Talk:Unidentified flying object

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Revision as of 13:08, 22 July 2010 by imported>Howard C. Berkowitz (Material needs to be restored to article; large deletions, at CZ, only follows talk page discussion)
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 Definition:  (UFO) Any airborne object or phenomenon of unknown origin or nature, observed visually or by instruments; often linked with alleged but unproven claims of extra-terrestial origin. [d] [e]
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 Subgroup category:  Pseudoscience
 Talk Archive:  1  English language variant:  American English
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This is a reasonable start for a collaborative project, and, blessedly, does not read like a conspiracy theory. It may need to be contextualized with articles on extraterrestrial intelligence and, indeed, expansions on radar, technical and imagery intelligence/photogrammetry, and phenomena of witnessed observation.

As the text began, there seemed a strong implication that UFO necessarily equated to alien. I'm certainly not dismissing the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), but I think that a fair article also has to comment on the possibility of incorrect reports. The more dramatic the claim, the better the evidence need be.

The article may need to address the possibility that some sightings were highly classified experiments, and certainly other phenomena with an obscure but natural origin. I did provide some CIA references that indicate that at least some observations suggest something was present and could not be explained with the knowledge of the time. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:40, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Name of the article

As you can see, I've Moved it, and created a bunch of Redirects. Hayford Peirce 16:23, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the Workgroups

I didn't have a clue as to what I should do there! Hayford Peirce 16:38, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

My thinking is that aviation and flight is generally engineering (and sensors), biology deals with the nonhuman aspect, and sociology with the issue of mass belief systems. Certainly, other workgroups could be involved, such as military from the specific investigations, psychology especially from the perspectives of cognition and sensory capabilities, etc.
While I'm not sure how much time I'll spend on it, I hope this can be an example of a controversial, borderline-fringe issue that can be objective from the start. It's not an issue on which I have strong personal opinions. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:59, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Ditto. Fortunately, I don't think we have any UFO nuts in our Citizenry at the moment. Hayford Peirce 17:41, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Hello and welcome to Cirizendium

Mary, please note that I reformatted some of your notes more correctly. If you will study the edit page, you will see how my edits were done. When using an online source for a note, rather than simply enclosing the URL in brackets, thus [url], it is much better to include a title of some sort within the brackets, thus [url Title] with one space between the end of the url and title. In that way, the note simply displays the title as a link. That avoids the actual url being displayed as a link because urls are often very long and do not make the actual title of the online source clearly visible.

Also, Citizendium uses subpages:

  • Related Articles: This where we place links to related articles within Citizendium. In other words. the relate Articles subpage replaces Wikipedia's "See also" section.
  • Bibliography: This where we place links to books and journal articles that provide information related to the main article.
  • External links: This where we place hyperlinks to online website sources of related information.

With that in mind, what you denoted as "Notes" all pointed to a specific line or paragraph in the main article text, just as they should. However, what you denoted as "References" do not point to any specific line or paragraph in the main article and therefore would be much better placed in either the "Bibliography" or the "External Links" subpages. Since they are all hyperlinks to online website sources, I plan to move them to the "External Links" subpage. Milton Beychok 17:52, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Scope of article

Mary, no one person, at CZ, defines the scope of an article, although Editors may guide it. Please make comments like "(Removed stuff about SETI and aliens as this would make a great separate article. This article is about UFOs not aliens)" on this Talk Page, not in an edit note where it is not really preserved in an archival way.

As long as the Hayek classification contains the Close Encounters of the Third and Fourth Kinds, then aliens are very much germane to the article. As long as the Vallee classification contains "This type of experience could include Near Death Experiences, religious visions and out-of-body experiences (OBEs).", the paranormal is within the scope of the article.

If these classifications were limited to physical aspects of movement, then things such as visual and radar resolution would still be relevant.

I would like that material restored and discussed. Since I inserted it into the article, that's not a formal ruling as an Engineering Editor, but I think it's absolutely relevant. The article began with references all from the UFO community, and that isn't balanced. Note that the added material is not all from skeptics. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:08, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm puzzled why the material from the Air Force and CIA, specifically dealing with UFO investigation, was moved, while material from Hayek and Vallee was kept in place. Lundahl is often considered the world authority on photographic interpretation, and the CIA documents indicate that the U.S. government did have some policy of avoiding things that might upset the public. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:00, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

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