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Wikipedia:Peer review/Lifespring/archive1

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I have just rewritten this article, which was a stub, and completely POV. I would like feedback to make sure that it is neutral and clear enough. I should add that the page has had a lot of random edits by anonymous editors, and the page could be the subject of an edit war--hence my desire to have it reviewed for neutrality. Thanks. Jeffpw 14:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This was an interesting subject that I knew nothing about. A few things struck me:
  1. Expand LGAT in the lead for its first instance. It's necessary to understand what the article is about.
  2. "Very controversial, it had vocal proponents, as well as prominent detractors." is kinda meaningless. You can say the same thing by putting "controversial" in the first sentence.
  3. "Observers have made comparisons between Lifespring and Werner Erhard's Est training." is probably unnecessary in the lead. The article goes into more detail (see next note) in a few sentences anyway.
  4. How about some detail on how Lifespring and est are similar/different?
  5. The article alludes to similarities to Scientology but never says what (either scrap the sentence, or tell us something about it).
  6. Complaints about the program, or people feeling pressured, probably belongs in the Criticism section rather than Course overview. This is probably going to be a bit hard to work out, but perhaps try to present a very NPOV view of what the program was supposed to do in the overview (I still have no idea), and then have all peoples complaints in the next section.
  7. Is Lifespring a company that offers a training program? Or a training program itself? The lead makes it seem like it's a program, but then a company is paying out for lawsuits. It should be clarified somewhere.
  8. I'd cut classification altogether and put in somewhere in the text (perhaps criticism?).
  9. Later developments is empty? Is it a program that's still around?
Hope this helps, good luck!--Will.i.am 23:43, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you very much, Will.i.am, for your excellent criticism of the article. I will start working on the changes today. In answer to some of your questions, Lifespring is both the company offering the trainings, as well as the training itself.

I agree that the paragraph about est and Scientology needs to be expanded. I'll start working on that after work today. The later Developments section was full when I went to bed, with no less than 5 sources. It was vandalized before you looked at it. It is now reverted (though all your lovely copy editing was lost in the process). Thanks again.Jeffpw 05:55, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No worries! I re-enacted most of them, and then liberally consolidated your Lawsuits, Psychological Discussions, and Deaths sections. (I believe that they all involved lawsuits, and are all covered by the topic sentence of Lawsuits anyway.) Final note on Later Developments: Can you spread out the notes so they're attached to the specific company they cite? That was a pretty long laundry list of companies and it's not immediately obvious from the note titles which reference is talking about which company. Cheers!--Will.i.am 22:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]