Talk:The Hockey Stick Illusion

Tidy up

I've done an intial tidy up. Does anyone have a hard copy of the book? One will no doubt be needed to expand the synopsis and add a few refs. Also, there don't seem to be many crit refs, so those need to be found to give the crit section some balance. This definitely has potential though. Jprw (talk) 16:20, 3 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have the book, refs are in it can be seen on amazon on the back flap of the book. Try as i did i could find no crit`s of the book at all, Cla looked in infotrac and found none either mark nutley (talk) 16:55, 3 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've looked through the first few pages of Google and also drew a blank. Where's George Monbiot when you need him? Nowtin The Guardian Jprw (talk) 07:19, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The references need to be formatted better, with author, publication, publisher, and date published, if available. If its from the web, the retrieval date needs to be noted. Cla68 (talk) 07:54, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The ref`s have publisher, date retrieved, and publisher. I dunno how to have the author and publication show as well? mark nutley (talk) 08:51, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Use the citation templates. They will put the information into a standardized format. Cla68 (talk) 11:22, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've just done the one for Matt Ridley -- that can serve as a template. Jprw (talk) 11:11, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There`s a template? mark nutley (talk) 15:44, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Take your pick or just copy the one I used. Jprw (talk) 16:32, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have asked a few people from the peer review thingy to look over this article in the hopes of getting it up to FA status :-) mark nutley (talk) 15:53, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Major problems would include (a) Amazon reviews are pretty meaningless and shouldn't be used in articles, and (b) dust-jacket blurbs are, by their very nature, promotional. The only sources independent of the book are the Ridley and Gilder reviews. And the Gilder review is basically a blog post from a source that has a history of being unreliable. Guettarda (talk) 05:58, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Andrew Bolt ref

Andrew e-mailed me and let me know the Andrew Bolt ref is actually about "Caspar and the Jesus Paper" not the book, so i have removed it mark nutley (talk) 19:41, 5 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Amazon refs

I think we need to get rid of the Amazon refs and reference the book directly. Jprw (talk) 07:01, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You mean the refs from the back flap? mark nutley (talk) 10:21, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All of them -- if you've got the book, use the book. If they're from the back flap, try to use the original sources. Jprw (talk) 11:44, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Although I cannot find where this originally appeared. Jprw (talk) 11:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm guessing the book was sent to him for review and that was his response. I could always e-mail Andrew to ask if needed mark nutley (talk) 12:37, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's an interesting question -- if you're in touch with him why not ask. Jprw (talk) 13:02, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is as i suspected, it was a pre-publication preview, why did you want to know btw? mark nutley (talk) 18:57, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, not used to those -- was just interested in the source. Jprw (talk) 12:33, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Introduction

Not sure what Wikipedia style is on this, but I would write the book's name as "Title": "Subtitle" rather than Title (Subtitle). I left it for now... does anyone know the Wikipedia style on this?--Jp07 (talk) 17:22, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also... who is Phillip Bratby? This is especially important to discuss since there is no article on him. What is the Climategate inquiry? What committee members? What's in Chapter 15? Is this paragraph important enough to be in the introduction? I suggest this be placed in a "Trivia" section at the end of the article if it is not to be omitted.--Jp07 (talk) 17:33, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

[Bratby] mark nutley (talk) 18:16, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Background

Which political blog was Andrew Montford looking at?--Jp07 (talk) 17:34, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Paragraph One: What does "replication" mean? That is a potentially libelous statement until you clarify that -- it might be interpreted as "plagiarism." That's how I read it because I don't know anything about this. I'm taking it down for now... See the history when you're ready to add it back, clarified. This is kind of important if you don't want to be sued. Also, who is Caspar Ammann, and how do you spell his name? What antics involved in keeping whose paper alive? What science do visitors need to be educated on?

Paragraph Two: What were the first steps in writing his book? --Jp07 (talk) 17:49, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Caspar Ammann is a climatologist, and that is how you spell his name :), The replication is about Ammann`s paper, which he said reproduced Mann`s work. There was a lot of jigary pokery by the IPCC to ensure the paper could be used by them so they could also continue to use Mann`s hockey stick graph. Thats the short version. His results also failed btw as he used the same proxies as Mann had, ie Bristlecone Pine which are no good for reconstructions. mark nutley (talk) 18:15, 7 April 2010 (UTC)(edit conflict)[reply]

Speaking of IPCC... who are they? Try to avoid acronyms to enhance clarity.--Jp07 (talk) 00:35, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dunno what blog he was looking at, i can ask him if needed Same for paragraph two mark nutley (talk) 18:17, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Synopsis

My previous comment on potentially libelous statements also applies to "reproduce" here. Distinguish this from "plagiarism," if applicable, please. If you do discuss instances of court determined plagiarism anywhere in this document, you need to cite a court case or you're risking a court case of your own. You cannot discuss plagiarism at all if a court has not called it plagiarism... unless you want to be sued. I'm going to remove this sentence for now as well. --Jp07 (talk) 17:57, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Same comment applies to "reconstruction." You can fix all of these things by referring to the history, when you get a chance. --Jp07 (talk) 18:00, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reception

George Gilder's quote is a bit large and unwieldy for this article. I suggest you paraphrase it or pick out the most important part... especially with all of the jargon. Here's a hint: newspapers are written at the fifth-grade level. I suggest you write for Wikipedia in the same manner. Not necessarily because the readers are incapable of understanding, but if it takes too much work to dissect a piece of writing, most people will skip it. You want it to be easy for the average reader to extract the meaning. To be honest, I just skimmed the quote.--Jp07 (talk) 00:16, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Same thing applies to Booker's quote.--Jp07 (talk) 00:16, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, Booker's quote is probably OK. I suggest that you break it up into two sentences, though. Write it like this:

"Blah blah blah ... pauses," Booker said. "Second half of statement blah blah blah."

Then you'll be good. --Jp07 (talk) 00:20, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

General thoughts

OK -- so my copy edit is pretty much complete. I took care of all the minor fixes and did a little bit of restructuring and so forth to make it read better. I tried to identify all of the areas of confusion and omission; you want to try to answer as many of your readers questions as possible. As you proofread your writing, think: What questions could I ask here? Who, what, when, where, why and so what (a.k.a. who cares)? If any of this information is missing, do your best to work it in.

Also... what was the result of the findings? I'm not completely sure. I believe you're indicating that they found that popular opinion on climate change is incorrect and that it isn't that bad. I suggest you explicitly write this out, if that is the case. Try to eliminate any ambiguity there since the findings are arguably the most important part of this article. Honestly, you might ought to consider placing the findings in the first paragraph. See the inverted pyramid for guidance.

And my final note: I didn't check the spellings and capitalization of organizations, technical terms, names, etc. Make sure you look at this; if you get any of this wrong, it damages your credibility. The best way to determine this is to look at how the organization or person spells their own name. If you can't determine this with a reasonable amount of research, just try to make sure you stay consistent with your spelling and capitalization throughout the article.

Nice job, overall! I think you identified an article that was in need of writing and that was not being picked up. If you look at it from a marketing standpoint, that's great. You want to serve those underserved markets! Keep it up.--Jp07 (talk) 00:31, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And by the way... I'll probably forget to come back and fix all of these things that I'm leaving you questions about, so you might want to address those on your own :). If you want another copy edit later, feel free to ask again, but I'm taking 17 hours this semester and I do plenty of research on my own... so I'll probably opt out on that portion, haha.--Jp07 (talk) 00:37, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]