User talk:Evenbalance

Have you read David Kalupahana's book on Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika? I think many of the criticisms leveled at Nagarjuna would better be directed toward Chandrakirti. Mitsube (talk) 05:01, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Which criticisms leveled at Nagarjuna? Are you talking about the ones on moralobjectivity.net? I don't see how this is related to the edit here. You could raise this issue on the moralobjectivity.net blog instead.Evenbalance (talk) 15:52, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Your addition of certain links
Salut Evenbalance, and welcome to Wikipedia. I notice you've been adding quite a few links to http://www.moralobjectivity.com http://www.moralobjectivity.net. This appears to be in tension with our policy on WP:SPAM. Specifically, could you explain how the site meets Wikipedia's standards on reliable sources? Thanks, the skomorokh  16:53, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

The links are not to www.moralobjectivity.com but to www.moralobjectivity.net. In all cases this site makes a relevant contribution to offering a different viewpoint, not previously mentioned or referenced in the articles, on the topics of the articles it has been appended to. I have been adding the links only in order to make that viewpoint accessible. It is also a site based on, and containing, academically peer-reviewed material including an accredited Ph.D. thesis. If you want to check the bona fides of the Ph.D. thesis, you can search it in the online library catalogue of Lancaster University UK (www.lancs.ac.uk).

There is a distinction between mere spam linking/self-promotion and provision for access to a minority viewpoint which is academically recognised (even if only to a limited extent). I think it is a legitimate use of Wikipedia to draw attention to the existence of an alternative view of an issue, when this is substantially different from the views normally given, and has been properly worked out and accredited in an academic context. Obviously this should not extend to giving it unrepresentative space so as to give the public a misleading view of the balance of opinion on a topic, which is why I have not deleted anyone else's material, and have often just added a link rather than any lengthy explanation.Evenbalance (talk) 17:01, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Skomorokh, you appear to have undone some of my edits on the assumption that I am not giving a reliable source, before even reading my response to your question, pre-judging the issue. Please can you give a response here to what I have written above, before you do any more deleting?Evenbalance (talk) 21:27, 5 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Hello Evenbalance, sorry for misidentifying the url of the website and thanks for your response. Robert M. Ellis, the apparent author of the content of the website, writes "I completed my Ph.D. in 2001 with a gathering sense that I was onto something important, a sense that was confirmed by the positive comments of my examiners. However, after a great many applications and submissions it began to become clear that I was very unlikely ever to get a permanent university job or to get my thesis published." I conclude that none of the content is written by established expert on the topic whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. If this is true, then under Wikipedia's policies on self-published research, the site is certainly not a reliable source, and references to it will be removed en masse from the encyclopaedia. If my conclusions on the authorship of the website are wrong, please enlighten me and we can re-assess the reliability of the content. Sincerely, the skomorokh  16:30, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

It is not the case that none of the work in the field on the website has been previously published by reliable third-party publications. Though the thesis itself has only been self-published, there are other papers published on the website that have been through academic peer review and been published in reputable academic journals (see ). Moreover, the reason that the thesis could not be conventionally published is made clear on the website - because of the length necessitated to establish its argument fully.Evenbalance (talk) 09:08, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

March 2016
Hello, I'm Dharmalion76. I wanted to let you know that I undid one or more of your recent contributions because they appeared to be promotional. Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" are against Wikipedia policy and not permitted. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. Dharmalion76 (talk) 13:38, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

What is it I was supposed to be promoting? The sources were reviews of Stephen Batchelor's book (by different review authors) and an interview. They provide information and assessment of the work of Stephen Batchelor, the subject of the page. --Evenbalance (talk) 19:52, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Please stop adding links to your own website to articles. It is self-promotion and against Wikipedia policy. Dharmalion76 (talk) 20:24, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

I have some connections to one of the sites I linked but not the other, but what does this matter if the links are relevant and informative? The Wikipedia guidance makes it clear that it is not solely having a personal link to the website that's important. To quote the page you linked "It can be tempting to write about yourself or projects in which you have a strong personal involvement. However, remember that the standards for encyclopedic articles apply to such pages just like any other. This includes the requirement to maintain a neutral point of view, which can be difficult when writing about yourself or about projects close to you. Creating overly abundant links and references to autobiographical sources is unacceptable." In this respect you need to explain why my links are 'overly abundant' or irrelevant or don't display a 'neutral point of view' before you delete them. The page you linked also says "There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to the external links section of an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia." You have said nothing at all about why my links were not content relevant or 'excessive', merely assuming that they are only promotional in motive.Evenbalance (talk) 09:53, 6 April 2016 (UTC)


 * The only edits you have been doing since creating your account are adding links to your own website. In this last instance, you added it with another link which doesn't cease making it self-promotional. The problems go beyond self-promotion. Your website isn't a reliable source and it is self-published. The fact that you have been doing this for years and have been warned about it since 2008 means there is no excuse. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for self-promotion. Please stop. Dharmalion76 (talk) 02:14, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

The things that I'm interested in writing about on Wikipedia simply aren't represented on it, because of its strange policy of treating philosophy like science. If somebody makes a scientific claim that is not justified by empirical evidence, I can entirely see how you need mechanisms to avoid unsupported claims being presented as widely accepted scientific belief. Philosophy, on the other hand, gains value for people only by offering alternative viewpoints or interpretations, and gains nothing further by being mainstream (and indeed, becomes far less interesting). It's not correct that the only edits I've offered are links to my own websites: a while ago I did try some other editing just to enable philosophically distinctive viewpoints that were not represented on Wikipedia to simply be represented as options alongside the mainstream ones, for example by editing the 'Middle Way' article. However, when nobody else has offered the same viewpoint or represented it at all, I am obliged to refer to my own work. At every turn, though, I've found that (a) the self-appointed Wikipedia police always place the worst possible construction on my actions, (b)when I have pointed out ways that my edits do actually fit Wikipedia rules on some interpretations, and that there's a good deal of ambiguity involved, these arguments are ignored. Articles related to Buddhism particularly seem to be policed by people for whom traditional authority is the only ground of judgement: a standpoint that I find incomprehensible given that the value of Buddhism is practical and that people (in the West, at least) usually get involved in it for practical reasons. So why can't practical criteria be applied to what is acceptable for inclusion in discussions of, for example, the Middle Way? When a practical standpoint about it is thoroughly and critically worked out in a Ph.D. thesis (published online by the British Library) and self-published in a series of books, when its author has actually published in academic journals (as mentioned above), and the main exposition only fails to gain commercial publication because it is has no ready-made audience, why is it "not a reliable source"? What could possibly make a source 'reliable' in philosophy anyway, other than it having been worked out in detail and addressing standards of critical enquiry? The standards you're applying here just seem to be deeply based on formalism and convention alone, and to involve no effort to actually engage in the nature of the subject at stake and what it would mean to offer people helpful and meaningful perspectives on it.Evenbalance (talk) 11:11, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * If, as you say, you find that nobody else is offering your viewpoint rather than adding your own self-published work maybe you should take it as a sign that the viewpoint is in such a minority that it would be undue weight for it to be added. This is the fourth long winded defense of self-promotion you have used. Please read the relevant guidelines which have been posted on this talk page numerous times. This isn't something that you can filibuster. Wikipedia is not a venue to promote fringe theories. Dharmalion76 (talk) 18:35, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Well, I'm pretty fed up with the consistently suspicious and patronising way I have been treated on Wikipedia. I hereby retire from editing.Evenbalance (talk) 21:31, 11 September 2016 (UTC)