Talk:The Philosopher

Plagiarism
The contents of this page are taken, unreferenced, from the web page, but I doubt it matters in this case. Anarchia 08:16, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

The page is inaccurate - do not impose a false version of the Journal on the world
The central feature of The Philosopher is that is NOT an academic Journal. Exactly what it is is described on its website. The material in this opening paragraph is from the official history, and is not promotional but informative. Now you know, but I may take any further reverts as 'trolling' and involve an administrator. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gemtpm (talk • contribs) 22:25, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The journal's website clearly states that it is peer-reviewed, which makes it an academic journal in my book. --Randykitty (talk) 22:40, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * a "learned, peer-reviewed journal" is one of the better definitions of "academic journal" that I have yet encountered... --Randykitty (talk) 12:50, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

There are formal definitions of academic journals, and The Philosopher does not fit them. Plus its founding statement and guide for authors state that it is an alternative to academic philosophy. Being in 'your book' is not enough.

Articles can be called notable since the authors are notable - Chesterton, Schlick, etc etc. Other articles are given prominence on the site and described as 'most popular'. So the list could be fine-tuned, but the principle is clear.

83.200.237.248 (talk) 10:18, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but your arguments are not convincing at all. Being an alternative to academic philosophy does not mean that this is not an academic journal. And notability is not inherited. Articles are only notable if we have sources that are independent of the journal that say so, not just because their authors happen to be notable. --Randykitty (talk) 12:29, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Issues box
These points are not relevant. The sufficient source for what the Journal is, is the Journal's official website. 83.200.237.248 (talk) 10:21, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Read the tags again, all of them are applicable to this article. Please do not remove them again without addressing the underlying problems. --Randykitty (talk) 12:31, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Re. the Notability 'issues' raised
Here are some examples - the Journal is of course cited in many, many places and publications.

G.K. Chesterton on "The Need for a Philosophy"

is cited in Faithful Reason: Essays Catholic and Philosophical by John Haldane (2004)

Science., Art and Play - Prof Erwin Schrödinger

is listed in the biography for Schrodinger as a Nobel Prize Winner http://www.zbp.univie.ac.at/schrodinger/ebibliographie/publications.htm

see: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1933/schrodinger-or.html Other Resources Biography

Moritz Schlick on 'Unanswerable Questions",

is cited in Questions and Questioning edited by Michel Meye (1998)

And a more recent article, James Danaher on "The Laws of Thought" was cited in ‪The Enduring Significance of Parmenides‬ by ‪Raymond Tallis‬ (2007)

All of these can be Googled to see the actual pages citing the Journal. Thanks.90.55.9.227 (talk) 21:33, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Please have a look at WP:GNG and WP:NJournals. We need a bit more than a few references to some articles to establish notability. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 23:01, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

This page has been cyber-squatted by a new journal also called "the philosopher"
There has been an attempt to redirect the website that the page for the journal/ magazine called "The Philosopher" directs to. For many years on WP it has pointed to the site www.the-philosopher.co.uk.

Nominet shows that this site was registered in 2000.

https://www.nominet.uk/whois/?query=the-philosopher.co.uk#whois-results

The site has articles on it for this period and continues to operate.

The Wikipedia page has been recently edited to now give this as the web address:

https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/

Wikipedians can check out when this site was started, but it has not been around long.

Secondly, the name of the editor of the Philosopher has been retrospectively' altered to give, for example "Mike Bavidge" as editor in 2011, whereas the page used to give "Martin Cohen" as the editor. (The www.the-philosopher.co.uk site still gives Martin Cohen as the editor.) If you check previous versions you will see how the list of editors has been altered in several places to suit someone's new agenda. Wp should be very suspicous of retrospective changes to pages that have been offering a different account for many years.

Presumably there is a new publication edited by Mike Bavidge/ Anthony Morgan, printed by "Biggs Books", just as there used to be, and maybe still is, a publication called "The Philosopher" in Australia.

However, neither of these other "The Philosophers" are the ones started in 1923 and produced more or less in a continual sequence, as can be seen by looking at the www.the-philosopher.co.uk website which carries articles from scanned from the printed journal in the 1920s and 1930s as well as more recent ones.

eg. http://www.the-philosopher.co.uk/2016/08/originally-printed-in-philosopher.html

What I think may have happened is that this company, "Biggs Books" has started publishing a new philosophy magazine and for some reason feels the need to pretend that it is inheriting a much older one. The problem with this is that the Journal called "The Philosopher" that started in 1923 has kept publishing and so what has been done is to create a 'fork' - backdated to 2014 - with TWO publications claiming to be the Philosopher. However, because the www.the-philosopher.co.uk site has been around since 2000 and is still going, I think WP should count this as the 'real one'. 2A01:CB18:8461:3400:226:BBFF:FE18:843A (talk) 23:00, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Additional note on who is the editor of "the Philosopher" All these links from notable sources give textual support to the statement that "Martin Cohen is editor of the The Philosopher":

Times Higher Education (2012) and 2019 https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/what-are-you-reading/420590.article

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/review-the-philosopher-justin-smith-princeton-university-press

Independent 1998 https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/philosophical-notes-in-search-of-the-true-philosopher-1197536.html

University World News 2014 https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20140820110708346

Irish Times 2019 https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/apple-tax-affair-what-would-confucius-say-what-would-machiavelli-advise-1.2781359

There are lots of other pages too, but that's maybe enough to show the edits to the WP box of who is "the editor of the philosoher" are dodgy and need to be supported.

It MAY be that this page, as per earlier debates, should be deleted. Better that than allow history (the editing and publicaiton history of an elderly magazine/ journal in this case) to be rewritten! 2A01:CB18:8461:3400:226:BBFF:FE18:843A (talk) 20:38, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Call for assistance and oversight
For the integrity of WP, please ensure that unknown individual's cannot alter the historical record. Since 1995 the website of the Philosophical Society of England's journal called "The Philosopher has been continuously published at one address: www.the-philosopher.co.uk. The Society collapsed in 2014, that is just after its centenary but the website has continued publishing as before, although as the article correctly states, a separate print edition evolved with different content and editors. In 2015 this different journal created it's own website, taking unacknowledged and without any copyright, material from the original website including, rather absurdly, the "notes for contributors"! It also claims numerous historical articles all of which belong to the original publication "The Philosopher". The official British Library record for the Journal and the editor of the Journal from 1995 to 2015 states that the editor of the philosopher is "Martin Cohen". who is also the editor of the version at www.the-philosopher.co.uk. In addition, the so-called "official history" of the society at te website Pathways to philosophy describes "Martin Cohen" as the editor.

For the historical record, please could administrators ensure that at least these basic facts are protected.

Status as a peer reviewed academic journal, a tale of two publications, and state of the article
This is somewhat of a continuation of previous discussion points started over the last couple of years. Some of this will also apply to Philosophical Society of England as well, given the relation between the publication and the society.

There are currently two publications carrying the name The Philosopher. Both trace their routes to a split, following a series of internal arguments within the Philosophical Society of England in 2014. Following that split, two publications emerged. An online only blog ran by Martin Cohen (philosopher), and a print only publication ran by Anthony Morgan. There seems to be some sort of animosity between the two groups, doubtless the result of the internal arguments within the PSE in 2014, and both make claim to be the sole continuation of the publication prior to the split. An IP based editor raised some of these issues here back in 2019. At the time, the only secondary sources they could find referred to Martin Cohen's version of the publication. I've since tried to find any other secondary sources, however the name of the publication makes that difficult as a simple Google search returns a lot of non-relevant news articles.

The article as it currently stands almost entirely refers to the print only publication. The two citations in the article link to the society website, and the [ttps://www.thephilosopher1923.org/ print publication website], both of which appear to be run by Anthony Morgan. It does not make easily clear that there are two publications with the same name, with different editorial teams. It also solely relies on WP:PRIMARY sources to establish notability and content.

One of the claims made in the article is that the journal is peer reviewed. The print format of the journal is not peer reviewed. Quoting from the lead editor "So, for the scholar I would say that they are likely to come across a wide range of themes and thinkers that may significantly broaden their horizons while at the same time not requiring them to trawl through a dense 10,000 word peer-reviewed paper or a whole book.". It is also not an academic journal, quoting from Adam Hodgkin: "[The Philosopher] has always been a magazine for the general public rather than for professional or technical experts." These claims are reiterated a couple of times within the interview.

The same appears true for the online format of the journal. The purpose of the online version is to "provide a forum for short, original, brilliant and accessible articles". Articles submitted to it are vigorously hacked away at by the editorial team to reduce "[t]he ever present threat of intellectual strangulation by the encroaching jungle of academic style - extensive footnotes and jargon-strewn indigestible prose". The editorial team stress that "The Philosopher insists on a high standard of readability and transparency, more in line with classical discussions than with the quite different aims and rationales of journals catering for the academic market."

As you can see from the words of the editors of both publications laying claim to the name, neither is peer reviewed, and neither is an academic journal. I'd like to propose, per WP:VERIFY that we remove the terms "peer-reviewed" and "journal" from the article, replacing it with something like "philosophical publication". I believe we also need to make it much clearer that there are currently two publications with the same name. Whether this requires an article split, or separate online and print sections is a matter for debate. The article itself doesn't receive much editorial attention at present, so I'm not sure if I'm talking into the void here or not. Hopefully someone sees this, but if there's no response in 72 hours I'll be WP:BOLD and start to clean up the article along the lines I've stated above. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:33, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Related to this point, I've started a revamp draft in my sandbox. Any feedback is appreciated, with the goal of making clearer the delineation between the online and print versions of the journal. I plan on incorporating the secondary sources linked previously by the IPv6 editor, along with any others I can find. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:34, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * This seems like a reasonable suggestion. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 05:45, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've done as best as I can over at my sandbox. There's a distinct lack of secondary sources about this publication though I have managed to find a couple not linked previously, despite its age as a publication I am concerned about notability. Of the two current formats for the publication, neither is peer-reviewed, and both are aimed at a general non-academic audience. If there's no objections I'll be WP:BOLD and replace the article content with my sandbox version in 48 hours per my last reply here. If there's any sources I've missed, I'd greatly appreciate it but I'm not sure there are any more to add. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:10, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm also going to ping active editors who have contributed here or the article in the past to get some more eyes on this. . Sorry if this bothers or is of no interest to you. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:21, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Alrighty. Made the change to the main article now. Hopefully its all good and I'll be keeping this on my watch list in case changes are needed/suggested. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:21, 18 October 2021 (UTC)