Talk:Christian Science/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Khazar2 (talk · contribs) 03:14, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll be glad to take this review. In the next few days, I'll do a close readthrough of the article, noting any initial issues that I can't easily fix myself, and then go through the criteria checklist. Thanks in advance for your work on this one. -- Khazar2 (talk) 03:14, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Unless anybody objects, I'm going to hold off on reviewing this one for a week or so, since the past 24 hours have seen a few content disputes; I'd prefer to let those play out and review the resulting version. Thanks to everybody for their work on this one, it seems to be coming along well. -- Khazar2 (talk) 14:57, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, as one of the disputants, I'll hold off on involvement in this article/Talk page for a week or two to help it to settle down for review. Thanks for giving your time to this Khazar2.Be-nice:-) (talk) 21:51, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I'd encourage you to work out anything you see as still deficient! I've got no problem waiting till there's consensus on these points. We'll give it a few days in any case. -- Khazar2 (talk) 21:55, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm OK with the article at the moment, more-or-less.Be-nice:-) (talk) 23:01, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Cool, good to hear. -- Khazar2 (talk) 00:06, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Just wanted to note that I haven't forgotten this article, but am still holding off for now, as it looks like we've had a few reverts in the last 24 hours. This article has seen an enormous spike of activity in the past few months (3 of the 5 talk page archives are from just the last six months!) and I'd like to see how stable the current version is. Again, I hope editors will read this note as encouragement to keep working on any issues, not as a request that editing stop! I'm happy to wait. Thanks everybody for your work. -- Khazar2 (talk) 20:29, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Medical Criticism

Alex, in relation to the Twitchell case, you have changed "The conviction was later reversed" to "Their conviction was later overturned on a technicality." I don't think the latter wording is a fair reflection of the situation: the couple were found to have acted in good faith in the context of circumstances outlined here: http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/416/416mass114.html. In any case, "overturned on a technicality" is both tendentious and tautologous. (All legal decisions are technical in nature.) Rather than getting into an edit war on this, can we agree on a fair wording? I'll leave it up to you to review the source info and come up with a fairer formulation.Be-nice:-) (talk) 11:47, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Content selectively being removed.

I see that mentions of vaccination have been removed down to a single line from [1] to the current article. I see the content on increased morbidity has been removed. The well sourced content that she was infleunced by Quimby has been removed (Christian Scientists don't accept the actual history) [2]. All mention of Christian Science being made to look like science has been removed (possibly due to a misunderstanding that in the 19th century "science" meant the general search for knowledge, which was not the case in 1872). The mainstream viewpoint is being watered down and removed. Compare what was there: [3] to what is now there at Christian_Science#Health_and_healing. A positive spin has been put on that section by going back to primary sources again (S&H), and by overly relying on the nytimes, while discarding academic sources. IRWolfie- (talk) 12:16, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Contrariwise, the article is far more balanced now than it has ever been. The issue of changes over time to CS are now addressed, and the use of pejoratives have been removed. Material abiut deaths is clearly given, and given due weight per WP:CONSENSUS. I would like to note that "Christian Scientists don't accept the actual history" would appear, on its face, to be a POV claim ab initio. As for the importance of Quimby - that is an editorial decision, not a POV decision. Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:57, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I guess from your perspective of having not looked at the academic sources it would seem like I'm asserting it ab initio. IRWolfie- (talk) 12:25, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

The article is now in much better shape than it was a few weeks ago. The evolution of the article in its present form, including sources cited, has resulted from consensus editing. (BTW, I don't know what "actual history" means and neither would any contemporary historian, or philosopher of history for that matter.)Be-nice:-) (talk) 09:42, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh please. Is this some sort of "everyone's version of history is equally valid" crap? What practitioners claim happened with the history is completely different what the reliable sources say; mostly because it's unflattering. IRWolfie- (talk) 12:27, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Collect is not interested in any reliable sources. See the talk page on the Christian Science article, he claims every reference I have listed breaks "NPOV", but the references I listed were written by reliable scholars such as Timothy Miller and Catherine Wessinger etc. SlimVirgin seems to have got the message and this user is now using some of the references I put on the talk page but this user seem to think they "own" the article, and any edit I or others make they revert, so I am just watching and we will see how their new edits go. Fodor Fan (talk) 23:02, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Kindly note the actual talk age discussions where I note that making a long list of critical articles without any balance at all does seem to be a WP:NPOV problem. The talk page discussion, moreover, makes clear that I exert no "ownership" of an article which I have very few edits on. Cheers. Collect (talk) 23:47, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:NPOV for you means to exclude anything critical of Christian Science. It just happens that the so called "critical" sources are the reliable ones published by scholars or in scientific papers, take a hint Christian Science is nutty fraud, why? Becuase that is what the sources say! Find me a single reference published outside of the Christian Science Church that is supportive of Christian Science? The 90% of references will be critical of Christian Science, there is no reason for a "balance" when the 10% are Christian Science sources published by Christian Science publishers. You are confused about WP:NPOV, with your logic every pseudoscientific article on wikipedia would be supported without any criticism, but if you look round you will see this is not the case, we don't need to balance articles when the majority of sources are against a specific subject. If the reliable sources say Christian Science is nutty fraud and filled with criticisms then that is what should be put on the article, not the nonsense claims from the tiny minority of CS sources... Infact there is no problem in using some CS sources (many are on the article) but to argue for a balance is just totally wrong.

If there are a million reliable sources against Christian Science and only ten in favour of it, are you really going to argue for a "balance"? :) Fodor Fan (talk) 00:12, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

OK -- if we postulate that CS is a "nutty fraud" as you aver from your own personal knowledge, we still have to follow WP:NPOV. I know this rankles crusaders agains "nutty frauds" but that is what Wikipedia is based on. When one editor comes up with twenty sources uniformly critical of a religion, and we have substantial sources from followers of that religion, we can not give excess weight to the critics. Else 99% of all religion articles would be filled with criticism of them as utter heresies as seen by all the other religions. Thus we neutrally pose the tenets of a religion, and list a few of the primary criticisms thereof. We do not list the thousands of books highly critical of Muhammed (for example) as a person in the article on Islam for very good reasons. What we do is present each side in some sort of balance. NPOV is not the same as "we state the absolute truth because we know what the truth is" it means we state what is stated on each side of an issue in reasonable balance for major views. Collect (talk) 01:19, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

• I retract my previous comment about SlimVirgin, I thought we were making some progress but clearly not, this user yet again has deleted an edit I made and anyone elses edits. This user seems to think they own the article, they deserve a topic ban. Fodor Fan (talk) 02:06, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

The aim is to use WP:CONSENSUS to make a "Good article". If your desire is to make the WP:TRUTH be in the article, I rather think you are in the wrong place - that is not how Wikipedia works. As for topic bans - generally the person who is never accepting of consensus and compromise is the one banned. Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:36, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Some thoughts

Hello there; I've given this page a look through and have some thoughts. Midnightblueowl (talk) 19:00, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

• There is no mention, or link, to Christianity in the lead; I know that the term "Christian" is in the title, but nevertheless, I believe that it should be in there.
• I think we need to make it clearer that Baker was an American and that the religion was founded in the U.S. in the introduction.

We should clearly indicate that she was an American, but the "Christianity" bit is difficult - CS does not conform to usual definitions of Christianity, and the use of "Christ" as shown by the name of the church "Church of Christ, Scientist" indicates clearly that she is using the name "Christ" to denote a specific person she calls a "scientist" (old meaning of the word) and not that she considers that person or anyone to be a "Messiah" nor that she accepts any fundamental Christian tenets (not even accepting a death by crucifixion as a renet). So yes to "American" and no to "Christianity". Collect (talk) 20:13, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. Midnightblueowl (talk) 19:27, 24 January 2013 (UTC)