User talk:Neil Brick/Sandbox/Cult and Ritual Abuse (book)

Article name
I'm thinking this article is going to need a rename because it is about a book. Maybe something like Cult and Ritual Abuse (book), but let's see what others think as well. D. Matt Innis 03:03, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This is fine with me. Neil Brick 03:19, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * That would be for the best, I think. --Joe Quick 14:59, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Also, please move it to "Cult and Ritual Abuse (book)" (fully capitalized). --Larry Sanger 17:49, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I regret the pattern
I object to the pattern of importing book articles that argue that ritual abuse is widespread, but apparently cannot be challenged because they "merely report the book". Might I, then, keep producing articles about books that present only one view of an issue, until CZ is filled with them?

Further, literature is often associated with fiction. Should this book not be under the oversight of a social science workgroup? Howard C. Berkowitz 03:09, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * CZ can have books on many topics. I don't see a problem with this as long as the articles are accurate. Neil Brick 03:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that is a good question, Howard. It probably should be on the forum, though.  Do you want to start it? D. Matt Innis 03:26, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * No, just put it in the workgroup - it's an academic book.Gareth Leng 12:57, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Clarification of affililiation
It's useful to identify an individual with their academic affiliation. ", and is the executive director of a professional organization dedicated to treating survivors of cult and ritual abuse," however, is not useful if it does not identify the organization. Further, the wording assumes the existence of the disorders. Might I suggest a more neutral phrasing might be "a professional organization for the concern of patients reporting experiences with cult and ritual abuse"? Howard C. Berkowitz 15:26, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Just do it, seems fine by me.Gareth Leng 16:16, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm glad to change the text; I'm having a little trouble tracking the organization, which seems to have gone through some name changes. Will put in my best information. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:30, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

The article is turning into an argument defending the book's premise
The book has a premise. It is fair to say that many disagree with the premise. I believe it to be fair, within CZ: Neutrality Policy, to articulate the disagreement.

This article is alleged to be about a book, not about the overall existence or nonexistence of the conflation of cults and ritual abuse. Trying to counterargue the disagreements gets away from the topic of a specific book. Generally, CZ has not had articles on specific books, other than long-recognized literary or intellectual masterpieces. It certainly has not, and in my opinion should not, have articles focused on advocacy books. Howard C. Berkowitz 03:54, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * To make the article neutral, I thought it important to counterbalance Victor's arguments in the paragraph before. Neil Brick 04:18, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * No, I don't think that's making it neutral. The book makes premises. There are disagreements with its premises. When you start arguing with the critics, you've left the subject of the book proper.


 * Frankly, I'm dubious that any article about a specific research project or advocacy book can ever be completely neutral. Homeopathy probably was our toughest challenge, but it took on a set of ideas as a whole. There have been less controversial issues about complementary and alternative medicine, but all dealt with a set of ideas; there are no articles about individual books or publications.


 * If you ever expect to see a CZ-style consensus, you are going to have to accept that there will be arguments you don't like. Again, look at homeopathy, and perhaps some of its voluminous talk archives. It presents the basic ideas of the field, accurately enough that practicing homeopaths could live with it. It also makes it clear that there is no widespread medical acceptance of those ideas.


 * I have difficulty with the definition saying "the phenomenon of ritual abuse", because there is no consensus that systematic ritual abuse exists. The definition could say that it discusses ritual abuse from the perspective of writers who believe in its existence. Howard C. Berkowitz 04:56, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The article itself is well balanced and neutral throughout now. The first paragraph describes their credentials and goals "raising awareness." The second paragraph gives a balanced view of their views "Some authors contend that these claims represents fantasy material, dissimulation, or delusions. Others maintain that patients' descriptions of ritualized trauma may constitute a newly identified psychiatric syndrome."


 * The next three paragraphs provide balanced critiques of the book, two neutral and one anti. The paragraph on Victor and the reply also provide a balance view of the topic.


 * The word "phenomenon" is appropriate in the counter balancing sentence in the third paragraph because it explains the point of view of those defending the concept. Neil Brick 01:45, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Speaking as one with a bit of experience in what is considered neutral in CZ articles on highly controversial subjects, no, I don't think it is neutral. I think it shows great defensiveness to put four and five sources on a counterarguing sentence. One good reference makes the point.


 * I would suggest the point is made, not overemphasized, by rephrasing: "Others however, believe that there is empirical evidence for the existence of ritual abuse as a serious phenomenon ." This attempt to improve the prose, however, does not change my position that these individual book articles are inherently non-neutral and probably not maintainable. We don't usually have articles on individual books and studies other than those of the greatest note, or as part of well-interlinked groups of articles (i.e., not "orphaned" or "walled gardens"). It is not CZ policy to have articles that "give a voice" to any group. Howard C. Berkowitz 01:55, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

(undent) The skeptical sentence has 33 words, while the counter one only has 18 words. IMO, an encyclopedia should have articles about books, and the way to do this is by making the page neutral, like we are. I think that counters can use more refs if needed. The paragraphs are about the same length and appear to have the same number of points. Neil Brick 03:10, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Please don't make such sweeping statements, Howard, such as "We don't usually have articles on individual books and studies other than those of the greatest note". I have written a couple of articles about individual books that are clearly not "of the greatest note," merely books that happen to interest me, and, by extension, probably a couple of other people in the world. These books are not "Hamlet" or "Huckleberry Finn" or "The Great Gatsby". I intend to keep writing such articles, as my fancy dictates. Surely you aren't going to tell me that I can't? Hayford Peirce 04:13, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Removed two paragraphs
I removed two paragraphs because they did not seem to be about the book. They appear well written, though, and I hadn't checked the sources, so they might be relevant to some other article - perhaps on ritual abuse - I don't know, but I'll put them here for now.

''Ritual child abuse is cited by Victor as one of a series of examples of moral panics. It is "an extension of sensationalized concern about an epidemic of child abuse, and later sexual child abuse. Initially, some mental health specialists who claimed to have developed new medical techniques capable of detecting illegal sexual contact between adults and children ("sexual child abuse") [also "sexual ritual abuse", (SRA)] believed that their clients' accounts of sexual victimization by secret satanic cults might be true.  This book is one of Victor's examples of "Some of these therapists communicated their "discovery" of SRA, by publishing articles in specialized professional journals and in popular culture books. ''

''Others believe that ritual abuse is a valid and occurring phenomenon with empirical evidence to back its existence. In one study of 2,709 members of the American Psychological Association over 90% of psychologists who had seen cases of ritual abuse believed that the reported harm took place and believed that the alleged ritualism occurred. Researchers have found ritualistic abuse in substantiate cases of day care sexual abuse. Gould stated that "the evidence is rapidly accumulating that the problem of ritual abuse is considerable in scope and extremely grave in its consequences...Evidence also continues to accumulate that the ritual abuse of children constitutes a child abuse problem of significant scope." '' D. Matt Innis 04:11, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I agree with this. Neil Brick 03:10, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * At a minimum, I believe the article must contain the view that some reasonably authoritative sources believe that SRA is a moral panic. I would rather not stop working on other things to write an article on moral panics, but it is fair, I believe, to introduce that idea as part of the sociological context for this book.


 * For the record, I have no argument that child abuse exists. I have no argument that there are organized, commercial child pornographic and pedophiliac groups. I find, however, little plausible explanation for SRA, if for no reason other than cui bono, but I do not want to keep arguing that in each book. This is why, if the book articles survive, that they must be subordinate to a more general article(s) presenting the strongly opposed views. Howard C. Berkowitz 03:47, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I didn't look to see who wrote what, I only saw diatribe that did not sound relevant to this book. It is relevant to the subject of this book, but that is not what the article is about.  Let me take another look to see if I can interface it better perhaps. If nothing else, Gareth is always good at this. D. Matt Innis 04:00, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I put part of the first paragraph in as a reference for now. Feel free to revert or make other changes. D. Matt Innis 04:11, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Attempt to unify big picture
We have no article on cults.

We have no article on ritual abuse. There is an article on (male) circumcision, which in part stalled on whether it should include females or there should be an article, consistent with usage in world medical and ethical bodies, on female genital mutilation.

We have no article on Satanism.

Fully understanding that not all trauma or recovered memories are suggested to be sexual, I created a preliminary article, medicalizing sexual offenses. In no way am I committed to that specific title, although the subject is important. It needs a parent topic of sexual offenses, as well as on sexual offenses against children, child abuse (which isn't always sexual), and criminalizing consensual sexual activities. I offer it in the goal of establishing context for a number of difficult articles.

In this case, there needs to be a parent topic of trauma, including purely emotional, physical (i.e., multisystem trauma medicine is an interdisciplinary centered around surgery but not limited to it), and interactions: if there is recovered memory and trauma, it certainly could apply to an accident victim just as much as to a crime victim. There need to be contextualizing articles on subjects I mentioned at the start of this post.

The issues raised are relevant here, and in recovered memory, since the topics are at the intersection of law, health sciences, ethics and social sciences.

If some of these redlinks can be filled in, remembering family friendliness, and the articles (or Related Pages) be well-linked, it would be a start on taking individual studies and books and putting them into broader and &mdash; dare I say more encyclopedic' &mdash; contexts. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:08, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Victor quote: linking, walled gardens and orphans
I have again moved what I consider a key quote, from Victor, out of a footnote and into a blockquote. Note that it now contains a number of wikilinks, blue and red.

Perhaps not obvious to a newcomer, but there is a good deal of feeling at Citizendium, and even at Wikipedia, that what are variously called "orphaned articles", which have very few wikilinks from or to them, or "walled gardens", which are articles that link only among a small set of articles, are a very bad approach to knowledge navigation. Essentially, they can be found only through search engines.

"Strong", or highly linked articles, can be found by a reader starting at a core article and working into depth, or starting from a low-level point and getting context. A search engine might bring a reader to the first article, but a good wiki design provides a powerful mechanism that a search engine cannot replace.

When terms that can be wikilinked are relatively obscure in quotes in footnotes, that defeats the goal of navigation. There are a number of articles, in these areas, which are variously orphaned or in walled gardens. Even if it is a matter of creating lemmas and/or Related Articles pages without full articles, I am going to start giving the orphans parents and breaking down the garden walls. That may, or may not, demonstrate interesting common contexts and patterns. Howard C. Berkowitz 04:29, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Howard, let me say that I consider all of the above to be entirely your own opinion. I hardly know what you are talking about, or how to respond to it. I *do* understand what you are saying but vehemently disagree with it. If I, for instance, want to write an article about Matt Helm, I don't see why it absolutely has to link to 70 other articles. It would be nice if it did, and it does, actually, link to a number of others, but WHAT IS THE PROBLEM, AS YOU SEE IT, WITH STAND-ALONE ARTICLES? I think that your approach to this is very idiosyncratic and not at all part of "a good deal of feeling at Citizendium, and even at Wikipedia, that what are variously called "orphaned articles", which have very few wikilinks from or to them, or "walled gardens". As far as I can recall, in nearly two years here at CZ, I have *never* encountered the term "walled gardens". I wish you would restrain your inclinations in making *very* sweeping statements about CZ and its policies, at least as you perceive them -- the reality is not always what you assert it to be. Hayford Peirce 04:48, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

One issue here should be with respect to the potential for linking as opposed to the current state. Clearly citizendium will have a lot of orphaned articles early on. I think the main issue is whether they will still be orphaned (or walled) even in a mature citizendium. With regard to this particular book I do not know. So much of this is subjective.

Should we have individual articles on every prisoner in Guantanamo bay? Would those articles be of general interest enough to be linked from an article other than Guantanamo bay? Schools was another one that was discussed early on in the life of citizendium. Then it was easy to say they are not maintainable. I guess this is all starting to skirt the concept of notability from wikipedia.

Should our goal be to have all published books? I know that is not possible, but I'm not sure where such a line should be drawn. We could say anyone could write about any book they please. But wouldn't it be a bit strange to have books on sexual abuse vastly over-represented in citizendium? Clearly two is not a problem, but I suspect Howard is reacting to a potential problem? Chris Day 05:07, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * First, Hayford, please see CZ Talk:Usability, where this topic has been under discussion since March. There have been Forum discussions that I'd have to find. Along with Chris and others, there is a nearly-ready proposal about "strong" articles, which are the antithesis of orphaned and walled gardens. Those latter terms are also a concern discussed at Wikipedia.


 * Chris and I, based on many discussions, tend to agree in this area. I am a very strong believer in linking. Call it linking, traffic analysis, correlation, contact tracing, intelligence mosaics, etc., linkages can often tell more about a subject than the information in individual linked nodes. The Semantic Web initiative has linking as a central concept, as do techniques such as mind maps.


 * Yes, I believe that notability and maintainablility are very serious concerns for a future large Citizendium, which has the goal of being accurate. Howard C. Berkowitz 05:26, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I obviously see the goal of CZ as being very different from the vision of Howard and Chris. I envision a CZ with, oh, 75 million articles. Or more.  Let's say that someone of my inclinations writes a 400-word article about a 1946 mystery short story called The House in Goblin Wood (story). It's a complete stand-alone, written simply because I felt like doing it and hoping that in the course of the next five years 10 people would read it for info and that one of those people might do some editing on it. Okay, that's my only goal and only purpose. BUT, of course, there would be a link to the author, John Dickson Carr. There would be, I hope, a lengthy article about Carr somewhere.  The article would say that he was a well-known mystery writer who specialized in impossible crimes stories. Mysteries might well fall under a more global group called thrillers. The article on thrillers might say that they were a kind of genre fiction. And the article *there* would link, I suppose, to Literature. Now, wouldn't all of that make both of you happy? Wouldn't it fit right into your scheme of things?  So what's the big deal about me writing a stand-alone article about a mystery short? Or any other book that caught my fancy? Or a 1930's tennis player? Or a 1910 baseball player? ONCE THERE ARE ENOUGH ARTICLES, THEY ARE ALL GOING TO FIT TOGETHER!!!! And the only way we'll ever have enough articles is to encourage people to WRITE THEM, NOT TO DISCOURAGE THEM FROM DOING SO! Hayford Peirce 16:21, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Hayford, this isn't the place to have this discussion; it's been around in articles and the forum for months. There are aspects of our vision that are not communicating. Your "of course" is much of what we want.


 * The reality, though, is that in several cases of problematic articles, there is no "of course". The articles carry few or no links to other articles, workgroups. They duplicate or contradict content in background articles. Their titles may reflect sound bites rather than a coherent concept.


 * No, I can't accept that "once they exist they will all fit together". I used to work for the Library of Congress and researched, for many years, before that. If a book wasn't well indexed when it went into the collections, it was effectively lst for all time.


 * As long as you write your stand-alone article and link it from the beginning, it's not stand-alone. Let's say there is no thrillers. If you take the time even to redlink it, you, or someone else, might go and write that. When I see redlinks in areas where I have expertise, and I don't have a lot of research time, I still may go write a Related Articles page on that redlink, even if the parents, subtopics, and related topics are all red. By doing that, the indexing &mdash; knowledge navigation in Webspeak &mdash; happens as a relatively painless part of the process.  When, however, as in this article, there were no redlinks to cult, ritual, bluelinks to child abuse and child sexual abuse, there is the beginning of an article that won't be seen other than by search engines. Without taking a position on the matter, religious male circumcision is clearly a ritual. Some believe it is child abuse.


 * I worked in a hospital that had a major scandal in the nursery, because parents of a baby of one religion found that a staff member, in secrecy, had applied fluids associated with a religious ritual, without their consent, to their child. Now, it happened they were Orthodox Jews, and the fluid was water used in a Christian baptism. Those parents regarded it, logically enough in their faith, a great abuse; they considered the child dead to them until much ritual recovery, literally over years, took place. Oh -- it was a Jesuit hospital and they fired the nurse.


 * Was that ritual abuse? Why? Why not? When we have no definitions of ritual, Satanism, etc., it's hard to tell. When we have nothing on Satanism (used many ways by many people), it's hard for a reader to judge if "satanist ritual abuse" has anything to do with Satanism. There's conflating of witchcraft, wicca, and Satanism.  Does this suggest anything of the problem?  I'm trying to play catch-up with background definitions and links.


 * Maybe we do have fundamentally different visions. Maybe one or the other side will see they are the same with an appropriate set of glasses. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:40, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Hayford i don't disagree with anything you say. But do consider there are over 20 million catalogued books in the Library of Congress. There are maintainability issues here whether we like it or not. Also, we have a bibliography subpage. I'm not saying this particular book should be relegated to a subpage, I don't know enough about it, but in general we do need to consider such issues. Maybe this discussion should be revived in the forum? Chris Day 16:59, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeh,it should probably be in the Forums! But I don't see why Howard makes such a big deal about articles with red links and blue links? When I started writing articles for CZ a couple of years ago I almost NEVER made links to anything else. Why? Because I was so fed up with the WP method of having six links in a seven-word sentence. If someone like Howard thinks that links are so important, then why doesn't he spent 30 seconds (seconds, not minutes) going to an article that he thinks is underlinked and put brackets around every item he things *should* be linked.  Maybe some of them will instantly turn blue!  I'll bet that most of the articles that I *deliberately* underlinked have many, many blue links throughout them.  And, of course, many of the newly linked words will turn red, indicating a new article waiting to be written. Et voila!  What's so hard about that? I absolutely refuse to accept an argument that just because *any* article is underlinked, or not linked at all, that it's not maintainable. Go to my Matt Helm article, or Michael Gilbert and add a *dozen* links here and there -- I'll bet all of them will turn blue.... Hayford Peirce 17:21, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * In a specialized area of knowledge, especially when the original author is the expert, the author may be in the best position to know what ideas relate to it, and thus should be creating the initial links. It's especially challenging when a subject matter expert discovers an article on a questionable subject, such that it's hard to link into any existing knowledge structure because it has an idiosyncratic view of knowledge.


 * Now, to take literary examples &mdash; several of us have been working on the Horatio Hornblower series, and both creating/updating subarticles on books, but also linking among the books (i.e., series/character development) and to the real-world history on which the historical fiction is written. I've started the Honor Harrington main article, as a series that derives from Hornblower, and, again, link as I write. The idea of creating links as one writes, or even pausing to see if there is existing content that should be linked, is good Wiki practice. In the sciences and engineering, one starts by reviewing the existing information before writing an experimental design; that is a pre-Wiki form of linking that is obligatory for good work. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:29, 20 March 2009 (UTC)