Talk:White Order of Thule

This "article" has nothing to do with the WOT. This is made-up garbage.

It certainly doesn't look neutral/unbiased, so why not correct it and add some references? I'd do the job myself, but right now I'm tied down on some other articles. Gnostrat 23:58, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It has to do with WOT now, since I rewrote it with WOT's own material as sources, not SPLC/ADL/Searchlight disinformation. :) --85.220.88.135 09:07, 5 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

i really don't understand why articles on white supremacist groups aren't semi-protected by default. even as a matter of keeping down the weeds, it's a pain to have to watchlist and revert vandalism all the time.Ossicle (talk) 02:02, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that was vandalism you just reverted. They look to me like good-faith edits whose intention was to restore a neutral point of view after your recent edits reinstated text which had been previously deleted on account of its blatant bias. Granted that you were right to remove the self-published sources, can we not have this page at least referenced to some halfway reliable academic studies like Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's Black Sun? Instead of word-for-word parroting of sites with an axe to grind like ADL or Southern Poverty Law Centre or even MIPT, which preface their statements with "apparently" and "believed to be", and/or don't cite their sources adequately or even cite them at all. Gnostrat (talk) 05:19, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, actually, that was vandalism: it removed information with no cause and changed the meaning of what remained in a way that purposefully didn't reflect what is found in reliable sources. E.g. it's just not negotiable whether or not the White Order of Thule be openly labeled a racist hate group, if only because there aren't (m)any reliable sources out there that serve to contest that characterization. If you want to expand on the "ideological foundations" of this racist hate group using what you consider reliable sources, go right ahead - so long as they're actually WP:RELIABLE SOURCES and rendered in NPOV. But (as probably you already know) you aren't really going to get far with the "axe to grind" SPLC & ADL complaint: they're WP:RELIABLE SOURCES and that information will remain in the article. And (again, as you probably know) my recent edits weren't "blatantly biased:" calling things by their proper name isn't "bias." I don't think there's any misunderstanding here: I've made myself perfectly clear and we just happen to disagree. And I'm sure that that disagreement isn't important at all, since my edits rely on reliable sources and accurately reflect what those sources say. Nonetheless, I do appreciate your attempt to be polite about it.Ossicle (talk) 05:46, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Describing unsourced, out-of-thin-air opinions on websites as "calling things by their proper names" is precisely what most people would understand by blatant bias. But, as you say, using non-neutral sources should not matter as long as we agree on "rendering them in NPOV", so I trust that this will be addressed. For example, "WOT has been described as a racist hate group" would be a neutral writeup of what the source claims, as opposed to the form "WOT has been identified as a racist hate group" (which would imply that the article associates itself with the source's point of view as being correct), and I have amended accordingly.

Irrespective of whether the sources are deemed "reliable", the advice I have from other editors is that claims of this nature should certainly be attributed in the text as opinions of these organisations. (Furthermore, long verbatim extracts from these sites are, in effect, quotes and should be treated as such.) It might also be appropriate to give the scholarly descriptions of WOT ("Odinist", "pagan", "esoteric neo-nazi") more prominence than descriptions by interest and advocacy groups.

The edits of which you complained did indeed change the meaning and presentation of your website sources, but this does not mean that the edits were inaccurate in themselves. They should simply have cited different sources. If you are determined that your text will remain in the article, I think you have to accept that, in future, it will remain alongside material from other, certainly no less reliable, sources which will contradict it. This is inevitable because the websites are indeed contradicted both by primary sources (actual WOT publications which, I have now ascertained, are allowable here) and by secondary sources (academic works like Goodrick-Clarke's).

For one thing, before you revert the latest (and, unfortunately, unreferenced) edits concerning the order's foundation, please consider that these, along with other such recently-reverted material, are largely supported by the scholarly sources and I will be adding references. The websites' statements about Nathan Pett are baseless and, since they make inaccurate claims about a (presumably) still living individual, they must not be restored. Gnostrat (talk) 00:35, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

huh. yeah. sure, whatever. i'm fine with the article as it is now. when i started editing this article it was ridiculously inaccurate - there wasn't any indication that the WOT is a white supremacist group. that's unacceptable insofar as it is the most important thing about the group for someone with no previous knowledge of the subject to know. that's all i mean about "calling things by their proper names:" that should be apparent straight away and the article should not give the impression of advocating that ideology (which it obviously does when the only sources are from the WOT and the text is taken verbatim from those sources).

as far as my "bias:" whatever. I don't have anything at stake here except that idea that it's important that this group be accurately described by non-members, and that that description be included. if you have an academic neo-nazi odinist hobby-horse (i also have hobby horses), get up on it then, so long as you don't actively seek to misrepresent the group.

i actually agree with identifying where opinions come from in the text, quoting when necessary, etc., and no, i don't particularly care whether "my" text (text is text) stays in the article or not, or whether those sources (e.g. the SPLC and the ADL, which i have no particular attachment to...) are contradicted. they're the ones i used because they're the ones google popped up with, and they are WP:RELIABLE SOURCES - you ought to know that that's the way WP works.

see, i'm actually proceeding in good faith here. you'll find i don't revert edits without good reason(if claims are unsourced, if edits eliminate information or misrepresent the tone of info, etc.), and that i do preserve well-sourced claims. what you wrote is better and more accurate than what was there. but this article also, and for obvious reasons, has a lot of anonymous editors who don't really seem to understand that things need to be sourced, and I'm reticent to allow unsourced edits to just sit there with a fact tag on them. so, yeah, unsourced edits will continue to go away pretty fast.

also, why exactly are WOT SELF-PUBLISHED materials allowable here, and how (by what process) did you "ascertain" this? Ossicle (talk) 05:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:RS — "Organizations and individuals that are widely acknowledged as extremist, whether of a political, religious or anti-religious, racist, or other nature, should be used only as sources about themselves and their activities in articles about themselves". WP:SOURCE — "websites and publications that express views that are widely acknowledged as extremist...should only be used in articles about themselves." WP:SELFPUB — "Material from self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources in articles about themselves", under conditions which are set out on the relevant policy page. Therefore, WOT publications (which are still influential, thus notable) may be cited here, with all due caution and in appropriate contexts — even if everything that the websites say about the organisation is true.

However, I do take your point that WOT publications were the only ones cited. Articles should be based on secondary sources, with primary sources offering support. Primary sources are OK in modest chunks and for descriptive or illustrative purposes, as long as they aren't used to back up original claims that go beyond the sources. So I would have included a broader and more diverse mix of references, taking the best points from previous versions and adding Goodrick-Clarke as an academic anchor. I wouldn't have deleted all the references to WOT publications — just the ones which weren't relevant.

For the record, I am still learning about this group myself. Being defunct, it has actually been rather low on my list of priorities, but it matters that we get the details right because it's still influential in neo-Nazi circles. Anti-Nazi campaigners tend to focus on racism and hate, and they aren't too careful about how accurately they describe the history or the overall philosophy. It does look like some unsavoury characters have been involved in WOT and the article should not shy away from that, but neither should it obscure what else this group was about.

Don't mind the excessively formal tone of my last post. I tend to slip into it when I'm trying too hard to be polite. I do realise some unsourced edits need reverting right away but this shouldn't be necessary every time, and the fact tags would give me a reasonable chance to dig up references. If I can't, you can zap them and I might even zap them first. Gnostrat (talk) 22:55, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

thanks for the WP:SOURCE references. if you see a change by me in the article history, check the text - for merely unsourced assertions, i tend not to delete text wholesale but rather to comment things out. this seems a halfway decent compromise between letting things stand with fact tags indefinitely (as they do in a lot of other articles) and simply deleting things outright. also, when i do this i do say either "check talk" or "check text" in the edit summary.Ossicle (talk) 12:15, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No problems with that. Cheers. Gnostrat (talk) 13:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RfC[edit]

BAn RfC: Which descriptor, if any, can be added in front of Southern Poverty Law Center when referenced in other articles? has been posted at the Southern Poverty Law Center talk page. Your participation is welcomed. – MrX 17:41, 22 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]