Talk:Team Seas

Semi-protected edit request on 10 November 2021

clean sea 169.139.8.151 (talk) 19:39, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 19:44, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Austin Russell $4M donation sentence

Since Austin Russell, who is known to be a self-made billionaire, tech mogul, and an entrepreneur, donated $4 million to TeamSeas, I'll make a possible consensus to this. Is it okay if I can add a sentence like this in this article on the "Donations" section?

On January 1, 2022, Austin Russell donated $4,000,000 to push up the final total of pounds removed over the 30 million mark.

I put in a {{citation needed}} template after this sentence, which we will actually need a source that he did that large contribution. I added that sentence on that section, which it was just in, but my edit to that was reverted for an unknown reason. Maybe the sources from here, here and here from Dexerto, Sportskeeda and TheFocus, respectively, would be it; but it did not mention him that donated $4 million. Also, Austin Russell is not Chumlee, which I'm confused that he's not the same person with the same name that donated, as the Austin Russell page redirected me to Chumlee's page at first that thought to be him. --Allen ^{(talk / ctrb)} 22:56, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure why the mention was previously removed. Someone seems to have added it back; I've cleaned it up. I think the sources are fine enough, even though they don't mention the value (although I added a {{cn}} tag specifically for the value). I also only added the dexerto source, because the TheFocus seems too small to be reliable, and the script User:Headbomb/unreliable.js flags Sportskeeda as unreliable. — Mcguy15 (talk, contribs) 18:31, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Re: the ocean pollution additions

This is synthesis, and cannot be re-added without proper sourcing/attribution. See my comments on this talk page: User_talk:Sxbbetyy#Edit_warring_and_synthesis — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 16:43, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

See my reply on this talk page for the explanation on why this claim is categorically false. Furthermore, note how they have not actually specified how this content is synthesis or any of the other policy violations they have claimed and how they have already attempted to remove the content without consensus discussion twice now. In fact they removed it again after another user independently restored what they removed. Sxbbetyy (talk) 22:29, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Additional discussion

Moved from User talk:PerfectSoundWhatever

 – — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 02:33, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I will be reverting your latest edit warring attempt on my contribution to this article as not only have you been unable to articulate a valid reason for its removal. All of the examples you provide claiming it is WP:OR are incorrect as per its respective article, including the examples you have attempted to use as justification for your reversions.

The content in question is not an opinion derived from a source, it is literally repeating information given by the source and comparing it to the topic of the article in a factual manner with no opinion given (to that end please read the paragraph titled "Routine Calculations" under the "What is not original research" section of the WP:OR page). Furthermore, you falsely claimed on my talk page that there is a consensus that the information I added should be removed, which is simply not true by simple examination of the edit history of the article (besides yourself only one other contributor reverted the information and they gave no explanation, themselves possibly simply taking your false claim at face value). In fact, there were more contributors who left the information on the page in their edits rather than attempting to remove it.

I also find it odd that if your concern truly is with the information being a "synthesis" issue, that you didn't simply attempt to reword the information to what you believed would be appropriate rather than simply removing it entirely. This behavior leads me to believe that you are simply trying to use a claim of an WP:OR as an excuse to remove the information from the article because it does not align with the narrative you want on that page. I hope I am mistaken.

In any case, due to what I have explained above, if you have any further problem with the information please create a talk post on the talk page for the article so it can be discussed as WP:CR requires a consensus before such edits can be removed (this contribution that you are disputing does not meet the criteria for content that can be removed without discussion, as per simple examination of the content itself and what I previously discussed). Sxbbetyy (talk) 08:18, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

@Sxbbetyy I don't have the time for this. Once again, read WP:SYNTHESIS. You can't just reword content that is incorrectly sourced and misleading. — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 15:05, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Frankly neither do I. You keep claiming there is an policy violation but have yet to actually point to why the content you are removing violates those policies. Continuing to say something is in violation of a policy, but then never actually engaging in the conversation of WHY does nothing but waste everyone's time (see your latest reply). And you can't continue to remove content with giving a valid reason (which you have thus far failed, or more accurately not even attempted, to prove) as that in itself is explicitly against the policies I previously described.

And to be clear I'm not against the removal or rewording of the content if it actually violates a policy, you just have yet to actually present evidence that it does. Sxbbetyy (talk) 22:20, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps reading synthesis would help. Or attempting to understanding it:

Do not combine material from multiple sources to state or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. and If one reliable source says A and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C not mentioned by either of the sources.

Statement A: "Team Seas removed X amount of plastic"

Statement B: "This amount of plastic enters the ocean every X hours"

Statement C (implied conclusion): "Team seas removed very little plastic compared to what enters daily".

You cannot connect the two statements to imply a conclusion if the sources don't connect them. Let's look at the sources. Does Marine Pollution, 2015 imply that Team Seas removed little plastic? No.

Does News18, 2021 imply that Team Seas removed little plastic? No. Since A and B do not mention C, you cannot combine these sources in such manner.

WP:SYNTHESIS gives an example that shows how poor editorializing this is. You can easily use the same statements (A+B) to draw an entirely different conclusion. How about:

The fundraiser pledged to remove 30,000,000 pounds (14,000,000 kg) of marine debris from the ocean by removing 1 pound (0.45 kg) of marine debris from the ocean for every 1 dollar donated. This quantity is so large that it takes 11-15 hours for that amount to enter the ocean. — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 22:52, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

If you continue to disagree, I must ask you. Please explain to me what is different between the example at WP:SYNTHESIS (The United Nations' stated objective is to maintain international peace and security, but since its creation there have been 160 wars throughout the world.) and the text you want to add (The fundraiser pledged to remove 30,000,000 pounds (14,000,000 kg) of marine debris from the ocean by removing 1 pound (0.45 kg) of marine debris from the ocean for every 1 dollar donated. However about the same amount of plastic waste alone enters the ocean every 11-15 hours.)

Why would synthesis apply in the first case, but not the second? — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 22:56, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

First let's address your latest reply.

The main difference between the example at WP:SYNTHESIS and the text that I contributed is very very simple. The WP:SYNTHESIS example states a contextless conclusion ("but since its creation there have been 160 wars throughout the world") that cannot be objectively concluded from the statement given earlier in the sentence("The United Nations' stated objective is to maintain international peace and security"). This example is a single, intentionally slanted sentence meant to give the impression that the fact that there have been 160 wars since the UN's creation is support for the claim of the UN being ineffective at preventing war. This is not in line with WP:SYNTHESIS as it implies a conclusion from a source that does not give evidence of this being the case.

Now for the text I contributed: it is a separately sourced sentence stating its own claim. The first sentence (which I did not contribute, it was already apart of the article at the time) which simply states the amount that was pledged to be removed and the second sentence (that I contributed) which uses routine mathematics to state that the amount of waste given in the first sentence only amounts to 11-15 hours of ocean debris pollution (as accurately stated in the source I gave). Unlike the first example, that is not a contextless and/or opinionated conclusion (it is objective fact that the amount of waste that was removed is only equivalent to 11-15 hours of human ocean waste generation, , nor do either sentences explicitly engage in any of the myriad of synthesis examples that you have given or that can be seen on WP:SYNTHESIS. In fact, these sentences fall under what WP:SYNTHESIS describes as content not to be considered synthesis as they use basic mathematics to make an objective statement based on the given facts. Now I do understand that what this text implies is not exactly beneficial to the stated goal of the fundraiser (which you seem to be primarily concerned about), but that is completely irrelevant to Wikipedia as we must maintain a neutral point of view (this means that removing content simply because it paints something in a bad light, is not acceptable).

To that end, this takes us back to your first reply. To start, you make a bad faith argument almost immediately by misrepresenting both: the conclusion of the sources and the actual argument being made. For example, "statement A" was not that, "Team Seas removed X amount of plastic". The article and the source in that article for that fact explicitly states that Team Seas pledged to remove 30 million pounds of "marine debris". This includes, but is not limited to, plastic waste. To that end, "statement B" becomes something you can accurately compare to statement A as plastic entering the ocean is marine debris. And finally, there is no "statement C" in the article, instead the facts are simply stated independently of one another in the fashion I explained in my last paragraph. If anything what you present as "statement C" would be the opinion of the reader after reading the article, which is outside the scope of WP:SYNTHESIS (and if you try to argue that the reader should not be able to form an opinion one way or the other on a topic after reading objectively sourced facts presented in a neutral manner, idk what to tell you lol).

I also want to specifically focus on what you gave as an example for how the content could be reworded, "This quantity is so large that it takes 11-15 hours for that amount to enter the ocean." You spent all this time arguing that there is a WP:SYNTHESIS violation with that text, yet you reword it in a way that doesn't at all change that claim, but instead alters the neutrality of the text to bias that once simple statement of an objective fact to now instead imply that a significant accomplishment was achieved (which seems to be what you have actually been trying to argue this entire time). This would this be a violation of WP:NPOV (as it is not a neutral way to present the information). To that end, after re-reading the text I do see that there is room for improvement in the neutrality of what I contributed as it can come off in a slightly negative tone, so I have reworded it instead to the more neutral "Note that about the same amount of plastic waste alone enters the ocean every 11-15 hours." Sxbbetyy (talk) 08:59, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Response to third opinion request (Disagreement about synthesis in Team Seas):

@Sxbbetyy: @PerfectSoundWhatever: I don't understand why this is in the article in the first place. If no reliable source mentions the "they removed 11-15 hours worth of trash", why is it in the article? I don't find that this falls under WP:2+2=4, this is in no way a "routine calculation". How is 11-15 hours calculated? It seems to me that this is just straight-up wrong, according to the source listed at the end. (they pledged to remove ~13600 metric tons of waste (they actually removed more), according to the lower bound of the study, ~13150 metric tons entered the water every day in 2010. that's a higher bound of 1+ day of plastic). Same with the following sentence, "This means that during the entire duration of the fundraiser, at least approximately 18,562,500,000 pounds (8,419,808,368 kg) of debris had entered the ocean (or about 61,875% more than what the fundraiser ended up removing)." Is this really necessary? The point of the fundraiser seems to be to remove some trash, not the entire Great Pacific Garbage Patch. These pieces of text have no place in the article. — BerryForPerpetuity (talk) 13:51, 20 November 2024 (UTC)