Talk:Reiki/Archive 16

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Lead again

I see it's been rewritten since I looked yesterday. Now, in general my view is that having the names of modern scholars/whatevers in the lead of an article like this should mostly be avoided, though a summary of their views is often WP:LEAD-appropriate. Also, none of the names included have very much coverage in this article, so repeating them in the lead is not "appropriate weight". That's my 2 qi. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:58, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the situation seems to going from bad to worse. I do not see how any of these names are important to the topic of Reiki. This seems like POV pushing, something which I have been accused of to no end concerning this article (and I have edited the article all but twice to add a POV tag).

I have at least tallied the current consensus on the very bottom of the appropriate section of WP:NPOV/N, but I think it is discourteous to be significantly editing the article while it is being debated without notifying the appropriate discussion venues. -Konanen (talk) 11:19, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I understand the complications it causes, when we end up debating a moving target. But we don't really want editing to stop just because a discussion is going on.

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång, I agree with you. We needed to do a little more WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY work here. I think we are making progress on that point. We could consider whether it should be shortened (e.g., "rejected by scientists as pseudoscience and by the Catholic Church as a superstition"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:59, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

It's nice to see this discussed here, rather than where many watchers of this page may not be watching. WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY is exactly what I'm doing by adding a few quotes to the lead. Due weight requires the lead, like the body, give prominence to mainstream RS. That means both amount and prominence of mention. Fringe views get a little bit of explanation. That's all. Therefore I disagree with "should be shortened". Unlike homeopathy, Reiki is so fringe it does not get nearly as much mention in scientific or scholarly sources as does homeopathy, an old, well-established, quackery. Parity of sources applies here, so the quotes and mainstream authors deserve prominent mention and deserve the biggest piece of the pie.

I have no doubt that it can be done more elegantly, so keep the suggestions coming. Note that these discussions have an effect. Even though I disagree with most of the objections, quackery is now gone from the lead! -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:11, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Can I ask who Jann Bellamy is, and why they are mentioned? I could do a simple search, but I am trying to take as little outside knowledge as I can while I am trying to judge the article from the point of view of a naïve user. I can kind of see why Stephen Barrett is mentioned (though, is there a way to attribute the characterisation to the NCAHF directly, which might be more topic-relevant?), but the other person makes no sense without context. –Konanen (talk) 18:23, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

It's in the body, "a lawyer and critic of alternative medicine". Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:27, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Konanen, she is a prominent anti-quackery activist, author, lawyer, and involved in many aspects of the legal, legislative, ethical, and other aspects of the medical/alternative/pseudoscience consumer protection world. She has warned of the dangers of chiropractic neck manipulations and other problems. I have known of her, her many writings, and her work for a couple decades. You should check her out. She's pretty famous in her own right. Barrett is the most prominent authority on quackery and medical pseudoscience. We don't mention much about them because the article is about reiki, not them. Feel free to add more context. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:04, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that naming and quoting individuals is necessary for LEADFOLLOWSBODY. It should be enough to say "rejected by many groups", instead of "Alice used this word and Bob said that". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:23, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I normally wouldn't do that in a lead, except out of an abundance of caution, per my long-time motto here: "When in doubt, use attribution." I could just say it and only use the citations as the attribution. Let me give that a try. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:02, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:09, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that this article could benefit from taking a leaf out of our article on The Force (Star Wars). That is, a lot more coverage of what reiki actually is, in-universe. Currently the article is almost completely focused on debunking the concept. That's fine, it's pseudoscience, it needs a good debunking - but there's so much more this article could be. Imagine if our The Force article spent 90% of its length explaining and re-explaining that it's fictional, that it was made up by George Lucas in order to make money, that it doesn't actually work in real life, that light sabers aren't real... Great, we get that, but we'd quite like to read something fun about midichlorians, and I think we can manage that without making people think they are real. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 18:41, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

You'd have to deal with WP:MEDRS and WP:BALANCE. Still, some expansion of Conceptual basis, Technique, Training, certification and adoption and History is not by default unreasonable. History may be a little easier. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:51, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Actually, looking at The Force, the in-universe Depiction section seems to be a not glaringly awful part of the whole. At a glance, most of the article is out-of-universe. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:58, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I definitely don’t mean to write the reiki article from an in-universe perspective, just that we could stand to include a lot more information about what reiki practitioners do and believe, and why, and what all those hand movements are supposed to mean, and how it relates to other “energy” beliefs and traditions, and so forth. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 19:12, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

[1] may have something useful for that. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:41, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Barnards.tar.gz, that makes sense. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:07, 14 June 2024 (UTC)