User talk:Darren-M/Archives/2022/April

Heathenry in Canada

Hi Darren,

Is there a reason you are interested in the page "Heathenry in Canada" in particular? It appears you have been making edits to reformat in the past few months. My own interest is in having accurate information on the page more than formatting, which I am still new to. If I am doing things wrong from a technical perspective that is user error, not lack of knowledge on this subject area. My recent revisions were to reflect more current information. (Please see below sections for details.) However, I can see that previous edits reflecting similar material were added by other editors over the last few months and have also been reverted. Just trying to understand the problem so we can move forward.

Thanks, GWN.Raven (talk) 21:58, 5 January 2022 (UTC) GWN.Raven

Linking to Groups

You previously deleted a bunch of links in December, and a number of them were definitely dead, so they did require revision. However, the ones I recently added are active groups or organizations that people who find this page would be interested in. These include Raven's Knoll which is a sacred site and festival site related to Heathenry/Neo-Paganism which is already mentioned on the wiki page, as well as The Heathen Confederation of Canada, and the Facebook Group for Saskatchewan Heathens. In addition, I see you have removed further links to groups in the Facebook Groups section which you had previously created.

Heathen Confederation of Canada

The paragraph you reverted at the top that I added was to update new information on Heathenry in Canada, including the newly formed organization, The Heathen Confederation of Canada, which is having an instrumental impact in the way Heathenry in Canada is viewed by the public. I had not finished making all the edits I wanted last night as I ran out of time. However, sourcing material on this subject is difficult given there are only approximately 805 Heathens in Canada. The information I had added in this section is paraphrased from this org's current bylaws on their webpage, which unfortunately is currently a Wordpress page due to how young the organization is. They have promised to update it to a proper webpage soon, having just elected their first non-provisional board in December of 2021. When that happens I will be happy to link to that more trustworthy source.

Heathenry in Saskatchewan

I am trying to more broadly make sure this subject is accurate on this page, with the intent to add more about regional differences in the Saskatchewan region in the next couple of days. I just want to know if I continue to make changes to this page how to avoid these revisions being reverted. The Saskatchewan groups are very small and only use Facebook at this point to organize. This is a funding/population size issue, so I am not sure the work around for citing if that were to be an issue.

References

References

GWN.Raven (talk) 21:58, 5 January 2022 (UTC) GWN.Raven

Hi @GWN.Raven. I stumbled on the page when monitoring recent pages, and it caught my eye as one that needed some work. It's now on my watchlist of pages so I keep an eye on changes that happen to it. I have no real interest in the actual subject matter of the article.

Re linking to groups - in most articles, we should limit the number of external links. For instance, an article about the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds might link to the RSPB website, but we typically try to avoid cluttering the article with lots of links. We definitely avoid pages that start to look like directories, with long lists of organisations and how to contact them. This isn't the purpose of Wikipedia ((WP:NOTDIRECTORY talks about this).

I removed information about The Heathen Confederation of Canada because it was an unsourced addition that appeared to be an advert. If there has been coverage of the organisation in reliable sources (e.g. national newspapers), it might be appropriate to specifically mention the organisation, in limited detail, with a citation to that source. But we want to avoid adding information for the sake of it about subjects that people haven't yet been proven (by coverage in reliable sources) to be interested in, and we definitely want to avoid things that come across as adverts.

Ultimately, all of the content in the article should be cited to a reliable source (see WP:REFBEGIN for how we cite things). If we can't find a citation of people who aren't connected with the group talking about it (in newspapers, journals, or books), we probably shouldn't include it in this article.

Hopefully that helps, but do shout up if you have any questions. Best, Darren-M talk 22:38, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi Darren-M,

The problem with this is first off that it is a religion, and secondly that the size of the minority group is minusucle compared to the Canadian population. As a result, inclusive heathenry gets little to no media coverage. The purpose of the Heathen Confederation of Canada is to engage with the government and the media, but since it has just formed there is not as of yet any media coverage of it. The organization formed to fight negative images of heathenry in the media for example the storming of the capital in the USA where the Q-Anon Shaman had symbols Heathens hold sacred tattooed on his body, even though he is actually a Christian. Other negative images that are related to Heathenry that find their way into the media are usually a result of white nationalist groups using Heathen symbols, like runes, in their imagery. Heathenry is a small religion with little to no centralization. This means that there are very few groups large enough to even afford their own webpages. This means many of these groups have added their links here, since it appears high in the search results when you google "Canadian Heathenry." They are doing this, not for self-promotion, but rather to make themselves visible above results from white nationalist groups who do have more members and more funding and try to gain new members under the guise of religious brotherhood. Removing the links, is actually dangerous to the safety of new Heathens looking for groups to practice with. However, I will be trying to collect all the links you have removed and posting them on my blog on the topic of Canadian Heathenry, so they hopefully don't disappear into the ether until I can figure out a better solution. GWN.Raven (talk) 16:07, 6 January 2022 (UTC) GWN.Raven

Hiya @GWN.Raven. I totally understand the logic behind it and why you want to do it. If the Confederation does indeed get that media coverage in future through its work, it would be entirely appropriate to consider adding references to it into the article. To put it a slightly different way - our article about knitting won't list all of the knitting clubs that exist in the world, but if a particular club has had national/state media coverage about how they've now become the official supplier for tea cozies to the royal family, we might decide to include a reference to them in the article in the context of what the coverage was for. If they ended up having coverage over a long period of time in lots of different media outlets, they might then be at the point that they could have their own article. (And this isn't in any way comparing heathenry to knitting, but it was simply the first activity that popped into my head!)

If it helps, [1] is a link to the page as it was before I removed the links, if you'd like to preserve them elsewhere. For your interest, it's also probably worth looking at the Racial issues section of the Heathenry article, which does talk to some of the points you've made around the impacts of white supremacy on the movement. Darren-M talk 10:18, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Darren,

That link was not valid but I have already found all the links I require in your edits and am working on compiling them. Hours of work, since so many of them are dead links. I will be sure to edit this page again in the future if I can find sources that will be considered reputable. Thanks for your input. GWN.Raven (talk) 16:07, 6 January 2022 (UTC) GWN.Raven

Wow. Oh 850 Heathens in Canada.

Knowledge1253 (talk) 08:27, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@Knowledge1253 805, approximately, although that is old data. Definitely not large. GWN.Raven (talk) 16:07, 6 January 2022 (UTC) GWN.Raven

made a mistake.

You ask me to leave a message on your talk page if I believe you made a mistake. Does this imply that you could not have made any mistake and that I could only perceive it as a mistake unless you agreed? And yes, I believe you made a mistake. Knowledge1253 (talk) 08:21, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Knowledge1253. Everybody can make mistakes. I've just noticed I missed your previous message above, although I'm not sure I understand it. Can you explain in a little more detail what you would like to discuss please? Darren-M talk 10:26, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I do not wish to discuss anything with you. Sorry for the mistake I made which compelled you to edit me Knowledge1253 (talk) 10:55, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:AFC Helper News

Hello! I wanted to drop a quick note for all of our AFC participants; nothing huge and fancy like a newsletter, but a few points of interest.

• AFCH will now show live previews of the comment to be left on a decline.
• The template {{db-afc-move}} has been created - this template is similar to {{db-move}} when there is a redirect in the way of an acceptance, but specifically tells the patrolling admin to let you (the draft reviewer) take care of the actual move.

Short and sweet, but there's always more to discuss at WT:AFC. Stop on by, maybe review a draft on the way? Whether you're one of our top reviewers, or haven't reviewed in a while, I want to thank you for helping out in the past and in the future. Cheers, Primefac, via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:59, 16 February 2022 (UTC)