User talk:Feraess

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Parkour

Hi Feraess. Thanks for your edits to the Ryan Doyle article. :) Actually, the sources in the article say that Doyle practices parkour, so that's what the article should say as well. On Wikipedia we don't get to make our own interpretation of things, but we have to stick pretty closely to what the sources say. Have a look at the verifiability policy and the no original research policy for the details, and feel free to ask me if you have any questions about them. Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:05, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Mr. Stradivarius. Thanks for getting in touch. I agree with you that some of the sources claim that Ryan Doyle practises Parkour, however I would argue that since there is disagreement in sources over this issue then at best the article as it stands does not represent WP:NPOV.
The more important point with regards to accuracy in Wikipedia is that although some of the sources do use the word 'Parkour', what the sources describe is not Parkour as currently described on Wikipedia. I would have to argue therefore that since the sources themselves do not know what Parkour is (and that includes Ryan himself), they are not good sources on the issue of whether or not Ryan practises it. Given that there are no good sources to support the statement that Ryan practises Parkour, and that the good sources in the Parkour article show that what he does is not Parkour, I can find no reason to support the inclusion of a statement that Ryan practises Parkour. Let me know what you think. Feraess (talk) 10:51, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again. Actually, this line of reasoning ("the good sources in the Parkour article show that what he does is not Parkour") isn't allowed on Wikipedia. This is what we call "original synthesis". To quote the policy page, "If one reliable source says A, and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C that is not mentioned by either of the sources." Even if one reliable source in the parkour article says that parkour has a certain definition, and even if another reliable source at Ryan Doyle says that Doyle does certain things that fall outside source A's definition of parkour, we are still not allowed to join those two concepts together and say that what Doyle does is not parkour. On the other hand, most (all?) of the other sources in the article say that Doyle is a parkour practitioner, and if you have doubts about the reliability of those sources, then we have this New York Times piece as well. I'm curious as to why you think what Doyle does isn't parkour, though. I'm no expert in the field - I just got involved in editing the article to resolve a dispute, and ended up rewriting the whole thing. What is it that he is doing that you think doesn't fall within the definition? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:43, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I dispute the reliability of the sources that say he practises Parkour. I especially dispute the reliability of that New York Times article, since as well as being wildly inaccurate it is also self-contradictory, for example captioning a photo of a backflip with 'efficiency'.
When I looked at the references for the Ryan Doyle article I saw that in general they do not say that Ryan Doyle practises Parkour (actually, several of the references are broken). They all refer to Ryan as a freerunner, and only two of them also try and connect Ryan and Parkour. One is Red Bull itself claiming that he is a Parkour ambassador for them, the second is an interview with Ryan where he says that he is 'a freerunner who practises parkour', but then goes on to use the terms 'freerunning' and 'parkour' interchangeably. I don't think that Red Bull could be considered an authority on what Parkour is (although I think we can assume they would try and use any marketing tactic available to them), and given that Ryan's views contradict all of the reliable information available about Parkour, including those of David Belle and Sebastien Foucan (who created Parkour and Freerunning respectively), I don't think we can consider him a reliable source on either Parkour or Freerunning.
Although some of the web pages that are used as sources might belong to organisations that are traditionally considered as reliable on Wikipedia, Parkour and related subjects suffer from a form of WP:CEE, or maybe meta-WP:CEE. Parkour grew in popularity much faster than accurate information could be transmitted. Because of this, newcomers filled the gaps in their knowledge with their own ideas. There were (and are) many more newcomers than experienced practitioners, and the experienced practitioners lived in France and didn't use the internet, and were therefore inaccessible to lazy news organisations. Consequently, almost everything that has been written about Parkour has used very new practitioners for references. They were not just new to the discipline, but they too were cut off from accurate information about the discipline, so they filled the gaps with what the lazy news people had already written about Parkour. That situation persisted for many years, until you had practitioners who had tried to practise for a long time, who thought of themselves as experienced, but who still had never had access to reliable information about Parkour, because that information was only available to those who had gone to France to visit the original practitioners.
Fortunately, in the last couple of years reliable information has become slightly easier to access. David Belle wrote a book on Parkour, Julie Angel produced a phd thesis on the history of Parkour, and together those works have produced a definitive picture of Parkour. There are still people who haven't taken the time to read these works, and although they are freely available they are not in the most accessible formats (being either in French or written in academic language), but at least as far as Wikipedia is concerned there are now reliable resources whereas before there were none.
If you think it would help this discussion I'd be happy to provide a personal input. However I tend to agree with the view that being an expert in a particular field does not (and should not) grant you any special privileges on Wikipedia, so although I do have my own personal views on the matter I think we're better off considering sources. In my view, the inconsistency shown in sources that would normally be considered reliable indicates their unreliability on this issue. I think the best course of action is to include only what is consistent, although if you think we need to assume that all of the sources are reliable then we could mention that there are differeing views on the matter. I don't think that would make for a better article though. Feraess (talk) 13:23, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Art Of Motion IS Parkour

Parkour is the Art of Motion designed to get from A to B as fast and efficient as possible. 

Ya know just a "few" links BlackDragon 23:47, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ha heres a direct source

Sounds fake to me??? BlackDragon 23:49, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am fully aware that Red Bull tries to cash in on the popularity of the word 'Parkour' by using it in it's advertising. However I see no reason for Wikipedia to become another branch of Red Bull's advertising machine. The fact remains that 'Art of motion' is an acrobatics event that is entirely unconnected to Parkour, and so including it in an article on Parkour would be misleading.
Regarding the statement "Parkour is the Art of Motion designed to get from A to B as fast and efficient as possible", I think you should read the article on Parkour, and more importantly the works it references. I think this discussion would progress much more easily if we were on the same page regarding the nature of Parkour. Feraess (talk) 11:34, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ryan Doyle edits

Hi Feraess. This is to let you know that you have new messages at Talk:Ryan Doyle#Parkour practitioner or freerunner?. Also, I noticed that you have reverted back to the non-parkour version of the article twice now. Be careful about reverting like this without discussing your edits on the talk page, as this is seen as "edit warring" on Wikipedia, and is not allowed. I'll leave you a boilerplate message about this below, just to make sure you're aware of the policy - sorry about the impersonal format. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 09:22, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Information icon Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. You appear to be engaged in an edit war with one or more editors according to your reverts at Ryan Doyle. Although repeatedly reverting or undoing another editor's contributions may seem necessary to protect your preferred version of a page, on Wikipedia this is usually seen as obstructing the normal editing process, and often creates animosity between editors. Instead of edit warring, please try to reach a consensus on the talk page.

If editors continue to revert to their preferred version they are likely to be blocked from editing. This isn't done to punish an editor, but to prevent the disruption caused by edit warring. In particular, editors should be aware of the three-revert rule, which says that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. While edit warring on Wikipedia is not acceptable in any amount, breaking the three-revert rule is very likely to lead to a block. Thank you. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 09:22, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You're a bit trigger-happy aren't you? Where's the edit war? I can't see one. I reverted an edit from you, and explained the reason why in the discussion we were having here. Then I reverted the same edit from Squish7 and explained the reasoning in the talk page. No one is repeatedly overriding someone else's contributions, and nobody's editing without trying to discuss the matter. What happened to WP:WikiLove? Feraess (talk) 13:36, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Feraess, please do not revert edits without at least discussing the matter on the talk page (when discussion of the edits you're reverting have been justified there). I especially get frustrated at this action. Explaining your edit in a summary may suffice if there is no other discussion on the talk page, but it is not a substitute for a more in-depth justification. Without any major factors in place distinguishing the skills or editing credibility of two editors, the editor who has defended their change thoroughly with careful elaborations stands as the one having made a superior change. I've written 3 paragraphs on the talk page about our latest set of changes, please discuss there before reverting another edit, and do likewise in the future, especially in interaction with me in particular. Thank you. Squish7 (talk) 17:46, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you're refering to. I've explained every edit I've made on the talk page. Also, it is the quality of the edits that is important, not the status of the editor. Edits don't have to be supported with eloquent explanation, but they do need to be supported by reliable sources. Despite the fact that you've written a lot in the talk pages (which I've responded to), the edits you've made are not all of high quality. I do not need to talk to you on the talk page before removing unsuitable material. I don't know if you're aware of this, but the emphasis is on you, the person who has added or re-added material, to justify its inclusion. See WP:Burden. With controversial edits like the ones you have made, you need to wait until we reach a consensus on the talk page before adding them to the article. Feraess (talk) 18:42, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that a revision I made (mentioning Freerunning in the lede when the term wasn't even there) wasn't reverted or challenged, says I'm in tune in some way with the lack of information on Freerunning in the article. If you want to argue credibility, then that fact gives me much more of it than you're making mine out to be. You have not actually defended the state that the article should be in in the tentative scenario before you apply your future solution. That makes your arguments fail. You've repeated over and over that FR should have its own page as opposed to being discussed liberally on the PK page, but this says nothing to the situation of what should be there in the indefinite scenario before you make your edit. If you believe FR should have its own article and not be featured here, then you have to make both changes simultaneously, not act on one and promise an upcoming one. Your solution however good or coming soon, does not give you the right to act as if you've already applied it in the meantime. Squish7 (talk) 20:47, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry but I really don't understand your comments. The lack of a separate article on Freerunning does not justify in any way the inclusion of more information about Freerunning in the lead paragraph of the article on Parkour. Whatever the state of the freerunning article, whether it's a redirect or blank or a full article, does not affect what should be included in the Parkour article. The fact is, you should not add information about one subject to an article about another subject unless it is relevant to understanding that other subject. The solution to problems with the Wikipedia content on Freerunning is not to make the Parkour article worse, but to make the freerunning article better. You're perfectly capable of creating the Freerunning article yourself, so if you're not happy with how long I'm taking to create a new draft of it you could always make a start yourself, or just revert it back to the pre-merger version. Feraess (talk) 22:04, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Core Parkour" / "Freestyle Parkour"

What do you think about suggesting to the PK/FR community that Parkour be divided into 2 divisions: "Core Parkour" and "Freestyle Parkour"? Such that (if this were widespread) the main Parkour article would go something like:

Parkour is (general all-encompassing definition). It's broken into two divisions, Core Parkour (or Core), and Freestyle Parkour (or Freerunning). Core Parkour limits movement strictly to the most efficient path between two points (from A to B as quickly as humanly possible), while Freestyle Parkour (Freerunning) extends a practitioner's options to allow for creativity and style.

Or maybe more simply, just introduce a single word to signify Parkour that does not include Freerunning (e.g. core parkour, orthodox parkour, strict parkour, etc). I'm not talking about changing the WP articles to make this suggestion, I mean do you think this would get people on the same page more if it were adopted by the community? I've been thinking a lot about it and I just don't think it's fair to kick someone out of a discpline the moment they start extending it or enhancing it... Squish7 (talk) 05:17, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, a group called Urban Freeflow tried to do exactly that in 2005. They created something called Freestyle Parkour, but they realised their mistake and changed their minds within a week. Actually they didn't have a lot of credibility to begin with, but that was one of the many nails in their coffin.
There are two basic problems with what you suggest.
1) Creativity is already included in Parkour. You need to be creative in order to get past unusual problems.
2) Even thinking about adding 'style' to Parkour makes Parkour worse, from the point of view of a Parkour practitioner. The key idea in Parkour is to go directly to your goal and let nothing stop you or slow you down. If you try and be stylish, you divert your energies and get worse at accomplishing useful things, it's as simple as that. Parkour was created in part as a revolution against sports and activities that prioritise looks over substance. They are opposite perspectives. It's quite easy to offend traceurs by suggesting that adding style 'enhances' Parkour. It's the equivalent of saying that spray-painting a smiley face over the top enhances the Mona Lisa. Traceurs by definition just don't see it that way. Traceurs use the word 'stylish' as a criticism.
Overall, we already have an extension of Parkour and it's called Freerunning. As far as I'm aware, its creator Sebastien Foucan shares the Parkour view on style. In my own personal opinion, as soon as you introduce style to movement then it becomes dance. That already exists as a label, and although it's not as cool and therefore isn't as appealing to some as the name 'Parkour', it is a far more factually accurate way of describing most of what gets labelled as Parkour. Feraess (talk) 18:00, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nonono, you're missing what I'm saying. Let me start over. What if we take that which a strict/core traceur is referring to when they say "That's not parkour!" or "That's freerunning not parkour!", and call this thing a different type or version or extension of the foundational meaning of parkour. To relate, I don't think the Catholic church would have the right to say of another denomination, "That's not Christianity!" when another form has the same basic ingredients. Freerunning (or that which is referred to when a traceur says "That's not parkour!") can be easily explained in terms of parkour, and in fact, is a very natural, intrinsic, intuitive, obvious extension of parkour. It just says "Let's take this method of getting to point A to B the fastest, and throw in another point, C, which one goes to efficiently to from A as if it were B, then to C to B as if it were A to B." Again, if someone were to say "I've studied base parkour so thoroughly I'm now applying it in creative ways and dimensions", they shouldn't be kicked out of the founding discipline altogether. This is the type of argument you're applying to Ryan (and the WFPF). He's infinitely practiced and versed in what you call parkour, he simply does more freerunning (a version of parkour applying more creativity and style, or whatever you say that freerunning does beyond basic parkour)... Squish7 (talk) 21:56, 21 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still not sure I understand your point, but I'll try and answer as best I can.
Parkour is a training system where you train yourself by trying to move past obstacles in your environment. Freerunning is a training system where you train yourself by doing whatever you think will help you. Freerunning is a broader discipline, it can include everything that is Parkour but it can also contain a much larger range of activities. Freerunning is not a subset of Parkour, Parkour is a subset of Freerunning.
An analogy to Freerunning and Parkour would be 'Athletics' and '100m sprint'. Athletics includes 100m sprints, but also a large range of other activities.
To the best of my knowledge, Ryan Doyle is not and never has been a Parkour practitioner. I have seen no evidence that he has ever trained by trying to move past obstacles, and if he hasn't done that then he hasn't practised Parkour. He's never been part of the Parkour discipline so he can't be kicked out. His attempts to talk about Parkour suggest, far from being well practised and versed in Parkour, in fact he has only a vague awareness of Parkour. I have, however, seen evidence that he trains by doing other things, and if he does any kind of training then he can be labeled as a freerunner.
If someone is a Parkour practitioner and does other things as well then I have no objection to continuing to label them as a Parkour practitioner as long as they still practise Parkour regularly. Examples of that would be Sebastien Foucan and Daniel Ilabaca, who do a range of other things but who do also still train in the Parkour way. In fact, there is no such thing as a 'strict traceur' because every traceur does other things as well as Parkour.
The idea that Parkour limits what you can do is just a common misunderstanding. Parkour imposes no limits on your actions. In fact, the whole purpose of Parkour is to remove any existing limitations. Practitioners are free to do whatever they like, in fact Parkour encourages practitioners to do other things. Practitioners just acknowledge that they are indeed 'other' things, not part of Parkour itself. That's what freerunners don't do; Freerunning lumps everything into one name.
Myself, I think it would be better if we just got rid of the name freerunning. Freerunning is just a single concept, doing whatever you think will help you develop, and the word 'freerunning' isn't a very good description of that idea. 'FreeLearning' would be better. In a way, when Sebastien started using that name he made it a lot harder to understand Parkour. The idea of freerunning is a good one, but as an idea it has no specific connection to Parkour. The fact that it's been promoted as being connected to Parkour is what has caused the confusion.
Getting rid of the word 'freerunning' would remove the confusion between Freerunning and Parkour. As a final benefit, people would be forced to think about how to label different kinds of movement, instead of just labeling it all as 'freerunning' and making the label itself useless. That might help people realise that 99% of what gets called Parkour and Freerunning is just dance. But that's clearly not going to happen any time soon, so I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. I just concentrate on making sure people can understand Parkour. Feraess (talk) 09:00, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever it is that you feel parkour is (or is about), you need to give it some name to segregate it from the entire movement of people who have a different definition than you. The WFPF states in their mission blurb:
"Once Parkour stops changing, once someone defines what it is in a neat set of rules, it’s over."
Many people feel PK changes and adapts. Doyle in particular is very outspoken in telling people not to listen to what he says or what anybody else says, to figure out what parkour is for themselves. He also says he could do parkour for the rest of his life "without moving", referring to efficiency in life and philosophy. If he were the only person using the term the way he uses it (e.g. if he called PK/FR "mayonnaise" when no one else on earth says mayonnaise has anything to do with PK/FR), I'd be able to digest your criticisms more easily, however, he's part of a monstrous group of people who use the word "parkour" the way he does or something akin to it. I don't buy your analogy that students studying science/etc who aren't associating, connecting, or understanding it in the scholastic sense, do not create a notable body of people if they use the term in their own way. If half the planet called the activity of thinking about hopscotch "math", it's a perfectly valid and notable term, whether or not it had anything to do with general scholastic math. It might not be as popular as scholastic math, hence it would come 2nd to math as we know it as a notable article, but you just can't say that XYZ billion people don't know what "math" is because they don't use it the core scholastic sense. You'd have to acknowledge the existence of both uses of the term, and would have to find a way of distinguishing one from the other (e.g. I used "core" and "scholastic" just now, necessarily having to create an adjective just to carry on the thought experiment).
I'm trying to wrap my brain around some of what you say, but it's hard because my understanding of parkour and freerunning are rooted in Ryan Doyle's perspective. (He's even said that "freerunning is only a part of parkour", the exact opposite of what you're saying). I'm really seeking a balanced perspective, but I can't quite fit your opinion in. It's almost intrinsically invalid to say that 99% of XYZ isn't XYZ at all. What's your personal standard of what's allowed to be called XYZ? Squish7 (talk) 01:03, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
From the current parkour article:
According to LeCorre, those who truly practice Parkour have the same mind aspect of each other, therefore it brings people to work together rather than compete, it allows them to be united internationally and forget the social and economical problems which separated them globally, ultimately leading one giant community working and growing together.
Now see, you really don't have much of an idea what Ryan thinks about parkour if you say he has little idea about such principles. He's infinitely versed in them. He tries to explain that the Red Bull AOM isn't 25 people competing against each other, but rather "25 individual tournaments" pitting person against environment. That "If you change the environment, you'll get a different winner." There are strong competition components and elements in the AOM, maybe even the most notable/defining, but it incorporates parkour principles as well. This is what I'm talking about of not kicking Ryan out of the parkour community. He's in tune with so many of the philosophical components it's surreal to say he doesn't practice it. He constantly stresses the practicing of parkour in one's life, making efficient decisions with the mind of someone trained to make them physically. He talks about this greater global picture in a way sureally similar to this quote, about a giant community working together. He's so in tune with the greater goal and philosophy set that I don't see how you can go backwards and say he never learned the founding discipline, so he has no right to involve himself in the greater goal... Squish7 (talk) 02:58, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Check out this video from 2:30 onward. He talks about overcoming obstacles on a mental level, i.e. an application from learning how to overcome them physically. Do you really think parkour isn't a part of his athletic mindset and yet somehow magically has developed a perfect philosophical mindset?. Also listen to the beginning and end of this video, he speaks against competition, saying parkour is not a sport. (He now actually does call it a sport, but the point is that these foundational principles are certainly still part of his physical/mental system.) Squish7 (talk) 03:14, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You make a good point about the use of language. A word's meaning is determined by how it's used. If the word 'parkour' is commonly used to describe something other than the original discipline then that word will acquire additional meanings. I'm not sure we're at that stage yet, but I am open to discussion about accepting different uses of the word. In Wikipedia terms, this means I'm open to the idea of creating a "Parkour (disambiguation)" page.
However, adding additional meanings to the word doesn't change the discipline that first gave meaning to the word. Big apples didn't change when that name started to be used to describe New York as well. The discussion about how the discipline is evolving is entirely separate from the discussion about language. It may benefit the discipline of Parkour in the future to use another name, just to help people understand that it's separate from what often gets called 'parkour', but as I said before, I don't think we're at that stage yet.
The evolution of the discipline of Parkour is a complex issue. I agree with the basic idea that the community will always be changing, because the community is defined by the practitioners and (by definition) Parkour practitioners are always changing. However, although the fine detail of how it is practised changes, the basic definition does not. The fundamental principles are what guide practitioners. They remain constant because humans are all fundamentally the same. The details of how people practise Parkour are different simply because the details of people's lives are different. But it is the fundamental principles that define the discipline, precisely because everything else changes. These fundamental principles of Parkour you just can't change, because they are just an idea. The idea exists now. You can create new ideas, but you can't un-create existing ones. Whatever you chose to call it, and whatever names people use for other ideas, the idea (of Parkour) will still exist.
As far as I can tell, the only people who make an issue about the evolution of Parkour are people who don't practise it. As I said before, for a Parkour practitioner the changes that are suggested are not beneficial, but harmful. It's like starting a chain of 'Official Unicef' forced labour camps. The only people who would suggest it are those who don't understand the point of Unicef. I think everyone would agree that the discipline itself is determined by the people who do practise it as opposed to the people who don't, correct?
The WFPF is a ridiculous company that has a vested interest in misinforming people. The only thing it can sell is the idea that it has the best traceurs/freerunners, so it has to ensure that those people are thought of as being the best. They are good at performing but aren't good at explaining, so therefore the WFPF tells everyone that performing is good and explaining is bad. Telling people that Parkour has clear ideas and principles would just highlight the fact that none of them understand what those principles are. When your image is all you have, you have to do everything to maintain it.
With regards to Ryan, it's not that he doesn't sometimes say things that are correct, it's more the fact that he usually contradicts himself later. Although he's aware of those ideas, he hasn't made those ideas a part of him. 'That' is what indicates he's not an expert, the fact that his actions don't reflect his words. He might be able to recite the words, but he either doesn't understand what they mean or doesn't value them enough to act on them. There is no depth to his understanding.
The fact that he doesn't embody the ideas is what indicates he's not an expert. The fact that he only includes some of Parkour's ideas in his own principles is what indicates he doesn't practise Parkour. The main issue is that he simply doesn't use Parkour's training method. Instead of training by trying to move efficiently past obstacles, he trains by trying to creatively move past obstacles with his style. He's right in that you can also develop yourself that way, there are many ways of developing your ability to overcome obstacles, but the way he uses is not the way of Parkour. The issue is that he doesn't acknowledge that Parkour has a specific training method. I suspect he sees Parkour as the end results, rather than the method of getting there, which is why he feels justified in labeling his alternative approach as Parkour too. That is a sporting view of the activity, and there seem to be many signs that, subconsciously at least, that's how he sees Parkour, as a sport. His focus in on creating practical movement, rather than how he's using the practical movement. Maybe he's progressing towards becoming an practitioner of Parkour, but he's still missing some vital ingredients at this point. Feraess (talk) 11:42, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm learning a lot from interacting with you and we're getting at the underlying issues, but here's my bottom line. Every time you say "Parkour", why is it so hard to imagine you could be modifying it to specify what you're talking about? It may be mean or unfair to steal the term Unicef for forced labor camps, but once done (or in stern progress), it doesn't change the terminology/encyclopedic issue of how to go about dealing with 2 instances of "Unicef". The original Unicef might then be called "Nonprofit Unicef" or "Unicef Charity", hence they could then only use the word "official" in context of "Official Nonprofit Unicef" or "Official Unicef Charity", etc., just like the purpose of a last name, but they couldn't say "Official Unicef" anymore if there's a notable/prominent other entity utilizing the term. It may indeed suck to have to change your name or use a longer name, but you'd still have to do it.
Now suppose we're on the road to the need for "Parkour (disambiguation)", isn't it necessarily logical to deal with the middle-ground terminology-wise? How would anyone get a feel for the specification terminology without experimenting with it? By the intrinsic policy of language you're allowed to modify what you're talking about with specification adjectives. So why not utilize the adjectives at your disposal to begin the process of specification now that may become a dire necessity, and can yield healing clarity in the mid-stages (e.g. "core", "strict", "original", "foundational", etc.)? Here's a good one. Why not say holistic Parkour? What's wrong with something like that?
See the web connects billions of people into to the same pages, articles, searches, etc. Any person or discipline wanting exclusivity to term XYZ, has to deal with everyone else around the globe who also want exclusivity to XYZ. At a local open mic I can call myself "Squish" because there are no other prominent people, ideas, places, etc., named "Squish" around. However, when I go online, this is not the case. Hence I've utilized "Squish7" and "SquishToGo". This isn't my preference, but there are just too many other people living on the planet for me to have exactly what I want. Yes I'd be angered if "Squish7 the porn star" got popular specifically trying to leech off of my name, but I'd just shrug at there arising a porn star called just "Squish". I think you have to shift your point of view from the former to the latter where "Parkour" is concerned.
If holistic/original/strict/core/etc Parkour (what you mean when you just say "Parkour"), was originally named "Flip" (in light of it involving flip-like movement), it would halve this whole emotional war of terminology, because you'd already naturally realize you don't have all rights to a popular standard dictionary word. You wouldn't even bother saying that "Flip Video" or "Flip Skateboards" is spreading lies about what "Official Flip" is all about, just as I couldn't complain about a product called "Squish Sponges". I don't think you'd be saying that the WFPF is ridiculous if they didn't use the word "parkour". What about the WFPF is intrinsically cruel or hostile outside of that you feel they're spreading misinformation about holistic/core Parkour?
What I don't think you realize is that holistic Parkour naturally and intrinsically contains dense viral components that call for creative extension in the mind of anyone especially creative. It's like showing people how to make money then saying they can only use it to futher their health, and that if they do anything else with it, they have to start calling it something else. No one's trying to steal or mangle your training discipline and philosophy, they're just applying it or components of it outside the box, and they have nothing else to call it than "parkour"... Squish7 (talk) 19:03, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'll answer all your points in moment, but just out of curiosity, why do you think your second porn star example is more appropriate than the first? The issue seems to be exactly like you describe in your first example, with someone (or in this case, lots of someones) specifically trying to leech off the popularity of Parkour.
At the moment, it seems to me as though most of what gets called Parkour has some kind of connection to Parkour itself. Yes, there are still people in the world (like Ryan) who have ignored all the good information, but they are decreasing in number. The Parkour community is winning the battle against misrepresentation. For example, Art of Motion doesn't get called a Parkour event any more, and even Ryan now occasionally speaks sense about Parkour. The situation is improving, and it will continue to improve as long as practitioners are working to improve it. Anyway, it's against the nature of Parkour practitioners to give up. Parkour is based on the idea of persistence, and if you persist then you succeed. There's no need for Parkour practitioners to change, I would comfortably back a Parkour practitioner against the world any day.
You're simply not going to get Parkour practitioners to value opinions on Parkour that come from non-practitioners. Practitioners are not going to change their own terminology simply to accommodate a bunch of people who are trying to harm Parkour, which is what you're suggesting. The Parkour mindset will say, "What is the problem? (Lots of people trying to leech off Parkour) What is the best solution? (Stop them leeching off Parkour)". A bunch of people trying to get Parkour practitioners to change for their own selfish reasons is just asking for trouble.
There's no need to say 'holistic Parkour' because all Parkour is holistic. Saying 'holistic Parkour' would be misleading, because it would imply that there is Parkour that isn't holistic. It's harmful, therefore Parkour practitioners won't do it.
The WFPF is like many companies in that it puts making money ahead of helping people. It's like much of pop-culture in that it values appearances over substance. Does I need to explain more? These are bad things.
I don't know what you mean by 'dense viral components', but it is not the case that practising Parkour encourages to act like Ryan and do performance acrobatics. Practising Parkour discourages people from doing those things. Practising Parkour encourages people to go direct to the heart of the problem and to find direct, practical solutions. It encourages people to look beyond appearances to the actual substance of things. It encourages a proper, insightful perspective on life and the things that truly matter. It encourages practicality and absolute persistence.
There are a lot of people trying to steal the discipline, WFPF, the Yamakasi, PKGen, AmericanParkour. However they are just the latest bunch, there are people who have tried and failed in the past. Parkour practitioners will always oppose it, and Parkour practitioners always succeed in the end. By definition. Feraess (talk) 21:36, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Would it reconcile your criticisms and negative feelings if everybody who defines parkour in a way you disagree with, simply prefixed the word "parkour" with their personalization? This morning on a whim I googled "what are English muffins called in England" because I was curious, and up on yahoo answers and WP talk pages came a tsunami of conflicting views, terms, and stories. (See Talk:English_muffin and a yahoo answers thread). Who in this global stew gets to decide what a muffin is? The only solution is to apply regional modifiers if all these people have a different idea of what to call a "muffin". "Parkour" is like that. It's a term that originated in France, but that doesn't give you global dominion over how other cultures or countries put the term to use, or how it evolves. Language and words have long, long histories stemming back indefinitely. It's reasonable to include in the definition of "American Parkour" that it originated from the Parkour that you talk about. You really think "parkour" has hit a permanent brick wall in history with the meaning you specify?
Even a single person can take anything they like and say "this is my version of XYZ". I can bake my own muffin-like food and declare, "this is a Squish muffin!", or write music and say "This is Squish Dubstep". Do you really require American Parkour to use "American Parkour Parkour" every single time they want to say "Parkour"? "Football" is another good example. When we just say "football" here we mean "American football", but in the UK they have to apply the modifier to distinguish it from non-American football (what we call "soccer").
I suppose our deadlock is disagreeing how large and significant a body of people have to be to earn an encyclopedic right to a term. You're referencing organizations with massive global or local regional weight; how many more of these would be necessary to constitute notability in your eyes? Let me put it this way, what is your estimate of the ratio of people who define/practice Parkour in the way you speak of it, to the number of people who define parkour differently? If the latter is really 99% (your words) of the general group of people who declare they know what parkour is, what is the deus ex machina attribute of the smaller group that gives it exclusivity to the term? Origination is not enough. Even within trademark law, if a term is used widely/broadly enough, it effectively and sometimes officially by law, voids the original registered trademark. You're crux argument is "We coined it first", and yes, this fact is very weighty--i.e. one could fathom an international trademark system that granted a discipline/sport rights to a term on origin--but such is just not out there.
Nutshell. If Ryan Doyle declared he practices "Doylekour"--saying he was inspired by (your) parkour to form/coin his version--would this alleviate all your beefs with his word usage? Because that's what he does functionally. There's no hostility going on anywhere; no one is trying to steal anything from anyone else. Ryan is extremely creative by core spirit, what is this massive war and emotional turmoil that arises when telling people like him that he has no right to name or title his idea or method? Squish7 (talk) 23:47, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, using a prefix before 'Parkour' wouldn't affect my criticisms of those individuals. Any use of the name 'Parkour' by individuals or groups that don't practise Parkour is simply them trying to cash in on someone else's success. I agree that the rules of language don't prohibit someone doing this, but my objection isn't based on the rules of language but on morality. It's not good to exploit others for your own selfish interests, and it's not good to use the word 'Parkour' incorrectly and thereby interfere with attempts to educate people about Parkour.
I wouldn't object to people using the word 'parkour' to describe something different, were it not for the fact that they think they are describing the same thing. If they were clear that they were referring to something different, for instance if they wanted to use 'parkour' to describe any kind of moving past obstacles, then I would be fine with that. I might even encourage that. However the misuse of language, in this case, indicates misunderstanding and that is what I'm concerned about. The people who define the word 'parkour' differently are people who define the discipline of Parkour differently, and that is the real problem. Whenever someone gets told that yes this discipline exists but it's all about style (or anything other than what it actually is) it makes it harder for others to spread the correct ideas. It's always easier to inform people if you don't have to battle against existing misconceptions.
I'm not arguing that anyone has any right to exclusivity of the term, I'm not making any kind of legal or regulatory argument, I'm just saying that it would be better if people didn't keep sabotaging attempts to help people understand this discipline.
At the moment though, yes, there are people trying to steal Parkour. The WFPF imagined itself into existence and is trying to persuade people that it's the leading authority on freerunning and parkour, RedBull tried to muscle in a little earlier and do the same, the Yamakasi are trying to claim that it's all one discipline and that they founded it, PKGen are trying to present themselves as the ultimate authority on who's qualified to teach it, and AmericanParkour are trying to turn it into a combination of crossfit and olympic weightlifting. It is a bit of a battleground at the moment, and as you saw from the ParkourUK statement there is a bit of hostility between the groups. If you were looking at the community a few years ago you'd have seen it far more openly (try Urban Freeflow), but it's still there, just less obvious due to the fall in popularity of internet message boards. Feraess (talk) 11:19, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Let us suppose you've convinced me of the general situation. Putting aside which side of this whole term war you're on and looking at things from a completely neutral POV (i.e. as an editor), is what you call the hostile side not large enough to warrant documentation? Are their opinions not notable enough to be represented here? Your opinion, even if correct/sound, that all these other parties are not speaking for what parkour is, should not be a factor in WP's over all tone, yes? What is erroneous about having an article that says "Parkour is XYZ to the founding parties, although newer organizations state that it's ABC."? Your view of the situation that all these other parties are engaging in hostility or theft, must be backed by independent sources to take this tone in an article, or akin. Given 2 warring parties, each disagreeing with the other and saying their side is the right one, what is there to place one above the other? Why should the WFPF, PKGen, AmericanParkour, Yamakasi, and Red Bull all have their opinions nullified aside from your feelings on the matter? Why should the PK/FR articles not include their views of what PK is with equal weight to the body of people and organizations that disagree with them? There are really two major sides here; how much larger would the side you're not on have to be to warrant intrinsic inclusion by the neutral policies of WP? Squish7 (talk) 19:20, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not trying to label one side in particular as being more hostile than another. I don't think you can differentiate between sides based on hostility, because everyone (including David Belle) has a degree of hostility towards at least some of the others. Where I think you can differentiate is between the views that represent a conflict of interest and those that do not. Wikipedia requires us to make that distinction, and it makes quite a neat dividing line in the Parkour community. The people and organisations that claim Parkour has changed are those that have a financial stake in making people believing that. The people that do not have a financial stake in Parkour being something different all support David Belle's original definition and description. The issue of what we consider to be correct is not determined by size or popularity, but by reliability. The views of everyone that claims Parkour has changed are simply not reliable, and do not warrant inclusion on Wikipedia. As Wikipedia editors we have the authority to judge the reliability of sources. We don't need to find independent sources which state that these other sources are unreliable, we determine that fact for ourselves.
I don't think there's much we can include in these articles from the dissenting views. There are no reliable sources which document the differences, and there are very few sources which state a clear position from those that disagree, even if you include those that aren't reliable. Their opinion is that opinions don't matter. The only kind of statement we have sources to support is one that doesn't really say anything, like "Ryan Doyle sometimes uses the term Parkour to describe his approach but has stated that he doesn't associate with the strict view of Parkour." That kind of statement doesn't seem to add anything useful to an encyclopedic article.
Do you have any suggestions? Feraess (talk) 21:17, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are cases in which financial bias makes a source's statements unreliable, i.e. here I suppose the dissenting views are not reliable for reporting what parkour is outside of their own scope. However, how are these other parties unreliable for describing what their own version of parkour is? Suppsoing we set aside any elements of They stole the idea and changed it around, then their new mix, if widespread enough, would constitute something worth noting if reliable sources documented the newer phenomena. It's perfectly sound to document a popular global product even if it has the footnote "Some people say that this company stole the idea from this other company". From one POV you might say the dissenting parties are spreading misinformation, however, from another angle they're simply engaging in creativity, specifically, the process art of taking what you know and have learned, and adapting it into something unique/original.
I can't shake the feeling that this theft you speak of boils down to wording. I definitely agree these newer parties should not state definitively "This is what parkour is, period." as opposed to "This is our creative version of parkour", but in some sense can't we say the latter is implied? What if these other parties simply included the disclaimer This is not the original notion of parkour, this is our creative extension. There's nothing intrinsically evil about making money. What if it boiled down to thumple.org saying what a "thumple" is, and thumple.com having a different definition of a "thumple" product they sell? Even if the people behind thumple.com liked the word "thumple" from thumple.org and this inspired their product name, this could be a perfectly legal hostile takeover to put it negatively, or we might say they were inspired by thumple.org to create their product. What is the difference between this example and the parkour issue other than the dissenting parkour definition not being widespread/adopted enough to have weight as encyclopedic content?
I disagree that things aren't determined by size/popularity, given that the size/popularity is documented (i.e. newspapaer articles describing the movement of "American Parkour", albeit such may not exist right now). Correct me if I'm wrong, but these parties are not stating "David Belle's view of parkour is XYZ" where XYZ is false. This is entirely different from saying "Parkour is..." where as "Parkour" implies the newer/derivative form. I can't help but thinking the entire war could be resolved by everybody calling the askew views "New Parkour" or "(adjective) Parkour". In fact, American Parkour does just that. How can you claim rights to a term in every other country than the one of origin? You really think that groups named Australian Parkour, China Parkour, Mexican Parkour, etc, would be spreading misinformation, rather than adapting a discipline into their own style and culture? It doesn't matter if any of these groups decide to engage in a profit endeavor, selling shoes or clothes or charging money for events. That doesn't loose them their right to sustain their own version of the discipline.
Your statement about Doyle and others akin would be very prudent, not the opposite. Consider that my perception of what parkour is originated from him alone, that is, I began with a perfectly good concept in my head that was honed by a specific person. If I had no idea that his version was rooted in another version, I might be very confused if I looked up Doyle in WP and saw nothing about what I thought his entire discipline was called. You use absolutely key wording to this issue, like Doyle's approach to parkour. This would naturally call for a term "(adjective) parkour", such as "loose parkour" or "new parkour". What is wrong with these terms rather than demand somebody give a totally new name to the thing they promote and practice? You've convinced me there's some wrongdoing or greed going around, but what about the rights people have to take what they know and make them their own thing? Squish7 (talk) 17:45, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't talk about Ryan's approach to Parkour, I refer to his approach to life and training. It's not the case that Ryan practised Parkour and then decided to change it. He has never practised Parkour. He practised martial arts, acrobatics and tricking, and then decided to start using the name 'Parkour' to label himself without changing what he did. It's not a new approach to Parkour he's promoting, it's just a new label for acrobatic dance. He hasn't evolved his own personal approach from Parkour, because his own personal approach has never been Parkour. Same goes for all people who promote the idea of Parkour changing. It is simply incorrect to think of their approaches as evolutions of Parkour, because they haven't come from Parkour at all. They have come from other activities, and have leaned a little towards Parkour, that's all. They're evolving towards Parkour, not evolving away from it.
If any of the groups that think of Parkour differently state what their view of Parkour is then we can think about including it. The problem with that idea is that none of these groups actually do come right out and state, clearly, what their view of Parkour is. They usually avoid explaining it at all costs, but when they are forced to write something down they tend to copy the one currently in the Wikipedia article. That is the only clear definition of Parkour that anyone presents. The alternative is saying that it can't be explained.
In this particular situation there isn't any practical difference between saying "Parkour is this different thing" and "This is our approach to Parkour", because it is so different. If you say "This developed from Parkour" then that implies that this and Parkour are fundamentally the same, and that is not true. The things that you label alternate approaches to Parkour are in fact fundamentally opposite from Parkour. If you explain this approach and then say Parkour is only slightly different then you're misrepresenting Parkour just as surely as if you claim this is Parkour directly. They just don't have enough in common for both phrases not to be misleading.
The desire to make money might not be intrinsically evil, but it is definitely not a good motivation. It is simply, intrinsically, a source of motivation that distracts from other goals. It is therefore , intrinsically, something that affects the reliability of everything associated with it.
I really don't know what you're trying to say with the American/China/Mexican paragraph. American Parkour is the name of a website, not the name of their discipline. I don't speak Chinese or Spanish so I can't speak for China or Mexico, but as far as I'm aware the various national groups all claim to represent the same, single, international discipline. Claiming their own special versions of the discipline is just not something I've seen any organisation do. That's the problem, everyone wants to say they are a part of one big community. The newcomers want to attach themselves to something cool, and the organisations want a big market to sell things to.
If what someone does is totally separate from Parkour, then it deserves a totally separate name. If you want to distinguish between different approaches to Parkour then that's fine by me, we can have flatland Parkour, mountain Parkour, subterranean Parkour, elderly Parkour etc. It's fine as long as they actually are types of Parkour, as long as they share the fundamental principles that determine what Parkour is. However if there is something that is different then it serves no practical purpose to try and describe it in terms of Parkour. There are more differences than similarities.
If you try and explain Ryan's approach with reference to Parkour then the explanation becomes something like, "It's Parkour, but without the focus on moving past obstacles, without the utilitarian training element, without most of the philosophy, and with an emphasis on style and expression added in."
If you try and explain it in terms of dance, the explanation is something like "It's dance with obstacles."
It's just not practical to connect it to Parkour. Feraess (talk) 21:58, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Why isn't FR already similar enough to PK to warrant a special name that includes the term "parkour"? The very fact that the FR page goes back and forth like a tennis ball into and out of the PK article alone shows there's a strong connection. Why would a term like "freestyle parkour" not well fit the discipline of FR? In other words, putting aside the issue of whether any particular group is implying a different type of PK or just leeching off of the community as you say (that is, putting aside whether my idealistic defense that implication solves all these problems flies), what would be intrinsically faulty about a community extending strict PK into the art of FR, and labeling this "(adj) freerunning"?
Put it one more way. Let's say there was just UK/French PK (the strict kind you promote), and the first country to adapt it in another form was the US, who's strong cultural components of the idea of freedom landed the new form into what the world currently calls "freerunning". What if we (I'm in the US) coined the term "American-style Parkour" to describe our new discipline, and spread it while strictly stating the differences between the American form and the UK/French form. Would this scenario now be free of all the beefs you have with the system the way it is now (or would you still be saying, "You can't call that parkour because FR isn't enough like PK to even utilize it in titling the new form"?). If so, what's wrong with recognizing the instances, however few, of dissenting views, that fall under this template? Ryan very directly and definitively states that his idea of parkour is what he's figured out for himself, and that everybody else should do the same. This is a stone's throw away from directly propagating your creed that people who don't speak for the PK community should not say that they do. Even if he sometimes speaks as he's speaking for the community, you have to filter this with his direct statements that he strictly doesn't.
You just haven't studied him well enough if you say he's not in touch with the philosophical elements of parkour. Describing the Art of Motion as being 25 individual tournaments pitting person against environment as opposed to 25 people competing against each other, and stating that people who ask who the best at PK is don't understand what PK is all about, both show deep core knowledge of the passage in the PK article speaking against competition. Not just a surface knowledge, an elite knowledge, applying PK principles in debate in the way of a thesis. Again, it applies these basic LeCorre quotes:
"Competition pushes people to fight against others for the satisfaction of a crowd...."
"Those who truly practice Parkour have the same mind aspect of each other..."
You may not agree with Doyle that the AOM embodies strong PK components, but his arguments that looking at the event in terms of each individual exploring the environment rather than anybody competing against each other, apply elite knowledge of parkour. If Doyle thought PK was all about competition, then his passion for being a part of a united global community and seeing people utilize parkour as a springboard for the bettering of the human condition, would have to be nonexistent, not prominent and fundamental to what he does, that is, these opinions are the epitome of the following quote/philosophy, the inverse of being opposed to it or ignorant of its meaning:
"...ultimately leading one giant community working and growing together"
As to financial motivations applied to an individual, how could anybody hold down a full-time career completely for free? They'd literally starve to death, it's 100% physiologically impossible to survive without food. It's just not fair to say that everybody who works full-time in a field can't be trusted because they get paid for what they do. You'd have to personally audit Doyle's fianances/budget and decide whether he spends excess money that he doesn't need for rent, food, and water, to claim he's overly financially motivated to promote parkour the way he does, and you'd have to quantify how promoting PK the way he does results in more cash in his wallet to begin with... Squish7 (talk) 19:23, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Freerunning is similar to Parkour. It has essentially the same philosophy. The only difference is that Freerunning also includes the applications of that philosophy in areas outside of moving past obstacles. Parkour practitioners also apply the ideas in other areas, they just label it differently. Freerunning and Parkour are essentially two ways of thinking about the same ideas. Given this, they are definitely close enough to make explaining Freerunning in terms of Parkour a valid system, so Freerunning could change its name to (prefix)Parkour without being misleading.
However, it's worth noting that what the world calls freerunning is different from what Freerunning actually is. The world labels any sort of acrobatics performed in an urban environment as freerunning, and that is not close enough to Parkour to truly warrant describing it as a form of Parkour. What Ryan refers to as his way is more broad, even, than freerunning, because with a lot of what he does self-development isn't part of the goal. There are parts of what he does that you could label as a form of Parkour, but also parts that you can't, but given that Ryan labels it all as part of his Way you can't label his Way in terms of Parkour. You could say that he does (for example) RyanParkour and RyanPlay, but it would be misleading to try and describe everything that he does as part of his way as a version of Parkour.
The anti-competition stance is probably the most widely publicised aspect of Parkour philosophy, so being aware of its existence is not any kind of indicator of philosophical understanding. All it shows is that he's read the Wikipedia article at some point. For someone to be considered an expert in the philosophy of Parkour they need to show that they have a clear understanding of the foundation of Parkour philosophy, and are able to explain clearly how each of the individual elements of the philosophy stem directly from it. They need to be able to present the central philosophy of a person who continues on their way and lets nothing stop them, and not just anti-competition but all of the surrounding philosophical aspects, i.e. that there is always a way forwards, the philosophy of taking action, the philosophy of injury, the choice of path, the nature of training as an individual, views on equipment and aids, motivation, finishing Parkour etc. etc. All Ryan's done is explain one reason, out of several, that Parkour isn't competitive. The simple fact that he takes part in competitions indicates that either his understanding of how competition relates to Parkour is not complete, or else that he just doesn't care to follow the philosophy of Parkour. Either shows he's not an expert.
I agree that modern society makes it difficult for anyone to do anything without money being attached to it. That doesn't change the fact that attaching money to something changes people's motivations. Whether you trust a person in that situation is entirely down to you, but there is good reason to question their judgement. Feraess (talk) 08:33, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think you let your detest of people making parkour into things you don't see it as, blind you to the elements of their lives and philosophies that do line up with precisely what you hold parkour to be. Eclectic people like Ryan who come from a mix of arts/disciplines and their own creativity and exploration naturally are going to exhibit elements of each in proportions. What is wrong with saying Ryan is a traceur in the way someone can be a juggler, pianist, physicist, and entrepreneur all at the same time? He passes some of your conditions with flying colors, e.g. overcoming a leg break with extraordinary effort (showing moving past obstacles and letting nothing stop you, etc). It's really a shot in the dark to say he must be speaking about XYZ because he read about it or knew about it, not because he experienced it or thought it up himself. His reasoning that a competition is actually a series of individual tournaments pitting athlete against environment rather than each other, is fresh and original.
I'm baffled at this idea you have that a concept should be officially defined by some particular reference rather than the general/global community. It's self-defeating to say that what everybody calls XYZ is not actually XYZ. If you say that, you're almost wrong intrinsically just by your logic. You can have a strong historical or professional reference such as a great leader or thinker who defined XYZ a certain way and influenced a field or significant group of people, but you can't grant their ideas exclusivity for the duration of the lifespan of the human race. I mean what else is there than the world? Aliens? Animals? What the world calls something is by pure definition encyclopedic content for a world encyclopedia. Squish7 (talk) 03:40, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Here is a quote I found on Wikiquote:
"One of the main points of the philosophy behind parkour is being able to help people... To teach them they way themselves, to gain confidence in themselves, building up from simple moves to more complex things, to teach them that they are worthwhile people." - Chris Hayes-Kossmann
Is this something you agree with? If so you're sadly unversed in what Ryan does and what he's about. Squish7 (talk) 04:00, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're missing the point. It doesn't matter that some people share some of the traits of the discipline. The point is that they have to share all of them to be accurately labelled as a practitioner. Even if you're red and spherical, you're still not necessarily an apple.
Of course you can be many different things at the same time. You can be a Parkour practitioner and an acrobat and juggler and lots of other things all at the same time. Doing one thing doesn't completely prevent you from doing other things as well. However in order for all of those labels to be correct you have to actually do all of those things.
Overcoming a leg break is not the same thing as moving past an obstacle. It might require a similar positive attitude, but it does not involve literally moving yourself from one physical location to another past an obstacle. You cannot say that everyone who's faced difficulties is a Parkour practitioner. Parkour involves more than that.
Ryan stating that the discipline isn't competitive, and then stating that practitioners compete against the environment, indicates that his views are not well formed. If you're competing against something then you're being competitive. In this, as in many things, he contradicts himself. Myself, I think that's a clear indicator that he's new to these ideas and that he doesn't have the full understanding yet.
Ideas and objects exist separately from the words which describe them. We know this because different languages use different words for the same things. The rules you describe about being defined by the majority view apply only to the words, not to the objects or ideas those words describe. The definition of a word changes depending on common usage, but objects and ideas do not change. For example, even though Pluto is now labelled as a dwarf planet rather than a planet, even though how we think of it has changed, Pluto itself hasn't changed at all and is still the same as it always was. Even if somehow everyone on the planet was convinced that hammers could fly under their own power, that wouldn't mean that they could. This is just the nature of language. Human thought and communication doesn't determine the nature of the world around us.
I agree that one of the main ideas of Parkour is to be useful. There are, of course, other ideas that are just as vital (if not more so). Also, this idea isn't actually limited to just helping others.
It looks to me as though what you're trying to say is that since Ryan tries to help others he's a Parkour practitioner, but that idea is ridiculous. If it were true then it would mean that everyone who helps someone else is a Parkour practitioner, including Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Flipper the dolphin and any number of pet dogs. I refer you back to the start of this comment, where I said that you need all of the components. Feraess (talk) 08:28, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're tearing apart my specific examples and points saying they don't create a whole picture. This makes it impossible to make a case for anybody that someone's a PK practitioner, short of auditing their every waking moment from birth. One of the main aspects of parkour is that it's non-competitive, so I explain some of Ryan's notions on this matter, and you say well everybody knows its non-competitive, so his views are nullified. This would hence also nullify anyone at all who's stated PK is non-competitive. I reference someone saying one of the "main points" of parkour is to help people in a specific way, you say well that's only one part of parkour. How could you possibly argue someone to be a traceur if you have to fulfill an infinite series of conditions to meet your judging criteria?
You're castrating the quote above without any cause, to make it sound ridiculous. Pet dogs don't help teach people to think for themselves, to gain self-confidence, to "build up from simple moves to more complex things", etc. The quote isn't about just "helping people", it relays an entire specific method of helping people and mindset behind it, which Ryan passes in this case with flying colors.
Different things can have the same name, but if you want to reference one of them when they're being discussed in the same context, adjectives should be applied evenly and clearly to distinguish. You can't say "What the world calls XYZ is not XYZ" in which two instances of XYZ are under serious scrutiny. You have to say "...is not what I call XYZ", or "is not John Doe XYZ", etc. You can even coin a rhetorical adjective if you want like "actual" or "original" or "classic". Language allows you to apply a rhetorical adjective whenever you like, especially when it's context clearer. Your absolution of holding that one term is so dominant from another that it should not even be distinguished clearly when discussing it, is over the limit.
The first line of the freerunning article shows this bias of yours.
Freerunning (or free running) is a discipline created by Sebastien Foucan.
You can't admit that the world has something they call freerunning, and then say that person X also calls their idea this word so the world's definition doesn't matter. Even if we could define FR to be purely Foucan's brainchild (ie if everybody agreed on this), it still wouldn't be prudent to list who created it in the first sentence, then have the 2nd sentence define what it actually is. Foucan himself said that "Nobody ever invented parkour, it's always been here", declaring that the quantification of a naturally occurring idea shouldn't override the intrinsic prominence of the idea itself. This would also apply to freerunning. Squish7 (talk) 19:50, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There isn't an infinite series of conditions you have to meet to be a Parkour practitioner. There is just one, you just have to practise Parkour. You have to try and move yourself past the obstacles in your environment for the purpose of freeing yourself from all of the limits imposed on you. If you do that, then you're a Parkour practitioner. If you don't, then you are not.
If you spend a long time practising Parkour then it has an effect on you as a person and you start to exhibit all of the traits of the discipline. Judging based on traits exhibited is not a good system for judging whether someone is a practitioner in the first place though, because you can acquire similar traits from other activities. A person probably won't acquire the exact same combination of traits from other activities, because doing different things has different results, but they can appear similar enough to make it very difficult to tell the difference.
Ryan doesn't practise Parkour, so he doesn't meet the basic criteria for being a practitioner. He does exhibit some traits that are associated with the discipline, but doesn't exhibit the same combination of traits that Parkour practitioners do. This fits in precisely with what we'd expect from someone who practised something different, and doesn't fit in with what we'd expect from someone who did practise Parkour.
I agree that helping people think for themselves is different from just helping people. I'm not sure that the quote you used speaks to this directly, but there's a problem with the sentence structure in the quote as it stands so maybe the intent was there. If I missed your point I'm sorry. I don't agree that Ryan is good at helping people think for themselves though. He states that people should think for themselves, but that's not the same thing.
Where a name is used to label multiple things, it is not necessary to apply adjectives to every usage. For example, although there is a New England, the original is still called England and not 'Original England' or 'Old England'. If you create something new then it is generally your responsibility to distinguish it from what exists already. It's just arrogant and selfish to try and force other people to change just to suit you.
A Wikipedia article on one use of a name does not need to refer to all other uses of that name. Based on reliable sources, the name Freerunning primarily refers to the discipline started by Sebastien Foucan, and Parkour primarily refers to the discipline created by David Belle. If we want to add other meanings for those words to Wikipedia then they need separate articles accessed via a disambiguation page. However, I don't think there are a sufficient number of reliable sources to demonstrate notability of the alternate views. Put simply, there just isn't the evidence to support the view that using the words differently isn't just an error.
If you think the sentence order in the Freerunning article needs changing then change it. I don't mind which order the sentences appear in. I'm not an expert on Wikipedia formatting, I'm just trying to ensure articles contain accurate information. For me, that was the easiest way of explaining things, but it doesn't mean it was the best. Maybe there is a more accurate word to use than 'created'. Sebastien says variously that he 'founded' or 'developed' Freerunning. He doesn't like to claim ownership, partly because it doesn't tie in well with the idea of freedom, but also because the central idea of the discipline is to take everything that is useful from what exists already. He is clearly the person who defined the overall concept though, so deserves mention for that.
Sebastien has said that nobody 'invented' Parkour, but he did so as part of an explanation about how the training methods are based on naturally occurring challenges. The idea of getting stronger by moving past obstacles in your environment isn't an idea that was 'invented', it's just something that happens naturally, like the birds and trees. This doesn't interfere with the idea that a discipline was created to harness this principle though. You just have to be careful to distinguish between the discipline and the ideas it contains. Sebastien has not always been clear on this, especially when he was still in the process of formulating his ideas (which is when the quote about nobody inventing Parkour comes from), but the separation exists. Feraess (talk) 10:26, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There may not be enough information to warrant complete offiical encyclopedic endorsement of newer uses of PK/FR, but procrastinating the terminology of what we're going to call these things until/if they meet WP's personal standards, doesn't make any sense. You might as well say we can't even discuss people who aren 't already featured in WP, because nobody on Earth should be called their legal name, or any name, until they've done enough in the world to warrant being in WP. You might as well say we can't even talk about any artwork, invention, company, or organization, that's not listed in WP, until they're listed in WP. To even discuss these things, we'd have to use logically absurd modifiers every time like "The person we're thinking about listing in WP who cannot be named until such time as we determine eligibility, has a new article in XYZ newspaper". Your logic makes it impossible to even have a discussion on the matter.
Let's say 99,000 people practice something they call freerunning, and 1,000 people have something they also call freerunning, but only the latter is documented well by newspapers (this is your math in saying 99% of what the world calls FR is not FR). You think not only should the references allow the 1,000 people to officially title their thing, but this is so much so that they demand no one in the world even mention all the other people because their title for their discipline hasn't become prominent enough through their personal standards. I'm right almost intrinsically, here. You used the modifier "that which the world calls" to refer to this 99%, yet also used "dissenting" when it was more efficient than saying "that which the world calls" every single time you refer to this thing "that the world calls". It's intrinsically linguistically absurd to demand nobody call anything anything without proper encyclopedic references. In endless scenarios, the modifiers "New" and "Old" are both utilized to distinguish ambiguity, or "Eastern" and "Western" city/state/etc. You're hand-picking a scenario that fits your argument. Squish7 (talk) 18:23, 17 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand what point you're trying to make in your first paragraph. We can't put stuff in a Wikipedia article until it meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, but we can discuss whatever we want elsewhere.
If there are enough people that use the word 'freerunning' to describe something other than Sebastien's discipline then the word will acquire an additional meaning. Maybe this has already happened (although in my experience it's closer to 99,000 different definitions of freerunning than it is to 99,000 people agreeing on one). If the word does start to represent more than one meaning, then we'll need to add other words to avoid confusion. My point is simply that it's not good to force other people to change just for your own convenience. It can happen, but it's not good. Trying to get the original practitioners of a discipline to change the words they use, just because other people want to steal the name, is simply rude. Numbers don't define right and wrong, they just make it easier to use bullying tactics.
What you're suggesting is that existing freerunners should give into the newcomers because the newcomers are too selfish to give in themselves. It might be true, but it's not a good thing. Feraess (talk) 13:02, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Let me put it this way. I'm writing a screenplay about PK/FR that I hope will help put people more on the same page. Given that there are two major warring groups on the term "parkour", what kind of suggestion do you think will help please everybody? E.g., I'm toying with the term "frip" as a nickname for general "freerunning and/or parkour" as a solution to unite the entire huge thing under one term. ("Let's go frip" / "Frip is fun" / "I'm a hardcore frip[per]" / etc)...

See, one thing you really have to consider at this point is that the past has only so much weight on the present and future. I came to understand parkour through Doyle, so to me, "parkour" is largely what he's taught me it is. I can't go back and change my perception because I later discovered there are people who don't want it used that way at all. If you disagree with his teaching methods or interpretations, it's too late for me, because I didn't have a choice in the matter. Similarly, thousands of kids are now growing up with what your thieves are telling them is "parkour". Once that damage is done (your view), it's too late for everybody. You can't go back in time and change everybody's perception. You now have a nation of people who call themselves traceurs who committed none of your named sins, yet aren't going to re-program their teachings.

What that leaves is a whole lot of innocent people who have to deal with the aftermath of the scenario, for instance, everybody who will be taught at the new new Airborn Academy, which Ryan's calling the largest indoor PK/FR training center in the UK (or will soon become it as it's still under construction). These unsuspecting people will be taught what parkour is, then run into people with your philosophy and be told "Oh you were mistaught, that's not parkour at all", and they'll just go, well, whatever, that's what it is to me...

Given this end scenario, does it not make sense to categorize your sense of parkour with terminology thus that it can at least be referred to in conversation without causing confusion to people. Like it or not, your sense of "parkour" is not making the cut as the general global collective use of the term. You just have to take a back burner seat and modify your term with something that makes intuitive sense and is appealing to you. Long story short, somebody else with your first name moved into town--rudely or not--but now innocent people have to deal with two of the same name. The only solution is to create a nickname for one or both of you, or for you to use last names.

I'm trying very hard to give respect to your strict discipline and represent it in my writing, but your absolute refusal to choose a last name so to speak, makes me less likely to even tell people about your understanding of parkour, as I can't even refer to it in conversation! I know very little PK/FR physically, but let's just say I'm decently skilled, and a skateboarder rolls by for 20 seconds on the street and asks me, "What's that??" I can't throw them the URL to this talk page so that they can have a thorough, balanced answer and awareness of the term "parkour". I might have the time to tell them there are two divisions of "parkour", but it's a lot harder if there's no name I can call either of them. And then I can't even relate your sense of parkour without continuously confusing the skateboarder.

At Airborn, they're going to teach what "parkour" is. They may not have a history lesson of the derivation and evolution of the term. That there is another sense of parkour can't even be spoken unless it's called something. Your community can have a say in what you're called if you pick and promote a modifier like "core", "original", "strict", "orthodox", "basic", "fundamental", "prime", "primary", etc etc etc... If you choose, people are more likely to respect your term, otherwise--if they even bother at all to even recognize your division--they'll just pick whatever the hell they want. Squish7 (talk) 07:25, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think you should forget about trying to please everyone. It won't happen, because you cannot reconcile the views of everyone. It is not possible for everyone involved to be correct.
There's no need to try and unite Parkour and freerunning. They are already united, Parkour has the same ideas as freerunning just with a different slightly different approach. It's essentially one community. Ryan is part of a different community. He's part of the community of people who try fun stuff, who never look beyond fun for a reason to do something. I don't think it would be worthwhile to try and group people like Ryan together with Parkour practitioners. There's not enough in common. Most of what Ryan does is neither Parkour nor freerunning, and in fact contradicts the basic ideas of Parkour. Parkour practitioners don't want to be lumped into the same category as people like Ryan.
Yes, there are a lot of people with incorrect ideas about Parkour. It doesn't matter though, because if you dedicate time to something then you learn more about it. People will only remain ill-informed until they try and find out more about it. There's enough correct information out there for people to find if they look for it. It's just a natural method of selection. If people aren't really interested in it then they'll only see the first piece of nonsense they come across. If they are interested in it, they'll find the correct information. That's how it works with everything.
People only get taught nonsense for a very short period of time. Airborn won't teach any ideas about Parkour, they'll just teach the idea that Parkour has no specific ideas. Anyone that goes to one of Ryan's classes that is interested enough in Parkour to try and learn about it will quickly realise that he doesn't have the first clue about Parkour, simply from his inability to string a sentence together about it. If you don't know enough about Parkour to get the basic definition correct then you simply can't run a series of classes on it. Either the coach will find themselves unable to teach, or the students will find themselves unable to learn. Either way, things will stop.
There's not much you can do when confronted with someone who understands a subject better than you other than accept their views. People who understand Parkour can answer many questions and solve many training issues that people like Ryan simply cannot. Having a good understanding simply makes things work better, and so people will choose that every time when they are given a choice. To practise Parkour you have to practise it well. Otherwise you find a problem in training you can't get past, and your training has to stop there. Parkour is self-selective, only the people that practise it well continue. There might be a lot of idiots around now, but in 15 or 20 years time people like Ryan will be gone and only the proper practitioners will be left. There'll be new idiots in the future I'm sure, but the idiots will not improve and the proper practitioners will never stop getting better. Parkour will become clearer with time.
There aren't two divisions of Parkour, there are just people that understand it and people who don't. I'm sorry that you've been misled in the past, but now you have access to better information and you have the opportunity to learn more and get a better understanding if you want to. If your interest is mainly for the purposes of writing rather than actually practising it then I understand if you feel the need to include the populist view. Anyone that's selling something wants the biggest market to sell stuff to. However you'll never be able to get Parkour practitioners on your side by insulting them. If you group Parkour practitioners in with people like Ryan then people like Ryan (that don't know the difference) may welcome you, but Parkour practitioners will either ignore or ridicule you. Parkour has nothing to gain from associating with people who have conflicting views.
If you want a few quick sentences for explanations then I can provide you with them. What is Parkour? It's a training discipline based on the idea of trying to get past obstacles. What does Ryan do? Whatever he enjoys, and at the moment he enjoys acrobatics in urban environments (sometimes it's acro, sometimes it's dance). Are they related? Only in that they both involve people doing what they want to do. Do they have similar effects? There is a little bit of physical development crossover, but their overall effect on an individual is very different.
My community is the Parkour community. If a person doesn't have a good understanding of Parkour then, in short, they're part of the 'wannabe' community. The only thing my community has, or values, is strength of character and conviction. Whatever obstacles the world puts in our path, we'll get past them all. We always do. We never give up, we will always progress. By definition. Feraess (talk) 21:41, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Look, if I'm a Catholic and I think Baptists are wrong about their teachings, I have the right to that belief, but it would be absurd to say they can't even call themselves anything, that they're so wrong they shouldn't even be talked about or mentioned in conversation. There are just far too many people with dissenting views from yours to say they're all so wrong that in the 2 decades it may take to convince them otherwise, they can't even call themselves anything.
You can say "The way I/we see parkour is the way that will eventually dominate all other belief systems", but you can't say someone can't even try to establish their own system, that everyone--including 10,000 innocent people in the middle like me who are trying to understand everything and come to terms with the whole big scenario--should trust your 15-20 year prediction and not even theorize about the scenario your view doesn't pan out long term.
For anything in the universe, I can create something that's sorta like that thing and call my thing "The Squish (thing)" or "XYZ (thing)". If I go train/breed fish to swim more efficiently, I can say I'm calling this "Fish Parkour". You can say that by definition parkour can't apply to fish, but you're creating a paradox in begging the intrinsic structure of modification. Your view that parkour can't apply to fish is already built into the mechanism of modifying the thing that you say can't be modified. You can't say:
1. parkour is defined as a system which can't be related to fish
2. parkour involves efficiency
3. parkour involves overcoming obstacles
4. parkour is a personal thing
--and then tell me that I can't modify your system to disinclude item 1 and apply the rest to fish. By absolute intrinsic default, I am functionally correct to call my thing that has something to do with your thing, "a different version of (your thing)". As long as "Fish Parkour" isn't a brand of vaccum cleaner for which I don't even try to present an argument that it relates parkour/fish, then I'm right by the very letter and spirit of language itself, to modify in this way. You don't have to like it or endorse it, of course! But you don't control language itself.
Even if I am building vacuum cleaners, I can still trademark my product as "Fish Parkour", and I can still name my pet dog or first child "Fish Parkour", assuming you don't have a firmly registered trademark and that I'm not trying to engage in illicit identity theft, even if I'm being an asshole to you and could easily call my thing something else. Now if your friend buys one of my vacuums and uses it for 5 years, you can't say that's not a "Fish Parkour" vacuum, because it is, and to boot they have a perception of it as a "Fish Parkour" vacuum.
If Ryan Doyle was the one and only person on Earth using the term "parkour" in a way that nobody else on Earth agreed with, he can still call it "Ryan parkour" or "Dolekour" or "New Parkour" or "Ultra Parkour". You can say "there's nothing ultra or parkour about 'Ultra Parkour' ", but you have to use the name "Ultra Parkour" to refer to thing which Ryan Doyle has named.
Now take that Ryan isn't singled out, that he's part of a group so massive that you're predicting on the scale of decades how long it's going to take to change their minds, actions, projects, and teachings, and purify your term. We now have two sides that should be referred to. You can even suggest "Deviant Parkour" or "Idiot Parkour" or "Poorly taught parkour" to negate the term within the title, but you just can't force people who want to refer to the giant body of people trying to call their thing parkour, "the huge group of people who are trying to create a version of parkour that's not 100% in line with the (original/core/actual/real) version of parkour".
I'll give you a great tell of how absurd it would be to hold to one side so strictly. David Belle endorses a line of bright flashy clothing (Take Flight Apparel) that yell "PARKOUR" in huge letters. If your discipline is so orthodox/pure that nobody should be allowed to interpret the core/strict/orthodox/foundational definitions in any way other than to fulfil every single one of your rules of what parkour is including "nobody else can call anything else parkour", then how can the founder endorse: 1. showing off, 2. for-profit product marketing.
I suppose you can say that the founder of parkour has sold out and lost touch with his own idea, but the clothing line is such a blow to your purist notions that you can't say nobody can interpret the term in any sense but the way you personally say. The world, 7 billion people, is too large to demand that a word not strictly trademarked internationally by a dominant global entity be insurmountably defined by a particular group of people, even if you comprise the simple majority, and even if you're going to win out in the future. This is why it's smart and reasonable of someone now running the biggest indoor PK/FR training facility in the UK to encourage people to think for themselves, especially since your version of parkour actually includes as part of its very definition that you can't define it. To hold to a purist or any particular view violates that condition and makes your strictness hypocritical. Squish7 (talk) 05:41, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
FYI, I enjoy interacting with you and appreciate all the information you've offered me. I've learned a lot, and while you haven't reversed any of my notions, you've strongly influenced my way of thinking about parkour and freerunning. I suspect other people you interact with in the future in this manner may be grateful in this way. A good and productive debate is often isomorphic with hostility. Squish7 (talk) 08:00, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about the delay in getting back to you. I've been quite busy with other things and haven't had enough time until now to reply properly.
There is a good argument to support the idea that using the word 'parkour' to describe what Ryan does is a linguistically-valid use of the word. Lots of people use the word in that way, and that's enough to be valid by the rules of language. That's fine, I'm not arguing that it (using the word 'parkour' to describe new things) breaks the rules of language. I'm just saying that it is a stupid idea. Parkour is not similar enough to this other activity (which already has lots of names, urban acrobatics, gymnastics, tricking, breakdancing, freerunning etc.) to make it worthwhile to describe this other activity in terms of Parkour. It's far quicker, and easier to understand, to describe actions like Ryan's in terms of acrobatics. This activity he does, this thing often gets mislabelled as parkour, is literally just acrobatics. It is not Parkour, it has not been adapted from Parkour, it is not a progression on from Parkour, it is not a form of Parkour. It has simply been mislabelled as Parkour. That is its only connection to Parkour. It might look similar if you're not paying much attention, but there's no actual connection.
Ultimately it's not a linguistic issue, it's an educational issue. It's not a question of people using the same word to mean different things. People who refer to urban acrobatics as Parkour think that they are doing the same thing as actual Parkour practitioners. They know what the word 'Parkour' refers to, they just don't understand much about it.
The issue is not names. The issue is people trying to do stuff without sufficient information/understanding. Changing the name of the discipline of Parkour wouldn't affect the problem. If all Parkour practitioners were to change the name of their discipline today, then tomorrow you'd have the same situation just with another name. There would be 15,000 youtube videos of people doing flips and calling it 'pure parkour'. The only solution is to stick with a consistent message long enough for it to sink in.
I don't understand your point about David Belle and showing off/selling clothing. He's never said either are part of Parkour, and there's no rule of Parkour that practitioners cannot do other things. Each person follows their own path. Another person might make different choices but you have to choose what you think is best. Ultimately, if something seems like the best way forward to you then it is not inconsistent with Parkour. That doesn't mean that it IS Parkour, just that it doesn't contradict it.
At no point have I ever said that you can't define any part of Parkour. That's what Ryan says, not me. I'm happy to try and define and explain every single bit of it. If someone says that something can't be explained then to me that's a big indicator that they don't know what they're talking about.
I don't try and force anyone to do anything, I just suggest what I think is the best course of action. Everyone's free to do whatever they want, but I think that ultimately the global understanding Parkour will improve. Given that the only alternative view is that Parkour is something that can't be defined, which is essentially a non-stance, I don't think there'll be much conflict.
I'm glad you've found this discussion useful. Not everyone appreciates that there's more to discussion than trying to change the other party's mind. Feraess (talk) 08:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still trying to wrap my brain on what you think parkour is. The WP article is simple and aligns with everything else I've read/heard, that parkour is the discipline of traversing the distance form A to B in the most efficient manner possible. This Doyle has mastered. Taking detours is simply an extension of the technique, i.e. to choose a point B, and then get to that point efficiently. Even if you discard the creativity, he still has the basic parkour skills, even the application to life and philosophy, making efficient choices.
The WP article even says PK involves "seeing one's environment in a new way, and imagining the potentialities". This is something Doyle is one of the best on the planet at--bringing to mind mental geometry (all possible point Bs) to navigate the environment efficiently.
He's elite at this because of (my theory) his partial blindness. Because he can't see well, he's learned to calculate and bring to mind what is where. Once the mental geometry is in mind, he's executing the environment navigation aspect of parkour. What in the WP article particularly does not apply to Ryan? Or do you disagree with information in the article?
I'm baffled you can discard Belle's approval of flashy PK apparel when you criticize Ryan for being monetarily attached to PK/FR. Belle's promotion of a strictly profit endeavor puts a serious dent in a lot of your logic against financial gain. I do appreciate the nature of your opinion, but it seems to apply less and less to the consensus here and in the community of what parkour is.
I do recognize value in what you say about urban acrobatics, The new Airborn Academy is adopting the phrase "urban sports training center" to apply to it in general (it now even includes cheerleading). Obviously "sports" doesn't mean playing hockey or soccer in the streets, so "acrobatics" may be a tolerable synonym.
Let me know if you have any opinions about the new academy.. Ryan's latest videos are a series about its construction: youtube.com/ryandoyle/videos Squish7 (talk) 21:51, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback

Hello, Feraess. You have new messages at Talk:History_of_the_Falkland_Islands.
Message added 12:45, 9 August 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Thanks for your input :) Langus (t) 12:45, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Edits to parkour article

Hi! I noticed the recent changes you made to the parkour article. I wanted to discuss whether or not the word parkour should actually be capitalized. I myself have been confused about this very thing in the past, because I have seen it written both ways, sometimes even in scholarly sources. But from Merriam-Webster ([[1]]) and Dictionary.com ([[2]]), there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the word parkour is a proper noun or that it is ever capitalized. What is your opinion on this? Do you think the edits should be left as they are, or do you think they should be changed back? Thank you for your time. Sincerely, 108.95.130.150 (talk) 17:44, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I made the original argument on the talk page, in the state of the article section. The article as it stands treats the word 'Parkour' very clearly as the name of a single, specific discipline. If that is correct (and it is) then it should be capitalised as it is clearly a proper noun. There's nothing more that needs to be said. We don't need sources that say it should be capitalised, it is just obviously a proper noun.
The definition that Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com give for the word is not the same thing as the subject of this article. Neither of those sources are based on reliable information, and should not be considered as reliable themselves. The standard of scholarly sources about Parkour is in the main very low, because they tend to refer to practitioners who themselves have only a very superficial understanding of the discipline. Finding good information for the Parkour article is harder than for most articles. Feraess (talk) 18:55, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Responding to me

If you'd like to continue our debate above, please ping me any time you add a response by putting [[User:Squish7|Squish7]] in the code. I barely know how to use the watch page functions it confuses me. No pressure to respond, just if you like. I often respond instantly to such things, so in order not to keep a 24/7 debate going, it's usually the other person's job to take long breaks! Please do this also if you respond directly to me on other pages or want to summon me. Thanks! Squish7 (talk) 09:59, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Songs

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Songs. Legobot (talk) 00:05, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Bond girl

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Bond girl. Legobot (talk) 00:08, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:New Kadampa Tradition

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:New Kadampa Tradition. Legobot (talk) 00:10, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking. Legobot (talk) 00:07, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Palestinian stone-throwing

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Palestinian stone-throwing. Legobot (talk) 00:15, 12 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Black Cat (comics)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Black Cat (comics). Legobot (talk) 00:08, 16 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Mark Ghuneim

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Mark Ghuneim. Legobot (talk) 00:10, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. Legobot (talk) 00:09, 24 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:48, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

Yapperbot (talk) 09:34, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You've been unsubscribed from the Feedback Request Service

Hi Feraess! You're receiving this notification because you were previously subscribed to the Feedback Request Service, but you haven't made any edits to the English Wikipedia in over three years.

In order to declutter the Feedback Request Service list, and to produce a greater chance of active users being randomly selected to receive invitations to contribute, you've been unsubscribed, along with all other users who have made no edits in three years or more.

You do not need to do anything about this - if you are happy to not receive Feedback Request Service messages, thank you very much for your contributions in the past, and this will be the last you hear from the service. If, however, you would like to resubscribe yourself, you can follow the below instructions to do so:

  1. Go to the Feedback Request Service page.
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  3. Paste {{Frs user|{{subst:currentuser}}|limit}} underneath the relevant heading(s), where limit is the maximum number of requests you wish to receive for that category per month.
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If you've just come back after a wikibreak and are seeing this message, welcome back! You can follow the above instructions to re-activate your subscription. Likewise, if this is an alternate account, please consider subscribing your main account in much the same way.

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If you have any questions, please feel free to ask on the Feedback Request Service talk page, or on the Feedback Request Service bot's operator's talk page. Thank you! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:26, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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