Document talk:Chemtrails - Proof and Purpose

Erratum

"Barium is a piezoelectric substance"

No, barium is a reactive metal. Possibly the author is thinking about barium titanate.

(the author of this correction is unknown, and not me. --Yuri Zephyros (talk) 10:55, 17 August 2014 (IST) )

Unsubstantiated claims

In the first paragraph

"As the operations intensified, NASA, aviation authorities, and military organisations responded to queries made by concerned citizens that the trails in question were merely condensation trails (contrails) generated by jets, which, they claimed, have always persisted and expanded in all temperatures, humidity levels, and altitudes." Can the author be contacted to provide a reference to his source for this statement? Compare that false statement with, for instance, the FAA/EPA/NASA Fact Sheet about condensation trails: https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/policy_guidance/envir_policy/media/contrails.pdf

I see no serious conflict between what the author says (as a single-sentence summary) and your reference pdf. To describe it s "false" is OTT IMO. --Peter P (talk) 07:26, 17 August 2014 (IST)

The statement is false in that the author claims that those agencies state that contrails persist and spread in certain atmospheric conditions, as opposed to in all conditions, which is the correct state of affairs - see the Fact Sheet I referenced. By attributing such a blatantly false statement to those agencies, I suspect the author is seeking to discredit them and make them out to be unreliable. --Yuri Zephyros (talk) 11:06, 17 August 2014 (IST)

I do not see this as a big issue. The document you cite is a general orthodox description of the phenonomenon of jet-engine 'contrails'. The author is describing responses by the same organisations (plus those of the military) to repeated suggestions over an extended period that often, what appear to be contrails of that sort, are in fact the result of chemical spraying; such suggestions are consistently obfuscated by those same authorities by, for example, issuing factsheets that ignore the substantive issue. OK, maybe he ought to have provided a few references or worded things a bit differently but so what? Also, the issue is a trivial element of the article as a whole --Peter P (talk) 12:51, 17 August 2014 (IST)

Can we correct the statement in the article? Or do we just note that it is false here in Discussion, and provide the correct information. How about highlight but ing the bunk in the article, and providing correct information in a series of footnotes?

Actually, the introduction (yellow box at the top) is not even a correct statement about the article - "climate engineering" is not mentioned in the article at all! --Yuri Zephyros (talk) 03:50, 17 August 2014 (IST)

Editing this and ANY document

See Document Editing Rules.

No editing of the actual article other than to provide internal links and improve formatting. Use the 'Edit with form' option to edit explanatory information about the article. Issues concerning the alleged accuracy of information in the article (beyond the briefest of overall mentions in the "Wikispooks comment" section of the form) should be confined to the article discussion page. The 'yellow-box' info (ie the article description) is also OK to edit, but currently does not mention "Climate engineering" and frankly, for a brief intro, I personally regard what it does say as reasonable - but I'm open to argument that it isn't. You could also propose it for deletion as rubbish and/or author a page or debunking article with links yourself --Peter P (talk) 06:51, 17 August 2014 (IST)

Handling Mistakes in Documents

Some of these documents do contain errors, no doubt, and Yuri Zephyros's point about Barium is well taken. The question of what to do about this merits further reflection. The current rules provide only two options:

1. A Wikispooks comment
2. A link to a further explanation on the talk page

I dislike (1) because it won't scale well with multiple issues and because the comment field is intended to apply to the whole article, not particular parts of it. Option (2) is neater, but still requires the reader to change pages while reading, so is rather fiddly.

Peter's suggestion of authoring a document about this particular document is more suitable for large, ideological/philosophical disagreements, than correcting errors of fact such as the omission of the word "titanate".

I propose expanding the document editing rules to include a 3rd section to provide clear guidance for people who see errors within the Document: namespace. i.e.

1. Since errors are not always clear cut, start with a query process of notifying the error on the talk page. An Errata section is a good idea (probably at the top).
2. Next wait a specific period of time to collect opinions and (we hope) establish concensus.
3. Amend the document by adding a tag inline that links to an erratum section on the same page (e.g. at the bottom).
   • (c.f. <ref>{{Erratum|2014-08-17|The author should have written "barium titanate".}}</ref>)

I used "ref" to demonstrate how it could work, but in fact this is inadequate - it must be clearly distinguished from an ordinary reference, to preserve the integrity of the original document. Unless there is a handy mediawiki tag we can draft into this (suggestions, anyone?) I recommend judicious use of SMW to make a suitable template. Robin (talk) 10:10, 17 August 2014 (IST)