Talk:Order of the Occult Hand

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Tone
When I first saw this I wanted to speedy it as an attack page. I don't know what's going on here or what the article is about, but it needs to be written in a more neutral manner and not in a way that suggests that our Wikipedia editors here have uncovered some sort of a conspiracy and are really proud about it. The article sounds accusatory and mocking. — Jeraphine Gryphon  (talk) 14:45, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm one of the editors who expanded this article. I removed bad jokes which were added after my edit, but frankly I am not sure what else I can do for you. Most of the phrases I used can be found in the sources I cited. For example, I used the word, "confession", and the word suggests something bad of a guilty sort, but it's the exact word used in the title of an article by Paul Greenberg, the editorial writer I cited.
 * It's about an inside joke and a secret society among journalists, so it's "mocking" by nature. This kind of mischief has been seriously accused by some people, specifically by newspaper editors, so there is certainly an accusatory tone in the article, I suppose. But overall, I think the article is neither praising nor condemning this silly tradition among journalists.
 * I think there is nothing wrong for a Wikipedia editor to feel proud of his/her article. Don't get the article/me wrong. I am not the one who uncovered the secret society, but I am the one who uncovered reliable sources on it and I'm proud of it. The article in the Charlotte Observer, which is critical for this article, was very difficult to find and I am very happy that I was able to dig it out.
 * You might call the "Members" section an original research because it's based on Factiva search, but most of the references (not the exact phrases, though) can be verified in James Janega's article. I used his article as an template for this section and expanded it. --Bugandhoney 22:03, 28 December 2011 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bugandnohey (talk • contribs)

WorldCarFans
Discussion copied from User_talk:Occulthand — TransporterMan  ( TALK ) 14:34, 7 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Well... uh... looks like we have a consensus then? User Occulthand, anything else you want to say or do? — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 15:10, 7 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Majority, Jeraphine, not consensus. I reverted the edit. Thank you for weighing in, TransporterMan . -Occulthand (talk) 15:18, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

In what sense can a society be said to be secret when it in fact has a wikipedia entry that describes in detail what it is? Jtrbnsn (talk) 02:53, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

This is a hilarious article. Thank you for revealing this funny quirk of journalistic subculture for us non-journalists — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.224.149.144 (talk) 22:59, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Long list of members
98.190.0.250, what is the value of the long list of uses of the term in §Members? The examples do not aid reader comprehension of the subject, which is adequately explained above. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:27, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I removed the section again, not having heard any reasoning for the reversion., my revert also blew away some good-faith recent additions on your part. Do you feel some early examples of widespread usage could be incorporated as prose in the History section instead? Firefangledfeathers (talk) 01:35, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

I see what you're saying, it's rather an interesting and complicated issue.

Unless I'm mistaken, in my opinion we're not necessarily reading WP:BRD correctly. So, it looks like the sequence was:
 * The core of the long list was added here, in 2011. Near as I can figure it stayed in the article since then, until...
 * User:Susmuffin removed it in January of 2021, and this stood until...
 * Anon user 108.34.173.242 restored it it August 2021, and then
 * User:Firefangledfeathers removed it again the same day, after which...
 * Anon user 98.190.0.250 restored it a few weeks in September 2021, after which...
 * User:Firefangledfeathers removed it six days later, and here we are.

So hmmm. There's a question of how WP:BRD applies here... BRD doesn't seem to talk about "stable versions" but it's kind of a commensense concept that I've seen used. Basically, you can't reasonably claim BRD applies to an edit make five years ago which has stood since. That way lies chaos. Since (AFAIK) there's no written rule, and finding common practice would be a big project, the spirit of what we're trying to do here is what applies. So let's see...

The list was put in early and stood for ten years, and over a score of editors worked on the article with apparently no objection, so that was the stable version for sure. An editor WP:BOLDly removed it January, and it was restored in August, which means the removed version stood for seven months. Is that long enough to create a new "stable version" and thus not subject to BRD? My view is probably not I suppose, because: 1) the version before that was very stable, having been there for ten years and not objected to by many editors, and 2) in the seven months the new version existed, only one edit was made. That doesn't seem like a consensus over time to accept the removal, but rather just that it's an obscure that's not watched much and nobody much noticed. I would have reverted the edit for instance, but I didn't happen to see it.

So just to make it more complicated:
 * The edit summary for the original removal "I removed a massive collection of useless nonsense", which, while reasonable people can discuss whether the material is appropriate for the article or not, "useless nonsense" is maybe not the best way to characterize other editor's work, so a poor edit summary. If that might compromise the good faith of the edit and if so how much would be a matter of personal opinion.
 * One thing that's just odd is that two editors restoring the material this year were both anon editors and that was their only edit ever. It's peculiar. My opinion is that it matters, as one-edit anons don't have much standing in my view (others may disagree), and this further muddies the waters.
 * Also I mean after all I spent a couple-few hours of my life editing the long list, which is how I found the article, as it had been for six days. I know we're all busy, but if seven months constitutes a stable version, what does six days do when it was probably only noticed because I did a bunch of work on it. You'd want to see some serious vigilance about not leaving an unacceptable state for long when other editors are going to work on.

Leaving behind BRD for a bit and addressing the merits, for my part the material belongs, yes. It demonstrates how widespread the meme was, and the reader can infer that herself rather than having to take our word for it, so it adds some useful depth to our coverage of the subject, probably of value to some subset of readers. The article is not too long so that's not an issue. It's not all wound thru the material so as to overwhelm the reader with details as she reads. And so I'm scratching my head over what would go in the blank of "Removing this material would be a net benefit to the readership of this article, because _________". User:Firefangledfeathers averral that "this content - a long list of any use of 'occult hand' - is not helpful in understanding the subject of the article; the gag is well-explained above" is precisely the counterargument, and it's also reasonable, altho I don't agree. (User:Susmuffin's "useless nonense" isn't an argument).

So putting all that together, bottom line: This article isn't watched much, so even an RfC on the matter won't probably get enough attention to settle the matter. WP:THIRDOPINION might be an option if we want to bother them. My take on the BRD matter is that the stable version is the old ten-year one (with the material) rather than the more recent seven-month one (with only one edit between removal and restoration), so I'm restoring the version with the long list in it. We can have a discussion, on that, possibly an RfC at the pump since it's a kind a general question. That'd be maybe the next step rather than sterile back-and-forth reversions. Herostratus (talk) 04:17, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not too bothered by the BRD calculation here. We can proceed assuming the list is part of the stable version, and I don't object to your restoring it if you'd like. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 04:25, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Now that's done, could you tell me more about your reasons for restoring the content? I am happy to take on the WP:ONUS here, but I have little to go on from your note above ("...I don't agree") and your edit summary (per BRD). Firefangledfeathers (talk) 04:32, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Aside from the purely procedural issue of which version is the most stable, what is the actual gravamen of the concern being raised here? I have taken a look at the revision history and it's not clear that there is a rationale given for removing the content besides silliness/stupidity/et cetera. This may well be the case, but we have articles for flatulence humor and the newspaper riddle and Goatse, among many others -- it seems to me like the content in question is reliably sourced, so what's the issue? jp×g 08:25, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * To be clear: I don't support removal on the grounds of silliness. I am strongly in favor of serious coverage of silly topics. My reason was given in my edit summary: " this content - a long list of any use of "occult hand" - is not helpful in understanding the subject of the article; the gag is well-explained above". I'd be happy to expound on that. I'm in a strange position now though, as no one has given a reason to retain the content, despite the multiple reversions. Yes, the list is reliably sourced. Is it useful to readers? Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:24, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * We do not need to list every time that a journalist has used a certain phrase in their writings. Indeed, a large portion of the section has no sources whatsoever. The remainder of it exclusively relies on external links. On another note, the list dominates an article that should be about the phenomenon itself, not a catalogue of examples. Arguably, this section also violates our policies against original research, as it entirely relies on primary sources. &#8213; Susmuffin Talk 17:48, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * But I did give a reason, that the list both verifies and details what we've said, the that the use was long-term and wide-spread.


 * So, we have like "The occult-hand phrase did not stop in the Charlotte News and Observer, but has crept onto other media.[1] The use of the phrase has spread to newspaper media around the world like "a cough in a classroom" and "a pox".[6]". OK but crept and spread where and to what extent, exactly? The list helps answer that question to some degree.


 * I don't think it's dominating the article. It does form the bulk of the text, but it's segregated in a separate section at the end that can be skipped, so it's not sprinkled into the main material where it might distract the reader. And on the other side, there's little question I think that it'd provide a level of detail of use to some of the readers interested enough in the subject to access this article.


 * Sometimes random lists of instances, such as you see in "in popular culture" sections, are trimmed or eliminated on grounds of being trivial or not germane. This is nothing like like that. It's more like if we say "This author wrote many books", what is the harm in both adding detail and providing further proof of the statement by adding a list of books that she wrote?


 * It is original research I suppose, but nobody's trying to push a POV, there's no chance of creatimg a POV by accident (by showing data on side of an issue but not the other, for instance), and there's no chance that it's incorrect, and those are the main reasons to discourage original research, so enh.


 * To be sure, it's an issue that can be seen either way. For some lists, a big trim is a reasonable compromise. I'm not that works here because we're trying to demonstrate the size and spread of the phenomena, and a small trimmed list doesn't do that. Another compromise might be to keep just a few of the examples, then compress the remaining ones into just prose mentions, like this:


 * For instance, X wrote Y here, and Z wrote A here. Other examples are found here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here


 * I dunno. I've done that in other instances. That would be reasonable maybe. But that would cut out the nuance of some of the ways it is used. But mot a whole lot. And it is a pretty long list. OTOH it makes for interesting reading, granted that "interesting reading" isn't what we're here to make. I dunno. My take is that it's OK as it is. Herostratus (talk) 20:33, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I was wrong, and you definitively did give your reason. Sorry about that! I think I understand your position. My view is that the long list is discouraged by WP:INDISCRIMINATE, in spirit if not letter. Don't we typically rely on secondary sources to do this sort of rigorous primary source collection? I think we could reasonably add more to the prose to convey the spread in geography and over time. Maybe something like: "... and "a pox". Among others, the phrase has been used in publications based in California, Australia, and Thailand; it continues to see use as recently as 2020." Firefangledfeathers (talk) 04:41, 20 September 2021 (UTC)