Talk:The 4-Hour Workweek

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on December 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

Note: This article was originally created in Wikipedia as a biography of the author, Timothy Ferriss. --Busy Stubber 14:14, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Hucksterism in overview section

The current rev as of 2/19/2008 12:38 AM EST says "While attending Princeton University, Ferriss' entrepreneurial side became apparent when he began offering accelerated learning classes for profit. Upon graduating from Princeton (and after a number of unfulfilling jobs) Ferriss became a founder of BrainQUICKEN[2], a company that sells sports nutrition products."

Somethings needs verification other than Ferris's website there is no verification of Ferris's claim that Ferris is a princeton graduat. Whats on record is that he an Entrepreneurship class there. This needs verification.

Also heres a video of Ferris on TV where he represented himself as a health expert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVyhILwQxg0

Ferris Claims MBA's in india cost $4-5 an hour and claims thats also the case in canada http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k24zlb2KR9I MBAs in india are paid $20000 year. that makes it around $10/ hr for full time employees contractors charge more as they have to make arrangements for their own offices.... The number in canada is well way off. The intuition i have is that he is a conman some one promoting a get rich quick dream. More research needs to be done there....

I did not edit the main page yet but will soon or maybe some one else should do it  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.174.89.104 (talk) 05:58, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Editorial conflict of interest

Which parts are deemed COI? Is it too supportive and promotional of Ferriss' work? All the information in the article are backed up with proper references, and the information recorded is in the best interest of the readers/information that readers are looking for on Ferriss -- Cmoti 04:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Cmoti, this is a biography of a living person. Ferris is a 30-year-old man, not a 1-year-old book. The information about Ferriss himself in the section Entrepreneurship is not sourced for verification. The section 4-Hour Workweek is also unreferenced. The section Book Reviews, Hoax Email Poem & Claims is highly critical of his single published work, and it is externally linked through inline references that are not listed in the reference section. The WP:COI tag on this article is to indicate that a single editor is not abiding by a neutral point of view in developing this Wikipedia article. Timothy Ferriss is a human being, and as long as there's an article in Wikipedia about him, this article should fairly and accurately reflect the public record of his activities and achievements. This article is not a good biography at the moment -- it's mainly a critique of Ferriss's single book. I'll do some basic cleanup on this Wikipedia article for you, but if you cannot source the biographical information and eliminate the emphasis on book criticism, this article might be deleted. I haven't proposed the article for deletion because you're actively working on it. But the COI tag will stay in place until this article is a balanced and well-referenced biography. If you can source and balance the article, I'll take the tag off. It's up to you. I'll help if I can. --Busy Stubber 01:52, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi BusyStubber, Thanks for explaining and for your help, am new to this. Should I create an article on Ferriss' book instead, and not place this info in his biographical article? Also, when you say biographical information, does that mean biographical info from Ferriss' book and blog, or from third party sources? I'm not able to find any third party biographical info on Ferriss. That's why I link to as many references as possible on the Internet, because it turns out that many of Ferriss' claims in his blog and book are being criticized for not being properly substantiated. Cmoti 05:06, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Cmoti, I'm glad to help :) It sounds like we shouldn't be trying to create a Ferriss biography here -- there's not enough independent verifiable information on him. I'm moving this bio article to a Wikipedia book article. There's still the problem of neutral coverage on this book, and I'm not sure the book article will pass Wikipedia's notability criteria for books. For that you'll need to cite reliable independent book reviews and ratings. Most blogs are not considered reliable sources of information by Wikipedia, so be careful about using blogs as a major source of information for the article. I'll check back and help if I can. --Busy Stubber 13:31, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Article moved to new title. --Busy Stubber 14:14, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

cmoti - this article is looking good. Its good you got an admin to steer you in the right direction. --82.28.227.238 22:26, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Does not cover book

This article about a book did not actually say much about the book. The section "Origins" should be expanded to a biography of the author. I question having the author's name redirect to this page. I would like to see the biography section be at least a couple of paragraphs long, on its own page, and have that page contain a link to this book (but not an automatic redirect). I see no evidence that the author of the previous article has actually read the book, or even skimmed the table of contents which is available for free on the Ferriss's website. Therefore, having read the book, I added a summary. The first item of criticism says that the author was confused about the correct attribution of a poem, and upon being informed of the correct attribution, the author corrected the next printing of the book and published a retraction. While this might indicate a lapse of proofreading or fact-checking in the original book, doesn't the correction indicate good character? VisitorTalk 21:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to expand the article to include more information on the book! See Wikipedia:WikiProject Books/Non-fiction article to see the general structure and content for non-fiction book articles. --Busy Stubber 17:27, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Biography of Ferriss

Note: This is in response to the note at the top of the talk page Note: This article was originally created in Wikipedia as a biography of the author, Timothy Ferriss. --Busy Stubber 14:14, 5 July 2007 (UTC) --

Thanks for the clarification, Busy. Do you have an objection to splitting the biographical material onto a biography page, and leaving information about the book on this page? My intention is that both pages would then be expanded into articles with tone and sourcing appropriate for an encyclopedia. For an example of what I have in mind, look at my rewrite of the Roy Masters (commentator) article. VisitorTalk 21:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Upon creation of a biographical page for the author, I will move all criticism of the author (as opposed to the book) to the author page. Within a few days, I will remove all criticism that is not properly supported. Note that as I understand it, Wikipedia policy does not consider comments to blog postings to be authoritative citations for criticism of a living person. Unless you have something better from a legitimate review source, the comparison with Frey would need to be removed. The criticisms, by the way, should be organized into three sections: 1. Claims that Ferriss misrepresents his own life in order to promote unrealistic ideas. 2. Claims that Ferriss's life changes could not be replicated by others; in other words, thought it worked for him, it would not work for others. 3. Claims that even if the changes Ferriss advocates could really happen, implementing his changes would be selfishly amoral. Ferriss openly discusses and refutes each of these types of charges on his blog and in interviews. VisitorTalk 21:38, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
You might want to review Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. If you have enough published, independent sources on Ferriss to build a neutral article about him, it could make a good addition to Wikipedia. Maybe you could provide the citations for your text in Roy Masters (commentator) before working on a Ferriss biography. Also, that article is tagged for lacking WP:NPOV, so you might want to spend some time looking at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines to help you write better articles. Hope this is helpful! --Busy Stubber 17:27, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Blog update suggestion

I found out about this inadequate Wikipedia article from a mention on Ferriss's blog. It would be nice for that blog to be updated with a comment indicating that there is a Wikipedia revision in progress. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by VisitorTalk (talk • contribs) 22:55, August 20, 2007 (UTC).

Feel free to update the blog! But this talk page is for discussion about this Wikipedia article, so it's best not to ask editors here to contribute to blogs. Thanks! --Busy Stubber 17:27, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy delete tag

User:38.99.21.130 put the speedy-delete tag on this article and also was quite rude to Cmoti at the same time. The article is definitely highly critical, and noboby has taken the time yet to balance it out. I don't know Cmoti's motivation for creating the article, so I can't speak to the attack bias. --Busy Stubber 03:33, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I created this article expecting more people to come forward and improve it with correct facts about Ferriss. My motivation is to have the true facts about Ferriss posted here. While searching the web for biographical info on Ferriss, I mostly came across a lot of criticism about Ferriss, especially about Ferriss' failure to show proof of his claims. But until now, unfortunately, the real facts about Ferriss and his claims still remains fuzzy. I would strongly encourage Ferriss and his publisher to properly clarify the list of claims highlighted in this article.
Rude people like User:38.99.21.130 don't bother me, if anything it just makes me more determined to ensure the truth is represented in this article. It's really suspicious when nameless hacks start deleting info and insulting editors, instead of trying to shed light on the subject matter. If you look up the IP of User:38.99.21.130, you can trace it to San Francisco, California. I have the ISP details and will request action to be taken against User:38.99.21.130 if needed.
For the record, in the past three days there have been several attempts by nameless hacks like User:38.99.21.130 to delete info from this article, if not the article itself, without stating their reasons for doing so.
Cmoti 11:37, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
There's a useful outline for articles about non-fiction books that might help here. This article doesn't have a synopsis of the book. Can you add this? --Busy Stubber 15:36, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi BusyStubber, I will go through these guidelines and do a full update once Ferriss and his publisher clarify the claims mentioned. Cmoti 01:17, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
Cmoti, the book is in print, and this article is about the book. The article needs a synopsis of the book, whether Farris and his publisher respond to critisism or not. Can you add this? If you can't add this, then the article is basically a list of criticisms about a book that isn't even summarized here. Please add a synopsis. --Busy Stubber 03:00, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

I've tracked down the IP address of *125.22.248.167 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) to Chennai, India. I have the ISP details and will request action to be taken if needed. Cmoti 05:19, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

"If you're ready to read some great character assassination, read on. This entry was solely created to discredit the author with misinformation. Read the entry and judge for yourself: how much of this is about the book?"
Frankly, the vandal has a good point, Cmoti. You know this article needs a summary of the book, and it doesn't have one. It began as a list of criticism, and you haven't improved it. I'm putting a NPOV tag on it. --Busy Stubber 23:57, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
BusyStubber, why are you supporting vandals! It's so ridiculous I just have to laugh, first time I've seen an editor actually praise a vandal for deleting and misconstruing article information! Can't you see this is exactly what the vandal wants? This article is for people to add in the true facts about Ferriss but so far no one has been able to - how does that amount to a character assassination? And since when have I become solely responsible for improving this article? Why don't you and other editors improve on it instead of simply sticking NPOV tags on perfectly good articles? Why is it deemed NPOV now when the article was fine for months until the vandal showed up? I'd like a good explanation why you are supporting the work of vandals. Cmoti 05:59, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
It's been NPOV for months. Now it has a tag that says so. Neither you nor anyone else seems to want to clean it up. You've had time. They've had time. Editors don't generally put NPOV tags on new articles that're being actively worked on -- many articles are temporarily out of balance while they're being developed.
The tag might attract editors who want to make this a good article. If not, at least the readers get a clear warning now. --Busy Stubber 23:25, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

BusyStubber, I'm sorry to say this but you've lost all credibility in my eyes. An editor who supports vandals is also a vandal. Cmoti 08:13, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, that's just laughable. BusyStubber vandalized what, now? Nothing? Oh, I see, then. Listen, talking about what the vandal said is totally different from vandalizing, supporting vandalism, supporting a particular vandal's actions, or for that matter from namecalling. That's right, I said it. Namecalling. 76.200.144.234 03:48, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Cmoti, back in July, you were thanking BusyStubber for helping and providing experienced guidance. Now look at ya'. Looks like you're still new at this. 76.200.144.234 03:55, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Seems like a lot of strange reversions and vandalism on this article over the last few weeks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mukhatir (talk • contribs) 01:30, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reverts

I give up on this article. The decision was to keep it, and I respect that decision. But this is a waste of time for me -- in my opinion -- so I'm not going to keep reverting here. Addhoc, good luck and God bless you! --Busy Stubber (talk) 03:41, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Martial Arts Titles

The sources cited for Ferriss' claimed martial arts accomplishments are highly faux pas--one being a forum and the other "NowNow", a Q&A website hosted by Amazon. To say that these claims have been substantiatet is not possibly supported by such dubious sources. Moreover, a quick glance through the NowNow page suggests exactly the contrary.

I am deleting these sources, as well as the claim that it has been substantiated, until someone can come up with some better research.

Here are the websites if anyone wants to look through them:

Reaper Man (talk) 07:14, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

You're right. The second source is actually a reprint of an earlier Wikipedia article. Agreed. TheRegicider (talk) 16:17, 8 May 2008 (UTC)