Talk:TalkOrigins Archive

message: The criticism section seems mildly reasonable, so I am going to restore the edits, with some minor modifications. JoshuaZ 23:20, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, just to clarify this 1 man conversation ;).  "Criticism" from creationists tends to come in the form of "it's run by rabid atheist evilutionists as part of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy™, and you shouldn't read it because it'll convert you to the dark side...".  The peer-review problem applies to most of the Internet (including Wikipedia).  The Archive is peer-reviewed by people who do have the requisite knowledge and qualifications in science and the creationist community.  It's just not a formal process,  but its usefulness can be seen in the awards that it's won.  It's also a very dumb criticism since no creationist works can count as peer-reviewed. — Dunc|☺ 13:19, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  In fact, some creationists are so afraid of this page, that they'll try to prevent others from seeing it.  One fellow we all know has used typosquatting to divert traffic from it and to his own domain.  Simply type the Talk Origins Archive URL without the "s" and you'll see what I mean.  Mind the pop-ups and ads...  - WarriorScribe 17:08, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

text:  Yes, all of this is true, it is a laughable criticism. That doesn't change the fact that it is a pretty common criticism of talkorigins.org by the creationists(common enough that is answered in talkorigins intro FAQ), and therefore it is highly reasonable to include. JoshuaZ 14:54, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good God! i just tried the 'talkorigin.org' link out of interest. I should have guessed who it would be. --Davril2020 09:12, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism section 

message: Any comments on why this article should not be nominated for deletion per wikipedia policy (Articles_for_deletion) that states "Internet communities, message boards and blogs are generally not notable" 24* 02:24, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please read the article, the archive is not an internet communty or a message board but a website that is loosely affiliated with the usenet group talk.origins. The relevant criteria therefore are listed under WP:WEB. The awards section of this article shows that the Archive meets WP:WEB pretty easily. JoshuaZ 02:27, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

text: If you think differently, you are of course welcome to nominate it for deletion. JoshuaZ 02:31, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This article has been nominated for deletion a number of times, all of them spurious. It would be useful if next time the nomination was allowed to proceed, so that we can keep the archived discussion to avoid further nominations. --Davril2020 20:56, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well. Actually I think all of them are somewhat my fault. At least two of the prior spurious AfDs(I'm not sure how many there have been) have been revenge AfDs after I've AfDed an article that someone wanted to stay. Presumably that's because I created this article. JoshuaZ 21:19, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion 

message: As I understand it TalkOrigins is a secondary source summarising primary literature in response to various claims. Hence it does not create original research of its own. Am I mistaken? If not I will edit the criticisms section since it is unfair to compare it to a scientific journal if that is the case. --Davril2020 21:23, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your impression is accurate. JoshuaZ 23:16, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Peer Review

message: The following paragraph makes several claims, so a citation is necessary. Anyone have one?
"The Archive engages in something of an informal peer review by refusing to publish badly written, badly sourced, or unsupported articles, and it should be noted that many of the participants in the newsgroup, as well as the Archive, are practicing scientists. Many scientific organizations recommend the site, and its contents have been incorporated into many college courses and textbooks.  This attests to the veracity of the information at the site and a generalized attitude toward its contents by the members of the conventional science community. However, the Archive publishes no original research and focuses instead upon deploying information in scientific journals to counter criticisms of evolution. It is not in the format of a scientific journal and the peer review method of these journals may well be inappropriate for such a secondary source."
Until that time, I removed it. --Hugo the Hippo 08:16, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Practicing scientists include Larry Moran, Bill Jefferys, Douglas Theobald, Andrew MacRae, Ian Musgrave, Chris Nedin, Tim Thompson, and me. It isn't like this information is hidden or unverifiable. If one expands the net to include academics in general, there would be several more people to add from computer science, philosophy, and other disciplines. The many scientific organizations recommending the site are listed on the awards page, most with links to where the recommendation is made. I've added the awards page link to the separate complaint made about the college courses, which it also answers. Wesley R. Elsberry 20:04, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Uncited paragraph

message: The following sentence is uncited.
"The Archive has also been used in multiple college level textbooks and had material from the archive incorporated into over 20 college or university courses."
Does anyone have a citation for this? For the time being, I removed it. --Hugo the Hippo 08:27, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The links to the various online course descriptions can be seen here. Wesley R. Elsberry 19:44, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looking at that link, it lists not a  single textbook which uses the Archive (in the text) as a reference or in any other significant way.  There is one which includes it in the text as recommended browsing for students.  I'm editing the statement to reflect this discrepancy.  The Jade Knight 17:57, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Uncited sentence

message: Can we get a consensus about the textbook phrasing please? Quoting from the Archive's award page "Science Textbooks that Use the Archive" Could we just use their wording and say "use"? JoshuaZ 05:03, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not if it would be misleading (or ambiguous) to the reader.  We should include language that is as accurate as possible.  If you prefer, we could say "The TalkOrigins Archive is mentioned at the top of a list of links of student resources in a single textbook, and is mentioned on websites associated with two others."  However, I thought my version was less wordy (and still accurate).  The Jade Knight 05:07, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not sure that's best, since in at least one of the cases, the textbook Evolutionary Analysis, the book was intended to be used hand in hand with the website, so saying it was mentioned on the website is a slight downplaying of it. I really don't mind the wording much though since the Archive has so many distinctions anyways. JoshuaZ 14:25, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Obviously "use" is the only accurate term.  It doesn't say "quoted", it doesn't say "borrows text from".  "Used" is accurate, and it's the wording used by the source.  "Mentioned in one" is unacceptable because (a) it seeks to create an impression which is other than what the facts are, and (b) because it deviates from the source and replaces it with the interpretation of an editor (=OR).  Guettarda 15:29, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While that agrees nicely with your POV, you have yet to demonstrate how my phrasing is other than "what the facts are" (lofty language, but please support it with evidence), or how it "deviates from the source" (see previous comment.  The Jade Knight 18:07, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

text: You are right that one textbook website does actually use an article from Talk.Origins.  Let me suggest something better, therefore:  "The TalkOrigins Archive is mentioned at the top of a list of links of student resources in one textbook, is used on a website associated with one other, and was also included on the author of another textbook's web page."  Is that better?  One of the websites Talk.Origins was "used" on no longer exists (check the link), and was simply an author's website.  The Jade Knight 18:07, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Hmm, the more I think about this, the more Jade seems to be making a possibly reasonable point. "use" is an ambiguous word and the use of the Archive in the various examples is slightly incidental. JoshuaZ 18:17, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

text: How does 'referenced' sound? --Davril2020 19:10, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  That seems like an excellent compromise. JoshuaZ 19:13, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

text:  Not sure... "referenced" = "used as a source", while I get the impression that it was used as a resource, rather than a source.  (Note: all of these are variants on the word "used").  Guettarda 19:21, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Mind providing page numbers for the rest of us?  I'm curious why TalkOrigins own website doesn't state that the site is listed in the texts of the other two (as it does for one).  Perhaps someone here should approach the webmaster on that.The Jade Knight 22:40, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Seeing as Wikipedia is not a place for original research, this may become particularly important for verifiability.  The Jade Knight 22:49, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

text: You should know better than that; citations are very important in an encyclopedia.  Anyway, get the references when it is convenient; it might even be good to include them as references in the article itself (rather than the link), as the website cited is certainly misleading on the matter.  The Jade Knight 18:15, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Text Book Phrasing 

message: * TOA reviewed in an article on Neanderthals in the New York Times. 
* TOA given as a resource by Roger Ebert in a column about IMAX science documentaries, quoted at the Panda's Thumb. 
: "An industry has grown up around the “science” supporting the “argument for intelligent design.” It refuses the possibility that evolution itself is the most elegant and plausible argument for those who wish to believe in intelligent design. If you are interested, you might want to go to www.talkorigins.org, where the errors of creationist science are patiently explained. And you might want to ask at your local IMAX theater why they allow a few of their customers to make decisions for all of the rest."
* TOA a suggested resource in online supplement to "Physical Anthropology" by Stein and Rowe.
* TOA in a list of links accompanying an article in "School Library Journal".
* TOA referenced in the Chapter 11 online overview of "How Humans Evolved".
-- Wesley R. Elsberry 18:38, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Media Notice 

message: * TOA listed as "other resource" on WSU course webpage.
* TOA listed as a biology resource on the University of Scranton library webpage.
* TOA listed as a resource on a page at the Universität Gießen.
* TOA on "Religion and Science" page at the Western Washington University.
* TOA listed on the "News and Events" page of Wroclaw University of Technology.
* TOA listed in the "Internet African History Sourcebook" of Fordham University.
* TOA listed in the "Links in Paleoanthropology, Evolution, Education, and Related Subjects" at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
* TOA listed as an evolution resource for "Biology 112" at the College of Charleston.
* TOA given as a resource on the "Evolution and Natural Selection" page at the University of Michigan.
* TOA listed as a resource on the "History of Western Biomedicine" page at Karolinska Institute.
* TOA listed as a resource on the syllabus of "Introduction to Evolution" at California State University, Stanislaus.
That takes me through page 21 of Google's "backward links" function for www.talkorigins.org. Please feel free to pick up there and add more items to this and the "Media Notice" section.
--Wesley R. Elsberry 18:43, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Educational Notice 

message: I think the article entitled Talk Origins: Deception by Omission should be added to the links section. 136.183.146.158 03:48, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm...an article that attacks TO for using the standard scientific definition of evolution?  I think the deception here is on the part of the author of the article to which you linked.  Guettarda 05:21, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

text: And then we'd add the link to the TOA reply and so on and so forth, until we've incorporated every byte of content from TOA and every site that criticizes something on it.  --Wesley R. Elsberry 07:20, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talk Origins and Deception by Omission 

message: For unspecified reasons google has delisted TalkOrigins Archive. I can only find blog entries about it at present, so I would be reluctant to write anything yet. Jefffire 11:48, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The TOA got cracked on 11/18. Matt Cutts at Google says that Google attempted to send a warning email, but their guesses as to email accounts didn't match our actual working aliases. I found out that the site was de-indexed on 12/01, found the problem, fixed it, and got the reinclusion request submitted. I also posted a note about it on Google's Webmaster Help group on 12/01, where a Google employee noted that reinclusion could take two weeks or more. I also blogged about it on my personal site on 12/03. That got noticed by TOA Director John Wilkins, a ScienceBlogger, and subsequently got Slashdotted. Apparently, I'm nowhere near the favorite flavor of many SlashDot denizens. Matt Cutts posted his account on 12/04 of how Google acted when the problem at the TOA was noticed, including trying to send a warning email. Cutts says that TOA is cleared for re-indexing in 24-48 hours. --Wesley R. Elsberry 19:41, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What is the significance of the delisting exactly, and how common is it? I don't understand how or why this is notable now that it has been relisted. --Davril2020 15:14, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've removed the Google thing. It doesn't seem that notable to me (although Slashdot picked it up). JoshuaZ 15:50, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I've now read the blog entry by Wesley R. Elsberry and as I understand it the site got hacked and then used to spam other sites? That's fairly common so no I can't imagine that it's notable in this context. Perhaps in the context of an article on cracking/hijacking sites as a prominent victim. --Davril2020 15:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Bill Dembski's Uncommon Descent blog was recently delisted too , which sent his pet trolls into overdrive . The King of Spain's beard 20:48, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

text: The matter does seem to be getting more attention. See for example . However, right now, everyone is focusing on it because of the google element and not really related to the Archive so I'm not convinced for now that the matter is notable enough for Wikipedia at this point in time. JoshuaZ 03:24, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I am not urging inclusion in the main article. I'm just letting people know what is up, since the question was posed. I completely deleted the TOA for a time this evening, then restored from a (hopefully) pre-cracker backup with all server scripted pages removed. So RSS, feedback, what's new, suggest a link, error pages, etc. are all busted. A plain HTML "what's new" page has been uploaded in place of the PHP page. At the moment, we're serving our mass of content, we are still in the Google index, and things could be far worse than they are. It's bad enough, sure, but it certainly could have been worse. --Wesley R. Elsberry 07:25, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

text: We do now have a means of handling feedback with public display, via a forum on the AntiEvolution.org bulletin board. --Wesley R. Elsberry 09:42, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Google problems 

message: Under "Awards", someone added a "specify" tag to the BioMedNet entry. The link is here, though I'm not sure what the status of the page might be. archive.org has bmn.org pages going back to 1998 or so. --Wesley R. Elsberry 00:51, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: The TalkOrigins Archive is affiliated with several other websites, as indicated in the text of the article. Someone removed the TalkDesign.org link from the "External Links" section. I think that the link was appropriate and should not have been removed. I'd ask one of the editors here to consider restoring it, or if that is not the correct way of noting it, to consider putting the link as a reference concerning the mention of the TalkDesign site in the body of the article. --Wesley R. Elsberry 02:58, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sister Sites 

message: Does anyone know what happened in October 2006? The Feedback and PotM sections at the site stop there. Ashmoo 12:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Look just above at the "Google Problems" section. --Wesley R. Elsberry 15:19, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: October 2006+ 

message: The TOA is temporarily shifted to a different domain name: toarchive.org. --Wesley R. Elsberry (talk) 02:28, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The original site still seems to be down, and the link above no longer works.  Any news? --TeaDrinker (talk) 20:18, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I went ahead and changed all the links to the new domain, since it works. This is the first time I've ever used the site, and there are presumably many others like me that will visit from the many evolution articles here, so use whatever works. --Armchair info guy (talk) 11:46, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

text: I just tried it and it's still down. But the reason I'm writing is to thank you for overseeing TO, Wesley. I've recently been studying evolution a good bit, and from the many refs to TO here at wikipedia I've found it to be one of the best resources out there. That's why I changed all the links to the working mirror, so others like me could benefit from it. A month of downtime is a whole lot of missed opportunities when the Evolution article alone gets several thousand pageviews a day. -Armchair info guy (talk) 21:01, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

text: We borrowed Douglas Theobald's "toarchive.org" domain in the interim. I'll talk to him about whether we can arrange to have that as a permanent second domain name. --Wesley R. Elsberry (talk) 06:38, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  For the foreseeable future, both talkorigins.org and toarchive.org will point to the pages of the Archive. Because of search engine optimization, "talkorigins.org" should be preferred for linking. --Wesley R. Elsberry (talk) 00:19, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change of domain name 

message: FYI, True.Origin Archive has been recreated again (after being a redirect for more than a year. If you are interested, you can comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/True.Origin Archive. HrafnTalkStalk 17:50, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  AfD for True.Origin Archive 

message: We have an editor attempting to remove all examples from Quote mining on specious grounds, including the claim that TOA is not a WP:RS. If any regulars here are interested in putting them styraight, it'd be appreciated. HrafnTalkStalk 18:15, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  FYI [[Quote mining]] 

message: It appears the website is defunct or has moved.  Does anyone know the story and can they update the page to reflect what happened?  
199.106.103.57 (talk) 16:05, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: TalkOrigins website defunct?

message: Since we're a bureaucracy, he's the "formal" discussion area for the merger and all things related. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:19, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: *Have a WP:TROUT and get a bleeding clue. WP:MERGE makes it perfectly clear that  merge proposals require DISCUSSION. And you STILL have failed to EVEN ATTEMPT to discuss it. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:26, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

text: You're really dense are you? Read up your beloved WP:MERGE yourself, "overlap" section. talk.origin and TalkOrigins Archive do not warrant separate articles. One's the newsgroup and the other is the archive of the newsgroup. FFS. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:52, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not so "dense" as to fall victim to the genetic fallacy and assume that just because one topic originally derived from another that they are (anything close to) identical. Nor am I so "dense" as to fail to notice that the content of the two articles don't in fact overlap heavily (the shared content would appear to be a single, short paragraph). "One's the newsgroup and the other is the archive of the newsgroup." WRONG! ...the latter started life as an archive of (FAQS and other high-quality content of) the former -- it has since taken on a life of its own, archived relevant material from other sources, had a foundation set up to support it, had a book of its Index to Creationist Claims published, is widely praised and cited. I would suggest that you attempt to understand topics before attempting to have them merged. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 06:22, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge 

message: Well, I was hoping that my edits would be upheld, but I figured there was a pretty good chance someone would revert them, so here we are on the talk page.  I removed a bit of content from the article because I thought it was self-evidently undue and puffery, but I guess not.  Is it really notable that a few websites have linked to this website?  Are we going to start listing every site that has ever linked to Flickr, Google, and Facebook?  This is absolutely unnecessary, and it contributes nothing to the article.  To place this alongside actual awards is undue.  Second, the Features section not only violates the MOS, it obsesses over minutiae, such as individual FAQs hosted on the site, sister projects (which are outside the scope of this article), etc.  Yes, it's a good website, and I like it.  That doesn't mean that it gets a complete pass on Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 11:49, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't revert you completely. The bit I replaced alongside rewards names significant institutions. I thought the bit I replaced in features gave a more rounded picture of what it is then just "cover a wide range of topics", and personally I would have removed the bit about feedback and was tempted to remove it but left it in only because you did. Dougweller (talk) 13:54, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, I think that I come across a bit more strident than I intended, and if I rewrote that post now, it'd be a bit more mellow.  But I still think much of the content is undue.  It is trivially commonplace for people to recommend websites.  It would be better to use these sources to describe the site in Features.  That would give us some idea of how much attention to put on individual aspects.  Why is it so important to list individual FAQs that are hosted on the site, the authors of those FAQs, and external links to them?  Can't people just go to the website if they're interested in that kind of overly-detailed information?  I have no problem with describing the nature of the website or what kind of information it disseminates, but couldn't this all be covered by a brief statement that says it refutes creationist arguments against evolution?  We can elucidate on that if necessary, but individual FAQs need never be referenced.  They certainly should not be linked to from within the article itself, as this is a violation of the MOS.  As for the website's feedback system, I was tempted to not mention it, but I figured that a bit of compromise would be wise; perhaps I misjudged and compromised in the wrong areas. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 21:51, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undue and promotional content