Talk:Point shooting/Archive 1

message: I am new to Wikipedia and hope I have not stepped on anyone's toes. I added a link to a synopsis of Rifle Quick Kill, and changed the word "theory" to "basis" at the start of the page.
The word "theory" is used by some in the shooting community, to discredit things that are "not traditional", and as such, "not good". It is a "code word" of sorts. 
For example, since guns deal with deadly force, one would/should be reluctant to adopt a theory vs a traditional methodology since their own demise could follow from their choice.
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The following comments I received as 5shot, have been added as a discussion note to this page, as I believe they and the responses to them, will provide sustance and support for the materials presented on Point Shooting.
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From Scott:
I've commented out the additions to the point shooting, pending some discussion about them--I recognize the contents as coming from the pointshooting.com website. If you are not the owner of pointshooting.com, then it's a copyright violation. If you are the owner of the materiel, then I would suggest that it's in need of cleanup to turn into a section for this article. I think the content you added as it stands is persuasive rather than neutrally informative, which is what an encylopedic article should be. The information is still in the article, it's just hidden between HTML comment tags (< followed by !-- to start the comment and -- followed by > to terminate). If you'd like to try making the entry more fitting to form, by all means do so; if not, I'll try to get to it soon and help out. scot 02:40, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Original P&S content inclusion discussion

message: I'd like to see some selected quotes form the Reflexive Fire method put into the article, or maybe a breif description of how it compares to the previous methods.  I'd also like to see the Center Axis Relock method added; I don't know much about it, so if there's anyone out there who can describe it and maybe give some example users, that would be great.  scot 17:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Additional content

message: Is it worthwhile to group the FSA, QK, QF, and RF methods into a "US Military point shooting methods" section?  Then maybe do an "Other Military methods" for the Israeli method, and and "Other" section for P&S, CAR, and others?  I think more of an outline format would make the article a bit more readable.  scot 17:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My concern was that the technique list was growing fairly long, and splitting it into categories might make it more readable.  Maybe there is some other logical way of grouping things that would acheive the same goal.  Any ideas?  scot 19:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Layout and categorization thoughts

message: I think the P&S pictures should be added back in, at least the two clips from the patents.  While the aiming index may not be a required part of P&S, both the Gardner and Veit patented devices do require the middle finger be used for the trigger, so I'd say they're closely enough related to be worth mention.  scot 17:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure of the official policy, but what I've seen in practice is that commercial links are accepted if they are also informative; if they are just an attempt to push a product or service, then they will be removed.  For example, an article on the Mac OS X operating system should (and does) have a link to the Apple website, in particular the MacOS X page there. A link to the Threat Focused forum, while it is (or will be) a commercial site, would probably be justifiable in that there is a significant collection of information there on the various point shooting mechanisms.  A link to "Jim-Bob's Point Shootin' School", which has no information other than prices and schedules, would probably be removed pretty quickly as it is purely commercial, and not informative.  Bascially, use your judgement, and if you link to a commercial website describe the informative content that you're directing the reader to.  scot 19:52, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: P&S content

message: I have reverted the blanking of this page; that is not acceptable behavior.
There are two points of view here that are clashing, and editors on each side who have an emotional stake in their views.  The goal of Wikipedia is to have a neutral point of view, and to present verifiable information, not opinion or original research.  The fact that there are multiple methodologies in the point shooting world should be sufficient proof to show that it is not an exact science, but rather a still evolving case of picking the right compromise between training vs. reactions to stress, speed vs. accuracy, and effectiveness of technique vs. ease of training.  I would like to beleive that I don't have an emotional investment in any particular school.  I have never receieved formal training in any methods, I just realized that when I'm under stress, I do focus on the target, and the sights may as well not exist.  I then ran across articles about Rex Applegate's push to move police training away from "The Modern Technique", because it wasn't working (how often do you hear "over 30 rounds fired, no injuries" about police shootings?) and back to point shooting.  I tracked down a copy of FMFRP 12-80 and read it, and it made an impression on me, because what Applegate was describing was what I had found--under stress, you focus on the target, and using the sights is unnatural.  This was several years ago, and when I created this article the only two methods I knew about were FSA and QuickKill (which I ran across on an airgun forum).
John is in the position of underdog here; you hold the least popular view.  That does not make his views invalid, I do think that they deserve a place in this article.  I do not personally object to links to his website, because his website does have a significant amount of information on many different types of pointshooting.  I would, however, prefer that the links be to pages with information, not to pages with commercial offers.  I'm not certain about "official" policy here, but this is the practice that I have seen.
As for removal of statements whose veracity is disputed; any statements made on Wikipedia should be verifiable by readily available, reputable external sources.  When a claim is made "X is Y", and there is dispute over the reliability of that statement, then it is probably best to say that "Z claims that X is Y".  This makes clear the source of the disputed claim "X is Y", and should keep others from objecting to the veracity of the statement.  Of course, if you state "Z claims that X is Y" then that should also be verifiable.  Again, John is in the position of being a person who has done original research, so maybe that does put a bit more of a burden of proof on him.  He does, however, have a patent, and since that is in essence a publication, I think that referring to that patent as the basis for statements made in the article would be acceptable.  I think everyone should read Wikipedia:Verifiability, but here's the short version:
:1. Articles should contain only material that has been published by reputable sources.
:2. Editors adding new material to an article should cite a reputable source, or it may be removed by any editor.
:3. The obligation to provide a reputable source lies with the editors wishing to include the material, not on those seeking to remove it.
And I would challenge John to point to statements in other sections that he considers opinion stated as fact--he's not the only one under a burden to prove their statements.  While I don't have an emotional investment in any particular type of point shooting, I do have some investment in this article, as I created it and wrote the original content.  I can't claim ownership of it, anything that goes into Wikipeida is owned by the community, not the creator, but I do have an attachment to the article and would like to see it grow into a good, complete article that everyone can be satisfied with.  scot 16:15, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A couple of notes on editing for talk pages.  First, putting a colon at the beginning of a paragraph will indent it in one level, like this paragraph; two colons does two levels, etc.  This makes it a bit easier to track long discussions.  Second, using four "~" characters in a row will insert a signature and timestamp, like this:  scot 17:20, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

text: You and John appear to be going back and forth on the P&S content.  I'm about to head to lunch right now, and I'm going to take a stab at merging the two versions into something that hopefully you can both agree on.  I know you two have argued a lot in the past, and I do want to thank both of you for working with me on this despite your disagreement. scot 17:20, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Emotional arguments

message: --- John Veit's original content removed by John Veit. Hopefully others' comments are still as they were. Background, rationales, articles published in Police publications and other venues, test results plus videos and pictures relating to Point Shooting and self defense,.... are available free of charge at www.pointshooting.com. Thank you Wikipedia for your information on this subject area. ---
From RES: And I have put it back.  John, you blanked this page once already and were told not to do it again, so now you went and blanked all of your own material and left ours.  Stop playing sour grapes just because you can't dominate the discussion or use Wikipedia as a marketing tool.Roundeyesamurai 16:52, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we can find a middle ground.  Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines sets up the policy for archiving old discussions to keep the talk pages from getting too cluttered.  The information is still there (which it would be, in the history, anyway) but it's out of the way.  If there's no objection I'll archive the first section and any other issues I think have been resolved.  scot 17:55, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  John Veit's continued deletion of material