Talk:Pharyngula (blog)

November 2006

This should be longer/more detailed than the section in PZ Myers, or that section summarised with the greater slab of information being on the main article.--ZayZayEM 06:48, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

both are correct. this article has only existed a couple days though, so it's got time to grow. Derex 07:11, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Troll posting?

I noticed in the reference section this seeming troll:

"...information is a massless quantity. Now if information is not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation explain its origin? How can any material cause explain its origin. And, this is the real fundamental problem that the presence of information has posed. It creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic scenario because information is a different kind of entity that matter and energy cannot produce."

I will delete it unless someone can justify it — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.9.240.146 (talk) 20:35, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Removed. --Fama Clamosa (talk) 20:45, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)That would be the Stephen Meyer quote PZ highlighted as being something so foolish you couldn't make it up (I'm paraphrasing, PZ's blog is linked as reference 14). It's not a troll posting, but I think we don't need the quote. --Six words (talk) 20:52, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, very informing. --Fama Clamosa (talk) 21:23, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

WP:SELFPUB

In light of the ongoing discussion and edits at Talk:PZ Myers I would recommend that secondary or tertiary sources be found to assert notability of any information in this article referenced solely to the Pharyngula blog. Otherwise it will likely be removed.--ZayZayEM 01:44, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this is as much of a problem. As my understanding of the guidelines go, once you've used secondary or tertiary sources to establish that a subject is notable, you can use primary sources for the content. For instance, if you've established that the movie is notable, then you can use the movie itself as a source for sections such as a plot summary. Similarly, we can use the blog itself as a source for the events that went on in it. Now, this might not apply to everything here, and it would be nice to get some alternative perspectives on some, so let's see if we can find that. --Infophile ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 02:15, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, WP:SELFPUB doesn't say that you can't use any self-published sources. The problem with PZ Myers and WP:SELFPUB was that the quotations were contentious and contained claims about third parties. Of course, this wasn't the only thing wrong with them, as they were constructed, without real context, and used to portray the subject in a certain light. The only case when including them would have perhaps been fine is if there was a real controversy and proper sources about it, because if you start including things simply because some editors want to educate the readers about what they think is offensive, you get to absurdities like also including things that would show that he is, say, witty and tolerant too, and end up with a sort of collection of quotes instead of an article. Compare with Richard Dawkins: do you think that simply adding the more juicy things he's said, especially by editors with a self-confessed agenda, would pass muster among the editors there? Why should it be allowed in any biographical article? Reinis^talk 09:38, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Pivar withdrawal

Just noting here that I've looked around, and there are no reliable sources that state the suit has been withdrawn, only the claims of PZ Myers and Peter Irons. Apparently, Irons learned of this through a talk with a reporter who was going to do a story on the case, but heard from Pivar that he'd dropped it, then Irons passed this news along to Myers. While this could all easily be true, we can't say for sure at this point. There should be some way to verify it one way or the other soon enough, though. --Infophile ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 03:53, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Then just report what we know - that PZ reported that Pivars dropped the suit. Guettarda 05:15, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Broken link

The link to his blog archives has been broken as of today (July 15 2008) Does anyone know if that is the right link (pharyngula.org)?

Linkthewindow (talk) 22:43, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Pharyngula.org is the old blog; he moved to scienceblogs.com/pharyngula in 2005 or 2006. 209.0.0.29 (talk) 05:49, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

The Magnificent P-Zed

As nice as this line is, Dawkins didn't actually say anything unusual. He merely pronounced the initials P.Z. in his own, normal, British accent. If he'd written it as "P-Zed" that would be different, but he was speaking in a normal manner. Nothing special. So I've changed the article.

TRiG (talk) 15:42, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Pharyngula Memes

There seems to be an ongoing trend of Commenters putting an "OM" to their name there. Does anyone know more about this?

",OM" is used to denote anyone who has won a molly on pharyngula. Its an award given out to the top two posters on pharyngula that month, as decided by a threaded vote tally. 209.33.36.194 (talk) 01:37, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Courtier's Reply

I propose that the Courtier's Reply have its own article. PZ coined the term, but it has now entered the general lexicon.Ibis3 (talk) 19:13, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Stand-alone article? Contents better contained in Myers biog? Rewrite definitely needed

Seems to me that this article is less about the blog and more about Myers and his critiques of "pseudoscientific" endeavors.... Much of this article belongs in the Myers biog article. This article should stick to the blog. Thus, perhaps a very small article or fold it into the biog. Barsook8 (talk) 17:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

The lead notes "In 2006 the science journal Nature listed it as the top-ranked blog written by a scientist. Pharyngula also won the 2005 Koufax Award for Best Expert Blog." That makes the reason for the "stand-alone article" pretty clear, and it's only natural that the author gets many mentions in the article. If you have a specific suggestion, please make it. Johnuniq (talk) 01:57, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Is this worthy of a Wikipedia Article?

I found this while doing research on African pygmies. I wasn't really expecting this from "PYGMIES + DWARFS arguments". Just quickly looking over it, the article is interesting, but is the blog the article is about noteworthy enough to merit a Wikipedia article? I really don't know, but the overwhelming majority blogs probably aren't I imagine. If it has significant readership then maybe.Nanib (talk) 02:35, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

This article easily satisfies the notability policy, and is of value to many who are interested in evolution, so yes, the article is warranted. It's quite interesting to see how often the topic has been mentioned in reliable sources: Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL. Johnuniq (talk) 07:16, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Introductory paragraph and History section need work

Pharyngula is still an active blog on ScienceBlogs. However, it is not merely a duplicate of what's on Freethoughtblogs -- the two blogs have different posts. (There may be some cross-posting, but I didn't see any with a quick glance at the most recent couple of pages on both.) I don't have time to properly rewrite the two sections right now, unfortunately. If someone agrees with what I've noted here, please feel free to make the changes; otherwise, perhaps I'll come back later to do it. bjkeefe (talk) 18:39, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the two blogs don't have different posts, rather the ScienceBlogs version is a small subset of what is on Freethoughtblogs. At least, I checked that the 5 most recent posts on ScienceBlogs are also on Freethoughtblogs, amid lots of other recent posts. --JWWalker (talk) 06:01, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for checking, JW. I should have thought of doing it that way, rather than just naively looking at them side by side. But my main question still stands: should there be some clarification, since Pharyngula is now two blogs, one of which still runs on ScienceBlogs? bjkeefe (talk) 14:17, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Went ahead and took a stab at the clarification, if anyone wants to know. bjkeefe (talk) 14:42, 1 April 2012 (UTC)