- The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the media below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the media's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was:
- Image:Godislove.png (delete | talk | history | logs) - uploaded by TaylorOliphant (notify | contribs).
The original maker of the tree of life made it "resemble" cannabis. I didn't reshape anything. I had no intention to spam anything either. I thought discussions were the place to sort this stuff out, sorry I offended you good sir. I will follow your rules MSJapan, help me put this image somewhere. I think it is useful and I don't want to offend anyone. You consider your judgment better than mine, please help me out.
--TaylorOliphant (talk) 01:17, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't see the image as particularly reembling a cannabis plant even when highlighted; and in any case, I could have highlighted a different part of the image to make it resemble something else. Delete; if the connection between the symbol and cannabis is just your personal theory and has not been mentioned in a reputable source, it is original research which is outside the scope of Wikipedia. - Mike Rosoft (talk) 09:09, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
PLEASE READ:
It is in no way my original theory. The word "Kaneh Bosem" describes the use of cannabis in the torah but MSJapan wont allow that article as he is offended by cannabis in general. There is a media blackout relating to the historic use of cannabis, and I'm willing to bet almost nobody reading this knows about the historic use of cannabis beyond the fact it was "probably used". Nice blackout ay? Do some research, make some phone calls. I would be happy to call people, cite references, whatever it takes. I figured the "tree of life" is a speculative topic and that all the research you have is riddled with generalities. Sorry my generality was cannabis, I know there has been billions of dollars put into stopping that generality. I forgot how effective that much money can be.
But it's not just me getting blackballed for sharing credible insight, look:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_Wears_No_Clothes <- here is a professional researcher going through the same thing as me. Look at his page, notice a complete absence of information? This is no joke, all he is able to put up is a "contest to disprove it"? What about the actual information?
Once again thank everyone for reading this. If I must be suppressed, that is fine. It's not like this information hasn't been trampled by everyone on earth since the Catholic church changed the words Kaneh Bosem to Calamus. Keep up the good work. True history will totally disrupt the nice path of destruction mankind is blazing by criminalizing the potential best natural resource ever found. May everyone please try and see both sides here. I am not an authority, I can't overwhelm anyone with my side and make them see it, you would have to look yourself. However, I must note that no one will even listen to the authorities on the subject. We have a 70+ year plus media blackout around the world. Please look into it. (For a starting point on the media blackout in America please look into the Hearst media empire and a man named Herman Oliphant.)
--TaylorOliphant (talk) 18:53, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Week Delete. I am concerned by TaylorOliphant's "forum shopping" for an article that will accept this image. He asks us to "help me put this image somewhere". To me that is the wrong approach. To create an image and then shop around for a place to put it certainly smells like OR and and POV pushing. We don't add images to articles simply because we think they might be "useful" or "informative". An image should actually relate directly to the subject matter being discussed. Blueboar (talk) 19:31, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: - Not really a hidden POV, as evidenced in this diff. This proves the intent in the image creator's own words. MSJapan (talk) 23:00, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
MSJapan/Blueboar: I'm not hiding anything from anyone. Why don't you send people to the real page if your going to link it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:John_Carter#Cannabis_and_Hermetic_Allegory - I have explained much more than that. I also use my real name, I'm doing everything I can not to come off as subversive because I know that people like you will be offended at any mention of cannabis. I still appreciate your otherwise good work on wikipedia though and I really hope you take the time to learn more about Shinto as well because you have definitely expressed misinformation on the subject.
--TaylorOliphant (talk) 23:21, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Btw, Blueboar, I tend to think it's MSJapan that is taking offense more than others, but I have no way to gage that and can't say for sure. You both seem like great people, but I think I accidently got MSJapans goat.--TaylorOliphant (talk) 00:24, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Taylor... the mention of cannabus does not offend me in the slightest... your constant pushing of your POV about it (especially on the talk page of a project that does not relate to it in the slightest), however, is quite inappropriate. That is beginning to offend me. Please stop. Also, please do not take all of this personally... Wikipedia has various policies and guidelines, and your image seems to have issues with several of them (as does your pushing of the image on pages where it does not belong). Blueboar (talk) 02:59, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Note to all: The image in question has been recreated under another title. see: Image:Kabbalistic tree of life plus hemp.png. I actually think this was a good faith recreation, an attempt by the creator to respond to comments that original title (Godislove) was POV. However, this recreation/renaming only solves part of the problem ... there are still issues with the image no matter what the title. If it is determined that Image:Godislove.png should be deleted, please make sure that Image:Kabbalistic tree of life plus hemp.png is deleted as well. If the determination is to keep, please merge the two.... I get the feeling that TaylorOliphant may be new to Wikipedia, and not all that familliar with our rules and policies - assuming this is the case... Taylor, just so you understand, while an image, article, or anything else is being discussed for deletion, it is considered very poor form to recreate/rename it under a new title. People may assume that you are simply trying to circumvent the process, and preserve your image from being deleted through back handed means. I assume (or at least hope) that this was not your intent. Blueboar (talk) 03:39, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That makes perfect sense to me. I really did not know, and I even left a comment on MSJapans page to tell him(her?) that I uploaded it with a non-POV name. I think I originally offended everyone by putting it up for discussion in the masonry section -a historically bad move apparently. =) I have added it to the discussion pages of Religion and Drugs as well as Spiritual use of Cannabis.
I don't think that should warrent any deletion and believe that the earlier deletion was due to my bad placement of the image, ie masonry. Thanks again, god bless the wiki world.
--TaylorOliphant (talk) 04:13, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Update: So after spending the past few days on wikipedia, I have learned a lot from everyone’s feedback. I can’t begin to tell everyone how impressed I am –Such intelligent responses. Even the person that seems to be my harshest critic appears to be someone I could use as a role model –amazing. I really believe this despite how insanely cheesy it is. =)
But, with every bit of integrity you guys and gals?(I'm sure there is one somewhere) feel like believing I have: I strongly urge everyone to leave the corrected version online. I believe it stands up fine against many images used on the other pages dealing with religion and the placement is now fine since it has been narrowed down to the Spiritual use of cannabis and the tiferet pages but I do believe that one of the K(Q)(C)abbalah projects will pick it up as more people come forward with qualified expertise.
I greatly apologize to the freemason project that I originally offended by going “outside the box” with my first posting of the image on their discussion page. Get it “out side the box”, I’ll slap myself for that pun don’t worry. I love masons and sincerely hope I can start coming up with a better way to interest them in the historic connections between masonry and cannabis. A lot of the original Masonic documents are written on hemp, by people wearing hemp, who ate hemp. With all due respect, I don’t think we should forget that, but that is POV. Forget it if you need to, I'm not a mason I’m just a guy who considers posting this where it is wanted and needed to be charity work. (Namely the Spiritual use of cannabis and the Tiferet pages) God Bless Everyone.
Cheers
--TaylorOliphant (talk) 01:02, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- That the plant mentioned in the Old Testament and usually translated as "calamus" may have been cannabis is a reasonable - if minority - theory, and it is properly mentioned in Spiritual use of cannabis. The connection between the symbol of the tree of life and a cannabis plant is an extremely minority fringe claim at best, your personal opinion at worst; see WP:FRINGE for guidelines on coverage of these theories on Wikipedia. I ask you once again: do you have a citation for this particular connection? - Mike Rosoft (talk) 10:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I still think it should be fine, it is just a diagram of tiferets paths highlighted and is just as credible as the other images on the topic. Also, I was given this information by a nice jewish man at a jewish .edu, BUT I must stress it is very hard to get people to sign their names in public relating to cannabis, it is NOT a good career choice, but I do believe I can get several credible people to sign off on this if that is what I have to do to say "It can look like cannabis". As far as the POV goes, tiferets paths CAN look like cannabis, this is accurate. It doesn't matter if I say it, or Ben Franklin said it, there is no expert on "something that might look like something" so someone will always be able to say POV, but they could say that about any experts thoughts on kabbalah -it's not science as such.
BUT there is the need for obvious and general statements on wikipedia as seen many places. I will wager that nothing can be explained without the use of some obvious general information and comparisons. Have a look at this article for example (I could use almost any article but this is relevant and short) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Oliphant -Look at this line: "Although the approach could be implemented in a time when society was relatively simply structured, in the present age it should be abandoned." POV POV POV - but it's not cannabis so I imagine it will be fine, correct?
My real POV is that people are trained to sweep cannabis under the rug, so I can't be mad at anyone. I have a simple diagram that is obviously credible as highlighting the paths of tiferet. Any expert will tell you I have just highlighted the paths of tiferet. I did not do anything POV'ish except say that "It CAN look like cannabis" which seems more on-the-money than much of what is said on wikipedia's less mainstream articles. Please don't single me out because this is cannabis.
Cheers/ God Bless / and thanks agian,
--TaylorOliphant (talk) 17:32, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I have reviewed the article Herman Oliphant; he was a law professor who believed that the principle of binding precedent ought to be abandoned; that under some conditions it could be useable, but currently, it is counter-productive. (No, the article doesn't make a value judgement that his views ought to be abandoned now; had it said such a thing, it would have been contrary to a number of Wikipedia policies. Rather, it recounts his opinions as he has stated them in his book.)
All this is quite irrelevant when judging the merits of your theory. You seem to have admitted that it's just your opinion that the symbol - with the right edges highlighted - resembles a cannabis plant and that it means that there must be some kind of a connection; you don't seem to have any third-party references. (Translated, your explanation means that you have shown your diagram to some anonymous colleague of yours on the Internet, and he told you: yes, it resembles cannabis. This is NOT a reference.) In that case I am afraid it has no place on Wikipedia in accordance with the Wikipedia policies of verifiability, on original research, and guidelines on coverage of fringe theories.
So much about policy; now my private opinion is that the symbol doesn't particularly resemble a cannabis plant, even with some arbitrarily chosen lines drawn in color, and that I could have colored different arbitrary lines to make it (somewhat) resemble something else - say, a kite. But I don't claim that there's any connection, and don't want to force my opinion to a Wikipedia article. - Mike Rosoft (talk) 21:08, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. I will have a Rabbi sign off on the image and I will be back. I can see that a few people have already chosen their POV and are not interested in questioning it. As for the Herman Oliphant article, I ask you this:
"He is generally regarded as a representative of American legal realism" - Says who?
"and is famous for his statement that the principle of stare decisis is no longer applicable" - He's more famous for criminalizing cannabis, but that is almost as POV as the original wikipedia statement of what he's famous for.
"Although the approach could be implemented in a time when society was relatively simply structured, in the present age it should be abandoned" - Herman Oliphant revised many of his statements. Interesting that this is put forth as his defacto view.
"To this effect, Oliphant pleaded a scientific approach" - Says who? Who called it "Scientific"?
If you guys held other articles to the standard of this image there would be no wikipedia outside of the most popular articles.
Thanks again, God Bless.--TaylorOliphant (talk) 23:50, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Can someone please re-correct the file name of the image? I corrected the name of the image to fit the wikipedia standards once already and would hate to make waves by correcting myself anymore. I am very certain that this image will be deleted by MSJapan as I am not being given any chance to correct my original mistakes. I see that there are people that want to get rid of this image ASAP, which is fine. Just know that I have tried to do everything I can to be helpful and to correct any mistakes that are definitely mistakes and not nit-picking based on content. --TaylorOliphant (talk) 23:59, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- You have made fair points about the Herman Oliphant article. But as I have said, that a different article contains poorly referenced, or even unencyclopedic content is not a valid reason to retain yours. (Please, don't re-upload your image under any filename; it will in all likelihood be deleted again.) You should also read on what contitutes a reliable source in an encyclopedia; hint: personal testimony of your rabbi ("that the image really looks a bit like a marijuana plant") isn't one. I ask you once again: do you have any quotation from a third-party source, preferably a scholarly paper, to support your claim that there's some connection between this symbol and cannabis? If not, then you can't add it to Wikipedia, period; it's that simple. - Mike Rosoft (talk) 01:01, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
People seem to overlook this way too easy, so I'll copy it here in addition to my talk page:
The connection between the kabbalistic tree of life and cannabis/hemp is as follows:
- Cannabis was traditionally used by the Jewish people, google kaneh bosem
- The kabbalistic tree of life is of Jewish origin and was, by all scholarly accounts I can find, created and developed by people that also relied on cannabis/hemp – This is not POV as hemp can not be separated from the history of Judaism, in any way. In fact, ancient copies of the Torah were often made of hemp, as was much of the paper, clothing, and food then.
- The kabbalistic tree of life is related to the tree of life in Genesis via the Judaic tradition - many scholars believe this could be/must be cannabis
- Many small judeo-christian sects believe cannabis definitely is the tree of life - The Ethiopian Coptic Zion Church and the Rastafarians are good for starters
- On top of all this, the kabbalistic tree of life looks to many like a cannabis leaf when Tiferet’s paths are highlighted
- Plus you can make anything out of cannabis/hemp, it's seed is probably the most nutritous in the world, and it cleanses the soil and air much more so than any other plant. (It is being used to clean up chernobyl for example) There is definitely no other plant like it.
It is for these reasons that I strongly believe this image should be available to the public, but with no absolute claims made about it other than that it is an image of Tiferet's paths. I would like to add that it can look like cannabis/hemp, but don't want to step on any toes. It definitely belongs online, at least on the tiferet page for now. The Religion and Drugs and the Spiritual uses of cannabis pages down the line once I get qualified references in relation to those pages. For the Tiferet page, it is just an illustration of the paths of Tiferet, which are already listed on the page.
TaylorOliphant (talk) 23:04, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
ALSO:
Please look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tree_of_life_wk_02.svg (seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah)
Why is this a more qualified kabbalah image? This is kabbalah, who is this kabbalist that governs illustrations on wikipedia or anywhere else for that matter?
By Wikipedia standards on this topic the image should be fine as a generic illustration for the Tiferet page. I think it may be better quality than the others actually. I mean shoot, I can even touch it up, anti-alias it a bit better, take down it’s file size, whatever you need. Most of these images are crap by graphics standards, I can tell you that much for sure. Steve Jobs definitely isn't running the graphics department. =)
Do you want it black and white even? I think we can all find an agreeable solution here, I'm in no way what so ever an extremist. My only real nonconformist opinion is that I believe that cannabis/hemp is the best candidate as a physical tree of life. I was originally asking for everyone’s help so that we could get to this point in the dialog, but I got in trouble for asking for help, as seen above. Not a big deal. I'm new, I see why people were originally bothered. I learned and here we are. I'd like to find a better file name like tiferets_paths_highlighted.png and link the image from the listing of tiferet's paths already on the page. That should be fine by every standard I've been shown.
--TaylorOliphant (talk) 08:13, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the media's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
What a mess... I deleted all of the old A4 reversions, moved the Borrowdale version to a new title (& updated links, etc), and made this a protected generic image name. SkierRMH (talk) 06:50, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
