User talk:Jim Burton

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Welcome to Wikipedia Hello, Jim Burton, and welcome to Wikipedia! Wikipedia is one of the world's fastest growing internet sites. We aim to build the biggest and most comprehensive encyclopaedia in the world. To date we have over four million articles in a host of languages. The English language Wikipedia alone has over one million articles! But we still need more! Please feel free to contribute your knowledge and expertise to our site. If you need help see: Help contents - the main help page. Cheatsheet - a listing of the main editing commands. Here are a few more good links for newcomers: The five pillars of Wikipedia How to edit a page Tutorial How to write a great article Manual of Style We hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using three tildes (~~~), or four (~~~~) if you want date stamp; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. {{{1}}} Again, welcome! Herostratus 02:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] re Pedophilia

When dealing with fraught subjects, we want to be especially rigorous with citations. Granting that many other editors have been lax, I'm leery of new unsourced statements in this article (e.g. this)... can you provide cites for this? Herostratus 01:53, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Please explain why a note about subjective opinion must be cited. What parts of the comment would you suggest citing? --Jim Burton 02:02, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Per WP:V and WP:OR, editors need to be able to prove that people actually do hold the subjective opinion, in worthwhile numbers. It's not permissible, for example, to say that "many people believe X" without citation. Generally, the citation must be from a respected, reasonably verifiable, and neutral source. Peer-reviewed scholarly journals are preferred, if available. In the case of subjective beliefs, opinion polls may be used, provided that they are both valid and rigorous in their methods; formal studies are much preferred. Anecdotal data is of limited value, although not necessarily flat-out forbidden; a respected and neutral source is the minimum for this.

Granted, this necessity is often honored in the breach, and this is weakness of the encyclopedia, but that doesn't concern us here. I wasn't referring to any particular passage, just making a general note. As a member of WP:PAW I'm particularly demanding on particular kinds of statements in certain classes of articles. I myself have certainly added several ^{[citation needed]} tags to individual sentences, one for each clause or perhaps each word, as required. Hope this helps, cheers, Herostratus 16:32, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Just wanted to let you know I've tried to improve Pedophilia activism. Any help you can give would be appreciated. I see this page as a test of Wikipedia's ability to objectively, carefully represent mainstream views in the face of a very engaged minority. Thanks! 216.104.211.5 19:36, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

The article is for describing minority viewpoints. There has been a very engaged minority, but they are simply combatting blind mainstream bias. I prefer the edits of activists on this particular article. They seem to have a higher capability for neutrality, and a base of knowledge that must be respected --Jim Burton 02:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC)