Talk:talk.origins

Untitled

Just a note: using an earlier draft from Wesley R. Elsberry, I have made an article for the Archive. Any help with it is appreciated. JoshuaZ 02:50, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

FAQ copyright issues.

I'm thinking of moving the FAQ copyright section here to the page on the Archive. Thoughts? JoshuaZ 06:01, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

-- Hi, Dave Greig here (moderator of talk.origins) figured I'd add some content. --D.

TrueOrigins link

"True.Origin was founded as a young-earth response to talk.origins. [2]" was added to the main article. I think that this is, at best, something that should be in the links section. In looking at the treatment of various young-earth creationist pages here, there may be a reference to the TalkOrigins Archive in a secondary section, but I haven't seen it used in the primary section of any yet. I think this mention of TrueOrigins in the main section of the talk.origins article is simply advocacy for enhanced link placement. -- Wesley R. Elsberry 08:19, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

The link existed in the link section previously. As per the discussion on the Talk.origins archive page it was removed as being non-notable. --Davril2020 13:00, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

And, as has been pointed out, this article concerns the Usenet newsgroup talk.origins, so the idea that the article should include links to antievolution websites is pretty dubious. There might be an argument that links should point to some antievolution Usenet newsgroups, but then one would have to weigh notability of those newsgroups. --Wesley R. Elsberry 20:26, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Creation Links section?

A section was added to this article called "Creation Links", with Hugh Ross's "Reasons to Believe" as the sole link in it. I suspect that this is simple self-promotion, since RTB doesn't have any direct relevance to t.o. as a concept. Is this section needed at all? --Wesley R. Elsberry 22:35, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I've removed it. If it were arguably related to TO in some way I'd be inclined to keep it in but it really isn't. Furthermore, we have had a lot of spamming related to Ross that last few days. JoshuaZ 23:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Another creation site link appeared in the article's "External Links" section, added by "Zephyr axiom". I don't see the relevance of the link to the talk.origins newsgroup. --Wesley R. Elsberry 03:21, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I still don't see the relevance. Unless I hear some objections, I will remove the link. --Wesley R. Elsberry 01:23, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Talk Origins and Deception by Omission

I think the article entitled Talk Origins: Deception by Omission should be added to the links section. 136.183.146.158 03:44, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm...an article that attacks TO for using the standard scientific definition of evolution? I think the deception here is on the part of the author of the article to which you linked. Guettarda 05:21, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

The website talkorigins.org is unaffiliated with the *newsgroup* talk.origins. The article is about the latter, while this wikipedia entry is about the former. Dave Greig 19:37, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Peer-reviewed publications

I suggest that the italicized portion of the following be deleted:

"Apart from the fun, however, the group is noted for its detailed and reasoned rebuttals to even the most unscientific creationist claims. This is a result of the one rule the group does seem to have, that any claim is to be backed up by actual evidence, preferably in the form of a peer-reviewed publication in a reputable journal. However, peer-reviewed publications are not real evidence in the sense of that provided by the scientific method, and consequently cannot be regarded in the same light as observational and experimental evidence. Peer-reviewed publications are only as good as the opinions, beliefs and vested interests of the author and the peers. "

Peer-reviewed publications are the communication medium of science. The italicized rant is not verifiable knowledge and is simply an extreme POV inserted into the article. --Wesley R. Elsberry 12:50, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, there are genuine debates to be had about the merits of the peer-review system. Of course, like evolution, they're generally about the details, rather than the system as a whole. The point is, though, that the Peer review article is the place to get into those issues, not this one. Joe D (t) 13:23, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

The text inserted into this article bears no resemblance to any actual debate over the merits of the peer-review system. --Wesley R. Elsberry 23:39, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Culture Wars and t.o. Culture

A recent edit by Yoda921 struck a goodly chunk of the "Culture" section, citing "formality". What was left was also edited, changing

Apart from the fun, however, the group is noted for its detailed and reasoned rebuttals to even the most unscientific creationist claims.

to

Apart from the fun, however, the group is noted for its alleged detailed and reasoned rebuttals to creationist claims.

We shouldn't simply be bouncing from one POV to another. I suggest that we trim this back to something simple:

Apart from the fun, however, the group is noted for its detailed rebuttals to creationist claims.

There is nothing "alleged" about the detail; that's verifiable. --Wesley R. Elsberry 13:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

While I agree, we need a reasonably reliable (secondary) source stating that. Do you have any idea? The TalkOrigins archive has a lot of independent endorsements, but do we have something similar for the newsgroup? --Stephan Schulz 14:15, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Almost all the material on the TOA originated as posts on the talk.origins newsgroup. If you are willing to accept the independent endorsements of the TOA, then part of the credit should be apportioned in turn to the newsgroup. --Wesley R. Elsberry 14:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and made the edit removing "alleged". The rebuttals exist--that is not to say that one has to accept the validity of the rebuttal. Incidentally, if you go to the article on rebuttal and then click on Counterargument that takes you to an article that uses evolution and creationism as its main example. It also makes clear that "rebuttal", used in an informal sense, does not necessarily entail acceptance (and capitulation) by the other side of an argument. Col pogo 01:54, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

An anonymous editor deleted the content of the "Culture" section but left the section title itself. Either the title should go away, too, or the content should be restored. It seems a rather drastic edit to be made without previous discussion on this page. --Wesley R. Elsberry (talk) 23:13, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Talk Origins down?

I hope it's only temporary, but right now TO.org is not returning http requests. I know it's OR, so can't be in the article, but does anyone else have any perspective on this? Huw Powell (talk) 06:08, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, since today is the first time I've ever used the site, but I went ahead and changed all the links to toarchive.org, which works fine. --Armchair info guy (talk) 11:43, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! They still appear to be down. Odd. I wonder if there is any "reporting" on it out there we can reference in the article? Huw Powell (talk) 19:53, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

There's an explanation at Science blogs but no hint as to why it is still down right now, 9 January 2009. toarchive.org seems to be an old version, though.

FYI, I used AWB to change 100+ more pages to toarchive.org since talkorigins.org is still down and has been so for over a month. I don't know if it's "old" or not, but it has a copy of every single talkorigins ref. It's a valuable site and is ref'd so much here. -Armchair info guy (talk) 21:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Talk Origins down

The site seems to be down since 3 may 2010. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 11:34, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Something must be wrong on your end. It works fine for me. ~Amatulić (talk) 16:59, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

It was dead around the time of the original post (DNS resolved the IP, but there was no response from the web server ... for me). However, it is good now. Johnuniq (talk) 02:27, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Bear in mind this is an article about the usenet group. A usenet group can't really go down, even if most providers stop carrying it, that isn't really the group going down. There is a seperate article for the TalkOrigins Archive website Nil Einne (talk) 07:06, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup

I added a few cleanup templates requesting third party, secondary sources. Currently, we have little-to-nothing in the way of independent analysis. In light of this, I have also tagged it with notability concerns. I'll see if I can dig something up myself, but this article needs a lot of work before it's compliant with policy. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 07:14, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Merge with TalkOrigins Archive?

See TalkOrigins Archive. --Krauss (talk) 00:26, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

• It's been years since I've been part of that community, so perhaps I'm not the best person to give an opinion. That said, I don't see too much advantage one way or the other. Both articles are pretty marginal from a WP:RS standpoint, so combining them might increase the quality. But the USENET community and the archive are distinct entities, and we'd lose something (perhaps not much) by combining them. If you're passionate about this, put together a draft of the combined article and ask what people thing about it. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 15:19, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

• Make sure you raise it at the other article too. Looks like there's a past merge discussion to take into account as well. Guettarda (talk) 15:49, 13 April 2016 (UTC)