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Intelligent design

Pasado, Hrafn42, KC, Morphh, Orangemarlin, Guettardo, Filll, Dave souza, Adam Cuerden, Jim62sch, Kenosis, FeloniousMonk notified

Message left at WikiProject intelligent design. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:02, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

In its current state, this article easily meets several of the featured article criteria. It is comprehensive, factual, neutral, and stable. However, it fails to meet four of the criteria: 1a (well-written prose), 2a (concise intro), 2b (sensible headings), and 4 (appropriate length and focus).

My chief concerns about this article are:

• The prose is frequently quite bad. There are many run-on sentences, dangling modifiers, and rambling excursions. I've posted some examples on the talk page, here. The article reads like what it is -- a bodged-together compromise resulting from lots of acrimony.
• There is excessive footnoting, particularly in the introduction. Because of a history of acrimonious editing, even rather simple and straightforward claims have a half-dozen or more redundant references. The footnotes tend to make the article rather hard to read.
• The sections are badly named and badly organized. More than a third of the article is in a section entitled "Overview". The other large section of the article is entitled "Controversy", a rather nondescript section for an article on a controversial subject.
• The article is excessively long. It has a lot of information in it, which is good; but much of its length is due to bad organization, poor sentence structure, and outright repetition.

I have attempted to raise these issues, both on the talk page and by editing. However, the response among the small number of editors who frequent the talk page has been ... unwelcoming of change. There is expressed concern that any change will tend to undermine a carefully-worked compromise on the article's content, or invite unwelcome attention to the article from biased editors, specifically, advocates of creationism. I do not think that these are good reasons to have a badly bodged-together article.

To repeat what I've said before: There's nothing wrong with the factual content of this article. It doesn't need NPOV review, or more cited sources (FSM forbid!), or anything of the like. It needs to be edited for good writing style ... and it needs to be allowed to be edited.

I encourage reviewers to read the article from top to bottom, as it exists right now. Featured article status is supposed to be based on how good the article actually is, not on how hard-fought someone's battle was to get it into its current shape. --FOo 08:54, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's a matter of "the small number of editors who frequent the talk page" being "unwelcoming of change." (There's a veiled WP:OWN accusation in there that I'm none to happy with). What it has been it a matter of asking you to educate yourself on the history of the article, which FOo seems unwilling to do. There has also been a request for FOo's patience while we discuss changes. An article like Intelligent Design is a very contested article and compromises have been reached in terms of wording in order to resolve discussion page disputes.

I also disagree that it is a "badly bodged-together article", and I think most of us have noted that there are areas that could be rewritten if we work together and keep the history of the article in mind. FOo seems disinclined to listen to these requests for reasoned discussion and patience. •Jim62sch• 10:15, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

It worries me that a number of contributors have said, in effect, that the quality problems are negligible when viewed in the light of the Triumphant March of Progress Through History, or the Great Struggle Against Evil that the article represents. This seems to be a demand for featured article status to be granted and maintained on the basis of amount of effort expended and difficulty of the task, rather than on the quality of the results. --FOo 19:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Foo, in spite of your confidence that your suggestions will uniformly improve a disaster of an article, I will note that very few editors seem to agree with this position. Some of your suggestions might very well be valuable, but I would advocate a conciliatory and reasoned approach, rather than a demand to allow a wholesale rewrite to your own personal standards. One thing I can guarantee with about 99.9% confidence; if we let you have free reign to rewrite the article in this fashion, in short order the article would be consumed in edit wars and under aggressive attack by those who forced many of the original compromises you seem to despise so much. Without a cadre of a half dozen or more regular editors, the article you envision would soon be torn to shreds. One person alone cannot protect this article. This article only exists at all in any semblance of NPOV through the efforts of a team. I soon found in other articles associated with this controversy like evolutionism or Hindu creationism that a single editor, or even a couple of editors, is unable to create an NPOV article in this general area. The forces with other agendas very quickly overwhelm these articles with POV edits, and in a matter of days or even hours these sorts of articles descend into POV rants by one side or another. Therefore, ignoring the advice and past efforts of these regular editors is not advisable or reasonable. Let us try to evolve the article, rather than impose huge changes rapidly by fiat or fatwa. --Filll 13:48, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The following statement of Foo I find particularly naive: There is expressed concern that any change will tend to undermine a carefully-worked compromise on the article's content, or invite unwelcome attention to the article from biased editors, specifically, advocates of creationism. I do not think that these are good reasons to have a badly bodged-together article. Other editors do not feel it is a "badly bodged-together article". This is only your own gratuitous personal opinion, which by the rules of logic, can be gratuitously refuted and discarded. If you have not had extensive personal experience (on the order of daily exposure and several edits per day, for at least 6 months) on one of these controversial articles, your opinions carry very little weight. Editing articles of this type, compared to regular articles, is as different as night is from day. Many of the regular editors of these controversial articles occasionally edit and create less controversial articles in areas like history or medicine or biography and have a compltely different experience. I can reasonably expect that even after a few months, a less controversial article of mine will be roughly the same, and evolving with slow changes and improvements. The rate of change on these controversial articles is perhaps 500 or 1000 times greater than it is on the average article, and editing them is a completely different experience. If Foo wrote an article in a controversial area himself and tried to defend it over a few weeks, he would soon start to gain a deeper understanding of the situation. His article would rapidly be overwhelmed. The more he tried to defend it, the more this would encourage attacks by POV warriors. Without a cadre of associates with the same viewpoint as him to defend it, his article would quickly be destroyed, in only a matter of days or even hours. Lecturing us about how awful the article is according to his uninformed standards is the height of arrogance. Instead, let us try to work together to improve it in small bites. The only way to do this is to do it incrementally. And as I have repeatedly suggested, locate reasonable pieces to farm out to subsiduary articles to relieve the stress on the main article. Let us learn from past experience at contentious articles like evolution, rather than try to reinvent the wheel.--Filll 14:21, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• The article is neither neutral, nor factual or anything like that. Neutrality: It restricts mostly to viewpoints that are either Intelligent Design or naturalist, and doesn't even mention critical viewpoints that don't agree with either. The article restricts itself too much to the controversy between some parts of the scientific community and the Intelligent Design movement, while positions held in professional philosophy about the matter are missing almost completely. Intelligent Design is mostly a problem of philosophy, and a good article about Intelligent Design needs to write about results from philosophy about Intelligent Design just as much as a good article about Evolution needs to write about results from science about Evolution. Facticity is a problem as well: The article describes some orthodox views as if they were exclusive. For example it uses "empirical science" instead of "empiricsm" as if the orthodox empiricist view were the only valid view on empirical science (falsification, for example, is a different one). --rtc 10:22, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Note - RTC is basically advocating using the same language in this article as is used by the ID folks to confuse the issue. That's pretty much what the above objection amounts to. Raul654 17:37, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
    • I have no sympathy for the "ID folks", but it sure doesn't sound that way to me. If there are concerns about "intelligent design" coming from academic philosophy as well as from science, they should also be addressed in the article. --FOo 19:21, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
      • The "basic academic philosophy" argument is a trojan horse - ID is creationism repackaged as science. And the only way you can call ID a science is to redefine what science is. So the ID folks (RTC included) advocate watering down the article with all sort of arcane philisophical minutiae to confuse the basic issue that science is empirical - that is, it is based in observable fact. Raul654 20:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
        • If anyone should care to examine RTC's contributions, one will see that RTC specializes in obfuscation and excessive pedantry, slanted to promote intelligent design. If left up to RTC, the article would read like a promotional brochure for the Discovery Institute, and be of little use as an encyclopedia article. --Filll 13:36, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• I didn't bother reading beyond the header. Not a single source, advocacy group or organisation is listed that is not from the US. Granted, this is chiefly a US debate, so either the framework of that debate needs to be elaborated within a US context to justify the inclusion of US-only material, or else a committed effort needs to be made to situate the debate within a larger (i.e. rest-of-world) view. My personal view is that, from an encyclopedic standpoint, the question why popular belief in ID is far higher in the US than anywhere else across the developed world is worth addressing. But either way, the US-centrism of this article is hideous and needs to be redressed. Eusebeus 11:45, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• • I agree that the article is a bit too US-centric, but there are obvious reasons for this, given the history of the movement. I have in the past attempted to flesh out the description of its gradual spread outside of US borders which continues apace, and I think that this can be easily addressed. Basically, the American legal system has spurred the creation and growth of this movement in the US first, and this momentum is being transferred to many foreign venues recently. A better way to go, which I have advocated, is a separate article addressing the spread of ID ideas to other countries. --Filll 12:58, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• I've thought it could use work on 2a to better summarize the article but changes to the lead take a great deal of time and effort to gain consensus. The external links could probably use a cleanup too with regard to guidelines. Morphh 12:46, 06 July 2007 (UTC)
• comment A bit more work on non-US elements could help. However, most of Foo's complaints seem to be at best overstated. In any event, it is highly premature to request a delisting wFubar has attempted little discussion on the talk page about the issues in question. JoshuaZ 13:37, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

*Delist. I am among those who generally appreciates seeing and paying close attention to feedback and criticisms from a broader community. I find the recent facts and circumstances under which this FAR was filed, however, to be reasonably explained only by dynamics such as bullheadeness, personal pride in being a self-appointed member of the style police, a demand to be paid attention to, and an arbitrary and somewhat capricious attitude with little respect for hard work and local WP:consensus. I'm for taking it out of FA status promptly upon receiving the feedback of the broader WP community, which hopefully will take into account that:

1) Intelligent design has proven to be a difficult and complex topic with countless personal POVs expressed, typically on a weekly basis, about what relevant facts are most important to effectively summarize the topic for the reader of the article, or even about what the facts are to begin with. Frequently the POVs come from four, five, six or more separate angles simultaneously and often are in direct and essentially intractable conflict with one another.

2) Being a complex and controversial topic, frequently this article gets attention from folks that haven't even bothered to thoroughly read the article and check the references. I recognize this is sometimes difficult because learning this topic takes time, energy, diligence and ability to comprehend complex sets of facts as well as broad descriptions of ideology that are integral to the topic according to the many reliable sources that have offered published accounts of different aspects of the topic. Maintaining it is a pain in the neck, and after the last FAR the participants in the FAR mostly went their merry way and didn't do squat to defend the decisions that were made for the article at the time, and the hard work has fallen in various measures on about a dozen long-term participants in the article.

3) I think, purely as a personal opinion here, that those who choose to continue to actively participate in the article on intelligent design would be collectively best served to simply remove the article from FA status (delist it) upon receiving the feedback of the broader community--feedback which, again, IMO, should always be welcomed. But constantly attemping to explain the conceptual and practical intricacies of this difficult topic to people who'd rather argue with the participants than take the time and expend the effort to learn the topic should not be part of the participants' job. The often vociferous feelings that the topic engages in many of the people who post about the article are a natural byproduct of the topic, in my judgment, not of the present form of the article itself. It would be good, IMO, to merely remove the "stick" that quite arguably is presently being used to brow-beat the participants in the article.

4) I don't aspire to be an administrator, only a contributor to WP, but I will say that it is my opinion that the administrative community here should look into this FAR with a close eye on the use, or possible abuse, of WP process in quest of users' personal agendas. There might be facts involved in this FAR that are worth analyzing from a "process perspective", and perhaps appropriate to act upon in forming and enforcing WP policy, specifically in better defining the concept of "disinterested" or "objective" application of WP processes by both admins and WP users generally. ... Kenosis 15:11, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Did you mean "delist as an FA" or "remove from FAR"? I'm a little confused here. KillerChihuahua 15:45, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

  • I did mean "delist as FA". If FA status is going to be used willy-nilly as a stick to brow-beat participants in the article, it should be delisted as an FA. If there's a procedure for removing the FAR once initiated, of course it should be removed from FAR. Feedback from the broader community is, IMO, always welcome and often quite helpful. But I wouldn't object in the slightest to removing it from FAR, under the present circumstances in which it was initiated. ... Kenosis 16:07, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
  • NOTE: I now see SandyGeorgia's instructions below regarding the correct application of FAR and FARC. ... Kenosis 11:20, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
• Keep FA. Article is accurate and every well supported, unlike FOo's analysis. That the prose is bad is simply a personal opinion; the editors who wrote it are a professor or holders of advanced degrees, and FOo's yet to offer any substantive alternative prose that's an improvement other than a revised intro yesterday which was an incremental improvement at best, not sweepingly better. FOo fails to keep in mind that this article has been a daily target for over 3 years of a well-organized campaign of ID pov pushers and the that the amount of footnotes has been proved necessary due to their clueless and bad faith objections. A quick glance at the 41(!) pages of archived discussion back this up; he should consider our 3 years experience in dealing with this issue first and foremost. FOo's objections to the "Overview" and "Controversy" titles is a minor quibble and one yet to be discussed. And of course the article is long, it covers a complex topic. If there's repetition in it, I've yet to see it. I think FOo misrepresents both the situation and the article here. Instead of rushing to challenge it's FA status when one or two proposals aren't getting the traction he'd like, he should instead write and propose a revised article and let the community decide if it's an improvement first, something he's failed to do. FeloniousMonk 15:13, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with Kenosis's and FM's assessments - Fubar seems to be equating "not written the way I like it" with badly written. The article is heavily footnoted because ID (like Global warming) tends to attract POV pushers. The fact that they are mostly (if not exclusively) from the US is because ID is distinctly a American phenomenon - an attempt by a group of American evangelicals to repackage creationism so as to fit US court decisions. In short, this FA review is completely unnecessary. Raul654 17:35, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

If writing style is just a matter of opinion, then why is it a featured article criterion? --FOo 18:05, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Because objections due to bad writing can be subjective or objective. Yours are subjective. Other people reading through the article have no problems with it. Raul654 20:20, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

And as for length ... do note that Intelligent design is longer even than Evolution, even though the latter notion has been around for a lot longer and has actual science to speak of, and both have subsidiary articles (e.g. intelligent design movement and natural selection). --FOo 18:14, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I would ask that you compare the daughter articles of evolution and intelligent design. I have personally put a lot of effort into producing daughter articles for the evolution article for precisely this reason-to remove the stress from the main article of covering all these side-issues and produce a shorter, more-readable, more-focused main article. Evolution was stretched thin and much too long and less readable before we pushed a lot of the material into daughter articles. Once the daughter articles were of sufficient quality (some even longer than the main article), a lot of the attacks on the main evolution article slowed down, and the main article could be trimmed down and improved. Unfortunately, the very nature of the topic covered by the intelligent design article is that more subjects have to be addressed in the main article, and it is less easy to farm out the attacks and difficulties to daughter articles. Nevertheless, we can still improve the subsiduary articles, and thereby stop asking the main article to be all things to all people. The main article can be more of a summary, or lead article of a family of articles covering the different aspects of this very difficult and very controversial topic.--Filll 13:35, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep So the article has too many references. Do I have that right? Read number 5 of Raul's Laws of Misplaced Pages. As for FOo's other objections: The prose is better than most other articles on controversial topics, the section names are accurate, the article is as long as it needs to be to cover the topic. Evolution is a shorter article because it covers the mainstream view and only has to devote a couple paragraphs to creationism. Whereas the ID article has to present two opposing views, the challenge of creationists to the scientific method and evolution and the response of the scientific community to that challenge, and in the proportion they are held. This filing smells like sour grapes. Odd nature 19:02, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep FA basically agreeing with FM and Odd Nature. I understand Kenosis' points, but I think running away from controversy is foolish. •Jim62sch• 21:51, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Great, Jim, thanks. Honestly, who cares if it's an FA--do readers look it up under FA? or under "intelligent design"? Do they attach more credibility, or less credibility, to what the article states because it's an FA? I thnk not. All this arguing about FA-status is in substantial part just internal politics within WP. Maybe I'll still change my mind on my stated preference, but for now, my stated preference stands as is. ... Kenosis 23:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

True, very true. But FA status is like a bone you throw to the dog for a job well-done, and some folks like to pile up bones.  :) •Jim62sch• 13:19, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Gee, thanx. Woof. Me want bone. Gimme bone. woof. ... Kenosis 23:20, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Please read WP:FAR instructions; Keep, Remove, Delist etc. are not declared in the Review phase. The review phase is for identifying and addressing issues; Keep or Remove is declared if the article moves to FARC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:56, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

That's what I thought. :) I was a little bit surprised when people started posting "Keep" and "Delist" and so on here, since I was pretty sure I was asking for support in making the article feature-quality again ... --FOo 05:02, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I would like the text of the article to be verifiable and more factual. Currently too much weight is given to unreliable sources over reliable sources. Pasado 07:24, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, that's a little bit out of scope, but ... Can you give examples? --FOo 07:48, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I would expect that this discussion would attract plenty of intelligent design advocates and so this should be kept in mind when one reads comments like that of Pasado.--Filll 13:39, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• I agree with Fubar's comments on the article's prose and structure, and would support changes in these areas. However, the history of the article combined with the extreme reluctance of certain editors to allow any changes, even the most trivial ("La WP:OWN sans phrases", pace Sieyès) does not give me confidence that these issues are capable of being succesfully addressed. I don't have an opinion on whether this means it should be delisted - it's not changed significantly for the worse since acheiving FA status, at least. Tevildo 10:47, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
• I appreciate the lesson in WP procedure-- the two terms are somewhat counterintuitive, each implying its opposite ( FAR <-> FARC ). My opinion about this situation stands as given above, except I've stricken the incorrect use of "delist". The feedback from the broader community would be much welcomed, except as we've seen from the last time around with this FA stuff, the reviewers will go on their merry way and Raul's Law #5 will kick right back into gear. ... Kenosis 11:20, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
• I am glad that we have so many people interested in improving the article, but I wish most people would look back at how the article was formed and respect the opinions of those who have been regular contributors and shephards of this article over the months and years. Without them, the article would be eviscerated in short order. This is a thankless stressful task, and the input of those regular contributors should carry some some weight in this process. As I have said repeatedly, the writing style in the article can clearly be improved in spots. The organization of the article might not be optimal. The current reference citation method is not the prettiest, but has been chosen and rechosen and reexamined many times, and is the product of a long process of concensus, as can be seen in the history. Given the contentious nature of the article, I suggest strongly that improvements be made in small steps, rather than massive rewrites that threaten to to discard huge amounts of material forged by consensus. My fear, and those of the other regular editors, is that this will leave the article vulnerable to attacks and predation by the very determined group of intelligent design advocates that forced the compromises in the first place, or embroil the article in huge amounts of time-wasting consensus building over the next year or so, resulting in an article not much different than what we now see. This intelligent design article is inherently different than the evolution article because evolution has science to back it up, and has a huge number of reasonably well-written daughter articles to support it. Intelligent design has to deal with several highly controversial and disputed matters, contradictory legal arguments, and multiple sides of a dispute that is still hotly contested. The evolution article is far more narrow, and all these contentious associated issues have successfully been dispatched to a very large number of daughter articles like evidence for evolution, creation-evolution controversy, objections to evolution, level of support for evolution, etc, which can be used to diffuse attacks on evolution and absorb the attacks. I think that farming out material and topics to subsiduary daughter articles, and improving the daughter articles is a better way in which to address the subject of intelligent design, rather than endlessly rewriting (and possibly further lengthening) the main article. Overall, in spite of the difficult nature of this subject, the intelligent design article is informative and balanced and well-written. I am not advocating a stasis, but a slow evolution of the article, keeping in mind the substantial constraints that this process much operate under. Any other process will inevitably lead back to a morass of editorial disputes.--Filll 13:21, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• Which point I think we have tried to explain to FOo several times. Maintaining the ID article is a very difficult balancing act, and the various objections with which we must deal inevitably lead to a longer article, occasional peculiarities in syntax, and an abundance of references and citations and those by need are predominately from the US as that is where the debate rages. Of course on can try to find info on ID from France or Spain or Italy, but this is a topic of so little interest there that, when it is covered, it is ripped apart as being utter nonsense. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 13:37, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Keep FA status. This article fully qualified for Featured Article status, and passed, fairly recently. To address FOo's points:

• There have been no substantive changes since the article became a FA, at least none that turned the article into a hodgepodge of compromises written in bad prose, or created the other problems FOo perceives. The prose is good, and if there are any grammar problems those should be trivial to fix.
• I have no problem with "excessive" footnotes; it means every sentence that has been subject to argument in the past has been well-researched, giving readers confidence in the reliability of the article given the sources cited.
• I have no problem with section naming, although more clarity is welcome, but the current section naming and organization are apt, and don't detract from FA status.
• Finally, the length is appropriate. A featured article should be comprehensive, and this is. =Axlq 16:20, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I really wish the first sentence didn't use an unattributed quote to define not just ID, but also to claim natural selection is "undirected" - a misleading description at best, and at worst patently false, since natural selection is, by definition, the non-random part of evolution (genetic drift is the random part) Adam Cuerden 00:42, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

What unattributed quote? It's a direct quotation from the sources cited. That's the definition the Discovery Institute uses. If the Discovery Institute is stating something misleading or patently false, well.... they say it, so the article quotes it. =Axlq 01:15, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I mean that it's not attributed in the article text - sure, if you check the footnotes, it's attributed, but it's a quote from an extremely biased source which is not labelled as such unless you footnote dive Adam Cuerden 02:43, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I think you're confused. Using a primary source (the definitive defintion of ID used by all leading proponents to show what it is they say ID is) is exactly what is called for by policy. That they misrepresent what they oppose (evolution) and their own claim is beside the point and dealt with later in the article. FeloniousMonk 04:45, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm surprised that policy requires this. Could you direct me to this policy? Thanks, Pasado 18:06, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd say Misplaced Pages:Attribution requires it. However, I wouldn't have a problem with inserting "by its proponents" into the lead sentence: Intelligent design is the claim by its proponents that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." - but I don't see how it enhances the value or readability of it. =Axlq 18:20, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the use of "is the claim" makes it pretty clear who's making the claim. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 18:27, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Eh, I just don't understand why we let ID proponents describe their opposition. There doesn't seem any reason to. Adam Cuerden 06:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

A number of posters above have emphasized a point that I made in the initial request for review: there is resistance to change in this article because of the fear that change will be abused by biased editors, specifically creationists. I would like to take a moment to address this concern.

The changes that I have proposed -- that I still believe are necessary for this article to meet the style-related portions of the FA criteria -- can be made in small steps. They can be made without sacrificing any of the meaning of the article. They do not need full rewrites, but incremental changes -- mostly copy-edits, grammatical changes to individual sentences; along with some reordering and removal of duplication.

On the struggle: I understand that a number of editors feel that they have struggled mightily to prevent bias in this article. I'm well familiar with the problem; heck, I edit Scientology-related articles. :P However, I do not think that FA criteria should be relaxed for articles on topics that are tough and prone to bias. Nor is it necessary to do so! I ask editors to look at any of the featured articles on other controversial subjects, such as Islam, atheism, or Jerusalem -- just to pick a few articles that have been recently featured on the Main Page. For that matter, try evolution ... or even Xenu.

All of these articles have been struggled over. All of these articles are on issues where some group(s) of editors strongly want to push their bias, and other editors have had to hold the line against bias. All of them have clearer writing, better-chosen sections, better grammar, and less repetition than Intelligent design.

(And none of them need more than 14 footnotes in the introduction, while Intelligent design has 35....) --FOo 03:30, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Has the Church of Scientology ever put Misplaced Pages on notice about its articles? The Discovery Institute, ID's leading organization, has: That's just one of many attempts to rally their followers to attack the article. So please don't be so quick to judge the regular editors there or assume that you understand the lay of the land on the topic or the article. Again, the number of sources in the article is the result of the persistant and often disruptive organized challenges to each and every source by these people; they won't let go a point until you've provided them with ten notable sources for each and every statement.

Also, I've still yet to see specific examples of this poor writing, ill-chosen sections, and repetition you continue on about. Which specific parts are you objecting to? Why haven't made a significant effort to build consensus for the changes you seek in the "small steps" that you suggest above, instead of defaulting to challenging the article's FA status after a couple of days half-hearted discussion? Furthermore, I may be wrong on this point, but I don't think anyone here has suggested that FA criteria be relaxed for this particular article. For those making the claim that particular editors prevent any edits to the article, its history for the last 45 days belies the claim FeloniousMonk 04:45, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you should go look at the talk page. There are plenty of examples of poor writing there, and an ongoing effort to improve it. Only reason I came here was to get more eyeballs on the problems. --FOo 18:56, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, I sense dismissiveness and hostility there.

Look FOo, of any of the editors to comment on this page, FM probably knows the most about the topic of ID, and has been working on the article for some time. I think he's well aware of what you consider to be poor writing, but it seems from his comments that he disagrees with your evaluation. Consider that before making further snarky comments. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 19:56, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Both Margareta and Fubar claim the desire to improve the prose of the article. Margareta has made dozens of sentence structure improvements without the meaning of the sentence being lost. But when Fubar makes a change the meaning of the sentence is lessened and the sentence structure in not improved. It belies the true intent of Fubar’s offer to "help". Pasado 05:26, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I would have to agree. Margareta's edits have been very good (although two needed to be tweaked), while FOo's fave been problematic at best and I'm begining to detect a desire to weaken the article. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 18:40, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

It's worth noting that two of the five examples of bad grammatical style that I originally highlighted on the talk page have since been improved by other editors. So apparently there's a little more consensus that this article needed stylistic improvement than some people suggest. While some editors responded with bile and hatred to the notion that this article has had style problems and needs work, others seem to have responded productively and usefully. Yay! I call it progress. --FOo 20:54, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

They're incremental in nature, not the sweeping problems you've suggested exist. The source of you lack of success there was your half-hearted attempt to make any genuinely meaningful improvements, instead rushing to challenge the article's FA status. That and what looks lime altering the article to favor the ID viewpoint at the expense of the scientific community's. On the other hand take a look at the effort of Margareta at the article. Through collaboration rather than brute force she's managed to do more in two days than you have in two years. That says something. I suggest you consider dropping this FAR. FeloniousMonk 05:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I find your accusations amusingly irresponsible. As an atheist with a strong (albeit amateur) interest in biology -- indeed, rather a fan of Richard Dawkins since before he was cool -- I have no interest in making creationism (since that's what it is) look good.

I find your claim of "brute force" to be rather sickening. After an initial attempt to directly edit the article, where my rather small efforts were reverted, I wrote up my concerns and made some proposals on the talk page. What I got back was a hostility I didn't understand. I realize now that this hostility was nurtured and cultivated by the ongoing struggles against creationist "POV-pushers", as evidenced by your attribution of that view to me. You think anyone who doesn't like the state of the article, must dislike it for biased, creationist reasons. Well, that's wrong.

I wanted more eyes on the problem -- and I wanted some serious discussion of whether this article still merited FA status -- so I brought it here. Unfortunately, you and others appear to be convinced that anyone who challenges the quality of your work must be an enemy out to destroy it, to twist it into some kind of creationist showpiece. Too bad. That's a sick, scary way to look at the world. Moreover, it's an attitude ultimately contrary to Misplaced Pages's goals, its policies, and the culture the project tries to cultivate.

If making proposals and raising concerns about quality via the channels offered for that purpose is "brute force" now, the project is doomed. Doomed, I say. Doooomed.

(I understand the irony in that I'm attributing views and motives to you, after rejecting your attribution of views and motives to me. I hope you'll excuse it. I hope also that my interpretation is slightly more accurate than yours, since yours is way off base.)

At this point, this FA review falls under WP:SNOW; you've defeated any chance that a serious discussion will occur here. I'm not going away, though. I'll continue to work on this article when I feel I have something to contribute -- mostly on the talk page, of course, since I expect the hostility to worsen if I actually try to edit. --FOo 06:49, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comments. The lead alone is an embarassment to FA status; there is also an external link farm, and incorrectly formatted citations. I avoided this when it was at FAC, but there are clear issues here. Looks like Wiki's worst example of how not to hammer out an NPOV compromise. Continue review; try to fix the article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:55, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
  • OK, I've looked at the FAC, and am not surprised at what I found. The article was promoted over multiple and serious actionable objections, and without involved editors identifying themselves as per the instructions at WP:FAC. Raul has expressed sentiments in this area that may reflect a conflict of interest. This article is an embarrassment to FA. Besides the issues already raised here (embarrassing lead, external link farm, incorrectly formatted citations), there are also basic MOS issues, starting with WP:MSH. A word to avoid in the first line? Poor wikilinking per WP:CONTEXT? Sloppy prose with parenthetical (see) inserts? Evolution was featured in spite of the potential for similar issues; this article doesn't achieve Wiki's finest status as Evolution did. This thing is dripping with POV and sloppiness. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:12, 9 July 2007 (UTC)