Talk:Doris Stokes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't have time to deal with this, but it needs attention. This article was mentioned as the "worst on wikipedia" on, I believe, the Randi forums. Using only biographies to write something like this is ludicrous. "Mediumship" last I checked, was also not accepted as a real phenomenon by the academic/scientific community, and as such needs to be described as a minority view. If this article is to be on wikipedia, let it be written around newspaper articles. Sources who have fact-checkers can be presented as fact. Sources who do not must be represented as claims or opinion. Also, can somebody provide evidence of notability? Thanks Tenebrous 23:09, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Wow! This article is really, really bad! NPOV is completely absent. I will try and fix this up later this week, when I have some time to do some research. Qarnos 20:21, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Was Doris Stokes a psychic medium for a profession, or did she have a "normal" job and do psychic things as a hobby? JIP | Talk 10:30, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

She was a psychic by profession. As for the notability question, she was notable enough to appear on tv more than once, so I think she qualifies.

[edit] Worst Article on Wikipedia

Not only is it short, but it is not at all neutral has no citations and totally lacks credibility. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by JimmytheT (talk • contribs).

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. Vashti 22:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References

Doing some work on this article at the moment. If people think this is a bad article, they should see the ODNB article - they might find themselves in need of the services of a medium shortly afterwards, put it that way! FWIW, it cites all of Stokes's autobiographies as sources, and if it's good enough for them... Vashti 22:44, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I think I'm done for now. I am not happy with the negative sources I was able to find, however - despite it being common knowledge that she was debunked, discredited, a fraud &c., I cannot find any substantive newspaper reporting on this despite doing a full newspaper search between 1985 and the present day and a Times search going back to 1880 (!). The concept seems to have just seeped into the national consciousness without ever being substantiated. I've heard rumours of a Mail story which did the research which discredited her, but have been unable to find it ... does anyone know it, or have a relevant source? I've included the gossipmongering stories, but I don't consider them terribly good sources to have used and would like to replace them at my earliest opportunity. Vashti 01:44, 20 August 2006 (UTC)