Talk:The Circle of Reason (society)

Proposed deletion of Pluralistic Rationalism article
Instead of deleting the page, what about a compromise of creating a page on the Circle of Reason organisation, with "pluralistic rationalism" redirecting to it? The organisation itself seems notable enough, and a page on the organisation would necessarily include a description of the philosophy. Should a time come when the philosophy itself merits an article of its own, it could be created and demerged from the Circle of Reason page. Ningakpok (talk) 03:57, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Editorial discussions about PRODing vs. improving/stubbing/renaming-redirecting this article are currently being held at PROD-recommending editor Huon's Talk Page, section User_talk:Huon. Thanks for the feedback and advice. -- Fhburton (talk) 19:53, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

The PROD decision of 2/3 of WP editors at User_talk:Huon was to remove the WP:PROD tag and instead improve the article by 1) removing all WP:Synthesis & WP:OR, and 2) providing more secondary 3rd party and news sources for further demonstration of WP:notability. The Pluralistic Rationalism article contents will be edited/renamed/moved-replaced with a new, The Circle of Reason organization article whose article text was serially drafted and vetted by the 3 editors at Huon's talk page; and the name "Pluralistic Rationalism" will remain as a redirect to the new site (the organization that espouses and practices that social philosophy). WP editors wishing to suggest, contribute or flag for further improvements; or conversely to flag for AfD deletion review of this improved/renamed/moved article, please first read the prior WP editors' comments and revision discussion on this article at User_talk:Huon. Huon keeps a good archive of all his Talk page contents, but upon request I'll try to consolidate all of the prior editorial talk on this article from his talk page and this talk page, either here or on the talk page for the forthcoming edited/renamed/moved version of this article. -- Fhburton (talk) 06:31, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

In order to try to avoid a future repetition of the situation, I suggest having a neutral party check your draft Circle of Reason article and sources for compliance with the guidelines that were in question with this article before it is publicly viewable. I volunteer my services in this respect - send me a copy when it's ready and I'll give it my promptest attention. Ningakpok (talk) 14:15, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi, Ningakpok, the recommended improved TCOR draft is now up on User:Fhburton/sandbox, if you'd like to check it out. It pretty follows the format of the revised stub#3, so is much improved over the PROD tagged article (I did request and independent AfC review of the submission last year, but unfortunately it was performed in a more cursory fashion than I'd predicted, but only I am to blame for that initial article's WP:Synthesis & WP:OR defects). Can you access my Sandbox directly to look at the new revised TCOR article? If not, or if you cannot respond before today's PROD deadline of 19:44, 3 June 2013 (UTC), which is about 4.5 hours from now, I'll go ahead and copy/replace the new article text into the Pluralistic Rationalism article-space, deleting the old text and PROD flag, and then try to look-up and follow instructions on how to rename/move the page to a new The Circle of Reason article (unless you've got more experience at this). The last steps today would be to upload a copy of The Circle of Reason's logo to the new TCOR article (apparently one can't do it until the page is created, if the image is a copyrighted one), and work on strengthening source citations (like asking for a possible Whitelist of the examiner.com-published speaker roster for the Rally to Restore Sanity MN, and trying to see if MinnPost will confirm TCOR as the organizer of the Gay Marriage conference). If you see a problem with the TCOR article text after I've moved it into the Pluralistic Rationalism article-space or renamed it to the new article space, feel free to whack away at the problem; after all, there's always its Talk page and revert button! Thx, -- Fhburton (talk) 15:02, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

This article was improved over several drafts by 3 WP editors, then moved/renamed from Pluralistic Rationalism to The Circle of Reason, as part of the de-PROD. -- Fhburton (talk) 22:04, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Ningakpok: I found some informative info NOT shortcutted, right above the WP:NGO, WP:NOPROFIT, or WP:Club criteria for organizational notability. These shortcuts are apparently supposed to be used as alternate criteria for notability, and are not to be used if the article demonstrates primary notability already -- check it out (boldfaces mine):...

Alternate criteria for specific types of organizations

 * The following sections discuss alternate methods for establishing notability in specific situations. No organization is considered notable except to the extent that independent sources demonstrate that it has been noticed by people outside of the organization. These criteria constitute an optional, alternative method for demonstrating notability.  Organizations are considered notable if they meet one of the following sourcing requirements
 * these alternate criteria,
 * the primary criteria for organizations, or
 * the general notability guideline
 * and they comply with the policy What Wikipedia is not, especially with regards to avoiding indiscriminate inclusion of information.
 * and they comply with the policy What Wikipedia is not, especially with regards to avoiding indiscriminate inclusion of information.

Non-commercial organizations

 * Organizations are usually notable if they meet both of the following standards:
 * The scope of their activities is national or international in scale.
 * Information about the organization and its activities can be verified by multiple, third-party, independent, reliable sources.
 * Information about the organization and its activities can be verified by multiple, third-party, independent, reliable sources.

So it seems, Ningakpok, that the NGO/nonprofit/club notability guidelines are an alternate notability option -- they are for use only if the group can't establish general notability; they were never intended to supersede established general notability. And those general notability guidelines are for national notability of the article subject, not for national distribution of the article subject. So, if any org meets the general notability guidelines, it is a suitable WP topic, no matter how many or how few satellite subgroups or chapters they now have spread around the globe. That means that the TCOR article's inclusion of an example satellite/daughter Cirkel in the Netherlands, or a high school Local Circle in Mayfield, Kentucky, might actually just be a distraction to the actual sourced evidence for general notability of TCORs "promising practices." Perhaps the references to local TCOR subgroups should simply be left out? -- Fhburton (talk) 01:34, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

The way I interpreted the wording was that they were specific, clarificatory applications of the primary criteria to the different situations of different kinds of organisation, neither optional alternatives (since notability established according to the alternate criteria would automatically satisfy the primary criteria) nor optional substitutions. As for the national/international issue, they clearly state that NGOs whose activities are purely local are only notable if they have received national/international coverage. The Circle of Reason has received national (Harvard Pluralism Project) attention for local (Minnesota Secular Bible Study) activities, and also has international activity - groups in other countries. The guidelines state that once notability has been established by independent sources (Harvard Pluralism Project, Star Tribune), primary sources (TCOR website, Dutch Cirkel website etc) can be used to provide information. Distracting readers from sourced evidence for notability is not really a concern; establishment of notability is the 'qualification' for inclusion in Wikipedia, once the topic is so qualified the article should contain all relevant information on the topic that can be cited to reliable sources. The international scope of the organisation is obviously relevant information. Ningakpok (talk) 03:01, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

First reported
I've seen a few other promotional issues with the article but an obvious one that was easy to fix was to remove a claim unsupported by the independent source: "its institutional practices have included organizing the United States' first reported "theist + atheist" dialogue group". This was restored claiming that this is original research by the editor relying on the dates of available English sources (also something to avoid on Wikipedia)... Direct editing of the article by affiliates is also highly discouraged per WP:COI. Disclosure is also required by policy and it seemed lacking, so I added the Connected contributor tag on the talk page. — Paleo Neonate  – 05:42, 10 April 2021 (UTC)