Talk:River out of Eden

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Contents 1 Added inappropriate tone tag 2 Rewrite 3 External links 4 Capitalisation

[edit] Added inappropriate tone tag

I added this tag to the article, as it it currently a collection of points about the book, coupled with a huge number of quotes. This article should not be an essay on every subject covered in the book, so it needs a rewrite to conform with the guidelines at the guide to writing better articles. Thanks. Mushin^talk 23:54, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Mushin. This was my first Wikipedia article and I agree that the style is not really what we want. I had it in mind to write a short piece with a few quotes, but then the quotes just took over. I don't think I'm going to make any further contributions for now, but I'd be quite happy to see it radically altered or replaced. Thanks. --Laurence Boyce 16:46, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Glad to have your understanding. There is definitely a lot of good stuff in there. I'm quite busy at the moment, but if I do any edits I'll try and preserve as much of your content as possible (obviously minus some of the quotes). Mushin^talk 18:55, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Some things seem to sound a bit unencyclopedic/POV/sounding like the voice of an author, e.g. "He tears their ... argument to pieces"; "This is the why question about life which philosophers and theologians have been pondering in vain for ages". Also, perhaps changing the "Dawkins shows..." to "Dawkins asserts..." 128.250.6.243 01:30, 8 September 2006 (UTC) (• Leon 01:31, 8 September 2006 (UTC))

The previous discussion was about the earlier version of this article. But as you pointed out, the new version is still not quite encylopedic. I'll address your concerns soon. Fred Hsu 04:21, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite

• previous version

I am thinking about enhancing articles on books by Dawkins, Pinker, Sykes and Baker. Perhaps I'll start with this article. Fred Hsu 01:59, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Fred – good move. As well as writing this lame article, I have made a number of edits across all the Richard Dawkins articles, with a view to achieving some consistency of style. One of the things I did was remove the ISBN numbers – I only mention this because I notice you put one back in A Devil's Chaplain. For example, in The Selfish Gene, I replaced a bunch of ISBN's with a paragraph explaining the dfifference between the various editions, which in my view is more helpful. I'm not convinced ISBN's are terribly informative or useful here – of course others may disagree. In any case, the full list of ISBN's are in the Richard Dawkins article where I'm sure they will remain.—Laurence Boyce 13:31, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I was planning to write the article basically as a chapter-by-chapter summary. But I don't know if this is what articles on books are supposed to be. Do you have an idea what the correct style should be? Fred Hsu 00:44, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any book article guidelines. I think one may either employ a chapter-by-chapter approach, or talk about the whole book in the round – in either case it mustn't be a book review of course.—Laurence Boyce 11:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

As for the ISBN number, I have seen people add the ISBN number to lead paragraphs of articles on books. I was surprised that the A Devil's Chaplain did not have an ISBN number. I was going to buy it. I ended up going back to the main Dawkins' page to find it. Don't you think the ISBN number is one of the most important number for an article on a book? I mean, after all, it is a unique number identifying the book; the title itself may not be unique. I know that different editions of the book will have different ISBN numbers. And perhaps a section on various editions for a popular book can list ISBN numbers for all editions. But most books don't have a second edition... Fred Hsu 00:44, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Most of Dawkins' books have had either a second edition or reprint, so which one do we use? – the original I suppose. Also aren't they different for hardback/softback US/UK editions? Is it really worth it? Shouldn't the article be about the book, not helping people to buy it as such? I mean there's only one Richard Dawkins. However, I'm not that fussed about it – I just wanted to tell you what I had done and why.—Laurence Boyce 11:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I was going to add ISBN numbers to all his books, but I stopped after adding the first one. I tried to find a wikipedia article about writing articles on books, but have not yet found one. I won't mind if you remove the number from that page again. Fred Hsu 00:40, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

The rewrite is finally completed!!! Fred Hsu 03:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Fred. I've removed the previous version from talk and created a link above. Thanks again.—Laurence Boyce 07:02, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the edit to the main article to clean up my typos. As you suggested in your own talk page, the article seems too long. As I was writing it, I thought perhaps I should move most of these to other articles. For instance, chapter 2 can be largely moved into Most recent common ancestor, and have that article link back to River Out of Eden. Fred Hsu 13:28, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I moved part of the chapter "God's utility function" into an article of its own. Fred Hsu 05:26, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links

[1] removed the only external links on July 19, 2006:

• Critical review from Answers in Genesis

I left this Creationist link unchanged during rewrite, because I felt that they needed to be given a chance to defend themselves, even though they would never succeed. The critical review attacks the book on peripheral non-issues, but not the central issues as summarized in this article. I felt that an intelligent person would be able to see through this fallacy in an instance, so I left the link alone. But I am fine with the removal of the link. I don't care either way. Fred Hsu 13:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalisation

The recent change in article name is entirely incorrect. The correct capitalisation is River Out of Eden. Laurence Boyce 10:03, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes. I'll leave a message on User:Extraordinary Machine's talk page. He also renamed the article :( Fred Hsu 02:50, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

There's a precedent on Wikipedia (see, for example, Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Album_titles_and_band_names) not to capitalise prepositions in titles of articles about books and similar topics. As for the capitalisation on the book cover, in most cases that's not relevant because we should be modifying typography to our own set house style (which happens to differ from the publisher's in this case); it's not unusual for some book covers to use all caps or none, for example. Extraordinary Machine 13:46, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I entirely agree with this. Also I notice that you have changed the Dawkins template, but not any of the articles that link here, so we are currently inconsistent. Laurence Boyce 14:05, 16 August 2006 (UTC)