality terms). CMD (talk) 14:32, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to add to the discussion that sometimes the consensus on an articles name changes over time. Tulsa Race Massacre was Tulsa Race Riot for years before the WP:COMMONNAME changed outside of Wikipedia. TulsaPoliticsFan (talk) 16:02, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it's well-documented that Western, Israeli, and Arab media all have major biases in their phrasing of the deaths and actions of Israelis and Palestinians. This makes WP:COMMONNAME the most reliable, but could also be inherently euphemistic. This excerpt from an AP article, despite being renowned for it's neutrality in US and world politics, treats the intentional targeting of civilians as collateral and incidental, absolving the IDF of responsibility with "appears to have killed" versus the active voice of "Palestinian militants ... opened fire on the rescuers." The excerpt also doesn't distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas by using the word Palestinian twice.

"Palestinian militants armed with machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades opened fire on the rescuers, as Israel called in heavy strikes from land and air to cover their evacuation to the coast. “A lot of fire was around us,” Hagari said. It was this bombardment that appears to have killed and wounded so many Palestinians."

Compare it to this article by AP about an ADF massacre in Kivu, which describes the killing of civilians in active voice. Titling the Kivu massacres as such on a Wikipedia article wouldn't be NPOV despite not following common name while the Nuseirat AP article glosses over the civilians killed in that event. In these situations, I think deciding whether the situation fits the definition of massacre and WP:SPADE should be considered if language from traditional RS relating to a possible common name is euphemistic. I am in favor of changing more article titles especially in the I-P conflict to massacre, and that the word should be generally be considered NPOV when civilians are killed en masse, although there are and will be situations where other titles fit an event like that best. Jebiguess (talk) 18:08, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I somewhat disagree, I think "massacre" should generally be considered a non-neutral term regardless of the civilian death count. "Massacre" implies intent, which is generally unknowable. There are cases where intent is quite obvious, such as the Re'im music festival massacre, but in most cases there isn't strong evidence of intent. One can often find certain sources which make assumptions or insinuations about intent, but more neutral sources generally refrain from speculating about intent, as should we.

I think WP:SPADE also isn't very applicable since there are generally more neutral terms we can pick, such as "attack", with roughly equal accuracy and clarity. In any case, it can't override WP:NPOVTITLE. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 18:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So you're suggesting that we should account for the sources' bias and declare for ourselves that it meets the definition? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:00, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thats not an inherently non-neutral term... It all depends on the context. For example if I was to make a page for the Massacre Rim Dark Sky Sanctuary the name is neutral whether or not the event the geographic feature was named for actually was a massacre or not. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:30, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest its use in Zong massacre is perfectly appropriate. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:44, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, I was just trying to give the next levels up with the Dark Sky Sanctuary example... Its two steps removed from any actual event, first there was some sort of mass killing... Then a geographic feature was named after that event... Then a political feature was named after that geographic feature... So even if its not approriate to refer to that first mass killing as a massacre there wouldn't be any wiki NPOV issues at all with the name of the park. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:54, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But in that case "Massacre Rim" would be the WP:COMMONNAME right?VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 22:37, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No it would be the official name, or do you mean just Massacre Rim alone? Because alone it refers to the geographic feature, not the associated park. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:50, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is it also not the commonname, in addition to being an official name? Both of the park and the dark sanctuary.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 23:46, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One and the same, the type of park is dark sky sanctuary. Massacre Rim is the name of a geographic feature (see for example Mogollon Rim). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:21, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The problem posed is, why can massacre be used liberally with mass Israeli deaths, but is strongly opposed in titles dealing with mass Palestinian (civilian) deaths, which are extremely common. The answer is, RS have no problem with using it for the former, but exercise extreme caution in employing the term for the latter. The RS illustrate WP:Systemic bias, so that WP:Commonname will ensure that the ethnic distinction remains on wikipedia. There is no remedy. Titles in any case should take a back seat because what is important is writing quality content, which is lacking in both the Israeli massacre articles and the corresponding articles on mass Palestinian deaths.Nishidani (talk) 19:28, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well put. Like elsewhere, Wikipedia has to follow and not lead—it's not our place to change the media landscape, only to make it more accessible. Far be it from me to point to the rules in face of obvious miscarriage of justice, but Wikipedia's are rules I genuinely do believe pan out in the end. Remsense诉 19:45, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You put this distinction way better than I could have. Jebiguess (talk) 19:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Nishidani: And this article documents some of this as pointed out by WikiFouf. But what exactly do we about this bias? Should we propose that more non-English sources be considered (assuming it doesn't create translation issues)? VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 22:28, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thats one of the questions which has been asked... But there is another (or two more if you want to look at it another way) "When can titles contain "massacre"?" / "Am I reading the policy wrong?." I have no answer for the specific Israel-Palestine conflict question... But for "Am I reading the policy wrong?" the answer is a clear and unambiguous "Yes you are." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:34, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Horse Eye's Back: so assuming massacre is not used in a WP:COMMONNAME related to the article, nor is it a commonly used term as per WP:NCENPOV, then when else can it be appropriate to use it? And most importantly, based on what criteria? VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 22:40, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When its the official or formal name for something, like in the given example of the Massacre Rim Dark Sky Sanctuary. Based on the existing criteria. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This seems like a case where we ought to wait for dustbto have since settled to see what the RSes say. Trying to define anything happen in Gaza as a massacre would be a mess knowing the issues of nationalistic siding that has taken place. Maybe 10, 20 years down the road, well after the current conflict is over and a more rigorous analysis of the events, can we turn the RSes for the best term. But on the short term, we should use a less extreme term like "killings" or "attack". Masem (t) 00:29, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Rather optimistic to think that waiting a decade or two will resolve this. If you line up 119 young men against a wall and mow them down with machine guns, IP history will eventually call that a massacre after several decades, as we do at 1956 Rafah massacre. If you kill 42 cadets, on parade, because they are, as was said at the time, potential future Hamas terrorists, then it is not deliberate slaughter of civilians, perhaps because it happened only 16 years ago.

A proposal to recognize what happened at Kafr Qasim in 1956 as a massacre was knocked back in the Knesset after 65 years had elapsed. Most obvious massacres there, in anyone's language, aren't even remembered (except by Palestinians), let alone covered by RS except in tiptoey snippets of reportage. A decade ago, I thought of writing an Arafat Police Academy massacre article, but dropped it, not finding any significant body of Western mainstream RS mentioning it as such, despite the fact that this first airstrike in Operation Cast Lead, at 11:25 am on December 2008 targeted a group of civilian police whom, by all definitions in international law (Goldstone report 2009 pp.100ff.), are not considered militants in so far as they constitute the law and order arm of a civil administration . 42 cadets, all lined up on for their graduation ceremony, as their families and relatives looked on, were 'taken out' by three missiles fired from a comfortable distance, along with another 57 in a few minutes (240 altogether in the ensuing days of airstrikes on police stations). None had ever engaged in combat with Israeli forces, and the surviving members were instructed to restrict their duties to policing Gazans even when Israeli ground troops subsequently invaded.

The undoubted mass killings of 7 October were immediately recognized as massacres by the mainstream media, rightly so, though hundreds were on active duty in the IDF. The point is, coverage of Israeli/Jewish victims is so intense, that we could easily write wiki bio stubs, with photos, of almost all of the 1139 casualties. Israeli casualties are individuals, known through service and family photo albums: their dramas are part of a (inter)national trauma, the grievings of their families are given voice to form part of our historical memory. Many of us have friends and relatives there. The 47,000 dead/missing in Gaza are not treated as individuals generally, but elements in an endless succession of mass 'Arab' deaths, 'collateral' damage in a hunt for putative murderers among them, hiding behind 'human shields'. Unlike Israeli troops, seen as decent people with normal suburban lives much like our own, defending the front line of Western civilization against a toxically lethal Islam (a meme that goes back to the Crusades, whose historical tenacity even to our times was documented by Norman Daniel in his classic Islam and the West: The Making of an Image, 1960), 'Arabs' are an essentially anonymous alien mass threat pullulating in the hovels of the barbarous fringe, and therefore, whatever the striking similarities in these incidents on both sides of the line, they must be described differently. As our rules state, we can't right the spectacular wrong of this profound cognitive prejudice in our sources, for RS language reflects it. What we can do is write articles with rigorous attention to the details buried in reportage to ascertain what does happen, and, occasionally, put a human face to these other victims, and leave it to readers to make up their own minds.Nishidani (talk) 08:25, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why would denial negate a title of massacre? The crux of this argument seems to have come out of left field. 2605:B100:1132:6702:D037:A3E1:3305:55E7 (talk) 04:53, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cargo cult[edit]

Due to a Twitter/X post, there has been an influx of new/IP users onto the talk page of the Cargo cult article contesting various aspects of it. I don't think the article has ever been great, but the topic is very difficult to write about properly because it refers to a very heterogeneous set of social political and religious movements. The opinions of experienced Wikipedia editors would be welcomed. For an introduction to the topic, I would recommend the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology entry by cargo cult expert Lamont Lindstrom, and What Happened to Cargo Cults? Material Religions in Melanesia and the West by Ton Otto. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:17, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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