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Media--singular or plural?

Bilsonius and Amatulic may want to consider this:

media 1 (ˈmiːdɪə)

— n 1. a plural of medium 2. the means of communication that reach large numbers of people, such as television, newspapers, and radio

— adj 3. of or relating to the mass media: media hype

Usage: When media refers to the mass media, it is sometimes treated as a singular form, as in: the media has shown great interest in these events. Many people think this use is incorrect and that media should always be treated as a plural form: the media have shown great interest in these events Yopienso (talk) 05:56, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

I know that already. The point of my revert was that it isn't necessary to slap the "(sic)" label on every quotation that uses improper grammar. Nobody would regard the quotation used here as a transcription error, and the label only serves to emphasize in a WP:POINTy and unnecessary way the speaker's usage of English. It's irrelevant to this article. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:26, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
I agree with you. I hope Bilsonius reads my input and your response and agrees, too. Yopienso (talk) 18:43, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

NCSEexposed.org

This website debunks the "People presented in the film" section of this article: http://www.ncseexposed.org/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.90.117.33 (talk) 09:45, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

NCSEexposed.org is self-published ID proponentsists attacking credible mainstream science, unsurprisingly. Not a reliable source, and not significant. . dave souza, talk 21:44, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
Dave, that seem incorrect. It's an organizations website, which is a citeable source even if content is suspect because party is involved. If this is where the rebuttal was done that would make it the primary source for the fact of a rebuttal and providing it's content. Whether it identifies itself as associated with the makers of the movie would be a relevant thing and important to mention. Whether the content was itself supported in their rebuttal or whether it is unsupported assertions seems relevant but seems likely to be debated. If they're involved parties their input is suspect, but so is everyone else in this mess. Markbassett (talk) 17:16, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
The organisation concerned is the Discovery Institute, this is one of their several websites which share their poor reputation for fact checking and accuracy, and promotion of pseudoscience. As such, it can only be used where shown in mainstream context, and is essentially an unreliable source. . dave souza, talk 18:08, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
Dave - looking further I see rebuttals reported elsewhere, e.g. at http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/12/more-on-gonzale.html mention that for Gonzales there was Demoines Register article "Intelligent design theory influenced ISU tenure vote" by Lisa Rossi, December 1, 2007, that internal ISU emails did include his ID-involvement. (And of course DI has press conference running with this bit and Pandas thumb piddles on DI and so on.) This does provide further citations shoowing rebuttal did happen and even that there's independant evidence some rebuttal claims had independant support. For size reasons I would think it more appropriate to put move the ISU content here and any rebuttal info to the detail page of the Gonzzales article. Markbassett (talk) 17:47, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
It shows that the DI put up spurious complaints, as usual. P.Z.Myers provides expert comments on these complaints: we should not give undue weight to such claims. . . dave souza, talk 18:08, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
24.90.117.33 - the website pointer is good, but you'll have to be more specific to something there to be meaningful and particularly be discussing an edit for the article to have actual results. So I suggeest that you pick the one biggest surest thing at that website and start boldly proposing edit mention of it and see how it goes. Markbassett (talk) 17:20, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
With any coverage of course needing to give due weight to the mainstream view, per WP:PSCI. . dave souza, talk 18:08, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

NPOV? The article is a biased hatchet-job

This Wikipedia page is as biased and propagandistic as the movie itself. Wikipedia's purported "NPOV" (Neutral Point of View) doctrine has been a joke from the earliest years, as further exemplified in this article. This long and painstaking article is simply a hatchet-job. Note the verbs "claims" and "alleges" when Intelligent Design sympathizers are cited; not once are these "shudder verbs" (questioning truth) used for the anti-Intelligent-Design people who instead merely "say" or "said" things.

There is a mostly-successful political campaign to keep Inteligent Design (deliberately conflated with religious Creationism) out of schools and universities, as the movie shows. The skeptics are more skilled in the use and abuse of Wikipedia as a propaganda tool than their opponents, as this article shows. (Shades of Serdar Argic.)

It's simply a fact that Social Darwinism and the Eugenics movement, and then Nazism, used Darwin's theory of evolution as supports. That's not Charles Darwin's responsibility, and it's not evidence for or against Darwinism, but it's true.

The main title of the movie is "Expelled", so it's appropriate for it to emphasize the career-destruction that results from endorsing or allowing for Intelligent Design, rather that setting out the theory and evidence in detail.

There is a certain general Wikipedia POV, basically that of the standard nerd. I have it myself. That it is "neutral" is a fraud and conceit of Wikipedia.

72.182.123.26 (talk) 14:26, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

You appear to be a bit misinformed about facts, and while you seem to appreciate that this article complies with NPOV policy, it appears that you want that policy to change. Wrong talk page for that. . . dave souza, talk 17:51, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
Dave -- ??? clearly he's flaming it as being an anti_ID hatchet job that failed at NPOV, not what you said. The note he makes of wording is a bit interesting, otherwise yah insertion of biases noted so what else is new. My suggestion would be to not try and fix it, there's enough factual content to be of some use and this seems about as good as it is going to get. Markbassett (talk) 23:53, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Jeffrey Overstreet quote

It was brought to my attention today that Jeffrey Overstreet was misquoted in this article, and upon investigation, this seems to be the case. The cite link is dead, but is available at Archive.org, and it is clearly from a "Letter to the editor" (the quoted bit is in "spoiler" text at the bottom), and cannot be credited to Overstreet. It was hamhandedly removed once today by an anonymous editor whose edit was justifiably reverted. I've re-removed it with explanation, although I cited the wrong "updated link" in the edit summary; the moved blog seems to have dropped the post in question. Overstreet's treatment of the letter and the response to it may push some buttons, but in any case we can't attribute that quote to Overstreet, since it is from "Stuart Blessman [...] a student at the University of Minnesota." --The Human Spellchecker (talk) 19:45, 31 August 2013 (UTC)


This is the early 1950s experiment mentioned in the film. This experiment was a success not a failure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.103.213 (talk) 04:19, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Divergence

Branch, Glen (2008). "Divergence over "Expelled"". Reports of the National Center for Science Education. Retrieved 12 May 2014. looks useful. . dave souza, talk 17:52, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I think the article would be improved by tightening it up a bit. I certainly agree that Copyright_controversies got notable news at the time, but both issues fizzled out as nothing. I see the section as dead weight distracting from the far more important content in the article. I'd like to just dump the Copyright_controversies section. Does anyone concur? Any opposition? Alsee (talk) 19:22, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Waited 9 days, no objections. Edit done. Alsee (talk) 13:04, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Just because something is on the news for a short time doesn't give it enduring notability. Niteshift36 (talk) 22:18, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
Agreed it was undue. If anything -- because there do seem to be several sources on the subject -- it might merit a brief one or two sentence summary elsewhere (in a "Production" section, for example). --— Rhododendrites talk |  23:39, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
A number of sources don't make something more notable. If 100 outlets report that Justin Bieber bought a new hat, does it merit mention in his bio? Niteshift36 (talk) 02:10, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
Yes, actually. This is part of how Wikipedia maintains a NPOV. Of course that example isn't a good one because 100 reliable sources wouldn't report that he bought a new hat. Kind of like asking "would we report that bologna cures headaches just because all the major medical journals said it does?" If it's not true, then the journals wouldn't say it is and we wouldn't report it. If the medical journals say it is, then we do report it because we don't actually determine truth or importance at Wikipedia. If 100 outlets reported Bieber buying a new hat, then there's probably something notable about that event -- even if we can't figure it out, it's still "notable" for Wikipedia purposes. --— Rhododendrites talk |  15:29, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Dawkins quote

@Alsee: Yes, you're right about Wikiquote. I was thinking Wikisource. Don't use either much. I think you didn't notice the IP was correcting grammar from a spoken source, not a written source. Can you please provide either a link to the clip you watched or an hour:minute where the quote occurs in the video? That should be included in your citation. Thanks. YoPienso (talk) 00:34, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

@Yopienso:, it was a the first hit I got on a youtube search. I'm sure I could find it again, but do we really want to ref random youtube clip? The movie is the original source. Best would be to cite the number of minutes into the movie, if anyone has a copy. Alsee (talk) 06:45, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
It just occurred to me that you might have wanted to see it. Here's the link. It's 1min 35sec for Stein's voiceover, and 1min 48sec for Dawkins' "But that higher intelligence..." quote. I'd rather keep it sourced to the movie though. Youtube has the benefit that readers can more easily see it, but youtube is generally a gross source, and there's no telling if/when that link could 404. Alsee (talk) 19:39, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

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Changing genre

While some reviewers used the term "propaganda", that doesn't remove it from a documentary category. Other reliable sources, such as the AV Club [1], New Scientist [2], Popular Science [3], Entertainment Weekly [4], Box Office Mojo, The Hollywood Reporter [5] and TV Guide [6] call it a documentary, even while mostly criticizing it. We can't change it to "Christian propaganda" just because a couple of people (one of whom still called it a documentary) used the term. Niteshift36 (talk) 19:36, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Propaganda films can be in the documentary genre, indeed that's been pretty common. This film is disreputable propaganda, and more to the point we should give due weight to the criticism and not misrepresent it by implying it's a valid or serious documentary. Of the two sources currently cited, one is a dead link, and the other is an archived press release by the film's promoters which calls it a "satirical documentary". At least that's more nuanced than just giving it undue credence. . . dave souza, talk 20:39, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
Dave, I couldn't get the press release to open; my word processor says it's corrupted. I spent a quarter of an hour looking for "satirical documentary" on the internet, but couldn't find it wrt this movie. I think we need to stick with "documentary," citing to a valid page. YoPienso (talk) 00:18, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
Dave, I see you're not on-Wiki right now. I'll go ahead and get rid of the dead link and remove "satirical," per sources; we can discuss and edit when you return. YoPienso (talk) 19:31, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
I'm good only at manual citations, not wikified ones. I see my second source, a movie review in Christianity Today, is also used at the end of the third paragraph in the lead. Those are currently citations 3 and 15. I don't know how to combine them. I also managed to duplicate the citation to Shermer in SciAm, #s 2 and 12. Please note that a number of sources cited in the lead refer to the film as a documentary. YoPienso (talk) 19:49, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

@Jytdog: What do you mean with this edit summary: "in-bubble source. not reliable for the label"? YoPienso (talk) 20:49, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Sources should be actually independent; which means ideologically too. Jytdog (talk) 20:58, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
That is absolutely incorrect. A RS doesn't have to be ideologically independant. Niteshift36 (talk) 13:24, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
All three sources you cite to call the film a documentary. YoPienso (talk) 21:18, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
NYT: "One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry." That is not just plain "documentary"
USAToday does call it a "controversial documentary" and also "blatant advertising" and points out "While he cites the holes in Darwin's theory, he never identifies specific flaws. He does directly link the theory to Nazism and eugenics."
SA does call it an "antievolution documentary" and points out "Blithely ignoring the vital distinction between social and scientific Darwinism, the film links evolution theory to fascism (as well as abortion, euthanasia and eugenics), shamelessly invoking the Holocaust with black-and-white film of Nazi gas chambers and mass graves." It describes how the production company hired extras to act as Pepperdine students. This was not disclosed in the movie. It says "the central thesis of the film is a conspiracy theory about the systematic attempt to keep intelligent design creationism out of American classrooms and culture.". It explicitly says " This propaganda production would make Joseph Goebbels proud."
All three sources support propaganda as well. I acknowledge that the term "documentary" is used broadly in the media for movies that are not telling fictional stories, and encompasses everything from actual documentaries to propaganda films like this. Jytdog (talk) 21:36, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
I just looked through the material at WP:FILM hoping to find some guidance on this (how do we generally separate something like Ken Burns' The Civil War that really fits the definition of Documentary film as in our article -- "a nonfictional motion picture intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education, or maintaining a historical record." -- vs something like a Michael Moore movie, which is very much making an argument, or this movie. Jytdog (talk) 21:48, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for that thoughtful reply.
My understanding and application of WP:NPOV is that we are to write objectively, not censoriously, about even those subjects we find distasteful. See, for example, the first sentence in the Adolf Hitler biography: Adolf Hitler was a German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and Führer ("Leader") of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. (Omitting a bit.) The next sentence is clinically to the point with no expression of outrage: As dictator, Hitler initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939, and was central to the Holocaust. "Central to the Holocaust," not "The vicious, deranged monster who condemned thousands of innocent Jews to the ovens of the Holocaust." Only a reader who already knew would guess he was a villain. That's how I feel we should begin this article--telling that it's an American documentary film. The propaganda aspect is treated later in the lead and in the "Reception" section. YoPienso (talk) 02:34, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
This started with what I consider the unwarranted insertion of "satirical"--unwarranted because I couldn't find a source that said so. We have a source that calls it a "sleazy documentary," but we don't call Hitler cruel in the lead, or at all in WP's voice.
Then you decided to "call a spade a spade," which is something I certainly agree with, but I think the tone should be that of "central to the Holocaust."
Then you deleted all the documentary categories, which I think is uncalled for because it denies what the RSs say.
Claudia Puig notes that documentaries don't have to be objective (and goes on to call this one "blatant advertising), which is why we use the descriptor "documentary" for this movie and Michael Moore's.
I'm hopeful we can enjoy finding common ground and come to a meeting of the minds on this. YoPienso (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Not an interesting proposal. Almost all sources call this a documentary. Some also call it propaganda, even while calling it a documentary. Calling it a documentary, something almost every source is doing, is not a value judgement. Calling it propaganda, which only some sources say, IS a value judgement. Niteshift36 (talk) 13:20, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Went and did some reading about types of documentaries. Most discussions I found seem to follow Nichols in --Nichols, Bill (2001). "Chapter 2: How Do Documentaries Differ from Other Types of Film?". Introduction to Documentary (1st ed.). Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253214696. OCLC 45618222. : 33–34 
He names 6 "modes"
Poetic (experimental, weird)
Expository (the most common kind, voice of god narration, etc)
Observational (camera just observes people doing stuff)
Participatory (interviews)
Reflexive (calls attention to the filmmaking)
Performative (emphasizes filmaker's emotional engagement and getting emotional response)
Looking at the whole book (which you can find online in several places) he doesn't deal with "propaganda" in any length. He does talk a lot about persuasion. in the chapter "What are documentaries about?". He says that educational videos are not much worth talking about; he thinks documentaries are generally directed to contentious things, and seek to persuade. He says "In general, then, we can say documentary is about the effort to convince, persuade, or predispose us to a particular view of the actual world we occupy". Thats interesting.
But back to the "modes", as an example, this blog post from the National Film Board in Canada has 4 modes, based clearly on Nichols' six modes:
Poetic (experimental, weird)
Expository (the most common kind, voice of god narration, etc)
Observational (camera just observes people doing stuff)
Participatory/Reflexive ("Performative" is rolled in here without saying it). Cites Michael Moore here.

-- Jytdog (talk) 23:49, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

  • Merely being persuasive (or attempting to be) doesn't make it propaganda. Again, almost all sources, including those who dislike the film, call it a documentary (fact). Only a few work in the term propaganda (opinion). You've shown no reason why the opinion of a few sources should trump the factual presentation that no source is disagreeing with. Niteshift36 (talk) 13:36, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Category

@Jytdog and Charlesdrakew: This film is widely categorized by movie reviewers and reporters as a documentary. I've watched it more than once and realize it is also a propaganda film. Nonetheless, the sources clearly call it a documentary. Therefore, so should we. YoPienso (talk) 21:22, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

This is related to the discussion above. Jytdog (talk) 21:36, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
Agree with Yopienso. It is, of course, both a propaganda film (in that its evident purpose is to propagate a certain belief), and a documentary film. There is plenty of space for criticism down in the article, no need to put it in the first sentence. Plazak (talk) 11:27, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
The introduction is supposed to summarize the article. Putting "propaganda" in the first sentence is a good way of doing that. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:20, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
I agree with putting "propaganda" in the lead, but not in the first, defining sentence. See my rationale above. YoPienso (talk) 06:58, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Disagree: The film is a documentary. That's not opinion or in dispute. Even sources that dislike the film call it a documentary. Some sources call it propaganda. That has been contained in this article for some time now. Putting propaganda in the first sentence is not the best way to summarize a film because the propaganda label is opinion. This would be akin to labeling movies as good or bad in the first sentence based on their Rotten Tomatoes score. We put the genre in the first sentence. Discussions about opinions or critical receptions don't go in the first sentence on other films, so why on one you happen to dislike? Niteshift36 (talk) 13:32, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
Dave Souza is entirely correct in saying that - strictly speaking - the propaganda film label label is neither good nor bad, it merely means a film with the purpose of persuading to a particular point of view. Unfortunately, too many readers and (alas) Wiki editors interpret it as meaning dishonest. The term is commonly used by film reviewers to denigrate a persuasive film with which they disagree. The question seems to be whether to use the propaganda label prominently in its true neutral sense, per Dave souza, or place it down further in the article in recognition that most readers will interpret it as a hot-button label meaning deceitful and dishonest.Plazak (talk) 22:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
  • The term propaganda is a loaded one. We can play the 'here's the strict dictionary definition' game all day, but the average reader will see it as a pejorative, even if your intention is a strict reading of the term. This is even more likely when you put it in the very first sentence, where there is no context, as there is later on in the article. Niteshift36 (talk) 13:25, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
I like how we handle the issue of balancing what those involved in a project say about it vs. what critics from the scientific community say about it at Creationist museum:
A creationist museum is a facility that hosts exhibits which use the established natural history museum format to present a young Earth creationist view that the Earth and life on Earth were created some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago in six days.[1] These facilities generally promote pseudoscientific Biblical literalist creationism and contest evolutionary science, which has led to heavy criticism from the scientific community.[2]
The first sentence is neutral in that it even-handedly defines the subject in the terms of those involved with the project. The next sentence presents the scientific community's view. YoPienso (talk) 01:59, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Dave Souza's recent edit seems to fix the problem--just call it a film. Thanks, Dave! YoPienso (talk) 15:07, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

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