User talk:Brody24

Rhododendrites: The major magic societies FROWN heavily on revealing secrets, which is ALL that this entry does. I can imagine NO reason whatsoever for a non-magician to want/need this information other than idle curiosity.

I have heard MANY stories from performing magicians of having people in their audience looking up the methods of the tricks faster than they can perform them, and then shouting out the methodology, thus spoiling the performances for many.

If there was ANY worth to the information, except to magicians, I would have no objections whatsoever but there isn't. Publishing this information is akin to the "rag" magazines that publish gossip.

And I can actually back up the idea that the information has ZERO worth. Read the bit I edited. Now, armed with the information that I edited, try to perform the trick. You can't, because there isn't ENOUGH detail to tell you how to ACTUALLY DO IT.

To me, you're allowing the secrets of magic tricks, which have taken many people many many years to develop and learn, to become the fodder for the idly curious, and FOR NO GOOD REASON.

Notice, that the ONLY change I made was to the description of how the trick worked.

The name of the trick, the description of the trick, the inventor - all of that seems reasonable to be in the common domain.

But to cast the actual workings of the trick....which may have taken the inventor an entire lifetime to discover ... to toss that out to anyone with a browser seems so wrong.

If you actually read the article I changed, you'll see that the original posting even states that some parts of the trick takes YEARS to learn.

So, I hope that someday, you get the chance to learn something...some bit of knowledge and information...that takes you YEARS to acquire, and have some silly person with a browser shout it out, effectively negating your years of work because some website won't protect your efforts.

Now, I realize that I cannot and will not win this argument, since you have the final say in the edits....but I hope you realize how amazingly far you are from fairness and justice.

Brody24 (talk) 22:46, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

June 2014
Hello, I'm Rhododendrites. I wanted to let you know that I undid one or more of your recent contributions to Zombie ball because it did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  22:14, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello, I'm Rhododendrites. I noticed that you removed topically-relevant content from Zombie ball. However, Wikipedia is not censored to remove content that might be considered objectionable. Please do not remove or censor information that directly relates to the subject of the article. If the content in question involves images, you have the option to configure Wikipedia to hide images that you may find offensive. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  22:16, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Zombie ball
Hi ,

Ok. Work with me here.

First of all, adding a comment to an article is never appropriate. If material needs to be removed immediately, just remove it and add a comment to the talk page (like Talk:Zombie ball).

Second, that people work hard on the tricks or that there are people who don't want the secrets available to the public are not good reasons for removing content from Wikipedia unless the material is subject to intellectual property laws (e.g. trade secrets). I'm not qualified to comment on that, but I'd leave a message at the Wikipedia help desk if you want to look into something along those lines.

Here's where I may be able to help you.

It's not at all clear the subject zombie ball meets Wikipedia notability criteria and thus may be nominated for deletion altogether.

The way notability is demonstrated is by showing it has been discussed significantly in reliable secondary sources. Right now the only source is a patent (a primary source, usually) that doesn't even mention "zombie ball."

Wikipedia operates according to verifiability (rather than original research) and neutral point of view (for balance, objectivity, etc.). Everything comes down to sourcing. As you are likely more of an expert than I am, I will ask you to, as neutrally as possible (though it's pretty clear you're not neutral on the issue), evaluate the patent to see if it actually backs up the text in the article. If not, remove the text. If it does, then evaluate the source to see if it is a reliable source for the subject "zombie ball." Is it talking about the same thing? If not, remove it. If it is talking about the same thing and does back up what's in the article, evaluate the text of the article to see if there's a better way to word it. Regardless of censorship or what should/should not be given away, the wording that exists there is definitely lacking in clarity. Is there a happy balance you might reach, perhaps by citing additional sources?

--&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  23:13, 14 June 2014 (UTC)


 * One more thing: I do not have final say, per your comment above. We have equal power on Wikipedia. However, there are a lot of rules and procedures governing how everything works here. When there's a dispute over content, "final say" is based on whoever is best supported by those policies (which are summarized best at WP:Five pillars but elaborate considerably from there). --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  23:17, 14 June 2014 (UTC)