Talk:History of Raëlism

GA Review

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   a (fair representation): b (all significant views):

5. It is stable.

   

6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.

   a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):

7. Overall:

   a Pass/Fail:

While the article generally contains well written and well referenced prose, it doesn't seem to make much sense in terms of chronological order. It seems to be a collection of rather isolated events that aren't written in such a way that they appear to be connected. The early beginnings of Raёlism are not even in the article. There also seems to be a severe content fork between this article, History of Raël, and the main Raëlism. I would strongly recommend merging the two history articles into one, and that would most likely eliminate this problem. Neither article is really too big (18K for this one and 10K for the History of Raёl article, so size shouldn't be an issue. It's rather confusing with it all separate. Dr. Cash 05:28, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Merge completed (GA Passed)

The only problem left in the GA criteria I see now is the issue of "all signficant views". I believe the controversy section in the Raëlism article would serve the purpose of that. However, this controversy section already provides NPOV for the Raëlism article itself. Now, I would hesitate to merge the two articles as they would together make the article quite long. Also, there would a tendency to resplit the articles in the future if they happen to grow after they merge. The Raëlism article is already a GA, and to move its controversy section to the History of Raëlism would undermine its GA status. Otherwise, there would be two copies of the controversy section, and three copies of the controversy concerning the Raëlian Embassy for Extraterrestrials. I find it unreasonable to merge two or even all of them since I believe these topics (Raëlism, History of Raëlism, and Raëlian Embassy for Extraterrestrials) deserve their own articles. The question I leave for you is whether the History of Raëlism is currently NPOV , and if not, whether it is acceptable to have so many copies about the controversy concerning Raëlism.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 03:59, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

While it looks like much of the information in the History of Raël article has been merged into this one, I wouldn't say it was, "completed". Plus, this article still refers to the History of Raël article, so the content fork issue remains. What still needs to be done is double check the History of Raël article for any additional information, then redirect that article into History of Raëlism, and remove the references from the 'see also' section in this article to the other one. I apologize; I should've been more clear and specified, "merge and redirect." Of course, I am not advocating merging this article into the Raëlism article. I think a separate history is enough. Just merge the two history articles, and that should be fine,... (you might want to revisit the 'history' section in the main Raëlism article, though, and resummarize it with the new information here (but that's beyond the scope of this article somewhat).

Done.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 18:48, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, this article looks much better with the early details in it. It makes things a lot clearer. However, a couple of issues still remain. First, I think there's some NPOV issues with some of the language, particularly in the 'early years' section. For example, in the first paragraph, it states that Claude Vorhillon had a meeting with an extraterrestrial, as if it were undisputed fact. I don't think wikipedia should be promoting the story exactly as if it were fact like that. Something needs to be added to clarify that we're talking specifically of the Raëlian's beliefs, and Vorhillon may (or may not) have actually met an extraterrestrial, travelled to another world, etc, etc. I think it's mainly the language in the 'early years' section that has this issue. But overall, the addition of this material really helps to clarify much of the Raëlian's actions mentioned later on, so don't delete it! Just make it NPOV! This must be fixed prior to GA status.

I reintroduced the plot tags to clarify this.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 18:48, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I did run across a lot of minor grammatical errors with the language throughout the article. Too many to either just fix myself or list all at once. There's also mentions of both 'Raël' and 'Rael', with and without the special 'ë' character -- I think we want to make sure that the special 'ë' character is included everytime the word 'Raël' (or any variant thereof, e.g. 'Raëlian') is used. Please go through and copyedit the article.

I converted to ë where necessary, but sometimes the names are simply do not have the ë (e.g. Raelian Foundation), which is in italics (see "words as words").◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 18:49, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

There are still some issues, primarily at the end of the article (recent years, present years), with some of the subsections being somewhat isolated events and not really weaving too well as an interconnected story. It makes the whole Raëlianism thing look more like a clusterf*ck of separate events without much guidance or leadership from the center. The events and issues are pretty well cited, and reasonably well written, but I think they could be tied together better. But a lot of this could probably be overlooked at the GA stage, but definitely should be addressed prior to featured status. At a minimum, however, the 'recent years' and 'present years' sections should be combined, as the events contained within are all very recent.

Agree, and done.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 18:48, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

That's all. I think we're getting pretty close, so I'll go ahead and place this article 'on hold' at WP:GAC pending revisions. Cheers! Dr. Cash 04:39, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Most of these issues appear to have been addressed, with the exception of the WP:NPOV issues. The 'spoiler' tags that you've added (and two other users have removed) are not appropriate for this article, since those are generally used for fictional books and movies. This differs, because we're not talking about specifically a work of fiction; we're talking about information from books that Claude Vorhillon wrote based on his accounts of what, to him, actually happened (as outrageous as it may sound). So we need to just modify those sections with text that indicates that these are the actual Raëlian beliefs. Dr. Cash 21:53, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Alas, it was just easier to make these minor adjustments to the article myself. Done, and promoted. Cheers! Dr. Cash 22:10, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

You're the man!◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 03:20, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

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POV problems

Hi,

I've added the POV tag to this page because I think some of the text needs some rewriting. It seems that some of the text uncritically repeats some of the claims of the Raelian movement, for example the "Founding" section begins:

On the morning of 13 December 1973 (Julian Date 2442029),[6] Claude Vorilhon – who was at the time a professional test driver and automobile journalist for the Autopop Magazine had a first meeting with an extraterrestrial humanoid,

This means that Wikipedia itself is claiming that Rael met an alien, which is clearly not a neutral POV - there is no phrasing of "Rael claims that ..." that would place it on a more neutral footing. Furthermore the citation to back this claim is Rael's own book. There are more examples of similar text in the "Sightings" section further down the page.

Overall I think this article needs some serious work to adhere to Wikipedia's POV policies and also needs some better citations (should it really be citing a website named "Raelia News" for example?) Fragglet (talk) 14:57, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

I too have noticed those absurd statements in the article.

I have now fixed them. Hoopajoopinserter (talk) 15:36, 13 September 2022 (UTC)