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This article was heavily biased, with unsourced or insufficiently sourced claims, and I have removed all but the most basic statements given in the introduction. The "Life" section was verified in the Post Gazette reference, but it is not good to leave in the article while removing all the rest since it's essentially Burke's personal testimonial and not noteworthy for an encyclopedia unless perhaps someone adds better biographical content the article to give it some context. The one claim in the criticism section sourced to the Post Gazette was incorrectly stated in the article since the P-G reporter essentially distinguished Burke from the more extreme ministries which preaches "healthy and prosperous, and that illness and poverty are because of their own sin or weak faith", so even though there was some attempt at verification in the criticism section, even it was flawed. I also removed two unsuitable sources, one just a promo to sign a petition, the other to a publisher called "Creative Loafing" because it superficially at least appears to lack the credibility demanded for the controversial statements in an article here of a living person.

Billy Burke appears to be noteworthy, but the article about him must strictly adhere to the policies (see wp:blp, wp:verify, wp:or and wp:npov). The following holds for all editors: "Unsourced or poorly sourced controversial (negative, positive, or just highly questionable) material about living persons should be removed immediately from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, and user pages." Professor marginalia 22:14, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This article was decidedly not biased or unsourced. In the section on Billy Burke's life, since most of the information came from Mr. Burke himself, I sprinkled the section with phrases like "According to Mr. Burke" and "he claims". If autobiography is an unacceptable source of information for an encyclopedia, then you're going to have to delete A LOT of information from wikipedia.

The claim in the Criticism section about Mr. Burke's Word of Faith proclivities was NOT incorrectly stated. The Post gazette reporter's statement that Mr. Burke preaches a "moderate" form of the "health and wealth" gospel is undefined and ambiguous. The reporter herself says that Mr. Burke "hedges" on whether lack of healing is due to lack of faith, and she doesn't give any examples whatsoever of how Mr. Burke is "moderate" on the question of whether one's personal wealth is connected to their level of faith. In fact, the article from Creative Loafing (a respected Tampa, FL alternative newspaper) gives a first-hand account of how Mr. Burke "disguised" his real views in the interview with the reporter from the bigger circulation Pittsburgh newspaper. The relevant section from the article should be quoted in full:

"After the intro, it's time for a disclaimer. In so very many words, Billy tells the flock they have only themselves to blame if they don't get a miracle tonight. 'The reason some of you don't get a breakthrough is because you don't realize that you're giving to God,' he says before the envelopes are passed out. We have to have faith in the money, we are told. 'You can't buy your breakthrough. But what you do is you put a value on it. See, God's watching what value you put on it ... if you said by saying with your mouth, "I believe I'm gonna get a miracle, then why wouldn't you put your money behind that?'"

Every piece of information in that article was backed up by reputable and verifiable sources. I will take out the petition link though, to be absolutely impartial.

Jojo45 18:55, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please remember to assume good faith wp:agf. This is not "your" article. And I'm just working to make the article better, that's all. I know nothing about Billy Burke except what I've read in the sources you had here. And there are many problems. The articles can't advertise somebody's books and parternships here, so if you can reword that part I removed so it isn't like a yellow page ad maybe that would be acceptable. But there is no issue with somebody selling books and partnerships in a minstry, so it would not by itself fit on the "criticism" section. And maybe broader input is needed here than just the two of us. I don't think that a single article in an "alternative newspaper" will meet the verifiability needed for those kinds of statements in a biography of a living person, but we should get other opinions. When the article is a biography of a living person wp:blp, we all have to edit on the side of overcaution. If the living subject of any article here is accused of things, whoever it is, the statement has to come out until it is carefully sourced. But also, you are putting your own meaning behind the quotes and you can't do this, that's considered original research. Burke may or may not be strongly hinting that faith in the healing must be shown by giving money but he did not say this directly in the quote so you can't say that here either. It is best to find an independent source who accuses him of this. And beyond that, you can't as an editor draw conclusions from certain facts and assumptions, and the criticism section was full of them. What would really help at this point is to find more good sources.Professor marginalia 01:45, 2 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Billy Burke (evangelist)/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Last edited at 18:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 09:39, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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