User talk:Calstarry

E-mail?
I have transcribed the lengthy article by J. Gordon Melton in Lewis' Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions, which might serve as a useful basis for determining at least some matters regarding what to cover in the various articles here, matters of weight, and suchlike. I would be more than happy to e-mail it to you, if you don't have access to it yourself. You don't appear to have e-mail enabled right now, but if you would want to convey your address to me, which can be done by going to my user page and then hitting the "e-mail this user" link in the toolbox, generally on the far left of the screen, I could e-mail it to you and perhaps any other documents I might find. John Carter (talk) 17:16, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure we should use one article to determine what should be included and how much weight should be given to different matters related to this Wikipedia page. Since you're familiar with the J. Gordon Melton article, do you think it mentions something important that has been left out of my draft?


 * I understand that the one source isn't available online, but if you have any sources you want me to look at can you share them on the Talk page? I want to keep our conversations all on Wikipedia so anyone else can read them. I think it's important to do this because of my conflict of interest. Calstarry (talk) 17:55, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * First, I am really only proposing reference articles of that type because, as encyclopedic reference sources, they tend to be among the better indicators of what is and is not encyclopedic content for our own articles. That one is more than a bit old, unfortunately, but it does contain fairly good information on the group to the time of its publishing, and Melton, the author of the article, is in general among the more highly regarded sources for NRMs of all types out there. I also have another one from a more recent encyclopedic source with a comparatively longish article, which I could also forward. I regret to say that it wouldn't be possible to reproduce the entirety of the articles on the talk page, given copyright concerns, but I could also forward them to someone else, of either your choosing or mine, so that they could see them as well. Also, for what it might be worth, we tend to use conflict of interest as per WP:COI primarily when the individuals under discussion have some sort of financial interest in the topic. I'm not sure how much, if at all, followers have financial stakes in this group, but in general those individuals might be better described as individuals with POV, not COI, concerns. John Carter (talk) 21:05, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Ramtha's School of Enlightenment
I have replied on my own talk page to your comments there. Maproom (talk) 22:12, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

COIN discussion asides
The discussions at COIN are getting far from anything specifically coi-related, so I'm responding here.

Not that you need to respond to this, but you seem to be a fairly experienced editor who has created an account specific for this job. If so, this could be a problem.

While proposing a new version of the article might seem a good start, I certainly wouldn't recommend it in situations such as yours. It doesn't show the piece-by-piece rationale that editors expect.

The article definitely fits under the Arbcom sanctions on pseudoscience because many of JZ Knight's claims are said to be pseudoscience by reliable sources. This means that anyone working on the article needs to closely follow the policies/guidelines identified in the arbitration findings.

I've looked over J. Z. Knight as well, and I have to say that both articles need total rewrites from independent and reliable sources, carefully following the content policies identified in the arbitration findings. There's far to much material that is promotional in nature that is inappropriate for encyclopedia articles. There's also the problem of discussing Knight's claims within her point of view, versus presenting them in light of science and other relevant viewpoints. I've not looked at the talk pages to see what discussion has already occurred on these matters.

I hope your work will bring these articles to the attention to editors willing to put in the time these articles need. --Ronz (talk) 22:20, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Clearly this is not pseudoscience, but religion. Andries (talk) 18:40, 21 June 2014 (UTC)