Talk:Yoism
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Should there be a page Yoism?
- Idiosyncratic "faith". Just because a person has a website an a weird idea for a new religion doesn't mean we should have an article on that. There are no independent sources of information on this "faith" and it doesn't pass the 5,000 person rule of thumb. This is beyond silly and is in fact an attempt at proselytizing and giving far more credibility to a "new faith" than it deserves. --mav 19:23 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)~
- Hmmm...seems like this article about a new religion offended mav for some reason. I wonder why? OverZealousFan
- He's told you why, and I'm inclined to agree with him. Evercat 19:43 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- He's told me why it should be removed, but not why it offended him. Anyway, I can see some validity in the argument about why it should be removed, but I don't see any reason to get offended. And while I can understand the arguments for removal, and I'm considering them, I'm not sure. Does it add value to an encyclopedia to remove small topics? It seems to me nothing is lost by including them, as long as their existence doesn't effect negatively the clarity and organization of other topics, which, it seems to me, it doesn't have to. Anyway, I've long marvelled at the beauty of the opensource process, and the speed with which this issue seems to have been addressed is just amazing. Within minutes people where objecting and removing links and deleting the topic I had added. I think that is great. Shows the power of this whole idea. OverZealousFan
- Me too. Perhaps the contributor can come back in a few years when Yoism is famous and successful and write a big article about it. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an advertisement. -- ESP 20:02 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- I've got to remember that slogan. --mav
- This is an interesting act of censorship! "Beyond silly" is the most interesting part of the syndrome! Idiosyncratic (http://www.bartleby.com/61/25/I0022500.html) deserves at least a footnote to a dictionary. [1] (http://www.bartleby.com/61/25/I0022500.html) Hence, in the interests of improving the Wikipedia NPOV process, I vote for retention. Rednblu 20:09 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Censorship! Ha! So I can create a website on my cat and then because that website exists I can create a Wikipedia article about my cat? Give me a break. This is the micronation thing again but even more ridiculous. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a place to advance idiosyncratic faiths - the burden is on the author to prove that their "faith" merits inclusion in the cannon of human knowledge. --mav
- I wouldn't mind keeping these articles (though one with a redirect might be better), but I do object to the original contributor sprinkling links to them all over Wikipedia; that strikes me as more like advertising. See also the discussion at the Village Pump on this topic. --Delirium 20:20 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- I vote for deletion. Mintguy 20:45 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Whether yoism is "beyond silly" is an irrelevance. We have an entry on Discordianism and similar nonsense religions, as we should. The important question is whether it is sufficiently important to warrant an article in Wikipedia. This has not been demonstrated. Martin 09:57 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Hmmm...what is the metric for inclusion here? There are a lot of important ideas that only a few people know about. Infact that is the reason for the existance of an encylopedia, to organize and provide knowledge, knowledge that a layperson would consider esoteric. There are many very important physics theories that only a handfull of physicists have ever heard of, or understand. Does that mean they are unimportant? That they shouldn't be included in wikipedia. I would argue that honest and objective articles improve the value of wikipedia, *except* when they reduce the value of other articles. So little known theories ought to be included, as long as they don't obscure the more important articles. From a user's point of view this is the logical approach. If someone has a particular interest and they can research that line of interest more deeply because there are detailed articles, this improves the value of the wikipedia, as long as it doesn't make it more difficult for people with a more general interest to find the information that they are looking for.
- You are not convincing anybody. Most votes are for deletion so I suggest you try to satisfy at least one of Martin's criteria expressed on the talk page. Otherwise this page will be deleted. --mav
- That is an interesting way to avoid actually engaging in a constructive conversation: just claim the other person isn't convincing anybody and ignore their point. As an alternative you might consider trying to respond to the points that people bring up?
- Delete jimfbleak
- You are not convincing anybody. Most votes are for deletion so I suggest you try to satisfy at least one of Martin's criteria expressed on the talk page. Otherwise this page will be deleted. --mav
- Hmmm...what is the metric for inclusion here? There are a lot of important ideas that only a few people know about. Infact that is the reason for the existance of an encylopedia, to organize and provide knowledge, knowledge that a layperson would consider esoteric. There are many very important physics theories that only a handfull of physicists have ever heard of, or understand. Does that mean they are unimportant? That they shouldn't be included in wikipedia. I would argue that honest and objective articles improve the value of wikipedia, *except* when they reduce the value of other articles. So little known theories ought to be included, as long as they don't obscure the more important articles. From a user's point of view this is the logical approach. If someone has a particular interest and they can research that line of interest more deeply because there are detailed articles, this improves the value of the wikipedia, as long as it doesn't make it more difficult for people with a more general interest to find the information that they are looking for.
Soapbox or advertisement?
Yoism is a great religion. Why not check out the site before you condemn it. Besides, it supports popular and even universal ideas, such as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, democracy, and also it gives its members great freedom by including empiricism as a means of knowing the truth. It is also pantheist. Since all of you seem to be caught up in condemning anything illogical, then get this, pantheism is prominent among scientists, such as many of you are likely to be. You ought to promote Yoism and the whole Yo thing rather than condemn it.
- Wikipedia is not a soapbox or an advertisement. --mav
- The empirical evidence (http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Maveric149) indicates that Wikipedia is a soapbox and advertisement for the biased cultural values that motivate the suppression (http://www.bartleby.com/61/80/S0908000.html) of opposing viewpoints.
- Clearly Wikipedia is a soapbox for some of the open-source cultural values that, for example, the Encyclopedia Britannica site--perhaps unknowingly--suppresses. Furthermore, Wikipedia is an advertisement for the cultural values that favor a "scientific point-of-view" over a Pseudoscience view.
- Thus, our only choice is to decide which cultural values we will allow Wikipedia to be a soapbox and advertisement for. That is the conversation that this continued censorship of what you cognize as "advertisement" suppresses. Rednblu 13:41 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)
One thing I like about Wikipedia is that goof-off ideas like this can end up being pretty good articles. It's a shame to see that effort go into something that's going to be deleted, but it shows that Wiki Works. -- ESP 20:04 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Yoism evangelism? Or is Yoism an interesting topic worth an article?
User:68.162.218.43 (Contributions) added Yoism and Yo, apparently an "opensource religion", and is now inserting "see also" references to it in numerous places, from Atheism to Deism to Agnosticism and Humanism. These edits are factually correct, insofar as "Yoism" appears to be considered a religion at least by some, and some of its tenets are indeed similar to some of those other "isms", but it still seems out of place, because it's so obscure as to not really merit a mention in the articles on more well-known topics (IMO). Do we have a policy on removing factually correct but obscure/irrelevant information (especially when that information appears to be added by an overzealous fan of the topic in question)? I could go through and revert all the edits, but wanted to ask what others though first. --Delirium 18:45 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- sorry for all the links, I didn't think through that it might harm the purpose of wikipedia. I think a discussion is warranted about where and how linking to an relatively obscure topic, fromless obscure topics which are clearly related, makes sense. -- user:OverZealousFan
- Well, just MHO, but yeah, I think reverting is the right thing to do unless the reference is highly relavent. But you might want to wait for other's input first. —Frecklefoot 18:57 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Oops, didn't see this. I've already done most of the reversion (one by one, not sysop-fast-revert :-) Evercat 19:01 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- A quick google search find that this is idiosyncratic nonsense "open+source+religion"%20yo (http://www.google.com/search?qs=) and should be deleted Mintguy 19:04 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- I'm not sure how this link demonstrates that it is idiosyncratic nonsense. A better search would be to look for Yoism, since Yo is such a common word
- "open source religion yoism" brings up 13 hits. Yoism itself brings up little over a hundred. Evercat 19:13 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- google:Yoism -site:yoism.org got me 18 non-duplicate hits, not all of which concerned the religion.
- Well I'm the over zealous fan. He he. I only put the links in where I they where relevant, and I thought people would indeed be interested in them. Perhaps instead of removing them, it would make more sense to move them to a less prominent point on the page. Someone who is interested in Humanism, Atheism, Deism, seems like there is a high likely hood that they would be interested in reading a little bit more about a Religious philosophy based on these things. I think what we want to avoid is the implication that Yoism is more important than it is. On the other hand it seems to maintain some (less prominent) link on each page is called for because it is relevant, people may want to find it.
- Well I see the Yoism page has been deleted without any real conversation. This seems unfortunate because it was an honest attempt to provide information about an inovative religious community that really does pertain to the topics linked to it. If there is a little known scientific theory, does that mean the theory is invalid, or does not deserve a mention in appropriate ways. Little things are not by their very nature irrelevant. They are just little. user:OverZealousFan
Criteria for being a legitimate page
There are various ways that our resident yoist might demonstrate that hir nascent religion is worthy of an encyclopedia article:
- Estimated number of adherents worldwide, from a reputable poll or census. If it's several thousand, then yoism might be worth including on that basis alone. (edit: add the word "alone)
- (copied from votes for deletion discussion because it seems relevant) Hmmm...why is this an important metric for inclusion? There are a lot of important ideas that only a few people know about. Infact that is the reason for the existance of an encylopedia, to organize and provide knowledge, knowledge that a layperson would consider esoteric. There are many very important physics theories that only a handfull of physicists have ever heard of, or understand. Does that mean they are unimportant? That they shouldn't be included in wikipedia. I would argue that honest and objective articles improve the value of wikipedia, *except* when they reduce the value of other articles. So little known theories ought to be included, as long as they don't obscure the more important articles. From a user's point of view this is the logical approach. If someone has a particular interest and they can research that line of interest more deeply because there are detailed articles, this improves the value of the wikipedia, as long as it doesn't make it more difficult for people with a more general interest to find the information that they are looking for. I think the same argument applies to religion --user:OverZealousFan
- Is it part of a wider open source religion movement? If so, we could mention yoism on a page on that topic, though we'd not want a page specifically on yoism.
- Has it had an important impact on the life of someone about whom we would reasonably expect to have a biography, or was it founded by such a person? If so, it could be briefly described in the relevant biography - though again, we'd not want a seperate page.
- Has it had an important impact on a particular place? If so, include it in the article on that place - again, no seperate page.
I hope this helps. Martin 10:07 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Sorry but I have to agree with MyRedDice. The article on Yoism is not, as it stands
an honest attempt to provide information about an innovetive religious community"
reading the article tells me only what Yoists believe, not who and where they are. When, where and why did Yoism develop? What influenced the development and how? etc. Ping 08:05 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Well give the article some time before deleting it and you may see it become more complete. How many articles start off really small and incomplete and then gradually grow as the origional author has time to keep working on it, and as more authors contribute? Isn't this the whole idea? --user:OverZealousFan
I'm pro-YO. If the claim of yoism as the first opensource religion holds true, this is non-trivial and reason enough to not delete it. Not because of the number of adherents, but because of the energizing appeal of the idea. This is Linus Torvalds + Pet Rocks + New Age. This is viral. This is a Wired Magazine article pre-existing in the time before time. Fellow Wikipedians, what is so great about Wikipedia? A number of things, one being that Wikipedia absolutely rules as the encyclopedia of popular culture. What could be more pop culture than opensource religion? I say, embrace the 'YO'. If it fails to generate buzz over the next 6 months, delete it then... technopilgrim 19:36 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Wikipedia is not a soapbox or place of advocacy of any kind. That isn't going to change. --mav 19:58 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- I don't think this is at issue here. Nobody, as far as I know, is arguing for this to change. If this changed I would likely not be interested in wikipedia (as it would just fill up with useless junk) --user:OverZealousFan
Does Wikipedia advocate by inclusion?
Inclusion is not advocacy. Advocacy relates to content and why are we worried that the forces of NPOV will not prevail here? technopilgrim 20:04 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- NPOV cannot operate because there is no way to independently verify information. That is why there is not an article about my cat. You state that we should keep this article because of the "energizing appeal of the idea" - that is rather POV and having this article in Wikipedia gives this "idea" some sort of credibility. We do not accept any idea just because somebody has it - the relative merits of the idea are irrelevant. --mav 20:20 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)
To quote #6 at What Wikipedia is not: "Go to Usenet if you want to convince people of the merits of your favorite views--and good luck." I agree with Martin's plan - how about you work on meeting one of his criteria? --mav 20:23 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- How about this criteria: Historically relevent as the first open source religion. The idea of applying open source principles to religion has been catching on in a number of different religious traditions, http://www.opensourcejudaism.com, and http://www.opensourcetheology.net, Yoism, is the very first, and is interesting in that regard. -- user:OverZealousFan
- Then let history decide. If your "faith" becomes popular then we will include an article on it. --mav
- And popular is *the* important metric because...? You have yet to justify this. Please see above argument.
Is Yoism a hoax?
On re-reading the article on Yoism I wonder if the whole thing is a hoax? Apparantly quite a successful one in view of the controversy it has stirred up. But only funny once; OK? Ping 00:20 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- If it's a hoax, it's an extremely elaborate one, involving plastering my entire neighborhood (Central Square, Cambridge, MA) with their posters... DanKeshet 00:38 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Nope not a hoax. I've been going to Yoan Gatherings for the last few years in the Boston area. There is a small extended internet community of about 80 people, and about 30 people who attend Yo gatherings, though that number has been increasing recently (which I've enjoyed). Anyway, not even close the 5,000 person number at this point. If you have any other questions, or need for "concrete" information that is not on the www.yoism.org website just ask and I'd be happy to suppy you with answers. --user:OverZealousFan
- So about a hundred people. More peole know about my cat. Bin it. --mav
Thanks DanKeshet for the first piece of concrete information about Yoism, apparantly some of its adherents have visited and/or vandalized Central Square Cambridge, Ma. I have never seen any posters in NZ, why have we been left out? How did we get so lucky? Ping 00:51 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Your nastiness about a group I've been participating in hurts my feelings a little, but I'll get over it. This is the internet after all ;-) --user:OverZealousFan
Issue of verification of text on page
Mav, you claim there's no way to independently verify information on this group and therefore no NPOV can exist. I don't follow this argument, please explain why you don't think information on this group is verifiable (important because it was just when you were making this claim that Mav's cat (http://battleforums.com/history/show/18763.html) entered the thread). If I lived in the Boston area and I saw the Yoism posters up around town I'd be pleased to find a concise description on Wikipedia. What would give me heartburn is if the Yoists added a lot of links to Yoism from articles that bear little relation to open source theology -- that's what I would view as advocacy and I agree we shouldn't tolerate it. But simple inclusion holds merit to my thinking (and I have no association with this group) -- technopilgrim 01:26 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- It would be verifiable if several different newspapers wrote about it after doing their own investigative reporting, for example. As it is all we have is the word of the adherents. Therefore NPOV cannot operate. Which means we cannot have the article here. Tick, toc, tick toc - deletion is in a matter of days - do try and answer Martin's criteria. --mav
- I don't follow how the article is not NPOV. I've read over it a couple times and there is not comment like "Yoism is the best religion in the world", which obviously has a POV. We find these things all the time without needing to independently research the actual topic. It is easy to tell if something is worded in a biased way. This article does not have biased wordings as I read it. It may be written by a small group of crackpots who are only 80 large but I don't see how that matters from a point of view standpoint. -- Ram-Man
- How does deletion work? I don't see anything approaching agreement that the topic should be deleted, or that the criteria listed are the correct criteria, or even that they are unfulfilled by Yoism. It would seem bizarre if it was deleted right in the middle of an ongoing conversation, even though no agreement or clear vote was taken.
- Just because two pro-Yo people keep on talking and talking without proving their case means nothing. We are primarily consensus driven here and the consensus is that this page should go. There is already a great deal of documentation (such as in What Wikipedia is not) to support this decision and Martin gave you two a way out - and yet you don't even try to prove your case per the established framework he set forth. --mav
- Ummm...perhaps you should click on the term consensus and do a little reading. So far we have maybe 13 contributors to this discussion, only 6 of which have taken a clearly negative stance. 4 of which have taken a clearly positive stance on retaining the articles (over zealous fan, rednblu, technopilgrim, and delerium), and the rest have taken no stance. This, as far as my reading of the term, is no where near consensus.
- Also, you have not responded to some very legitimate questions as to the value of the "criteria" that were presented. Perhaps if you engaged in the conversation in a productive way we would gradually move closer to consensus?
Options for making the Yoism page meet the criteria
It sounds to me that, with the two websites "over sealous fan" mentions, a reasonable article on open source religion could be created, which would include mention of yoism, along with, say, open source judaism, and other similar movements. That looks like the best way forward to me - why not give it a try? I'm happy to give a temporary reprieve if you need more time...
Since you're local, you could also help improve our article on Somerville, Massachusetts - perhaps you can add something about the church you meet in? Just to bide time until you get a thousand or so followers, of course :) Martin 01:16 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Mav mentioned about about independently being able to verify things and it got me thinking. Now I do not know about the accuracy of these people in Massachusetts, but if they really do exist and there is some sort of movement, why not have an article on them? Does anyone doubt that they exist since supposidly they put up posters and meet and have a website and so forth. Are we saying that the only way we can add information to this encyclopedia is if we copy the data from another source? What if I do a research project on some topic and do my own research and then post the results on wikipedia. Now since I am interested in geography lets say it is some research project on my hometown. Now it is *highly* unlikely that anyone else is going to verify it, even though it could be done. Yet that doesn't change the content itself. How is yoism different? I don't buy the argument that it can't be independently verified. It *could* if we wanted to. Why not have someone on Wikipedia go to one of the meetings in that area if this is such a big deal. Whatever. -- Ram-Man 02:44 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Should Wikipedia exclude pages useful to only 100 people?
I vote to keep this page. I don't care if the followers have 1 or 1 million followers as long as the article is factually correct and it is not a hoax. The article as I read it is not some soapbox (given that it is not just a set of advertising links). It is worded in a NPOV fashion. It describes this fringe silly religion and if someone reads it and joins the group I don't see how that makes a single difference as to whether we have the article. It's not my business what others believe. If I interview one of the members of this religion and someone else who has seen the posters and write an article on Yoism based on that information, is that enough of an "independent source" of information on this topic to please everyone? -- Ram-Man
- So I can write a biography of my mom or even my cat and so long as what I write is in a NPOV style, factually correct and not a hoax then that article should be allowed? Riiight. --mav
- Above you claimed that this article was not NPOV (if I read that right) and there was concern that this was factually incorrect and a hoax. But none of these arguments for deleting the article appear to be satisfied. But you ask whether I think this article is valid. I agree that there should be things that we use to decide whether to keep something. Consensus is a wonderful tool and I am using my vote to keep. The fact that there are even 100 crackpots who believe this stuff if significant to me. This may have nothing to do with most people but from the town that these people meet in this could have historical significance. Just because *I* don't care about this topic doesn't mean that it isn't saying something about a culture of some town X in Massachusetts. I don't forsee that your mom or your cat have any significance whatsoever, but if we keep talking about it so much it may earn itself an article ;-) -- Ram-Man
- That is exactly my point - letting them talk their cause into existence here is setting a bad precedent. And my mom and cat are important to around the same number of people. Just because somebody has an idea doesn't mean that we should have an article about it. Also to clarify; I said that NPOV cannot operate without independent sources of information. If and when this group get at least mentioned somewhere outside of their own website or random postings by them on the Internet then we can think about including them here. They need to earn their own legitimacy - we should not be the ones giving it to them. Do you see my point? --mav
- Yes I see your point. Yet we do have a wikipedian among us who has at least seen their posters and could conceivably go to one of their meetings to see what it is about. Or we could do an interview. In otherwords we have some independent source of information already and we could get more. Would that be sufficient to at least satisfy that criteria? One problem I have deals with the city of Jamestown, Oklahoma which has a population of 10 people. That article probably has less chance of being interesting and important to just about anyone than an article on Yoism. Yet we keep the article for some unspoken implicit value and since disk space is not an issue. Now my problem is that I want that city in Wikipedia, but it is less important than even Yoism, yet it is not deleted. Personally I am not sure than an article about your mom would be terrible given in the correct context. Let's say your mom is from the city of Jamestown, Oklahoma. She might be the town's only doctor or the sheriff and the cat would be her sidekick. This has cultural and historical significance to anyone who is interested in Jamestown. Do we allow such an entry? My suspicion is that you would say no. Yet someone like this plays a *HUGE* role in a town of 10. I won't cry if this article is deleting but I am uncomfortable with our standards for deleting until we consider its impact some more especially since a broad interpretation of this has helped me keep articles I wanted. I am also not sure that we should require our sources to be published elsewhere before we use them. That does not allow for independent research. -- Ram-Man 13:54 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Response to RamMan:
Is independent verifiability the primary criterion?
Independent verifiability is the most important criteria. I do see your point with the Jamestown, OK bit. So within the context of Jamestown my mom would be really important. Do we have a separate article on her linked from the Jamestown page or do we have the text about her in the Jamestown article. I have to say that it is best not to mix the subject of articles too much and that warrants a separate page just about my mom. So long as the page about my mom is only linked from the Jamestown page and info on her can be independently verified then that should be OK.
But this is also vexing; as we add more and more obscure topics it will become increasingly difficult to find independent verification of facts and I fear our standards in that regard will become lax.
And consider this scenario: The Girl Scouts of course should have an article; since it does it makes sense to have an article about the Western Region division of the Girl Scouts. Since that exists is may make sense to have an article on the Los Angeles district. If we are going to have an article on the LA district we might as well also have articles on each of the chapters. But the most important people in those chapters are the scoutmasters - so it makes sense for us to have an article on them too. And the most important people in scoutmaster's life are going to family members = more articles.
So then just about anybody on the entire planet could have an article about them so long as facts can be independently verified. I think the amount of verifiable info is also important - not enough = no article warranted. This is still all rather subjective but I think we are going somewhere interesting with this discussion.
I will contemplate how all this applies to the current situation. --mav
- Thinking about this was all I was asking. I will note that 30 people in a Massachusetts town of 77,000 is practically negligible in importance for that town. Yet I am still not convinced one way or another. When I first started wikipedia I was floored by the fact that we would allow these articles on tiny topics that wouldn't be considered in a regular encyclopedia because of space consideration. Even with the list of "What Wikipedia Isn't" there is still a super large amount of data that could be added. You could have an encyclopedia of this current size just about recipes. Or rock formation. Or styles of clothing. The possibilities for an encyclopedia about anything are endless.
- Part of the problem is the lack of people doing articles on everything. The 'pedia has lots of articles on the Lord of the Rings, but not on many other very important classics. There is a lack of balance. I am not sure how to go about fixing this. It seems to me that we should stress people making articles about broader topics rather than the smaller, fine-grained ones. With the city articles you did not get just the obscure cities, but you got the larger, well-known cities as well. The spirit of Wikipedia is to not tell people what they have to write articles on. But if a large percentage of people write small obscure stuff, the usefulness of the 'pedia is going to drop. Still in practice we have not had a large problem with this. I've been impressed how I can find an article on practically anything I want to know. It's amazing how wide a range of topics we do have.
- The article on Yoism seems to suffer from one major problem: In a world of billions of people, it is a very obscure movement. I'm not going to change my vote to "delete" until I give this some thought and figure out some solution or guideline that makes sense for me and/or everyone else. Frankly I see your point in the problem with allowing anything, but in a sense that is why we are all here. Which is more important, having people contribute articles about just about anything, or trying to keep the pedia from being fragmented. I think we have already considered this with the main page. It basically links to well-established, general topics which have a general and widespread interest. To find Yoism, you'd have to search for it, or go through a lot of links before you found a reference to it. If you were searching, presumably having the article is then justified because of the interest in the topic. In either case, it isn't the predominate feature.
- I'll shut-up now. -- Ram-Man 19:33 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Is this a different case from celestialism? Or should it be deleted too? Rmhermen 16:18 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Combination verifiability and interest by 100 is too small
This article should clearly be deleted. The criterion for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability. A website alone is not enough for verifiability -- it could be a hoax or a publicity stunt, and it can go down immediately. There is simply not enough independent, easily verifiable information about Yoism yet for it to warrant an entry in our encyclopedia (as opposed to US Census data, published by the government). Now, I do not mean to be rude towards those who started this movement. It reminds me of the many micronations we have been dealing with. I wish them the best of luck with their "open source religion", and if it becomes relevant, we will certainly start an entry about it. But at this point, Wikipedia only becomes a promotional vehicle for what is as of today a largely unknown and unverifiable project. Just like we would not have an article about The Anti Banana Society (http://antibanana.8m.com/), we should not have an article about every philosophical experiment. --Eloquence 19:52 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- I don't need to repeat what I've said before, but at least one wikipedian has independently verified that this group does in fact exist and hangs up posters advertising their meetings in case that changes your feelings. In the example of the woman who is an important person in a town of 10 (see above), it would be difficult to independently verify the information simply due to the lack of wikipedians (or the will) to discover it, but that is merely a limitation of Wikipedia/Wikipedians, not the topic itself. -- Ram-Man
- No offense to DanKeshet, but right now this is merely hearsay without any specific details. Verification would be a quotable source such as a newspaper or magazine. Wikipedia is not a primary source, nor are Wikipedians. Our job is to describe human knowledge that is verifiable from other sources, not to do the actual reporting. That would open up a whole can of worms concerning the reputation of Wikipedians, whether they can be cited in articles etc. In the example of the woman who is important in a town of 10 but not elsewhere, I would also vote for deletion because of lack of verifiability. Yes, verifiability depends on the willingness and ability of Wikipedians, but that's a good thing: If a topic is so obscure that nobody is willing or able to verify an article about it, it probably does not merit inclusion in Wikipedia. --Eloquence 20:21 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Do we allow independent research of non-Web data?
- I'm willing to concede that if we do not allow "Original Research" (What Wikipedia is not) then clearly this article must be deleted. Nevertheless, I would have to disagree with this policy. I would suspect that the wide majority of information placed into Wikipedia is not cited, and it might be hard to verify it. Certainly much of it is not verified because of lack of interest. No one actually bothered to check if Jamestown actually exists. Maybe I made it up just for this discussion to try to convince everyone of my view. I am very uncomfortable with the idea that someone from Jamestown will write a whole article on their town about its history and local government and so forth only to have it deleted. It is entirely possible that there will *never* be any "independently verifiable" information on this town because it is so rediculously small. Does that mean the article is doomed to be a Census stub forever? Limiting information to other published sources leaves us with a very limited encyclopedia. Throughout the whole history of man the wide majority of information was passed by word of mouth and independent research for years, decades or centuries before being written down or at least published. Much of that gets lost, but Wikipedia stands as a place where this information does not need to be lost. It seems that Nupedia is the alternative to Wikipedia as they require a higher standard of verifiability. -- Ram-Man 21:28 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Well, we have effectively enforced this policy for many months. Dozens of articles about "micronations" started by a bunch of friends were deleted, for example. All of them "existed" in the sense that they had a website or something, but no other published information could be located about them. Similarly, many articles about not-so-famous persons who died in the Sep. 11 attacks were moved to the Sep. 11 wiki. It is not true that information in Wikipedia is generally not verified -- there are two components of verification that constantly happen. One is internal knowledge (does an article contradict what I know about the subject, or does my intuition tell me that it is wrong/invented?), the other is trust (has this user constantly contributed high-quality material?). We trust you, so we believe that you would not just make up cities in order to boost the Rambot article count :-) (even so, I believe many people have gone to the effort of actually trying to find more info about these cities to add to the articles). Articles should pass both of these criteria -- and if you know nothing about the subject, you can either 1) ask for verifiable sources, 2) ignore the page. A user who is asked about the sources should provide them within reasonable limits, and unverifiable facts/pages can be deleted.
- I do sympathize with your desire to catalog human knowledge and to add original research. This would, however, require an externalization of the trust component -- citing certain contributors as reliable authors. To do this professionally, we would have to at least verify their identity, and determine some fields of expertise within which that user can make claims which are counted as verified. A micronation-inventing kid would likely never be trusted because most people regard these things as silly jokes, whereas a person living in city X could gain the trust necessary to write about their city. We currently do not have such a system in place, but it could probably be established. For the time being, however, I vote for deletion.—Eloquence 13:03 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- With the new information that has come about about this article, the same concerns may not longer exist. However, I have thought about doing my own original research on certain topics such as doing a more in depth study of my hometown. Whether or not I do that is another question, but I think we should at least allow it. I am mostly comfortable with requiring some sort of trust or verification of the person doing such information. -- Ram-Man 23:51 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Incorporation documents as qualifying verifiability
- There is more independent evidence available on the web. The incorporation documents of Yo, Inc, including the Articles of Organization are available at: [2] (http://corp.sec.state.ma.us/corp/corpsearch/CorpSearchSummary.asp?ReadFromDB=True&UpdateAllowed=&FEIN=000832116)
- Goto the bottom and request the Articles of Organization if you would like to see those too. Note that this is directly from the Massachusetts State government, and that the Articles of Organization include a statement confirming much of what is in the Yoism wikipedia article as well as what is on the Yoism website. Also I would gladly send photocopies of a newspaper article about one of the projects listed on our website (Zuzu's Place). There are actually quite a number of ways to verify the information presented in the Yoism wikipedia article. I have access to mp3 recordings of a number of the Gatherings, as well as hundreds of hours of video footage, from a documentary that is being made. The focus here is really more oriented towards coming up with reasons to delete rather than really trying to verify the information. I wonder if this has more to do with various biases people have (esp mav?), than with the actual verifiability of the subject matter. I would guess that there are plenty of articles on Wikipedia which are less verifiable. Do we really want wikipedia to be such a direct reflection of people's biases? -- user:OverZealousFan
- My bias has been against us having an article on a subject whose contents cannot be independently verified. I could care less about your religious views. But since you have finally provided some independent evidence then I withdraw my vote for deletion too. However, now we have to figure out just from where this article will be linked from... The already deleted links from religion et al are not appropriate. This will require additional research. --mav 20:16 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Given the above link, I'm inclined to withdraw my vote for deletion. Any and all material like MP3 recordings and newspaper article scans would be helpful. However, I cannot download the "Articles of Organization" PDF above, the server only returns an error message. Can it be downloaded elsewhere? BTW, you may want to create a user account and sign your comments (type three tildes like this: ~~~).—Eloquence 16:11 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- I finally got the download to work when I clicked on the link to the .pdf file--way to the right of the screen. I had to select "Articles of Organization" from the SelectBox at the bottom of the first screen. Rednblu 16:18 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Thanks for the photocopies :) They seemed to verify the existence of the supporting and related organisations, more than the religion itself, but it's still something. Martin 16:47, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Possibility of completing page in a private space
Rather than deleting this article, could it be moved elsewhere for safekeeping? (user:MyRedDice/Yoism if you can't find anywhere else). That way, if Yoism does turn out to be the next big thing, or it gets newspaper coverage, then we'll have an article readily available, and Yoans will be able to continue editing it in the meantime. Thanks. :) Martin 13:49 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
FWIW, I can recall at least one other religion article that was deleted, I think rightly so; in that case, the contributor also ran the web page advertising the religion; couldn't find any info there or elsewhere that suggested a membership greater than one. (Wish I could remember what it was called.) The real problem with that one was listing on pages like list of Christian denominations, or (I think) it got put next to deism, theism, atheism, because the religion ended with an -ism... throwing in something like yoism or whatever that other one was next to words like theism and panentheism seriously overinflates their signficance and should be avoided. It sounds like yoism might merit an article (though I lean towards deletion as well), but IF it's kept, references to it and on other pages should be careful not to imply that it's any more popular or widespread than it actually is. Wesley \
Role of personal bias as data to help untangle risks and opportunities
Incidentally, discussing how biased or "offended" mav or I or anyone else might be seems to be completely irrelevant, provided there are sound reasons for deleting the article that are consistent with the goals and policies of Wikipedia. Let's discuss the article and reasons to keep or not keep it, not why we think someone might be giving reasons for one or the other. Wesley 14:56 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- It seems to me that an editorial community understanding its biases, and the biases of its members is *extremely* important and relevant. I don't see how you can hope for NPOV without this kind of introspection.
- If you think this is valuable, you should consider getting a username and signing your posts, don't you think? This would allow you to build up a history of edits, discussions and similar contributions and thus build trust and understanding among your fellow editors. Otherwise it's rather difficult to carry on a conversation, let alone be certain that the same person is using a given IP address over a period of weeks, months and years. That aside, reasonable arguments for including, gutting or rewriting an article ought to be able to stand on their own merits. Wesley 15:30 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- [Responding to Wesley.] I most certainly disagree--on very rational basis.
- 1) What we have here is a system that reflects a macrocosm of the major problems in the world. That is a hypothesis, but I would suggest it is a testable hypothesis. On another page, we could define the "variables" in that hypothesis and consider means for measuring both the dependent and the independent variables.
- 2) Each person here represents the bias of their own personal case, which includes their history, understandings, and rules-of-thumb. Again that is a hypothesis in which each term could be defined and measured on any sample of people that interact with serious intent.
- 3) And in attempting to understand the "system," the best first piece of data that anybody has are the biases, offenses, and arguments that people express here. I hasten to add that this has nothing to do with "mav"--but with what "mav" represents within the micronation that Wikipedia is.
- 4) Accordingly, I would propose that "mav" represents for all of us--like a good and faithful algebraic symbol in the form of a very worthy person--the a) superiority of the "scientific-point-of-view," b) importance of "system-wide standards" of excellence, c) competence, and d) common sense.
- 5) Hence, considerations of "mav's" apparent biases and "offenses" can be very useful and may be critical for understanding what is going on here. But we have to make sure to not make any of this personal. "mav's" arguments certainly score points on my board--because I have very similar biases and "offenses." Rednblu 15:37 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- First, I agree that no one is truly objective, and we all bring our own set of opinions and biases to any article, as well whatever knowledge of the subject we've accumulated. Sometimes we all have trouble distinguishing between the two.
- Second, it seems reasonble and courteous to extend other editors the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise, that they will do their best to stick with knowledge and facts and at least not deliberately use wikipedia as a soapbox or what have you.
Importance of establishing username to assist understanding
- Third, IF it seems genuinely important to discuss someone's biases openly, everyone in the discussion needs to put their cards on the table. The original contributor(s) to this article is only known to us as 68.162.218.43. For all we know that could be a longstanding contributor who decided not to log in while working on this topic, a proxy server for a bunch of elementary school kids trying to see what they can enter, or anyone else in between. Such a "user" has no basis for discussing another contributor's biases. If they want to remain that anonymous, fine, but then they had better restrict their discussion to the merits of the article itself and not hide behind their anonymity while trying to exploit someone else's transparency so they can keep their soapbox article. I realize that this may very well not be the person's intent, but not using a username certainly has that appearance. Wesley 15:56 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Done! Note that I've signed all my posts as over zealous fan, so it should be clear from reading the discussion who I am. Now I have an official username, which is of course better.
- Also please note I *did* extend the benefit of the doubt to mav, and everybody else here. However, I have found that Mav continuously avoids engaging me in actual dialogue over points which I think deserve attention. That is the *only* reason I bring up his biases.--OverZealousFan
- Interesting! Yes. I can see that pattern. Rednblu 16:08 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Thanks, over zealous fan. I look forward to working with you. (If you ever want to add a time stamp to your sig, use four tilde's instead of just three... I don't really care if you do that bit or not though, there's a limit to my obsessive-compulivesness.) :-) Wesley 18:22 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Also I would gladly send photocopies of a newspaper article about one of the projects listed on our website (Zuzu's Place) (user:OverZealousFan)
Please do. My snail mail address is listed on my home space. Thanks. :) Martin 16:30 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Meaning of open-source religion
After poking around a bit at http://www.yoism.org, I have to ask, in what sense exactly is it an open source religion? I don't find any mention of any content of the site or its religious documents being under any sort of open license. I don't see any way to submit patches to any of them. There's a promise that the "Book of Yo" 1.0 will be released soon, but I was unable to find a beta. There's a twiki section of the site, but it's only for religious discussion, not for collaborating on the religion. What makes the discussion forum different from a Muslim or Christian discussion forum? Is it an open source religion only in that its adherents all happen to be advocates and users of open source software? Does all collaboration happen in person at the gatherings, rather than online? Wesley 18:22 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- I know what I would consider to be an open source religion--if instead of having Bible study sessions they would have Bible writing sessions. I would like to rework that part of the Bible about Adam and Eve. In some cyber room, we could have people from all over the world rewriting the first chapter of Genesis. Now that would generate some exciting Talk pages. Rednblu 18:29 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Collaborative writing and revising consensus texts of belief
- Its open source in the sense that the Book of Yo is developed in an open source collaborative fashion. The development started on the website's twiki, but was then moved into a word processor format to make editing and printing easier. Unfortunately word processors don't have remote revision control in the style of CVS at the moment, though I'm trying to get some features added to OpenOffice to allow it to seamlessly interact with Subversion. This is essential to really handling remote collaboration of writers in a true opensource fashion. We want to be able to easily print up the latest version without having to do a lot of formating and stuff, and thus using a wiki system seemed insufficient. DocBook and CVS was another option, but the writers of the book aren't programers for the most part, and weren't even able to handle HTML without getting discouraged. Anyway, we are trying to figure out the best format to work on it, and to make it available in. Right now a draft of 0.1 is available in Word format upon request via the website (if you have ever installed TWiki, an open source wiki, you have to request the latest code via email there too) (user:OverZealousFan)
- Yes, I have installed TWiki, and it bugged me that I had to go through their registration process to get the source, too. (At the time at least, I had to fill out a bunch of info on a web form to get the twiki tarball.) But, c'est la vie. Good to hear you're working on moving it from Word to OpenOffice; I'm sure you'll find that many open source software advocates will grumble about having to use an expensive, proprietary software package to work on an open content document. Or, you may get updated versions saved in Word format using OpenOffice and it'll all be hunky-dory. What license or copyright terms come with the Book of Yo and similar religious documents? If the article stays, this is stuff that would be useful to add. Wesley 21:07 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Protected public licensing of open-source documents
- Q: I can't compile this religion in my universe - what should I do?
- A: Yoism is not compatible with some older universes based on the outmoded "Flat Earth" architecture. Also, you need to make sure that you have your theory of gravity switched to multi-threaded mode.
- (Good questions though - an open source movement without a license isn't truly open). Martin 23:08 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Very true, a while back (a few years ago) we considered various different licenses, and finally decided on the GNU Free Documentation License. However since then our focus has turned to actually writing the Book of Yo and thus we haven't necessarily been paying attention to including copy-right notices (perhaps we need to focus on that some more.) (user:OverZealousFan)
- Ha! Good Q&A. Interesting. How about a GNU Free Documentation License on the new "Bible"? That would make it open-source, would it not? And presumably the cooperative software implementing the open-source writing of the "scriptures" would guarantee implementation of the license, is that not so?
- Suppose we would write a basic open-source Bible, maybe starting with Genesis, over in the MetaWikipedia area (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedians_by_religion). Wouldn't that automatically create a GFDL license to the public? Rednblu 23:38 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- The christian bible has already been elevated to the public domain, by virtue of being written a long time ago. Martin 16:51, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The following moved from VfD. - Hephaestos 18:15, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)
July 22
- Yoism, Yo
- discussion to talk:yoism. No clear consensus: esp, mintguy, frecklfoot, and ping favour deletion. Mav, Eloquence, Ram-Man, Rdnlu, delerium, technopilgrim, and "over zealous fan" favour keeping. Independent proof of existence seems to have been provided so Eloquence and I have changed our votes. --mav 20:32 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- I say keep as well, both personally and because I'd rather err on the side of keeping an article when the votes seem to be going 50/50. And it's been over a week... can this come off of VfD? -- Jake 04:03, 2003 Jul 31 (UTC)
- I think the one article on Yoism should remain, as long as the one who became User:OverZealousFan no longer insertes links to it on every semi-relevent page on religion. I still think the whole concept sounds more like a long running joke than what one would normally consider a religion, but since some people seem to like it having one short article on it won't hurt too much.
- discussion to talk:yoism. No clear consensus: esp, mintguy, frecklfoot, and ping favour deletion. Mav, Eloquence, Ram-Man, Rdnlu, delerium, technopilgrim, and "over zealous fan" favour keeping. Independent proof of existence seems to have been provided so Eloquence and I have changed our votes. --mav 20:32 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)