Talk:Rex Research

Part of one single sentence in this article needs to exist, and not here but in the tetrasil article. I'm moving the sentence and deleting this unnecessary article in 7 days. Ghostface Editah (talk) 20:43, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Because...?--Krej^talk 20:54, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Because it makes one claim that's marginally relevant to an on-mission article. Otherwise, you've shown by adding material that calls the author "insane" that you're using the article as a repository for poorly written and substanceless ridicule. ANd like a lot of your writing, it's written in a kind of pointlessly snarky narrative that I think diminishes RW's credibility. Aside from addressing tetrasil, the guy is a nobody crank. Ghostface Editah (talk) 21:09, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

So are you saying RW has notability guidelines? I didn't know that. Thanks for telling me.--Krej^talk 21:15, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

No. I'm saying that you might use a little judgment and consider whether creating a page basically to fill with "snark" and call some random guy on the internet names is what you'd want to pop to the top of Google searches for RW. Noting that the guy promotes a number of crank theories and what they are is relevant to showing the milieu of tetrasil promoters. Not much else. Ghostface Editah (talk) 21:23, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Hey, by writing "pointlessly snarky" stuff, I'm just trying to write in the style of the majority of RW.--Krej^talk 21:29, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

No you're not. No it's not. Even if some of it is, is that really how you think RW is going to be taken seriously? So much of this site reads like some kind of parody of an encyclopedia (I realize RW is not an encyclopedia) that it's time to reexamine SPOV and it makes me sad that this is what you think RW should look like. Ghostface Editah (talk) 21:32, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Frankly, when I read the RW guidelines, I was rather surprised to see that it said the SPOV is to "make woo-promoters uncomfortable", since if the articles make them uncomfortable, it'll just drive them away and make them have a persecution complex instead of making them listen to reason. Anyway, this is something that should be discussed by the community at large.--Krej^talk 21:37, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

The best way to "make woo-promoters uncomfortable" is to tell the truth about the woo they promote. Randomly calling them names doesn't do that. It's better to explain their error to them, and they might even listen. Were you around for the Dynamiclear argument? They came to argue with us, lost, and changed the wording of their website. The level-headed approach works. Sophie^Wilder 21:45, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

OK, so is it OK if we selectively call them names?--Krej^talk 22:13, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

That's not up to me. I'm surely guilty of name-calling, but I'd prefer to see articles on people and core topics be presentable and credible to my mother. Ghostface Editah (talk) 22:15, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

It has been discussed, although the discussion went nowhere because it wasn't over power or voting. I can't even find where it was. I'd like to see it start again. SPOV is bad policy, to the extent it's clear policy at all. Ghostface Editah (talk) 21:53, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Right. Well, personally, I think SPOV makes RW enjoyable to read, from a skeptic's point of view, but it's detrimental in terms of the general public or the people who support the things criticized in RW's articles. On one hand, you have some potentially entertaining crank-bashing (which, however, drives non-skeptic people away), but on the other hand, you have boring, dead-pan writing useful only for Internet arguments. In the middle, you have criticism, sprinkled with some anti-woo snark. But whether there's a lot or only a little snark doesn't really matter, since any snark will offend people and drive them away. A compromise doesn't really make sense to me; it's either snark or no snark.

So, yes, SPOV is bad from a proselytizing point of view, but on the other hand, changing it to NPOV would make RW quite boring. (I hold no opinion as to which one is better.) I only write with snark because it's RW policy, but I'll gladly change my tune if the policy's changed.

Of course, none of this has any bearing on whether this article should be deleted. Why should it?--Krej^talk 23:12, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Because at most it's a support article and only the second half of the first sentence says anything relevant to the article it supports. (formerly Ghostface Editah) 23:19, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

OK, then, what sort of information has to be added?--Krej^talk 23:22, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Dude, I don't know. I don't think the guy's worth commenting on or drawing attention to so I'm not the right person to ask. You've added more than I would if I were fighting to keep this article. (formerly Ghostface Editah) 00:58, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I fixed your thing. Look at the cquote and sbs docs for an explanation of why templates with unnamed variables don't like = without coaxing, and therefore won't respect your inline CSS. (formerly Ghostface Editah) 01:00, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks.--Krej^talk 01:36, 13 March 2013 (UTC)