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Branton Files was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 3 October 2022 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into UFO conspiracy theories. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.
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Along with problems related to dubious sourcing, this article contains a lot of content that has nothing to do with conspiracy theories per se. Simply listing alleged UFO sightings and assuming an underlying conspiracy is inappropriate WP:OR. I'm beginning to remove such off-topic content, along with material attached to non-WP:FRIND sources. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 18:13, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of dubious sourcing remains in this article. The writing is quite good, but is it reasonable or appropriate for an encyclopedia article to depend so heavily on pro-conspiracy organizations/authors as sources for conspiracy theories? Perhaps this article should include only notable UFO-related conspiracies directly covered by WP:FRIND sources. Reasonable minds might, of course, disagree about that, so please share your opinions here. I might also take this issue/question to FTN. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 15:59, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t think we need to be laundry listing every single claim made by Ufologist types to get the point across on what a ufo conspiracy theory is. I also concur that the article should shy away from overtly fixating on the simple belief in UFOs as alien in origin- the actual meat and potatoes is the belief that “the government” is actively hovering it up. Paragon Deku (talk) 01:42, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's nearly two years later, and the situation has only gotten worse. It's one thing to populate this article with massive amounts of content that has nothing to do with "UFO conspiracies," but it's another thing to present such content in promotional, non-encyclopedic tones. At some point soon I'm going to take a hatchet to this page. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 16:06, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm probably the main person adding content to the article, so this is on probably on me. I certainly don't mean include a promotional tone at all, greatly welcome improvements that polish the language. I have a long term plan for the article, which likely involves splitting it into a series of sub-articles across the chronology. While it's in active development, it's best to keep it here, but we could split the "laundry list" chronology to a single sub-article for now. Obviously, we want an end product where this article only summarizes the subarticles, doesn't go into a full history like the present article does. It's easier for my workflow if we let the extended chronology live here for now, but I'm flexible! :) Take a peek at Roswell Incident, which went from a similar "messy prewrite too much info" state when it was under active development to becoming a FA (with great help from @Rjjiii and their hatchet). I'm not here to PROMOTE the CTs we're discussing, any more than I'm here to promote the various new religious movements I document. Feoffer (talk) 16:56, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
it's best to keep it here... It's easier for my workflow if we let the extended chronology live here for now, but I'm flexible! Isn't what you describe the primary purpose of Sandboxes? Going forward please consider using your sandbox(es), rather than material in article space, as prequels for your "long term plans." JoJo Anthrax (talk) 17:26, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, I could sandboxify, but it is a wiki and I sure could use help. If someone else wants to write a "good" version of the article , I'd be happy to fork off the extended chronology. The main reason I haven't forked already? What would we replace it with? The article has always been messy. Feoffer (talk) 17:55, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping. I don't know if I'll have much time to work on this article, but here are my 2 cents: The sources in a lot of places are too narrow in scope for this article, which is such a broad topic. The Michael Barkun book is excellent, so maybe work from there? He covers the United States up to a certain point, so the article also needs sources that cover other countries and sources from after that point. In 2024, several major newspapers did a kind of overview/retrospective of UFO conspiracy theories in response to New Jersey drone reports. Once you have some reliable, secondary sources with a broad scope, then you can use the sources to decide whether a topic needs paragraphs, sentences, just a wikilink, or no mention at all. On a related note, the article needs a default method of citing pages (WP:CITEVAR). It doesn't matter what it is, but currently it looks like it uses the citation methods from subarticles, which are all slightly different. Page numbers are in full citations, short citations, and {{rp}} superscripts. In addition to allowing content to be trimmed, I think this might also expand or change the coverage of some topics. For example, there is a lot of coverage about Ray Palmer that is cited to sources about Ray Palmer. Once you start looking at broader scope sources, it'll allow the article to cover things like the impact of the letter columns in his publications, where people formed pre-internet networks for discussing fringe ideas like the Shaver Mystery and UFOs. Rjjiii (talk) 19:47, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
+! -- thanks for your ALWAYS-AMAZING advice. In American football, you're who I turn to to get the ball over the finish line into the endzone!
To be honest, I have always avoided this page "like the plague" using it as the dumping ground for content I wanted to get rid of but didn't think I could delete outright. But now that the building blocks like a GA-ed Flying Saucers articel and a FA-ed Roswell, maybe it's time to look at this old 'fixer-upper' of an article.
You know me and my historian background, I lead with secondary sources as close to the event and then buttress with 21st century. Perhaps I should take a more "top-down" approach". In any case, so happy to have your feedback! :) Feoffer (talk) 19:56, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(Edit conflict)
Roswell just passed FA not long ago and flying saucers just passed GA this week, so I'm finally turning my eye to this, the current 'umbrella article'. Per comments above, I should have been using Talk way more, so it was clearer.
AS I say above, I think I can show conclusively I'm not here to PROMOTE these theories by my work on Roswell incident and Travis Walton incident, plus similar "histories of novel religions" articles.
I've added FRINGE and TONE tags to alert readers that the article does have problems, shame on me for not having done so earlier.
The overview section doesn't even cite sources. I would greatly welcome someone nuking it and writing a good overview instead. The current overview is jsut a quick summary of the 'chronology'. edit added sources, but invite for improvment stands, the lede and overview need a rewrite.
I get it -- the current chronology is way way way too much. It's just such a pain to "divide" and "re-divide" a multi-decade narrative into sub-articles before knowing what the final article series is going to look like (cf. Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard).
The chronology's sourcing is basically "go look in the subarticle and trust me, it's in there" that's not good, and obviously needs to be fixed.
There's basically no skeptical voice thoughout the entire article. It is title UFO conspiracy theories, so the title does a lot of work for us, but per above, there's so much work still to be done to create an article that cannot be mistaken for one PROMOTEing the topic that needs to be debunked.
Refs are a mess (again, my own doing)
In the extended chronology, whereever we end up putting it and over how many articles, what elements merit inclusion? At minimum, if we have an entire article dedicated a UFO conspiracy topic, that topic ought to be available somewhere in the "macropedia" extended narrative.
Obviously, citations are a mess, but the article has always been messy.
Anything that can be done to inject skeptical counterpoints in the article would be greatly appreciated. Ultimately, we want an article that gives a quick NPOV overview to allow readers to understand and dismiss the CTs.
I haven't even begun to look at the lede -- please improve it as anyone sees fit!
Per Rjjiii feedback above, add sourcing on Palmer material
Per Rjjiii feedback above, refocus narratvie on Barkun
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