Talk:Val Johnson incident

message: This whole article should be scrapped and redrafted, if not deleted. It violates a ton of WP article criteria and guidelines, not to mention the fact that it's primary "source" seems to be "UFO book" with no external, verifiable sources.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.51.201.140 (talk) 20:21, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the article needs more sources, but I disagree that it needs to be deleted. This is a well-known UFO case (as the article attests), and the "UFO Book", far from being some crank source, won the 1998 Benjamin Franklin Award in the Science/Environment category from the Independent Book Publishers Association, so it's definitely a reputable source (read the Wiki article on Jerome Clark for more information). I would suggest that UFO skeptic Philip Klass's book UFOs: The Public Deceived be used to supplement the source. The article does need more sources, but it shouldn't be deleted, simply edited and revised.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.0.187.153 (talk) 00:01, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Although the article needs more sources, I don't think the current "revision" is necessarily an improvement. Nearly all of the details have been eliminated and the article is now little more than a stub. As for eliminating the "fringe" source, The UFO Encyclopedia is not a fringe source; the encyclopedia received high praise from mainstream publications such as Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, which recommended that academic libraries buy the book for "patrons who are interested in the subject". It has extensive references and footnotes, much of the information in the Val Johnson article is taken directly from newspaper and other media accounts of the incident. As for the article's neutrality, it included references to UFO skeptic Philip Klass's debunking of the incident, so it's hard to argue that the article is biased. For what it's worth, the original version of the article was fine and neutral - it needed more sources, not to be hacked down to a virtual stub with few details. My opinion, of course :).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.145.229.162 (talk) 19:56, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: UFO Encyclopedia may have garnered some good reviews, yet I think most will agree we shouldn't source the bulk of the article to it or consider it "authoritative" on UFOs, a subject itself steeped in extraordinary claims. That said, it's reasonable to use it to summarize "what UFOlogists say about X". Any more (lavishly detailed measurements and expert-sounding opinions, etc.) would place undue weight on their POV and is not appropriate. - LuckyLouie (talk) 16:30, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

text: In short, "details" provided by fringe theorists can't be considered objective facts by Wikipedia, according to WP:FRINGE. In the case of this article, the 'details' were chock full of inventive flights of fancy such as "inward and outward forces acting almost simultaneously" and grade-B spook story devices such as calling attention to "the driver's side headlight was smashed, but not its companion to the left" to advance the notion that the car "was damaged in peculiar ways", etc. I haven't looked closely at those other articles you mention, but if they are sourced mostly to UFOlogists, they don't conform to WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE. We add detail according to the degree of notability a subject has gotten from objective sources. The object is not to fill up an article with as many KB we can find, or "balance" both fringe and mainstream POV in an article to make both read as equally credible. LuckyLouie (talk) 15:12, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

text: I saw the "Ford engineer" story. How do we know it's factual? Did Ford provide a press release or other documentation to mainstream media? Was it cited in technical journals? Given that its only origin is UFOlogists and conspiracy theorists, it could have been conveniently edited to exclude data that didn't fit the UFOlogists beliefs that UFOs exist. Or it could be exaggerated to add an air of "mystery". Or it could be wholly fabricated. You seem to be asking Wikipedia to regard information that doesn't come from reliable sources and/or has been filtered through the POV of UFOlogy - as credible fact. That's something the encyclopedia can't do. - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:27, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: So what is a non-credible fact?Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86 22:04, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It isn't just "ufologists and conspiracy theorists" who have extensively quoted and used the Ford and Honeywell reports. Prominent UFO debunker Philip Klass uses these supposedly "exaggerated" or "fabricated" reports in his book UFOs: The Public Deceived. It strikes me as odd that the leading UFO debunker of that era would use two reports that supposedly don't exist to buttress his argument that the case was a hoax (and I should add that Klass uses these sources no less selectively than ufologists to try and make his case). Quite frankly, Wiki's reliable sources criteria often is used as a crutch by some editors to delete information that they clearly (as illustrated above) simply refuse to believe, even when well-known UFO debunkers and skeptics extensively quote from the supposedly "fictitious" source in their books. Perhaps if editors - before making sweeping deletions - actually studied/learned about the Val Johnson incident and thus learned of the sources that both ufologists and debunkers use in discussing the incident, they wouldn't delete cited sources that clearly exist and are not fabricated or figments of the imagination. I don't think Wiki's reliable sources or fringe article requirements approves of people deleting cited sources based on clearly inaccurate assumptions regarding the sources.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.3.111.31 (talk) 19:54, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

text: As an editor seeking to base an article on material from questionable sources, you might want to seek opinions at WP:RSN. I'd ask them specifically if books by UFOlogists can be considered reliable and objectives sources of factual material upon which to base articles. (Otherwise they might misunderstand you to be asking if opinions attributed to UFOlogists can be included in articles, which they certainly can.) - LuckyLouie (talk) 23:53, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  One main cited source?