Wikipedia talk:Featured article review/Intelligent design/archive2

Readers of this page are advised that the vast majority of edits on it are by DLH, and not by the editors he has ascribed them to. They may or may not reflect the current opinion of the editor, or the context in which the comments were made. --Michael Johnson 04:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

FA1 Review Criteria

Please SUMMARIZE Review/Editorial Issues and Actions in this outline. (NO VOTING List/Delist here) One to two lines per person per criterion please. Leave/place long discussion elsewhere. Put detail in the project page. DLH 05:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

TOO LATE THIS IS ALREADY CLOSED Take a look at this. Oh well. Fun while it lasted, wasn't it?--Filll 04:46, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

FA1a Is it well written?

• 1. Is it well written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral and stable?

• Improve prose. It evidences edit wars. Needs systematic editing, compaction. DLH 05:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• Needs improvement. There are still plenty of weak sentences and the whole is not well organized. --FOo

06:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

• Tighten up prose: (Abecedare)

FA1b Comprehensive?

• (b) Is it "Comprehensive", not neglecting major facts and details?

• Missing sections: Assumptions, Evolution limits, Predictions, and Discrimination. Science Demarcation needs Stephen Myers major paper.DLH 05:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• No problem. These matters are covered; they're just not well organized. --FOo 06:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• Missing professional philosophy (rtc)

• Highly US Centric (Eusebeus)
• more work on non-US elements (JoshuaZ)

FA1c Is it Factually accurate with inline and reference citations?

• Mixed: Major errors needing correcting. See comments moved to discussionDLH 05:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• Largely accurate. "Major errors" is an exaggeration. --FOo 06:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• Style issues. "style issues, especially with citations (for example providing publisher, year of publication etc,"(Abecedare)
• Cleanup. "external links could probably use a cleanup too with regard to guidelines." (Morphh)

FA1d Is it Neutral-Fair & without bias?

• Endemic anti-ID bias deleting statements of ID positions: Frequently states critics' but not ID positions. “Owners” rarely allow corrections or improvements. DLH 04:31, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
• Content fine; style lacking. The heckling tone, in which every piece of information about what ID people think is immediately rebutted, gives the appearance of a work of debunking, not an encyclopedia article. Featured articles about controversial topics do not adopt this tone. --FOo 06:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• worst example of how not to hammer out an NPOV compromise (SandyGeorgia)

FA1e Is it Stable, w/o edit wars?

• Poor: Ongoing edit wars with frequent revisions by “owners”.DLH
• Shouldn't be. This article needs a lot of development still, which is being resisted out of (somewhat justified) fear of biased editors wrecking it. --FOo 06:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

FA2 Does it comply with style manual, WikiProjects?

FA2a Has it a concise summary?

• Imbalanced summary: Lead section fails to summarize major positions. Excessive detail on issues in the lead. DLH 05:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• Does not summarize. Lead does introduce the article but does not summarize the material in it. --FOo 06:35, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• Excessive intro-too many references (Eusebeus)
• Better summarize the article. (Morphh)

FA2b Has it Hierarchical headings?

• Fair hierarchy: Needs rearranging. Eg Origins, PositionsDLH 05:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• Very bad. The top-level sections do not seem to be well chosen, nor the second-level sections well-arranged within them. --FOo 06:35, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

FA2c Has it a substantial table of contents?

• Fix Peer Review: This needs to be moved up one level. Separate out Scientific Research.DLH 05:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• No (independent) problem. The TOC is just an index of the sections. --FOo 06:35, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

FA2d Has it consistent inline formatting with inline/end citations?

• References need compaction, improvementDLH 05:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• Excessive in lead; otherwise fine. --FOo 06:35, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• external link farm, and incorrectly formatted citations. (SandyGeorgia)

FA3. Has it images & media?

• Prefer more images: Sundial helps. Add Behe's mousetrap, flagella, Dembski's filter. DLH 05:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• Unnecessary. Images as suggested are not appropriate to the subject; they are mere icons. --FOo 06:35, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

FA4. Is the length reasonable and is it focused

• Excessively long: "Redundant repetition" should be compacted. Summarize longer sections & move to their own page.DLH 05:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• Length due to verbosity. Tightening up the prose would fix the length. No detail needs to be trimmed. --FOo 06:35, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

---

Readers of this page are advised that the vast majority of edits on it are by DLH, and not by the editors he has ascribed them to. They may or may not reflect the current opinion of the editor, or the context in which the comments were made. --Michael Johnson 04:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC) Exact quotes used - I tried to summarize statements by various "(editors)" by exact quotes. Time to do your homework Michael.DLH 04:22, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, this is a biased confused mess that you have barfed out here on the page. Great job.--Filll 04:36, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

FAR closed???, discussion moved/restored

Again, this FAR was closed days ago. Please to do not to continue to edit this page, it is supposed to be record of the discussion leading up to the FAR being closed. Since DLH wants to continue on with this discussion, I've created a subpage in his userspace and moved his recent new sections rehashing this there, User talk:DLH/Featured article review Intelligent design, in order to preserve this page a record of the discussion and minimize the disruption endless rehashing of this will have on the rest of the project. Anyone who wants to continue this discussion can do so there or in their own userspace, but this is not the appropriate place. FeloniousMonk 06:37, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I will confess. I am plenty confused.--Filll 18:25, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

A little more investigation just revealed to me that this FAR was indeed closed on July 20 by User:BozMo: [1]. Unfortunately, the notice at the top of the Talk:Intelligent design page has not been updated accordingly.--Filll 18:44, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the research and clarification. Yes, it's been re-opened. Personally I think BozMo was respecting consensus. The regular FA reviewers including the director appear to have reached some kind of internal consensus to let it proceed, citing among-other-things the potential to give stronger standing to the article's content in the future when it might again be subject to POV pushing of one kind or another. ... Kenosis 19:54, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Well the research did not clarify anything, but only lead me into this murky mess. If we do let it proceed, we can always in the future point to the fact that it had a full review, and the FAR was not cut short. However, I have yet to see anything other than some nit-picking and minor grammar issues. The price is that people have to put energy into answering the charges and complaints and questions and griping, some of which are identical to things that have been addressed dozens of times already.--Filll 20:18, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

This outline is to SUMMARIZE statements for ease of evaluation. The one on the Project page is for Detail. So restored it here after FM's wayward wanderings.DLH 04:22, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I am glad to know that DLH has taken upon himself to organize and completely direct the FAR procedure, according to his own requirements and specifications, cutting and pasting assorted dismissed boilerplate nonsense on every page he can find. Great.--Filll 04:31, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Wow so it really isn't closed

Man oh man, now I *AM* confused. Well, um...what do I respond to that? Good heavens. Isn't anyone in charge?--Filll 19:42, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Ignore that [hu]man behind the curtain. It was semiofficially closed, then quasiofficially reopened, citing tradition, but is presently placed as an active archive available for further editing. A "break" was declared, then DLH proposed a new format for the FAR; Marskell moved it to the FAR talk page, an "anon IP" from the midwest US moved it back, and I moved it back again to the talk page. DLH moved it back to both the talk page and the project page; FeloniousMonk took the more-or-less duplicate part that was on the talk page off the talk page and put it on DLH's page, citing userfication and noting that the FAR had been closed already, possibly thinking that the "archive2" was actually an archive (silly of him, right?). Whether intentionally or not, this left DLH's approach on the project page, and AFAIK neither Marskell, who was in this morning to have a look, nor anyone else including myself has chosen to complain at this point or actively contest DLH's approach, which I think should properly have been implemented at the beginning of the FAR, if at all (no?). Then I myself moved a newly developing mass of material, about how French and German Wikipedians write their lead sections, onto the talk page, susequently moved to the ID talk page. I can't seem to figure out who's who, who's advocating what, who's working with whom, who's on who's side and who's not, if indeed that matters at all, and who's doing what, nor how we're to proceed, how we're expected to proceed, and by whom, nor how the decisions have been made, nor how they will be expected to be made in the future. I wanted to let off some of the steam about the situation, so I began by conceptualizing it as it might be seen from the POV of everybody's opponents, critics, and detractors, and it ended up looking like this pictorial parody of the situation as seen from the eyes of everybody's detractors, including mine, and including those of the hard working FA community. I hope no one's terribly offended, because what we have in common is that the procedure is confusing to almost everybody, and fully understood by no one AFAICS. I figure it's summertime and community common sense just went on a little vacation. I fully trust that these many procedural confusions can arrive at a reasonable conclusion in the end. At the moment, though, nobody appears to be quite sure how this will happen.

In the meantime, a bunch of little stuff has been improved in the article, I think, ongoing POV arguments notwithstanding. And the footnotes, which previously were consistent and thus met the FA criterion about being well cited with a consistent reference format, are now inconsistent and in transition to a template-based reference format with form fields. But these too, I trust, will become consistent enough again in due course. Either way, the clear consensus, despite protests from the FA community that "that's not the way we do it", clearly has been that the article is a valid FA even as it presently is, as well as as it was at the beginning of the FAR. So personally, I trust that the various little improvements will continue to be implemented through whenever the FAR does end, and perhaps beyond its closing. ... Kenosis 20:04, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind if they keep it open. This is all just sort of confusing to me.--Filll 20:18, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind either, except in that it becomes a forum for POV-based content disputes that are mostly related to the DI propaganda still actively being circulated. And also, the assertions of a few that, essentially, certain things must clear everybody's approval, when that's not the way WP works, simply is a time-consuming nuisance. I've not a doubt about the good faith intentions of the FA regulars. But this confusion about whether it's judged by committee, or is a "one veto knocks it out" system, or is actually consensus based, and if so, on what issues is it consensus based, etc., etc., has turned out to be not-too-well suited for dealing with controversial articles such as the current one that involves multiple aspects of controversy and some aspects of inherent deception related to its use as a legal strategy and such (unlike, say, Evolution). This is, of course, in addition to the kinds of POV problems and terminology problems that frequently occur with articles concerning philosophy, religion and such (note that there aren't many of those on the featured article list, incidentally-- often they're just tough to write about and hard to define the POV lines for purposes of assessing NPOV). Anyway, if it'll help to improve the article further, great. Either way, the decision (note the cautious use of passive voice here) apparently has already been made. ... Kenosis 20:35, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

We have ample evidence that the DI and its associated supporters and institutions want desperately to turn the WP articles into religious tracts. I do not blame them for being a bit desperate. The Dover trial result looked fairly bad, and they have been denouncing Judge Jones as just an ignorant stooge, and a closet filthy liberal, and "legislating from the bench", etc, and Jones has even received multiple death threats associated with the decision. In Australia, the UK, France, Poland, the Netherlands, Macedonia etc they have suffered political setbacks. In Turkey an associated organization has been very successful, but are not really controllable and in fact are even more anxious to denounce intelligent design and Christianity than they are interested in attacking evolution, so this is not really a "win" for them, since intelligent design was really never anything but a slick method for pushing Christianity. Then on google searches, of the top ten searches, only one is pro-DI and pro-ID. The number one hit, last I checked, is this article. The fact that anyone can edit it is very inviting of course. How easy to generate an army of 5, 10, 20 or more meat puppets and/or sock puppets? Sounds perfect to them, I am sure!

I agree with you that it is a pain to have to continue to defend against assorted attacks, none of which seem to have any substance to me. That flurry of postings in the last day or so were just completely comical, confusing the POV expressed on the talk pages with NPOV of the article, and using plenty of POV to do it. If these challenges are not met, however, not only will the article lose its gold star (which I do not care so much about), but they will be emboldened to demand changes to the article itself.--Filll 21:00, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea what's going on here, but whatever it is, it's inappropriate. The FAR was closed by an administrator as "keep." It was then re-opened by an editor who had seriously abused the writers of the article during the previous discussion, and is in a personal dispute with one of them. I've asked her to remove herself from the situation. I suggest this be left closed, and that we move on before the situation becomes any more confusing or toxic. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 05:02, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

IMHO, this thing is closed and dead. A couple of POV-pushers are attempting to keep it open. I'm ignoring it, but when I saw SV here, I assumed something was up. I was wrong, she was stating what I believe is true. Orangemarlin 18:11, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

High time to protect the page I'd say. See what we've had to put with at the ID articles. Odd nature 18:15, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Experiment, made more explicit

The following discussion now moved to this talk page, as it's irrelevant to the FAR per se. If people think it should be on Talk:Intelligent design instead, feel free to move it there. Thanks. ... Kenosis 18:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I am moving it to Talk:Intelligent design accordingly. Thanks--Filll 18:46, 23 July 2007 (UTC)