Talk:The Urantia Book/Archive 2

message: Some of the stuff in "Adherents" should be put in "Teachings"... how does one guage "adherents" since nothing published and verifiable about them? I vote making mention of the facts there isn't any way to guage it, and deleting the rest. -- Anonyn
:PS -- on thinking about it, I just did that. Will add in teachings that appeared in 'adherents' in appropriate sections as they get built. All that stuff was inherent in the book anyway and will get covered appropriately as the article develops.
::I agree. Hanely 16:09, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adherents and Teachings 

message: I've restored to the previous version "God and the Individual". Even though this is a longer version, it contains information that should not be cut and lost. I suggest wordsmithing rather than cutting. I hope I have not omitted anything myself, and if I have I offer my sincere apologies upfront. Hanely 17:43, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Did some wordsmithing, much of the so-called cutting was from redundancies taken out.   Also, parts redistributed to Thought Adjuster article.  Finally, parts that weren't "God and individual" but more "history of earth" Wazronk 23:41, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Restoration 'God and the Individual' 

message: I put the philosophy section in again. A great deal of philosophical concept is offered in TUB and thisd section, though small now should grow. Hanely 17:44, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've happily edited out my own stubs in the past, for example a subsection on "Celestial beings" and "Comparison to New Age".  I fully think those are appropriate topics to have.  But when a section is added, for example when I put in "Comparison to Buddhism", something of substance should be there that has been sourced and verified.  Stubs have been placed for long periods as suggestions and then languished.  The edits to clean this up is for the readers and editors shouldn't be so attached to stubs.  This particular "section" is comprised of exactly one jargon-rich quote with no explanations and two stub markers and has sat there for over a month without going anywhere.  I'm not disagreeing that such topics can be developed, but add back when actually there is something to say.  In addition to that large issue in general, the "I AM" topic isn't even representative of TUB's "philosophies" but is more a religious concept than anything, and like I've pointed out, isn't even enough of a topic in the book to merit more than a sentence or two in the article at most.  This isn't even a removal of anybody's writing but of a cut-and-pasted quote from the book. Wazronk 23:41, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Restoration 'Philosophies' 

message: I restored the previous paragraph and kept the new one too. I suggest editing the grammar to streamline or wordsmithing, but points are well made, imho. Hanely 17:46, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adherents - again 

message: I still think the way the new version here was written this is very misleading as to what is actual, factual presentation of the concepts in the book. However, I've restored TA stuff as it was in "God and the Individual" section. If another article is to be written, I suggest getting the whole picture and writing it up pretty fast. The article on Thought Adjusters has been recommended for deletion, so... just my thoughts. If the article is deleted, then a topic summary can go in here for now... Hanely 17:48, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The primary reason for the deletion flag was because the wording was so blatantly not NPOV that other wikipedians saw it as prosyletizing.  This is exactly the language I cut from this article and which has now been restored here, so I'm making some additional edits to improve NPOV here. Wazronk 23:41, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, Wazronk! Good idea. I just restored it and didn't have time to rewrite. I think we are actually getting somewhere. Hanely 04:21, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thought Adjusters 

message: I've created this spot for editors to discuss their ideas and make proposals on how to either split the article or make it into a series. Hanely 18:20, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discuss the Article Split or Series Here 

message: Hello 70.171.55.216, I noticed you added a POV tag to the section God and the individual. That is a large section, please be specific in where you believe there is a POV problem. Thanks! HighInBC 15:06, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I read the article section and it goes right along with what is found in The Urantia Book. What is not neutral? Anonymous March 19, 2006
I am going to remove this tag until it is justified on the talk page. HighInBC 18:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Hi HighInBC, Anonymous and 70.171.55.216, Was it my edits? I took another pass at them. In the past editors have had a problem with sentence structures that don't reference the book specifically in nearly every sentence. I have disagreed with that style of writing. The style caused tension between summary style and quoting and making sure the reader knows what is in the book and what is opinion or pov. What I have put in here IS IN THE BOOK and IS IN SUMMARY of many places the concepts can be found. These edits are designed to show the reader who God is in the UB teachings that make it so "God and the Individual" is represented properly in this article. I hope the edits are improved and I welcome comments, suggestions, and further edits to improve quality readability and accuracy. It gets tiresome to keep saying, according to the book... but that, I guess may be the complaint. I hope to think of some more ways to say that without sounding repetetive, redundant and irritating. Some people don't agree with the UB concepts about God and so they think it is POV when in actuality it is just in the book. After all this is an article about the book. Thanks for all the help! Hanely 19:12, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would not worry too much about that tag, it was not justified and may be the result of somebody reading the section out of context with the article. If you look at the contributions of user 70.171.55.216, you will see this is the only contribtution by this user. I made a note on the user's talk page saying that if the tag is justified on the article's talk page then people will give the tag more consideration. The section seems very NPOV to me. This happens sometimes when an article is about a book. The statements from the book seem POV, but are NPOV in the context of the article's subject, which in this case is the contents of the book. HighInBC 19:30, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV - God and the individual 

message: What happened to the picture of the world? Can it be restored? Hanely 19:23, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I will find a good PD image of the earth(urantia) from the NASA site. HighInBC 19:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I used the same image Earth uses: :Image:The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17.jpg HighInBC 19:46, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picture/Image of Earth? 

message: Dear Xaxafrad, 
Thank you for trying to help with the article here about The Urantia Book. I read the following paragraph you added to the "Overview" of The Urantia Book article. I believe this is strictly opinon, and POV which I further think doesn't belong in the overview. 
Your paragraph read: "Be advised that while large portions of this book are very easily understood, there are some extremely difficult sections, especially near the front of the book. It is generally agreed that the Foreword is the most difficult portion of the book. An unprepared reader might start with the Foreword, find it overwhelmingly impossible to understand, and then give up on the book. This is unnecessary, as large portions of the book are easily read and understood. The sort of dry, scientific, methodical presentation used in the early pages is simply the setting of the stage for the beautiful and inspiring literary prose adopted by the final, biographical narrative."
I appreciate your efforts to contribute to this article and heartily welcome participation and constructive input - thank you - and I hope you don't take this wrong way, after all Wikipedia is about editing...and getting edited. But, there has been a great deal of work between editors over the last few months to really reach a stage in this article where it is totally neutral in its point of view as per Wikipedia help and guidelines sections.
As an encyclopedic entry about the contents of The Urantia Book, I feel your paragraph doesn't fit where it is, firstly and secondly is only opinion. I don't know if this opinion can be considered published, or documentable, verifiable, criticism, if so, then it could be noted in what publication and by what author in the criticism section. Otherwise the Foreword and first part of the UB are represented in a totally neutral manner without the new paragraph. Anonymous - 4-3-06
No hard feelings, here. Being a wiki newbie, I'm happy to follow in the footsteps of those far more experienced than I am. And since you pointed it out, yes, I'll agree that paragraph was opinionated. Actually, the surrounding several paragraphs were even more opinionated, enough such that I declined grafting them into this present article (they originally came from the 3rd or 4th edit of the Urantia Book article; it's Crystal hawk777's paragraph). My only reason for it's inclusion was as a warning for folks who were curious enough to start reading not to get discouraged by the extensively confusing and convoluted foreword. But, ummmmm....well, the more I think about that objective the more inappropriate it sounds for wikipedia. I'll shut up and leave now. Xaxafrad 04:14, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed "Opinion" out of the "Overview" 

message: I've noticed duplicate links in the article are being added (e.g. for "God").  Only one link at the first instance of any given word is the typical way to do it.  Also, it's usually not necessary to link plain English words.  Have a look at this useful article, Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context.
The other week Xaxafrad added external links for papers listed in the Overview section.  I liked how this turned out.  An argument can be made (and I think has been made in the past with some external links that used to be in the article) that wikipedia isn't meant to be a repository of links (see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not).  In the overview section, I think it's appropriate to link to the sampling of papers that are listed, since this is a public domain book.  I also preferred how it colors the titles blue and the remaining descriptive text is black and visually easier to see in each paragraph. Wazronk 21:28, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links 

message: This has been edited a number of times over the months.  The citation style on wikipedia follows Harvard referencing and is meant to provide reference information needed to identify and look up the book and isn't an attempt to describe the origin of the book.  I've had it as "Unknown" and "Unknown author(s)" before.  No book is authored by "Mysterious Origin" and so that change doesn't work to me.  That's a development of wording only on this article and not true reference information for the book.
I looked into how author is actually referenced by libraries and book sellers, and found all sources use Urantia Foundation as the author, so I've changed the reference accordingly.  It will likely be necessary to footnote the designation due to the inevitable perception that this is stating the UF is the author when there have been court cases etc. on the issue.  But in terms of providing the information to correctly identify and reference the book in a citation so that it can be looked up by people, that should be the one to use.
Second comment on the entry... The citation style of wikipedia standardizes around ISBN and I think this format of writing a citation line should be maintained.  The Library of Congress number was added at the end in a non-standard way.  I know this was added to be of extra use, but I think the standard citation format should be followed, and I think ISBN accomplishes everything the Library of Congress number accomplishes and then some. ISBN covers the US and everybody else's home country equally, since it is an international number.  I think the citation looks cleaner only with the all-inclusive ISBN and all other wikipedia citations are written this way. Wazronk 21:28, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation of ''The Urantia Book'' 

message: :Skeptic Martin Gardner considers Part IV to be an especially "well-written, impressive work," and says, "Either it is accurate in its history, coming directly from higher beings in position to know, or it is a work of fertile imagination by someone who knew the New Testament by heart and who was also steeped in knowledge of the times when Jesus lived."
If I recall from travels through the article history this statement was once removed previously. I believe the contention arises from quotes without references. I haven't read the Urantia Great Cult Mystery book--is that where he makes the above comment?
Xaxafrad 21:00, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I added the lines originally.  They were first removed by 71.138.88.168 on 2/17/06 and then again by 71.139.236.142 on 4/18/06 without a comment on either occasion.  (The same person behind dynamic IPs?)  I had different thoughts on why they might have removed the lines, but really it's just guessing because the editor(s) didn't say why.  If the question is about where the quote originated, yes, the quote is from Gardner's book Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery.  I typed it in directly from the source.  In the absence of an argument about why the lines should be cut -- I think they're relevant and should be there, which is why I added them of course -- and since I know them to be a verified, I put them back. -- Wazronk 18:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Martin Gardner's statement regarding Part IV 

message: I removed the external link to the UBHoax website because I don't think it serves as a good reference for several reasons:
1. Please see "Links to normally avoid" in the Help section on  Wikipedia:External links. Please note particularly numbers 1, 2, 11 and 12.
2. There is no author cited at the website and only a copyright for the webpage is shown there - a copyright of the type which is inherent in the law even if you don't put in the symbol. I personally think it is hosted by one person, doing "original authorship" and who doesn't necessarily represent the views of all Christian Apologetics - the writs there are unverifiable as true published sources that are not "original authorship".
3. I think a line referencing the view of "Christian Apologetics" as opinion in the criticism section would be more acceptable if it can be shown from an appropriate source.
69.137.116.242 16:25, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: External Links

message: I removed TUB article from the category of "Esoteric cosmology" here at Wikipedia. They now have it clearly defined as being "occult" with chosen few. This does not apply to the Urantia Book. They also define "esoteric(ism)" as being "Esotericism is knowledge suitable only for an inner circle of the initiated, advanced or privileged". This is positively inappropriate and misleading. 69.137.116.242 16:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Esoteric Cosmology