Talk:Astrology/Archive 11

message: How many Wikipedia editors are Astrologers??  Andrew Homer 05:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The "peers" in question don't necessarily have to be the same as the subject; there are more experts on astology than just astrologers. Must the article on scientologists be edited only by scientologists? (Don't say, "Oh, but scientology is just a cult" -- the point is objectivity all around.) And in answer to your question, all Wikipedians who link to one of these templates has at the very least listed an astological sign, while these ones claim interest in Chinese astology in particular. --Lenoxus 15:40, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What the hell does "at the very least listed an astological sign" have anything to do with legit astrology?  Your fluffy friends and you are only b.s.ing yourselves.  Since you're pretending to know what you're talking about:  where's your Jupiter/Pluto midpoint and what narrow orb aspects does it make to other points in your natal chart?  And what experiences have you had during the periods of the solar-arc directed Jupiter-Pluto midpoint making hard aspects in your natal chart??  Andrew Homer 08:39, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is NOT peer reviewed 

message: This page seems to contain a lot of external links. I've not had time to go through them all, but it doesn't seem very many of them meet the WP:EL guidelines, or the spirit of them-providing additional source material that we wouldn't be able to cover all of in the article. It seems most of them are tangentially related, to schools, software, etc., that just happen to deal with the same subject. That isn't really the purpose of external links. Seraphimblade 13:13, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. It could use a trim. Sam 16:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Trimmed. Specific links themselves should come into review now. An HTML comment in the section to editors might be a good idea so that it doesn't get repopulated within a week. Sam 19:42, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: External links cleanup

message: I don't see why having http://stel.la as an external link does not adhere to WP:EL.  The site offers a good look as to how Synastry works between people. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aeon2012 (talk • contribs) 14:58, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Few main problems there-first, generally, we shouldn't link to social-network sites except in articles about those sites, or sometimes to the "official" page of a person or organization on that site. (For example, we might link to a band's "official" Myspace page.) Also, WP:EL strongly discourages against linking to "registration required" sites unless the information on them is so high-quality and essential as to be irreplaceable. Blogs and networking sites are generally considered to be pretty low-quality information, they're not an editorially-controlled or peer-reviewed source, and pretty much everything on them is unverified and possibly anonymous. We also run into the "Shhhh, everyone will want one" problem-links from WP tend to increase Google rank, so if we link to one blog, or one networking site, without a clear reason why it belongs and any other one wouldn't, we'll quickly have a very large EL section in that article. Seraphimblade 15:17, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Stel.la

message: There are a lot of good objective judgments of the article on the featured article discussion and peer review page. To get more of a focus on what needs to be done, I'd like to start a "to do" of sorts from concerns on these two pages. 
*Footnotes in the introduction — "the lead shouldn't have footnotes since everything stated there should be elaborated and supported by the body". Additionally I have a concern of how the numerous footnotes affect this section's readability, which I brought up in the above "Excessive citation?" section. 
*No references for much of the text — the refs seem to be mostly given to the disputed text only. There is much text elsewhere which have very few in comparison, such as the sections on history, traditions, and horoscopic astrology.
*External links trimming — done
*Footnote style should be consistent — at a glance this doesn't look like much of a problem anymore
*Copy editing — sentence length should be manageable, text should be fluid
*Linked terms — mundane terms not relevant to the subject shouldn't be wikified. Doesn't look like much of a problem anymore.
*See also length — most if not all of these links are already in the astrology category; perhaps providing a link to it would serve as a more succinct replacement. 
Please feel free to add your own concerns. — Sam 14:40, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Objective concerns and areas in which to improve 

message: Is there an acceptable, NPOV way to say that astrology is bullshit?  RobertAustin 21:22, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sure there's an acceptable alternative to profanity. — Sam 21:25, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would like to point out that there are already nine pages of archives for this page. Please take general conversation not directly pertaining to the article elsewhere. — Sam 18:18, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question 

message: I noticed that Astrology is described as a pseudoscience in this article. And then the article states it has failed tests. Then when I look at the pseudoscience article it defines it as something that cannot be tested. Any comments? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.211.150.60 (talk) 13:18, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've change the pseudoscience article to make it clear that untestability is not the only definition of pseudoscience. Jefffire 13:29, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  pseudoscience? 

message: The text segment
"Astrology (from Greek: ἀστρο, astro, "constellation"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge")" should be rewritten as:
"Astrology (from Greek: αστήρ, αστρός{astér, astrós}, "star"; and λόγος, λόγου{lógos, lógou}, "word" or "speech")". HTH.
KSM-2501ZX, IP address:= 200.143.1.33 18:23, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: An anonymous user recently changed the original text. I will restore it. Thank you. — Sam 19:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some correction 

message: I think it should be noted somewhere in the article that (at least with European Astrology) that early astrological predictions were based on a geocentric model of the universe. It was only after Galileo & Copernicus that European astrology began to accept the ideal of a heliocentric view of the world.
Now this totally brings into question the accuracy of astrology and astrologers.
-Bill
Thurs. May 17, 2007
: Geocentric refers to a viewpoint - as seen from the earth. Even if the mechanics are different in terms of what orbits what, the cosmic influences are felt as per the passage of planets through the signs as seen from the earth. Ramayan 19:42, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geocentric and  Heliocentric 

message: As a newcomer to Wikipedia editing, I didn't feel comfortable editing the article. However, I would like to raise the issue of the neutrality of the article, with regards to science. It seems to me that the article, especially the third paragraph, is grossly biased against the 'traditional' scientific discourse. I also think wikipedia policy does not allow for such an inappropriate and condescending tone adopted against the scientific establishment. - Syamil 02:48, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutrality With Regards to the Scientific Establishment 

message: Besides the claims of the Mars effect, astrological researchers claim to have found statistical correlations for physical attributes,[49] accidents,[50][51] personal and mundane events,[52][53] social trends such as economics[54][55] and large geophysical patterns.[56] None of these claims have been published in a mainstream scientific journal.
I don't think that the above paragraph is appropriate, as it does not follow the "reliable sources" guidelines. The policy page on Reliable sources , says Reliable sources are credible published materials with a reliable publication process. Since these claims have not been published, and are not reliable, I think they should be removed from the article. Vorpal Bladesnicker-snack 03:55, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Credibility 

message: For the statement
"Some have argued that this apparent failure of astrology is based on a measurement difficulty not fully appreciated by the scientific community.", the reference given does not back this claim in any way. In fact, it has studies which show that astrology doesn't "work". For example, from the site which was referenced above
-  -  Abstract: A non-technical look at effect sizes in astrology and how they compare with effect sizes in other approaches such as graphology and psychology. Astrology is said to fit reality so well that its effect size must be close to 100% hits. But examples show how this is due to the flexibility of astrological symbolism, and how astrology works even when the wrong chart is used.
-  - Abstract: The controversy over astrology is largely about artifacts, or whether the claimed results could have ordinary explanations. Artifacts are fake effects due to hiccups in data (this article) or in reasoning (see the article Artifacts in reasoning). They are never mentioned in astrology books yet they occur throughout astrology, leading to wrong conclusions that astrology works.
-  - Abstract: Unaided human reasoning is subject to artifacts due to systematic errors (we call them hidden persuaders) that can fully explain why an astrology based on experience seems to work. Astrologers proudly and repeatedly claim that astrology is unassailable because it is based on experience, but they are mistaken -- what they see as its strength is actually its weakness.
Therefore, I'm removing the incorrect statement Vorpal Bladesnicker-snack 08:05, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wrong statement in lead 

message: In a recent edit, it is claimed that
:The notion that sun sign astrology is inadequate has become increasingly recoginzed. At the same time, the understanding is growing in the West that other forms of astrology, notably Vedic astrology, have more predictive content.
If this is about astrologers generally changing their outlook towards another kinds of astrology as being better, then this should be more clear from the paragraph.
But if it is a claim that people in general, the "informed opinion" and the scientific community are more accepting towards non-sun-sign astrology than others, then I would like to see some citation. Adding more math and basing astrology on another set of arbitrary signs and heavenly bodies does not change its status viz. science, pseudoscience, tradition, etc.
If this Vedic astrology has better predictive power, then lets see the sources for that claim - otherwise, we cannot have a sentence which suggests this is the case. Lundse 12:06, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed this statement because it's unreferenced, biased and incorrect. I don't think there's been any scientific study published in a reputed journal which has validated the predictive power of vedic astrology (or indeed, any astrology). I found this article published in a credible source by an Indian scientist Vedic astrology and all thatVorpal Bladesnicker-snack 16:05, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Propose the following sentence be added to the science para: "The ancient vedic astrology, which is based on the visible zodiac, is becoming increasingly popular due to its claimed predictive accuracy." Ramayan 22:51, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

text:  Can you please provide a citation for this statement? Gillyweed 00:35, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

text:  I´m afraid you won´t find many citations about the growing popularity of vedic astrology in refereed journals coming out of the scientific community, notably the physics departments of US colleges, although even there some are becoming more sceptical about the hardline denial of God []. For those following these developments the evidence is all around us. Jyotish, the Sanskrit name for vedic astrology, is an integral branch of the Vedas, of which yoga is best known. In Sanskrit the word 'Jyothi' means light or flame and 'Ish' means God. According to the June 2007 edition of Vanity Fair magazine there are an estimated 16 million people in the USA that are practising yoga in the USA to day. [] Yoga is thought to have been first introduced to the USA by Swami Vivekananda at the World's Parliament of Relgions in Chicago in 1893. For over a century, yoga and the vedic philosophy has spread gradually from being viewed as an exercise program to that of an integral spiritual practice and outlook. Some suggest the yogic philosophy adresses a need in Western people that other approaches have failed to fulfill. [] The 1986 book of James Braha, "Ancient Hindu Astrology for the Modern Vedic astrologer" is among the books considered instrumental in popularising vedic astrology in the English speaking world. In Fairfield Ohio, where the Maharishi University is located, thousands practice vedic astrology. [] It is also possible that the scientific failure of western astrology has prompted serious practitioners and students of astrology  to consider other branches claimed to give better results. Whatever the case may be, Vedic astrology is a tradition that has survived for thousands of years. There are no signs this field of knowledge is going away. If anything, it is only becoming more popular. [] Ramayan 06:36, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  None of the citations you have given validate the claim that a)vedic astrology has predictive accuracy b) vedic astrology is becoming increasingly popular. Wikipedia policy says that unless we have credible references which are verifiable, we cannot include the content. So, until the "predictive powers" of vedic astrology are tested, It would violate WP policy to imply that it has any "predictive power".  Vorpal Bladesnicker-snack 07:48, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

text:  Additionally the reliance on 'popularity' to indicate 'proof' isn't a particularly good at indicating something is true or accurate.  Gillyweed 07:53, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

text:  You raise a valid point. The fact is, however, for practitioners the use of the sideral zodiac is crucial and changes the matter in an important respect. Western astrology has relied on a fictitious zodiac which has drifted away from the visible one by two-thirds of a sign over the past two millennia. This fact has long been ridiculed by sceptics. More importantly, the western system, which was partially rediscovered in the 19th century, allows individual practitioners to devise their own rules with adverse repercussions for the predictive accuracy. The Vedic system is more precise in this regard and some approaches focus on boosting the predictive accuracy through the establishment of clear-cut rules of prediction. The reason so many astrologers exist around the world and ply their trade is not to fleece the unwitting although there are scoundrels everywhere, and probably more so in an unregulated profession like astrology. The drive for certification and associations of astrologers is an effort to stem such developments and retain the professional credibility. [] [] The belief of astrologers is fed by their personal experience of charts of hundreds and thousands of people. There is a kernel of truth in astrology and the effort of astrologers is to harness the full benefit of the true language of the stars. The discovery of Vedic astrology has been a major advance in this direction. The predictive ability of astrologers switching from western to vedic astrology has taken a leap. Many experienced western astrologers no longer attempt prediction, while the vedic astrologers do nothing but prediction. Don´t take my word for it, just explore the information on the net, the discussion lists and some of the on-line bookstores []. As the field is only developing in the West, the work to prove the validity of this science to the scientific community at large awaits. Ramayan 08:22, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I have added a  tag, in the hope that you can reference this claim in the near future.Vorpal Bladesnicker-snack 12:15, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Without a citation from a reliable source, the sentence in question constitutes  original research. A brief review of the highlighted link will show that OR is strongly discouraged...actually, it's prohibited. In questionable circumstances (and there are clearly questions here), the proper thing to do is to remove the OR until such time as it can be properly cited. Once verifiable references have been presented, the text can be restored in full. In the meantime, please consider that edit warring and reverting are almost never productive in terms of improving article quality. I'm going to remove that sentence from the article for now, and I hope it will remain that way until cited. Thanks...Doc  Tropics 20:36, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ramayan, I see that you have twice restored the controversial text with an Edit Summary indicating that it had been properly sourced on the talkpage. If  so, I'm curious as to why you haven't included the cite in the article itself. That way your specific source can be reviewed for reliability and accuracy. Can you please provide a link or ref to the specific source which makes this statement? Doc  Tropics 23:32, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Simply put, read citation [3] above - an article by US Vedic Astrologer, Dennis Flaherty. However, also consider that this development, the increasing popularity and use of Vedic astrology in the West, is well known in the astrology community. Actually, I have not been actively looking for articles about that as I and many others simply know this development first hand. The growing number of articles on Vedic astrology I usually come across in western trade magazines and on the net are focused on the application of this type of astrology. The well known US magazine The Mountain Astrologer, formerly an exclusively western astrology magazine, now regularily publishes vedic astrology columns as well. The evidence presented above paints a picture of the spread of yoga in the USA and this is true for other western countries. Over 5% of the US population is now estimated to practice yoga in one form or another. The Vanity Fair article cited demonstrates that. What is not as well known is the gradual popularity and knowledge of the cosmology of the vedas, inclusing Vedic astrology, which is the back bone of yoga. This body of knowledge has been spreading for just as long. It is seen in the popular work of writers like Deepak Chopra. The late ex-Beatle George Harrison was an avid yoga and vedic astrology enthusiast. There are plenty of other luminaries promoting or using the Vedic knowledge, including Vedic astrology. The growing offering of Vedic astrology books in US astrology book stores is also another proof of this development and the citation given shows that. several decades ago, there were no such books readily available in US astrology book stores. This is another fact. Of course, to know this one has to follow the field for a long time. Why not rely on the specialists for this insight, rather than sceptics who really don´t have a clue. The OR claim does not hold water, this development, the growing popularity of Vedic astrology in the west, is a fact. Ramayan 00:50, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It surprises many people to discover that at Wikipedia, the catchphrase that we use (which is also policy as described above) is "Verifiabiility, not Truth". This may seem strange, but just because you and your associates "know" something is true, doesn't necessarily mean that we can publish it here. Unfortunately, the website that you linked to (the Revealer.com) doesn't seem to meet our standards for reliable sources. Please see this section for more information on what reliable sources are. Under the circumstances, I think it's appropriate to remove the text from the article and I'm going to do so. Please note that if you find a better source in the future, we can always revisit the topic. In the meantime however, the material should not be included, and I ask that you please not restore it without a better ref and further discussion. Thanks.  Doc  Tropics 01:14, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

text:  This is OR because you have synthesized your statement about popularity from a range of intermediate sources (none of which appear to say what you claim).  You need a source that says exactly what your sentence says. Gillyweed 01:11, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  More recognized? 

message: "That's not a valid analogy. We have General Relativity which is a "model" of gravity and makes predictions which can (and are) experimentally verified to a great degree of accuracy. This is not true for astrology.Vorpal Bladesnicker-snack 04:22, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Because the first scientific theory of gravity (ie, Newtonian) made accurate predictions in its domain of applicability. The reason why Newton's theory of Gravity is a scientific theory is because it proposes a "model" which makes predictions that can be experimentally verified. On the other hand astrology proposes no mechanism or model, and also fails experimental tests of individual predictions. Vorpal Bladesnicker-snack 12:13, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  My point is we do not need a mechanism if the model can be verified. Agree? FatherTree 13:25, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  What exactly do you mean by a "model" and a "mechanism"? Also, note that the individual predictions of astrology fails when experimental tested. Also, if this is not directly relevant to the article, let's not discuss this here, as Sam pointed out. Vorpal Bladesnicker-snack 16:31, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  you can go to my talk page. how do you define "model" and a "mechanism"?   FatherTree 16:40, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  mechanism 

message: Ramayan, please note that it is standard practice to attach a personal sig to all of the comments that one makes on talkpages in WP. Furthermore, altering or removing an editor's sig, or their comments, is often regarded as a "vandal edit", even when it might seem there are good reasons for doing so. In any discussion involving multiple editors (like the section above) sigs are very important so that those reading it can know who made which comments. They should certainly be attached to each comment, and shouldn't be removed. I hate to revert another of your edits (I'm sure you must be feeling persecuted by now), but again, this is standard practice, and it's very important for clarity. Doc  Tropics 19:18, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The instructions when filing for Request for Comments [] suggest otherwise (see no. 3) Ramayan 19:53, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Sigs on comments

message: After a brief discussion, Ramayan and I agree that outside opinions might be useful in resolving this. I have placed a request at Wikipedia:Third opinion and created this section to accomdate them. Please don't post in this section if you are already active in the discussion. Thanks. Doc  Tropics 20:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: 3rd Opinions