Talk:The Order of the Solar Temple: The Temple of Death

Alternative title?

The ASRR review names the book as The Order of the Solar Temple: Order of Death, not The Temple of Death. All other mentions (except one) say The Temple of Death. I initially thought this was a mistake, but I've since found another mention of this being the book's title, in the 2013 book Rampage, ISBN 978-1-4597-0721-4 page 248 (where it briefly praises the book). I don't know why this is, since I can find no other record of that title, but I think that is somewhat implausible for two separate people to say it is the title without it having some rationale, so I made a redirect from that name. Even if it is baseless two sources call it that, so oh well. PARAKANYAA (talk) 16:19, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:The Order of the Solar Temple: The Temple of Death/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: PARAKANYAA (talk · contribs) 01:07, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Premeditated Chaos (talk · contribs) 02:42, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Dibsing, please throw popcorn at me if I don't review within the week. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:42, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Lead & background

• "lack of coverage of some aspects of the OTS was criticized" - bit of passive voice there, although possibly unavoidable
  • this is phrased more passively because i feel like the more direct phrasing, i.e. "reviewers criticized the lack of coverage of some aspects of the group" implies that it is more unified as to what they were considering missing aspects. both of the reviewers who wanted other things to be covered named different topics they felt were missing - but this might just be my interpretation, if you want me to change it to that i can
    • I don't agree with your interpretation of the phrasing but I'm also not that pressed about it
      • neither am I: changed in an attempt to be less passive
• Might help give scope to the number of bodies if you add membership estimates
  • added
• "in October 1994 53 bodies" - two numbers successively reads oddly, suggest moving the date or at the least adding a comma
  • fixed
• "Some were found to have been murdered, while others were drugged and killed" - er, some were murdered and some were murdered?
  • attempted to fix - this refers to the division between the (as the OTS labeled them) "traitors" (who were killed for betraying the movement) and the "immortals", who agreed to some part of the "transit" plan but were killed by the other members in an attempt to "help" them transit. kind of hard to make clear though
    • I would suggest either adding the suicidal "transit" concept (after "internal and external problems"), or removing the distinction about who died in what way.
      • added bit on "transit" - if it's awkward I can just remove it, whatever works best
        • I tweaked your wording, but feel free to revert if you don't like it
• "another set of bodies were found in France" - how many?
  • added
• " followed by another five" - was that all of them or were there survivors?
  • the three survivors of the 1997 transit are barely mentioned in the book and none of the reviews mention them, so I don't think it's particularly due weight to include here - I would have to add extra sources that don't mention the book to include this. i don't think it provides much context to the content summary, which IMO is what the section is for.
  • if we're talking about Thierry Huguenin (the claimed survivor), none of the reviews mention him, i don't think it's required context to the contents summary or the overarching story, and i feel it is a bit undue weight here to focus on the one guy (though i am writing an article on his memoir)
    • That's fair
• "there was criticism of the police response" - the response to what? the found bodies?
  • Dericquebourg actually says "investigation", which makes more sense, fixed

Contents

• "Contributors to the book include" - is the list that follows exhaustive? if so, "include" isn't the word, as it suggests it's not exhaustive
  • done
• 2nd paragraph is really two paragraphs squashed together - the first half about the contents generally and the second half about Mayer's article. I'd split it
  • done, moved the first half to the first paragraph, shuffled it around
• Link neo-Templarism
  • done (this article didn't exist until recently, forgot to link it)
• Might help to include context on Mary Douglas, even if it's just "anthropologist Mary Douglas"
  • done
• Full names for Freud and Eliade - there are people who don't know who they are
  • done
• Link Francophone
  • done

Publication

• I might move this up before Contents, since it provides a little context on the personnel including Lewis
  • i feel like this is nonstandard but i have no issues with it, done
    • I've seen it done both ways. I just think in this case the context is worth having before diving into the contents
• Again, I suggest adding context for who reviewers are - "sociologist", "journalist", whatever - as it helps give context to their perspective (not as necessary when you're saying what journal they're writing in, but for example Carole M. Cusack)
  • added note calling Cusack and Folk historians of religion and Dericquebourg a sociologist. I am honestly unsure of what O'Callaghan's field is; he is an associate professor but nothing seems to assign him the same sort of subdiscipline even those kinds of author blurbs in book's he's contributed to.
    • Could go with "religious scholar"?
      • good idea, done
• This is a nitpick, but "criticized by some reviewers. Folk criticized the" has "criticized" repeated quite close
  • some reviewers has been removed so this is fixed
• You say that "some reviewers" criticized the presentation, but quote only Folk on this. If there were other critics of this, add them; if not, just say Folk criticized and ditch "some reviewers"
  • this was the result of me misinterpreting dericqueborg, see below, removed
• I'm not sure "disparately" is the best word here, and in any case it's not clear what Dericquebourg's arguing. In what way were the deaths explained differently?
  • upon rereading this this isn't really phrased as a criticism, it's just him saying that the writers in the book have many very different explanations for why what happened happened (and that their conclusions on this are less uniform than the other topics in the book), not that that's a bad thing. removed
• "other theories of Maurice Fusier" - who?
  • see below
• "and the Vuarnet family." - again, who?
  • these two things are mentioned in the context of the "affair within an affair", which is very hard to explain but is sort of a narrative the french media was pushing in the 2000s. Dericquebourg is wishing generally for a chapter covering this and cites these two as prominent examples (as they pushed basically the same theories), i realize now i have phrased this misleadingly. Fusier is a (probably non-notable) Radio France journalist who wrote three books calling the whole thing a government coverup and Jean Vuarnet is an extremely famous French Olympian whose wife died in the second incident and who pushed a similar theory (well, mostly his son).
  • Dericquebourg does not specify what either of these people do but it's mentioned in the main OTS page. added anyway, and also rephrased to make it clearer that he's talking about the "affair within an affair" more broadly. rephrased this section. this may have made it worse because this is very hard to understand without context
    • What about cutting it down to something like "Dericquebourg wished that the book had included a chapter covering the various conspiracy theories that involved the idea of external involvement or cover-ups in the group's affairs."? That way the reader gets the idea of what he wanted but doesn't have to sweat the details.
      • did something similar, hopefully it works?
        • Perfect

Overall a generally well-written summary. It shouldn't be much to make the above-noted corrections, and the I'll be happy to pass. Spot checks of available sources don't show any discrepancies, and the chapter summaries look fine (happily, I own this book, and although I'm not going to re-read it in full for this review, a quick skim matches up). Sole image is correctly fair use (if you wanted, you could probably add some headshots of the authors, but that's a suggestion not a must-do). ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:29, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

@Premeditated Chaos I have addressed the issues to the best of my ability - if the issues remain unfixed or I have introduced new ones please let me know. Thank you :) I'd add images of the authors, but to my knowledge the only one for whom a free use image is available is Introvigne, and including an image of him only seems odd. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:23, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

PARAKANYAA, responses above, anything not commented at looks fine. Mostly just a few remaining thoughts. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:40, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

@Premeditated Chaos Thoughts on changes? PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:59, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Looking good! We're a pass :) ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:04, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: withdrawn by nominator, closed by Narutolovehinata5 talk 00:37, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that The Temple of Death is the only English-language academic book about the cult the Order of the Solar Temple? Source: stated in Violence and New Religious Movements page 143. note, this source is from 2011, however it is still true. It's the only book on them in English at all actually but Bogdan specifies "academic" so i must go with that
  • Reviewed:

Improved to Good Article status by PARAKANYAA (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has less than 5 past nominations.

PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:33, 10 August 2024 (UTC).

• As an WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim, it being the only such English source will need exceptional sourcing, such as more references backing it up. Otherwise, the hook can't run as it is likely to be challenged. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 13:14, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
  • Fair enough I guess. I can't think of any other hooks so I withdraw this. PARAKANYAA (talk) 15:22, 28 August 2024 (UTC)