Talk:John L. Allen Jr.

Connection to Notre Dame High School?
Does anyone know John Allen's connection to Notre Dame High School in the San Fernando Valley?

He mentioned them in one of his book introductions, and it sounded as if he had been a student there, but the dates seemed impossible to me (it would have made him a high school student less than ten years ago). - Lawrence King 23:59, 23 December 2005 (UTC) (an alumnus of Crespi, ND's arch-rival)  *grin*

(Later) I found out he went to high school in Kansas and graduated in 1983 from Thomas More Prep-Marian. I added this information to the article. But I'm still curious what Allen's connection to Notre Dame High School might be! - Lawrence King 00:22, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Response: Yes, Allen actually taught journalism at this school, but I am not certain of the dates. As of 1995, he was teaching there. - —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.70.148.132 (talk • contribs) 16:28, 19 October 2006

Objectivity
I question the objectivity of this article. This guy comes off as a pro-Vatican lickspittle and the article finds nothing wrong with this. - posted 07:28, 24 March 2006 by Thedreadshoggoth


 * Can you cite any specific statements in the article that you consider POV?


 * I agree that the tone of the article is positive. I don't think that a positive "tone" violates NPOV, however.  Certainly if you know of any facts (or even substantiated rumors) that would cast Allen in a more negative light they should be included in this article.  On the other hand, if you are saying "He is Catholic and therefore you must be concealing the dark side of John Allen," I think this needs to be substantiated. - Lawrence King 16:25, 24 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I rephrased a few things to better distinguish what the article is asserting (which needs to be neutral facts) and what others say about Allen (which is important to establish the article's claims about his reputation). - Lawrence King 16:30, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I find the recently added "Reviews of his work on Opus Dei" section to be particularly non-NPOV. This section, in my opinion, needs to be reworked. Is it not somewhat unusual in an encyclopedic article to include contemporary reviews from the popular press of a recently published book? At any rate, I replaced a quote which I found particularly misleading: "Christopher Howse says it is 'pages are so full of facts.'". Aside from the fact that this is an Incomplete_comparison, the original quote reads as follows:

"In giving answers, John Allen’s 388 pages are so full of facts (mostly accurate, though he writes 'teapot' on page 19 when he means 'kettle') that sometimes the shape of the wood is lost, though the trees are correctly identified."

This form of out-of-context quoting may perhaps be common in advertising, but is clearly not appropriate for a NPOV Wikipedia article. I replaced the above quote with the more representative "determinedly unsensationalist but deeply intriguing study." I still, however, take issue with the entire section. Unsupported assumptions such as "The positive reviews were many" should be reworked or removed. --Gladstone 11:00, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Restored section on ideology
I restored the section Ideological slant and influence. Allen's reputation for fairness is one reason he is so famous, and deserves to be mentioned in an encyclopedic article.

I added "cite" tags because we certainly need references for these claims, but they should be fairly easy to find. I myself have seen several Catholic media outlets comment on his objectivity, and hopefully I can dig up some specific references, but if not I'm sure someone else will. &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 02:26, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

OD book
I removed two large paragraphs of commentary about his book about Opus Dei which were nearly exact copies of material from the book's article itself. Certainly the now slimmed section about his book could be revisited somewhat, but the coverage was excessive. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:57, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

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