User talk:Free Bird 515

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Welcome

Howdy Free Bird and welcome to Wikipedia. I look forward to seeing how you will contribute to Wikipedia. John.Farquhar (talk) 19:39, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome

Hi! I just wanted to stop by and quickly welcome you to Wikipedia. I'm helping out a bit as the online Ambassador for the "Reality Check" course, so if you need any assistance just give me a yell. You can leave a message on my talk page, or send me an email - both should work well, and I'm really happy to receive questions. I'm in Australia, so our time zones will be out of sync a bit, but I'm normally online during the mornings and evenings your time. At any rate, it should be an enjoyable course. :) - Bilby (talk) 06:20, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also like to welcome you to Wikipedia! I've been interested in issues related to skepticism and rational thinking for many years. I'd be happy to help if you have any questions. Dustinlull (talk) 02:09, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome

Hello! It is great to work with you. I hope we get a good grade! AshleyMoe (talk)

Shadow people

Hi. Good work with your addition to Shadow people, but I think LuckyLouie is correct in saying that Briggs isn't a sufficiently reliable source, although your wording - which remained quite neutral throughout - was excellent. One of the bigger problems with working on articles in these areas are the large number of sources which appear to be authoritive, but are pushing a particular perspective too strongly, making them unreliable except, potentially, as sources for information about themselves. This makes things tricky. One suggestion would be to build from existing sources for a bit. Otherwise you could always ask on the talk page, or ask LuckyLouie if he has any suggestions. :) - Bilby (talk) 10:05, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Shadow People Content

Thank you for your kind compliments. I was actually surprised that the information I found stayed on for as long as it did but I knew eventually it would have been taken down. I find it near impossible to find anything related to the phenonmena of shadow people. I have searched libraries, the internet, literally everywhere and at this point, I might as well just try to go out and find them in person with a camera because this assignment is impossible. There is no verifiable research or hard scidentific evidence related to anything having to do with shadow people. But I will heed your advice and look at the existing sources and maybe chat it up on the talk page. Thanks again. -Free Bird 515

It seems like a difficult topic - I dug around a bit, and the terminology doesn't seem to be well defined, so there wasn't a lot to draw on. Where there isn't hard evidence we can still write on the topic, but the wording has to be very careful so as not to give the impression that it is true. With some of these topics I try and tackle them the same way I would with allegations about a person - so long as they aren't proven, I make it clear that they are, at this stage, nothing more than allegations, and preset the information as views held rather than true statements.
I quite liked the Science Now article, and you might be able to pull a bit more out of that. You might also get some milage out of "Photosensitive complex partial seizures aggravated by phenytoin", as it mentions Shadow People in the abstract, but I suspect won't be of a lot of value. A search of Google Scholar with "shadow people" and "hallucination" as the key terms suggests there may be something you can build on from the psychology literature. - Bilby (talk) 23:07, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It really is a problem article, as you may have gathered from the AfD discussion [1]. As far as I know, the subject was originally popularized by Art Bell/George Noory on Coast to Coast AM and a couple of his guests who apparently wrote books promoting the idea. But other than trivial mentions of the phrase, this subject has simply not been given the required degree of in-depth attention by multiple reliable sources, e.g. mainstream press, academics, scientists, folklorists, sociologists, etc. Not even the entertainment press has seen fit to comment on Coast to Coast's treatment of it. This leaves us with a bunch of kooky primary sources that don't pass WP:RS, and no secondary coverage of what they say that we can use to build an article from. A number of well-meaning editors have added the "scientific explanation" material, but it is generally seen as WP:OR since it's a synthesis of general material that doesn't specifically reference "shadow people". Since equally non-notable multiple interpretations of the term exist, one approach might be a disambiguation-style article, something like:
Shadow people may refer to:
  • Supernatural shadow-like humanoid figures that, according to believers, are seen mostly in peripheral vision, sometimes known in modern folklore and paranormal popular culture as dark entities with malevolent intentions. [2][3]
  • The destitute and homeless of South Africa [4].
  • Mythical beings of Nez Perce folklore [5] and Eskimo legend [6]
  • The illusory sensation of another person behind you. [7]
  • A type of hallucination reported by seizure patients [8]
I might add that the ScienceNow "feeling of someone behind you" and Sciencedirect "seizure patients" use of the term have nothing to do with the "Coast To Coast" use of the term, although it's understandable that editors have conflated them. Given the sources, it may be possible to develop at least a paragraph or two on each for such a 'disambig' style article. - LuckyLouie (talk) 03:47, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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