Talk:Conversion therapy

Comments, as requested

As requested by User:September 1988, here are my comments about this page.

I see the following things that could be said more simply:

• a range of treatment(s)
• under criticism
• a source of controversy
• condemned
• highest-profile
• advocates
• derided
• banned

Miscellaneous notes:

• Range is linked, but it is a dab page.
• Besides the note below about the 3rd paragraph, involved probably isn't a good word to use. Its a vague term that doesn't tell you anything specific.

There are some places where the meaning was changed from the enwiki article:

• 1st paragraph: The enwiki article says "range of treatments" (plural), not "range of treatment" (singular). At best, there is a subtle difference. At worst, "range of treatment" doesn't make sense because range implies more than one thing and treatment is singular.
• 1st paragraph: Enwiki says "in the United States and other countries". This article says "many countries, including the United States". Enwiki doesn't say how many other countries, so we can't know if it's many. Besides that, many is a vague, relative term that doesn't tell you much. It's usually good to be more specific: in this case, you could either say exactly how many (if you can find that information), or just say "other countries".
• 3rd paragraph: By putting "other religious groups" in a separate sentence, the meaning is not the same as in the enwiki article. Maybe you were trying to make shorter sentences, but in this case I don't think it worked. The enwiki article combines the fundamentalists with other groups as the main advocates. The wording here takes the other groups out of being high-profile advocates. It says that 1) the fundamentalists are the highest-profile advocates and 2) other groups are involved in some unspecified way. The fundamentalists by themselves might not be the highest-profile advocates: it must be left combined with the other groups to still make that statement. Do you see the difference?

--Auntof6 (talk) 22:15, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I changed some of the wording in the article. Is there something else? Angela Maureen (talk) 15:57, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

First, I've struck out the things that have been taken care of. There are still a few left.

The change I see is that you took out the sentence "Other religious groups are involved." That doesn't fix the problem. Not only that, it also changes the meaning from what's in the enwiki article to something we don't know is true. Let me see if I can explain.

The original language (in the enwiki article) is "The highest-profile contemporary advocates of conversion therapy tend to be fundamentalist Christian groups and other religious organizations." Let's go through a mental exercise.

• Imagine making a list of all the highest-profile contemporary advocates.
• Imagine looking at that list and noticing that most of them are in one of two categories: either a fundamentalist Christian group or some other religious organization. That is what the enwiki article is saying. It doesn't say that no other type of group is represented (there could be some government organizations included). It just says that most of them are in one of the two categories.

Maybe it would help to look at this in a different way. Say someone said, "The top-grossing movies each year are usually either science fiction movies or action movies." (I don't know if that's true, I'm just using it as an example.) That doesn't tell you anything about either genre individually. It says that together they account for most of the top-grossing movies. To change that in the way you changed the article, we would end up with, "The top-grossing movies each year are science fiction movies. There are also action movies." Can you see how that doesn't say the same thing? If we then remove "There are also action movies", that doesn't make it better because the original doesn't say that sci-fi is at the very top. To keep the meaning the same, we'd have to keep the mention of both genres together in one sentence.

I know I may be belaboring the point, but this is important. When you simplify an article to bring it here, you absolutely must completely understand anything you're going to change. You can't properly simplify or remove text without understanding it first. If you don't understand it, you risk changing the meaning and ending up with something that isn't true, or at least isn't supported by sources.

I know it's hard to recognize situations where you think you understand something but you're actually mistaken about it. That's hard for anyone to recognize, and I imagine it's even harder for someone with learning disabilities. Because of that, I really appreciate you starting this article in your userspace where we can work this kind of thing out before putting it into mainspace. I hope you will seriously read this and ask if you see something where you want more explanation. Please don't just say OK so you can move on. It's very important that you take this to heart. It's very important. Did I mention how important it is? :) --Auntof6 (talk) 06:09, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

I've changed advocates to workers; I also added one sentence back. Angela Maureen (talk) 15:19, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Good change on under criticism/criticized -- that's exactly what was needed.

Advocate doesn't mean worker. It might help to look up advocate (the noun) in a dictionary.

There are a couple of issues with the sentence you added. One is that you changed religious groups to religious networks. The enwiki article doesn't say networks, so we can't say it, either (unless you find a source saying that the groups were networks). The other issue is that it still leaves the two categories of advocates split apart. They need to be together. I guess my attempt to explain that didn't help. If you think of "fundamentalist Christian groups and other religious organizations" as one thing, that might help you get the grammar right. --Auntof6 (talk) 17:02, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

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I changed workers to supporters. I also connected the two sentences like you said. Something else? Angela Maureen (talk) 22:37, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Supporter is simpler, and has the right meaning.

The combining of the two groups works now.

I struck out some more items above. There are still some to take care of. If you find a simpler way to say "range of treatments", that will probably take care of the dab link.

I did just notice that the second paragraph could be divided into two sentences.

I think that's all that's left. --~~ ~

I've simplified range of treatments and divided the second paragraph. Is there anything else? Angela Maureen (talk) 03:23, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I simplified one more thing and removed one of the categories. I think it's ready now. Would you like it moved to mainspace, or do you want to create the article as a new page? --Auntof6 (talk) 07:08, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Let's move the article to mainspace. Angela Maureen (talk) 18:07, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Done. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:05, 16 April 2015 (UTC)