Wikipedia:Peer review/Odinism/archive1

Odinism

I've listed this article for peer review because of the variety of errors and content disputes that have been raised in a recent RfC. I would like to try and save the article but there is a very real possibility of either deleting the article or starting over from scratch. Comments and suggestions should be based around content inclusion/exclusion and references/referencing, though all constructive criticisms are welcome. Please also try to provide an example of how to fix the content text, if possible, to avoid "general comments".

Cheers, Drcrazy102 (talk) 02:16, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Important Background Information: Over the past few months, I have been working on Heathenry (new religious movement), an article which I have recently nominated at GAN. "Odinism" is a term preferred by certain practitioners of Heathenry, particularly – although certainly not exclusively – by those who adopt a racialist perspective to the religion and seek to restrict it to white individuals. This is well attested in the academic studies of the subject (by Mattias Gardell, Jeffrey Kaplan etc). Given that "Odinism" is therefore a partial-synonym for "Heathenry", in June 2009 the Odinism article was originally established as a Redirect that took the reader straight to Heathenry (new religious movement), which was then going under the title of "Germanic neopaganism". It was later expanded into an article of its own right. Over the past few months, an Odinist editor known as User:ThorLives has been very active over at the Heathenry article; their contributions were recognised as WP:Disruptive Editing, and myself and other editors put a stop to their behaviour before I initiated a community discussion as to whether ThorLives should be Topic Banned. Their edits at Heathenry thwarted, ThorLives turned to editing the Odinism article, turning it into a WP:Coatrack. After ThorLives disappeared amid a looming Topic Ban, the very next day Holtj appeared, and continued right where ThorLives left off. I have initiated a sock puppet investigation, at which Holtj has made the (dubious) claim that he is not the same individual as ThorLives, but is in fact his son. Regardless, if should be made clear that the vast majority of the Odinism article consists of the contributions of ThorLives and Holtj.

There are very serious problems with the Odinism article as it stands. As I see it, the main problems are a) the inclusion of un-referenced material, b) the inclusion of excessive information cited to non-reliable, primary sources in contravention of our reliable sources policy, and c) the use of reliable sources about pre-Christian religion to cite claims being made about the new religious movement, which is totally unsupportable from an academic or outsider standpoint and is a clear case of religious advocacy. On each occasion that I removed the problematic information, Holtj turned to Edit Warring to restore the article to their preferred revision. Ultimately, this material has to be removed wholesale for the article to meet Wikipedia standards; given that that entails the basic deletion of the entire article, I would continue to urge that it be restored as a redirect to the Heathenry (new religious movement) article. Midnightblueowl (talk) 21:10, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

• Update: Given that the ThorLives/Holtj sock puppet has now been blocked for abusively editing, I am going to go ahead and remove all non-referenced material and all material relying purely on primary, self-published sources. I am also going to remove all of the material in which that user had cited reliable sources in a manner that was totally inappropriate and constituted their own religious advocacy. I will not try to convert this article into a redirect, although I do believe that that is the best course of action. Midnightblueowl (talk) 21:22, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

• I have also added some additional academically-referenced information to the lede. Midnightblueowl (talk) 22:34, 26 November 2015 (UTC)