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Tatarstan

Could someone please look at the situation around the Tatarstan article? There is an issue around this edit, and a string of reverts that followed. Since I've already reverted more times than I should have, and since my explanations did not go through to the user, I would appreciate if someone else could take a look.

In a nutshell, the original sentence (52% of the estimated 3.8 million population is Muslim) was sourced to this sptimes.ru article, which states, verbatim, that "52.9 percent of the 3.8 million population is predominantly Tatar and Muslim". The anon is arguing that the 52.9% figure is actually the percentage of Tatars as taken from the 2002 Census, and on those grounds he changes the percentage to 53.2%, which is the percentage of Tatars reported by the 2010 Census (and the source he uses is actually the ethnic composition sheet from the 2010 Census results).

Now, the anon's statement that 52.9% is the percentage of Tatars in the 2002 Census is correct (and can be easily verified using a similar ethnic composition sheet from the 2002 Census results). Problem is, the sptimes.ru article does not say that the percentage is from the 2002 Census results but merely states that it is the percentage of "Tatars and Muslims". My argument is that while the source is most likely wrong in that (because it is ridiculous to assume that all Tatars are Muslims), their being wrong does not give us the right to engage in synthesis: to replace 2002's 52.9% with 2010's 53.2% requires assuming that sptimes took the number from the 2002 Census results (there is no proof they did) and then logically concluding that it would be OK to replace those results with the 2010 Census results. If this isn't a textbook example of synthesis, I don't know what is. Furthermore, in the anon's version we end up with a sentence that tells us the percentage of the Muslims yet is referenced to a source which does not even contain the word "Muslims". A third opinion would be greatly appreciated. My discussion with the user can be found on my talk page.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 6, 2012; 15:49 (UTC)

What, no takers?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 17, 2012; 15:06 (UTC)

Yup, you are right - synthesis, entirely unsupported by the source cited. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:11, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Would you (or whoever else reading this who happens to agree) care to get involved into this, change the article to the previous version, and perhaps explain this again to the anon if he persists? I really don't feel comfortable continuing to re-revert.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 17, 2012; 15:44 (UTC)

Ezhiki: It seems the reliability of the SPTimes article, for the purposes needed, cannot be reasonably judged as established: (a) we now don't reliably know what year it refers to; (b) it speaks of "Tartars and Muslims" and not simply "Muslims" (it may be wrong on both these counts because, if based on Census ethnicity figures, it should really be just "Tartars."). I cannot read anon's source as it is not in english. However, from what you say, anon also makes the assumption of (b) above - which means his source, alone, does not strictly support his statement either. Why not compromise and (provably) state that the vast majority of Tartars are Muslim. That will make it obvious to readers what the majority faith is even if a percentage figure cannot be reliably sourced. Blue Horizen (talk) 22:41, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pitching in! The source which you couldn't read is simply a table of results of the population census, one which deals with ethnicity only (indeed, religious preference was not even a question asked during the census). As for the sptimes article, I, too, agree that it is not the best source to illustrate what is being said (although it is definitely more suitable than the Census results). I do not, however, agree that it would be OK to just say that "the vast majority of Tatars are Muslim" and leave it there. That very well may be true, but it is an extraordinary claim all the same, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary sources (or at least some sources). There are undoubtedly many secular Tatars, as well as Tatars who culturally identify with the Muslim faith but do not really practice it, so simply saying that the "vast majority" of Tatars are Muslim would be quite presumptuous on our part. Perhaps removing the offending passage altogether will be the best solution, at least until appropriate sources are found?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 31, 2012; 14:31 (UTC)

That sounds a fair interim solution to me. (You may not have noticed that I said above that you would need to provably show "the vast majority of Tartars are Muslim" if you wanted to go that way. Of course if such a source cannot be provided then you cannot go that way as you rightly conclude.) Blue Horizen (talk) 04:22, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Uh, whats so offending? Ezhiki, if you visit the Islam in Tatarstan page, a BBC article said most of the Tatars in Tatarstan are practicing Muslims. I also gave several points on the Tatarstan talk page, please adress those. 68.149.133.218 (talk) 00:16, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I see you haven't read WP:SYNTH yet, or you wouldn't have asked this question. Please, do read it; it might be handy in future edits.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2012; 14:14 (UTC)

Americans Elect

I've been having a deuce of a time keeping up with the edits on the Americans Elect article. There's a host of relatively new accounts making sure to remove the description of the organization as a political party. The source for this seems to be a lawsuit filed by the predecessor organization. My inclination is that citing such is original research (the suit is anything but clear in defending the new editors' claims, since it actually starts with describing the plantiff as a political party). The "non-partisan organization" is rather one of the key elements of how Americans Elect describes itself, but the news seems to pretty regularly describe them as a political party. Any help sorting out this mess would be appreciated. --TeaDrinker (talk) 20:19, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I've left a comment on the talk page; this is a little bit tricky, and may require a nuanced solution, so no change to the article yet. Let's see if another set of eyes can help direct a better discussion. Qwyrxian (talk) 08:22, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

New York City

There is a bit of debate over how information regarding New York City should be presented. One of the contentious sentences is "New York is an important center for international diplomacyand is widely deemed the cultural capital of the world. The debate has largely revolved around whether "...is widely deemed the cultural capital of the world" is original research or not. There are other sentences, especially in the lead constructed and supported much the same way. The current discussion is located at Talk:New York City#NPOV. AIRcorn (talk) 08:21, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

It isn't original research... but I could see objections on NPOV grounds. Perhaps " widely deemed a cultural capital of the world" would be more acceptable. Blueboar (talk) 00:50, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

If that is the case then I have completely misunderstood WP:Weasel and WP:Synth. Did you check the references that are used to support this claim? Note that there is no other attribution within the article. AIRcorn (talk) 01:02, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

It's all in the phrasing: "...has long been recognized as an international cultural center." is how I would phrase it. Usually whenever you see four footnotes attempting to "document" a single phrase, that's more often than not a POV declaration that should be toned down, I have observed. There is no "capital" of anything of the world, it's a peacocky figure of speech. Carrite (talk) 19:43, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I made a change which alleviates the concern of original research in my mind. It was one I suggested at the talk page that was met with disapproval there, but seems to be accepted now. I can probably work on the other issues in a similar way. Thanks to those who responded. AIRcorn (talk) 12:45, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Corporate Representatives for Ethical Misplaced Pages Engagement

Hi, kind of a technical question, but perhaps an important one. Is it considered OR to quote more of a quotation that a secondary source quotes, provided you have access to the full original quote in a primary source. In this case, Jimmy Wales commented on a blog...a secondary source (a reliable one) reported an excerpt. Currently Wales' is quoted in the Misplaced Pages article more fully than the excerpt. Is that considered OR? Ocaasi 19:09, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe it would be OR, but you must cite the primary source as well as the secondary source, which does not appear to be the case at the moment. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 09:03, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it would be OR in that context. A primary source is just fine to verify the exact text of some quote. There may be cases where it's inappropriate to use a lengthier quote than chosen by secondary sources, for other reasons (ie. a long quote could be undue weight; justaposing the text with something else might be synthesis). I wouldn't file it under "OR" because copy & paste leaves no room for the editor to exercise their own imagination. bobrayner (talk) 13:23, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Friday night death slot

Friday night death slot (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I have removed all unsourced statements with some left remaining. I wonder if this article's sections still violate WP:no original research, such as "Failures", "Successes", and "Fox and Fridays". --George Ho (talk) 19:52, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Dog and Canis lupus dingo

I am a mediator/clerk at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard. Editor Jobberone brought a dispute there in which editor Chrisrus wanted to add the following text to the Dog article:

The domestic dog (a union of Canis lupus familiaris and Canis lupus dingo ) is a subspecies of the gray wolf (Canis lupus), a member of the Canidae family of the mammilian order "Carnivora".

I subsequently noted that he had added a similar assertion to the Canis lupus dingo article, specifically:

"While current taxonomy lists it as "provisionally separate" from C. l. familiaris, the current taxonomy notes that it is legitimate to view the two as united into one subspecies, the "domestic dog", while admitting that this "stretches the subspecies concept.""

The DRN discussion is here. I expressed the opinion that the MSW sources were ambiguous and had to be interpreted and analyzed (in particular, the very analysis Chrisrus made in this edit) in violation of the NOR policy to be able to support the suggested text. Chrisrus has now challenged my opinion, saying that the source is not ambiguous. The opinions of other editors is needed. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 02:17, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

The first reference you've provided is not under discussion; please strike it through before it confuses. Instead, provide the Canis lupus familiaris page, here, like Canis lupus dingo also stamped "domestic dog":

http://www.bucknell.edu/MSW3/browse.asp?id=14000752 (MSW3 listing of 'Canis lupus familiaris)

When MSW3 so stamped these taxa, they directed that the taxa be so filed: file specimens of both C.l.familiaris and C.l.dingo under the label "domestic dog". Please read and follow the discussion at the article dog. I explain in more detail there and could only repeat that here. Chrisrus (talk) 05:39, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't sure how important you thought that first one to be so I left it in. I'm removing it. I also agree that the C.l.familiaris link is important and have modified it so that it shows up in your last post, immediately above. — TransporterMan (TALK) 18:15, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

References

1. ^ "Mammal Species of the World - Browse: lupus". Bucknell.edu. Retrieved 2010-08-10.
2. ^ "Mammal Species of the World - Browse: dingo". Bucknell.edu. Retrieved 2010-08-10.

Great. If this is fully understood that it's a clear-cut matter with no WP:Sythesis in sight, shall we close this thread or is there something more to discuss? Chrisrus (talk) 03:02, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, there's been no discussion and no understanding. I still think the three MSW3 sources are too ambiguous to support your preferred text. Let's see what other editors think. — TransporterMan (TALK) 03:14, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

The topic of OR must not be interpreted in isolation of verifiability and neutral POV as they work in harmony with each other. His POV analyzes and interprets the references to advance a POV not attributable to them and which is not neutral. His POV is isolated from the scientific community and is not verifiable without the analysis he brings to the article. I can find no other reliable references to substantiate his claims and statements. If he could find other references which are not ambiguous that would be helpfulJobberone (talk) 03:46, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Also, the following quotation by Chrisus is not only unsubstantiated in the literature, it follows no known taxonomic rules. It is totally unscientific and makes no sense-

"When MSW3 so stamped these taxa, they directed that the taxa be so filed: file specimens of both C.l.familiaris and C.l.dingo under the label "domestic dog". Please read and follow the discussion at the article dog. I explain in more detail there and could only repeat that here. Chrisrus (talk) 05:39, 19 February 2012 (UTC)"

MSW does not 'direct' anything in regards to taxonomic classifications. I have no idea what "file specimens of both..." means. While the decisions of what constitutes a genus, species or subspecies is subjective, the naming is not and follows strict rules. http://iczn.org/ Canis lupus familiaris and Canis lupus dingo are currently valid biological taxonomic names for both subspecies of Canis lupus. "Domestic dog" is not a valid taxonomic name. In fact it has varied meanings depending on context.Jobberone (talk) 03:01, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

The question here is whether I am guilty of undue WP:SYN when I support stating that MSW3 has identified both ‘’Canis lupus familiaris’’ and ‘’Canis lupus dingo’’ as “” by placing those words in the comments section of each taxon, and then saying what they do in the comments section of the parent taxa.

When MSW3 put “domestic dog” on those two taxa, they meant that those taxa are both domestic dog.

When they explain on the parent taxon page that that the domestic dog is a subspecies of Canis lupus, they are referring to the two taxa they identified as “domestic dog” on the other two pages.

When they say that C.l.dingo is only provisionally separate, the proviso is that we understand about both belonging to domestic dog.

When they say they admit they know that this stretches the subspecies concept, it’s because you are right, it is weird to have a subspecies made of two subspecies, but that's their decision anyhow.

If it seems to you that this citation might be saying something else, I think they ball is in your court to explain what that might be.

If you can’t, I’d have to ask why, then, you say that it’s ambiguous.

If you don't or can't answer that question, but just insist we wait for someone else to do this for you, I’d like to ask for who, for how long, and why.

If there are any other questions, such as:

• what other citations say
• whether other citations are better
• whether this citation reprents current taxonomy or scientic consensus
• whether or how this citation should or should not be used in the article
• whether what this citation says is true or good or wrong or odd or insane
• what effect this if used would have on the article dog, other articles, system of articles, theoretically likely readers, dingo conservation efforts, or anything else
• whether we should use this citation just for the taxa, but ignore the comments
• whether the comments are confusing, strange, or beg questions that need answers before we can use them in the article
• how we feel about what the citations says
• any other matters

…then please feel free to bring them up in an appropriate forum elsewhere. You may be surprised my reaction. I just might agree. But not here.

Here we may only discuss whether there has been an WP:OR violation I my part or not. Chrisrus (talk) 05:35, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

First of all the WP:OR page clearly states OR should not be interpreted in isolation from neutrality or verifiability. Neither can you interpret a source and come to your own conclusions without that source directly stating that interpretation of the data but OR and WP:SYN states you cannot combine source A and source B to infer that C is the conclusion. You may not advance a POV in isolation from the rest of the community without balancing it to remain neutral. Your statement violates all three of the basic tenants of Misplaced Pages.

You are inferring that MSW3 is the gold standard for all of humanity when it comes to naming taxa as well as defining what non-taxonomic terms are supposed to mean. That's a particular POV which is not balanced as there are many other databases which are highly thought of and none of them mention that domestic dog is a union of familiaris and dingo. Nor should they attempt to define something outside the purpose of a database for biological taxa. You're saying a biological taxa database which reports taxa and does not define them is defining what the domestic dog means even though they are not clearly saying what you are espousing. And you're doing this on not only the lead paragraph of the article for Canis lupus familiaris but the actual lead sentence. Not only is it not neutral and is OR, it is extremely misleading and not correct in the context you are using it.

If you wish to discuss just what the domestic dog really is then do it in the body of the article, another satellite article or develop one concentrating on this subject. There is much that can be said about what is a domestic dog including certain wild dogs, hybrids, captured pure wolves, yada. I'm not going to debate this further unless asked to and we'll see what other editors decide. Hopefully whatever decision they make will serve Misplaced Pages's best interests.Jobberone (talk) 02:47, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Juggling world records

I just ran into this article from which I removed an enormous number of video links, posted on YouTube and supposedly verifying the information in the article (the videos are cool but they are primary, and it is impossible to verify the information even if you wanted to). I'm actually kind of at a loss for what to do with the article--I'm tempted to nominate if for deletion since I have my doubts about the basic notability of those records. Drmies (talk) 04:18, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Notability is a test to see whether a topic can have its own article Misplaced Pages:Notability. I think the topic Juggling world records is notable for many reasons: (1) Juggling is a world-wide sport with many national and international competitions some of which have been nationally televised (i.e. World Juggling Federation, International Jugglers Association competitions), (2) Juggling world records are tracked by notable organizations such as Guinness World Records, the Juggling Information Services Committee on Numbers Juggling, and others, cited as sources in the article. Thanar (talk) 05:15, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Ethereal being

Ethereal being (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Most of this article's content isn't specific to any published overview of "ethereal beings", i.e., whoever wrote the article decided on their own what constitutes "ethereal" and has collected and duplicated content from dozens of articles to include all non-physical entities in any and all belief systems ever. A glaring example is the Etymology section, which separately analyzes the words "being" and "ethereal", and then attempts to weave a bunch of out-of-context snippets from the writings of people like Thoreau and Disraeli into a made-up "timeline". Talk page discussion has a consensus of editors agreeing that this is a massive example of synthesis that requires a remedy, possibly a redirect to an appropriate target article, however one or two editors disagree. More eyes on the article would be appreciated. - LuckyLouie (talk) 22:17, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I second this. This article is a total train wreck. :bloodofox: (talk)

The "Conspiracy theories and doctrines" section segues into stanzas of poetry. Nuff said. - LuckyLouie (talk) 02:08, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Um, wow. Just wow. "Nuke it from orbit" comes to mind.Yobol (talk) 00:30, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

This discussion is a misconception in my opinion. The word ethereal is only an arbitrary adjective and replaceable by any other such as non-physical, immaterial, impalpable, etc. "Ethereal being" is not a proper noun, therefore sources don’t need to mention exactly these two words together or separated at all. What matters is the entity to own the quality of being immaterial, intangible, spectral, incorporeal, etc. For example, there is no difference at all between the articles 'Ethereal being' and Non-physical entity, both have the same proposition: to describe creatures portrayed in mythologies, religions, philosophies, and popular culture that own the quality of being insubstantial. Guslarkachic (talk) 17:00, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

First of all, I agree 100% with user Guslarkachic and I must to note that several editors manifested this agreement as well in the talk. Second of all, when we find parts of an article written as personal essays we fix the tone, or else we tag the section. Third of all, if the article wasn’t at least tolerable ‘Ethereal being’ wouldn’t be assessed as ‘B’ in the categories Paranormal, Mythology and Religion as “was” done. Fourth of all, the primary goal of a ‘talk’ is to improve an article rather than redirect it or destroy it as mistakenly and insistently was requested there since a RfC began in the talkpage. Fifth of all, since the beginning of the RfC, practically all subsequent edits in that article were destructive, left the article with orphaned references, and usually consorted with arbitraries and controversial summaries overlooking the ongoing discussion. Sixth of all, if really there is synthesis in an article, it has to be removed, however etymology of one or more words isn’t synthesis or OR, and I regard appropriated the citations pointed out over there. At last, at this point the destiny of that article should be decided by third parties, reason why the discussion was wisely brought here. Melodychick (talk) 14:54, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not going to repeat here all of the arguments that were already made in the article's talk. And there have been literally zero arguments against any of those arguments, only vague attempts to block or stall any changes at all. This is getting really, really tiring. — Jeraphine Gryphon  16:07, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Melodychick & Guslarkachic, the severe problems this article is suffering from have been explained on the Talk page again and again - with examples. Yet I see claims that edits can't be made because discussion is in progress, or that the 'B' assessment proves the article is tolerable, or that sources don’t need to explicitly mention the topic, and I wonder if a fundamental misunderstanding of the encyclopedia's policies might be to blame. But given the repeated removal of NPOV and OR article issue tags here and here accompanied by instant dismissal of these concerns as "inaccurate" - I honestly think what's actually going on is refusal to get the point. - LuckyLouie (talk) 00:22, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Sources need to explicitly mention the topic, this is not the issue. The point is the difference between "title" and "topic." Some editors claim that the sources should mention exactly the title of the article, while from the other point of view other editors claim that the concept is the more important thing and so well sourced. A tangential question I figure. I concur with the latter view, the article is suitable and the word "ethereal" is just a general characteristic, an adjective and not a proper noun as argued above. Any synonym could be used. If helps I can cite that this attribute was also utilized by 16th century alchemist Agrippa who described gods, daemons, angels and devils as entities virtually made of ethereal bodies, nevertheless we can realize that Agrippa utilized this term as a widespread characteristic sometimes alternating it with other adjectives such as aerial and others. Excalibursword (talk) 12:50, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Funny you should drop by to "concur". There's something going on here, but I'm not sure what. - LuckyLouie (talk) 14:16, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I had got the feeling that the usernames seemed to have the same flavour but I'd put that down to them having similar interests. Dmcq (talk) 14:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I was just about to ask why literally all of the pro-keeping-the-artice-as-it-is users have a habit of marking their new messages on talk pages as "minor edits". — Jeraphine Gryphon  14:48, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I bet they won't now Darkness Shines (talk) 14:54, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment: OK gentlemen, good weekend. Excalibursword (talk) 18:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

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