Talk:Jordan Peterson/Archive 4

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Wikilinks in quotes

There was very liberal wikilinking in quotes, and went through and removed them. We generally don't do this, and are conservative when we do, per MOS:LWQ. Jytdog (talk) 16:25, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Oppose per "Be conservative when linking within quotations; link only to targets that correspond to the meaning clearly intended by the quote's author".--Miki Filigranski (talk) 16:46, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Right so one has to very careful; not liberal. I don't think for example when Peterson says "socialism" he means what is in the socialism article (and it is a huge waste of time to work out. You might think he means exactly what socialism says......) In general each one would require asking what does Peterson really say about X throughout the everything he says (does he even use "X" consistently?) and what does article X really say and are those the same thing? Endless arguments. Sometimes if it is a very concrete thing, a WL is OK, but most of the WLs in this page were to broad concepts like "socialism". Jytdog (talk) 21:36, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, but arguably, almost all if not all the wikilinks you removed were clearly meant by Peterson. He was not explaining some rocket science, it is basic comprehensive language. Your argumentation is not an argument, and broad or not concept, wikilinks are used for that and it is helpful for people who never checked these concepts to understand the topic.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 00:16, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

That is your judgement and neither you or me want to do an analysis of every one of them. Hence the guideline. If you think the WL is very important for understanding please use paraphrases instead of quotes; then you can WL within reason staying clear of WP:OVERLINK of course. Jytdog (talk) 00:19, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

If you do not want to have an analysis i.e. did not do one and are not sure whether they are or not clearly meant then do not remove the wikilinks. It is more than obvious, as well constructive to wikilink them, for me. We cannot explain terms and concepts on every article, that is pointless, because of that we have short solution like wikilinks.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 01:17, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I did look at them. If you want wikilinks, paraphrase instead of quoting. Jytdog (talk) 02:43, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

No, quoting in this case is better.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 06:38, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

We should remove the wikilinks in quotes. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 05:19, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Per what guideline? LWQ supports wikilinks in quotes.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 06:38, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Revert: section 12

User:Miki Filigranski in this diff you removed the addition of the "interactions with the alt-right" section

In his interactions with his fanbase in the alt-right, he has tweeted their memes about kek and Pepe the Frog, attempting to connect these memes with his work on mythology; he has said: "The mere fact that we are having this conversation about Pepe the frog and Kermit the frog is just an indication of how surreal this is, and the fact that something strange is happening at a symbolic level." He has said that he is not responsible for the behavior of people on forums like 4chan where his detractors are attacked, nor for the threats made by his fanbase against his detractors. He has shown letters with people's names and emails in his videos and tweets, for example tweeting one with a text: "A complete list of the 250 most ideologically possessed SJW's at the University of Toronto, compiled by themselves." Some of the people who were subsequently targeted by his fanbase were harassed online for months and sought counseling to deal with the trauma. He offers counseling to some of the men who follow him, charging $200 per month for a monthly 45 minute videoconference with him. He said that he has helped some of them to moderate their views.

References

Please justify that revert based on the policies and guidelines Jytdog (talk) 16:33, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

This is discussed in another discussion, don't find it suitable and notable enough for inclusion (per WP:SCOPE) in any current section or that it needs another section. The article is already big enough. If we make some "Public image and popularity" section which would also include this kind of information I don't know where will be the end, the scope becomes lost, and other public personalities don't have such extensive coverage about things for which are not and cannot be directly responsible.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 20:56, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

It is completely in SCOPE - it is about Peterson and his interaction with his base. This is not a valid objection. Jytdog (talk) 23:12, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

It is your personal opinion to not be a valid objection. I don't find it within the current and basic scope. As already said, it would be the scope of some other section which we do not currently have, and is about Peterson's public image and criticism, which is per BLP policy very problematic for inclusion.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 14:07, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply but this is not valid. Will wait for other input here. Jytdog (talk) 17:53, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

The term "interactions with the alt-right" in not mentioned in the sources given, and is a borderline BLP violation. A direct connection between the "A complete list of the 250 most ideologically possessed SJW's at the University of Toronto, compiled by themselves" and the other information does not seem to be made in the source. So the use of "for example" seems to be WP:SYNTH. Hrodvarsson (talk) 22:22, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

The specific term doesn't have to be "mentioned" explictly - we summarize sources here. This is not even close to a BLP violation and if you were to bring that it would boomerang on you very hard. What is a BLP violation is the lack of anything outside of Peterson's message. That is going to be fixed. Jytdog (talk) 22:52, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

"Bring that"? What do you mean by this? Altright is some sort of racial nationalist movement/group, to say a LP has "interactions" (I have rarely seen this term used before in this way) with it is a borderline BLP violation. Especially with those sources, which combined have one mention of "alt-right". Hrodvarsson (talk) 23:48, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Revert: section 10

User:Miki Filigranski in this diff you removed the following from the Critiques of political correctness section

In a January 2018 column, David Brooks said of Peterson's ideas, "Much of Peterson’s advice sounds to me like vague exhortatory banality. Like Hobbes and Nietzsche before him, he seems to imagine an overly brutalistic universe, nearly without benevolence, beauty, attachment and love. His recipe for self-improvement is solitary, nonrelational, unemotional. I’d say the lives of young men can be improved more through loving attachment than through Peterson’s joyless and graceless calls to self-sacrifice. But the emphasis on strength of will, the bootstrap, the calls to toughness and self-respect — all of this touches some need in his audience.... The Peterson way is a harsh way, but it is an idealistic way — and for millions of young men, it turns out to be the perfect antidote to the cocktail of coddling and accusation in which they are raised."

References

Please justify that revert based on the policies and guidelines Jytdog (talk) 16:33, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

It is not related to the Peterson's criticism of political correctness at all, yet the book 12 Rules for Life. It is cited in the book's review section.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 20:42, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

That is a reason to move it, not revert it. The removal was unacceptable. Please self revert. Jytdog (talk) 21:09, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

The source is already cited in the reviews section and previously we decided to not keep the book reviews in this article.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 21:12, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

The content was not in the page. Brooks column is not a book review. Please self revert. I will not ask again. Jytdog (talk) 21:37, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Part of the quote is cited in that article, Brooks consideration is about what Peterson wrote in the book, for now, we didn't include reviews&opinions on this article section. I won't self-revert. I won't repeat again.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 14:01, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

This is non-responsive. Will wait for other input here. Jytdog (talk) 17:55, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

That passage of the article is largely a review of the book, see "The implied readers of his work" and the regular interspersion of quotes from the book. The quote also seems quite lengthy in comparison to other quotes already in the article by people who are not Peterson. Hrodvarsson (talk) 22:14, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

That is not valid either. The Brooks piece is about Peterson's work overall; the then-new book is clearly the hook for the piece, but it is not a book review. It is one of Brooks' columns. There is also no reason this page should preferably quote Peterson. It quotes him too extensively as it is, which we'll need to deal with another RfC I guess. I appreciate the comments from each of you, which are useful. I will keep looking for further input on this. Jytdog (talk) 22:27, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

A book is of course not going to write itself, so there will be naturally be discussion of the author. The preceding paragraph of the article is explicitly about the book, quoting or paraphrasing the "rules". This is the "advice" being referred to. It is better suited to the article for the book, as we do not have other reviews or commentary on the book in this article, particularly of that length. Hrodvarsson (talk) 23:52, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Revert: section 7

User:Miki Filigranski in this diff you removed the addition of the following to the section about "Maps of Meaning"

The hardover book initially sold less than 500 copies. In 2018 Peterson said: "I don’t think people had any idea what to make of the book, and I still think they don’t. No one has attempted to critique it seriously."

References

Please justify that revert based on the policies and guidelines Jytdog (talk) 16:33, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't find it particularly notable for a separate paragraph or mention, several critical reviews can be found in the "Reviews" section, one of which ([1]) is seemingly quite serious enough.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 20:24, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

WP:N is about articles, not content within articles. There is nothing here about "seriousness." This is not a valid reason to revert. Please self revert. Jytdog (talk) 21:12, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Notable is a word with an obvious meaning. I didn't say anything about "seriousness" except that what Peterson considers a "serious critique" doesn't need to be considered as such by editors. Is this information, and opinion, significant and cited by other sources? Sorry, I don't find it important to be mentioned in both articles.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 21:39, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

"Notable" is a word with specific meaning here in Wikipedia. You wrote: seemingly quite serious enough. Please self revert. I will not ask again. Jytdog (talk) 21:58, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

We don't speak only in Wikipedian language on Wikipedia. I won't self-revert. Will not repeat again.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 13:57, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. Will wait for other input here. Jytdog (talk) 16:30, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Hardcover*, and the information about sales should be added to the article for the book before being considered to be added here. But it is probably useful information, as it is currently mentioned that his next book became a bestseller. Hrodvarsson (talk) 22:07, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Already included in the book's article. I don't find it such an useful information to be included in both articles. It's trivial fact and opinion.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 20:14, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

You have argued for long quotes giving his opinion about things, but now his opinion is just an "opinion" and should not be mentioned. That is a valuable diff. If it is not obvious, the proposed content shows that he was obscure before the Bill C-16 thing. It is a very relevant piece of the story and not "trivia". Jytdog (talk) 00:24, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

As I said above, I think the information about the sales would be useful to the reader, at the least as a comparison to the success of his next book. But the quote is better left to the separate article, in my opinion. Hrodvarsson (talk) 23:54, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Revert: section 5

User:Miki Filigranski in this diff you restored the material about Wilfrid Laurier University that I had removed in this diff - my edit note there explained that this is about him. (That is all the more clear btw, with this section incorporated into his career per section 4 above.

Please explain that revert Jytdog (talk) 16:33, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Per previous discussions on the Bill-16 and WLU articles it was decided to keep the information on this article because it is directly related to Peterson and the whole topic.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 20:19, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

So reviewing the past discussions here the discussions were:

• April 2018 here, pretty long, no clear consensus but obviously it came in.
• May 2018 here it was suggested to be removed. no response there

at the "Bill-16" talk page I see this discussion where the other person argued UNDUE when you wanted to add it there, and suggested it go here.

I reviewed the discussions atTalk:Wilfrid_Laurier_University and do not see any place where somebody suggested it be given more full treatment here.

Copying the content here to better be able to discuss it:

In November 2017, a teaching assistant (TA) at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) was censured by her professors and WLU's Manager of Gendered Violence Prevention and Support for showing a segment of The Agenda, which featured Peterson debating Bill C-16, during a classroom discussion. The reasons given for the censure included the clip creating a "toxic climate", being compared to a "speech by Hitler", and being itself in violation of Bill C-16. The case was criticized by several newspaper editorial boards and national newspaper columnists as an example of the suppression of free speech on university campuses. WLU announced a third-party investigation. After the release of the audio recording of the meeting in which the TA was censured, WLU President Deborah MacLatchy and the TA's supervising professor Nathan Rambukkana published letters of formal apology. According to the investigation no students had complained about the lesson, there was no informal concern related to Laurier policy, and according to MacLatchy the meeting "never should have happened at all".

References

I believe I understand the desire to report this in such detail here, as it is such a good fit with with Peterson's message. The fact that video was of Peterson is the "hook" upon which this is hung. I could see there be a sentence about this, but the length of this makes it what we call a WP:COATRACK for his argument and that is not what we do here. Would trimming this down to something like the following be acceptable?

In November 2017, a teaching assistant at Wilfrid Laurier University first year communications course was censured by her university for showing a segment of The Agenda, which featured Peterson debating Bill C-16 with another professor, during a classroom discussion. The TA does not agree with Peterson's ideas about gender pronouns, but wanted to teach students how important pronoun choice is, in some contexts. The censure was later withdrawn and the university apologized to the TA. The events were discussed by Peterson as an example of the kind of atmosphere at universities that he has criticized.

References

Thoughts? Jytdog (talk) 23:08, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

If we decide for a trimm on this article propose an intermediate: "In November 2017, a teaching assistant at Wilfrid Laurier University first year communications course was censured by her professors for showing a segment of The Agenda, which featured Peterson debating Bill C-16 with another professor, during a classroom discussion about pronouns. The reasons given for the censure included the clip creating a "toxic climate", being compared to a "speech by Hitler", and being itself in violation of Bill C-16. The censure was later withdrawn and both the professors and the university formally apologized. The events were criticized by Peterson, as well as several newspaper editorial boards and national newspaper columnists, as an example of the suppression of free speech on university campuses."--Miki Filigranski (talk) 13:55, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Hm. In the existing version, the stuff you pulled in is sourced to the Brown/telegraph source. It is not there, but it is in the Platt/National Post piece. You omitted that the student does not agree with Peterson, which is important. There is also some missing information there, so how about this:

In November 2017, a teaching assistant at Wilfrid Laurier University first year communications course was censured by her university for showing a segment of The Agenda, which featured Peterson debating Bill C-16 with another professor, during a classroom discussion. The TA does not agree with Peterson's ideas about gender pronouns, but wanted to teach students how important pronoun choice is, in some contexts. The reasons given for the censure were that playing the clip without presenting a framework was like playing speech by Hitler as though it were morally acceptable and created a "toxic climate," especially in light of Bill C-16. The censure was later withdrawn and the university apologized to the TA. The events were discussed by Peterson as an example of the kind of atmosphere at universities that he has criticized.

References

I am summarizing "neutrally" in "playing a speech by Hitler neutrally" with the "as though it were morally acceptable". I understand people might summarize that differently. Jytdog (talk) 16:04, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

"morally acceptable" is a big leap from the source, I disagree with that wording. What is the quotation to verify the TA "does not agree" with Peterson? A search for "agree" in that Maclean's article yields someone named Leibold stating they "don't agree with Peterson's views", but no direct quotation from the TA. "toxic climate" should come first, as it is in the source, and the comparison should come afterwards. Hrodvarsson (talk) 22:05, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

So what do you propose instead of "morally acceptable"?

About Shepherd:

• the HuffPO report says: "In Shepherd's recordings of her meeting with superiors, which she shared with The Canadian Press, she is heard arguing that she tried to present the situation neutrally in order to foster debate and discussion, and states that she herself does not support Peterson's views on gender-neutral pronouns."
• Mcleans: "And while Shepherd, in the leaked audio, says she doesn’t share Peterson’s views on this issue.... " This source has the actual recording. You can listen to it. She says it between 11:50 and 12:00. "The thing is, I disagree with Jordan Peterson. I disagree."

btw the context for the "Nazi" reference comes in the 9th minute. Rambukkana (who is clearly the professor in whose class she is a TA) is trying to explain the context for the concern, and Shepherd is upset that she has been called into the meeting for showing the video at all. At around 9:00 she says, "I don't see what is transphobic about showing a video. He is a real person. He is out there." Rambukkana says: "He is a real person. But he is a real person who has engaged in targeted behavior that.. targeting of trans students, in a particular... basically doxing them (if you know the term), like giving out their personal information so that they will be attacked and harassed. So that death threats will find them. This is something he has done to his own students. He has done it other students. And this is also something that the students are aware of. So this is... this is basically like playing ... not to, kind of, doing the thing where everything comes down to comparing things to Hitler, but this is like neutrally playing a speech by Hitler, or Milo Yiannopoulos, or gamergate. This is the kind of thing, that departmentally, in terms of critical communication studies, and in terms of the course, of what we are trying to do... is diametrically opposed to everything we've been talking about in the lectures. Was this why you wanted to do this, because this was a reaction to the lecture content?" So that is the context for the Hitler quote. fwiw. The press really jumped on that and skipped over the other two comparisons. Jytdog (talk) 01:04, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. That article is quite lengthy, and arduous to read as I am already aware of the incident. I listened to the audio recording back at the time, but most of it has slipped from my memory. I would suggest: "The reasons given for the censure included the clip creating a "toxic climate"—one of the TA's professors compared uncritically playing the clip to uncritically playing a speech by Hitler—and being itself in violation of Bill C-16". The Hitler comment does not seem to be a distinct reason for the censure, but a comparison made to expand upon the "toxic climate" reasoning. On the topic of C-16, it probably should be mentioned in the article that the bill passed as this detail may be confusing otherwise. Hrodvarsson (talk) 23:57, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Cultural Marxism

Regarding recent edit, is there enough evidence and reliability in associating Jordan Peterson's critique of postmodernism/identity politics with Frankfurt School#Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, without being some minor (media) opinion and guilt by association (possibly violating WP:BLP)? Regarding the sources which were used, Mic (formerly PolicyMic) has previously been rejected on RS/N.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 21:18, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Have added a few additional refs. This is a perspective that is out there; undeniably so. Yes Mic is no good and was easily pared away. Jytdog (talk) 22:48, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, the Guardian, Mic, etc. are RSs. --CartoonDiablo (talk) 23:17, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Does Viewpoint Magazine even have a Wikipedia page? Is it reliable? It is an opinion source which is not mainstream. Should be removed. Vox also does sound like a hit-and-miss piece but is more reliable although it does not mention Cultural Marxism by name only an opinion by "Harrison Fluss, an editor at the Marxist journal Historical Materialism, tells me. “He connects the two in [an] overarching conspiracy theory.”" - however, they all have in common to be left-leaning media. Do we have other RS which are not left-leaning?--Miki Filigranski (talk) 23:38, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't know about Viewpoint, but I'll add the Politico piece that says the same thing, it's widely said among reliable media. CartoonDiablo (talk) 23:44, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

It is not widely said nor all the sources pass reliability criteria nor are mainstream nor are politically diverse. They are all left-leaning, Vox for the conspiracy claim quotes editor of Marxist journal, Viewpoint Magazine is Marxist, The Guardian and Pacific Standard are openly left-leaning or "social justice", Politico is far fron mainstream and is liberal-conservative. So no, there is no balance, your removal for being "left-liberal media" is unsubstantiated, as well should not be promoted "see also" wikilink.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 00:04, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Regardless of the political lean of a source, they are widely considered to be reliable sources (with the possible exception of Viewpoint which I agree should be removed given it's uncertainty). If you want a comparison, this would be like citing National Review which is conservative but, as far as I know, is reliable. CartoonDiablo (talk) 00:13, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

You said "widely said", that means it is widely reported by mainstream media, of cited only The Guardian belongs to that criteria, and itself reports "His bete noire is what he calls “postmodern neo-Marxism” or “cultural Marxism” with such a "reliable" and contradicting opinion It’s true that he’s not a white nationalist,” says David Neiwert, the Pacific Northwest correspondent for the Southern Poverty Law Center and the author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump. “But he’s buttressing his narrative with pseudo-facts, many of them created for the explicit purpose of promoting white nationalism, especially the whole notion of ‘cultural Marxism’. The arc of radicalisation often passes through these more ‘moderate’ ideologues.”. This quote was discussed in previous discussions.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 00:26, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Politico, Pacific Standard, and Vox are all reliable in addition to the Guardian. And the article isn't claiming Peterson is a white nationalist, it's that he's his critiques are similar to the cultural Marxist conspiracy. CartoonDiablo (talk) 00:43, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Are these, and the content itself, all secondary RS without being an opinion? That quote is insinuating exactly that, and per WP:BLPSTYLE "Criticism and praise should be included if they can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, so long as the material is presented responsibly, conservatively, and in a disinterested tone. Do not give disproportionate space to particular viewpoints; the views of small minorities should not be included at all. Care must be taken with article structure to ensure the overall presentation and section headings are broadly neutral. Beware of claims that rely on guilt by association, and biased, malicious or overly promotional content".--Miki Filigranski (talk) 06:48, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes and none of the other things are a problem here. CartoonDiablo (talk) 18:07, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. Miki should feel encouraged to present sources with counterveiling opinions and we can add or reconsider content in that light, but this is a clearly a view expressed by reliable sources and bears a brief mention (and it couldn't be much briefer), provided said reference is reliably WP:ATTRIBUTED (which it explicitly is). Or rephrasing to more expressly address Miki's last post, I see no indication that the mention is outsized, relative to the number of sources, nor much ground for the argument that we are introducing something non-neutral via Wikipedia voice (again the mention is brief and attributed).

As the arguments that our sources are too "left", that has absolutely no basis in policy or how we form content on this project as a reflection of WP:WEIGHT; we don't throw our own personal, idiosyncratic analysis of the political leanings of this or that news outlet into editorial decisions, which would be WP:Original research through the back door, and that would be an actual abrogation of WP:NPOV. So long as the community has judged a given source to be reliable (which has more to do with editorial controls than how they present this or that "right" or "left" issue and who their readers are supposed to be) then that source is exactly that: reliable for purposes of citation, provided its relevance to a cited statement is established. And here, no matter how you slice it, there are multiple sources which are clearly reliable which converge on this description. Again, if Miki can find contrary perspectives in sources, we can entertain adding such claims and/or modifying the current wording, but the notion that we should reject multiple reliable sources because they are collectively "too far to the left" has no traction in policy or community consensus on such matters--and for good cause, since if this was the permissible standard on Wikipedia, it would constitute an unwarranted introduction of editor POV into the content, allowing for original research through cherry picking of sources. To say nothing of the intractable fights it would engender across each and every remotely controversial article of the encyclopedia. Snow ^{let's rap} 09:01, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Wrong, the sources political leanings are well-known, not my personal OR, and as they have an obvious ideological bias we cannot ignore that for proper balance and is not neutrally appropriate to describe i.e. attribute all of them as "some in the media" when the cited sources are mostly (3/4) left-leaning media, that the expressed opinion i.e. comparison is not necessarily by the news outlet when they quote "Harrison Fluss, an editor at the Marxist journal Historical Materialism" (Vox), "David Neiwert, the Pacific Northwest correspondent for the Southern Poverty Law Center" (The Guardian), which itself are not mainstream and belong to leftist bias. I did not say we should reject the RS because of political leaning, don't put words in my mouth, yet their reliability in comparison to content in question without proper analysis of the context so we can make a proper attribution and wording which will not violate BLP.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 09:50, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, although I find some of what you say out of step with fundamental policies and community consensus on sourcing, if the discussion is about proper attribution and wording, then we may not really be all that far apart in our perspectives regarding the content itself. Snow ^{let's rap} 11:46, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

This has basically already been said, but I'll summarize this my own words in case it might be helpful to read another perspective:

The encyclopedic significance of an outlet's political lean must also be supported by sources, otherwise it's editorializing. To be crystal clear: this must be supported in relation to this exact issue. It's no good to find sources documenting the outlet's lean, because that's not necessarily relevant. Emphasizing ideology in a way that is not supported by sources would be inserting an editor's personal opinion on what is important. That's not neutral at all. If sources are reliable, they are reliable regardless of their ideology. If not, this shouldn't be mentioned. If this is part of the controversy, that should be supportable with sources, in which case it can be contextualized, such as with attribution or whatever. Grayfell (talk) 07:26, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

This is a good way of putting it. The reliability of the source is what matters which is why conservative sources can be included and reliable as well. Only insofar as the political slant of the source is topic-worthy and itself sourced by an RS, say, "[Article] has accused the sources of being left-wing" it is irrelevant to the topic/article. CartoonDiablo (talk) 22:55, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

@Miki Filigranski: You have two options to expose the bias of the sources: (1) add a rebuttal from Peterson himself see WP:WELLKNOWN & WP:ABOUTSELF, or (2) add a reliable source--perhaps even the aforementioned National Review--that says something like "Peterson is being assailed by left-wing media blah blah blah." – Lionel^(talk) 10:20, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Revert: section 11

User:Miki Filigranski in this diff you removed the following from the Postmodernism and identity politics section:

At the same time, Peterson has clear ideas about identity and gender roles. He said: “The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.” With regard to the Toronto van attack and the incel ideology of its driver, he said: "He was angry at God because women were rejecting him. The cure for that is enforced monogamy." He uses notions of Jungian archetypes to discuss gender roles: "You know you can say, ‘Well isn’t it unfortunate that chaos is represented by the feminine’ — well, it might be unfortunate, but it doesn’t matter because that is how it’s represented. It’s been represented like that forever. And there are reasons for it. You can’t change it. It’s not possible. This is underneath everything. If you change those basic categories, people wouldn’t be human anymore. They’d be something else. They’d be transhuman or something. We wouldn’t be able to talk to these new creatures." Naureen Shameem, who works at a Canadian organization called Association for Women’s Rights in Development, said that Peterson's post-2016 activisms are part of a backlash against gender equality and said: "It’s an old story, really. In a lot of nationalistic projects, women’s bodies and sexualities become important sites of focus and control."

References

Please justify that revert based on the policies and guidelines Jytdog (talk) 16:33, 8 June 2018 (UTC) (fix source, per note below - Shameem mentioned in NYT not globe and mail Jytdog (talk) 23:18, 10 June 2018 (UTC))

It sounds to be taken out of context and easily misunderstood, like WP:SYNTHESIS with the second paragraph which cites an opinion by a personality which both lack notability and once again the opinion sounds like a biased.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 20:49, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

There is no SYN here, and the context is very clear; it is the paragraph on his views on identity politics and gender.

On the second paragraph, the page had no responses from the rest of the world to his ideas. No page is complete without responses, so this is not a valid objection either. Jytdog (talk) 23:11, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't agree anyhow. Per BLP policy we must be very cautious with criticism, while responses i.e. opinions should also follow WEIGHT.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 14:05, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

This is not valid but thanks for your reply. Will wait for other input here. Jytdog (talk) 17:53, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

"Naureen Shameem" is not mentioned in the Globe and Mail source. Hrodvarsson (talk) 22:16, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes that is correct. It is the NYT source. Have fixed that above. My bad. Jytdog (talk) 23:18, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. The quote implies Peterson is a nationalist or a member of a "nationalistic project", which is problematic. The source also does not state "activisms", which could mean an action, but "philosophies", and mentions a "bigger global backlash", while the proposed wording using just "backlash" could be taken as a one-man backlash. There is also the question as to why include that quote in particular. Surely there are more notable persons than Naureen Shameem giving opinions about Peterson and his views. Hrodvarsson (talk) 23:49, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

No, it doesn't imply he is a nationalist. That is a useful response, however.

I am going to draft something pulling together the critical content and will post an RfC on it.Jytdog (talk) 23:30, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Revert: section 9

User:Miki Filigranski in this diff you restored the old content about "self-authoring", which was

Peterson and his colleagues Robert O. Pihl, Daniel Higgins, and Michaela Schippers produced a writing therapy program with series of online writing exercises, titled the Self Authoring Suite. It includes the Past Authoring Program, a guided autobiography; two Present Authoring Programs, which allow the participant to analyze their personality faults and virtues in terms of the Big Five personality model; and the Future Authoring Program, which guides participants through the process of planning their desired futures. The latter program was used with McGill University undergraduates on academic probation to improve their grades, as well since 2011 at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. The Self Authoring Programs were developed partially from research by James W. Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin and Gary Latham at the Rotman School of Management of the University of Toronto. Pennebaker demonstrated that writing about traumatic or uncertain events and situations improved mental and physical health, while Latham demonstrated that personal planning exercises help make people more productive. According to Peterson, more than 10,000 students have used the program as of January 2017, with drop-out rates decreasing by 25% and GPAs rising by 20%.

References

I had revised this to better sourced, removing low quality blogs, unsourced content, and content about outcomes not supported by WP:MEDRS sources, clarifying that this is a for-profit enterprise, and providing the date when the company launched, so the content read like this:

In 2005 Peterson and his colleagues set up a for-profit company and website called selfauthoring.com to provide a web-based writing therapy program. It includes the Past Authoring Program, a guided autobiography; two Present Authoring Programs, which allow the participant to analyze their personality faults and virtues in terms of the Big Five personality model; and the Future Authoring Program, which guides participants through the process of planning their desired futures. The latter program was used with McGill University undergraduates on academic probation to improve their grades, as well since 2011 at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. The Self Authoring Programs were developed partially from research by James W. Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin and Gary Latham at the Rotman School of Management of the University of Toronto.

References

Please justify that revert based on the policies and guidelines Jytdog (talk) 16:33, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Partially agree with you about the usage of the website and blog as a reference; Toronto Life also mentions it as a "Self Authoring Suite" so it's a replacement for the blog, but don't understand why the reliable source Toronto Life was removed, and why the verifiable, reliably sourced and attributed information "According to Peterson, more than 10,000 students have used the program as of January 2017, with drop-out rates decreasing by 25% and GPAs rising by 20%.[5]" was removed. I am still trying to understand the situation for the sentence "Pennebaker demonstrated that writing about traumatic or uncertain events and situations improved mental and physical health, while Latham demonstrated that personal planning exercises help make people more productive.[4]".--Miki Filigranski (talk) 20:39, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Your response here does not address the problems, that you removed the information about it being a for-profit founded in 2005.

With regard to the last two sentences about the efficacy of the method - please read WP:MEDRS - claims about the efficacy of a treatment must be sourced per MEDRS. Attributing them does not make them OK. (or else WP would be full of all kinds of crazy health claims - truly crackpot stuff like "According to Joe Mercola, wearing magnetic bracelets helps with depression and anxiety" (what peterson is doing is not crackpot - i am just showing that the principle that "health claims are OK if they are attributed" does not work in WP - this is one reason why there is broad and deep consensus about MEDRS. Do you understand? Jytdog (talk) 21:36, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

You did not mention the problem hence I did not mention it in my response. Also, it is not a medical method or treatment nor it produce such results. Peterson is a clinical psychologist and social scientist, writing academic papers using scientific approach the numbers have credibility. The same thing goes for the info which can be found at NPR regarding the co-authored Nature paper A scalable goal-setting intervention closes both the gender and ethnic minority achievement gap , "Overall, the "self-authoring" students greatly improved the number of credits earned and their likelihood of staying in school. And after two years, ethnic and gender-group differences in performance among the students had all but disappeared" i.e. "But for minority students who had done this set of writing exercises, that gap dropped to five credits the first year and to just one-fourth of one credit in the second year".--Miki Filigranski (talk) 14:22, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Dealing just with the MEDRS issue -- the nature paper fails MEDRS. Please read MEDRS especially WP:MEDDEF. Jytdog (talk) 17:54, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

I would agree this would need a medical source if it was Peterson saying that the program had increased serotonin levels in the bloodstream or something similar, but I am not sure how it is a claim about health as the claims pertain to academic performance, with no mention of positive or negative effects on health. Hrodvarsson (talk) 22:12, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Same.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 20:15, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

the content makes claims about improved output. The argument both of you are making is how people promote snake oil in Wikipedia. I work on health stuff every day and this is not acceptable content, especially not for an explicitly commercial product like this. The edit removing the fact that this is a commercial product and keeping the promotional, badly sourced content is a very clear violation of WP:PROMO. I will post at WT:MED to get more input but the position of both of you is not sustainable. Jytdog (talk) 17:54, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Is there a MEDRS issue here? I'm not sure there's consensus that MEDRS covers psychology topics. This sentence, for example, is helpful: "Pennebaker demonstrated that writing about traumatic or uncertain events and situations improved mental and physical health, while Latham demonstrated that personal planning exercises help make people more productive." (If "demonstrated" is not supported, swap it for "argued" or similar.) The point is simply that writing to yourself (talking to yourself) is a form of therapy, just like talking to an analyst. People used to be helped by keeping diaries. This isn't a new idea. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:08, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

I highly doubt it, the actual issue is pedagogical-psychological-sociological, not medical. It is about academic performance, not health in general, that's a striking difference. For now, I removed the sentence and made it more focused on the program's intention and academic paper: "Peterson's co-authored 2015 study showed significant reduction in ethnic and gender-group differences in performance, especially among ethnic minority male students.[46][47] According to Peterson, more than 10,000 students have used the program as of January 2017, with drop-out rates decreasing by 25% and GPAs rising by 20%.[11]".--Miki Filigranski (talk) 18:38, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

The Pennebaker stuff about the mental health benefit of just writing is well described in the literature: there should be enough to satisfy MEDRS there. I'm not certain how that helps this article though. Bondegezou (talk) 19:09, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

User:Jytdog, it sounds like it might be helpful to other editors if you could make a list of the exact phrases or sentences that you think should be handled as Wikipedia:Biomedical information in this article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, there is a WP:MEDRS issue here, notwithstanding a WP:PSTS issue. The consensus is that the requirement for secondary sources applies to all Wikipedia:Biomedical information used in articles. That supplement clarifies what information is considered biomedical and what is not. I am firmly of the opinion that any claim that a particular course of action aimed to bring about an improvement in a human's performance or condition (i.e. a treatment by any other name) requires good quality secondary sourcing. There is no doubt that Pennebaker demonstrated that writing about traumatic or uncertain events and situations improved mental and physical health, while Latham demonstrated that personal planning exercises help make people more productive needs secondary sources, as "improved mental and physical health" is patently a health claim, and "[making] people more productive" is arguably more borderline. Nevertheless the requirements at PSTS that "[a]ny interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation" means that we should not be using authors' own analyses of their experiments to support the claims they are making. There are simply far too many cases of initial judgements, based on one set of trials, being proven false or inconclusive later for Wikipedia to be taking the word of primary authors on the efficacy of their own new discovery. The plural of anecdote is not data. If these techniques can really be shown by means of independent analysis to produce the claimed improvements, then let's see the quality secondary sources that back that up. --RexxS (talk) 19:43, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

yes seems to be WP:PSTS issue--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:15, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Is that the only sentence (or two-thirds of a sentence) that is a biomedical claim? Are we all agreed that claims such as "According to Peterson, more than 10,000 students have used the program as of January 2017", which seems to have been removed, are not biomedical content and are therefore correctly supported by the same kinds of sources that we would accept for any other business about how many customers they have had? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:31, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing the content is hard-selling a for-profit therapy service. The claims about the success of the service are absolutely biomedical claims. We do not "sell" the efficacy of health services in WP using non-MEDRS sources. You know this. Jytdog (talk) 23:32, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm trying to figure out exactly which phrases are "claims about the success". Does "more than 10,000 students have used the program" count as a claim about success? What I would really like is a complete, bulleted list of everything that you think is a biomedical claim, so that there can be no doubt in anyone's mind about which things do need MEDRS-style sources, and which things don't. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:38, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Enforced Monogamy

Why does the phrase "Enforced Monogamy" redirect to the Jordan Peterson article? Esp. when it isn't mentioned in the article. Fredo699 (talk) 13:16, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

It doesn't anymore; I deleted it.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:23, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Author

In light of Maps of Meaning and 12 Rules for Life, I propose adding to the opening sentence:

Jordan Bernt Peterson (born June 12, 1962) is a Canadian clinical psychologist, author and a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.

Also he's in Category:Canadian non-fiction writers.--45.72.201.251 (talk) 01:48, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

I tend to feel that adding 'author' to the lead sentence would be just a tad too WP:UNDUE. As a general rule, we only add the most central professional roles to the lead sentence. Peterson's books are certainly an important extension of his theories as an academic, but I do believe they are a secondary aspect of his notability. And the books are mentioned prominently in the lead, so their contribution to his notability is recognized early. Snow ^{let's rap} 02:50, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

First being an academic book, and only the second arguably making him an author, it's too recent to generally describe him so.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 10:37, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Teaching question

I use wikipedia a lot, mostly for general information before digging deeper. While reading this page I noticed something that I thought should be addressed. Though the professor has stopped giving lectures and teaching at a university, he still teaches using more modern methods. I thought this was a nitpicking misnomer.

Thank you ClintonB89 (talk) 22:57, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Philosopher

Jordan Peterson
Peterson at the University of Toronto, 2017
Born	Jordan Bernt Peterson (1962-06-12) June 12, 1962 Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Citizenship	Canadian
Education	Political science (B.A., 1982) Psychology (B.A., 1984) Clinical psychology (Ph.D., 1991)
Alma mater	University of Alberta McGill University
Spouse	Tammy Roberts ​ (m. 1989)​
Children	2
Scientific career
Fields	Psychology
Institutions	McGill University (1985–1993) Harvard University (1993–1998) University of Toronto (1998–present)
Thesis	Potential psychological markers for the predisposition to alcoholism (1991)
Doctoral advisor	Robert O. Pihl
Philosophy career
Era	Contemporary
Region	Canadian, Western
School	Analytical
Main interests	Jungian archetypes, criticism of postmodernism, psychology of self
Website	jordanbpeterson.com
Signature

Peterson is clearly known for more than just his work in psychology. It is his philosophical positions that gained him mainstream popularity:

— Opposition to gender neutral pronouns.

— Opposition to postmodernism.

— His views on masculinity.

I suggest we include a module in the articles infobox (example: right) to reflect the philisophical career. — CaptainGirard (talk) 03:29, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I disagree. He's not a philosopher. Calling everyone who writes a thoughtful book a philosopher is wrong. He has a PhD in psychology; what more to argue? Outriggr (talk) 23:02, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

He's not a philosopher in the way other high profile Wikipedia articles use the term. Discussing philosophical topics does not make one a philosopher per se. The issue of what makes one a "philosopher" has been covered many times on Wikipedia in RfCs seeking concensus... in particular I'm thinking Ayn Rand (a hell of a fight, that one... one which ended up with her being deemed a "philosopher") and Stefan Molyneux (who Wikipedia does not list as a "philosopher"). There are, of course, publications which breezily declair Peterson a "philosopher for our times" and such, but in other articles (like the ones I've cited) the thinking has been that a person must be considered a philosopher not just by magazines and such, but by peers... by others recognized as philosophers. Marteau (talk) 08:53, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Marteau. Psychologist, specifically clinical, is a suitable descriptor. The other things mentioned fall under cultural criticism, so they are covered by cultural critic. Hrodvarsson (talk) 21:12, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Having hot takes doesn't make one a philosopher. PeterTheFourth (talk) 01:06, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Insulting the subject of the article is not constructive.77Mike77 (talk) 16:53, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

References

I'd like some clarity on the pronoun issue. Is Peterson against using "preferred pronouns" in all cases? Or does it depend on who expresses a request (and with what attitude/purpose)? Or is he only against being forced by the government to use such pronouns? --Uncle Ed (talk) 15:51, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

you can see Peterson in friendly discussions with transgender people on youtube, and he is willing to use their preferred pronouns. 98.7.192.88 (talk) 23:14, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

It would seem to me that anyone who devotes their life and career to the study of philosophical topics, i.e. the place of religion in a modern society, how to live a good life, the proper structure of the polity, good and evil, etc should be considered a philosopher. In answer to the pronoun issue, Peterson is specifically against using the government to compel speech. It's not relevant to him that it's gender neutral pronouns being compelled. He has been repeatedly and unfairly maligned as a transphobe by the media. (JakeTheKing42 (talk) 06:38, 6 August 2018 (UTC))

RfC on section order

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

In what place in the article should the content about his opposition to Bill C-16 be described?

Options:

• As a subsection describing his "Critiques of political correctness", like this;
• in the section about his career, like this; or
• Others?

-- Jytdog (talk) 16:47, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

!votes on C-16 content location

• Career section. This describes historical events that are part of his career, not abstract ideas per se. It was the events around his opposition to this bill (now law) that made him famous and famous polarizing and the article makes no sense for a reader who doesn't know much about him already, with these key events stuck away down at the bottom, even after the description of his books and other output. Also the description of his output comes before the description of his ideas, and having these events narrated at the very bottom of the page, before his personal life, leaves that historical context out as well. History should go with history, which contextualizes what follows. Jytdog (talk) 16:52, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
• Separate section. To be honest, the difference between the options is marginal to me, but I lean slightly towards this one. While it's true that Peterson's social advocacy and ideology have become somewhat entangled, I'd still say this aspect of his notability is discrete and worth it's own subsection. I also feel that a career section (covering primarily his research interests and academic notability) followed by a works section (which displays his transition towards a public intellectual) and then a section on his current role as an anti-PC ideologue, strikes a good balance and helps with continuity. All of that said, the main issue that sticks out to me is that each of these sections, but particularly the sections on political correctness broadly and Bill C-16 in particular, are way, way too long and unbalanced with regard to WP:WEIGHT and inconsistent with summary style. We really don't need 12 paragraphs to discuss his opposition to one bill, including details on multiple speaking engagements and grants which he may or may not have been denied per his own suspicions. Some pairing down here would be very useful, and would make it even easier for this content to fit in whatever section consensus decides that it should abide in. Snow ^{let's rap} 06:54, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

• Critiques of PC section, or Separate section, the series of videos were called "Professor against political correctness" and it makes more thematic sense to cover this aspect of his ideas/claims as part of the 'PC' section. Otherwise I agree with Snow Rise, everything presented at present is far too long. The fact that this controversy may have magnified his fame/notoriety, does not automatically make it 'career' and placing it there is borderline WP:POINTY IMO. I could see the sense of moving the whole 'critiques' section up, and possibly renaming, but not by artificially adding it to career and breaking thematic and chronological sequence. Pincrete (talk) 18:23, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

• Critiques of PC section.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 15:59, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

• Critiques of PC section (Summoned by bot) This seems to be the most logical placement. Agree with one commenter that there is only a shade of difference between the various options. Seems weird to have an RfC on a minor organizational issue, as well as to see multiple RfCs on secondary issues on this page. Coretheapple (talk) 13:28, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
• Critiques Giving it it's own section to me seems undue. ^{cinco de} L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 16:52, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

discussion on C-16 content location

User:Snow Rise would you please clarify -- a separate section where? I moved this up into the career section for the following reason -- I came to this page primarily to start learning about this person. I had to read the whole page twice and read the sources before I actually understood the story.

The stuff described in the C-16 section is the pivotal historical matter here; these are the events through which his career was transformed and he started saying and doing the things that brought him into the public eye - through which he became as it were a "public intellectual". These events -- what he did and said and how people reacted -- "made" him.

Here is the history of how this page developed:

• this is how the page appeared at the end of Sept 2016 (before all this stuff was picked up in WP)
• At the end of October, it looked like this, with a "controversy" section at the bottom exactly about this stuff.
• By the end of November in this version, the Works section got built in between, and that section (eventually renamed to what it is now, stayed down at the bottom.

Over time a bunch of other content was added, pushing this yet further down the page.

The growth was organic, but it has left the storyline broken.

Having that material at the very bottom of the page is very unhelpful to a reader, in my experience of coming to this page, to learn about him. I believe they belong in his career as they are historical, telling his story. They aren't abstract ideas, and are not "works". Hence my argument for including this in "career", which is where we put the stuff that people do.

(I've now read all the sources here and more btw.) :) Jytdog (talk) 23:13, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, I guess I hadn't thought of it from the perspective of someone coming here to learn specifically about his ideological advocacy. I liked the format placing it at the bottom because it appealed to me for the clear progression of the phases of his notability, if you follow my meaning. I will have to review the matter again when I have fresher eyes and and then re-comment, as soon as I may. Regardless of placement though, I'm pretty sure I'm going to continue to feel that the C-16 content needs to be paired down a little. Wikipedia is not a blow-by-blow digest of every engagement a public figure has with a given idea or government initiative, and this section could summarize the same basic details with half as many paragraphs. Mind you, I'm not ambitious enough as to try to insist upon such a drastic change, but there's a paragraph or four there that are ripe for reduction or removal, in my opinion. Snow ^{let's rap} 07:06, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for considering. I just wanted to learn about him, not his advocacy per se. The Bill C-16 stuff is a turning point in his life and is just weirdly divorced from the story of his life. I agree the detail in that section is excessive. Jytdog (talk) 16:27, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, so I've reviewed the competing formats and I do think there are two ways of looking at this: One (which is your view, if I more or less read you correctly) is to judge the order of elements/sections as being dependent upon (or at least significantly informed by) their relative weight as topics in the sources. And concordantly, this view would hold that, because Peterson's notability has swelled since his vocal criticism of "PC culture" became a topic of mainstream media and social media attention, and a great deal of the sources concerning him are now focused upon this topic, it leaves the article feeling uneven that these events are buried near the end of the page. That's a compelling point, I agree. The alternative argument is that all of the events covered in that section have transpired since 2016, and represent just a sliver of Peterson's lasting notability, which was well established in both GNG and NACADEMIC terms well before these events. Collateral support for this approach also arguably comes from A) the fact that it has the benefit of conferring a continuous chronological order ot topic discussion throughout the article (aside from the "personal life" section, which is moved to the end in all proposed edits). Strict chronology is by no means a requirement of any article, but it can be a boon to certain articles where attainable--and I think that is arguably the case here, where we have someone who has gone through "phases" of different notability in different types of sources for different (if clearly interrelated) reasons. And B) it keeps the C-16 subsection anchored in a section which pertains to his publicly espoused views and socio-ideological advocacy generally, which is a good context for it.

Now, I gave a little more weight to the second option there because it has a few more moving parts, but I don't mean to be dismissive of your stance; I view both approaches to be grounded in some substantially relevant arguments about what is best for flow. That said, I think I still lean towards the latter option. But I think either can be made to work, honestly. And my notions about what goes where could fluctuate depending on how the content of individual sections changes; as noted previously, there is room for improvements to several sections and subsections which would necessarily play into that analysis. I know that is all somewhat non-committal, but those are my thoughts! Snow ^{let's rap} 08:18, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts User:Snow Rise. I am somehow not getting this across. If a person reads the article from top to bottom, like people do when they are reading (!) -- like I did the first time I read this -- having the career stuff all in one place makes total sense. Finding essential events in his career at the bottom makes no sense. This is why I had to go back and re-read the whole thing a second time. His second book for example is completely in the context after those events. It sold a ton, while his first book sold almost nothing. Likewise his youtube channel took off after those events. His body of work should be encountered by the reader already knowing the guy's career - having already read that, travelling from top to bottom. Do you get it now? it is a page-order thing. What the reader finds, at what point while reading. Jytdog (talk) 23:26, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Actually, I think the failure to convey may be on my part as well, because I do recognize that what you are emphasizing is the order and flow of the content and tried to address that above. But addressing the more specific point you raise about the second book above, I would note that the content covering that book is a short three sentences and there's nothing in our coverage of it to suggest that it is any more linked to his current anti-PC notability than to his earlier academic topics (for me, our description actually makes it sound closer to the latter than to the former, honestly), so I'm not sure that's cause to completely shake-up the order the other subsections relatively to eachother to address that one concern. And no matter how we order the content, there is likely to be some discontinuity, so it's a matter of trying to get the narrative to flow as as strongly in one direction as possible, given these constraints. However, I may be misreading what you are proposing; if you are suggesting that the "Books" section be moved lower, such that the new order is: Education-->Career-->Works (minus the Books content)-->Critiques of political correctness-->Books-->Personal life, then, while I'm not sure that change is totally for the best, I don't think it would break the article either and would be within what I would consider to be a reasonable ordering of the content. But I suspect your proposal is not quite that simple and we may still be talking past eachother a little here. Snow ^{let's rap} 23:42, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

User:Snow Rise (sorry to ping, i don't know if you are watching). Thanks for replying. Per the RfC question, I think it should be like this. A subsection of his career. The story of his life should be told clearly and together. The stuff he did opposing Bill C-16 made him famous and changed his life. Independent sources, and he himself, say this. The globe and Mail says:

• "Until last fall, Prof. Peterson's primary claim to fame outside the classroom was a "self-authoring" program, a guided series of reflective written exercises shown to improve academic performance and mental and emotional health. A picture on his web page posted prior to his stratospheric rise to fame showed him broadly smiling, a tweed jacket draped over his arm, looking every bit the contented professor at Canada's top university. He hadn't yet tapped into his nascent fan base, although he was more media-savvy than your average university lecturer....The ascent of Prof. Peterson's social media persona began on Sept. 27, 2016. That is when he posted a YouTube video of himself speaking out against Bill C-16, legislation introduced by Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, and intending, among other things, to expand the definition of hate speech in the Criminal Code to include discrimination on the basis of gender expression...." (the article even has graphs showing his following on social media bending dramatically up in response to that stuff.
• The Chronicle of Higher Ed piece says: "Then there’s the actual Peterson, a guy who Ping-Pongs between exuberance and exhaustion, a grandfather who is loathed and loved by a public that, until very recently, had almost entirely ignored him. Now he has more than a half-million YouTube subscribers, nearly 300,000 Twitter followers, and several thousand die-hard disciples who send him money, to the tune of $60,000 per month." And really importantly, it says right after that: "Even the man with all the answers appears stunned by the outpouring, and at the sudden, surreal turn in his life. "When I wake up in the morning, it takes about half an hour for my current reality to sink in," he says. "I don’t know what to make of it."

Those events are essential for understanding him and his work. His first book sold fewer than 500 copies in hardcover (chronicle) - just the preorders for his second book, after all that and addressing his new audience, were huge. (chronicle) -- it ended up selling 1.1 million copies between its release in Jan and May (NYT ref) and was supported by a book tour.

Do you see what I mean? The C-16 events changed his life, what he does everyday and in his work, how people read him, etc etc. They are what made him the "public intellectual" or whatever else you want to call him, that he is now.

It needs to be up in his career, not down at the very bottom of the page, so that when someone reads the article, they read about his works and ideas with the concrete history in their mind. So they have actual context. His ideas are not abstract but grew from actual things that happened. Jytdog (talk) 16:02, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Youtube channel

I think there should be something a box about his Youtube channel. How many subs and things of the sort. I also think his YouTube Channel should have it's own a Wikipedia page. Throwing the conversation let's see your thoughts.Filmman3000 (talk) 15:45, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Wigan Pier

The current text says Peterson 'grew disenchanted with the [NDP] due to what Orwell diagnosed in The Road to Wigan Pier as a preponderance of "the intellectual, tweed-wearing middle-class socialist" who "didn't like the poor; they just hated the rich".[2][3]' The phrasing implies that it is a direct quote from Orwell. I suggest changing it to: Peterson 'grew disenchanted with the party due to what he said Orwell diagnosed in The Road to Wigan Pier. “Orwell did a political-psychological analysis of the motivations of the intellectual, tweed-wearing middle-class socialist and concluded that people like that didn’t like the poor; they just hated the rich.”' TFD (talk) 17:00, 5 August 2018 (UTC)