Talk:Victor Zammit

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article falls under the scope of WikiProject Paranormal, which aims to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to the paranormal and related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the attached article, help with current tasks, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and discussions.
Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.

[edit] Call for Discussion

This seems written more as a promotion piece for Mr. Zammit than an neutral article. It needs to also be noted that "Talk" is not a copy of the article itself. --Rcharman 15:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Why you say that? I mean, what are the reasons to say that this article is not neutral? --LSpring 14:40, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with LSpring. I cannot see any statements in the article which are not factual. I have deleted the reference to Mr Randi's challenge because Victor Zammit's challenge does not mention Randi's name and makes no claim to be in response to it. Therefore the comparison is irrelevant and promotion for James Randi. In any event the conditions of Victor Zammit's challenge were clarified on 6th November and much of what was previously written no longer applies. --JamesJBergin 07:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

This is smelling self promotion, you have only contributed to this article and this with the two variants of your username, LSpring has contributed to Zammit page and a subject about materialisation, and up checking Zammit page, it is the new kind of interest he has those last months. Go figures. I will be adding the totally disputed tag, as this article seem to be based on an inside source, possibly being the individual being the subject of this article. Unless all those contributions are sourced such tag shall remain. I have nothing against the subject he is interested in BTW. Fad (ix) 04:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
The only reason Zammit is even known as a public figure is because he was discussed by James Randi and subsequently established his challenge as a counter to Randi. The fact that Mr. Zammit has subsequently carefully redacted all references to Randi from his challenge and website has no bearing on this. The differences between Zammit's challenge and the skeptical challenges it is meant to attack deserve description. Zammit's challenge is presented in public as being like those challenges, but in fact according to the rules is about as rigged as something could get, since it 1) pre-assumes the truth of claims in question and 2) relies on judging done solely by people who already believe this evidence is solid 3) requires convincing people that have spent their life asserting these things that they are wrong. That's nothing like the skeptics challenges it is apeing, which only ask that someone present evidence in a controlled situation of what they claim they can do: something so unambiguous that it doesn't really even require special judging. Plunge 01:43, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps if someone were to give specifics on what is not neutral about the article, it would help those who don't see it. A broad stroke that says "nothing about the article is neutral or factual" isn't helpful, nor is true - after all, his name and profession are right!  :) Dreadlocke 21:36, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The article contains load of informations which are not sourced, I doubt any published information could support even half of the current article. This suggest that we are dealing with self-promotion here. Also, this individual has been criticized by skeptic organizations. I wonder if the man is even notable enough to have his page on here. He has some self-published work and a blog fashioned website, does that make him even remotly notable to have his Wikipedia page. There are on each universities in the West, a considerable portion of the professors published scholars, not self published and various papers. How much of them are enough notable to have their page here? Why Zammit? Fad (ix) 01:13, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Now that I've started reading the article, some of it is sounding like an advert. But that can be fixed. Do we have any experts on the guy to help find more sources for the article, sources that meet WP:RS? Dreadlocke 03:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
The source for most available material about Zammit is Zammit himself. I have tried to create a lead section that at least reads properly, and have added an {{unreferencedsect}} to the biographical stuff. The section about Wayside Chapel makes no sense to me, and I think it ought to be pulled. For one thing, it's not even clear who has made the quote in it – Zammit himself, or the preacher? — BillC talk 01:36, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Victor is a well-known public figure in Sydney, Australia and has been the primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the person. He has been featured in a number of newspaper and magazine articles, radio and television interviews (e.g. as a resident guest on Sharina’s Psychic Encounters) regularly Sunday night for 2 years on one of Australia’s largest radio stations 2UE) and his Million Dollar Challenge has been discussed by TIME Warner and by Sylvia Browne in Larry King Live (CNN Aired September 3, 2001 at 21:00 ET)

Victor is a controversial figure in psychic research and is internationally recognized in Spiritualist and Spiritist Circles as having made a significant contribution to the availability of information on the evidence for the afterlife. So much so that volunteers have translated his book “A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife” into 6 languages: Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and French. A Russian edition of the book has been published by a mainstream publisher and is now in Russian bookshops. His book is hosted on a number of internet sites. He has a large fan base and his current materialization experiments are widely discussed on paranormal forums; there are more than 110,000 entries on him on Google and he is referenced 11 times in Wikipedia.

The Biographical information about Victor and his longstanding interest in human rights is based on articles by Francis Wilkins in the Lawyers Weekly (a publication of the NSW Law Society) on 26th April 2001.

Although Victor was an identity as the Wayside Theatre for ten years by his convening weekly Sunday night meetings inviting political VIP’s as guest speakers, it is I agree that we should delete the stuff because it has been subjected to petty vandalism. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jamesjbergin (talkcontribs) 10:51, 31 January 2007 (UTC).