User talk:Knowledge for All

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[edit] AMA request

Hi, you've requested an advocate, I'm a good one, would you like my help? User:Pedant 21:50, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] First step

First, I need to know a bit about what the problem is that you are having, and I'll be asking you questions to clarify things. Then I'll research a bit and let you know what seems to be the best solution for a quick resolution. At any point, stop me and let me know if I seem to misunderstand you, the key to most of these things is to keep a good communication flowing.

If you prefer to be more private, at the expense of a little convenience for both of us, you may email me and I will email you in response. I prefer to keep the discussion here on your talk page, if that's acceptable, this will allow easy reference to our dialog.

If it's acceptable to you, we can discuss it here on your talk page, which I have added to my watchlist, I will see your responses here on this page, and you wil receive an alert when I respond. In that case, just describe the issue below and I'll get started reading it. Take your time, I'm going to bed after this post, but I will look in on this page in about 8 hours.User:Pedant 07:53, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problem description

Basically I made edits to the Destiny article which kept being reverted without explanation, even though I requested an explanation. The user Zeusnoos who was reverting my edits later made allegations that the edited matter was 'pseudoscience', but was cutting off any discussion which very much left me under the impression that his reversions had been strongly biased. In fact the matter I had posted was from a reliable third source and was referenced. My edits read something to the effect of 'According to X, the situation with destiny is Y.' I am not aware of any Wikipedia policies that would discourage such matter. In the interest of NPOV, I think that the matter deserves its place in the Destiny article. Knowledge for All 18:39, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] researching

User:Pedant:Ok, I am going to do a bit of reading on the subject matter to familiarise myself with the concepts involved. In the meantime, to decrease the tension I recommend that you don't edit the article for now. I'll help you put together an explanation of 'why this edit is sound and NPOV' etc. shortly. I'd appreciate if you look over my essay at User:Pedant/Pillars which may help you a bit. It discusses some of the finer points of 'how to express concepts that may not be widely held', using some real examples from a previous discussion.

User:Pedant:Frankly, this seems as if it will be a fairly contentious case, as you are dealing with people's belief/disbelief, so referencing to highly reputable primary sources will be paramount to creating a stable text, which I assume is the goal. Wikipedia does have firm policies about neutrality as I am sure you are already aware, and these cover inclusion as well as exclusion of material. This is what we will need to work with. Bear in mind we will not be trying to change anyone's mind on what the truth is, that isn't within the scope of my abilities, but we can probably, with good use of multiple references, create a stable edit that includes a wider and more neutral viewpoint which doesn't exclude your material. User:Pedant 19:35, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Knowledge for All 07:13, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] a proposed solution

User:Pedant:All right, I think I'm caught up. The problem itself stems from the fact that both you and the other editor have strong beliefs regarding destiny, and you are editing an article about destiny without really having a good grip on your beliefs, letting your belief override each of your awareness of how to write encyclopedically. The policy in play here seems to be CITE and the guideline RS, is it possible that you can find a citation for your material that comes from a more acceptably reliable source than the one referenced at the spiritual research foundation website? Maybe you could contact them and ask them for a supporting reference for this material:

"However neither of these views are completely correct. The answer according to the science of Spirituality is that in the present times 65% of our lives are ruled by destiny and 35% by wilful action.

But we can overcome the 65% of our destiny part, by using the 35% of our wilful action to undertake the correct spiritual practice."?

User:Pedant:It seems that's the key passage objected to. The, spiritual research foundation website by itself does not seem to be wholly acceptable as a primary source, since they give no clue as to how they arrived at, for instance, the percentages in the above passage.

Another approach might be to use text to the effect of :

According to the spiritual research foundation website, a website promoting Spiritual science and a belief that human lives are affected by destiny, "65% of our lives are ruled by destiny and 35% by wilful action".

Which is a fact, and not disputable, as long as the website continues to say that, it is defensible to quote it. If you can't find a "better" source try asking on the talk page of Destiny if the above block of text would be an acceptable compromise. If the consensus is negative, we might need to try something more dramatic, in terms of resolving the conflict, if you still insist that the mention of those percentages is appropriate and another editor or editors disagree.

I'll check back here and on Talk:Destiny to see how things are going. User:Pedant 02:04, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I read over that website and I can't find any evidence or research or reference for the claim of those percentages, I think you might want to question where they came from. Anyone can basically put anything they want on a website, as you know, and I don't think (without mention of how the figures were calculated) that it actually fits the policy Use reliable sources ... do you have any idea how they could measure something like that? Do you think that maybe that is an unsupported claim? Without more evidence, I think most editors are not going to be happy with having that statement in the article unless it were like this:

The spiritual research foundation website, a website promoting Spiritual science and a belief that human lives are affected by destiny, "65% of our lives are ruled by destiny and 35% by wilful action", however they do not mention how the percentages were calculated, and do not provide evidence of how it was determined what portion of our lives is "affected", nor do they mention what the term "affected" means in this context.

And if it has to be put that way, I don't see the point in including it. Remember, what is written in this article is still subject to verifiability and reliably-sourced information, regardless that the topic is of a spiritual/metaphysical nature. Comments? User:Pedant 05:08, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Pedant, thank you for your efforts. I will henceforth pursue the issue at my own pace. Fyi, details of the methodology are given in the section About Spiritual Research: Spiritual Research Methodology[1]

If you explain where you found the term 'affected' - I may be able to help in clarifying. Knowledge for All 10:57, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

'Affected by destiny' was my characterization, not their wording. This was based on the phrase "ruled by" -- if we are ruled by destiny, we are affected by destiny.

I will take a look at the methodology. Hope that you understand better now that your edit was rejected because of another user's application of well-established policy. If he had discussed it, it would have been better, and that's a policy too. I've pointed this out to Zeusnoos, and that's pretty much all we could really hope to accomplish at this time, and I don't think it would be worthwhile to escalate to a mediation step, even informal mediation, at this time. I've archived this discussion, and my discussion with Zeusnoos. It's available at User:Pedant/KFA-Destiny for now at least. I hope I have been of some help to you.

I'm going to consider this matter 'closed' for now. I'd be very happy to help you or advise you or answer any new questions you may have, any time. Just drop me a note on my web page. It's been nice to meet you and I look forward to your future contributions. User:Pedant 19:54, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adding links to the same site to multiple articles

I notice that you have been adding links to a website to multiple articles. Please do not do this: it is regarded as at the least bad practice on Wikipedia, and can be regarded as vandalism if repeated. please read WP:SPAM for more on this policy. -- The Anome 22:36, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Anome, I will make sure I add content next time. Knowledge for All 07:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Knowledge for All, merely 'adding content' will not help the issue... you are actually violating the policy WP:SPAM by continually adding links to a non-notable external website which is not a reliable source and which contains unsupported original research.

The site itself details their research methodology, which can fairly be summarised as "A saint asks a question and the answer is directly revealed to the saint"... this does not meet the standard expressed in wikipedia's guidelines.

You have had this mentioned to you by multiple other editors, it is up to you to stop doing this, or you will experience an escalation of wikipedia procedures which will very likely result in you ceasing to aggressively push links to Spiritual Science Research Foundation. Please stop this voluntarily.

It appears evident that you are attempting to boost that site's pagerank. It will do more harm than good to do so because all of the references to your attempts to spam the link will share google page space with the discussion of the page's lack of notability and lack of credibility as a reference resource. It is of no value and is actually hurting the site's reputation, as well as your own. As your former advocate and as an editor, I advise that you stop. User:Pedant