Keith Raniere, Super Executive Coach or Cult Leader, take your pick! Options

[milowent]

i haven't fulled digested what the disputes going on regarding Keith Raniere and his cult-organization NXIVM are all about, but the talk pages are littered with the debates of non-regular wiki editors all with either (1) an axe to grind against this apparent upstate New York cult and its weirdo leader, or (2) likely cult members trying to insert stuff about him having the the highest IQ in the world (no joke) and being a teen judo champion. Crazy stuff.

A number of exposes have been written about Raniere in mainstream news organizations, e.g., New York Observer (2010) and a 2003 front cover story in Forbes among others, but they seem to get deleted and refactored out and then put back in, etc.

This post has been edited by milowent:

[EricBarbour]

Cults (and generally, minority religions) are poorly and inconsistently handled by Wikipedia.

I will quote my comments from a thread in the "private area":

Ever looked closely at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (T-H-L-K-D)? Lengthy, detailed, one of the oldest articles on en-wiki, and obviously being "sanctified" by church members. At the present time, that would include Richwales (T-C-L-K-R-D) , Eustress (T-C-L-K-R-D) , and a few others. As time dribbles by, the "Controversies" section expands and contracts.

Similar things happen to Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (T-H-L-K-D), but it doesn't enjoy quite the golden showers of righteousness that the primary Mormon church articles do. Folks like ARTEST4ECHO (T-C-L-K-R-D) and a few IP addresses "expand" the article to make it more "wikiality-ish", yet others reinsert the group's "legal problems". (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/rolleyes.gif)

Similar things happen to the articles about other Mormon sects listed here. No doubt because those groups tend to be "technology-ignorant".

Similar for the Unification Church, which counts an early Wikipedian (Ed Poor) as a member.

There's lots more, but I'll let you find it. Start here.
The presence of rabid anti-cult nerds on en-WP, like Will Beback and Cirt, doesn't help. I would have to say that the cult coverage is generally very poor in quality, and frequently biased.