User talk:Lav-chan

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Contents 1 Welcome! 2 2006_Serie_A_scandal 3 R/raven 4 Pastor Don M Spiers

[edit] Welcome!

Hello, Lav-chan, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  -- Longhair | Talk 04:18, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 2006_Serie_A_scandal

What parts do you think are confusing? I'll try to make them easier to understand. --Awiseman 15:33, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] R/raven

Yeah, I tend to just shrug also :) The Tree of Life and related wikiprojects are some of the largest and most active projects on Wikipedia, and many of the individual contributors there are pretty impressive too - so I guess they know what they are doing. But as you can see, there is still a fair bit of disagreement on this issue and the concensus is tenouous, even amoungst academic journals. So a shrug and going with the flow is probably the best approach. -- Solipsist 11:20, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• It actually kind of bothers me (from an English-NAZI kind of perspective), and in any other situation i'd probably press to have it changed. But i imagine the issue's been dissected a thousand times by people who know way more about nomenclature than i ever will, so yeah, i'll probably just play ball if i ever have to edit any articles like that in the future. ... Which i probably won't, since i'm not a biologist or whatever.

edit: I wasn't sure whether to reply to your comment on my page or yours, since my talk page hasn't seen a lot of action yet. I dunno. I'm used to comment-tag since i have a MySpace, but correct me if i'm doing it wrong. ~ lav-chan @ 12:17, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• Ahh, its actually one of the things that is kind-a broken on Wikipedia (but not a particularly important one). You will sometimes see people ping-pong'ing a conversation between two user talk pages, copying each side of the discussion (like this). Other editors will ping-pong the conversation, but not copy over both sides so you have to read two different pages side by side to follow the conversation. And yet others will just keep the conversation on one talk page, which means that one of the editors involved has to keep an eye on there watchlist to see when a reply has arrived.

With known experienced editors I tend to prefer the last approach (the downside being that with about 5000 pages on my watchlist, I sometimes miss a replay or forget to respond). With newer editors I'll tend to use the bounce-n-copy approach. The truth is that none of these methods work brilliantly. A recurring theme on the Village Pump is that there should be a better threaded messaging system, but then the usual reply is that this is a Wiki and being able to edit the talk pages is the Wiki thing to do (that is to say strikeout previous comments, correct spelling and links, refactor and archive discussions etc). And there's some truth in that - I just reorganised a discussion on Talk:Thursday this morning. On the whole the developers tend to have more important things to work on and everything more or less works, so nothing changes. -- Solipsist 12:37, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• I see. I don't mind either way but i suppose the rub is that you never know which method the other person prefers (unless they state it on their page, which, now that this subject has come up, i think i'm going to do right now). ~ lav-chan @ 12:58, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pastor Don M Spiers

I really do not get it as to what is the nonsense that is present in this page. You also said it has got religious promoting. Well if it is so then what about other page like Pentecostal Mission? This page is related to it. All I know is I just created it. If Pastor Don has really inspired life of many people then it shoud be there. rencin24 09:10, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• The 'nonsense' comment was in reference to the poor writing in the article (an example of which i pasted on AfD). Poor writing, of course, isn't usually a good reason for deletion, so that wasn't exactly part of my arguement. It was just a comment.

As far as religious promotion, though, that definitely is a reason for deletion, or at least clean-up (depending on the severity), because it represents a non-neutral point of view. (See here and here for further explanation.) This is a fundamental, non-negotiable principle of Wikipedia.

Saying things like, 'he saw many of society’s outcasts being transformed to evangelists and pastors by the power of God and His word' is advancing a non-neutral point of view, because it pre-supposes the validity of that belief. The existence of 'the power of God and His word' is not a verifiable, objective fact. It's faith. It's alright if you have that faith (or if Pastor Don does), but you can't go around adding it to an encyclopaedia like a fact, because there's no source to verify it.

What you could do is say something like this: 'according to Pastor Don, he saw many of society’s outcasts being transformed to evangelists and pastors by "the power of God and His word"'. That allows you to advance Pastor Don's view point (the existence of which would be a fact) without making the article itself biassed. Of course, that quote would have to be verifiable (you'd need a reliable source you could link to).

Anyway, i think even more important than all that POV stuff is the notability issue. Pastor Don (and possibly the Pentecostal Mission you linked to, i'm too lazy to do any research right now) is just not notable enough to be included in Wikipedia (see here). That's not a criticism of him, it doesn't mean that he didn't touch people's lives, it just means that there isn't sufficient external notice of him. He may be the single most popular person within that church, but the fact remains that there are no non-trivial sources on him. If you do a Google search, it turns up like three results, and two of them are Wikipedia.

A subject must have verifiable non-trivial references, preferably many of them, to be included in Wikipedia. It's just common sense — how can people edit an article when no information is available on the subject? If only two or three persons on Wikipedia have access to knowledge of something, it simply is not notable enough to be here. That's the way it goes. ~ lav-chan @ 21:47, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Kindly take another look at the article, after another pass or two of removing POV or partisan phrases. As for WP:BIO, there are criteria for musicians, artists, sports figures, and politicians, but none for religious people. There needs to be, because daily there are disputes over whether some pastor's article should be deleted. I would suggest that an otherwise unknown parish priest would not be notable, but someone known throughout their denomination or in society in general would be. Spiers would appear to have been well known in national and international religious work, per reference 1, and was an official of his denomination rather than just a local pastor per reference 2. I would like to see more references, but the ones I found are nontrivial, and convinced me that he had sufficient notability. The original article sounded like a eulogy. Do not fall into the trap of Googleism. A man born 80 years ago whose greatest prominence may have been 40 years ago often does not have a good online trail of references, compared to say a current or recent public figure. It can take longer to turn up old newspaper or magazine references from decades ago. Edison 07:02, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

• You did remove most of the other religion-pushing, so OK, that's cool. But notability is the big thing here, and as far as that goes, you still haven't asserted any. Granted it would be a lot easier if there were a bio page on religious figures, but come on. I really don't think it's necessary here, because you just don't have anything on this guy. I wrote this on AfD, but i'll paraphrase for you here: You have three sources, and this is how they break down.

(1) An obituary. Doesn't count, because there's no assertion of notability. Lots of people get their names in obituaries every day.

(2) An article published in 'Abundant Life' magazine in 1976. The age of the article isn't what bothers me about this one, it's the fact that the magazine itself doesn't appear to be notable. I can find no reliable third-party evidence that the magazine even existed (of course i'm not saying it didn't), let alone how many readers it had (Or has? Is it even still around? Who knows, i can't find anything on that either.), what kind of press attention it got, whether it received any awards, et cetera. Maybe it did, but there must be evidence of that given.

(3) What is probably a personal memorial, although the link is broken for me so i can't check for myself. If it is what i think it is, it doesn't count as a reliable third-party source. A personal memorial in most cases is very trivial. (Correct me if i'm completely wrong about what that link points to.)

I don't know where you get the idea that those three sources are 'non-trivial'. Actually, it's only two sources, since the obituary doesn't assert anything other than the fact that he lived and then he died. The other two are not notable publications in themselves, and even if they were they do not assert any notability of the subject of the page. (In other words, the AL article doesn't say that he got any recognition or anything, it's just a narrative essay. That asserts his existence, and his experiences, but it doesn't assert his external notice or significance.)

As far as 'Googleism', you're right, that can be a bad habit to fall into. There certainly may be off-line sources that prove this person's notability. But you haven't given any. The onus is on you to do that before you write the article. You don't get to write an article and then promise to back it all up at some indefinite point in the future. You have your sources now or the article should be removed. ~ lav-chan @ 09:10, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

• Thanks for your very thoughtful comments on the Spiers article. I tend to agree with you on notability. The obit did describe him as "Associate Deputy Chief Pastor of the Ceylon Pentecostal Mission" which would apparently make him a churchwide official and would be a claim to notability, but I suppose it could also refer to an official of a local church, if poorly written. I like to see mention in New York Times or other publication of general circulation, or for this specialized field, perhaps in other religious publications. I found an article , pp 77-78 of http://www.apts.edu/ajps/05-1/05-1-RHedlund.pdf#search=%22ceylon%20pentecostal%20mission%22 which appears to be a scholarly journal, describing the Ceylon Pentecostal Ministry as having 834 branches (chyrches) worldwide and 3984 ministers. No mention of Spiers, however. He is on the cust with respect to notability, without other refeerences, as you state. Please take a look at the Wikipedia talk:Notability (people) discussion and add your thoughts on what should be required for a religious figure to be notable at the discussion " Ministers, Priests, Rabbis, etc".Thanks again for your efforts to make Wikipedia a better source of information.Edison 16:38, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• You too. I'll check out that discussion and see if there's anything i can add. ~ lav-chan @ 10:40, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I have got one link here. I really do not get you when you said that you could not find article about Pastor Don. Well I did find it and here it is.Pastor Don And I tell you please if you do not like the page going on just delete it.If this does not support POV then go ahead and delete it. rencin24 rencin24 09:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• I don't know exactly what you're getting at. That isn't an 'article', it's a small non-notable memorial page (which i've explained my position on two or three times now). It doesn't even assert notability of the guy, it's basically three paragraphs describing how nice he was. And i don't dispute his kindness, i dispute his notability. Also it isn't up to me to delete things when i don't like them. ~ lav-chan @ 04:43, 13 October 2006 (UTC)