Wikipedia:Featured article review/Intelligent design/archive2

Intelligent design

Pasado, Hrafn42, KC, Morphh, Orangemarlin, Guettarda, Filll, Dave souza, Adam Cuerden, Jim62sch, Kenosis, FeloniousMonk notified

Message left at WikiProject intelligent design. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:02, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Messsages left at Ed Poor, Duncharris, FuelWagaon, Ec5618, Margareta, Rbj, RoyBoy, DLH and JoshuaZ

In its current state, this article easily meets several of the featured article criteria. It is comprehensive, factual, neutral, and stable. However, it fails to meet four of the criteria: 1a (well-written prose), 2a (concise intro), 2b (sensible headings), and 4 (appropriate length and focus).

My chief concerns about this article are:

• The prose is frequently quite bad. There are many run-on sentences, dangling modifiers, and rambling excursions. I've posted some examples on the talk page, here. The article reads like what it is -- a bodged-together compromise resulting from lots of acrimony.
• There is excessive footnoting, particularly in the introduction. Because of a history of acrimonious editing, even rather simple and straightforward claims have a half-dozen or more redundant references. The footnotes[1] tend[2][3][4] to make the article rather hard[5] to read.[6][7][8][9]
• The sections are badly named and badly organized. More than a third of the article is in a section entitled "Overview". The other large section of the article is entitled "Controversy", a rather nondescript section for an article on a controversial subject.
• The article is excessively long. It has a lot of information in it, which is good; but much of its length is due to bad organization, poor sentence structure, and outright repetition.

I have attempted to raise these issues, both on the talk page and by editing. However, the response among the small number of editors who frequent the talk page has been ... unwelcoming of change. There is expressed concern that any change will tend to undermine a carefully-worked compromise on the article's content, or invite unwelcome attention to the article from biased editors, specifically, advocates of creationism. I do not think that these are good reasons to have a badly bodged-together article.

To repeat what I've said before: There's nothing wrong with the factual content of this article. It doesn't need NPOV review, or more cited sources (FSM forbid!), or anything of the like. It needs to be edited for good writing style ... and it needs to be allowed to be edited.

I encourage reviewers to read the article from top to bottom, as it exists right now. Featured article status is supposed to be based on how good the article actually is, not on how hard-fought someone's battle was to get it into its current shape. --FOo 08:54, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's a matter of "the small number of editors who frequent the talk page" being "unwelcoming of change." (There's a veiled WP:OWN accusation in there that I'm none to happy with). What it has been it a matter of asking you to educate yourself on the history of the article, which FOo seems unwilling to do. There has also been a request for FOo's patience while we discuss changes. An article like Intelligent Design is a very contested article and compromises have been reached in terms of wording in order to resolve discussion page disputes.

I also disagree that it is a "badly bodged-together article", and I think most of us have noted that there are areas that could be rewritten if we work together and keep the history of the article in mind. FOo seems disinclined to listen to these requests for reasoned discussion and patience. •Jim62sch• 10:15, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

It worries me that a number of contributors have said, in effect, that the quality problems are negligible when viewed in the light of the Triumphant March of Progress Through History, or the Great Struggle Against Evil that the article represents. This seems to be a demand for featured article status to be granted and maintained on the basis of amount of effort expended and difficulty of the task, rather than on the quality of the results. --FOo 19:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Foo, in spite of your confidence that your suggestions will uniformly improve a disaster of an article, I will note that very f<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/navpop.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css&dontcountme=s">ew editors seem to agree with this position. Some of your suggestions might very well be valuable, but I would advocate a conciliatory and reasoned approach, rather than a demand to allow a wholesale rewrite to your own personal standards. One thing I can guarantee with about 99.9% confidence; if we let you have free reign to rewrite the article in this fashion, in short order the article would be consumed in edit wars and under aggressive attack by those who forced many of the original compromises you seem to despise so much. Without a cadre of a half dozen or more regular editors, the article you envision would soon be torn to shreds. One person alone cannot protect this article. This article only exists at all in any semblance of NPOV through the efforts of a team. I soon found in other articles associated with this controversy like evolutionism or Hindu creationism that a single editor, or even a couple of editors, is unable to create an NPOV article in this general area. The forces with other agendas very quickly overwhelm these articles with POV edits, and in a matter of days or even hours these sorts of articles descend into POV rants by one side or another. Therefore, ignoring the advice and past efforts of these regular editors is not advisable or reasonable. Let us try to evolve the article, rather than impose huge changes rapidly by fiat or fatwa. --Filll 13:48, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The following statement of Foo I find particularly naive: There is expressed concern that any change will tend to undermine a carefully-worked compromise on the article's content, or invite unwelcome attention to the article from biased editors, specifically, advocates of creationism. I do not think that these are good reasons to have a badly bodged-together article. Other editors do not feel it is a "badly bodged-together article". This is only your own gratuitous personal opinion, which by the rules of logic, can be gratuitously refuted and discarded. If you have not had extensive personal experience (on the order of daily exposure and several edits per day, for at least 6 months) on one of these controversial articles, your opinions carry very little weight. Editing articles of this type, compared to regular articles, is as different as night is from day. Many of the regular editors of these controversial articles occasionally edit and create less controversial articles in areas like history or medicine or biography and have a compltely different experience. I can reasonably expect that even after a few months, a less controversial article of mine will be roughly the same, and evolving with slow changes and improvements. The rate of change on these controversial articles is perhaps 500 or 1000 times greater than it is on the average article, and editing them is a completely different experience. If Foo wrote an article in a controversial area himself and tried to defend it over a few weeks, he would soon start to gain a deeper understanding of the situation. His article would rapidly be overwhelmed. The more he tried to defend it, the more this would encourage attacks by POV warriors. Without a cadre of associates with the same viewpoint as him to defend it, his article would quickly be destroyed, in only a matter of days or even hours. Lecturing us about how awful the article is according to his uninformed standards is the height of arrogance. Instead, let us try to work together to improve it in small bites. The only way to do this is to do it incrementally. And as I have repeatedly suggested, locate reasonable pieces to farm out to subsiduary articles to relieve the stress on the main article. Let us learn from past experience at contentious articles like evolution, rather than try to reinvent the wheel.--Filll 14:21, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• The article is neither neutral, nor factual or anything like that. Neutrality: It restricts mostly to viewpoints that are either Intelligent Design or naturalist, and doesn't even mention critical viewpoints that don't agree with either. The article restricts itself too much to the controversy between some parts of the scientific community and the Intelligent Design movement, while positions held in professional philosophy about the matter are missing almost completely. Intelligent Design is mostly a problem of philosophy, and a good article about Intelligent Design needs to write about results from philosophy about Intelligent Design just as much as a good article about Evolution needs to write about results from science about Evolution. Facticity is a problem as well: The article describes some orthodox views as if they were exclusive. For example it uses "empirical science" instead of "empiricsm" as if the orthodox empiricist view were the only valid view on empirical science (falsification, for example, is a different one). --rtc 10:22, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Note - RTC is basically advocating using the same language in this article as is used by the ID folks to confuse the issue. That's pretty much what the above objection amounts to. Raul654 17:37, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
    • I have no sympathy for the "ID folks", but it sure doesn't sound that way to me. If there are concerns about "intelligent design" coming from academic philosophy as well as from science, they should also be addressed in the article. --FOo 19:21, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
      • The "basic academic philosophy" argument is a trojan horse - ID is creationism repackaged as science. And the only way you can call ID a science is to redefine what science is. So the ID folks (RTC included) advocate watering down the article with all sort of arcane philisophical minutiae to confuse the basic issue that science is empirical - that is, it is based in observable fact. Raul654 20:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
        • If anyone should care to examine RTC's contributions, one will see that RTC specializes in obfuscation and excessive pedantry, slanted to promote intelligent design. If left up to RTC, the article would read like a promotional brochure for the Discovery Institute, and be of little use as an encyclopedia article. --Filll 13:36, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
          • Stop your personal attacks and bad faith comments and stop claiming I am biased towards Intelligent Design. --rtc 12:53, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Well I apologize if what you have done on WP appears to be biased. However, I am just going by what I have observed, and how I and other editors have interpreted your contributions and discussion. If you have some more subtle agenda, it has escaped my notice up to this point, and I think you should ruminate on that state of affairs a while to see if you can come up with another way of presenting your views and suggestions.--Filll 15:19, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

• I didn't bother reading beyond the header. Not a single source, advocacy group or organisation is listed that is not from the US. Granted, this is chiefly a US debate, so either the framework of that debate needs to be elaborated within a US context to justify the inclusion of US-only material, or else a committed effort needs to be made to situate the debate within a larger (i.e. rest-of-world) view. My personal view is that, from an encyclopedic standpoint, the question why popular belief in ID is far higher in the US than anywhere else across the developed world is worth addressing. But either way, the US-centrism of this article is hideous and needs to be redressed. Eusebeus 11:45, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• • I agree that the article is a bit too US-centric, but there are obvious reasons for this, given the history of the movement. I have in the past attempted to flesh out the description of its gradual spread outside of US borders which continues apace, and I think that this can be easily addressed. Basically, the American legal system has spurred the creation and growth of this movement in the US first, and this momentum is being transferred to many foreign venues recently. A better way to go, which I have advocated, is a separate article addressing the spread of ID ideas to other countries. --Filll 12:58, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
  • This is puzzling. ID is essentially a construct of the US creation science movement in response to the US constitution as interpreted by US courts, led by a US organisation, so inevitably there's a US focus. However, despite the statement that "Not a single source, advocacy group or organisation is listed that is not from the US.", the cited sources include the BBC, The Guardian, the UK Government and Hansard, and specific mention is made of the UK organisation "Truth in Science", as well as Australian, Dutch and Turkish sources. ... dave souza, talk 19:04, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant sources within the debate. Let me restate my issue: The consensus in the scientific community is that intelligent design is not science. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated ... The National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science say it is pseudoscience. Others have concurred or termed it junk science.

The term "intelligent design" originated in response to a 1987 United States Supreme Court ruling ... culminating in the 2005 "Dover trial" .... U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design is not science ... therefore violated .. the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

That lead makes it clear to me at least that this article is more navel-gazing US religious war stuff. It makes me laugh that there are 35 footnotes in the lead alone in order to satisfy "POV" issues: if this was a Canadian description of the issue, there'd be like 2. See also, in this respect:

1. The French article: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dessein_intelligent
2. The German article(s): (both very solid, offering the kind of context I think should be in the English wiki, although I appreciate they have more latitude to be, shall we say, direct since the article is not plagued by pro-ID POV pushers.)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent-Design-Bewegung

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Design

Other national scientific bodies have declared ID to be pseudoscience (see the German non-ID list above referenced, e.g.). But the editors of this article don't give a s*#t (nor should they) what some Polish or Japanese scientific body thinks, since ID hasn't emerged as an issue in those countries. So, I think the article needs to be more honest about contextualising this as a US-specific debate, in which US courts and US judges, US scientists and US scoolchildren, US school boards and US religionaries duke it out. Actually, User:Dave souza in his gentle-smackdown above to what he perceives to be my latent idiocy puts it very well indeed:

ID is essentially a construct of the US creation science movement in response to the US constitution as interpreted by US courts, led by a US organisation. Tighten that up and there's a great opening sentence for this article. Eusebeus 12:09, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

• I've thought it could use work on 2a to better summarize the article but changes to the lead take a great deal of time and effort to gain consensus. The external links could probably use a cleanup too with regard to guidelines. Morphh ^(talk) 12:46, 06 July 2007 (UTC)
• comment A bit more work on non-US elements could help. However, most of Foo's complaints seem to be at best overstated. In any event, it is highly premature to request a delisting wFubar has attempted little discussion on the talk page about the issues in question. JoshuaZ 13:37, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delist as quickly as possible. I am among those who generally appreciates seeing and paying close attention to feedback and criticisms from a broader community. I find the recent facts and circumstances under which this FAR was filed, however, to be reasonably explained only by dynamics such as bullheadeness, personal pride in being a self-appointed member of the style police, a demand to be paid attention to, and an arbitrary and somewhat capricious attitude with little respect for hard work and local WP:consensus. I'm for taking it out of FA status promptly upon receiving the feedback of the broader WP community, which hopefully will take into account that:

1) Intelligent design has proven to be a difficult and complex topic with countless personal POVs expressed, typically on a weekly basis, about what relevant facts are most important to effectively summarize the topic for the reader of the article, or even about what the facts are to begin with. Frequently the POVs come from four, five, six or more separate angles simultaneously and often are in direct and essentially intractable conflict with one another.

2) Being a complex and controversial topic, frequently this article gets attention from folks that haven't even bothered to thoroughly read the article and check the references. I recognize this is sometimes difficult because learning this topic takes time, energy, diligence and ability to comprehend complex sets of facts as well as broad descriptions of ideology that are integral to the topic according to the many reliable sources that have offered published accounts of different aspects of the topic. Maintaining it is a pain in the neck, and after the lastFARFAC discussion the participants mostly went their merry way and didn't do squat to defend the decisions that were made for the article at the time, and the hard work has fallen in various measures on about a dozen long-term participants in the article.

3) I think, purely as a personal opinion here, that those who choose to continue to actively participate in the article on intelligent design would be collectively best served to simply remove the article from FA status (delist it) upon receiving the feedback of the broader community--feedback which, again, IMO, should always be welcomed. But constantly attemping to explain the conceptual and practical intricacies of this difficult topic to people who'd rather argue with the participants than take the time and expend the effort to learn the topic should not be part of the participants' job. The often vociferous feelings that the topic engages in many of the people who post about the article are a natural byproduct of the topic, in my judgment, not of the present form of the article itself. It would be good, IMO, to merely remove the "stick" that quite arguably is presently being used to brow-beat the participants in the article.

4) I don't aspire to be an administrator, only a contributor to WP, but I will say that it is my opinion that the administrative community here should look into this FAR with a close eye on the use, or possible abuse, of WP process in quest of users' personal agendas. There might be facts involved in this FAR that are worth analyzing from a "process perspective", and perhaps appropriate to act upon in forming and enforcing WP policy, specifically in better defining the concept of "disinterested" or "objective" application of WP processes by both admins and WP users generally. ... Kenosis 15:11, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

What previous FAR? There was not a previous FAR; it was removed by Raul. Are you perchance mixing up WP:FAR and WP:FAC? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:45, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I was mixing up the two, and was referring to the FAC in which the article attained FA status. Thanks. ... Kenosis 21:30, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Did you mean "delist as an FA" or "remove from FAR"? I'm a little confused here. KillerChihuahua^?!? 15:45, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

  • I did mean "delist as FA". If FA status is going to be used willy-nilly as a stick to brow-beat participants in the article, it should be delisted as an FA. If there's a procedure for removing the FAR once initiated, of course it should be removed from FAR. Feedback from the broader community is, IMO, always welcome and often quite helpful. But I wouldn't object in the slightest to removing it from FAR, under the present circumstances in which it was initiated. ... Kenosis 16:07, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
  • NOTE: I now see SandyGeorgia's instructions below regarding the correct application of FAR and FARC. ... Kenosis 11:20, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
• Keep FA. Article is accurate and every well supported, unlike FOo's analysis. That the prose is bad is simply a personal opinion; the editors who wrote it are a professor or holders of advanced degrees, and FOo's yet to offer any substantive alternative prose that's an improvement other than a revised intro yesterday which was an incremental improvement at best, not sweepingly better. FOo fails to keep in mind that this article has been a daily target for over 3 years of a well-organized campaign of ID pov pushers and the that the amount of footnotes has been proved necessary due to their clueless and bad faith objections. A quick glance at the 41(!) pages of archived discussion back this up; he should consider our 3 years experience in dealing with this issue first and foremost. FOo's objections to the "Overview" and "Controversy" titles is a minor quibble and one yet to be discussed. And of course the article is long, it covers a complex topic. If there's repetition in it, I've yet to see it. I think FOo misrepresents both the situation and the article here. Instead of rushing to challenge it's FA status when one or two proposals aren't getting the traction he'd like, he should instead write and propose a revised article and let the community decide if it's an improvement first, something he's failed to do. FeloniousMonk 15:13, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with Kenosis's and FM's assessments - Fubar seems to be equating "not written the way I like it" with badly written. The article is heavily footnoted because ID (like Global warming) tends to attract POV pushers. The fact that they are mostly (if not exclusively) from the US is because ID is distinctly a American phenomenon - an attempt by a group of American evangelicals to repackage creationism so as to fit US court decisions. In short, this FA review is completely unnecessary. Raul654 17:35, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

If writing style is just a matter of opinion, then why is it a featured article criterion? --FOo 18:05, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Because objections due to bad writing can be subjective or objective. Yours are subjective. Other people reading through the article have no problems with it. Raul654 20:20, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

And as for length ... do note that Intelligent design is longer even than Evolution, even though the latter notion has been around for a lot longer and has actual science to speak of, and both have subsidiary articles (e.g. intelligent design movement and natural selection). --FOo 18:14, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I would ask that you compare the daughter articles of evolution and intelligent design. I have personally put a lot of effort into producing daughter articles for the evolution article for precisely this reason-to remove the stress from the main article of covering all these side-issues and produce a shorter, more-readable, more-focused main article. Evolution was stretched thin and much too long and less readable before we pushed a lot of the material into daughter articles. Once the daughter articles were of sufficient quality (some even longer than the main article), a lot of the attacks on the main evolution article slowed down, and the main article could be trimmed down and improved. Unfortunately, the very nature of the topic covered by the intelligent design article is that more subjects have to be addressed in the main article, and it is less easy to farm out the attacks and difficulties to daughter articles. Nevertheless, we can still improve the subsiduary articles, and thereby stop asking the main article to be all things to all people. The main article can be more of a summary, or lead article of a family of articles covering the different aspects of this very difficult and very controversial topic.--Filll 13:35, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep So the article has too many references. Do I have that right? Read number 5 of Raul's Laws of Wikipedia. As for FOo's other objections: The prose is better than most other articles on controversial topics, the section names are accurate, the article is as long as it needs to be to cover the topic. Evolution is a shorter article because it covers the mainstream view and only has to devote a couple paragraphs to creationism. Whereas the ID article has to present two opposing views, the challenge of creationists to the scientific method and evolution and the response of the scientific community to that challenge, and in the proportion they are held. This filing smells like sour grapes. Odd nature 19:02, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep FA basically agreeing with FM and Odd Nature. I understand Kenosis' points, but I think running away from controversy is foolish. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 21:51, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Great, Jim, thanks. Honestly, who cares if it's an FA--do readers look it up under FA? or under "intelligent design"? Do they attach more credibility, or less credibility, to what the article states because it's an FA? I thnk not. All this arguing about FA-status is in substantial part just internal politics within WP. Maybe I'll still change my mind on my stated preference, but for now, my stated preference stands as is. ... Kenosis 23:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

True, very true. But FA status is like a bone you throw to the dog for a job well-done, and some folks like to pile up bones.  :) &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 13:19, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Gee, thanx. Woof. Me want bone. [Kenosis wags tail; rolls over.] Gimme bone. woof. ... Kenosis 23:20, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Please read WP:FAR instructions; Keep, Remove, Delist etc. are not declared in the Review phase. The review phase is for identifying and addressing issues; Keep or Remove is declared if the article moves to FARC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:56, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

That's what I thought. :) I was a little bit surprised when people started posting "Keep" and "Delist" and so on here, since I was pretty sure I was asking for support in making the article feature-quality again ... --FOo 05:02, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I would like the text of the article to be verifiable and more factual. Currently too much weight is given to unreliable sources over reliable sources. Pasado 07:24, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, that's a little bit out of scope, but ... Can you give examples? --FOo 07:48, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I would expect that this discussion would attract plenty of intelligent design advocates and so this should be kept in mind when one reads comments like that of Pasado.--Filll 13:39, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• I agree with Fubar's comments on the article's prose and structure, and would support changes in these areas. However, the history of the article combined with the extreme reluctance of certain editors to allow any changes, even the most trivial ("La WP:OWN sans phrases", pace Sieyès) does not give me confidence that these issues are capable of being succesfully addressed. I don't have an opinion on whether this means it should be delisted - it's not changed significantly for the worse since acheiving FA status, at least. Tevildo 10:47, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
• I appreciate the lesson in WP procedure-- the two terms are somewhat counterintuitive, each implying its opposite ( FAR <-> FARC ). My opinion about this situation stands as given above, except I've stricken the incorrect use of "delist". The feedback from the broader community would be much welcomed, except as we've seen from the last time around with this FA stuff, the reviewers will go on their merry way and Raul's Law #5 will kick right back into gear. ... Kenosis 11:20, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
• I am glad that we have so many people interested in improving the article, but I wish most people would look back at how the article was formed and respect the opinions of those who have been regular contributors and shephards of this article over the months and years. Without them, the article would be eviscerated in short order. This is a thankless stressful task, and the input of those regular contributors should carry some some weight in this process. As I have said repeatedly, the writing style in the article can clearly be improved in spots. The organization of the article might not be optimal. The current reference citation method is not the prettiest, but has been chosen and rechosen and reexamined many times, and is the product of a long process of concensus, as can be seen in the history. Given the contentious nature of the article, I suggest strongly that improvements be made in small steps, rather than massive rewrites that threaten to to discard huge amounts of material forged by consensus. My fear, and those of the other regular editors, is that this will leave the article vulnerable to attacks and predation by the very determined group of intelligent design advocates that forced the compromises in the first place, or embroil the article in huge amounts of time-wasting consensus building over the next year or so, resulting in an article not much different than what we now see. This intelligent design article is inherently different than the evolution article because evolution has science to back it up, and has a huge number of reasonably well-written daughter articles to support it. Intelligent design has to deal with several highly controversial and disputed matters, contradictory legal arguments, and multiple sides of a dispute that is still hotly contested. The evolution article is far more narrow, and all these contentious associated issues have successfully been dispatched to a very large number of daughter articles like evidence for evolution, creation-evolution controversy, objections to evolution, level of support for evolution, etc, which can be used to diffuse attacks on evolution and absorb the attacks. I think that farming out material and topics to subsiduary daughter articles, and improving the daughter articles is a better way in which to address the subject of intelligent design, rather than endlessly rewriting (and possibly further lengthening) the main article. Overall, in spite of the difficult nature of this subject, the intelligent design article is informative and balanced and well-written. I am not advocating a stasis, but a slow evolution of the article, keeping in mind the substantial constraints that this process much operate under. Any other process will inevitably lead back to a morass of editorial disputes.--Filll 13:21, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• Which point I think we have tried to explain to FOo several times. Maintaining the ID article is a very difficult balancing act, and the various objections with which we must deal inevitably lead to a longer article, occasional peculiarities in syntax, and an abundance of references and citations and those by need are predominately from the US as that is where the debate rages. Of course on can try to find info on ID from France or Spain or Italy, but this is a topic of so little interest there that, when it is covered, it is ripped apart as being utter nonsense. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 13:37, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Keep FA status. This article fully qualified for Featured Article status, and passed, fairly recently. To address FOo's points:

• There have been no substantive changes since the article became a FA, at least none that turned the article into a hodgepodge of compromises written in bad prose, or created the other problems FOo perceives. The prose is good, and if there are any grammar problems those should be trivial to fix.
• I have no problem with "excessive" footnotes; it means every sentence that has been subject to argument in the past has been well-researched, giving readers confidence in the reliability of the article given the sources cited.
• I have no problem with section naming, although more clarity is welcome, but the current section naming and organization are apt, and don't detract from FA status.
• Finally, the length is appropriate. A featured article should be comprehensive, and this is. =Axlq 16:20, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I really wish the first sentence didn't use an unattributed quote to define not just ID, but also to claim natural selection is "undirected" - a misleading description at best, and at worst patently false, since natural selection is, by definition, the non-random part of evolution (genetic drift is the random part) Adam Cuerden ^talk 00:42, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

What unattributed quote? It's a direct quotation from the sources cited. That's the definition the Discovery Institute uses. If the Discovery Institute is stating something misleading or patently false, well.... they say it, so the article quotes it. =Axlq 01:15, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I mean that it's not attributed in the article text - sure, if you check the footnotes, it's attributed, but it's a quote from an extremely biased source which is not labelled as such unless you footnote dive Adam Cuerden ^talk 02:43, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I think you're confused. Using a primary source (the definitive defintion of ID used by all leading proponents to show what it is they say ID is) is exactly what is called for by policy. That they misrepresent what they oppose (evolution) and their own claim is beside the point and dealt with later in the article. FeloniousMonk 04:45, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm surprised that policy requires this. Could you direct me to this policy? Thanks, Pasado 18:06, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd say Wikipedia:Attribution requires it. However, I wouldn't have a problem with inserting "by its proponents" into the lead sentence: Intelligent design is the claim by its proponents that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." - but I don't see how it enhances the value or readability of it. =Axlq 18:20, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the use of "is the claim" makes it pretty clear who's making the claim. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 18:27, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Eh, I just don't understand why we let ID proponents describe their opposition. There doesn't seem any reason to. Adam Cuerden ^talk 06:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Where better to get a definition of something than from the horse's ass, I mean the horse's mouth?  :) ID is functionally an exercise in redefining creationism, so we might as well let the redefiner's own redefinition be what we use. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 18:55, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

A number of posters above have emphasized a point that I made in the initial request for review: there is resistance to change in this article because of the fear that change will be abused by biased editors, specifically creationists. I would like to take a moment to address this concern. The changes that I have proposed -- that I still believe are necessary for this article to meet the style-related portions of the FA criteria -- can be made in small steps. They can be made without sacrificing any of the meaning of the article. They do not need full rewrites, but incremental changes -- mostly copy-edits, grammatical changes to individual sentences; along with some reordering and removal of duplication. On the struggle: I understand that a number of editors feel that they have struggled mightily to prevent bias in this article. I'm well familiar with the problem; heck, I edit Scientology-related articles. :P However, I do not think that FA criteria should be relaxed for articles on topics that are tough and prone to bias. Nor is it necessary to do so! I ask editors to look at any of the featured articles on other controversial subjects, such as Islam, atheism, or Jerusalem -- just to pick a few articles that have been recently featured on the Main Page. For that matter, try evolution ... or even Xenu. All of these articles have been struggled over. All of these articles are on issues where some group(s) of editors strongly want to push their bias, and other editors have had to hold the line against bias. All of them have clearer writing, better-chosen sections, better grammar, and less repetition than Intelligent design. (And none of them need more than 14 footnotes in the introduction, while Intelligent design has 35....) --FOo 03:30, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Has the Church of Scientology ever put Wikipedia on notice about its articles? The Discovery Institute, ID's leading organization, has: [1] That's just one of many attempts to rally their followers to attack the article. So please don't be so quick to judge the regular editors there or assume that you understand the lay of the land on the topic or the article. Again, the number of sources in the article is the result of the persistant and often disruptive organized challenges to each and every source by these people; they won't let go a point until you've provided them with ten notable sources for each and every statement.

Also, I've still yet to see specific examples of this poor writing, ill-chosen sections, and repetition you continue on about. Which specific parts are you objecting to? Why haven't made a significant effort to build consensus for the changes you seek in the "small steps" that you suggest above, instead of defaulting to challenging the article's FA status after a couple of days half-hearted discussion? Furthermore, I may be wrong on this point, but I don't think anyone here has suggested that FA criteria be relaxed for this particular article. For those making the claim that particular editors prevent any edits to the article, its history for the last 45 days belies the claim [2] FeloniousMonk 04:45, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you should go look at the talk page. There are plenty of examples of poor writing there, and an ongoing effort to improve it. Only reason I came here was to get more eyeballs on the problems. --FOo 18:56, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, I sense dismissiveness and hostility there.

Look FOo, of any of the editors to comment on this page, FM probably knows the most about the topic of ID, and has been working on the article for some time. I think he's well aware of what you consider to be poor writing, but it seems from his comments that he disagrees with your evaluation. Consider that before making further snarky comments. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 19:56, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Both Margareta and Fubar claim the desire to improve the prose of the article. Margareta has made dozens of sentence structure improvements without the meaning of the sentence being lost. But when Fubar makes a change the meaning of the sentence is lessened and the sentence structure in not improved. It belies the true intent of Fubar’s offer to "help". Pasado 05:26, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I would have to agree. Margareta's edits have been very good (although two needed to be tweaked), while FOo's fave been problematic at best and I'm begining to detect a desire to weaken the article. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 18:40, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

It's worth noting that two of the five examples of bad grammatical style that I originally highlighted on the talk page have since been improved by other editors. So apparently there's a little more consensus that this article needed stylistic improvement than some people suggest. While some editors responded with bile and hatred to the notion that this article has had style problems and needs work, others seem to have responded productively and usefully. Yay! I call it progress. --FOo 20:54, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

They're incremental in nature, not the sweeping problems you've suggested exist. The source of you lack of success there was your half-hearted attempt to make any genuinely meaningful improvements, instead rushing to challenge the article's FA status. That and what looks lime altering the article to favor the ID viewpoint at the expense of the scientific community's. On the other hand take a look at the effort of Margareta at the article. Through collaboration rather than brute force she's managed to do more in two days than you have in two years. That says something. I suggest you consider dropping this FAR. FeloniousMonk 05:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I find your accusations amusingly irresponsible. As an atheist with a strong (albeit amateur) interest in biology -- indeed, rather a fan of Richard Dawkins since before he was cool -- I have no interest in making creationism (since that's what it is) look good.

I find your claim of "brute force" to be rather sickening. After an initial attempt to directly edit the article, where my rather small efforts were reverted, I wrote up my concerns and made some proposals on the talk page. What I got back was a hostility I didn't understand. I realize now that this hostility was nurtured and cultivated by the ongoing struggles against creationist "POV-pushers", as evidenced by your attribution of that view to me. You think anyone who doesn't like the state of the article, must dislike it for biased, creationist reasons. Well, that's wrong.

I wanted more eyes on the problem -- and I wanted some serious discussion of whether this article still merited FA status -- so I brought it here. Unfortunately, you and others appear to be convinced that anyone who challenges the quality of your work must be an enemy out to destroy it, to twist it into some kind of creationist showpiece. Too bad. That's a sick, scary way to look at the world. Moreover, it's an attitude ultimately contrary to Wikipedia's goals, its policies, and the culture the project tries to cultivate.

If making proposals and raising concerns about quality via the channels offered for that purpose is "brute force" now, the project is doomed. Doomed, I say. Doooomed.

(I understand the irony in that I'm attributing views and motives to you, after rejecting your attribution of views and motives to me. I hope you'll excuse it. I hope also that my interpretation is slightly more accurate than yours, since yours is way off base.)

At this point, this FA review falls under WP:SNOW; you've defeated any chance that a serious discussion will occur here. I'm not going away, though. I'll continue to work on this article when I feel I have something to contribute -- mostly on the talk page, of course, since I expect the hostility to worsen if I actually try to edit. --FOo 06:49, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's called WP:Consensus. Arriving at it is often contentious, sometimes worse, depending on the combined approaches of all the participants. I should add to the above that participating editors have needed to edit this article and arbit disputes among strong POVs from a significant number of extremes, including proponents of creationist apologetics, scientism, POVs involving presumptions that the very notion of evolution is inherently political in nature and that the article is a product of a leftist conspiracy, self-appointed officers of the style police, self-appointed citation police, persons favoring much more detailed treatement of specific aspects of the topic, those favoring a "let's cut right to the chase and skip all the confusing details" approach, etc.. Well, where we'all ended up after all this is where the article is right now. So, it is a bit overly self-centered, IMO, to expect that after over 4mB of talk, about 10,000 article edits, nearly 200 citations, etc., that suddenly the local consensus must give way to FOo's vision of now the article should read and what it should look like.

I hope this set of exchanges here will quickly be put aside, because frankly, while the article can always use improvement, these are complex concepts that the article deals with and even leading philosophers of science, scientists, theologians and courts struggle with them. Now that FOo has gotten the attention of a number of participants and Margerita has ironed out a significant number of minor syntactic and grammatical wriggles, maybe we can get back to slowly hacking away at the article again. There are, because of the very nature of "intelligent design", complex sets of facts and concepts involved in this article that can't be properly put forward in just a few words with broad swipes. Given that the article is in an advanced state of development after a long and still contentious history, and that there have been no major new developments about intelligent design recently, maybe we'all can do any further work like the Slowskys on the Comcast commercial widely aired of late in the US-- slowly and deliberately. It would be good not to fall prey to expectations that the article read like a poster child for a style manual at the expense of accuracy and reasonable thoroughness . ... Kenosis 18:28, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Consensus may have become majority rule by those who persisted the longest; the article doesn't read as if consensus building is at work here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I missed this comment the other day. Given that Sandy has never spent any time editing the article, how could she possibly know just how big of a role consensus building had played? &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 09:36, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comments—continue FAR. The lead alone is an embarassment to FA status; there is also an external link farm, and incorrectly formatted citations. I avoided this when it was at FAC, but there are clear issues here. Looks like Wiki's worst example of how not to hammer out an NPOV compromise. Continue review; try to fix the article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:55, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
  • OK, I've looked at the FAC, and am not surprised at what I found. The article was promoted over multiple and serious actionable objections, and without involved editors identifying themselves as per the instructions at WP:FAC. Raul has expressed sentiments in this area that may reflect a conflict of interest.[3] This article is an embarrassment to FA. Besides the issues already raised here (embarrassing lead, external link farm, incorrectly formatted citations), there are also basic MOS issues, starting with WP:MSH. A word to avoid in the first line? Poor wikilinking per WP:CONTEXT? Sloppy prose with parenthetical (see) inserts? Evolution was featured in spite of the potential for similar issues; this article doesn't achieve Wiki's finest status as Evolution did. This thing is dripping with POV and sloppiness; when six and seven citations are needed to source statements, it seems apparent that NPOV hasn't been attained. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:12, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
    • I just left a comment above that might address some of these issues. I strongly advocate integrating the feedback given in this context. But this is inherently a controversial topic with complex and often-highly-debated issues involved. After the last FAC discussion, the reviewers went on their way and left a core group of about a dozen participants to defend against the various POV onslaughts this article is subjected to as a matter of course. If the very diligent and often heated quests for accuracy and thoroughness will threaten to be compromised in the slightest by stylistic concerns, I strongly advocate removing it from FA status and leaving it to the local consensus to decide how the article should be written. ... Kenosis 18:39, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
      • Evolution did it within a similar context; if this article can't do it, it should be defeatured. Embarrassing, embarrassing, embarrassing. From reading only small pieces of the article, it's apparent editors aren't working together to present the info in a neutral fashion, and from the notifications I just did, it's not surprising many of the active editors have given up. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:50, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

No, evolution is not similar as regards anything important to this discussion. The controversy in the article on evolution is about one thing-- one central question only: Is it a correct, highly developed empirical assessment of life, or isn't it? Or are the creationists who base their conclusions on whether the presented schema fits with scriptural revelation correct in their conclusions about evolution? In that case WP:NPOV#undue_weight was dispositive of the main issue. And a separate article covers the creation-evolution controversy to allow arguments from both sides to be presented in tandem. In the case of intelligent design, it is a complex interaction of ideological, socio-politically driven, inherently and self-admittedly deceptive strategies by its proponents (said to be for a good cause of course, to bring people to Christ), legal strategies that involve science, philosophy, speculative theology, biblical apologetics, US national educational policy, local school-board politics, and a number of other important issues that are part of a thorough summary of the topic. ... Kenosis 20:40, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, this certainly makes no sense, "and from the notifications I just did" -- sloppy, sloppy prose. Also, embarrasing is a bit subjective, don't you think. Thanks for sharing.

BTW, what is so diffult about comprehending just why we have all of those references? It has nothing to do with not attaining NPOV status, it has a lot to do with sustained attacks by DI hacks. Why not go through the archives? After you have, then you perspective might be a bit different. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 19:03, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

• Speaking of which, while FOo has been criticising run-on sentences (some of which can readily be fixed without overly damaging the explanations), Margerita has been criticising the use of "And" and "But" at the beginning of sentences that are extensions of issues begun in the prior sentence. No big deal so far, but we can't always have it both ways, folks. Also, speaking of stylistic quirks, even the footnotes that are not part of the discussion about consolidating multiple citations sometimes present stylistic issues that ought be noted. Did anybody notice how ridiculous it looks to have footnote #1 following footnote #120? (#1 being one of the notes used multiple times in the article). The decision to use separate footnotes was elected for a reason that is familiar to the local consensus but not to those outside the local consensus, which is: after the style police go on their merry way, the regular participants are left to defend the article, at great expense of time and effort, against passersby who haven't even noted that there are multiple sources combined under one number, accusing the WP participants of cherry-picking the sources to suit the WP editors' preferred rendering. This has happened multiple times. The main point being, there are going to be stylistic quirks that don't necessarily fit everybody's preference, and there will inevitably be conflicts between the Chicago manual and Garbl manual and Oxford manual and even WP:MOS that arise out of the complex, interdisciplinary nature of the topic, not out of bad decisionmaking by the article editors. This article needs to deal with ideology, socio-political advocacy, legal strategy, science, the demarcation problem, several aspects of philosophy and theology, the culture wars, and self-admitted intentional deception by the proponents of ID, and other such concerns, not least the constant bombardment from multiple POVs simultaneously (pardon my dangling modifier). So IMO, we'all (anyone who hasn't permanently given up per Raul's law #5) proceed cautiously to fix what we can, and not compromise accuracy and thoroughness, if that proves to be possible here. ... Kenosis 19:58, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Simple point here being this: English is a living language, as such there is no definitive prescriptive grammar regarding usage. For example, I despise the serial comma yet others are fond of it; both usages are actually "correct". And and but can certainly be used to start a sentence, although in my opinion, they should be used sparingly. I have no qualms regarding passive voice, while others throw fits when it is used. These, my friends, are the joys of a living language. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 20:11, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Well said. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 21:57, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

The article is good at its primary purpose of being accurate, informative and well sourced about a complex and difficult subject. Improving the prose is welcome, but as FOo has found, it can be tricky to rephrase while maintaining accuracy and balance in this highly nuanced context. Some reorganisation is in order, but patience and careful consensus is needed to make these changes. Combining references could look tidier, though this has been done in the past and led to arguments as to whether there were enough citations for a point, but any reorganisation has to be resolved before combining references. With patience and cooperation this excellent article can be further improved. The place for discussion is the article talk page rather than here. . .. dave souza, talk 19:33, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep FA status. This is a very good article, one of the few Wikipedia articles to attract external praise. The main editors have worked extremely hard on it, in the face of all kinds of nonsense. It's clear and comprehensive, well written and well referenced. If some editors think there are too many ref tags, the citations can be combined. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 21:24, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep FA status. Frankly, I have a hard time believing some of the objections are serious. Too many footnotes? That's an astonishing thing to say about a Featured Article. As for the section headings and article length, I don't see any serious issue with the former, and the latter is appropriate to the subject. I agree with FM and Odd Nature's arguments here, it's an excellent article, and deserves to retain FA status. I'm not even completely sure why this review is being raised; is there something going on here that I'm missing? Jayjg ^(talk) 00:08, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• • • Yes, you missed a user who decided to appoint himself Style-Lord find his poor edits being rejected. To get even, he opened this mess. At least that's my observation (and no FOo, I will not apologise for stating the bleeding obvious). &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 21:48, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

• • There is no vote here to keep or delist - it is a FA review, not an FARC. I think the thought with the footnotes is not that there are too many for the article but too many references for one statement.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Not all the points raised are with regard to prose, although I do see it as a valid point for review and improvement. My thoughts were with FA criteria 2a using some work as I don't think the lead summarizes the article well. There is a growing linkfarm in the external links section that requires cleanup to WP:EL guidelines. There is no reason to dismiss points of heading titles or other areas that go against Manual of Style. The point of this is to discuss areas to keep this article up to FA standards. If some of the areas are not addressed, then it could possibly lead to an FARC and voting but there is no need to jump the gun. Morphh ^(talk) 0:42, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
    • I tried to address the issue with the headings. Morphh ^(talk) 0:52, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Yes, however, as this is a FARce, no point in letting it progress to FARCe. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 21:48, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

• • If Featured Articles are meant to be well-written, then this one is poorly written from the outset...

"certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." I'm a living thing. I have pierced ears. Is this an aspect of the theory of Intelligent Design? I thought natural selection was a DIRECTED process by definition. There is a serious grammatical elipsis too, leading to an amusing ambiguity of agency. Im not a scientist, but it seems clear to me that this opener is not saying what it should be saying, and that this is the result of poor written expression. I'm not qualified to say what other theoretical assertions may have fallen under the same fate, but I suggest that Wiki doesn't continue to draw attention to the article as an example of its best work until someone has checked. I've been reading a lot of FAC proposals lately, and it seems to me that popularity/networking ability of the authors/proposers is over-riding true assessment of the 1 (a) aspects of the articles themselves. Gnomethegnome 01:40, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Adam Cuerden has also made this objection. It is not poor wording on our part - it is a quote of the definition of ID by its creators (the Discovery Institute). I think we all agree with that point but it is not our definition. Morphh ^(talk) 2:03, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree it's a bad definition of ID. So what's it doing as the first sentence of the article? Is there a requirement to let the proponents of a deceptive cause set the frame of the discussion? Especially given the content of the article? Pasado 04:18, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, last I heard it has something to do with WP:NPOV. The view of the proponents must be put forward as the definition that the proponents have given. It's definitive, so to speak. But although I support it, this wasn't my doing, Rather, it was agreed around the end of 2005 or very beginning of 2006 to present the proponents' definition first. How else would WP do it and still meet WP:NPOV. Suggestions? ... Kenosis 04:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• delist. If this should be a FA by WP standards, WP is indeed hopelessly anti-intellectual. This article is neither neutral, readable, nor coherent. (I must declare a prejudice: I am a convinced and determined supporter of evolution, and therefore think that a purely objective presentation of an anti-evolutionary theory with a reasonable citation of the opposing arguments is quite sufficient to convince any ration person.)

The first step in a neutral article about a theory is to present the theory without continual interruptions by critics, and without the constant use of "alleged" The fist step in a readable article is to reduce the use of footnotes to one a sentence, and not reference each point with a multiplicity of redundant references. A second step to readability is to not use the footnotes for argumentation--for example, to present the arguments of the evolutionists at length, or to present the speeches of trial judges as if they demonstrated anything about science verity.

The first step in coherence is the distinction between general and specific arguments, and between strong and weak ones. Behe's argument is a subtle one, and the response to it requires a serious presentation of thermodynamics. It cannot be disposed of by a judicial ruling--however correct the ruling may be in legal terms.

One does not disprove intelligent design by arguing against the Christian religion, or its fundamentalist interpretation. The Christian religion might be altogether false--all theistic religions based on a personal god might be false--and intelligent design yet true. One does not disprove intelligent design by exposing the political and religious agenda of its proponents. They may support it only to confirm and evangelize their preconceptions, and yet it might be true.

One does not disprove intelligent design by showing that 99% of trained scientists reject it--we might after all be wrong, & our method of analyzing the universe not the correct one.

I'll give one specific example of the article's POV: The article states "Though evolution theory does not seek to explain abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter, intelligent design proponents cannot infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically, since they have not shown that anything supernatural has occurred" This is POV at its clearest. The editors of WP have no business in determining such matters. Who are the authors of the article to determine what arguments are correct? What revelation do they depend on? And how is this certitude of theirs supposed to convince anyone else?

And I'll give one example of its argumentative style: "if one were to take the proponents of "equal time for all theories" at their word, there would be no logical limit to the number of potential "theories" to be taught in the public school system, including intelligent design parodies such as the Flying Spaghetti Monster "theory"." I'm embarrassed even to copy it--it's the straw man argument at its most sophomoric.

And an example of its rhetorical style: "The consensus in the scientific community is that intelligent design is not science.[21] The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that "intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their own.[22] The National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science say it is pseudoscience.[23][24][25] Others have concurred or termed it junk science.[26][27][28][29]" (the refs. here dont link--see the article)

That's the appeal to authority, at its most superficial: what would one expect them to say? But it gets worse-- there's also the Argumentum ad baculum--that evolution is science and ID not, because a judge has said so. Evolution was always true, even when judges said the opposite. DGG (talk) 04:26, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• • Come to think of it, I repeat my suggestion that this article be voluntarily withdrawn from FA status. If what's needed to keep FA status is to present nice clean lines to the nice oogling gentry that will pony up a few bucks to sell the pseudoartistry to, better to jettison the relationship to the pseudopayola of FA status altogether. ... Kenosis 04:31, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I strongly oppose the core of DGG's argument, as well as his/her conclusions. The content of the article is largely neutral. The style has problems -- and some of these problems get in the way of the content ... sometimes quite badly.

Citing scientists, or scientific associations, as sources on the subject of whether ID is science is not appeal to authority. It's citing sources, a basic requirement for all Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia is not here to concoct original proofs or research; it is here to present the arguments and conclusions that others have made.

The article does present others' arguments rebutting ID, and describing the reasons that it fails to be science, and more pointedly that it fails to be legitimate science education. Some of these arguments rest on the religious basis of ID -- that, for instance, whole textbooks were developed with the religious terms "creation" and "creation science", and that these terms were replaced wholesale with "intelligent design" in contempt of court. Likewise that ID advocates willingly and openly speak to their own political base in terms of subverting science education in order to establish religion.

Describing these facts is not an attack upon religion. We've seen this same kind of fuss over on the Scientology articles. Scientologists accuse Wikipedia of bias and "POV-pushing" when we neutrally describe certain things their church has done, like try to have journalists locked in insane asylums or infiltrate the U.S. government, or kill its own members. The truth is, a neutral description of those actions reflects badly upon them because (surprise!) they're bad actions.

It is true that the present article does not do a perfect job of presenting the claims made by ID advocates without adopting the heckling tone of inserting constant rebuttals to every proposition. The heckling tone has the effect of making ID look better than it should, by failing to allow its frauds and deceit to fall on their own weaknesses. The heckling tone is what attracts accusations of "pseudoskepticism" and "debunkerism" -- accusations that distract from the subject at hand. The lack of clear writing makes the facts of the matter needlessly difficult for the casual reader to understand.

Those are what need to be fixed. And when they are, readers of this article will see a ... much more accurate ... picture of "intelligent design" and its advocates. --FOo 06:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Oddly enough, you're the only editor I recall alleging "pseudoskepticism" and "debunkerism". &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 21:03, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. Well, this is going to be a very long FAR. I see a much simpler issue: the article never had clear consensus for promotion to begin with, and the featured article director should not be judge, jury and witness at the same time; this creates a conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of a conflict of interest. The issues with this article highlight the problems that can occur when an article is promoted without consensus. This is a a process problem as much as an NPOV, MOS, etc. problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Your posts here are inappropriate, Sandy. You may not like the article, but it's not an "embarrassment," and it's unfair to describe people's hard work that way. Secondly, people have confidence in Raul as FA director and in the way he chooses to involve himself. In fact, he's the one person who keeps the entire process from falling apart. This discussion shouldn't be turned into an excuse to attack him. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 21:04, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Please take care with tossing around the word "attack", SV; there is no attack. Please consider suggestions made elsewhere regarding cooling off the recent aggressiveness towards other good-faith editors; it's not becoming. IMO, citations to an extent that they impede readability are problematic in any article, and embarrassing in an FA. Saying so is not an attack, and is quite appropriate for a featured article review. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:33, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• And I see that 45 minutes after posting this, SandyGeorgia posted a personal attack on me on AN/I about my editing of the sourcing policies. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 04:27, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

• Looking at SandyGeorgia's edit history, I only see one edit to WP:AN/I in the last day. With respect to one of the most respected admins in this place, this requires a bit of a stretch to be called a personal attack. It's a support of User:Tim Vickers in a dispute with lots of administrators, but it's rather mild to be called an attack, and I don't see any singling out of Slim Virgin, so it's hardly personal. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 18:25, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

• Ah, the infamous non-attack attack. It really depends on how you define personal, I guess: I can both see how someone could think it was an attack, and how it very well may not be an attack. There is, however, a bit of a history behind the comments, so I guess I'd prefer to call it a veiled tacit sort-of-but-not-quite-attack. Bear in mind, that a famous debating tactic is hiding an ad hom in an ad rem, which is kind of what the referenced edit was.&#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 22:02, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Responsive comment. Sure, all fair enough. An article like this, though, is not about Sandy Hook or Sandy Spring (pardon my free association here), but about a complex, controversial topic involving an intertwined set of issues with numerous possible points of contention within, according to the WP:reliable sources that deal with the topic and it's constituent parts. This requires familiarity with the topic to make judgments about the article, and also requires reciprocal feedback between those familiar with and thos not familiar with the topic, to try to judge how well this stuff is being explained in light of the inherent difficulties of the topic. While the point about the nominator being an advocate of FA status may well be fair game for discussion among those involved in FARC's, FACs, FARs and such, right now I see, if anything, an excessive degree of restraint exercised by participants in the article who happen to also be admins, such as KillerChihuahua, Guettarda, JoshuaZ, even FeloniousMonk. (FeloniousMonk weighed in briefly then left; Dave Souza, also an admin, has participated; Raul654, who gained a fairly close familiarity with the topic during the original FAC, also has participated.) So I'd appreciate hearing more summaries in the future about what the internal administrative discussion is among those involved in FA candidacies and review--many of which are not WP admins, I do recognize.

A core issue here seems to be that there's some confusion about whether the main issue in this FAR is that intelligent design was improperly granted FA status? Or whether the issue is about what's happened to the article since it was granted FA status. This affects a couple of things at present. The first thing it affects is the lengthy discussion several months ago guided by Adam Cuerden (who's also a WP admin) that resulted in some consensused changes to the lead after the FA status was granted. The second thing it affects is the use of separate rather than consolidated footnotes, another decision that was made after the FA status was granted. Thoughts? ... Kenosis 15:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's only a matter of consolidating (or not) footnotes: if you need six and seven footnotes multiple times in the article, has consensus been attained and are the best sources being used? I also don't understand why bringing up who is and is not an admin is relevant. All editors are equal; adminship is no big deal (unless you're implying that admins are using their tools inappropriately to effect this article's content). On the original question, it concerns me whenever Raul advocates for promotion of any FA—that damages the credibility of the process, which must be impartial. The article was promoted over strong opposition; that would at least appear less damaging to FAC's credibility if Raul hadn't taken a stance. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:37, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Ahh. SandyGeorgia, I think I see a bit better what your point might be. Are you asserting that Raul654, as the nominator, should not be involved in advocating the article's improvement, discussion of its merits, etc., or merely that he should not be involved in making the final judgments and closing out the FAC procedure? (If it's the latter, I suggest he might consider becoming more closely involved in this review, so as to have both sides of this story equiably represented in this discussion.) ... Kenosis 18:42, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm asserting neither (and Raul is not the nominator, so I'm not sure what you're asking anyway): I'm saying that since Raul—as the FAC director—has the final decision to promote or fail a FAC, he should't opine on candidates. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:02, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I didn't know until now that he's the director. Was he the director when the FAC for intelligent design was first discussed? Either way, the handy solution would at first appear to be for him to weigh in on procedural matters and make judgments about relevance and criteria, but recuse himself from further advocacy of substantive issues and limit his role primarily to assessing the procedural issues. But this appears to solve little or nothing, because he's involved in the decisionmaking and must make rational decisions either way, in turn justifying the reasons for those decisions to the community of FA reviewers. It's an extremely strict interpretation of the principle of COI that's being proposed here, in my opinion. ... Kenosis 19:15, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, Kenosis, I didn't realize you had limited knowledge about the FAC process. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

NP. The links to the necessary info are slightly akin to the streets in a gated community-- not easy to figure out if you don't have directions from someone who's already familiar. And the names can be quite counterintuitive (e.g., FAR and FARC, each of which implies the other of the two). Thanks for the clarifications. ... Kenosis 21:50, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

The very long length of this FA review (just like the Barack Obama one) is a tipoff that there's some serious disagreement about the article. Also, why is there a pockwatch picture in the article? Why not a computer? Or a picture of Jesus? Don't get the meaning of the pocketwatch. Feddhicks 18:48, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Since I'm already paying attention, I may as well respond briefly. The watch is related to the watchmaker analogy widely used by intelligent design advocates. I don't get the relationship to Barack Obama, but if the implication is supposed to be that there's a political element in all this, it would appear to be roughly correct that it's part of the culture war in the US. More specifically though, ID is a legal strategy involving separation of church and state in the US. But our little aside is not directly relevant to this FAR, which has more to do with how the article's written and whether it deserves to be a Featured Article in WP than it does with whether the article's basically an accurate rendering of what relaible sources have said about the topic. Hope that helps... Kenosis 19:01, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Kenosis, you don't get the relationship to Barack Obama because there is none. Feddhicks seems to not understand what FAR is for, and it would appear he is attempting to canvass here for his invalid Obama FAR which he launched because of a minor content disagreement on the page. Tvoz |talk 20:23, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, no relationship at all. Not even apples and oranges; more like apples and ham. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep FA status - I see no reason to demote. Informative and NPOV article that demonstrates that it is possible to have articles on controversial articles on Wikipedia which are neutral. One of the best summaries of this subject I have read. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 20:49, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep FA status - I would like to comment further, but editors have messed up the formatting and have interrupted other conversations, so I have no clue what the hell is being said above. So, I'm in favor of keeping in counter to what Foo has written in the nominations. 1) I think the prose, though not perfect and certainly as a result of consensus building to counter POV warriors on both sides of the issue, is above a lot of other articles. Not quite as good as Evolution certainly, but better than 90% of articles on here. Also, I'd like to see some sample of bad writing in the article (which might be above, but I lost patience with the bad formatting). 2) Excessive footnoting??? Give me a break. More footnotes the better in a contentious article. Almost everything written has attribution, how great is that? More articles should be like this. 3) Badly named sections? Didn't this thing pass FAC? In that case, it seems like independent editors thought it was fine. But we can tweak the sections and not have this FAR. 4) Long? Not sure what we could cut. It's a great article. So, if I repeated anything someone else wrote, I'm am very sorry. I just can't deal with the random formatting of this discussion, which makes it hard to follow the conversation. Orangemarlin 20:59, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

  After trying to read a bit of this discussion I particularly agree with FeloniousMonk's and OddNature's commentary. I repeated them, so that means they rock. Orangemarlin 21:00, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

  Short answer, Orangemarlin; did it pass FAC? Read the FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

  Comment Sandy, yes we know all about your campaign against Raul645 that you, Marskell, and Tony1 have been conducting, trying to undermine him here at FA for some time, over a year now it appears. The entire project does. It's transparent that your participation here is part of that campaign. Your little group has tightened the FA criteria to the point of absurdity, with all kinds of new ridiculous rules about how citations should be written, and quality of writing and sources, which you guys simply ignore when when it suits you. Your new rules go way, way too far, and were made without any substantive community input. It's clear to observers that your little group tries to maintain the FA review process to give them more control over FA content and guidelines, and you frequently use it as a weapon, either against Raul or against individual editors; both being the case here. A good number of we admins have watching this from the sidelines for several months now, so don't make the mistake thinking that you're going to continue on like this at FA unopposed... the cat is out of the bag. This behavior of yours matters because several of the best FA writers have stopped writing FAs because of your group and it methods I've outlined. I'll also note Marksell and Tim Vickers (another from your group) have recently turned up at NOR, V, and RS trying to force unduly tightened sourcing policies too. This constitutes a pattern by a group, and the pattern shows that the group's aims are not the betterment of the project, but undermining and marginalizing fellow volunteers like Raul654 and SlimVirgin. Until you stop trying to impose inane new FA criteria and cease engaging in selective enforcement of same, I'm taking a personal interest in seeing your group's vendetta against Raul654 and SlimVirgin aired out and ended for good. FeloniousMonk 04:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

  Reply to Sandy's rude comment. Yes it passed. Of course, since I participated for several months in editing and building the article, I would be clueless to whether it was FA or not. And thank you FM for pointing out what's going on here. I didn't know. Orangemarlin 06:39, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Wow, I had no idea. This is more complicated than it appears at first glance. Thanks FeloniousMonk.--Filll 12:45, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Hell hath no fury like an editor scorned or something... &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 22:09, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Replied to FeloniousMonk's post of same content on my talk page. I guess this ID stuff is pretty nasty territory, and perhaps the personal attacks going 'round this FAR might be better refactored to the associated talk page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:22, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Refactored? And of which PA's do you speak? Refactored? I think you mean moved, and what is there to move? &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 22:50, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Sandy, from what I see, you're the personal attacker. Making some nasty remark as to whether I read the FAC is contemptible. And your one-person campaign on this FAR is reprehensible.Orangemarlin 23:23, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. One more thing for the reviewers. ["This just in."] See this edit, which is illustrative of what participants in the article need to deal with on a regular basis. This speaks directly to the issue of why there are so many individual citations in the article and why participants have been reluctant to combine citations. The other reason is that when text gets moved around, it is far easier to move relevant citations to where they belong. ... Kenosis 22:07, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
• Keep FA status - I see no good reason to delist. - Shudda ^talk 02:40, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep FA status. A well balanced and well referenced article on a highly controversial topic. ID’s failed attempt to be accepted as science is much of what there is interesting about it, so the abundance of criticism in the article is absolutely justified. The edits during the past week have gone a long way in cleaning up the prose. This FAR is working. Pasado 05:30, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment...hmmm..the content ain't too bad and the prose is ok, my issues would be:

why call the first section an overview? Isn't that what the lead is? It isn't an overview but what it is is a summary on the theory, so why not call the section Theory, or Teachings, Concept, Ethos or Paradigm or something that describes the sections.

Also, is it possible to reduce the number of direct quotations? They don't help making the article look polished or encyclopedic.

Finally, this may be a good article to leave the inline refs out of the lead and just in the body of the article, again for style reasons.

Otherwise on a quick scan the prose looks ok. I'll have a closer look later. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:28, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

It might not be a bad idea to change the citation style to be more like "(Author1,1999; Author2 et al, 2000)". However, this might still break up the flow of the text, since a large number of citations appear to be crucial because of the scrutiny and attacks that this article is subject to. What I do not think people realize is that this article is the focus of an extremely determined and well-funded computer literate movement. Do a google search on the term "intelligent design". The last time I looked (today), of the top 10 hits, 9 were not favorable to the Discovery Institute. The first link returned by google was to the Wikipedia article we are discussing. The Discovery Institute has several paid staff whose job it was to promote intelligent design, as well as advertising and public relations firms, and has invested millions of dollars already in the promotion of intelligent design, only to see it slowly being eclipsed by negative publicity. Since anyone can edit Wikipedia, of course it is natural to attract these kinds of attacks, which we do. A stylistically beautiful article might make us feel warm and fuzzy, but it will not survive. I personally wonder how valuable and accurate the rating system is here sometimes, but it is obviously important to some people. Our goal should be to make the best compromises we can to achieve the best article we can, under the circumstances. I am sure we can do better than the present article. But some of the suggestions people are making are not taking into account the conditions in which this article must exist. Short of just writing a perfect article and then permanently protecting it, like some of the other controversial articles, we have to make some compromises and grope our way forward. If you want an article closer to evolution in style, remember that it was not easy to get "evolution" into its present condition. By trial and error, at evolution we seem to have hit on a scheme that reduces vandalism and trolling and attacks, while allowing for a better-written article. It was not easy. It took a lot of arm-twisting to allow its last major rewrite as well. And huge blocks of the evolution article were farmed out to other articles. Eventually this might have to be done at intelligent design as well, which would be my suggested approach. I might also suggest an FAQ page linked to the talk page on intelligent design, as was done for evolution (although I disagree slightly with the present style of the FAQ page, it seems to have done the trick anyway). Also organizing the archives so that past discussions on topics that arise over and over are easy to find can be useful, as was done at evolution. Another approach that seems to have worked well at evolution was to produce a simpler, less heavily cited Introduction to evolution article so that one article did not have to be all things to all people. This approach might not work here, or be suitable, but it might be worth considering. The problem is that the intelligent design topic is not really scientifically intricate or sophisticated, but more socially and politically contentious, with multiple layers of meaning to almost every statement. For example, there is what the Discovery Institute says, there is what other creationists of different flavors say, there is what the mainstream science community says, there is what the politicians say, there is what liberal theologians say, there is what conservative fundamentalist theologians say, there is what people in the US say, there is what overseas observers say, etc. Therefore, it might not be possible to easily divide up this topic into a more straightforward piece, and a more detailed piece. Even the discussions about how to connect intelligent design concepts to their obvious antecedents was extremely difficult, with 5 or 6 different views contending for precedence, and the topic arising repeatedly over an extended period. I would ask people here to try to lay off the attacks and bureaucratic criticisms, and for everyone to put their heads together and see if we can think of some ideas for reducing the vulnerability of intelligent design to assorted attacks and predations, while optimizing the writing style and readability, at least within the constraints we are presented with. If you like how evolution turned out, lets try to think of some innovative approaches the way we did at evolution; an FAQ page, organizing the archives, farming material out to more daughter articles, a parallel article with a different slant, etc (disclaimer: I pushed for and participated in 3 of these 4 ideas on the evolution article, so I might be a bit biased)--Filll 13:20, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Filll, paragraph breaks good. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 22:12, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Don't like. First, it offends my anal-retentive sense of style on articles. They should be academic, not made for the lowest common denominator. So what if there's a couple too many references. A contentious article requires it. Yes, the article can be cut down to a few offensive POV forks, but maybe not. And some random editor, based on Filll's thoughts on the subject (and another long paragraph dude), decided to screw up some of the references this morning. I guess that editor has some unusual sense of consensus. Orangemarlin 08:38, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

<comment withdrawn>

Not an insult. You have NEVER involved yourself with ID or any of the Creationist/Evolution articles. That makes you random in my view of the project. You didn't even comment here. And you created a consensus where there is none. TWO editors, one of whom, according to FeloniousMonk, has an ulterior motive for this FAR, think that the references need to be fixed. The dozens of other editors who labored over this article think it's fine as it is. So, I went to look at the article, there you are, without any tiny bit of consensus, without ever editing the article, without exhibiting any knowledge whatsoever of this article, throws in a couple of odd edits. Trust me, if I wanted to insult you, I would. I AGF'ed you by not even insulting you. Just watch out when I don't give any AGF. Orangemarlin 08:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I certainly don't think that my long paragraph encouraged him to do that (at least I hope not). Of course, similar formats have been tried. Does no one think we haven't tried that one before? Good heavens. The thing is, just because we are discussing it here, does not mean that a consensus exists. Did he not read a bit of the talk page history? A bit of what is written above? The references look like that for a reason...--Filll 10:49, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

For those who did not want to read the long paragraph, I am not suggesting any particular format for the references, just that we discuss the reference format some more before anyone jumps to conclusions. I am also suggesting that we might correct some of our problems at intelligent design by doing a bit of what we did at evolution, or maybe trying some other ways to be innovative.--Filll 10:49, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

A key, and oft overlooked, interpretaion of ID re religion, is it would be more aptly akin to the proverbial "wolf in sheep's clothing," rahter than a sheep in wolf's clothing. [A view that at least warrants inclusion, don't you agree?]

• Delist. This article strikes me as a bit of the "curate's egg"--good in parts. The opening paragraph I find problematic. If I weren't a wikipedian, I would regard the long quotation in the opening definition as bad high-school prose. In our world, of course, it's a scar left over from a long-edit war. So, too, all those footnotes? Yech. The rest of the article is much better. I'm a bit concerned to see inconsistency in referencing. Passage of Plato, Artistotle, and Cicero are mentioned without providing references to the specific passages. The link to the de natura deorum is welcome, but it's a bit unhelpful to the reader without Latin--that is, all of them. (I'm not sure, in fact, that the teleological section is very helpful to the article.) Finally, I think this article does have a NPOV-problem. It happens to be my POV, but I think it's detectable enough that the article is less effective at showing ID-sympathizers and/or waiverers anything about themselves. I sincerely think that the best reason to delist it is that the drive to get it back to FA status will make it a better article. semper fictilis 05:46, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
  • In our world, the opening quotation is the chosen definition of proponents of ID, a complex piece of legalistic deception that may be bad high-school prose, but is extremely hard to summarise without original research. Fully translating it becomes an attack on ID, not how they wish to portray themselves and therefore problematic in NPOV terms. Better proposals on the talk page will be welcome, expect detailed analysis and discussion which is likely to find problems with most suggestions. ... dave souza, talk 09:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I appreciate User:semper fictilis' feedback. I should point out to the reviewers and to participants in the article that this is illustrative of why a close-up familiarity with this very complex and still-controversial topic is vital. This, again, is not an article on Yosemite National Park or Washington Monument (which needs work, by the way; and I've picked US-based topics because ID is fundamentally a US-based topic). It is, instead, an article on a legal strategy with an intertwined set of complex, controversial ideological, socio-political, religious, theological, philosophical, educational, public-policy advocacy built around a network of advocates who are self-admittedly engaging in deception of the public in the United States to get religion back into the public school, debunk evolution in favor of a presumed higher cause, and engage in religious apologetics and speculative theology in the high-school science classes. In order to meet WP:NPOV, it was necessary, and widely agreed among participants in the article, to use the proponents' definition up front in the article, because it's definitive, it's what the proponents define it as, and the proponents have consistently used this definition verbatim on their websites for quite some time now. The rest of the article, given the nature, or is it supernature?, of the topic, requires no apoplogetics. The issue of being a "featured article" is another thing, and I'd be perfectly willing to admit that this article might not be FA material. For one thing, it's been placed under the FA category of "Religion, mysticism and mythology", when perhaps it should instead be "Politics and government"?, or perhaps "Law"?, or perhaps "Philosophy"?, or perhaps "Education"? But the problems at present are not with the article; rather they reflect the topic. Not that there aren't things to be improved, but it's never going to have the nice clean lines that everybody can easily and uncontroversially agree are examplary of excellent writing in WP. Not, at least, without an understanding of the difficulties of the topic. ... Kenosis 13:16, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Kenosis. I think there are definitely some weaknesses in the article, and as I said before, I am not sure that FA means that much, especially in the case of this intelligent design article. Also, the arguments about US-centricity are a bit like complaining that the article National Institutes of Health is US-centric. It is primarily a US movement, that has historical international antecedents, and is now spreading to other countries as well. So what?--Filll 14:32, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Sure, and the spread into other nations has been cursory, with the UK, Netherlands and Australia quickly disposing of the issue in essence by mass suggestions that the education directors/ministers who brought it up might be best suited for another line of work. And the Discovery Institute's offshoots have set up little networks, or at least several websites, that appear to be in several other countries where the issue of separation of religion and public-school science education may be regarded by its advocates as potentially vulnerable to infiltration. That is to say, unlike the Internet, or McDonald's, to date it's not exactly a global movement that happened to start in the US, but is a US phenomenon with a few passing outward ripples at most. ... Kenosis 15:31, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, with the possible exception of Turkey and maybe some other Islamic countries as well.--Filll 15:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

• Prose issues. I find the use of the generic male pronoun objectionable. I find the instructing of readers to "note that" in poor taste. The whole article needs a good run-through by some copy-editors. Awkward expressions such as "Intelligent design deliberately does not try to identify or name the specific agent of creation" ("Intelligent design deliberately avoids identifying the specific agent of creation"). "Can be found in" twice in three sentences. "Put forth" is a bit ... 19th century. But there's lots to commend in the article. I hope that its supporters can find fresh eyes to spruce it up. Tony 14:35, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely true. However, in partial defense, we have been too busy fighting off the alligators to drain the swamp...--Filll 15:17, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Tony, what you you prefer in place of "he"; "he or she", "he/she" the infamous "xe", or the grammatically incorrect "they"? English, given its developmental path, has no gender for its nouns, so the pronoun doesn't match the gender of the noun as it does in Romance languages (or even in other Germanic languages). Using "he" as a default stems from the restriction in Old English of the instrumental case to masculine nouns, not really to any type of prejudice.

"Can be found in" -- agreed. First there are better ways to say that, and second, repetition of phrases is something up with which we shall not put.

Put forth isn't 19th century, but it is very formal, and grammatically correct.

Yes, agree too about "note that" -- it's like a neon arrow with blinky lights. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 09:55, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

The "development path" of English has seen masculine usage largely disappear in professional media in the space of about thirty years. And "he", I'd suggest, has ceased to be colloquial even in common usage—it "reads weird". "She or he" is better, even if clunky. (I'll guess that "they" will eventually be a correct use in the singular because it's been adopted verbally—but probably not for another generation or two.)

There's agreement on the talk that we can at least move to unpack the refs further—publisher, date, retrieval date etc. Can we do that tidy-up, at least? Marskell 10:24, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

"They" has a long way to go: it's a colloquialism much like "ain't". Fine for speech I suppose (although the usage of "they" creates and ambiguity), but still not for standard prose (ain't will appear but only if used ironcally).

"colloquial even in common usage—it" makes no sense to me. Colloquial means the common usage of the populace. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 15:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for my redundant phrasing. "Ain't" doesn't solve a linguistic gap; singular they does. In fact, judging from our sources on that page its usage doesn't have far to go at all. The Cambridge Guide appears to advocate it. (Let's form a commitee!)

Jim, starting from the bottom I have begun unpacking ref info. I won't have much time after today, and it's going to take hours to do. Any other volunteers? Marskell 15:22, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

In a certain sense "ain't solves a linguistic "non-gap": the desire to not have to remember all those verb-forms for "to be". Shame English isn't Swedish.

Well, you'll never catch me using singular they. Besides, what would be the proper verb usage? They is? They writes? They eats? (After all, if it's to be a singular, the verb should be as well). I'd much rather use (s)he or he or she, as unwieldy as some might see that.

You can have a go at the refs -- I really dislike working on refs, too much of a pain in the but. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 17:55, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

The words "note that" now removed. Turned out they were part of a quote of William Dembski. But the words were part of a clause that was somewhat superfluous anyway, so I removed them and put in an ellipsis. "Put forth" now changed to "put forward", with an edit summary thanking Tony1 for the criticisms. The phrase "..can be found in" is followed by "can be found again" in the section on "Origins of the term" I thought the usage was reasonable there. Any suggestions? ... Kenosis 13:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

On the issue of gender neutrality, I found one instance where the issue presently comes up. It's in the example of the archaeologist finding a statue made of stone, second-to-last paragraph of the opening section of "Overview". There, the word "he" is used three times in close sequence, so "he or she" in rapid sequence might be a bit verbose. Of the rest of the instances of the word "he", one is in the phrase "he or she", so that's already covered, and all the remaining ones refer to a specific intelligent design proponent or critic. Incidentally, all but one of the many CSC fellows are male (Nancy Pearcey being the lone exception and not among the more vocal advocates); the two most prominent critics are female (though I do not attempt to attach any particular meaning to this at the moment). Beyond an abstract advocacy of gender neutrality as a general principle, does anybody have any concrete suggestions? Maybe I'll go try "(s)he", and see where it goes. ... Kenosis 14:02, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah, political correctness. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 15:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I would be interested to see the comments of new reviewers separated from those of the editors who have been involved in all the bitter fights over this article in the last several months. Gnixon 00:56, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

It's called a discussion, GN: breaking apart the discussion would serve no purpose. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 09:58, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't appreciate your rudeness. My point was that 99% of the comments here are from people who have been very active in editing the page, and it would be helpful to be able to identify the comments from people who may have a fresh perspective. Gnixon 23:07, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind that Gnixon those who brought the article this far along all share the opinion the Gnixon has a long history of trying to impose his personal views onto the article at the expense of neutrality. Odd nature 23:23, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Can you provide any example of a time when my personal views have been at issue? Gnixon 23:32, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Shall I bring up the criticisms of at least 10-15 editors in the past? FeloniousMonk, an administrator, probably would be best to recount your activities. Orangemarlin 23:36, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Just about every issue you raised there was shot down as favoring ID proponent's rhetoric over a neutral recitation of facts and views. You can start at Talk:Intelligent_design/Archive37. Odd nature 23:40, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Since I obviously don't think my personal views ever came up, nor do I think I favored anyone's views, a specific diff would be more helpful. Gnixon 23:53, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delist Others have given my reasons, and I fear further comment would only further incite the wrath of the article's editors. For the record, I was involved in some of the fighting I mentioned above, generally on the other side from this article's supporters. I'd love to help with the article if the environment ever improves. Gnixon 00:56, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Wrath? LOL. If I recall, your edits ran into WP:NPOV problems. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 09:58, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

One of the basic problems with the article is that editors can't agree on how to follow WP:NPOV. Gnixon 23:07, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

You're one person with whom few agree with respect to NPOV. Jim recalls you correctly as I do. Orangemarlin 23:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. As I mentioned earlier history has shown that Gnixon is the last person to be delivering lecture to anyone on NPOV in regards to the intersection of creationism and science. But he is an excellent candidate to receive such a lecture on NPOV. Odd nature 23:29, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

One could examine the history to see that many editors have independently raised concerns about NPOV in the article. It's true that the owners of the article tend to disagree with me. Gnixon 23:32, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

The passive aggressive attack on us. No, NPOV editors ALWAYS disagree with you. But, I understand your being aggrieved. Apparently we all pick on you and only on you. Orangemarlin 23:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

My apologies for the way I stated it. I think the article is fiercely owned by a group of editors, which in itself should disqualify it from FA status. I think (at least some of) the group attacks (not merely disagrees with) not only me, but anyone who disagrees with them.

Owners? Are you trying to claim that the 8-10 regular editors of that article are violating WP:OWN? Presummably you are just dissatisfied with the current OWNERS^TM but would be perfectly happy were you owning it. Odd nature 23:40, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think they are violating WP:OWN. I have no interest in owning the article. In fact, I once suggested that the best way to improve the article was for everyone currently involved (including myself) to never edit it again, and rely on random chance to select a crop of editors who could work together with better results. Gnixon 23:57, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Without these "owners" the article would quickly deteriorate into a publicity tool for the Discovery Institute. Maybe that is what you think is preferable. I think that would not be a reasonable and balanced article. Readers who want to see the Discovery Institute position can visit that website. Wikipedia does not present minority views as though they were majority views. And Intelligent Design is clearly a minority position. Deal with it.--Filll 00:02, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Nowhere did I indicate that I think it "preferable" for the article to "deteriorate into a publicity tool for the Discovery Institute" and I think it's rude (a violation of WP:CIVIL) that you would suggest that. Can you provide an example of when the DI coopted the article because its "owners" weren't there? Gnixon 00:06, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

One has to wonder why you haven't even bothered to check the article's edit history before sounding off. There's a broader of people editing the article than you realise or would have readers believe. Odd nature 00:09, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, I guess he's not including me, because I barely edit ID. But I guess the rest of the cabal owns the article. Of course, the cabal that edited this particular article included both ID or Creation advocates and those who support science. About 10 editors I would guess. So let's round them (me excluded, of course), and have them banned for owning the article. Oh wait a minute, only one person is making that accusation. Orangemarlin 00:12, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, one person who wants to lead the firing squad. Sadly, he'll not get the opportunity as his accusations are rather risable. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 15:09, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: The original nominator of the FAR stated problems with 1a, 2a, 2b, and 4. I would add to that list 1d (neutral) and 1e (stable) as well.
  • Concerning 1d, the article tries too hard to convince the reader of the conspiratorial nature of the subject. For example, there is the repeated use of words like "deliberately" or "intentionally". Or bringing argument after argument debunking ID such as in the Controversy section. In the end such a strident push makes the article appear more like a tract than an encyclopaedia article.
  • Concerning 1e, it is clear from the length of this FAR, the controversial nature of the original FA promotion, and the continuing reverts in the history of the article that no consensus/stability has been reached. A lot more work has to be done to get this article to truly exemplify as one of our very best. --RelHistBuff 10:55, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Stability is a unlikely and unreasonable expectation for such a controversial topic. Particularly one that is the target of online POV campaigns: Putting Wikipedia on Notice, the Discovery Insitute Odd nature 00:13, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

If stability is not possible, then it should not be an FA. It does not satisfy criterion 1e. If it can't be made neutral, then it should not be an FA. It does not satisfy criterion 1d. If the prose cannot be fixed due to fear of deterioration, then it should not be an FA. It does not satisfy criterion 1a. Etc., etc. The article can remain A-class or GA, but not FA. --RelHistBuff 22:45, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Correction of POV-pushing edits does not count as instability, at least from my POV. Stability implies the article is largely "fnished", that is significant edits are not being made to either add more material, or bring the article up to acceptable standard. That this article is a magnet for POV edits from ID pushers should not affect its eligibility for FA status. --Michael Johnson 00:07, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Michael that periodic vandalism or the like doesn't disqualify an article from "stability," but there are more serious changes that a number of editors have tried and failed to make, in good faith and without any POV-pushing agenda. Some editors who frequent the page have tried hard to reach solutions, but I think they have so far failed. Because of that, and because new parties continue to raise good-faith objections, I'd agree with RelHist that the article doesn't seem stable. Gnixon 05:38, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Of course I was not talking about vandalism but rather "good faith" edits by editors unable to accept that their POV is not a NPOV, and insist on repeated attempts to change the tone of the article. --Michael Johnson 07:10, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Let me assume for the moment that I can be included among your idea of those "unable to accept that their POV is not a NPOV".... First, my personal POV, which I can only guess is unknown to this group since I've very rarely if ever described it, has never been an issue. The question is entirely one of what constitutes the correct application of NPOV policy, i.e., how to avoid allowing the article to take some POV. I think enough editors have independently and in good faith raised objections to the "tone" of the article that it's unfair to dismiss them as cranks. Gnixon 15:35, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes, vandalism is in the eye of the beholder.--Filll 11:27, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Could someone divide this discussion into subsections? Gnixon 23:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

No one wants to. Orangemarlin 23:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Can you clarify? Clearly someone (me) would like the discussion divided into subsections. As I imagine is obvious, my reason is that it's difficult to follow or add to such a long discussion with no subsections. Surely you can't testify that no one is willing to perform the task. Gnixon 23:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

No, I'd object to that. And I'm sure many others would too. Odd nature 23:23, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Could you say why, please? Gnixon 23:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

No. Odd nature 23:30, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Don't you usually refactor discussions without consensus? My reason would be that people won't read all of the discussions and move right to the most recent section. That's not fair to this discussion. But you know, please be bold and refactor away! I'm sure everyone will appreciate your endeavors.Orangemarlin 23:34, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

• My Word. I just read the current version of the article on ID. While I understand the complexity of getting the various factions to agree on any text, this is remarkable. It is almost unreadably redundant. The article would be better served as the summary of the definition, a bit of history, the Dover decision then link to long discussions of the various important sub topics. The discussion on the tactics and motives of the various proponents is hugely important, and feels burried under loads of explaination of why there are no peer reviewed articles. In addition, the fallicy of "God in the space between" is so abhorent to me (as a Christian) that I can hardly comment. I have faith that you all can do better --Rocksanddirt 00:02, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for a very valid point. There's an underlying theological debate, about the validity of Johnson's description of "theistic realism" -- or sometimes, "mere creation" --as the defining concept of our [ID] movement. This means that we affirm that God is objectively real as Creator, and that the reality of God is tangibly recorded in evidence accessible to science, particularly in biology. Less fundamentalist Christians don't have that need for physical evidence to support their faith. The intelligent design movement article covers aspects of the campaigning, but the history is very much intertwined with the various concepts put forward, and coverage can be improved in the intelligent design article, with patience and research.. dave souza, talk 19:08, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Nothing like showing your hand and demonstrating how neutral you are on this, is there? And somehow, I do not understand what this "fallicy" has to do with the article. This is article is not arguing for or against God or his/her/its nature. It is discussing a popular public relations and political campaign for a certain agenda. This is again someone unlikely to be satisfied by more than an advertising brochure produced by the Discovery Institute. If anyone doubts the problems that this article faces, just look at the handful of people with NPOV POV agendas that have even shown up on this page. This sort of thing attracts them like flies.--Filll 11:27, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Filll, I think you've misunderstood Rocks' reason for mentioning his faith. By the way, I do indeed have an "NPOV agenda"!  ;) Gnixon 15:41, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah, well I guess I missed that someplace.--Filll 15:45, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Nah, you didn't miss anything. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 15:57, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I must have missed it too. But it's possible if I put on my reading glasses I'll see it. Nope. Still not there. Orangemarlin 06:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the problem lies in having one set of criteria for all featured articles when different types of articles should be featured as representing the best wikipedia has to offer for its type of article. This article should be featured for many reasons. That style choices have been made due to this being a wiki and a controversial subject is a fact that should not be responded to by making the article superficially better but worse as a wiki article. Instead it should be recognized that syle choices should reflect the nature of the subject and the nature of the publication. Wikipedia is breaking new ground as a type of publication never seen before. Let's be open minded about also breaking new ground in what constitutes a well done encyclopedic presentation. WAS 4.250 18:53, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Major Rework Needed. Thanks for the notification SandyGeorgia. I find the article seriously deficient to be FA, primarily by providing little on what ID is, and emphasizing criticisms of ID. Major effort needed to achieve FA status.DLH 07:59, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh, so Sandy is canvassing POV pushers now, is she? Seeems that this is getting a bit personal now. I wonder what Sany's real interest is given that she's not contributed squat to the aricle. As for you DLH, the link you provided below gives away your POV in spades.

And as for Sandy, editors who truly have Wikipedia's best interests at heart do not slither about behind the scenes looking for the most tendentious POV pushers they can find. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 18:07, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

On editorial criteria:

• Factual - I find numerous statements that are false or misleading. Substantial corrections are needed See examples below.

• Comprehensive: This article is missing the major section of ID Assumptions. Recommend that this be added.DLH 06:57, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

This long and wooly discussion on a pro-ID wiki (not a reliable source) was written by David L. Hagen: who he? ... dave souza, talk 11:22, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

• Neutral: The article frequently emphasizes critics position and often fails to mention the corresponding ID position.

• Concise Intro: The introduction poorly summarizes Intelligent Design. e.g., The present introduction has 1 line on what ID is and 15 lines against it. To be featured, this introduction should summarize the main arguments presented by ID proponents, as detailed in the rest of the article, and summarize criticism against it with about similar space.DLH 06:57, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

The intro is not concise, with lengthy descriptions by critics and little on what ID is.DLH 05:14, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment DLH's many objections (now moved to the article talk page) are a textbook example of the sort of the policy- and guideline-devoid disengenuous objections from ID promotors long term contributors to this article have had to contend with. Before anyone cries foul I'll point out that User:DLH has in his 1.5 year at Wikipedia yet to make any meaningful contribution to an ID related article but has an established history of using Wikipedia articles to promote ID views and rhetoric while discounting the mainstream view and ignoring WP:NPOV, as well as link spamming ID-related articles to his pet project, an ID wiki researchintelligentdesign.org: [4]. FeloniousMonk 05:51, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

It's also worth pointing out that DLH has a history of recruiting meatpuppets offsite at the pro-ID ISCID forums to inflate the ID POV into the article: [5] Odd nature 18:23, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

See NPOV: Undue weight. .. dave souza, talk 11:22, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

By my count, the article introduction has 4 sentences about what ID is. Seems like plenty to me. It then has 3 sentences stating that ID is controversial and opposed by some groups, which is true. You want to pretend that this is false? Give me a break... It finally has 5 sentences talking about the history of ID and what has happened recently, which might not have been the way the DI wanted it. However, this is an encyclopedia, and this is what the readers want to read and need to read. So please...put a sock in it.--Filll 12:49, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delist, it is neither well-written prose nor of appropriate lengthy. More specifically, it is too verbose by at least an order of magnitude, and the nearly two hundred sources should be snipped down to the most relevant and informative. Finally, as judged by this page even, the article is subject to significant controversy, and from the edit history does not appear to be particularly stable. >Radiant< 09:09, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

If the goal is to have only stable articles on here, then no controversial articles should probably be FAs, or possibly even in WP. However, my feeling is that these are quite valuable for the reading public. The public does not care or even know in most cases what is rated FA or GA or A or B etc. They just want to get information. And this article provides it. Suppose I am a parent whose school board is under attack by ID supporters (or I support ID, and I want to know what the arguments are on the other side so I can be prepared to defend myself against them) and I want to understand the situation. I can come to WP and understand the pros and cons, the issues and recent history and major players, and where to go for more information on both sides. Suppose I am a legislator or a political aid or a lobbyist. I can find what I need here, and links to other important information. Suppose I am someone preparing for a school debate. All I need is in the article, or in its links. If we "pare this down", a huge amount of valuable information will be flushed away and lost. If the goal is to make something pretty for our own vanity, this article might never make it, according to some arbitrary narrow definition. If the goal is to make something useful for the readers, then this article is on the right track (although it still can use work of course).--Filll 12:58, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure my support will help it, but I fully support all or most of DLHs suggested changes. I commend his patience in dealing with it. I havent the least idea of where he stands on the issue personally, and that is just as it should be. These changes alone may not be enough for FA--Radiant suggests much more drastic changes. DGG (talk) 10:01, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

• Note: I have moved the discussion on the content of the article to the talk pages of ID. Please discuss here only the FA criteria. --RelHistBuff 10:07, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Editorial Concerns Registered: In her invitation to comment, SandyGeorgia noted:

• "If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status."
• For the record: I provided explicit details on the editorial policies that RelHistBuff has moved to the discussion page. Unless those detailed concerns are addressed by July 23, 2007, I recommend that this article be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list per the stated policy. DLH 17:22, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. As I mentioned above, I agree with the article's critics on one thing, which is that it shouldn't be a "Featured Article". I advocate a voluntary give-back of FA status by consensus of participants in the article, if such consensus can be achieved. The problems here are not, on the whole, with the article, but with the FA criteria that simply are not designed with the more complicated and controversial topics in mind. Many of those criteria are readily subject to endless bickering that requires a patient, diligent analysis to sort through the many issues and arrive at meaningful collective judgments-- something that relatively few, if any, participants appear to have the time and inclination to do.
  Taken as a whole, the feedback given thus far in this FAR amounts to a colláge of contradictory statements about the article that would be impossible to implement in any meaningful way. Please send the FA rating back to from whence it came via whatever procedural method can be devised-- IMO, this discussion has become largely a waste of time. ... Kenosis 13:59, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Here here. Orangemarlin 17:23, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

What exactly is the purpose of the FA? Aside from making the editors involved feel good, and being another FA scalp to hang on the proverbial wall? It should be about improving the writing and the articles. But in this instance, it is not clear to me that this is the purpose. It is acting at cross purposes, perhaps to what should be the goal of this article, or what is even possible.--Filll 14:22, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

The purpose of the FA is to identify our great articles and to encourage editors to get articles up to that level of quality. The purpose of the FAR is to assess how well an FA maintains its qualifications as such, to suggest improvements in case the article does not meet some of the FA criteria, and to provide a path toward FARC in case it doesn't seem like the article can be brought up to snuff. Several people have suggested improvements to the article, and several others have indicated they think it should go to FARC, so I think this FAR is serving its purpose. Gnixon 15:51, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately I know too much about your past edits Gnixon, so that colors my response to this post.--Filll 16:12, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, and we're not alone apparently. Orangemarlin 17:23, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Kenosis, from the stated policy, I understand that unless the editorial concerns are corrected, this article will automatically be transferred to "Featured Article Removal Candidate". Then there will be the vote of whether to Keep or Delist.DLH 17:26, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I think you mean the valid concerns. Sadly, many of the converns raised here (yours among them) are not really valid, are they. You basically want us to reproduve a DI page on the granseur of ID. Ain't gonna happen. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 18:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Got that right. Odd nature 18:26, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

As I said before, this kind of review is bound to bring out the aggressive, aggrieved minority viewpoint, in the form of Gnixon and DLH. they are all excited thinking they can finally strike a blow and "hurt" this article and the NPOV "pro-science cabal" that has been protecting the article from the minority pro-ID, pro-DI predations and attacks. I do not care if this article gets re-rated as start class, there is NO way...and I mean NO way we will ever give in to a view like that of Gnixon or DLH. I would rather have the article deleted completely than see that happen. This page just gives these agents of intolerance and ignorance another platform on which to parade their completely biased views and not-so-hidden pro-right wing Fundamentalist agendas.--Filll 18:55, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm curious what exactly my "minority viewpoint" is. Gnixon 20:22, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep as FA - While every article can be improved (and this one is subject to constant discussion and change), I see no reason to delist this article. Sure, there are people who dislike the article because it doesn't simply regurgitate Discovery Institute talking points - and Sandy Georgia appears to be out there recruiting them for this FAR - but having an NPOV article is no reason to delist. Then there is nonsense like Radiant's "too many references". If he had bothered to pay the least attention to the article history (or maybe, you know, read the discussion on this page) it would be obvious why that many references are needed. Guettarda 00:15, 17 July 2007 (UTC)