Talk:Rupert Sheldrake/Archive 9

Edit wars
(Tom Morris please note.) There have been many very recent edits to the article, some of them extensive. None of them have been discussed here in advance. I believe that some of them would have broad consensus, but they have been reverted. I believe others would only be supported by those who made them, possibly in violation of the the article ownership policy. Unfortunately, they tend to remain in the article. Rather than getting involved in edit wars, or letting the bad edits stand, all edits would best be discussed here before they are put into the article. If your ideas and writing are good, they will have no problem being accepted by other editors. If they are NOT good/accepted, they shouldn't be in the article. Lou Sander (talk) 16:38, 20 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Funny that Lou, I think that the edits without any broad consensus have been reverted, and those recent small changes have been taking things a little more centrally, towards your point of view. Any way, the bad edits have gone, and I would support letting things stand as they are.  --Roxy the dog (quack quack) 16:52, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
 * the only way to mandate that changes go through a pre approval process is to edit war to get the article locked. I wouldnt really recommend that as a strategy. Strong application of WP:BRD might achieve your goals. --  TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  17:05, 20 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Roxy, it all depends on who is deciding that " the bad edits have gone." For instance, TRPoD deleted a line that would have added balance noting that citations were needed. It would seem less possessive if he-she-it had added the proper citation tag and discussed it here. Tom Butler (talk) 17:10, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
 * are you stating that editors here are not acutely aware of WP:BURDEN and the need to provide inline citations for all content going into the article? and that in this controversial article about a living person questionable materials should remain in the article and be tagged? I will point you to WP:BLP. I will grant you that in the best of all worlds, I would have followed up that removal with a talk sections stating "I removed X because it was not properly sourced" . However, had I done that for my recent corrections, this talk page would have had an additional 6 sections about minor edits. so i am not sure that is the best of all possible worlds, either.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  17:26, 20 October 2013 (UTC)


 * is an absolutely clean cut example of WP:OR - unreferenced, vague, clearly does not summarise the sources, and very much wishful thinking. Please, if we these "others" exist they need to be documented properly.  Please provide the references. Barney the barney barney (talk) 17:59, 20 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Agreed. --Iantresman (talk) 18:12, 20 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Barney: Your points could possibly be better made if they were made about a proposed edit. All of us could look at them, evaluate them, and respond to them if they merited a response. Lou Sander (talk) 18:15, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Lets just trace the timeline here.
 * The article stood as this
 * An IP made a BOLD edit.
 * Which was REVERTED
 * The IP RE-REVERTED and added additional content
 * I began making a series of individual edits at the problematic content added by the IP.,  etc.
 * Barney fully reverted the IP
 * Vzaak has made a number of incremental changes

If there is anything specific from the BOLD edit of the IP that you wish to discuss as actually having potential for meeting the content requirements, then please feel free to DISCUSS it. If you have any objections to the incremental edits that Vzaak has made, then you can either REVERT the not so bold changes, and we can DISCUSS, or you can jump right the the DISCUSS.

but discussing edits that I made that were in the article for about one minute and have been undone is probably not going to help the article progress. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  19:19, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

"some of this is good"
BOLD edit by the IP that was REVERTED and RE-REVERTED under the edit summary "some of this is good" re reverted the BOLD edit by the IP with the edit summary "some of this is good". However he passed over the DISCUSSION portion where there would be consensus gathered about which portions exactly are "good".

Please identify which portions you think are "good" so that we may discuss. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  00:25, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

now moot side talk about what the process should have been

 * Red: We have to get it back into the article first, so all of us can see it. Editors should not undo edits without good reason. An edit summary of the reversion of a large and thoughtful edit doesn't really show that there's 'good reason'. Maybe you could put it back so we can discuss it. We all might be surprised by what happens. Lou Sander (talk) 00:45, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
 * how is replacing "the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) until" with "at ICRISAT until 1978" "thoughtful" or "good" ? Any " good" edit will give the full name of an organization first and follows up with the initialism.  when the edit mixes obvious BAD editing with controversial content, there is no need to "BDR".
 * Point out what you think is "good" in the massive edit and we can discuss it.--  TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  00:53, 21 October 2013 (UTC)


 * You do know its been protected?--Roxy the dog (quack quack) 00:55, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks to the rogue IP we ended up at the "all edits [must] be discussed first" option that Lou Sander had suggested above. I dont know that thats necessarily a bad thing.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  01:02, 21 October 2013 (UTC)


 * In this same thread we have "all edits would best be discussed here before they are put into the article" juxtaposed with warring to get unsourced statements "back into the article first". The protection has chosen the path for us, but we are no closer to making sense of this. vzaak (talk) 01:25, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Indefinite semiprotection
Because of topic ban violations by IP editor(s) as detailed in this AE thread, this article is semiprotected as an arbitration enforcement action under the authority of WP:AC/DS and Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience.  Sandstein  07:25, 21 October 2013 (UTC)