Talk:John D. Morris

Geology professor?
He his YEC chums claim that he is a geology professor. They do not mention which university he is supposed to be a professor of. If he is it is clearly a fundamentalist Christian university with an appropriate statement of faith, but which one? &mdash; Dunc|&#9786; 20:44, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Nevermind, found it, San Diego Christian College. &mdash; Dunc|&#9786; 21:10, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Criticism Link
The link worked fine with me, and adding "Dr" in front of his name is a standard creationist POV edit, I have therefore reverted them. JoshuaZ 01:00, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The link did not work for me. Does the link contain direct quotes from Morris? Does it have a citation regarding where those quotes originated? And is the citation verifiable?


 * I have no idea what "a standard creationist POV edit" is, but Morris has an accredited degree, from a regionally accredited university, so "Dr." should be on his bio. --Yuk Yuk Yec 01:11, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually for most people who have such degrees we don't bother calling them Dr. (see for example the pages on Eistein and Martin Luther King) and we are in the process of formalizing this on the style page. To verify, the relevant page that doesnt seem to be up for you is http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_piths.html yes? JoshuaZ 01:20, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The Dr. thing isn't a real big deal, but I think it is allowable.


 * Yes, that's the link that doesn't work for me. If you don't mind, let me know the answers to my questions above or I'll try the link later. --Yuk Yuk Yec 01:34, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The link does have the quoted comments and responses. Looking at your other edits they seem to make sense, but we I would strongly prefer to deal with the Dr. issue also. JoshuaZ 01:45, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I removed "Dr.". I think it's appropriate, but some other entries don't have it and his degrees are mentioned, so that's good enough. --Yuk Yuk Yec 01:50, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I am glad that we can reach a consensus on this. JoshuaZ 05:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

This section is copied with slight edits from the "talk.origins FAQ" linked above. As such, it appears to be a copyvio, although it's hard to say, as the FAQ doesn't identify the original author. (The website claims only to be an archive.) Also, that FAQ appears not to be sourced, itself. It's a little hard to evaluate the verifiability of a web page with no author and no sources.

In other news, I removed the six redundant external links. They all link to the same FAQ, and the paragraph resembles the original enough (and has no content not found in the original) that I think it really only constitutes one large quote, rather than six little quotes of successive sentences. Sam8 19:40, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

After looking around a bit more, I believe the whole section needs to be removed as a copyvio. Here are the salient points: Sam8 18:27, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The section is copied verbatim (with the addition of two words "anthropologists, argue") from the talk.origins FAQ linked above.
 * The web page is marked Copyright Jim Foley.
 * Perusing Google's Usenet archives suggests that Foley is indeed the original author, and wrote it in 1995 or sometime before.
 * I have seen no evidence that it was released to the public domain or under the GFDL. To the contrary, the website explicitly asserts copyright.

It is not a copyright voilation to quote academic sources provided the whole work isn't reproduced and proper credit is given. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ErRe (talk • contribs).

To comment further, I believe the statement above is a misunderstanding of fair use. While the conditions mentioned are part of the tests for fair use, they are not sufficient. (See Common misunderstandings.) The primary problem is that there is no content in that section except for the quote. One of the tests of fair use is that the use be transformative and not derivative, meaning that the use is in talking about the source, using the source to illustrate a point, study of the source, parodying the source, etc., as opposed to just appropriating the source's words.

The way I see it, there are two ways to resolve the copyright problem. One is to actually write a section in your own words describing criticism of Morris. You can then quote Foley's words as one example of such criticism, and it would be fair use. The other is to rewrite Foley's statements in your own words, as copyright applies only to the exact words, not the ideas they express. For now, I'm going to remove the section again, until one of these two things happens. Sam8 05:20, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * No, that attempt to WP:LAWYER to remove criticism isn't going to work. &mdash; Dunc|&#9786; 07:50, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I have fixed up the quote to something that is more likely to be fair use. The amount of quoted material is still a bit much for my taste though. (See WP:FAIR.) Sam8 00:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Notability
Most of this article is cited to Morris himself & his ICR, and it is not difficult for any creationist, no matter how obscure, to get a mention on TOA. Therefore the only citation supporting notability is the (apparently fairly brief) mention in Pigliucci. This really isn't enough -- hence the tag on the article. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 04:54, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Question attitudes displayed by working editors, and am critical of existing content of site
I have no great affinity for the views of the ICR, but as a regular science contributor to wikipedia (and a secular university faculty member) have to question the objectivity and influences that are evidenced in the discussion here in Talk. We are to report information from reputable sources, and not to sit in judgement over the subjects of our reporting—this is encyclopedic, and not editorial work. And when bias is clear in Talk one must presume that it contributes unfairly to decisions regarding text of the article. Perhaps these influences are why there is so little informative substance in this article, e.g., about where JD Morris has lead the organization since the death of his father, its founder? This is the information I came to find, to no avail. Similarly, is it standard at wikipedia to report the incomes of heads of NGO/not-for-profits? If so, fine. If not, what is the point of reporting it here (except perhaps to insinuate that he is overpaid)? Hence, the overt and subtle distastes of the editors of this article seem clear, and this is disappointing (even though I would likely agree with the substance of the underlying disagreements). Objectivity regarding our subjects is not the aim for only those with whom we agree; it is the aim for all, and the test of our mettle as editors. LeProf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.249.63.82 (talk) 13:59, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Lucy Skeleton
I'm uncomfortable with this. The full quote is Lucy included almost a complete pelvis and leg (taking mirror imaging into account, and excluding the foot). I am therefore updating the quote itself. Comments welcome. Mongoletsi (talk) 10:48, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I rolled this quote into the quote before it (for it was a reiteration of part of the longer quote). I then fixed the broken link supporting the longer quotation. See the next section for a full description of added text, and justification. Cheers. LeProf.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.223.9.222 (talk) 22:29, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Will remove unsupported factual material at 6 mos, to maintain fairness/appearance of fairness of article.
This is advanced warning that as a biographical article on a living individual, about whom earlier POV questions have been raised, the article needs us to ensure that missing citations regarding statements of record and other facts are placed in a timely manner. I'll make sure that all current "citation needed" tags are dated, and will return in 6 mos. or so to ensure that they are addressed. Note, it is the responsibility of the original editor (or others interested) in placing these missing citations, and not the responsibility general wikipedia community to do so (though anyone can help that has the needed information, and wishes to). But there's no gainsaying that doing post-hoc/forensic fact attribution is both tremendously inefficient, and encourages the original scholarly sloppiness that it seeks to obviate. (Hence the response of this editor to facts without citation, at the 6 month point, will be deletion.) No offense intended, just making clear a path to get the facts substantiated, in a timely way, for a biography of a living person. Cheers. LeProf. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.223.9.222 (talk) 21:40, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * One of the two "citation needed" tags was already six moths past, so I attended to it today. I fixed that text—by rolling it into the preceding quote, which it reiterated in brief, and I fixed the broken link to that longer quoted source. I also qualify this source, in two ways, by expanding upon the nature of the source when it first appears ("UseNet", "private organization"), and later by noting that the source does not itself provide further citations to support its extraordinarily broad claims. (Note, I could not find, at the source/organization web page, any indication of scientific credentials for the organization, which may explain the tenor of the quoted material.) Once again, while I do not hold to Morris' ideas (about Australopithecenes or much else), we do the argument no service by choosing such poor citations as this UseNet, anti-creationist source, to serve as Morris' rebuttal. It is pure fairness to note the sources clear bias and scholarly shortcomings (until interested editors can replace it with better, more reliable scientific information). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.223.9.222 (talk) 22:27, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I've reverted your comments on the source. This is something we simply don't do normally and certainly if we have an article about the source. Many if not most sources have a pov (something you call bias), and if it has serious scholarly shortcomings it probably shouldn't be used, but that's been discussed for this source before and there was agreement that it can be used if attributed, which it is. Dougweller (talk) 10:05, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Needs Context and Neutrality
Firstly, after reading the article I still have little knowledge about what John Morris advocates. The section labeled "Criticism" starts with, "Critics have disputed some of Morris's claims." But nowhere has the page done anything to help me understand what his claims are, exactly. The criticism section briefly introduces two rather disjointed points, but they have no context so they still don't give an understanding for his claims. Secondly, It seems that the criticism section is not giving a fair representation to John Morris. Since the same source that is supposed to speak against his first claim is also the source introducing his point of view. It would be far better to have a direct contextual quotation from him regarding the point rather than leave both pro and con side to the same source since that source is arguing against him. And the point about the Leviathan seems thrown into the criticism section haphazardly since no criticism is being given against that claim. I would personally also criticize a claim such as that, but it seems poorly done to introduce it as a point he's received criticism for without giving at least one example of someone disputing the point and giving reasons for disputing it.

I would recommend either filling out the context and neutrality on this page or referencing better pages that already have enough context and neutrality, in which case all that needs to be done is mentioning the specific areas where John Morris' opinions differ from the referenced pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.118.116.209 (talk) 20:02, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Undue weight with "Criticism" section
Why is the "Criticism" section in this article so much longer than any other section. This article, just like any other article about a person, living or dead, should be about that person, not the criticisms about them. The criticism section should be reduced, and the "Biography" section should be expanded. --1990&#39;sguy (talk) 22:09, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

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