Talk:Marvin Olasky

Edit Warring and Possible Sock Puppetry
User:Menikov and User:Greenhorn1914 (See WP:SOCK) as well as anonymous users at 65.175.205.107 (Sanbornton, NH), 74.243.188.226 (Asheville, NC), 98.94.164.108 (Mills River, NC), and 98.94.146.25 (Asheville, NC) have repeatedly applied similar edits to this article without justification or documentation, and User:Vindicacontratyrannus has repeatedly substantively reversed these edits. See WP:EW.

I have applied warnings to the talk pages of the registered users involved in this dispute: User talk: Menikov, User talk: Greenhorn1914, User talk:Vindicacontratyrannus.

Given that this is the biography of a living person (see WP:ALIVE), temporary protection of the article may be warranted until these disputes can be resolved. Or, given the relative obscurity of the article's subject, deletion or significant shortening of the article may make more sense (see WP:BIO). However, perhaps we can resolve the disputes without resorting to that. Please use this section to discuss any further substantive edits similar to these:


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marvin_Olasky&diff=454766424&oldid=451580891


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marvin_Olasky&diff=483774239&oldid=479264661


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marvin_Olasky&diff=492271794&oldid=487400979


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marvin_Olasky&diff=500233914&oldid=494757806


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marvin_Olasky&diff=503638839&oldid=501162077


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marvin_Olasky&diff=507533833&oldid=505995482

Here are a couple of the sticking points to get us started:

Perhaps a matter of opinion, but Olasky had great support from many students, especially freshmen and sophomores he had helped to recruit.
 * What students did Olasky alienate at The King's College? Students in general, students including student leaders, an isolated few student leaders?

See Olasky columns and articles in 2001 criticizing in World magazine Bush administration implementation of compassionate conservatism --for example, July 7, 2001, http://www.worldmag.com/articles/5153.
 * What is the relationship between the "compassionate conservatism" envisioned by Olasky and that implemented by the Bush administration?

If the current information on these subjects is inadequate or inaccurate, this is the place to explain why and document and justify proposed changes. The article seems to be written by one of the King's students who opposed Olasky, because it makes a major point of some fairly minor controversies that occurred in three years of his 40-year career, but so be it -- at least the content should be factually accurate. Greenhorn1914 (talk) 21:41, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

If there are other disputes that should go on that list, put them there and sign your changes.

--Evaus (talk) 11:52, 16 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Greenhorn: What are the factual inaccuracies, or, in the alternative, which incidents or controversies do you believe are not significant enough to merit inclusion? As I said above, I'm opening to significantly shortening the article, as it goes into more detail about the subject than is perhaps warranted given his historical/current notability. Here is the standard from WP:BIO:


 * "A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has been the subject of multiple published secondary sources which are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject."


 * Eliminating the critical material in the "Controversies at The King's College" section would mean eliminating the material sourced from the "Gadfly." With that source gone, the bulk of the remaining material is sourced from primary sources or sources not independent of the subject, with the exception of some material from the New York Times Magazine profile and Christianity Today. Thus, if we were to remove or significantly abridge the critical information, I think we would seriously weaken the argument that the article's subject meets the notability standard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Evaus (talk • contribs) 21:37, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

NPOV Dispute (November 2009)
Reinstated anonymous NPOV tag which was later anonymously removed. . . seems likely subject is editing his own biography. Reads like a (rather tedious) resume. See WP:BLPEDIT, WP:NPF, and WP:AUTOBIO. I'd like to take a crack at cleaning it up—any comments, suggestions, objections?

Evaus (talk) 04:59, 24 November 2009 (UTC)


 * As it has been several months and no one's objected, I'm going to begin re-working this article.


 * Evaus (talk) 03:48, 25 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I think I've managed to clean up the citations and cite the unreferenced assertions, or remove the ones I couldn't document. I intend to add some material in the next few days, but if there are no objections I'll take down the NPOV tag soon.


 * Evaus (talk) 14:08, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Email interview as reference
On 25 December 2004 I received an email from Marvin Olasky after asking him to look at the article and suggest revisions. Some of the information he gave me I have not been able to confirm using other sources (such as his birthdate), but I have included this information anyway, and cited my email interview in the references section. I am not sure what the protocol is for problems like this. I could make available the email he sent me, but it would be difficult to prove its source. If you think changes are necessary, please let me know and, if you like, make those changes. --Spangineer &#8734; 03:39, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)


 * I know what you did last Christmas JoshNarins 00:48, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Zeus, Zeus, Zeus!
Why is there no mention of the bizarre "religion of Zeus" thing? That was his 15 minutes of semi-fame -- there are probably a fairly large number of people who have never heard of him except in connection to the "religion of Zeus"... AnonMoos 01:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Please enlighten me; I've never heard that story. --Spangineer[es] (háblame)  12:20, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It was in a lot of papers at the time -- he said he opposed the McCain candidacy because it was the equivalent of the "religion of Zeus". Frankly, I wonder how many times Olasky has received mentions in "ordinary" newspapers (i.e. not the New York Times or the Washington Post, and not in a syndicated op-ed piece) which were NOT in relation to the "religion of Zeus".  You could start here http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldbergprint030300.html AnonMoos 02:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

King's College controversy section
This edit seems completely inappropriate. gadflymag.com (a website which is no longer active) doesn't seem to be a reliable source - in any case, it's a primary source. That is, the editors may have had criticisms, but those criticisms should not be included unless they are reported by reliable third party sources. Christianity Today would qualify, but it didn't actually report on any controversy. StAnselm (talk) 22:41, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified (January 2018)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Marvin Olasky. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20101107155854/http%3A//online.worldmag.com/2010/11/05/marvin%2Dolasky%2Din%2Dfull/ to http://online.worldmag.com/2010/11/05/marvin-olasky-in-full/

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NPOV dispute (April 2023)
This article seems to contain a number of statements slanted in favor of the subject, such as the following: "The magazine [World] also exposed evangelical leaders who used ghostwriters without acknowledging them, pastors who were silent about abortion, Christian counselors who preferred psychobabble to the Bible, and Washington insiders who tried to manipulate evangelicals." Beyond the use of terminology like "exposed" to describe pastors with no outspoken stance on abortion, or the pitting against of concepts like "psychobabble" and the Bible (the implication being that Christian counselors utilize psychobabble, that the Bible is preferable to said psychobabble, or that Christian counselors should prefer the Bible to said psychobabble), the citation accompanying the above quote is World magazine itself, for which the subject served as an editor. I will be removing the above quote from the article shortly, along with the associated claim that the subject "made sure World stayed aloof from the Bush administration", which appears to be original research.

Furthermore, I see that this is not the first time that the neutrality of this article has been disputed, as an above section on this talk page (Talk:Marvin Olasky) indicates. In said section, User:Evaus suggested that the subject may been editing his own page. This may be the case currently, as I see that one recent editor of the page is a User:Zengerhouse (the lead section states that the subject serves as chair of the Zenger House Foundation, and as a Zenger Prize judge). — Matthew  / (talk) 01:10, 21 April 2023 (UTC)