Talk:James McDonald (writer)

Puffery, citations, etc: needs rewrite or deletion

This article requires rewriting as it is entirely promotional (WP:PUFF) and lacking in secondary citations that actually back up the article. While James McDonald may or may not be notable (policies like Wikipedia:Notability_(academics), Wikipedia:Notability (people) should be consulted, and adequate sources should be searched for), the article bears all the signs of puffing up that notability. McDonald links to this Wikipedia article on his personal homepage.

I will say that his writings are prolific and widely-disseminated. If you have spent enough time on the internet, you have a decent chance of having stumbled across one his websites, like www.cathar.info, even if you didn't know what a Cathar was. On Google Scholar, though, it doesn't look like his works on religious topics have received many citations. Google Scholar profile (Independent Researcher)

cathar.info is on the Wikimedia-wide spam blacklist [1] which has been discussed [2] including him commenting objecting to many of his domains being blocked [3]. That was in 2007. There's history involving now-banned user(s) posting "hundreds" of McDonald's links to Wikipedia, and other disputes, some involving content that McDonald feels strongly about (such as the persecution of Christians).

I'm going to state all the following points for future reference, and as justification for rewriting/deletion/etc:

• 1st paragraph: James McDonald is a British polymath: mathematician, etymologist, historian, theologian and non-fiction writer.[1][2][3]
  • Citation 1 is to a 1985 newspaper review of McDonald's 1985 book Wordly Wise, and it does say that he is a mathematician and etymologist. OK, sure.
  • Citations 2-3 are both to very passing mentions of the same book. They don't really support anything, but appear to be an attempt to prove his book was important enough to be cited by others (WP:REFBOMB). (I tracked down the book Fighting Talk under the title Sticklers, Sideburns and Bikinis.)
  • No citation supports that he is a historian or theologian, and "polymath" is a peacock term.
• In 2nd paragraph:
  • His work is characterised by combining serious scholarship with an entertaining style.[4][5] The two citations are to 1985 reviews of Wordly Wise. (Similarly in the infobox: Scholarly yet entertaining writing.) This is editorializing.
  • Something of a polymath, he has also written on subjects as diverse as computer simulation, mathematical problems, philosophy, etymology and comparative philology. No footnotes. An attempt to sound impressive.
    • Again puffery: "Something of a polymath", "as diverse as".
    • "computer simulation, mathematical problems": in this context, these are one item: apparently the book, Solving Business Problems using Simulation.
    • "philosophy": no hint of evidence.
    • "etymology and comparative philology": again, these are the same thing in this context (i.e. the book Wordly Wise).
• 3rd paragraph: an uncited list of where he has traveled.
• 4th parahraph:
  • Education (only citation is to his own dissertation).
  • [edited comment to add:] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London in 1990. A "fellowship" is open to anyone who has been a "member" for 5 years (which only requires payment of fees).
  • He is a life member of Humanists UK. A membership open to anyone who pays £850.
  • His biography in the 5th edition of his book Voltaire on the Cathars notes that he is one of a small but growing number of atheist theologians. This is a biography (perhaps written by him) in his own book, which he self-published. Also, "atheist theologian" would be commonly understood to be self-contradictory, so without another source, this is at most a self-claim.
• Coat of arms image. The image description page itself says "No reliable source for heraldry given, unverifiable." The article's footnote goes to one of McDonald's own websites, internationalheraldry.com.
• Publications:
  • Three of them are self-published: Voltaire on the Cathars, and the two published by "Academy of Cathar Historical Studies". That organization's director is McDonald.
  • Excessive and inappropriate footnotes (up to 7 footnotes per book), nearly all of which are simply to say the book was "cited by" someone, in an attempt to appear notable. WP:REFBOMB

--Micler (talk) 04:46, 5 December 2023 (UTC)