Cirt's Scientology edits - January 2011 Options

[carbuncle]

I accept that there has been significant criticism relating to my editing of certain pages relating to Scientology. I will do my best to take this criticism on-board, and adjust my future actions accordingly. To begin towards that process, I have gone ahead and removed 66 Scientology-related BLP pages from my watchlist. I am going to shift my focus away from this topic of Scientology in general, and of BLPs within this topic in particular.

Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 01:33, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: As stated here diff, I am going to avoid editing within the topic of Scientology, unless directly related to prior GA and FA projects. -- Cirt (talk) 01:52, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I am intending to do a monthly thread here about Cirt's Scientology edits, because I would like to help them kick their nasty habit. Cirt, I don't say this in a mean way, but when you edit articles related to Scientology, it makes your fingers and breath smell like Scientology. And no one wants to kiss someone whose breath smells like Scientology.

Cirt managed to get into an edit war over reducing the overly long and repetitive lede to List of people who accepted Golden Raspberry Awards. When their opponent refused to be bullied, Cirt capitulated. There is currently a thread at ANI about Cirt's creation of an edit notice on the related Golden Raspberry Award. Edit notices are displayed when editing an article and can only be created by admins, so Cirt doing this while involved in a dispute looks like a typically petty abuse of admin rights. Scientology connection: Battlefield Earth, a movie based on the L Ron Hubbard book and starring a gaggle of Scientologists.

Cirt created Beyond the First Amendment. Scientology connection:To quote from WP's Operation Clambake article: In Beyond the First Amendment: The Politics of Free Speech and Pluralism, author Samuel Peter Nelson raises the question: "Why should a private actor (Church of Scientology) in the United States have the power to restrict the speech of a Dutch citizen publishing in the Netherlands whose speech is protected by Dutch law?"

I don't think it will be very long before an intervention is required.

This post has been edited by carbuncle:

[carbuncle]

A new article from Cirt: The Best American Magazine Writing 2007. No mention of Scientology in the article, which is odd considering what Cirt refers to as "an investigative journalism article for Rolling Stone by Janet Reitman" is entitled "Inside Scientology".

[HRIP7]

A new article from Cirt: The Best American Magazine Writing 2007. No mention of Scientology in the article, which is odd considering what Cirt refers to as "an investigative journalism article for Rolling Stone by Janet Reitman" is entitled "Inside Scientology".

There is also Net.wars (T-H-L-K-D), currently at DYK, as usual. The article doesn't mention Scientology, but it's a major part of the story.

Still, Wikipedians may well say, What is the problem with having someone create a well-written article on a book they like? Isn't that how everyone is operating?

[carbuncle]

A new article from Cirt: The Best American Magazine Writing 2007. No mention of Scientology in the article, which is odd considering what Cirt refers to as "an investigative journalism article for Rolling Stone by Janet Reitman" is entitled "Inside Scientology".

There is also Net.wars (T-H-L-K-D), currently at DYK, as usual. The article doesn't mention Scientology, but it's a major part of the story.

Still, Wikipedians may well say, What is the problem with having someone create a well-written article on a book they like? Isn't that how everyone is operating?

Add to that the article Freedom of Expression (McLeod book), making three new articles in January on related sbject matter. So what is wrong with these articles, you ask? Taken in isolation, nothing. Looked at as part of the larger pattern of Cirt's editing, they are just more of the same anti-Scientology POV-pushing.

Each of the authors is actually strongly connected to Scientology, which is not surprising really since they are all writing about issues dealing with copyright and the internet. The CoS doesn't want people to be able to read its super secret documents, so they have been involved in several legal battles dealing with publication of those. Is this mentioned in any of the articles? Oddly, no. Do most articles about books, especially non-fiction books, have pictures of the authors? No, but these do.

Cirt has pledged to stay away from CoS-related editing, but these new articles exist on WP solely because of these authors' anti-CoS writing and Cirt's obsession.

[HRIP7]

Here's another two examples from this month.


1. Landmark Education

According to the New York Times, Terry Giles, the Chairman of Landmark Education (T-H-L-K-D), was recently appointed by a judge

"to temporarily take over King Inc., the corporation that controls Dr. [Martin Luther] King’s intellectual property and that was at the center of the familial dispute, and to restructure the King Center, the troubled nonprofit organization that houses some of the King archives."

The New York Times article says Giles managed to broker a peace deal between Dr. King's children, who had fallen out among themselves, adding that

"He also is chairman of Landmark Education, the company formerly known as EST, and says he uses its strategies in his work with families."

A couple of weeks ago an IP added this info to the Landmark Education article. The edit was promptly reverted by Cirt as "vandalism". (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/blink.gif)

The Scientology connection is that Landmark uses the intellectual property of Werner Erhard, who derived some of his EST methods from Scientology's communications course, and that Giles has also been Werner Erhard's lawyer.


2. Melton

Here Cirt argued the other day that a paper and book chapter by J. Gordon Melton is a biased and questionable source on Scientology.

• Melton is the author of "Melton's encyclopedia of American religions", a tome of 1386 pages published by Gale Cengage Learning, currently in its 8th edition.
• He is the author or editor of dozens of other academic books and reference works on religion.
• Melton writes the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Scientology.
• Melton's book on the Church of Scientology is required reading in dozens of university courses.
• Melton has been quoted hundreds of times as an expert on Scientology and other religious movements in the New York Times, by Associated Press (click on "Show more text" at the bottom of the page), USA Today, the Boston Globe etc. etc.

It's hard to find a more qualified source.

Cirt, on the other hand, cites the website of the International Cultic Studies Association in the discussion. They don't like Melton.

The ICSA is a privately funded anti-cult organisation which used to be known as the American Family Foundation.

Reformed EST and Hunger Project "cult" member Carol Giambalvo, mentioned in another thread on Cirt recently, is one of the ICSA's directors.

Cirt therefore argues, forcefully, that Melton is a biased and questionable source.

There is the Cirt and Wikipedia problem in a nutshell – according to Cirt, Wikipedia is supposed to follow the ICSA line. Most of the people on Wikipedia are clueless when it comes to assessing the real-world standing of a scholar vs. an anti-cult website. Nine times out of ten, an "admin" and "FA writer" like Cirt can pull the wool over their eyes.

This post has been edited by HRIP7:

[Jagärdu]

The ICSA is a privately funded anti-cult organisation which used to be known as the American Family Foundation.

Reformed EST and Hunger Project "cult" member Carol Giambalvo, mentioned in another thread on Cirt recently, is one of the ICSA's directors.

Cirt therefore argues, forcefully, that Melton is a biased and questionable source.

There is the Cirt and Wikipedia problem in a nutshell – according to Cirt, Wikipedia is supposed to follow the ICSA line. Most of the people on Wikipedia are clueless when it comes to assessing the real-world standing of a scholar vs. an anti-cult website. Nine times out of ten, an "admin" and "FA writer" like Cirt can pull the wool over their eyes.

The nutshell sounds about right. To be fair to the ICSA though, they have come quite a ways in credibility from their beginnings as the American Family Association, and their journal, Cultic Studies Review, is now indexed in academic databases like the ATLA Religion Database. That said, nothing published by the ICSA is in anyway, shape or form a credible source when it comes to criticizing well respected academics. As you say, however, most Wikipedians do not understand the differences between what is published by anti-cult groups and mainstream scholars when it comes to NRMs and cults. If Cirt had been operating in another area of interest, in the POV manner that he does, he would have been banned from Wikipedia a very long time ago.

This post has been edited by Jagärdu:

[Avirosa]

That said, nothing published by the ICSA is in anyway, shape or form a credible source when it comes to criticizing well respected academics.

"Well Respected Academic" = source that supports my POV

The ICSA and its journal are as valid a forum for the presentation of academic difference, controvery and debate, as any other special interest humanities grouping. If one is going to play the Wikipedia game on the basis of its rules that 'academic controverisies and differences' should be given appropriate weighting, then reference to fora where those controverisies and differences' are rehearsed is necessary. I can't see why that wouldn't include the ICSA.

Of course Wikipedia rules mean nothing but if the absurdity of the notion of "Well Respected Academic" were allowed to operate unchecked - then Wikipedia humanities articles would be based entirely on single paradigm populism. Cirt may be playing against some of the rules, but she/he appears to be a symptom of Wikipedia's crass inability to accommodate multiple perspectives and critical approaches. My guess is that whatever Cirt's motivation, Wikipedia is slightly more truthful because of her/his participation, though whether the split infinitive of 'truth' represents anythying worthwhile is another question.

A.virosa

This post has been edited by Avirosa: