Homestarmy

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I didn't want to clog up [User:Filll]'s discussion page with our stuff. So let me continue:

• Jewish stuff. There are anti-semetic nuts out there, and I choose to believe that they are a distinct minority in this country. But as I tell my children and my step-children, prior to Kristallnacht, most Jews in Germany just ignored what was happening. We were watching the movie Joyeux Noel a few nights ago (not as a Christmas celebration, mind you), and I had to stop the movie to explain how the Germans were commanded by a Jewish Lieutenant. But I digress. Hatred of Jews ends up with us usually being killed or exiled.
• Which leads me to White Trash. I don't consider it a racist or inoffensive statement, but you may. It describes a group of Americans who are uneducated. However, if we are describing the intense poverty amongst a certain class of whites, then I wouldn't use White Trash...I'd use something like very poor. And please don't argue that there are people who can't get a decent education. That's a lack of trying on their part, not a lack of my being sympathetic.
• Which leads me to Atheism. Despite your comments (and jokes between us), I am not an atheist. Do I believe in your version of the Bible? No. Do I believe anything in the Bible? As a moral code, maybe, but I'm not a big fan of smiting someone for some offense. Do I think Noah's Ark existed? No way. Do I think Jesus existed? Don't get me started. Do I believe in your god? Nope. Do I believe in a G_d? Yes. Do I think science and G_d are mutually exclusive? No, one most certainly exists with the other. When I cure someone of a disease, it is not a miracle, it is medical science at its best. When I fail to do so, it has nothing to do with religion or prayer or god, it has everything to do with my skills, technology, and timing. My skills come from my own training and education. So that's my opinion on everything. We differ less than you think. But I will not countenance you or anyone making me, my children, or anyone else believe what you believe. That's why I'm adamant about keeping religion with religion and science as science, and not try to make religion a science. Sorry for the rant. Orangemarlin 19:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I would second this. The part of the Christian creationist movement that is so offensive, along with the Muslim creationist movement and the Hindu creationist movements, is their demands to push their beliefs on everyone else. Sometimes the alternative is death. That is the problem. No one is saying your beliefs are bad etc. But to force them on others, that is VERY bad. And it has been bad throughout history.--Filll 20:30, 3 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Sometimes it is good to step back to get a little perspective. That is why I wrote the Hindu creationism article. Read it. What do you think of them? Now try to imagine what your faith and movement looks like to outsiders. See? --Filll 20:34, 3 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Ok, it took me awhile, but here I am, and i've got plenty to say heh. The problem I have with White Trash is in the context I generally here it in life, its generally a racist remark used against white people solely to denigrate them and them alone. I'm aware that historically it was used to refer to poor white people out in the "boondocks" so to speak at first due to the extreme poverty, but that was back when almost every black person in America was a slave, and in today's society, "White Trash" is making a racial distinction where none needs to me made in my opinion, having someone without an education is not a matter of race, its a matter of circumstance. Since the usage of "White Trash" here seems to imply that only "uneducated" white people are the problem as opposed to every "uneducated" person, it appears racist to me. If I was Asian in descent, would you be so quick to condemn me for wanting to stand up for what I believe and trying to convince others that it was true? I mean I certainly wouldn't be part of the "White Trash" community you speak of. Now, on smiting people for some offense, the smiting ultimatly will from God, whom the Bible proposes is a being of infinite justice. I cannot think of any better being who would be equipped to judiciously punish people. But Orange, surely you realize Evangelical type Christians are not all the same, I can think of no Biblical reason whatsoever to justify that when you personally cure someone of a disease, it was God Himself personally doing it instead, and i'm certain there are other Christians somewhat similar to me who would find an equally hard time finding such justification. But no need to apologize for the rant, I mean, my English teachers always keep complaining that everything I write mostly is a rant, and im telling ya, those papers aren't that bad, they have structure and everything. So I think "ranting" in the apparently professional sense of the word is certainly nothing bad.

I don't practice medicine like I used to, but several years ago, I'd say 20% of my patients or close family members would say something about G_d helping me in some way. Since I have no bedside manner (contain your surprise), I would reply with any number of comments, one of my favorites is "well I hope your god pays my bill, because I did all of the work." Probably was a bit argumentative on my part. Anyways, I actually don't know much about Evangelical Christians because there aren't a lot around my hometown of Santa Barbara, CA. We're all decadent heathens--maybe we are all well-off, secure, and happy to have perfect weather 12 months a year, etc. etc., so we tend to ignore religion. So basically, all I know about your religion are some people who sit in the local Starbucks reading the bible together, the LDS missionaries who come to my door probably because of the University of Utah sticker on my car, and the crazy nutjob who insisted on trying to engage me in a discussion of why I was going to Hell as a Jew when I was sitting next to him on a very long flight from LAX to JFK a few years ago. As for the White Trash comment, I'm white, I went to college, two graduate schools and medical school (and no, I'm not a prototypical wealthy upper middle class Jew, I come from poor English/Welsh stock), I work my butt off, and I have no tolerance of anti-educated people (I'll set aside the excuse-ridden laziness of not bettering oneself). Anyways, to prevent further argument, and because this is sounding like an excuse-riddled rant, I won't use the terminology again. But if you tell me that you'll drive up in your Ford 150 pickup, beer cans in the back, a shotgun rack in the window (not shotguns would be allowed here in California), and you are chewing tobacco, it's going to take a great amount of self control to not laugh and say it. But I'll be a grown up. Orangemarlin 22:25, 6 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hmm, I have a question about that person on the plane, did they by any chance start by asking "Would you consider yourself to be a good person?" or something like that? But with Ford 150 guys, I gotta say, tobacco isn't as cheap as it used to be, and its gotta take plenty of concentration to drive a truck, chew tobacco, and be drunk on beer at the same time :D. Homestarmy 14:27, 8 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, Chewing tobacco is very bad for you. Mouth cancer and the such. Besides it's disgusting. I drive a truck  :) Don't drink beer however. No the guy next to me on the plane asked if I believed in Jesus. I answered, not really, he forgot to trim the hedges last week. Went downhill quickly. But it was better than sitting next to the LDS Quorum of 70 member who started to get ticked off when I was reading Krakauer's book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. I almost ordered a beer and chewing tobacco right then and there. Orangemarlin 22:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

....Well, its a very expensive kind of cancer, yea, its like an elite product! That...kills people...ahem, anyway, it seems a bit odd to me that LDS folks would get angry about that kind of thing, most reports i've heard about LDS behavior toward's non-Mormons generally takes the form of pouring on as much love as possible to influence you to join them :/. Homestarmy 01:35, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Now, Filll, I think a little distinction needs to be layed out here. In your Hindu Creationism article the primary proponents are Hindu Nationalists. Historically, India has not exactly been the most peaceful of places to live or be political in, and this history of India has predisposed their nationalist movement to be highly violant and intimidating apparently. Christian Creationism, on the other hand, is not so tied up in a single region of the world, while it is admittedly heavily Americanized and of course many Creationist type ministries are conservative politically and like looking patriotic, I don't think you'd find large caches of weaponry for some Christian Nationalist movement in the states like you're probably going to find over there in India. Sadly, I sometimes think this is why whenever Christians try to do what the Hindu's in your California example did to the school system, we don't get listening to as much as Muslims or Hindu's might be, because we aren't predisposed to murderously and violently threatening people who get in our way as much. Yes, we'll boycott things and hold protests, but they don't take the form of people just chanting "Jesus Akbar!" if you know what I mean. Force through violence isn't the objective, its more of a democratic kind of pressure, people claim its just playing with politics, but we're citizens of this country too and sometimes when we outnumber people in a certain area democracy should, theoretically, take precedence quite a bit. However, Muslims and Hindu's pretty much never come close to outnumbering anyone in this country, yet as you've pointed out they get listened to quite a bit whenever subjects like this come up, suspiiiiciouuuus.....But anyway, if people honestly think the Radical Hindu Nationalist movements of India are exibitive of Fundamentalist Christian behavior, i'm afraid that's a problem of massively blowing up the "threat" of Christianity than a problem with Christians riding through the streets toting machine guns and threatening to drive-by-shoot anyone who advocates Evolutionary theory. (Since, of course, that doesn't happen.) Homestarmy 20:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

• I am afraid things are more ambiguous. There are lots of Christian militia wanting to blow up abortion clinics etc and stockpiling weapons. And there were death threats against Judge Jones after the Dover decision. And the KKK uses the bible to justify themselves. As the slave masters used to as well. --Filll 21:05, 6 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Which Militia's? And unlike either Hindu or Muslim type organizations, the vast majority of Christian type organizations would certainly condemn such attacks as compleatly unnaccetable from a Biblical standpoint, which they are. And remember, our country has several hundred million people. I don't think just a small little cluster of them sending death threats is really representative of Christianity as a whole, which is bigger than our country anyway. Also, have you ever tried to examine whether or not the KKK and the slave masters actually justify all of their behavior logically using the Bible? Because anybody these days can make themselves sound like a member of any religion they want to by saying things alone. Homestarmy 21:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

• I definitely do not claim they speak for all Christians, just as the Hindu and Muslim extremists do not speak for all Hindus and Muslims. However, by the same token, all creationists and fundamentalists and biblolaters and believers in bible inerrancy and bible literalism do not speak for all Christians either. They want to, they want to appropriate the name for themselves and declare Catholics nonChristian and Presbyterians nonChristian etc. And they do not speak for me either. So that is the source of the problem in all these situations. A small obnoxious aggressive group wants to foist its views on everyone else. --Filll 21:15, 6 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

So then, although I believe that the only way to earn salvation is through faith in Christ and that all other religions and/or belief systems are wrong just as a fundamentalist would believe, and am a Creationist, Biblical inerrantist, (Is that even a word?) considering that I do not see why every last Catholic would not necessarily be Christian, what precisely am I? Homestarmy 14:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

So explain to me, where do I stand in your hierarchy of morality. I served my country. I help people live longer and healthier. I give to charities. I help the poor. Catholics believe that the pathway to heaven requires loving G_d and doing good works. What if I told you that I do both, not out of obligation but out of desire? Not that I believe in Jesus or in your religion, but do you really think if Jesus were here that he would care all about the rules and regulations? Do you think he cares all that much about Evolution? What if he came down here and said to all of us, you know G_d guided man's hand in writing the bible, but G_d's seven days is kind of like your 7 billion years? You'll say that I can't know what G_d means, but then how can you? Anyways, aside from some minor issues here and there, you may be shocked to believe that we may both see the world in the same way. It's a matter of interpretation. Orangemarlin 22:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I believe that if Jesus was here, he would be disgusted with what he saw going on in the world and in most churches. And the churches he would be most upset at would probably be those extremists at the boundaries; evangelical Christians, Lubbuvatichers, Wahabi Muslims, etc. Just my opinion.--Filll 00:21, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well Orange, the "hierarchy of morality" in fundamentalist type Christianity is relatively simple, all humans (except Jesus of course) are evil when compared to a standard of infinite goodness, like God. From what i've learned, its very difficult for people to comphrehend why we think this unless I, well, at least partially evangelize to you :). (Trust me, i've seen this before, when people just state that everyone is evil and offer them no explanation or just some lousy one that's not connected to the message of at least God's justice anyway, things tend to get....messy.) Homestarmy 01:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

In principle, yes homestarmy, although I have seen this not work like that at all in practice. Lots of US fundamentalists are only too glad to engage in assorted hate speach of a wide variety.--Filll 04:09, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

That's the thing, not many people in America, as far as I can tell, really know how to evangelize Biblically. I mean, the Bible gives plenty of clues, but you gotta read things a bit closely to get it on your own I think. Most of the time you'll get people who are on either extreme, either friendly towareds the culture or unfriendly. Friendly would typically be your standard encounter with any Christian if you initiate the conversation, whereas your bound to eventually hear something about the so-called hole in your heart that Jesus supposedly came to fill, and probably alot about self-fulfilment and happiness and whatnot, generally without concentrating at all about sin, hell, God's perfection and thus infinite standard of justice, that kind of thing. It's probably a big reason why the latest polls about church evangelism success is only like a 5 percent rate of people who actually stay active in the church after making a "decision", unlike in the Bible, people like this don't really ever warn people about the "wrath to come" as the Bible puts it, and of course, then there's not very much conviction about being a Christian, or believing in God, or really much else, because after all, as far as the person who made a "Decision" is concerned, the "man upstairs" isn't planning on really being mean to anyone for any reason.

Then, of course, you have the other extreme, where people aren't very friendly towards the culture. And, of course, by not friendly, I mean pure hell-fire preaching. It's typically something like Jonathan Edwards type preaching, except even his (in my opinion) sparse mention of actually being saved through faith in Jesus Christ is lost in the translation. So you have people screaming about Hell, how much God will punish those who have sinned in His eyes, typically little to no justification about why God first of all must be infinitly just and second of all why this justice must be applied to mankind in the form of punishment in Hell. Then, typically, there's pretty much no mention at all of how to actually escape this punishment, there might be a little mentioning of Christ's name a tiny bit, but overall, there's pretty much no gospel presentation. This, as you might imagine, makes people rather angry at the speaker, and then generally about Christianity too if that becomes their impression of it, and rightfully so. I mean, who wants to be shouted at about how much God hates them, and then not be told why God hates them, or why God will send them to Hell, or even how to avoid that fate. This never happened in the Bible, for a small example, Jesus's encounter with the women at the well is sort of an introduction about how you can introduce the topic of people's sins, and then present the gospel. Although it was typically only the Gospel being preached in the NT, this was mostly in Israel or at least with a Jewish audience, so of course they'd already be familiar with God's standard of justice anyway. Preachers like Charles Spurgeon or George Whitfield are the kind that you'd hope would be more out on the force, they both presented the law of God, and of course the justifications for God having to be a being of justice, and then the gospel. It's probably why they were so famous actually, Whitfield in particular shows up in alot of just basic history books, sometimes along with Finny or something like that.Homestarmy 01:16, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

We probably dont have a word for you. You have some fundamentalist and creationist beliefs, but you are far more reasonable than most it would seem.--Filll 15:17, 8 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Aww, that reasonableness gets me again, off to the UU training camps for me... :D Homestarmy 01:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Oh those evil UU types!! Wash your mouth out with soap for even saying their name!!--Filll 04:07, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't want you to think that, you know, maybe I'd say something nice about you at the next Atheist Society Meeting held on Darwin's Birthday, but I am a big fan of intelligence and intelligent discourse. You probably think I'm damned to Hell, and I think you're a Fundamentalist, but I could probably sit down with a glass of wine (you do drink??) and discuss intelligent things. We won't figure out the "truth" but we might learn a bit. But if you have to deny knowing me and Filll, because you'll be thrown out of the Christian Fundamentalist and Apple Pie Baking Society, we'll say some mean things about you publicly. Just understand that I'm not an Atheist, but I don't think we're fundamentally evil Although knowing what you just wrote, I now know when I called a certain recently banned user (who sits on your side of the fence, and you ought to have kicked him out) evil, I was far closer to the your belief that I ever knew ;) I still wonder if Jesus really did exist and really does return, if he'd be just ticked off at all of us for any number of reasons. Anyways, I still like the Catholic ideal of loving your G_d and doing good works. Almost would be acceptable to me, except the Pope is German, and you know that cultural memory thing.  :) Orangemarlin 06:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Don't worry, i'm sure the Atheist Society has big plans anyway for our children and pets that taking the time to discuss me might hamper. But yes, I am of the opinion that anyone who isn't born again is heading to Hell, but once again, I can't expect you to see that as reasonable unless I basically evangelize to you :D. I'm sort of not the drinking person, I prefer a nice glass of whole milk, I don't understand why people ever stop drinking it if they've started, its quite delicious....(and maybe filled with hormones, but eh, most everyone dies eventually anyway). But remember, as a fundamentalist, i'm quite convinced I already know the truth, it comes with the religion heh. But don't worry about the Apple Pie baking society, my mom has this great Apple Pie recipe, they can't afford to kick me out! (No way are we losing to those Buddhists around the corner again, we'll have that pie baking trophy back soon, you'll see! :D ) But yes, i've seen situations like that too where some really popular skeptic makes some recording or something about how "evil" Christian Fundamentalists are and I just end up silently laughing because their right, we are evil, that's quite a fundamental doctrine of, well, fundamentalism. See, we'll have you singing hyms in the church before you know it, and I haven't even gone through the law yet! It's funny you end with the Catholic thing though, alot of Catholic apologists types i've seen in the states seem to realize that works righteousness really does contradict the Bible at least by the letter, and they end up trying to deny it or obscuring it with some church tradition or something. In the states, in my experience and it seems the experience of other people i've read about, Catholic authorities often seem more protestant than Catholic in their thinking, (And a Catholic friend I have seems far more mainstream protestant than anything, and he isn't lapsed or anything I think) I guess their too far away from the Vatican or something..... Homestarmy 19:43, 15 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

A request for mediation has been filed with the Mediation Committee that lists you as a party. The Mediation Committee requires that all parties listed in a mediation must be notified of the mediation. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Jews for Jesus 2, and indicate whether you agree or refuse to mediate. If you are unfamiliar with mediation, please refer to Wikipedia:Mediation. There are only seven days for everyone to agree, so please check as soon as possible.

I keep reading this article, and although I can't even explain to you how appalled I am by this group, why all the arguing? I'm a very biased bystander, and it seems like a reasonable article. No one calls them Nazis (I am not a fan of using that label anyways, given that a Nazi is pretty way down the evolutionary scale of humans--couldn't resist, sorry--but these people are anti-semetic). Do you think you could give me a blow by blow of why this is so contentious? I've read the discussion, and you seem to be one of the voices of reason, but I could be confused.Orangemarlin 22:15, 6 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

It's actually very complicated and we've been going at this for months, do you want the short version or the long version? Homestarmy 22:17, 6 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

How about a short version, and I get to ask some follow up questions?Orangemarlin 22:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, basically, I just ran across this article one day, (I don't remember how) and it was in an odd kind of shape and pretty limited, so I put it on my watchlist and responded to some random people on the article talk page for a bit. To summarize, a few months or so later, for no particular reason I can tell, a whole bunch of these random new accounts or anons kept popping up and drastically editing the page in various ways, which got Humus and several other editors quite annoyed it seems. That got people interested in improving the article, I'm pretty sure even I threw in a few good referenced things here and again until the article basically got to a similar state to what you see today. (And, really, I don't think its half bad) Then we got some more dedicated editors who seem to of taken trying to edit JfJ in a far less Judaism-oriented manner as a personal mission almost, and the problem was whenever they tried to remove things related to the opinion of notable folks concerning Judaism, edit wars almost always happened. There were a ton of them, I generally stayed out of it, (well, except for a few times, I couldn't resist jumping in one or twice, this has been going on for many months now :) ) but there was so much arguing on the talk page that things got really ugly really quickly. There were some accusations of "Eliminating Jews" which wern't very nice, and I was primarily concerned with the Christianity template, which as far as I can tell from the stated motivations of several editors, (Mostly Humus) it is being used to more or less "Clear up any misconceptions the reader may hold that Jews for Jesus might actually be Jewish", which seems hardly appropriate and, as I refined my argument more, increasingly counter-productive. Although I primarily care about the template because it seems like it could lead to bad things, and maybe learning something about Jews for Jesus that makes me choose one side or the other. (Honestly, I don't know if I want to support these guys or not, I just can't get the kind of information on them that I can see from, say, The Way of the Master, and you almost never know what these kind of people are really up to until you see and hear them personally, you know?)

The main topics of contention have concerned the prominence of the incompatability with Judaism thing, the writing of the intro with all the references, the humungous amount of critical opinion, and for me with issue that got dropped, even getting a chance to spell out Jews for Jesus's offical response to much of the criticism in plain english. (It's the last reference in the JfJ response section, the way it was going, its pretty good that I was able to find a way to write the sentence so that people wouldn't take it all out of the article period :/.) I mean, if you read some of their responses, its a lot more detailed than what's there right now, but meh. Whenever people try to change the article too boldly, they tend to get mass-reverted, and while i've never been too much for boldness on this topic, I can certainly see why other people would tend to get annoyed when occasionally they try to change something in a good faith manner, Humus often just uses the rollback function, (Which, if I understand administrator policy, is supposed to only be used for vandalism related things.) or Humus and several other people just pile on revert so that nothing opposed to Jews for Jesus gets removed or shortened much. Then, of course, there's all the fun on the talk page, where the determination of some editors, (User:ParadoxTom and User:Justforasecond come to mind), seems to of made many of the anti-JfJ type editors really suspicious of anyone who wants there to be less or blunted criticism in some manner, and quite frankly, considering all the ugly mass reversions that were going on there for awhile by anon's and the like, I can understand their suspicion. Homestarmy 23:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've got to ask one thing. What does it matter if it's incompatible with Judaism? I would say not. And as a Jew, I've met these people, and I would hope that Christians wouldn't accept them. Orangemarlin 00:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

It apparently matters quite a lot to plenty of editors, as they certainly seem to get riled up easily whenever somebody tries to change the wording too much :/. We're also on the second Mediation request on the article, we just need User:Jayjg to accept again, the first one stalled out because the Mediation bot wasn't running and the whole system was basically down, and User:ParadoxTom filed an ArbCom request, but unfortunently, it seems that might of been what caused someone to notice he had been blocked again, and he was indeffed, (if that's even a word heh.) though if you ask me, if this keeps going on much longer, I think the probability of the case being accepted if submitted again is just getting higher. But on another note, you say you've met these people, can you tell me what sort of things they tried to say and do? I really do want to learn about these people on a more down to earth level, but when I went through like 20 pages of google results spammed with mostly Jewish-written attack sites, (There was even one that said all Christian Fundamentalists want the rapture to come so they can watch 1/3 of all Jews be killed in the tribulation, that sort of got my attention....) I sort of realized finding first hand information that's relatively neutral wouldn't be easy, and if you don't mind, i'd like to hear about what you experienced :). Homestarmy 00:40, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

And I thought the Evolution article was bad.  ;) From a Jewish perspective, there is a cultural memory that you cannot even imagine. Every Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah, wedding, anything has reference to the Shoah. My ex-wife's family was devestated by pogroms and the Holocaust. Her family wouldn't trust a Christian under any circumstance. It is scary to me to read about these people. We don't know if they're the next Nazis or just some crazy group. But, that being said, and staying with the article, this is not Judaism from a cultural standpoint. From a Jewish faith standpoint, I'm not as knowledgeable as you appear to be on this matter of Messianic Jews. I know that none of my Jewish friends would consider that group Jewish, just Christians of another name. (More Orthodox of my friends and family lump all C's, their code for Christians, as one in the same). Anyways, the article to me is pretty good and balanced. Obnoxious reading, but I read the Holocaust article and get really ill. Orangemarlin 06:37, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yea, i've watched the Evolution talk page quite a bit for awhile, (Shortly after I joined Wikipedia, as many creationists do, I took a stab at trying to undermine Evolutionary theory of course, but it seems the U.S. education system convienently forgot to tell me about how the first law of thermodynamics only applies to a closed system, but I was asking things in question format anyway, so I learned something without making people angry I think) it is a highly complicated theory which has a bad habit of being hard to pin down :/. (Even when other Creationists have come on the page, i've seen some responses to them contradict each other sometimes) but I don't think there's ever been any real cases for mediation or ArbCom about the Evolution article. One thing I seem to be getting from the JfJ stuff is that, as you say, the cultural setting in Jewish culture seems very deep, and apparently doesn't like being challenged much. I don't know why JfJ's particular challenge seems to evoke memories of the Holocaust in people though, its not just you, several archives ago this one person wouldn't stop repeating how Jews for Jesus is "Eliminating Jews", and then turning around and saying that I was being offensive for thinking that that comment was relating to the holocaust at least by word choice. Homestarmy 14:25, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

The rapture and tribulation etc is great, but it is not really based on anything but the feverish nightmare of some girl less than 200 years ago who was sick in bed with the flu, as I understand. But...people get so revved up about nothing. And if it gives them another chance to attack their neighbors who believe something slightly different than them, they just jump on it. It is sick really.--Filll 00:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Actually, these JfJ folks don't just believe something slightly different, if there's one thing i've learned about the Judaism of today from all this, is that no Jewish authority really puts up with anyone who claims to be Jewish and believes Jesus to be the Messiah. (It's not even Messianic Judaism we're talking here, even the Messianic Jewish sites i've seen that comment on JfJ don't like JfJ either, their beliefs are too different for them too heh.) However, I think a lot of these organizations aren't understanding that JfJ's definition is first ethnic, then it gets complicated religiously, even I was confused for awhile, I thought JfJ meant both Christian and Jewish religiously heh. Homestarmy 00:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hmm interesting. I did not know that. I thought the Messianic Jews were the same as the JfJ. I have met a few of the latter but none of the former as far as I know.--Filll 00:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

The citation should actually be in the article somewhere I think, what happens is that Messianic Judaism is more into obeying the laws of the Torah in several ways than Christianity normally is. Whereas typically, even with something like Seventh Day Adventism, almost all denominations will acknowladge that we are no longer under "the curse of the law" and that we are freed from having to follow the terms of the old covenant so to speak, Messianic Judaism seems relatively separated, they seem to combine both the NT and Torah in a way that they follow the laws of both unless the NT specifically replaces some of them somewhere. So, for instance, they follow all of the Old Testament holidays mostly. Whereas if you look at JfJ's beliefs, take out the special evangelism to Jews and you've got a fairly typical looking protestant evangelical organization. Homestarmy 01:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. I just learned something. I always consider the JfJ types to be Christians, and not even ethnically Jewish (even if they drop their pants and they're circumcised). A much more fascinating group are the Crypto Jews of the American southwest. Now there's something that we could discuss that has a whole bunch of historical, sociological and religious data. I don't think it's very controversial, but one can always be surprised by these things. Orangemarlin 06:43, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your GA passing of Shaw and Crompton - it has been hard work, but well worth it, it seems! I'll try to make the ammendments you recommended to improve the article further. Thanks again, Jhamez84 16:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

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Cheers and regards,
Anthonycfc ^{[T • C]} 03:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Why do you do so? Are you a credophile? --Taraborn 23:55, 8 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, that article is a redlink and i've never heard of the term I think, and the current reasons I have for believing in God are numerous. While at first I did, admittedly, take it for a given because nobody tried to convince me otherwise, now that i'm a Christian, I know that God exists through a combination of personal experience and various intellectual type reasons. What sort of "why" do you want an answer to? Homestarmy 23:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for reviewing Hamersley - you've brought up some good points which we can address. And your talk page is far more interesting than mine! Mine is chatter and random frog discussions at the moment. Orderinchaos78 15:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Its ok I dont think he understands the underside of the whole adventure, maybe I need to break it to him gently... ( I speak for myself of course - not him) SatuSuro 01:02, 10 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

This is still on the GA/R but with improvement now has 4 keep votes, but ChrisMari delisted it on its talk page on 2 Jan. What to do? Pls repsond on GA/R page.Rlevse 14:15, 11 January 2007 (UTC)...Same deal with Katie Melua. People are delisted as soon as they put them on the GA/R page.????Rlevse 14:17, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Since the real discussion seemed to be on the article talk page, I just responded there. Homestarmy 14:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Please look at it and give me your comments: User talk:Filll/AllAboutGod--Filll 03:03, 15 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

This doesn't seem like a half bad stub to me, are you concerned about notability or something? Homestarmy 03:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Of course. Notability, NPOV, grammar, etc. --Filll 04:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Here it is as a real article: All About God Ministries--Filll 15:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hrm, one of those interesting things of Wikipedia, I guess. I'd never happened across your userpage before, and had no idea I was working with one of those damnable fundamentalists. (This is meant quite tongue-in-cheek, of course, so please don't take offense. :) ) I'm used to it enough being called a hellbound atheist, so it's interesting for me to see that I'm working with a very religious person in one case, and a quite real-life pastor on another article I recently came across. Seraphimblade 11:41, 15 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

It's sort of funny for me too, with Jews for Jesus, when I first saw how much people wanted to make them look bad, I was all set to reaserch more about JfJ and go to the trenches so to speak in their defense, but as I kept looking more and more, I couldn't actually get the information I needed to test whether or not JfJ was actually an organization worthy of defense :/. This whole time I just can't choose a side on an article where it seems like most people would have one, an unusual thing for a fundamentalist indeed. I've been learning things though, mostly about Judaism, (and I don't like what i've been learning at all) but haven't been able to learn much more about JfJ.... Homestarmy 19:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

You scare me. You don't sound like one of them!  :) (PLEASE don't take offense, it was meant as humor.) Orangemarlin 19:41, 15 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hey, putting everything to the test is part of the Bible too, and if I can't put these JfJ folks to the test properly I really have serious problems with trying to defend them or anything. Homestarmy 19:44, 15 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Believe it or not, things are quiet over here. We've gotten the article down to fighting weight and we're in shooting range of FA quality. I've opened a discussion on the talk page about what is still needed in the article. I'd love to have you opine. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 14:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Homestarmy -- just curious if you had another suggestion for permissions to continue editing the JfJ article. Ramsquire and I both made alternative suggestions, but if you had another idea, we'd probably agree. Best, Mackan79 18:41, 18 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

The other idea with the contentious parts seems fine, I don't often edit them anyway, I supported. Homestarmy 14:42, 19 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Why not campaign against linguistics? And the teaching of many aspects of linguistics in colleges and high schools? Grammar? Etymologies? A lot of information taught and studied in linguistics disagrees with the biblical account, after all.--Filll 03:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

It is hypocritcal to be offended by evolution and not to be offended by the field of Historical linguistics.--Filll 03:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Err, did you mean to give someone else this comment? I don't think i've contributed to the Tower of Babel article recently. In order to be offended by evolution, i'd have to have pride in my own beliefs, which would indeed be hypocritical, but not in the way you suppose... Homestarmy 14:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

If you and editors with similar views started your wikipedia, the living wikipedia or whatever, you may find more benefit than having to constantly lock horns with the unilluminated. Your community has achieved a lot on WP, it would be a shame if most of it became lost in edits. This has been the solution to the interests of a group being achieved. Just a suggestion. Fred 03:31, 20 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

P.S. given the power of faith it could outrank this wiki one day! Fred

I would direct anyone interested to CreationWiki or ResearchID Wiki. There are probably more out there too.--Filll 05:28, 20 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I was going to join creationwiki, but their policies just seem way too authoritative, having to have your content looked at by admins before it goes live? What happens if I want to skip ahead the old argument chain, create some new argument of my own against something evolutionary, and no admins let me because an "old" response is "good enough"? You won't be able to get rid of me that easily Filll :D. Homestarmy 15:55, 20 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Pardon my interjection "This page, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, is one of Wikipedia's three content policies. The other two are Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research." You may find this 'authoritative' too. Many editors, myself included i hope, adhere to these policies in the hope that others will. All other content can reside at a number of sites. Would you 'edit' the encyclopedias at your local library. Try to understand the principles at work here. You interests are well represented on wikipedia. Your faith is not to be found in here. And you need good eye contact for evangelism. yours faithfully Fred 17:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Authority can be good, but creationwiki isn't in the same class as Wikipedia. An administrator doesn't have to check every edit you make before it goes live. And I must beg to differ as to the need for eye contact, while it is rather difficult to evangelize in the same style as one would in real life here, written words are quite an acceptable and well-used medium for evangelism. Besides, evangelism isn't exactly the only thing Christians are commanded to do in society you know. Homestarmy 17:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I am a member of CreationWiki myself. I have not contributed anything yet however. I did not yet join the intelligent design one. I am of course a member of EvoWiki. I also contribute to some other Wikis. I do not want to "get rid" of you. It is just useful to know of other good wikis. For example, I think WikiTravel is far underused.--Filll 16:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

If an article has a majority o f pass in it's GA/R does it mean that it becomes a GA. Thanks. Kyriakos 21:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Oh, sorry, I didn't realize it wasn't a GA heh, I passed it. Homestarmy 23:23, 26 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Dear Homes: I tell people call me anything but late-for-dinner! 8-) The big boy on the block is Kenneth Scott Latourette, A history of the expansion of Christianity 7 v. New York ; London : Harper & Brothers, 1937-1945. Christian History, a magazine, also does a nice job in a more popular tone. They are on the web. If you have a little more specific question, let me know, and I'll tickle the keyboard. It's what I do. (Think of me as a wired reference librarian). --CTSWyneken^(talk) 12:10, 5 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, but only in snippet view at google.--CTSWyneken^(talk) 21:32, 5 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Pat Robertson:

Ok, i've pretty much stopped trusting this man ever since the assasination of Chavez comment, but for a person who's also made what seem to be false prophecies, (Remember Bush winning in a landslide, among numerous other things) I don't see how he's a fundamentalist. You can use language like a Fundamentalist without being a Fundamentalist. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

• He calls church-state separation a “lie of the left”

Current interpretations of it by the left side of the political spectrum do seem quite incorrect, it may very well be a lie the way they tell it. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

• thinks Christians like him should lead the world.

I don't think anyone is quite so Pat Roberston as Pat Robertson, he seems pretty one of a kind. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

• His 1991 book The New World Order was based on a host of anti-Semitic sources, although Robertson has always been pro-Israel for end-times theological reasons.

Anyone can use anti-semetic sources for something without actually agreeing with the premise of anti-semitism, and I presume that since he supports Israel he doesn't agree that all Jews should die or whatever garbage spews out of anti-semetical groups these days. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

• The same book opines that former presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush may have been unwitting dupes for Lucifer.

So? For all I know, before I became a Christian, I may of been an unwitting dupe for Satan on some level, maybe you too, hey, maybe half the world is as long as he's dealing with probabilities. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

• On his TV show, Robertson once charged that Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians represent “the spirit of the Antichrist.”

Yes, because as we all know, digging the divide deeper between groups which aren't necessarily compleate heretics is compleatly Fundamentalist. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

• In a Sept. 13, 2001, diatribe, he asserted that the terrorist attacks on America happened because of the Supreme Court’s rulings in favor of church-state separation.

A man can change in more than 5 years. Not that Roberston necessarily has changed enough, but once again, he doesn't seem the most Fundamentalist of Fundamentalists to me.

• Over the years, the failed presidential candidate has often dallied with brutal dictators. He celebrated Guatemala’s Pentecostal strongman Efrain Rios Montt, lauded Frederick Chiluba of Zambia as a model for American politicians, hunted for gold with Liberia’s Charles Taylor and did business with Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. (He was caught using relief airplanes owned by his charity, Operation Blessing, to ferry diamond-mining equipment in and out of Zaire.)

Now you know why many Fundamentalists are easily skeptical of Televangelist types. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Robertson Quote: “The fact that [the courts] are trying to ignore this country’s religious heritage is just horrible. They are taking our religion away from us under the guise of separation of church and state. There was never any intention that our government would be separate from God Almighty. Never, never, never in the history of this land did the founders of this country or those who came after them think that was the case.”

What, it is horrible. Ever read a book called "Three Cheers for our Secular State"? It might be a bit dated, but the sentiment of the book seems alive and well with current separation of church and state interpretations. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Dr. James C. Dobson:

• lauded corporal punishment for children at a time when many child-rearing experts were recommending against it.

.....and when, apparently, the majority of parents are still for it: (MSN isn't exactly the most conversative news site out there too) [1]

• refers to church-state separation as the “phantom” clause in the Constitution.

It is.....? Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

• He frequently lambastes gays, legal abortion and the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Depending on what you mean by "lambastes" gays, (which I frequently have found basically means "opposes homosexuality") these values sound fine to me, I don't see the problem here. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

• In a 1996 radio address, he attacked the concept of tolerance, calling it “kind of a watchword of those who reject the concepts of right and wrong….It’s kind of a desensitization to evil of all varieties.”

Well, yes, today's concept of tolerance is quite terrible indeed. And the problem here is....?Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Two years before that, an FOF magazine attacked the Girl Scouts for being agents of “humanism and radical feminism.”

I'd need to reaserch this more to come to a conclusion on the girl scouts. I mean come on, who knows what goes into those cookies anyway? :D Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

• More recently, Dobson lashed out at a pro-tolerance video produced for public schools that featured popular cartoon characters, among them SpongeBob SquarePants, because the group that produced it put a “tolerance pledge” on its Web site that included gays.

So would I, I personally like SpongeBob SquarePants, and the idea of some tolerance people taking advantage of a character as innocent as SpongeBob to try and defend near-absolute moral relativity is preposterous. And I don't mean just preposterous as in "I don't like it" either, SpongeBob as a character does not belong in that kind of situation, and its a terrible stretch to use that character to further a philosophical agenda. (At least, it is now, SpongeBob makers may make his character develop more in the future) Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Rev. D. James Kennedy:

• His “Coral Ridge Hour” mixes fundamentalism with strident attacks on public education, gays, evolution, legal abortion, “secular humanism” and other Religious Right targets.

Wanting people to Home-school their children is no attack on public education, he's always attacked Homosexuality and the actions of Homosexuals rather than personally attacking the Homosexuals themselves, (at least as far as i've watched him) and I see no problem with the rest, does any of it surprise you particularily? Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Alan Sears:

• He was the first Religious Right figure to assert that the cartoon character SpongeBob Square­Pants might be gay

It's easy to over-react in today's political and social environment, and I can understand how people who haven't watched much SpongeBob SquarePants might have a premature reaction to him. But their quite wrong, SpongeBob is far too innocent a character to be a homosexual or even know what that word means. It just doesn't add up. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

• has criticized the 1959 comedy film “Some Like It Hot” for promoting cross-dressing.

So was it? Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Sears Quote: “One by one, more and more bricks that make up the artificial ‘wall of separation’ between church and state are being removed and Christians are once again being allowed to exercise their constitutional right to equal access to public facilities and funding.” (January 2004 e-mail alert)

Debateable, but that would be nice if it's true. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Donald Wildmon: Wildmon, 68, has flirted with anti-Semitism, suggesting that Jews control the entertainment industry. The AFA’s Journal has also reprinted articles from The Spotlight, an anti-Semitic newspaper. In December, Wildmon said evangelicals may stop supporting Israel if Jewish leaders don’t stop criticizing the Religious Right.

I fail to see how this person is Fundamentalist with that kind of attitude. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Wildmon Quote: “Anti-prayer/Anti-Christian groups – like the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State – have teamed up with liberal judges on the U.S. Supreme Court and are stripping away our religious freedom.” (Fall 2000 fund-raising letter)

Even though he might not be Fundamentalist, this may be more or less accurate. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Family Research Council:

• Recently, it has led the Religious Right effort to attack the federal courts and strip judges of their ability to hear church-state cases, sponsoring a series of anti-court rallies called “Justice Sunday.”

....Wha? Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Quote: “The [Supreme] Court has become increasingly hostile to Christianity. It represents more of a threat to representative government than any other force – more than budget deficits, more than terrorism.” (“Confronting the Judicial War on Faith” conference, March 7, 2005)

And, at the time of that posting, it probably was, what with frequent 5 to 4 decisions against Christianity-based opinions and whatnot. By siding against us in so many abortion-related cases, more un-born children have died as a result than everyone who died in 9/11 combined. I'm not sure why you think I might be surprised or somehow shocked by this opinion of FRC, unless you're trying to out me or something, but I assure you, people who've gotten to know me deeply already know i'm quite Fundamentalist, and I fail to see what's to be gained. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Jerry Falwell:

• His newspaper labeled the children’s show character Tinky Winky a stalking horse for the gay-rights movement in 1999. *He has asserted that the Antichrist is alive today and is Jewish.
• Two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Falwell appeared on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” and opined that God had lifted his protection and allowed “the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”

The teletubbies is possibly one of the creepiest looking shows i've ever seen or heard of, and whether its a front of the homosexual-rights movement or not, I still wouldn't recommend anyone watch it. Not because of something Fundamentalist related, but because shows like that are just increadibly disturbing on a deeper level. The antichrist comment may or may not be true, I don't see how that's anti-semetical or something, but once again, now you know why many Fundamentalists are easily skeptical of televangelist types.

Falwell Quote: “Separation of Church and State has long been the battle cry of civil libertarians wishing to purge our glorious Christian heritage from our nation’s history. Of course, the term never once appears in our Constitution and is a modern fabrication of discrimination.” (“Falwell Fax,” April 10, 1998)

Sounds accurate to me.....? Come on, surely you'd think i'd agree with something like that, I mean, it fits the stereotype of someone like me and everything :D. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Rev. Louis P. Sheldon:

• . He has been criticized for acting as a front for gambling interests on at least two occasions. An aide to disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff once called Sheldon “Lucky Louie” in an e-mail when the two worked together on a lobbying project on behalf of the legalized gambling industry.

Doesn't sound Fundamentalist to me. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

• For many years, Sheldon carved out a niche for TVC by engaging in unrelenting gay bashing. When other Religious Right groups began moving in on this turf in the 1990s, Sheldon diversified, ramping up his assaults on church-state separation, public education and the federal judiciary.

Ditto. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Sheldon Quote: “A dangerous Marxist/Leftist/Homo­sex­ual/Is­lamic coalition has formed – and we’d better be willing to fight it with everything in our power. These people are playing for keeps. Their hero, Mao Tse Tung, is estimated to have murdered upwards of 60 million people during his reign of terror in China. Do we think we can escape such persecution if we refuse to fight for what is right?” (“The War on Christianity,” column, TVC Web site, Dec. 13, 2005)

Now that's clearly just kind of desperate. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Source: [2] --Filll 16:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Just wanted your reaction, that is all. Some of it makes me just laugh out loud. But I could find far far worse and more outrageous than this to post. After all, I never posted anything about Haggard or Swaggert or Phelps or any number of other more extreme types. These are the mainstream, and the biggest operations in evangelical Christianity in terms of dollars.--Filll 20:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

You do realize that you might not think these guys are working with a full deck, but when we hear this stuff, we think all of you (lumping all Fundamentalists together, which probably drives you nuts) are out to have us all executed by the side of the road, and have us wear yellow Stars of David on our coats. We have a cultural memory that makes us shiver when we read it. Orangemarlin 21:13, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Some of these characters might be more in the Evangelical community than the Fundamentalist community, which as the Evangelicalism article points out, is a term which "has been all but relinquished to the "moderates," rather than liberals or fundamentalists." And for good reason, while all Fundamentalists are Evangelical, not all Evangelicals are Fundamentalists, although historically Evangelicalism has been almost solely on the rightward side of social issues, that has changed drastically. Now you'll find Evangelicals on both sides of almost any issue, because while Fundamentalism implies the Fundamentals of the Christian faith, Evangelical simply means, you know, evangelizing. The message actually being evangelized varies often, and quite radically. You'll find Social Gospel people such as Brian McMcleran or Rob Bell generally on the left, Roberston would arguably be on the semi-right side, Kingdom Now theologians wandering about saying who knows what these days, Prosperity Gospel people often seeming to say whatever will get their church the most donations for, quite frankly, who knows what, and it's hard to keep track of it all. Homestarmy 22:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yeah I guess. Well most of them strike me as dangerous and hate-filled and maybe more than just a tad deluded.--Filll 00:04, 9 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

I appreciate your contributions in closing GARs, but I noticed that you closed one when only 1 person other than the nominator had voted. Please remember that the GAR is really more about consensus than about voting. When a unanimous 4-0 vote comes around, then that could be declared consensus, but 2-0 is rather low. Also, please do not count the nominator as a vote when you post the results of the GAR. Thank you, and I hope that you can continue to help in closing GARs. Diez2 03:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Err, which one was it? I've always counted the nominator unless they don't seem very sure of their reasons for listing, and nobodies said anything before. Homestarmy 14:10, 13 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Oh, Louis Jordan. Well, in a way it was sort of a 3-0 because Agne had warned it so long ago, and with such a long warning time, it could of been delisted then whether a review was made or not. Homestarmy 14:12, 13 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

I noticed you took part in the straw poll. Please visit the talk page to engage in the discussion, so we may build consensus. Vassyana 00:20, 18 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

I was reviewing HiPER and noticed that it had a lack of inline citations. The editors noted that there are sources but they aren't published could you help and possibly give suggestions on how this can be resolved. Tarret 22:00, 20 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I noticed that you were trying to run Cedars bot. Perhaps you could take a look at this proposal and leave comments. Thanks, Walkerma 05:39, 22 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

 

The Original Barnstar
For your civility in the Mediation Committe case, WP:RfM/Jews for Jesus, and for helping to solve an important dispute efficiently and sucessfully - and making my Mediation easier :) - I, Anthony, award Homestarmy the Original Barnstar. Well done!
Kind regards,
Anthonycfc ^{[T • C]}

Post script - you might want to archive your talk page :) it's around 125 KB!

I notice that you renominated those articles for Good Article reviews after I had already passed them and noted that they met the criteria. I've relisted them as GA. Apparently I didn't include the form on the talk page outlining that they had met those criteria. There seems to be a glut of other nominees already, so I don't want to leave articles there that have already passed GA. --Bookworm857158367 15:36, 6 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've agreed to take on the large task of trying to improve this article, and hence checked out the GA review. You mentioned that most of the references are in Spanish. While I do not dispute that this article needs a lot of work doing on it, I cannot accept that it should not be referenced in the local language (most of the references are actually in Catalan). You might like to take a look at WP:CSB: whatever the defects of that page might be, it is a useful reminder of the problems facings the compilers of a "universal" encyclopedia! Best wishes, Physchim62 (talk) 12:18, 8 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Fair enough, thanks for your reply. In any case the article at the moment isn't "Good", I'm not disputing that. As for non-English references, I will take the discussion to WP:GA where it seems to belong. Best wishes again, Physchim62 (talk) 16:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Go ahead and fail it. I totally forgot about it.IvoShandor 17:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Here is an article that could use your attention.--Filll 17:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

It was a heresy to believe that three nails were used in the crucifixion of Christ? That seems kind of silly.... but anyway, this sort of thing is well outside my subject area, I always thought it was just one nail because of media interpretations, I think i'd be a bit hopeless on this topic. Homestarmy 17:33, 8 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Come on we need some scholarship and assistance here on this important subject !--Filll 18:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

It will be difficult to dance on the head of this pin as you put it when the primary results of a google search yield little more than parody stuff, person websites, and a forum post from Stormfront.org. Homestarmy 22:32, 8 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I didnt say it would be easy to get good information on this. It sounds like a fascinating topic.--Filll 22:40, 8 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your comments. I am fairly new to Wikipedia and, having added quite a lot to a stub, I decided to test the waters for a Good Article assessment. While I accept your conclusion I should like to query some of your comments. My references are to a single author source because in recent times no one else has written anything about Hall Caine in any depth and Allen has I think been the first person to study the primary source material which is held in archives in the Isle of Man and in Canada. The only other book about Hall Caine held by the British Library was published in the 1901, only half way through his career, and it is not available to me. You question whether there should be an article at all but as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography considers he merits an article, I should think that is a good enough reason for one in Wikipedia.

I accept that much of it needs to be re-written, and if I do come across any more sources, they will be included, but if they don’t exist, they can’t. Allen’s point of view is not always favourable; indeed it is in many places quite critical (in a negative sort of way). Caine’s popularity is not a value judgement; it is measured by the sales of his books and by the degree of adulation shown by his fans (this objective evidence is in the text). I am not sure what you mean by “classical language” – it is certainly not what Wikipedia means. Are we in the area of American v. British use of English here? An example is your comment on “discovery”. “I discovered Wikipedia four months ago” is perfectly acceptable usage in England, even though Wikipedia has been around for a little longer!

It rather seems that everything has to be included in the ‘lead’ – you say, “why wait until the rest of the article…”. Surely the lead has to have some limits. What “type of nervous breakdown”? – well, psychiatric diagnosis was not particularly precise in 1870 and I doubt we shall ever know unless a psychiatrist does some research on it. You refer to my “western bias” – how about your sexist bias? The “fellow” Allen is a woman – note her first name in the References. I too could ramble on….

About the single critic, this comment was added by a different editor and I am reluctant to delete it. I and other editors have not yet come across any other quotes; when we do they will be included if relevant. I placed this in the postscript to indicate that not much weight should be placed on it in the context of the whole article – a sort of light-hearted ending to it.

Having made your point at length about the language and “bias”, I should have welcomed some positive comment about other aspects of the article. You say nothing about the layout, images, citation, bibliography etc. Some comments in these areas (such as whether you consider them to be perfect or not) would have been useful in re-writing the material. You did not advise for example that all the citations were placed wrongly - before the full stop (this has now been corrected). Advice on matters such as this would have been helpful to an inexperienced editor. Peter I. Vardy 13:22, 10 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

If it is really true that nobody else with any weight as a reference has done anything about Hall Caine, this may be very problematic. Not because the article is worthless or anything like that, but because it is very difficult to justify GA or FA status for articles based on only a single source or writer, no matter how authoritative he/she is. If this is truly the only useful person to use as a source on this subject, you might be able to justify its GA status if you can prove to people that the article satisfies all other GA criteria and that the source is extremely effective in terms of broadness of coverage and authoritativeness overall, but in my experience, many reviewers would probably be very skeptical of the article if they don't know the situation, (and probably would still be even if they do) in my opinion, if you can really write the article in a more neutral manner and improve the lead some, you should file a WP:GA/R over the article and justify its status there, because it will probably need the input and approval of several editors for this article to be approved and not just delisting by someone semi-casually looking over the GA list for articles which aren't really GA's due to references.

The problem with the text I was highlighting and most of the article overall is that Allen's point of view seems to be repleate throughout it, whether negative or positive, I don't think much of it is really in the spirit of WP:NPOV at all. Caine's popularity would likely be considered differently by different people if there was more than one reference, and because the article simply states its conclusions of popularity as fact instead of attributing it in the text, this seems very problematic to me in terms of neutrality. Once again, because Allen is the only source, I think this is causing problems because it often seems like the article is being written from his point of view instead of a more Wikipedia-esque and neutral point of view. Even worse, because Allen is the only source, trying to attribute every value judgement about Caine's popularity to Allen specifically would likely get repetitive and silly looking. If you can prove that Allen basically represents the most authoritative pinnical of reaserch on this person all on his own, you should be able to simply attribute these popularity judgements in more general terms such as "Biographers/Writers/Commentators believe Hall to be one of the most popular writers ever in his time....", but once again, this will likely require a good bit of justification if you want the article to be a GA or FA.

By classical language, I meant the sort of flowing and praise-worthy language I was highlighting in many of my comments, in my experience, this sort of language comes from many books I have read from classical time periods, so I simply assumed the language was classical because allen seemed to be writing in that style and because I didn't want to just say "All this Point of View pushing language...." because I think it would of seemed more vauge, more hostile, and less helpful. The writing style of the article needs to be more neutrality-oriented and less filled with word choices that influence large swings in mood, which in my opinion is often how classical literature reads, and besides, the classical literature article does indicate that classical literature is considered old and stands alone as its own writing tradition, which is what I think much of the article's language and word choice reflects. It might be closer to some other kind of writing style, but whatever style that is, its not a neutral one for this article, and a neutral kind of writing style is what Wikipedia is supposed to be after in theory. When too many words with positive (or negative) connotations are used in statements of facts such as in the article in question, it tends to color how an article reads, and the use of the word "discovery" I highlighted is merely one in a long list of language usage in this article that seem to color things.

Not everything needs to be included in the lead, but the most important things should be. Currently, it doesn't mention anything about his personal life, which could probably fit in a smallish third paragraph, and considering how big and important to the subject that section is, I think it is reasonable for the lead to include important bits of that section, nothing indepth of course, just some important generalities and the like. Considering he seemed to react to World War one, one of the most famous wars of all time, in a way which seems to of generated much content in the article, I think a sentence or two in the lead mentioning important bits of those sections might be appropriate as well. I don't want to go into specifics too much, because if/when the article is re-written, it may be refactored in ways that will make my suggestions about content in the lead be meaningless, and the POV concerns in my opinion are by far the most major problem in this article. Nextly, I was only using the Western bias thing as an example to prove my point about the lack of attribution of statements of popularity, I could of also displayed my point by writing about how Wikipedia policy says this and that, but I thought this would of been much easier and would of demonstrated my point in more practical terms, rather than legalistic ones.

In my opinion, the single critic really does represent undue weight even if the references of this article overall are limited in who created them, from the Undue Weight clause of WP:NPOV: "Views held only by a tiny minority of people should not be represented as significant minority views, and perhaps should not be represented at all.". I would call a single critic a very small minority indeed, though of course if something was provided that demonstrated that this particular critic represented the views of many of his contemporaries in just about everything he said about anything, I think this would be very different. However, if you do decide to do what I recommend about improving the article and filing a WP:GA/R over it, other editors can probably tell you what to do in more certainity, I mean, its either keep the content and maybe change a few words or just delete it, fairly easy to implement a decision and whatnot because there's not much involved.

Finally, whenever I make reviews and fail an article, I normally don't say anything about categories that I think were ok. I just end up getting so involved often with talking about whatever I think was wrong, it just seems kind of silly to say at the end "Oh, by the way, all the other stuff was ok", after typing a wall of text. For GA status, the citation format you describe isn't an issue, while some people who know far more about Manual of Style policy concerning citation formatting sometimes comment on it, it doesn't really mean much in terms of the Good Article criteria. Even if your references were all just hyperlinks at the end of sentences, that would of been fine for GA status, and from what I can tell, Featured Article reviewers often pick up on all of those FA status type things quite easily and suggest corrections. I mean, what reader is going to read this article and leave in disgust because the citations wern't in the correctly formatted place? I doubt most readers of Wikipedia are familiar enough with the Citation format part of the Manual of style to even know what to be annoyed over to tell you the truth. Besides, bibliography format is often considered debateable, there's several different styles out there, and it seems that there's not much point in telling people to switch styles for most articles because there's not much benefit. Homestarmy 23:26, 10 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, that's much more helpful. Peter I. Vardy 09:06, 13 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi. Do you remember where this vote was held? I've been searching the archives of just about every page of the GA system. Thanks. / Fred-Chess 09:46, 11 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm having a bit of difficulty finding it, I was under the impression it was in a WP:GAC talk page archive though. Homestarmy 02:05, 13 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Homestarmy,

I found you via the Christianity article. I am currently working on the Nero article and was wondering if we could get some outside help on the section concerning Nero in Christian Tradition. Your input would be greatly appreciated!

Best regards,
Djma12 ^(talk) 19:53, 12 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Speaking as someone who's reviewed and commented on a bunch of Good Article review type things, i'm not so sure that article needs concentration on the Christian Tradition section, what's there already looks well-referenced, and its the lead that looks like it needs a bunch of help. In the middle paragraph of the lead, I don't even know what "libertine" means, and as for referring to figures that seem to be detailed in the Historography section, several of those paragraphs don't have obvious citation. There's a ton of weasel wording in that paragraph too with all the "some say this" and "it may be impossible" that, though I can understand if the article is so long that that kind of thing is unavoidable. However, that last sentence in the middle paragraph seems more like something that belongs in the conclusion of a history essay than an encyclopedia, it really just seems like wild speculation, and unattributed at that. For an article this long, I also think it could stand to have another paragraph in the lead, his interactions with Parthia appear highly relevant to developments which appear to have had very signifigant ramifications for the future, (I mean, basically everything dealing with the whole middle east back then is gonna do that) and his administrative policies could help give readers a quick glance into what sort of policymaker he was, I think both of those sections could be tied together into something nice in the lead. I know this wasn't really the response you seemed to want, but quite frankly, with an article as amazingly well-referenced as this one appears to be, it just seems like the weak lead is dragging it down more than anything else :/. Homestarmy 23:00, 12 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Sigh...

If you are ready to abandon your ridiculous allegiance to fabricated, non-Biblical, counter-historical, counter-logical, anti-semitic/misojudaic, antinomian, pagan Constantinian doctrines that represent the diametric opposite of the authentic 1st-century Ribi Yehoshua (Aramaic, Yeshua, Greek translation Iesous=>Jesus), and follow the authentic Torah-teaching 1st-century Messiah (Mashiakh) Ribi Yehoshua as his 1st-century disciples prior to the dispersion of 135 AD did, according to every detail of reliable historic scholarship, the gate for you is very narrow. Contact the Netzarim in Ra'anana, Israel.

http://netzarim.co.il/

Noogster 00:48, 13 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Erm, why only give this message to me? And why only use namecalling against what you presume to be my beliefs, several assumptions of which in your list appear to be wrong? Homestarmy 02:03, 13 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Actually, it was probably a bad move to have advertised on Wikipedia at all, what with the tried-and-true principal of NPOV in order. I apologize if you're offended or taken aback. It's just that sometimes I am a bit turned off to see someone cling so unquestioningly to man-made, anteBiblical theology (gentile 4th-century Christianity) that (according to almost all reliable religious historians) Ribi Yehoshua and his 1st-century followers would have been in resounding disagreement with. To ask the question is to learn, my friend. Maybe YbD said it best for what the intent of his work largely represents: "showing Jews, Christians and Arabs how they each have a key to a lockbox - and that lockbox is Torah, not any displacement theology." G-d bless you, whoever you are. Noogster 02:51, 13 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've never even met you before, or if I have I don't remember it, so I think it's only natural that i'd react unfavorably to your out-of-the-blue attacks on what you apparently have already presumed my beliefs to be. Homestarmy 16:09, 13 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your comment on the Saprang Kalayanamitr article. I've responded on the Talk page. Patiwat 22:51, 16 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

• I've decided to do what you suggested: remove "secret" from the intro as well as find a reference for the trivia. Thanks again! Patiwat 14:47, 17 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I am inviting all recent editors of Joseph McCarthy to comment on a current dispute. User:KarlBunker, in his stated view out of concern for WP:NPOV#Undue weight, has reverted, deleted, and selectively reinstated factually accurate sourced information that I have added. I contend he is in error. Please see the discussion at Talk:Joseph McCarthy. Thank you. Kaisershatner 17:28, 17 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hiya,

Long time no chat. My hiatus from Wikipedia was interrupted by Spring Break.. so I've been editing much more than I would have otherwise. But taking time off from WP has cleared my head tremendously. I feel the bitterness draining from my soul. :-)

Now Spring Break is over and so is my heavier WP editing. As I close up shop again, I have a favor to ask.. a big one in some ways. Taiwanese aborigines is up for GA and I would love a very thorough review by an experienced reviewer... I think another guy is gonna be working on it for the next couple days, but.. maybe after that...could you? If you can, I'd wanna know if any sections seem POV, if any facts seem irrelevant (and can be cut), etc... and suggestions for future FA... Thanks! (But only do it if you feel like you have the time & the inclination). --Ling.Nut 04:34, 19 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

PS-was I one of the three who deep-sixed the speedy delist? If so, then I was wrong. It has caused logjams.--Ling.Nut 05:16, 19 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

You are invited to participate in Lutheranism WikiProject, a project dedicated to developing and improving articles about Lutheranism. We are currently discussing prospects for the project. Your input would be greatly appreciated!

--CTSWyneken^(talk) 01:52, 22 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Archimedes Plutonium (AfD discussion)

Please revisit the discussion. Uncle G 10:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

It's been for ever since I nominated Pennsylvania Route 145 and still no review. You reviewed I-476, could you please review this article becuase If it passes I wanted on the story of the Newsletter for U.S. Roads. Thanks a lot. -- J-A10 ^{T · C} 0:55, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I knew the history was itchy, nobody mentioned it in the peer review. When I fix that problem, I'll contact you to review it. Thanks for your help. -- J-A10 ^{T · C} 1:23, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Can you review it sometime like Thursday, maybe? I'm going to make sure it doen't change much. I still don't understand, the article hasn't changed much just some minor changes has happened to it. -- J-A10 ^{T · C} 1:37, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, the diff for the past few days looked like some reasonably signifigant changes were happening to it. It's not really a bad thing per se, its just that, you know, if someone reviews an article while its being changed a good bit, by the time its done changing it might not really be the same article that was reviewed. I could just put it on hold for a few days, its no big deal. Homestarmy 14:54, 24 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Okay, that could work well for me. Put it hold and then review it. Thank you so much for yuor help. -- J-A10 ^{T · C} 20:27, 24 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Its time for PA 145 to be reviewed, I know its a bit early, but the stable problem is gone and if it isn't than don't review it. Reply at PA 145 talk page. Thanks.-- J-A10 ^{T · C} 21:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I did a review, however as I did not bother posting anything on the DMC page as I felt it adequately met all requirements of a GA article. If there had been issues, I would have posted on the talk page. There are still some things people might take issue with, but those would pro'lly be for a FA review. Dåvid Fuchs ^{(talk / frog blast the vent core!)} 20:27, 2 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

You mentioned some things about the Civil War article for the GA review. Instead of adding too many comments there, how about mentioning some ideas on either my discussion page or the discussion page for the Civil War, whichever you'd prefer. Let me know what you think.Jimmuldrow 18:18, 3 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't know if scattering discussions is a very good idea, trust me, i've seen GA Reviews waaaay longer than this one, and there wasn't much of a problem. As I look more closely at the article, there's some concerns beyond the slavery thing in the lead that I think might be important, and some other people in the review might want to know about them. One reference seems to be from a personal website of some kind, another references a speech without actually pointing someone to the speech or a place where a copy could be obtained, and well, i'll see what else I can find after I get done looking at the article more. Homestarmy 20:27, 3 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

The article looks good so I passed it I was very busy so I forgot to mention some in talk pages, do you have second thoughts on the article? if so which are the problems, if you may state them. Or you can take it out and let another user review if it would satisfy you, cheers. Lakers 21:31, 4 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'll go and add some comments this evening. I passed it because I could not find any GA criterion shortcomings... Pete.Hurd 21:48, 4 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hey there. I've had a few different IPs and usernames delete that section over the course of times. People don't seem to fully read it to realize that it is an "ironic" section. --Avery W. Krouse

I honestly have no clue what's going on there. I think it roots from an edit I did a while back to revert somebody's innane statements on some page or another. It may very well be this person logging out and vandalizing my page. Go figure. I will do some further research. Thanks for your help! --Avery W. Krouse 13:10, 24 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Do you think Gordon Griffith should remain a good article? I am not that knowledgeable at the review process as you are, but do you think this would be a candidate for review? It's lacking an infobox, has no heading organizations, and no fair use rationale on the first image (but then again, the image is from a 1918 film which no longer under copyright, so maybe the license needs to be chnaged). Let me know what you think. --Nehrams2020 07:15, 12 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Can you take a fresh look at the article and give your thoughts? Thanks. LuciferMorgan 21:56, 12 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Alas, that may take some time, someone just nominated Jesus for FA and I wanted to make sure it works out right, and I told the guy on the American Civil War review that i'd come back with more commentary. Homestarmy 14:02, 13 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Bad bot! IvoShandor 13:55, 13 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hiya,

GA nom Banat Bulgarians has about 30 (slightly more than half the total) of its references from a single source. Do we care?

BTW, your talk page is over 150KB. May be about time to archive again.. ;-)

--Ling.Nut 23:49, 13 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, the vast majority of references appear to be non-english, there's no real way to verify almost all of the references, unless you happen to speak Bulgarian.... Homestarmy 00:21, 14 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yeah. Do we care...? --Ling.Nut 00:23, 14 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well-referenced to me has always meant that content is verifiable, that is, one can take the content from our articles and attribute it to given sources which back up the content. But if you can't actually read the sources, you can't really attribute it, for all I know, those books could be Mother Goose in Bulgarian, or just anything at all. For instance, if I wanted to attribute one of the facts in this article that's cited, all I can do is go "well, err, uhh, see this book here, yea, if my keyboard was even set up to type in Bulgarian, and um, if I knew if it was even on the topic in question, and uh....yea, I have no idea what any of this stuff is." But there might be some policy about non-English refs, in some topics they are quite useful, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is some guideline saying that they are ok, but I doubt if there's anything like "If the vast majority of an article is referenced in non-english refs, one should just take it as a given that the refs are on topic". Homestarmy 01:20, 14 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

(undent) I passed it as GA. There doesn't seem to be any controversy regarding its content, and there are a couple FAs with almost no English-language refs. WP:V says English-lang refs are strongly preferred but not absolutely required.... thanks! --Ling.Nut 20:47, 14 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

The citation template citeweb always links the title with the webpage, so I was mimicing that style. I personally believe that seeing an unformatted URL in a reference is ugly, and some of the unformatted URLs were so long that they broke the two column design (they were longer than the column width). The citation templates, and the MLA and the Harvard style manuals suggest to always put the author's name first (last name first). So my edits just moved unformatted URLs to associate them with the article title (per the citation templates) and to move the last name first. Sorry if I caused any edit conflicts or confusion. -Andrew c 13:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure, I've been meaning to look at some recently featured articles and compare and contrast the notes seciton. I know in the past, the format wasn't exactly as important as actually citing sources, but maybe things have gotten even stricter. I know I brought up standardizing the notes section at Talk:Evolution, and article that is already featured, and none of the editors thought it was a worthwhile venture. While they agreed that a standardized reference section would be more neat and, well, standardized, I guess they thought the amount of work was too much for the return. Anyway, the recently featured The Orb, Moon, Devil May Cry and Japan articles have citation templates throughout, while Liberal Movement and Leo Ornstein uses the Harvard shorthand throughout. History of Sheffield mixes short hand with citation templates, which I personally may be our best option for Jesus. I'll bring this up at talk Jesus.-Andrew c 14:17, 16 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

hey. You've been doing a amasing amount of good work on the Jesus article since it was nominated for FA, and i just wanted to say good job. You've been putting a lot of effort into this i wanted you to know it's not gone unnoticed. Keep up the great work :D

peace out-Threewaysround 19:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

You may wanna look in on Talk:Phil Mitchell. I'm done with it. :-) --Ling.Nut 22:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Didn't the last person get up in arms over "Serious problems" too? Homestarmy 13:12, 24 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

What-ever! I feel like I'm changing diapers here. In the future, when articles have serious problems, I'll try to avoid mentioning it. Ling.Nut 13:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Articles with the most revisions
• --Ling.Nut 23:38, 28 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Should be very stable for a while. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 23:27, 30 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Will you bring a sack lunch and some orange slices for me and serve your country? Will you, stupid?! ;) JuJube 03:17, 1 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • But it's where you got your name from! The good times are over! ;_; JuJube 03:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Still waiting for those suggestions regarding the lead. It's never too late. =) Thegreatdr 13:18, 5 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

title says it all EliminatorJR ^Talk 02:10, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't really care anymore about the GA review, but I wonder if it's still a GA nominee. I hope so, because the article has greatly improved since it failed. I was wondering if you could review it for GA if its still a nominee. Thanks. -- JA10 ^{T · C} 19:59, 10 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yeah but I waited a while before it failed for the first time and I want to get this to FA soon, but if you don't want to, It's cool. -- JA10 ^{T · C} 20:14, 10 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Some users suggested it went through GA first. If I just take it to FA, I'll fail I need to make sure it fits the easy GA criteria before it goes through the harder FA criteria. --JA10 ^{T · C} 20:21, 10 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

O.K., I'll talk to the other editors about it, thank you so much for your advice. --JA10 ^{T · C} 20:30, 10 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The GA review was started after I failed the article about a week ago. After that I rewrote and fixed most of the article, and Johnny has done the same, after which he nominated it again. I believe that the article deserves a "fair chance" now, and should not have been removed from GA candidates because of the result of the review on its old state. --NE2 01:05, 11 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hey, I noticed you are a frequent contributor to WP:GA/R. There are a few discussion threads that are floundering and need additional comments from other editors. I would like to act on these soon, as they have been up for discussion for several weeks, but so few people have commented that I can't even archive as "no consensus" since we have a near null-set of comments. If you have the time, could you take a peek at the following articles and make any comments at WP:GA/R as you see fit? The articles needing additional comment are: Jeremy Clarkson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Anaximander, and Syncaris pacifica. Thanks in advance for your help with this! --Jayron32|talk|contribs 18:27, 18 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'll try to take a look, but i've got important stuff going on right now in real life, I doubt i'll be able to give anything a thorough look-through or something like that really soon. Homestarmy 00:26, 19 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

No biggie now. A bunch of people chimed in over the past few hours, and the articles have now received enough comments to act on them. Thanks anyways! --Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:37, 19 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for fixing Cullacabardee... Like anything new I got a bit mixed up by the template :) Orderinchaos 05:16, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

This form message is being sent to you either due to your membership with WikiProject Good Articles and/or your inclusion on the Wikipedia:Good article candidates/List of reviewers. A new drive has been started requesting that all members review at least one article (or more, if you wish!) within the next two weeks at GAC to help in removing the large backlog. This message is being sent to all GA members and even members who have been recently reviewing articles. There are almost 130 members in this project and about 180 articles that currently need to be reviewed. If each member helps to review just one or two articles, the majority of the backlog will be cleared. Since the potential amount of reviewers may significantly increase, please make sure to add :{{GAReview}} underneath the article you are reviewing to ensure that only one person is reviewing each article. Additionally, the GA criteria may have been modified since your last review, so look over the criteria again to help you to determine if a candidate is GA-worthy. If you have any questions about this drive or the review process, leave a message on the GAC talk page. --Nehrams2020 23:48, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Thank you for taking the time to offer to review Large Group Awareness Training as a GA candidate. I responded to your question on the article's talk page, but you may also wish to see that the article had a recent GA review, and the only issue that did not pass was stability, but now the article has been stable for some time, so I believe it now fits all the criteria for GA. Let me know if you have any further questions. Yours, Smee 07:08, 25 May 2007 (UTC).Reply
  • Thank you so much for your polite feedback and detailed comments. I took some time, and I believe I have done my best to address all of the (25) points that you raised. I and the other contributors at Talk:Large Group Awareness Training would appreciate if you would let us know your thoughts on the article, and whether it now satisfies the Good Article Criteria. Thank you again for your time. Yours, Smee 03:04, 26 May 2007 (UTC).Reply

 

-- A WikiThanks, for your polite demeanor and helpful suggestions in improving the article Large Group Awareness Training up to Good Status. Thank you for your time. Yours, Smee 02:58, 27 May 2007 (UTC).Reply

I still am going to fight to get it into the article(Without breaking the policies). I believe that there is not enough of a balance in the article and there needs to be one. I have started a thread on the talk page about it. Have a nice week and god bless.--James, La gloria è a dio 02:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I am still going to talk about it. I am not going to give up. I will bring many people in to say there oppinion, I will make it a medcab case, if that fails I'll make it a MedCom case, if that fails I will make it a ArbCom case. I feel very strongly about it and will not give up even if it means we are in a dispute for years. Peace:)--James, La gloria è a dio 03:07, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Shockingly, it looks like we have found a compromise.--James, La gloria è a dio 04:12, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

So how did that test go? I was so hoping you'd realize the error of your ways and take the test knowing that it requires a belief in Evolution, but I can only hope so much!  :) Orangemarlin 03:20, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

It's okay that you took it out - but what I was trying to do there was actually prevent vandalism to the Einstein and alpaca pages by idiots. The idea there was to show people there is and isn't a way to mention things in Wikipedia: An appropriate place for this sort of obscure but well-footnoted reference would be the Colbert Report and not on the alpaca page. Notice that the alpaca page is still protected. I guess they just don't get it. I really think btw that Jimmy Wales and Stephen Colbert both "set up" the viewers with the "oxygen is a poison" reference, as that had it's oxygen toxicity already in Wikipedia.

I figured out another way to head off the vandalism that's sure to occur when the episode is rebroadcast: show a link to the history of the alpaca page that demonstrates that vandalism can easily be undone, and also link to the Pp-vandalism template to show that pages can be easily protected from vandalism. I think that may actually work!

As is my usual complaint, I really must get to my schoolwork. :-) Have I addressed enough of the POV & referencing issues? Thanks Ling.Nut 19:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

You may wish to rephrase; Calhoun was never President (except, some would say, in his own mind ;->); calling him Senator and VP was intended as a gentle hint. But again, this is not aimed at you; there are many worse reviewers; you are merely unusually candid.

Also, I wasn't actively engaged with the article when you reviewed it; it seems to have improved markedly. How much of this is your review I do not know. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:50, 31 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have raised some concern about the lack of a NPOV in a certain paragraph of the Alliance Defense Fund article, and having noted that you have shown interest in previous talk page discussions on this topic would invite you to input at Talk:Alliance_Defense_Fund#Referencing_and_NPOV. thanks Keylay31^hablame 08:11, 2 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

As recommended to me by Jayron, we should just ignore the comments of the mathematics project folks. Let them waste their days getting wound up over all this nonsense and let's just go about our business as usual. Let them make their little proposals for change. We can support what we like and oppose what we don't. At the end of the day, we're not doing anything wrong. They're goal is obviously to frustrate and annoy us, so the best bet is to just ignore it. What do you think? LaraLove^T/_C 05:56, 3 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

They are editors too, and if we simply ignore them, outsiders will rightly see such a situation as combative and un-collaborative. Pmanderson in particular seems very bold, ignoring him would just likely see the project deleted via page move whether we like it or not. Has nobody suggested that if mathematics project people really don't like the way GA works, that they can start their own system of grading articles? As long as it actually serves a useful purpose, I don't think it would get deleted. Homestarmy 18:41, 3 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hey. I've seen your work at WP:GAR. From that, I was wondering if you would like to consider running for adminship at WP:RFA. From the loks of it you should pass no problem, and i'd gladly nominate you. Let me know of your decision.--Wizardman 16:35, 3 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Stopping by at your talk page was surely long overdue, but I just wanted to thank you for your sensible approach to the recent stresses there have been, and also for clarifying a different aspect of the "delisted" template. I actually think that little alterations like these do have the potential to shift the mood and generate more good will. Best wishes Geometry guy 18:12, 5 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

You recently commented at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cradle of Humanity, which closed with no consensus. The article has been re-nominated for deletion, and you may care to comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cradle of humanity (2nd nomination). --Akhilleus (talk) 16:31, 11 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your support in my recent, unsuccessful RfA. It's much appreciated. IvoShandor 16:08, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Try this one: [3]--Filll 18:15, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Tried it before in the Nationstates forums, (Think a forum filled with people just like you, mixed with Christians of all shapes and sizes, mixed with people of other religions frequently caught in the middle of the endless war) curiously, it said I was equally Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox, don't ask me how that's possible, but I guess I could try again. Homestarmy 19:32, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

This is what I got this time, looks like a perfect score :D. Beliefnet apparently groups most Christian or Pseudo-Christian classifications together, that really misses alot of the distinction I think.... Homestarmy 19:44, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

1. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (100%)

2. Eastern Orthodox (76%)

3. Roman Catholic (76%)

4. Seventh Day Adventist (75%)

5. Orthodox Quaker (71%)

6. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (68%)

7. Jehovah's Witness (65%)

8. Islam (64%)

9. Orthodox Judaism (64%)

10. Bahá'í Faith (61%)

11. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (60%)

12. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (49%)

13. Jainism (41%)

14. Liberal Quakers (40%)

15. Hinduism (39%)

16. Theravada Buddhism (34%)

17. Sikhism (33%)

18. Mahayana Buddhism (33%)

19. New Thought (31%)

20. Reform Judaism (29%)

21. Nontheist (28%)

22. Unitarian Universalism (25%)

23. Scientology (23%)

24. Taoism (16%)

25. Neo-Pagan (14%)

26. New Age (13%)

27. Secular Humanism (9%)

Homestarmy 19:44, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

We are just about completely opposite in our scores. So you think we are both creationists?--Filll 20:31, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Certainly not both the same kind of Creationist from the looks of it. Homestarmy 20:33, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Its pretty untrue of what you think about islam. I Muhammad didn't attack any cities and didn't kill anybody. But the pope, he started the crusades and killed millions of innocent people. talk about bad religion.

...I don't think you're Muhammad, and if the actual Muhammad didn't attack any cities, there probably wouldn't be any Islam at all, which would actually of worked out amazingly well I think, but eh, not everything in life works out so great sometimes, you know? Homestarmy 19:54, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Homestarmy, you probably shouldn't engage in discourse with a troll. You know what happens when you feed them. Orangemarlin 01:29, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I dunno, he doesn't really look like a troll, he seems civil, even if he's got his facts wrong. Homestarmy 01:47, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

He's spammed my page about 4 times. I had no clue what he was talking about, so I kept archiving his comments after adding his ID. It was kind of boring. By the way, when are you going to brag about your 5 on the AP Chemistry exam? Orangemarlin 03:26, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

One thing I don't get though is that I haven't done anything really major on Islam related pages recently, in order for this person to be aware of my views on Islam, he'd have to really be reading old comments on my talk page. And I didn't even think you even have said anything about Islam before that people would notice, I didn't think you contributed to Islam related articles :/. As for my AP scores, they still haven't arrived yet, I don't know if i'm really 5 material, but all I know is that our teacher generally doesn't like it when people get below a four, I think he's a bit sour that last years senior class wouldn't do anything, and dropped his AP score average down from like a high four or something down to a low three. The only person who got a decent score was actually in our grade, he was only in AP chemistry one year earlier because the school he came from apparently went through Chemistry sooner than it went through Biology. Homestarmy 03:32, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Since your talking about AP exams, I might just you a tad bit of advice, they don't arrive until July. http://collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/exgrd.html and whats the point to making an account? Wasn't it a goal of the Wikipedia founders to allow you to edit anonymously? I understand someone with out an account is more likely to vandalize, but should you review their material before you revert? And Homes, go visit a mosque just as I visited synagogues and churches to ask insightful questions so I can learn about their religions. and I hope you made 5 on the AP chem, take any of the others? 70.244.52.244 06:05, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Actually, you can be anonymous and still be registered. In fact, when I post as a registered person, I am more anonymous than if someone has my IP address, so your statement is a fallacy. You're in Houston right. See? And unregistered editors have fewer rights than registered ones. For example, many articles would block you from editing. And many editors revert unregistered editors on sight. And as for visiting mosques, cathedrals or synagogues, that's not any way to learn about a religion. You learn about the ceremony is all. And that's not what makes any religion. Now, go get registered, since you did figure out how to sign your posts. Orangemarlin 06:38, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Visit a mosque you say? That's not likely to yield much truthful information methinks.... Homestarmy 15:15, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

On second thought, I always thought the jews murdered jesus(and wanna rule the world) and the trinity was stupid.70.244.52.244 01:02, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

and orange, not houston, so so close. Try Bellaire, Texas.

I think you need to get your IP banned. I guess you do not like editing Wikipedia.--Filll 01:10, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Those do sound like some pretty typical Islamic world conpsiracy theories, but if that is now your second thought, what was your first thought? Homestarmy 01:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I also think you have weird conpsiracy theories about islam, but how is that jews killing jesus a muslim thing? even mel gibson and jerry falwell have gone after jews and muslims. 70.244.52.244 04:41, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm pretty sure the conspiracy theory more concentrates on hating Jews because they tried to kill Jesus, (among a multitude of other, mostly made up reasons) that's why I said it sounded like one of the muslim world conspiracies. That still doesn't answer my question though, what was your first thought if your second thought was to side with anti-semetical conspiracy theories and to think that the trinity was stupid? It seems pretty random to just adopt those two ideas out of the blue. Homestarmy 15:29, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, you see in the Bible, it said that the Jewish nation will be forever persecuted until the end times. -Yancyfry

So the bible is absolute fact? i'm taking the atheist POV. can you prove its not some bullshit written my some hobo? how about dinosaurs? Bible come tell me the truth!! I assume Pat robertson must be your next door neighbor 70.248.186.93 08:17, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, yea, and yes, no hobo could of written this whole thing, the writing styles in the books change too much, the second half didn't even appear until like, what, 50 A.D. or something, so this would of had to of been like a several thousand year old hobo with like a 10-15 multiple personality disorder, its not gonna happen. The bible never said there wern't dinosaurs, and after Pat did the whole "let's kill Chavez" thing and after the whole "President Bush will be successful in his second term" prophecy apparently in the middle of failing, I sort of don't trust that man immensely. Homestarmy 15:29, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

You seem to be more involved with Creationism related pages than I am, and I was wondering if you could answer a question I have about the Kitzmiller case. Jim62sch won't allow me to even indicate on the Creationism article page that there's a dispute at all about the current, well, dispute i'm in on the Creationism talk page, and I was wondering, do federal District Courts have authority to have their rulings apply throughout the entire United States, instead of just inside their districts? Jim62sch just gave me a "Go study the US court system" response when I asked him about this on the talk page, and I have a feeling there's actually an increadibly easy answer to this question that nobody really wants to tell me. So far, nobody is actually told me why i'm wrong, and i've been getting a feeling that there's some unspoken idea that the Kitzmiller case actually makes teaching Intelligent Design in public schools as an idea on equal footing with evolution illegal in the entire U.S., instead of just the Pennsylvania Middle District, and i'd really like to get to the bottom of this without having to waste the next few days studying the entire U.S. Court System. (The Wikipedia articles don't seem to have an explanation on where these District Court rulings can apply) Homestarmy 02:59, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I saw your question on RossNixon's page. I wanted to answer it for you. Kitzmiller is only law, technically, in Pennsylvania's Middle District. You are right. However, it now becomes precedent everywhere, meaning that case will help decide another one. But what is de jure in one Federal District, becomes de facto nationwide, if no one seeks to have it overturned. If it is affirmed in the US Court of Appeals, then it becomes law over the area of the appellate jurisdiction, which may be 4 or 5 eastern states. If it is affirmed by the US Supreme Court, then it is, of course, national. The Plaintiffs, because they won, cannot have the ruling affirmed, so they won't appeal it. The Defense can't afford to pay for the case nor can they afford the loss. The case is pretty clear in its ruling, so it would be hard to believe it can be overturned. Now, a school district in each Federal District could attempt to teach Creationism or Intelligent Design, go to court, and probably lose. With this one case being lost by the Creationist side, it is doubtful that any school district in the US would risk the millions of dollars it would cost for the case. Dover School district had to pay over $1million for legal fees to the plaintiffs. So, it is not de jure the law of the land, but because in the test case, the school district that tried to promote Creationism lost, it is de facto the law of the land. Any school district that tried to implement a Creationist teaching would most definitely lose, since the constitution is pretty clear on this matter. Remember, the Kitzmiller decision was not whether it was legal to teach Creationism, because it is not. The ruling was whether Intelligent Design was just another form of Creationism, and this ruling said yes. Orangemarlin 02:05, 22 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

But does precedent in one district mean that if someone in another district started teaching intelligent design in schools, that the cops would show up? With the way your paragraph is worded, it seems to be saying that it is illegal, which would mean that indeed, cops should show up, without any extra court case in that district involved. Homestarmy 02:20, 22 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

No, the cops wouldn't show up. I'm not a constitutional lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but as I recall, it takes an Executive order to uphold a federal court ruling. So, it wouldn't be cops, it would probably be the FBI!!!! But seriously, no one would try to do it in the Middle District of PA. Outside of there, again, they could teach it, but it becomes an economic and legal choice at that time. It is technically not illegal to teach Intelligent Design, but no school district is willing to risk millions of dollars to attempt it. So again, it becomes de facto, the law. Orangemarlin 04:07, 22 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

If its technically not illegal, then why does your paragraph as written say that it cannot be taught as an alternative in Evolution in any public school, presumably in the entire U.S., since the U.S. is all that is mentioned? Cannot is very different than will not. Homestarmy 19:46, 22 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

<undent>I might not have this correct, but my understanding is that a teacher can teach intelligent design on his or her own in public school science class. However, they would then have to deal with the complaints of parents, the students, the school board, the principal, etc. And there could be trouble as a result. If there were no complaints, then there would be probably be no problem (but I would sure want to check with a lawyer first before I tried it). However, a school board that tries to force teachers to teach intelligent design in science class is asking for legal trouble, and probably would not be likely to attempt it. I think that the precedent of the Dover case would probably have some bearing, unless it becomes overruled by some higher court. I think that schools can require the teaching of intelligent design in other classes, as long as they do not favor one religion over another (of course, this is not the way in which these proponents want it taught, since they want to illegally recruit people to their religion with public money). A class on comparative religions would probably be fine as long as no one religion was singled-out for special treatment. The other problem with a teacher attempting to take time away to teach this material is that it would likely detract from their student's performance on various exams, and therefore reflect badly on the teacher. There is also a danger that the student's from that school might not be welcome in further education in that state because of bad preparation, especially if the situation becomes widely known. So if a parent is dead-set on this, they should go to a private school where they can have whatever they want taught, as long as some very minimal standards are met.--Filll 20:05, 22 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Once again, the way the article is written implies that a teacher cannot teach intelligent design at all without, as I suppose Orange is right in saying, having the FBI barge in and arrest them. Just because something will spark complaints doesn't make it illegal. Homestarmy 21:17, 22 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

You were right on this point. Check out my edit, and see if you approve. I know what Jim meant in his reply to you, which is there really is no shot at overturning the ruling and that it does set a precedent so difficult to overcome that it is, in effect, the law. But it is not, de jure, the law. I hope this makes sense. By the way, you now need to take AP US Government. LOL. Orangemarlin 16:02, 23 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thank you. But I didn't spend all that time writing those DBQ's in AP US History to get a five on that test just to take even more of that kind of stuff in collage, I earned that five fair and square, no history related stuff for me thank you :D . Plus, my school didn't even offer AP US Government, just ordinary government, though it wasn't a very serious class, our final exam was just like five opinion essays on some court cases, (No Kitzmiller though :/ ) and our class consisted of just taking tests on content out of a book that eighth graders probably could of done well with. I really think our teacher would of rather taught an Ethics class, our economics class next semester was even more lazy, near the end, he gave us a choice of playing Monopoly the rest of the year or "studying" how to review movies that involved business, (it was just some comedies where there were businesses involved) and once, he said we were going to watch a show about businesses, and what else would pop up on the screen, but the Spongebob Squarepants Krusty Krab training video. Homestarmy 16:39, 23 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

This is not an education. You should be taking 8 AP classes next semester. Now hop to it. Spongebob???? You have a lazy fat teacher that ought to have his butt kicked. Orangemarlin 16:46, 23 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

They mandated that everyone have at least one economics and government half credit, don't ask me how that makes any sense :/. I would of rather taken the Ethics class, come on, we got by with just three people in AP Computer Science, (Which was actually more like AP Java Programming) and surely I wasn't the only one to sign up for Ethics.....This teacher was pretty good with teaching AP US History, and considering that our economics exam consisted entirely of questions asking us to give our take on the ethics of various business situations, I think his heart was really with doing a real ethics class, not some fake we-do-it-for-the-credits economics and government classes. Homestarmy 16:50, 23 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your comment on my talk page regarding the GA criteria on images.

I noticed that you have renominated I Not Stupid for GA status "as per the GA/R". I know there was a 3-0 consensus to renominate the article, and I respect the consensus. However, as I noted in the GA/R (read the fourth paragraph of my post), I intended make further improvements to the article before renominating it. The Plot section needs a complete rewrite, the Production section should be expanded and the Political satire section may also need expanding. The good news is that I have recently found a couple of references which contain valuable information that I will need for the expansions I have wanted to make for a long time.

Should a GA reviewer read the article before the planned improvements have been completed, the nomination is likely to fail. Since it will take about two weeks to complete the planned improvements, I had planned to renominate the article on 8 July.

Owing to my conflict of interest as the primary contributor to the article, I am not allowed to review and fail the GA nomination. However, as the primary contributor to the article, am I allowed to withdraw the GA nomination? If not, could you, the nominator, please consider withdrawing the article's GA nomination? I promise to complete my planned improvements within two weeks and subsequently renominate the article.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:14, 22 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for helping reverting some of the pages vandalised by 68.94.98.93. In case you didn't know, that IP was one of almost 100 (yes, 100) handpuppets of Mmbabies, who was community-banned for shenannigans just like these. I suggest you take a look at his rap sheet. Thanks again. -- azumanga 02:24, 24 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

In here I did list Operation Gibraltar for GA review but I assumed it was passed by one person so it was automatically given a GA status by one user. Idleguy 10:10, 24 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

There's some discussion here about the accuracy of the first paragraph of the abortion article, and you're invited to participate.Ferrylodge 19:51, 24 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

All of your relevant criticism per WP:WIAGA has been addressed [[4]]. Do you plan on changing your vote? Wikidudeman ^(talk) 16:18, 30 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

It seems to be in the middle of extensive editing, i'd prefer to look at it again after that's done. Homestarmy 23:35, 30 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Because I panicked on finding something that I'd consider a copyvio/plagiarism, and thought the whole article might be stuffed with copyvio, and have to be deleted, so I did. However, it turned out it was probably isolated, so the article was restored, but in the meantime, if the article was being restarted, the template needed removed, as it'd apply to a different article. Adam Cuerden ^talk 23:17, 30 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Do you believe that you were right in doing that? Especially without having read the rest of the article which now turns out to be just fine? Especially now that your only objections on the content in question seem to be it's relevance to the article? Wikidudeman ^(talk) 23:19, 30 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I come from a fairly academic background, and with that background, could not have acted differently. That sort of extreme closeness to the source - and misattributed, no less - is... well, I find it a bit shocking. So, yes, I think I was justified, under standard academic procedure. That the rest turned out to be fine is good, but one cannot presume it's fine and safe, and I'd be happiest if we reworked the entire thing so that few sentences read the same just to be sure. Adam Cuerden ^talk 23:31, 30 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

The article appears to be more or less the same one that had all that history behind it, it certainly is the same topic, I don't think leaving all the articlehistory stuff deleted is really warranted. Homestarmy 23:34, 30 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

It's restored now. It just didn't get restored with the undeletion. Adam Cuerden ^talk 23:44, 30 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

The paragraph in question has been totally removed for now anyway due to as mentioned above, questions of relevance, not copyright. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 23:37, 30 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Aye, but, well, academia may not be wikipedia, but, well, I'd feel better if you understood why I reacted so strongly, because then I'd be more certain it wont have happened elsewhere. Adam Cuerden ^talk 23:44, 30 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't know what you're saying. You shouldn't jump to such conclusions, especially on wikipedia which is for the most part piecemeal. Perhaps in the future if you see something of questionable copyright you won't resort by instantly deleting the entire article, along with it's history and along with it's talk page archives and headers, especially by me, since I don't violate copyright, at least intentionally, and if you see something by me which is questionable then it's purely an anomaly which can be easily fixed. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 23:48, 30 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Right, now, that's what I wanted to hear: If I know it wasn't intentional, I can trust that the rest of the content is safe, despite my concerns over that part. But you haven't said it wasn't intentional - at least, not that I saw - ad so my concerns were growing. Adam Cuerden ^talk 23:51, 30 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi I am quite aware of the general wikipedia rules. I am also not affiliated with this site (as you can see from my editing record I am more involved in other areas).. however I AM puzzled. I checked the other criticism sites, and they were actually less relevant, extensive and equally "personal" as the one I added.. so please enlighten me.. what was the difference with the link/site I added and the other links that can specifically be found under the "criticism" chapter at the bottom of that page

Thanks

Gem-fanat 16:41, 3 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

PLease stop citing the Horus section in Jesus as an advertisement. Please assume good faith WP:AGF Vexorg 00:14, 5 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

further:

  You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions in a content dispute within a 24 hour period. Additionally, users who perform a large number of reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring, even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Please do not repeatedly revert edits, but use the talk page to work towards wording and content which gains a consensus among editors.Vexorg 00:19, 5 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

You have learned of the policy well, my young friend. But you are not a Wikilawyer yet. Mostly because a real Wikilawyer wouldn't of broken the 3RR in the first place, but meh. Homestarmy 00:24, 5 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

"Young Friend" ?? Can I ask you not to be patronising in your approach to fellow wiki editors.Vexorg 00:42, 5 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Look, I play Star Wars: Empire at War almost every day, I think its to be expected that i'd throw around a few Star Wars based comments here and there. Homestarmy 03:34, 5 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm still a little confused why the last FA failed. Most FAC get more feedback, and when someone addresses their concern, the concern is striked. So at the end of the FAC, either you have a FA, or a good laundry list of concerns that need to be addressed. I felt that we had addressed everything, and the critics never got around to striking their comments or making further comments after our changes, yet we still failed FA. So, I'm not exactly sure what can be done. I'll check out the new apocrypha section, and see if any of my sources I have at home could help. And if nominated again, I'd be glad to participate and try to address any future concerns raised at the nomination. Thanks for your persistent work on this article, and I'm sure one day it will be featured (hopefully sooner than later).-Andrew c ^[talk] 03:25, 6 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Here is a list of articles with GA on the talk page not listed on the WP:GA page. The list has grown enough that it might be good to resolve these. I don't have time to look at them. Gimmetrow 19:38, 8 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

• • 122 mm howitzer M1938 (M-30)
  • Anabolic steroid
  • Chernobyl disaster effects
  • Dungeons & Dragons
  • In Excelsis Deo
  • Income inequality in the United States
  • J. P. Morgan
  • Jack Harkness
  • Pennsylvania Route 222
  • Retrocausality
  • Roy Marlin Voris
  • Shunga
  • Somerset Levels
  • Structural history of the Roman military
  • The Lost World: Jurassic Park
  • The Simpsons
  • Youth Offending Team

I have copyedited the article on Cooch Behar to the best of my abilities and i think it can be re-nominated. All the issues raised by you while failing the article for GA have been addressed to the best of my abilities.....just wanted u to go thru it once again and let me know if anything else needs to be done.Gprince007 12:18, 9 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

A new elimination drive of the backlog at Wikipedia:Good article candidates will take place from the month of July through August 12, 2007. There are currently about 130 articles that need to be reviewed right now. If you are interested in helping with the drive, then please visit Wikipedia:Good article candidates backlog elimination drive and record the articles that you have reviewed. Awards will be given based on the number of reviews completed. Since the potential amount of reviewers may significantly increase, please make sure to add :{{GAReview}} underneath the article you are reviewing to ensure that only one person is reviewing each article. Additionally, the GA criteria may have been modified since your last review, so look over the criteria again to help you to determine if a candidate is GA-worthy. If you have any questions about this drive or the review process, leave a message on the drive's talk page. Please help to eradicate the backlog to cut down on the waiting time for articles to be reviewed.

You have received this message either due to your membership with WikiProject: Good Articles and/or your inclusion on the Wikipedia:Good article candidates/List of reviewers. --Nehrams2020 23:25, 10 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hey there Homestarmy! Well...honestly you were that last person I was expecting to revert that edit. But I'm not gonna force it, even though I take issue with "historical existence" as it has a different meaning than "historicity". I mean, that IS the name of the article and I can't help it that people would not understand it. I'd suggest that there is a Simple English Wikipedia for those people who have a problem with the wording. As a matter of fact, I have a problem with the entire sentence and its mostly placement in the article (as the fourth sentence - it drives me nuts). I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I have the general impression that you do too. I seriously question the credibility of statements that elevate conspiracy theories (or whatever you want to call it) to high levels of publicity. I consider this a serious glitch, if you will, in Wikipedia that this sentence remains protected from edits (by admins too) and seems to be carved in stone. I really don't have any hidden agenda, but common sense just tells me that this sentence is out of place. Just because it has been there for a long time doesn't mean it should remain there. Well...anyways, just thought I'd explain my rationale to you. Good luck. aNubiSIII ^{(T / C)} 02:00, 13 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Come on fess up. I know the scores are out. Orangemarlin 02:46, 13 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

They still haven't come in the mail, but my parents are getting suspicious that i'm hiding them. However, I don't know where they are. Homestarmy 02:48, 13 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

My son got his about 10 days ago. I'm on the side of your parents, being a parent myself. LOL. Orangemarlin 03:34, 13 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

They just came today, I got 3's in Chemistry and Calculus AB, and a 2 in Computer Science AB, not that I expected a good score in what basically is a course on Java Programming. This was the first time i've ever really learned a programming language, its like trying to assemble an insanely complicated puzzle where there are nearly an infinite amount of solutions, and every piece can be re-arranged to belong in a compleatly separate puzzle, and even if you do solve the puzzle, your solution might be too slow to even be useful. Homestarmy 20:32, 13 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Ah, well at least you gave it a try. Speaking as someone who has coded in about 15 different languages and has been coding since I was in high school, and used 10+ different operating systems, you are just starting to understand the real world a bit and what it is like to really REALLY master a subject. So try to learn from this experience, and resolve to do better as you progress in your career. Just when you criticize those who have considerably more background and experience and their ability to reason, try to show a bit more humility. Not to brag, but I think you have a bit of a way to go yet. Good luck.--Filll 20:51, 13 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Good scores in Calc and Chem. You need to repeat Computer Science. Now take a good Biology course, learn evolution, and you'll be fine. Orangemarlin 20:58, 13 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

But Filll, all you get back is the number, there's no way to learn what exactly you did wrong. The three in Calculus was at least better than the one I got in my first practice exam, it was pretty funny when I got to tell my classmates I got two, and they thought I meant I got a 2 in the AP scale, but I meant I got a two as in two points. Homestarmy 21:12, 13 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well true, but take this as a learning experience.--Filll 21:27, 13 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes I will Dagomar 21:20, 18 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

In relation to your response to my question on the GA Candidate talk page, what do you suggest doing with the two sections that warn about future projects on the Institut Le Rosey article? Thanks, -- AJ24 22:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC).Reply

Can you or one of your friends help me edit User talk:Filll/christiananswers ?--Filll 01:54, 27 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

You should know Filll by now.DGG (talk) 06:05, 30 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think I and young homestarmy know each other. Don't we? I did not mean any offense and if I gave any, I apologize.--Filll 06:21, 30 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

At Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force there are many suggestions about fixing many of the inconsistencies and other items to make the GA process less confusing. Your ideas, suggestions and comments would be welcome. Tarret 17:03, 12 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well I don't know if you noticed, but there is talk about bringing back {{Good article}} on the GA talk page and I do believe that you input would be benficial in making a decision. Tarret 20:18, 28 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Hi long time no chat.
• You've been more or less against formalizing the GA process for as long as I can remember, your key reservation being that we already have a backlog & more formality will slow the process even more. I'd like to suggest that the time has come to consider the possibility that the incessant yammering and bickering and even occasional outright fighting is the price we pay for all this informality! The cost of all of the above is more expensive than the (supposed! assumed!) benefits of quicker turnover in reviews are worth. Please consider that possibility. Thanks.
• -- Ling.Nut 18:53, 3 September 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • Actually, that most recent post by someone bringing up those points wasn't me :/. I prefer to support various changes to the GA system when it looks like there's a clear need for them, for instance, when GA was very new, there was hardly even a need for a candidates page, so few people knew about the system, that a couple of us would just go out, find articles that were good, and tag them. Several parts of the GA process arose only when it would clearly be beneficial, generally when increased attention warranted some new measure or system to handle increased article traffic. GA/R, for example, has changed multiple times rule-wise, there were a few refinements here and there when situations revealed deficiencies in the processes, (GA/R in particular has often resulted directly in changes to the GA criteria, often to clarify something) but when the page was new, there would be no point in all the many rules for GA/R right now, there simply wouldn't of been enough volume on the page to warrant regulation. (Indeed, reviews used to stay up for 2 weeks minimum I think, and even in all that time, maybe 2 or 3 people would comment) Several times in the GA processes development, i've felt people do something too drastic, and say so. For instance, the removal of the speedy delist rule, (Based on the size of the GA/R page now, a continuance of not having that policy would likely of been a disaster) the large amounts of flip-flopping with the inline citations criteria back when the real fights over it started, (I've normally been undecided, but when the criteria changed like 6 or 7 times a week, that caused problems, there were serious differences between the two proposed versions, and how was anyone supposed to really know what was going on when most people didn't even look at the talk pages?) the current change in the inline citations criteria, (Which i'm about to go expound on) and things like that.
  • The way I see it, with a constantly growing and adapting system like GA, quarrels are bound to happen often, but they resolve themselves eventually. There may of been a few close calls in the past where, if some of the opposers of the GA system had cared, they probably could of gotten the whole process deleted. (I figure our most vulnerable times were in the very beginning, when it was just article stamping, and the inline citations arguments, where the criteria was constantly in flux and a powerful segment of the Wikipedia community was not happy with us) But i've already got in the works a pretty strong argument I can throw together based on the WP:1.0 logs that should easily demonstrate how successful GA really is at the moment, i'd just need an excuse to compile the most recent data whenever a MfD or something occurs.
  • However, as to the topic of increasing GA's formality, changing the GA criteria doesn't really do that, that just changes the standard. Having a more ambiguous and common-sense based standard, in my opinion, more accuratly captures the idea of "Good", since as a subjective measure of quality, our community of reviewers can examine articles flexibly, and the overall sense among reviewers of what "good" is can change over time for certain criteria. But concerning actual formality debates, the biggest suggestions I remember in recent times were to appoint only specific editors as reviewers, have only administrators modify the main GA page, have 2 or more people review every article for the initial candidacy, have GA/R's proceed by AfD-esque rules, (With adminship required to close another question) and have all reviews occur in FA review style. At the moment, I don't see a pressing need for any of those, though changing GA/R to be more like AfD without requiring admin intervention might be harmless at this point, and i've always thought that might need to happen in the future anyway if the process picked up enough attention. (There might be a bit too many GA/R's up at the moment to limit things to just one week though, and there'd need to be better discussion on how to close things) Is there some specific change i'm not remembering that you wanted me to support? At the moment, the main arguments seem to be over the inline-citation criteria, which has quickly devolved into multiple unrelated discussions. Homestarmy 19:36, 3 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the excellent reply!

The big prob is that an article can be passed by one drive-by reviewer. Everywhere you look.. everywhere! over and over again! since forever! ... on the FAC talk pages, on the WIAGA and GA/R talk pages, on individual editors; talk pages.. everywhere the constant knock is that one person can pass a GA. This method must go. It is the locus of All Things Criticized about GA. It is the source of all our tears and pain. As an adjunct to that, I'd like to see mentoring for reviewers.. a highly standardized set of training pages.. etc. But the One Reviewer Rule is the key thing that must go the way of the horse and buggy. Thanks! -- Ling.Nut 19:45, 3 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

If people really complain about it that much, I could compile the 1.0 bot list of all articles passed in the last few cycles, and review the overall quality of the reviews. The last time I even looked at passed articles to check the reviews, almost every single review was quite acceptable at least, and some were very thorough and clearly helpful to article development. I only check delists now though, I often find a case of vandalism or improper articlehistory implementation that needs fixing, or some improper speedy fails which had no review or terrible reason(s). Homestarmy 20:02, 3 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

(undent) I don't think it matters whether the reviews are good or no. This complaint has become iconic. It is impervious to facts & figures; it is also intuitively appealing to suggest that one drive-by reviewer can pass an article for a buddy without even providing a review (I"ve seen it happen... among well-known admins, no less!) or a POV person.. or someone making a WP:POINT.. or.. or.. no, I don't think facts & figures will help at all. Sorry. -- Ling.Nut 20:11, 3 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

Has anyone actually shown hard data about how good single reviews are though? It should be a simple task to categorize the passes from the last two or three bot cycles as good, exceptional, and bad, or other categories. Based on what i'm seeing, I predict this will reflect pretty favorably on our current system. To tell you the truth, if people actually watched the 1.0 bot log more often, every lousy pass would be stopped, (assuming they put the GA template on the talk page) even with just me looking at delists, I've been fixing almost all of those whenever they go wrong. Homestarmy 20:15, 3 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

The things you're suggesting about people watching the 1.0 bot are awesome & should be a part of the (as yet nonexistent) training process.. And of course you can try to fight calumny with facts & figures — no reason not to! But I think that:

1. To a large degree the "only one reviewer= crappy process" argument is a psychological one that is impervious to data, and
2. Also to a significant extent, it has become such an iconic auto-response argument that it is calcified into the lore of Wikipedia. It would be easier to remove the grounds for that argument (by getting rid of that procedure & adding more formalization) rather than to fight it as if it were somehow based on logic. Thanks! -- Ling.Nut 20:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps you might like to comment on my stance over here? --Joopercoopers 15:31, 4 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

• See Lara's talk. --Ling.Nut 04:18, 9 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

• your talk page is 156 Kb long.
• after awadewit and willow finish, would you please review the gac of Harold Pinter? thanks --14:20, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

In the spirit of Prov. 12:15, am in need of your wise counsel. I requested and received a full block on Christian views about women until 9/30/07. The problem: User:A B Pepper, aka User:75.132.95.79 lack of WP.CIV and disruption. P;ease glance at beginning at "Man was created in Gods' [sic] image, woman was not" ff., and Articles for deletion/Christian views about women. An "executive summary" by User:Oberlin 21:01, 23 September 2007 says it well. His paranoic name-calling and rages continue on [[User_talk:A_B_Pepper] where he calls a user a stalker, tells him to "Open up your fly and take a look," and a "pansy ass." How much vulgarity and personal attack will "they" allow before they ban him? On the article's Talk page, he says among other things: "Welcome to my dominion of humiliation," wrote of me "afaprof01 speak for herself. I think the little woman can defend herself and doesn't need macho man to come to her rescue. If she does need protection then let her get back underneath the covering of her husband" (wrong gender. Guess he thinks no Christian men feel strongly about Christian views of woman!). He will certainly run off greatly needed competent editors for the article. Bro, I need your wise counsel please via afaprof01@aol.com. Thanks very much, Afaprof01 03:46, 26 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have noticed that you are a frequent reviewer at that Good Articles project. good article reassessment is experiencing a considerable backlog problem. There are several articles dating from August that still have not generated enough discussion to close. Could you please take a look at the oldest article and make some fresh comments on them? Please note that some of these have undergone signigicant changes since they first came to GA/R; please judge the article only on its merits as of its current version. If you reviewed an earlier version of any of these articles, please also consider re-reading them and either revise or endorse any earluer comments you have made. Thanks for your help with this! --Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

A few editors who support homeopathy seem to be under the impression that the Homeopathy article is somehow bias because it contains too much criticism of homeopathy while opponents of homeopathy seem to think the article doesn't contain enough criticism. In my opinion it's formulated perfectly neutral. The article is always improving and this shouldn't mean it should no longer be GA status. Once an article is nominated to GA and is on the road to becoming an FA, should it not improve only to stay stable so that it can maintain it's GA status? How could it improve while still maintaining it's GA status? Improvements and stability can't co-exist therefore it only makes sense to suspend the stability requirement because it's improving itself on a daily basis. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 16:07, 3 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

The important thing to notice is that the edit wars have not had any impact on the content of the article itself. Since the article was promoted to GA status 5 days ago, all of the changes have been improvments such as organization and/or addition of sources. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 16:20, 3 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

If you take a look at the changes that have occurred in the actual article since it was nominated to GA status, you will see that they have all been constructive improvments on grammar, prose, additional references etc. Here is the Diff. Notice that the only changes are additional references, switching around of paragraphs and improvments on prose and grammar. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 16:36, 3 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I encourage you to read over the article and post any problems you see with it on the articles talk so that we can start improving it. Any weasel words need to be removed so please list them on the talk page if you see any. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 16:44, 3 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

So, what AP classes this year? Evolution? Biology?  :) OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 21:22, 5 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I see you fell to the temptation to take the Quizfarm test. ;-> You're right, though; whoever designed it doesn't understand much of what they're assessing! --profg ^Talk 20:13, 8 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hey there. I miss you. What have you been up to lately? Arch O. La ^{Grigory Deepdelver} 18:14, 10 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

You mean that whole lack of extant contemporaneous sources phrase? I agree, it was contemptable. Most scholars believe that Jesus at least existed; now, if we can only convince them that he is God incarnate sent to atone for the sins of humanity! But, not everyone has the Holy Spirit. Arch O. La ^{Grigory Deepdelver} 17:54, 11 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for supporting my RfA, which unfortunately didn't succeed. The majority of the opposes stated that I needed more experience in the main namespace and Wikipedia namespace, so that is what I will do. I will go for another RfA in two month's time and I hope you will be able to support me then as well. If you have any other comments for me or wish to be notified when I go for another RfA, please leave them on my talk page. If you wish to nominate me for my next RfA, please wait until it has been two months. Thanks again for participating in my RfA! -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 01:33, 12 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Since you are a frequent reviewer at GA, I thought you might be interested in some preliminary discussions about overhauling some of the various review processes at Wikipedia. The relevent page is Wikipedia:Content review/workshop and there is a lot of discussions going on on that project's talk page. We are still hammering out the goals, but there are some good ideas there, and I think you may have a lot to offer. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:05, 12 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

The November 2007 issue of the WikiProject Good Articles newsletter has been published. Comments are welcome on this, as well as suggestions or offers of assistance for the December 2007 issue. Dr. Cash 01:13, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

• A draft userspace article has been created. Please see Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 November 8. Pdelongchamp 21:48, 8 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

As I've noticed that you had also reverted the anon's changes, I think you may be interested to note that he has reported me to a user (who does not appear to be an administrator) with a rather disingenuous presentation of the matter. I've made my point clear, but as you seem to see the same problems with the changes, I decided to notify you. Considering the language, editing habits and the message to me on my talk page, I suspect that this user is Biblical1 (who made edits from another IP as well), who is presenting his case as an "observer" in the matter. I don't know you, but I think that a short look at my editing history shows that comment left by the anon is a gross misrepresentation. I've taken the steps to email the user of the identity of the anon (and his warped picture of things), but I would appreciate if you could comment on the material as well. The anon is making it seem like there is a general agreement for inclusion, where there is absolutely none (and to that point, the information is still against policy). See the post here. Thanks for your time.--C.Logan 04:55, 12 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

I just noticed that the conflicting passages section was slipped in again without consensus (at Criticisms of Christianity). I also noticed the article is now about 20kb larger than it was a few weeks ago. I don't have the time to get to the bottom of all the new content, but I'm seeing if you wouldn't mind taking a look, since you were involved a few weeks back, and because I trust your ability to edit wikipedia in accordance to guidelines and policies. If you are too busy, or just don't want to get involved, I understand as well. Thanks for your consideration.-Andrew c ^[talk] 21:20, 28 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've had to stop editing much lately because the end of the semester is coming up :/. It'll take someone with much more free time to really examine what's going on with that article, I only did something recently because blatantly non-neutral content was being introduced, so I didn't need to read the talk page at all to know what the proper course of action was. Homestarmy (talk) 00:12, 29 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

The December 2007 issue of the WikiProject Good Articles newsletter has been published. Comments are welcome on this, as well as suggestions or offers of assistance for the January 2008 issue. Dr. Cash 01:02, 4 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

Happy New Year! Here is the latest edition of the WikiProject GA Newsletter! Dr. Cash (talk) 03:59, 3 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles Newsletter

The WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter Volume I, No. 3 - January 2008   December issue | February issue   Project News There are now 3,301 Good Articles listed at WP:GA. With 1,789 current featured articles, that brings the total of good and featured articles to 5,090! The most recently promoted articles are: Hurricane Daniel (2006), Tarbosaurus, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Wicca, Seth MacFarlane, Stanley Internment Camp, Hurricane Karen (2007), Interstate 155 (Illinois), Tropical Storm Ingrid (2007), Brian Sings and Swings, Winston Churchill, Mzoli's, John Kefalas, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The backlog at Good Article Nominations has recently exploded to 236 unreviewed articles! Out of 264 total nominations, 17 are on hold, 10 are under review, and one is seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance! The oldest unreviewed articles are: Attachment disorder, Byzantium under the Palaiologoi, Byzantium under the Angeloi, Wowowee, Tyrone Wheatley, Mina (singer), Jon Burge, Mercury Hayes, William Lowndes Yancey, and Toni Preckwinkle. The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (47 articles), Film and cinema (25 articles), Television and journalism (16 articles), Art and architecture (15 articles), and Politics and government (14 articles). The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 17 articles up for re-review. If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated!   Reviewer of the Month Dihydrogen Monoxide is the GAN Reviewer of the Month of December, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 of the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Dihydrogen Monoxide hails from Brisbane (which, incidentally, is almost a GA, kids ;)) and has been editing Wikipedia since August 2006. He mostly likes to review articles relating to music, Australia, or anything else that takes his fancy! He also has two articles waiting, and notes that there's still a huge backlog,... so get cracking! Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of December include: Awadewit (talk · contribs) Canadian Paul (talk · contribs) Derek.cashman (talk · contribs) Drewcifer3000 (talk · contribs) Elcobbola (talk · contribs) Jackyd101 (talk · contribs) Kane5187 (talk · contribs) M3tal H3ad (talk · contribs) Nehrams2020 (talk · contribs) The Rambling Man (talk · contribs) VanTucky (talk · contribs) Wassupwestcoast (talk · contribs) Member News There are now 166 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 7 new members that joined during the month of December: Majoreditor (talk · contribs) Bernstein2291 (talk · contribs) The4325 (talk · contribs) Pepsi2786 (talk · contribs) Monowi (talk · contribs) Rankun (talk · contribs) This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all! GAReview Template Lots of you that frequent WP:GAN have undoubtedly seen the articles under review, marked with "Review - I am reviewing this article. ...". The articles have been marked as being under review by an editor using the {{GAReview}} template. The purpose of this template is essentially to prevent two editors from reviewing the same article at the same time, so it's essentially a common courtesy notice to other editors so that they don't pass or fail an article while you're in the midst of collecting and writing comments. However, just because an article is marked, shouldn't preclude another editor from contributing to the review. If you'd like to review it, go ahead; simply collect your comments and write them down on the article's talk page – but don't pass or fail the article – leave that to the other reviewer. To use this template yourself, simply write "#:{{GAReview}} ~~~~" on the line immediately following the article's nomination at WP:GAN. You can even leave additional comments as well (e.g. "#:{{GAReview}} I will finish my review in the next 24 hours. ~~~~"). Reviewers marking articles with this template should also observe some common etiquette; please don't mark more than 1-3 articles as being under review at a time, and please try and finish your review within 3-5 days of marking the article. GA Sweeps After openly requesting the community for more participants into the Sweeps, we have 3 more members on the board. They are (in no particular order) Canadian Paul, VanTucky, and Masem. Canadian Paul will be sweeping "Middle East and the World" articles. VanTucky will be sweeping "Religion, mysticism, and mythology" and "Literature" articles. Masem will be sweeping "Television episodes". We're still looking for more reviewers. Interested individuals should contact OhanaUnited for details. At this moment, participation in the sweeps project is by invitation only, as we desire experienced reviewers who have a thorough and extensive knowledge of the criteria. This is to ensure that articles that have "fallen through the cracks" would be found and removed, and that additional articles don't fall through the cracks during the sweep. Currently, there are 16 members working on the project, and we have reviewed 74 articles in December 2007. Of those that are swept, 275 articles are kept as GA, 126 articles are delisted, and 5 promoted to FA. Did You Know,... ... that the total number of good and featured articles is now over 5000? ... that GA was formed on October 11, 2005 and was formerly called "Half-decent articles"? ... that there is a bot (StatisticianBot) that gives a daily report on GAN? ... that many discussions were made over the years on whether GA should have a symbol placed on the main article space, yet at the end always removed? ... that there was a proposal to change the GA symbol to a green featured star? From the Editors Happy New Year, everyone! I'm just filling in for Dr. Cash as he's busy (or away) in real life. This explains why I wasn't prepared for a full-length article on GA process, and instead I resort to a tiny DYK for GA. OhanaUnited Happy New Year as well! I'm still here, and haven't totally disappeared. I had to cut back on editing and reviewing during the month of December as I made the transition from Flagstaff, Arizona to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But I should be about settled in the Keystone State, so I'll be contributing more to Wikipedia again in the new year. Thanks to OhanaUnited for putting together much of the content for this newsletter! He's been working hard with the Sweeps, and the 'Did You Know' section is also a great idea, so I think that will become a regular feature now! I also figured out how to have a collapsible newsletter, so that will change our delivery options a bit. Cheers! Dr. Cash Contributors to this Issue Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor) OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps correspondent) Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005! WikiProject Good Articles: Open Tasks This project identifies, organizes and improves good articles on Wikipedia. Nominations: Atlanta Braves (talk | history | start review) • LGBTQ culture in Puerto Vallarta (talk | history | start review) • Dick Simpson (politician) (talk | history | start review) • Darren Moore (talk | history | start review) • Pete Astudillo (talk | history | start review) Reassessment: Hurricane Allen • Haile Selassie • Wild Arms (video game) • Ben Nevis • The Nightmare • Walt Disney Animation Studios • USS Texas (BB-35) • Battle of Plataea • Task forces: Project quality • Sweeps • GAN Backlog Drives • GA Cup WikiProject Good articles newsletter (last updated January 2013)   Good article criteria | Statistics | GAN Report | Changes log Nominations list | edit

The February 2008 issue of the WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter is ready! Dr. Cash (talk) 05:28, 1 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles Newsletter

The WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter Volume I, No. 4 - February 2008   January issue | March issue   Project News There are now 3,485 Good Articles listed at WP:GA. The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 206 unreviewed articles. Out of 251 total nominations, 37 are on hold, 7 are under review, and 1 is seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance! The oldest unreviewed articles are: Johan Derksen, Trafford, J. Michael Bailey, Greg Skrepenak, Paleolithic-style diet, Alan Dershowitz, Natalee Holloway, Slovenian presidential election, 2007, San Francisco Municipal Railway, and Marcela Agoncillo. The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (57 articles), Theatre film and drama (34 articles), Music (19 articles), Transport (17 articles), Politics and government (16 articles), World history (13 articles), and Meteorology and atmospheric sciences (13 articles). The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 8 articles up for re-review. If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated! GA Sweeps Update During January, 57 Good Articles were reviewed. Including those articles that were under GAR or on hold, 35 were kept as GA, 20 delisted, 9 currently on hold or at GAR, and 3 were exempted as they are now Featured Articles.   Reviewer of the Month Ealdgyth is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for January, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Ealdgyth, known in real life as Victoria Short, hails from Central Illinois, and has been editing Wikipedia since May 26, 2007. In this short time, she has made significant contributions to 9 Good Articles, including Baldwin of Exeter and Hubert Walter. Her interests in editing are in the areas of the Middle Ages, History, and horses. Outside of Wikipedia, she is starting her own photography business, and owns three horses. She likes to read science fiction, history, and geneology books. Congratulations to our GAN Reviewer of the Month for January! Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of January include: AnonEMouse (talk · contribs) Canadian Paul (talk · contribs) Casliber (talk · contribs) Derek.cashman (talk · contribs) Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs) Drewcifer3000 (talk · contribs) Jackyd101 (talk · contribs) Johnfos (talk · contribs) M3tal H3ad (talk · contribs) Miranda (talk · contribs) Nehrams2020 (talk · contribs) VanTucky (talk · contribs) Member News There are now 176 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 15 new members that joined during the month of January: Atlantik (talk · contribs) Auawise (talk · contribs) Cyclonenim (talk · contribs) Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs) Ddstretch (talk · contribs) Ealdgyth (talk · contribs) FamicomJL (talk · contribs) Hamiltonstone (talk · contribs) jackturner3 (talk · contribs) Kbthompson (talk · contribs) Keilana (talk · contribs) Miranda (talk · contribs) pcbene (talk · contribs) Skeeker (talk · contribs) Snowolf (talk · contribs) This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all! On Hold versus Failing an Article This month, I thought I'd focus on a less technical and more of a procedural issue at WP:GAN – determining what the appropriate course of action to take when reviewing an article. Currently, there are four options to decide what to do with an article: Passing – it meets all six of the good article criteria; add it to WP:GA and add {{ArticleHistory}} or {{GA}} to the article's talk page. Failing it – it does not meet the criteria; remove the article's listing from WP:GAN and add {{ArticleHistory}} or {{failedGA}} to the article's talk page. On Hold – The article meets most of the criteria, but might fall short in a few areas; keep it listed at WP:GAN, add #: {{GAOnHold|ArticleName}} ~~~~ below the listing and add {{GAonhold}} to the article's talk page. Second Opinion – Similar to the on hold option, except an editor is either inexperienced or not knowledgeable enough about a given topic and asks another reviewer to offer another opinion before passing or failing; add #: {{GA2ndopinion|ArticleName}} ~~~~ to WP:GAN below the article's listing and add {{GA2ndoptalk}} to the article's talk page. So how to you know when an article fails outright, or fails initially, but meets "enough" of the criteria to be placed on hold? The answer to this question probably varies by about the same amount as there are reviewers of Good Articles! Everybody treats this slightly differently. The most important thing to consider is that articles should not be on hold for longer than about one week. Although there is no hard and fast time limit for this, most editors would probably agree that five to seven days is enough time to address any GA-related issues with the article to get it to pass. Some editors have extended this a few days in the past, due to other extenuating circumstances, such as an article's primary editor being very busy with school or work, so they have asked for extra time. But as a general rule, a GA nominee that is placed on hold should meet enough of the criteria to be able to be passed within five to seven days. Some examples of articles that might be placed on hold would be: the article is mostly complete, but might be missing one topic (subcategory). minor copyediting is required (needs a few minor manual of style, spelling, or grammatical fixes. mostly well sourced, but missing maybe a handful of references. a couple of images need to be tagged with appropriate copyright tags. On the other hand, an article should be failed if it: is missing several topic categories, or there are several sections which are very short (1-3 sentences per section). contains numerous sections which are just lists of information, as opposed to written out as prose. there's entire sections of text that have no references, or there are a lot of {{cn}} or {{unreferenced}} tags. has evidence of an active edit war in the article history. has major neutrality issues. has any {{cleanup}} or other warning tags in various places. Did You Know... ... that on July 19, 2007, 1,548 good articles that have not been categorized at all were categorized in 15 days? ... that in Chinese Wikipedia, articles need to have at least six net support votes before they are promoted to GA? ... that the English Wikipedia has the most Good Articles, the German Wikipedia has the second most (at over 2000), followed by the Spanish Wikipedia (at over 800), the Chinese Wikipedia (at over 400), and the French Wikipedia (at over 200)? ... that Simple English Wikipedia has zero Good Articles? ... that "Sport and games people" category has the most Good Articles? ... that Virginia Tech massacre (which is now a featured article) was promoted to GA just only about one month after the shooting incident, but took more than seven months to reach FA status? From the Editors Originally, I wasn't planning to do "Did you know" other than as a fill-in for Dr. Cash. However, I decided to continue writing this section until I ran out of ideas. OhanaUnited Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here. Dr. Cash Contributors to this Issue Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor) OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent) Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005! WikiProject Good Articles: Open Tasks This project identifies, organizes and improves good articles on Wikipedia. Nominations: Atlanta Braves (talk | history | start review) • LGBTQ culture in Puerto Vallarta (talk | history | start review) • Dick Simpson (politician) (talk | history | start review) • Darren Moore (talk | history | start review) • Pete Astudillo (talk | history | start review) Reassessment: Hurricane Allen • Haile Selassie • Wild Arms (video game) • Ben Nevis • The Nightmare • Walt Disney Animation Studios • USS Texas (BB-35) • Battle of Plataea • Task forces: Project quality • Sweeps • GAN Backlog Drives • GA Cup WikiProject Good articles newsletter (last updated January 2013)   Good article criteria | Statistics | GAN Report | Changes log Nominations list | edit

The March 2008 issue of the WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter is ready! Dr. Cash (talk) 06:00, 3 March 2008 (UTC)Reply

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles Newsletter

The WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter Volume I, No. 5 - March 2008   February issue | April issue   Project News There are currently 3,647 Good Articles listed at WP:GA. The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 185 unreviewed articles. Out of 237 total nominations, 42 are on hold, and 10 are under review. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance! The oldest unreviewed articles are: Ian Browne (cyclist), Tony Marchant, Reginald fitz Jocelin, Annie Russell, Brodie Croyle, and Jimmy Moore. The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (39 articles), Theatre, film, and drama (34 articles), Transport (23 articles), Music (21 articles), Politics and government (18 articles), Culture and society (13 articles), Places (13 articles), and World history (12 articles). The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 13 articles up for re-review. If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated! GA Sweeps Update Two members joined the sweeps team this month. They are Jwanders and jackyd101. Jwanders swept Physics sub-category quickly and is now sweeping "Astronomy and astrophysics". Meanwhile, jackyd101 is sweeping "Armies, military units and legal issues". During February, 66 Good Articles were reviewed. Including those articles that were under GAR or on hold, 33 were kept as GA, 21 delisted, 17 currently on hold or at GAR, and 1 was exempted as they are now Featured Articles.   Reviewer of the Month Blnguyen is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for February, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Blnguyen is from South Australia and has been editing Wikipedia since 2005. He was also the reviewer for the month of December 2007, so this marks the second time that he has been GAN's Top Reviewer for the Month. Congratulations to our GAN Reviewer of the Month for February! Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of January include: Blnguyen (talk · contribs) David Fuchs (talk · contribs) Derek.cashman (talk · contribs) Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs) Calbear22 (talk · contribs) Ealdgyth (talk · contribs) Jackturner3 (talk · contribs) TimVickers (talk · contribs) VanTucky (talk · contribs) Wrad (talk · contribs) Member News There are now 185 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 9 new members that joined during the month of February: Bibliomaniac15 (talk · contribs) Canyouhearmenow (talk · contribs) Chrisisinchrist (talk · contribs) Ed! (talk · contribs) Juliancolton (talk · contribs) Kakofonous (talk · contribs) LOTRrules (talk · contribs) Matthewedwards (talk · contribs) Nousernamesleft (talk · contribs) Did You Know... ...that the shortest timespan for a GA to be listed and subsequently delisted is 8 minutes? (The article is Project Chanology and currently listed on WP:GAR) ...that the current nominations system started on March 10, 2006? ...that in May 2006, number of GA surpassed number of FA? This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all! One GA Requirement - The Lead Section By Geometry guy In this issue, we will focus on one of the requirements for good articles: a good article article should follow Wikipedia's guideline on lead sections. So what does this guideline say, why does it say what it does, and how can good article reviewers help? The lead section is particularly important, because for many readers, it is the only part of the article which they will read. For instance, they may have come to the article by following a wikilink in another article simply to obtain a quick overview before they continue reading the original article. They may only read the first paragraph, or even the first sentence. On the other hand, one of the joys of Wikipedia is the way that it embodies the endlessly branching tree of knowledge; if a lead is well written, it may encourage even such a reader to read on and learn something new. This is reflected in the terminology: "lead" is a word taken from journalism, where it recognized that many readers will only read the beginning of a newspaper article, and so it is important to convey the key points first, before going into detail. Note that "lead", in this sense, is pronounced as in "leading question" and is sometimes spelled as "lede" by journalists to distinguish it from lead, the metal, which was once very important in typesetting. Wikipedia supports both spellings. Wikipedia:Lead section is written with all this in mind, and describes two different roles for the lead: first, it should introduce the topic; second it should summarize the article. This is not always as easy as it seems; indeed, it is almost impossible to write a good lead if the article itself does not cover the topic well. It has a side benefit that an article which satisfies this guideline is probably also broad: if the lead is both a good introduction and a summary, then the article probably covers the main points. The good article process is often the first place in which an article is judged against this criterion, yet many current good articles may not meet it. A common fault is that the lead is purely an introduction, while the rest of the article contains other information, which should be summarized in the lead, but isn't. So, how can reviewers help to improve this? One approach is to read the rest of the article, and not the lead, first. Make a note of the significant points discussed in the article. There is usually at least one important issue in each section. Then, go back to the lead and ask the following questions: Does the first sentence of the lead define the topic, as described in the article? Is the most important information mentioned in the first paragraph? Is the lead a suitable length for the article? The lead guideline recommends 2–4 paragraphs depending on the article length, but judgment is more important than counting. Are each of the significant topics that you noted mentioned in the lead? If the answer to each of these questions is "yes", then the article probably meets the guideline. If not, you may be able to fix it yourself by summarizing the article. If you can't, then it suggests that there are not only problems with the lead, but also the rest of the article. That is the beauty of Wikipedia:Lead section. Finally, there isn't universal agreement on whether the lead should contain inline citations. As long as the material in the lead is developed and cited elsewhere in the article, then inline citation is not required. There are exceptions, the most significant being quotations and controversial material about living persons. Good luck helping more articles meet this important criterion! From the Editors Well, this is somewhat GA-related but at the same time not totally GA-related. However, I think this is important. Thanks to everyone who supported me at my 2nd RfA. It passed unanimously at 79 support, 0 oppose, 0 neutral. As many are impressed by my work in Good Articles processes, I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone giving me a very enjoyable time at GA. There are 2 people that I want to explicitly say thank you to. They are Nehrams2020 and Epbr123. They patiently taught me how to do GA reviews properly in summer 2007. I couldn't achieve better without them. Now that I have the mop and the bucket, some of my time will be working on reducing Commons image backlog. Nevertheless, you will still see me once in a while in matters related to GA. OhanaUnited Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here. Dr. Cash Contributors to this Issue Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor) OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent) Geometry guy (News Correspondent) Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005! WikiProject Good Articles: Open Tasks This project identifies, organizes and improves good articles on Wikipedia. Nominations: Atlanta Braves (talk | history | start review) • LGBTQ culture in Puerto Vallarta (talk | history | start review) • Dick Simpson (politician) (talk | history | start review) • Darren Moore (talk | history | start review) • Pete Astudillo (talk | history | start review) Reassessment: Hurricane Allen • Haile Selassie • Wild Arms (video game) • Ben Nevis • The Nightmare • Walt Disney Animation Studios • USS Texas (BB-35) • Battle of Plataea • Task forces: Project quality • Sweeps • GAN Backlog Drives • GA Cup WikiProject Good articles newsletter (last updated January 2013)   Good article criteria | Statistics | GAN Report | Changes log Nominations list | edit