Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:18, 30 March 2007

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Hello, Abridged, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place {{helpme}} after the question on your talk page. Again, welcome!  W3stfa11/ 06:43, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Welcome!

No problem. Let me know if you need any help getting around this jungle... wiki. :) W3stfa11/ 23:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Rajan Sankaran

Nominated him for deletion because I hoped it would spur people on to rework the article - it's pretty awful at present, and really stagnant. Also, you're the first to point out his notability in any coherent way =) Adam Cuerden 19:49, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Sankaran is actually a pretty big gun in the homeopathic world. :=) Abridged 20:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Notability of Robin Murphy

A tag has been placed on Robin Murphy, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Misplaced Pages. This has been done because the article seems to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in Misplaced Pages. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert notability may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, and if you can indicate why the subject of this article is notable, you may contest the tagging. To do this, add {{hangon}} on the top of the page (below the existing db tag) and leave a note on the article's talk page explaining your position. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm its subject's notability under the guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Hatch68 21:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

For the record, this page was up for about 5 minutes before it was deleted. It was a stub. It did indicate how the subject was notable--as an author of reference books that are considered to be standard in Homeopathy. Abridged 21:29, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Arr... Actually, there was an old version, which is likely why it got deleted so quickly. The old one was a straight advertising piece. Also made claims about him being the most widely-known teacher of homeopathy that weren't supported by any source or popularity check I could come up with, at least that dealt with him having a relatively common name. ('"Robin Murphy" Homeopathy', with quotes around his name to remove chance hits, gets only 873 hits, for instance. Obviously, google hits aren't everything, but that was the only real assertion of notability) Is he really notable? Adam Cuerden 09:52, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Adam, I have subsequently learned that you had deleted a previous page on Robin Murphy. I was able to save a draft version since it was deleted while I still was actively working on it and had it in cache. You can look at it and see what you think. Hatch68 and the deleting Admin (who has quite a collection of pages on rugby players he apparantly does find notable), did not even read the page they speedily deleted because the reason for speedy deletion that Hatch68 placed on the page was completely bogus. Abridged 12:10, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I've undeleted it. Do you want to see the old version that got deleted before you? There may be... something... worth keeping from it. Adam Cuerden 16:58, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks and sure. Abridged 17:00, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

They're at User_talk:Abridged/OldRobinMurphy - I gave two versions - my last version, removing statements that as far as I could tell were unsupported or advertising, and the version before my edits, with a couple comments. Adam Cuerden 18:00, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, all I can say is that I agree with your comments wholeheartedly. I think he is actually a well known teacher, but there was a lot of hyperbole and worse. I am not sure there is much there worth saving. I'm not sure where he went to school undergrad. One bio says Michigan State and one says Ann Arbor so I just put "michigan" in the version I did. The Abha Light stuff--who knows? I'll google it. The newspaper interviews are kind of thin. The school thesis and scholarship probably not so relevant to mention, but maybe they should go back. Please add what you feel should be there as well. Abridged 18:33, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

"Well-known" is a fairly woolly term, and for a given value of "well", he probably fits. But, "one of the most well-known"? No. To be honest, I'm distrustful of anything on that page, and would be more inclined to just make use of the links. Adam Cuerden 18:44, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I completely agree. please go ahead and add the links you want to salvage. I took what I wanted already. Abridged 18:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

edit template

To edit the template, just head on over to Template:Homoeopathy. Here's another way to link to the template. {{Homoeopathy}} Templates are changed with new stuff, so be sure the content you want to add is important enough to be in the template. W3stfa11/ 15:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Do you...

...regularly attack people that agree with you? If anything, I was laughing off the notion of it being a spam article. We are all working together to build a good encyclopedia and throwing around accusations of biting is going to do little to help that cause and, instead, kinda trounces on WP:AGF. You are going to win this DRV. Now focus on convincing other users as to why the article should survive a future AfD (if it even comes to be at all) rather than questioning the motivations of great users like Guy and cranky gnomish admins like me :) youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 22:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, I go tthe impression from your message that you think that I had not bothered to read your deleted article. I had. Admins can look at deleted content and usually do so before weighing in on any DRV. youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 22:58, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge?

Hey, Abridged, do you think it's worth fusing Homeopathic proving and Homeopathic Materia Medica (and possibly Homeopathic repertory, which is a mixture of the Materia Medica and clinical experience, though merging it all into Materia Medica, which has large sections not on might be a bit far.

I ask mainly because the Materia Medica is a collection of Homeopathic proving reports, so the information about homeopathic proving is necessary to understand it anyway.

Oh, also, I merged Homeopathic Materia Medica and Materia Medica Pura - we can resplit 'em later, but it made sense to talk about the first homeopathic Materia Medica in the article about them, and M.M.P. was a very short article once you lost the listiness. Adam Cuerden 23:30, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

(lost the listiness: It used to have this huge list of links to the articles about the bases for the remedies in it, few of which mentioned homeopathic use anyway. It was removed after some discussion.) Adam Cuerden 23:32, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Hey there Adam, Proving, materia medica, and repertory all are fundamentally different topics each deserving their own article. They are all interrelated (as you note), but should have separate articles. I haven't really looked at them, so I don't know if they are good or not. Totally ok and a good idea to fuse the other two. I was thinking along the same lines, actually. Abridged 23:36, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Right-o! Adam Cuerden 16:59, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. One thought, though: Homeopathic proving will presumably expand and change eventually. Why don't we add in its current, short version to Materia Medica now (keeping it as an article), then let them diverge over time? Good idea or bad? Adam Cuerden 16:02, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

...On the other hand, it's not a very good article, is it? (Though I must admit the last paragraph makes me laugh.) Adam Cuerden 16:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it is a bad idea. "Proving" is a basic methodology in homeopathy (and I haven't gotten around to looking at the article and working on it, but I soon will). Materia medica is a collection of description of remedies based on the proving reports and also on observations of patient cases. The place where "proving" and "materia medica" belong together is the larger homeopathy article (with callouts to their own articles), becuase they are part and parcel of the larger homeopathic method. Merging them into one article by themselves just doesn't work. Think merging and article on the "scientific method" with articles on results of various experiments done by using the method. Extreme example, but it just doesn't work. Please don't do it. Consider having some patience and letting the articles improve. I honestly applaud what you are doing to make the articles better, but I think you are going too far to merge and delete. The deletions cause problems when someone comes along to innocently write a new article on the subject and find it is immediately regarded as suspicitious becaue prior article was deleted (recent Robin Murphy situation). Abridged 16:30, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I looked at the article. It is pretty stubby, but I don't think is is really bad. It cites two standard texts; that is good. The last paragraph of course needs a cite. In placebo controlled trials of medicaions, the placebo folks will often have a response or side effects similar to the intervention group. This in itself is not interesting without a statistical analysis to see if the groups are sig different. And of course when authors get unexpected results they attempt to figure out why that is happening and explain this in terms that they know and understand. I think this is what the homoepaths are doing. It is a little funny from a standard scientific and medical perspective, however, I'll give you that :=). Abridged 16:46, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Homeopathy Template

Sorry, I've been the only one working on it for a while, so I didn't actually realise there was anyone else to talk to about it.

Basically, the changes I made were:

• Swapped Materia Medica for more relevant Homeopathic Materia Medica. Materia Medica is only secondarily homeopathy-related.
• Per a merge and cleanup, removed Materia Medica Pura
• Removed Herbalism as not strongly related to homeopathy.
• A little category name tweaking for appearance reasons.

Adam Cuerden 23:35, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Could we get rid of anthrosopohy? Abridged 23:37, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough

I see where there may have been confusion. 'Round here, people (at least in practice) criticize articles, edits, categorization schemes, etc., but not other editors personally. Anyone saying that the article was "spammy" (and note that I was joking about the comment at the DRV and not saying that the article was spammy) was criticizing the article and not you as a person or even as a Wikipedian. Sometimes, however, that gets lost on newer users (hell, I've been guilty of getting offended myself). That is why we all spout the "assume good Fatah" mantra, as it is easier to just assume the best possible meaning of a comment and move on rather than tell the person what you really feel about them (which can be oh so tempting at times. Guy, for one, has made me want to pull my hair out at times, but he genuinely has the best interests of the project at heart. As for your article, I will give it a good look as soon as the DRv finishes (it will be restored, I imagine) and give it a spit polishing and offer you constructive criticism. Cheers. youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 23:41, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes admins go overboard (I'm sure that I have myself). We literally get thousands of new articles from new users every day that are either from people trying to sell their crappy home-published book or that say stuff like "mr roberts is the best teacher and is soooo cool. he also came up with all of the ideas for star wars." In defending the integruity of Misplaced Pages, we clean 'em out with a flamethrower. Sometimes, we go too far and, hence, DRV. I'm just glad that the whole experience hasn't turned you off. We always need bright folks like you to stick around. youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 23:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Cool. Whenever working on a rticle gets stressful (ie this DRV) try working on something completely opposite fo your usual stuff. I see you like homeopathy, so try working on Rupert, Idaho or Harry Hill or Transportation in Sri Lanka whenever things get too stressful in your usualy field. If you ever have any questions, just give me a yell. youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 00:20, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Welcomes

Hi, noting the point you raised, anyone can add a welcome to a new user, or indeed to an anon. A list of handy templates is given at Misplaced Pages:Welcoming committee/Welcome templates/Table, feel free to apply them whenever you think appropriate. Welcome! from dave souza, talk 09:48, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Homeopathy Wikiproject

It looks good, and I believe there's interest. The NPOV'll be the hardest one to maintain, though. Have to watch the pages, as, well, it's not uncommon for someone to go in and weaken some criticism, change wording to remove or diminish the scientific point of view, etc. (For instance, the other day, some anonymous user claimed a homeopathic product ha d been allowed back on the market after having been yanked under advertising standards. Luckily, the Australian governmental webpage in question was very detailed about everything that department was looking into, so I could quickly disprove that as true, but... Adam Cuerden 22:30, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is very important to guard against that kind of stuff. Do you know if Misplaced Pages-wise I have to go through some process to approve it, or can I just stick it up? Abridged 23:13, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Looking at WP:PROJECT, looks like you can go ahead and just do it! Adam Cuerden 23:26, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Prod Removal

Fair enough. I'll wait a couple of days before filing AFD's on them, in order to give you a chance to find reliable sources for the articles. In particular I am concerned about E. B. Nash, whose article consists of a single sentence. Also of concern, now that I look at it, is B. Jain, which, other than not demonstrating notability, is a pretty clear violation of WP:SPAM, WP:NPOV, and very probably several other policies. Cheers, Skinwalker 13:44, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I totally agree about those articles 100%, but I dont' think there is any need to impose tight deadlines and I feel that adding the prod templates all over the place is a bit confrontational. I am concerned about the deletions becuase of what happened here: Misplaced Pages:Deletion review/Log/2007 March 26#Robin Murphy. I came along an innocently wrote a new article on this guy because I thought he should have one and BAMM! it was deleted in 3 minutes (look at the logs; I'm not even kidding). The former deletion had raised a suspiction about the new article, but the new article was a pefectly reasonable stub. I don't think this really should happen again. Jain probably deserves an article--they are a huge publisher of homeopathic books in India and the books are used internationally, but of course Misplaced Pages shouldn't advertise. Why not take the Jain article down to a stub due to the reasonable concerns you raise rather than asking for the article to be deleted? I'll put some more info on Nash, but have some other items on my agenda as well. Abridged 13:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I understand your concern about too-speedy deletions - I would never prod an article that was obviously a work in progress, and the Robin Murphy deletion was clearly an example of overzealousness. The articles I prodded were short, abandoned articles that did not demonstrate notability, and rudimentary googling indicated that there were not reliable sources to be found. I will refrain from setting a timetable for your sources, out of courtesy, but these articles must eventually be improved or deleted. I stubbed B. Jain per your suggestion, hopefully a good article can be made of it. Cheers, Skinwalker 14:18, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

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