Talk:Unidentified flying object

Added metadata and some notes

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)

Moving Text Around for Article

I moved the stuff down so the article will flow better. When I looked at the article the history and conspiracy stuff chopped it up.

I do believe the UFO article should stand alone as it is about UFOs. The shape, size, classifications, etc. Conspiracy theories, aliens whatever would make great sub topics and articles in their own right.

Also, I left the comments in the article summary section so users would know what action was taken. Mary Ash 19:50, 22 July 2010 (UTC)Mary Ash

I agree 100% with Howard on this, Mary. I don't see how you can have an article about UFOs without incorporating all of the baloney aspects of it -- that's what at least half the readers are going to be interested in. Remember, this is not a newspaper, or even a paper encyclopedia, with severe constraints on space. We can have articles as long as they need to be. I see that your deletions have now been restored. Now is the time to discuss them. Like many things in life, rules and guidelines at CZ are not black and white, alas. On the one hand, we say, Be bold. But by that we really mean, Be bold, but not TOO bold. In other words, start a new article, go into an existing article, even if it appears to have been primarily written by two Nobel Laureates, and make edits, add a paragraph, delete a sentence, that sort of stuff. Go to the Welcome to Citizendium page and correct some grammar, add a sentence or two. BUT don't reformat the entire page, removing half the text and changing the colors. That's being TOO bold. It doesn't mean that you can't *eventually* do it -- it just means that FIRST your proposed changes should be thoroughly discussed on the Talk page and some sort of consensus reached. What we absolutely do NOT want here at CZ are the "revert" wars at Wikipedia. In the three years I've been here only a couple have ever started -- and the Constabulary or Editor-in-Chief quickly stopped them. A couple of people left as a result, but if that's the sort of activity they want, they should stick with WP. So, as I said above, Be bold -- but not *too* bold! Hayford Peirce 20:04, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

And please use our system of indentations as you go down the page replying to comments -- thanks! Hayford Peirce 20:04, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

I'll be happy to indent, if you tell me how... Mary Ash 20:09, 22 July 2010 (UTC)Mary Ash

Ah, just use colons to indent your replies. One, two, three, four, or more, as the case may be.

Look here.

And here.

And here again -- using the EDIT mode on this page -- you'll see the colons coming down the page. Once in a while, if there are so many of them that the text is getting scrunched, someone will start all over again at the left margin but will write (unindent) to start off the text.

(unindent) Like this. Thanks -- it's all pretty easy! Hayford Peirce 20:20, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

As far as flow, I see it entirely relevant to have the history early in the article. It sets a context, which is one of our goals -- just as I put in seealso to extraterrestrial intelligence. As the article was, it jumped directly into Hynek and Vallee, which easily gives an impression these are widely accepted and there is no controversy about UFOs. Indeed, the "flying saucer" reference in the lede is something I found distracting, but I referenced and contextualized rather than removed.

I've never worked on WatchNOW so I can't comment. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:24, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Culturally, it's not inappropriate to link Vallee to the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:25, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Shapes

"According to the National UFO Reporting Center statistics" Could you elaborate on these statistics? Are these visual, photographic, or imaging radar assignments of shapes? Which are correlated with at least multiple independent observers in a plausible geometry? Howard C. Berkowitz 20:28, 22 July 2010 (UTC)