Talk:Charles F. Haanel

rumor removed
I have removed the following: "It is rumored that Bill Gates, whilst he was attending Harvard, discovered a copy of The Master Key System. According to the rumour, Mr. Gates was so inspired by the tome that he dropped out of school and began his computer business career, which resulted in him being the wealthiest man in the world as the founder and owner of Microsoft. ."

Rumor does not constitute grounds for inclusion in Wikipedia. If someone can get a reliable source, such as an interview with Bill Gates, that confirms the rumor, the information can be restored.

Looks a lot better not.

It has been since been updated again. Hope the advert code can be removed.

Globalprofessor 02:36, 31 March 2007 (UTC)globalprofessorGlobalprofessor 02:36, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Attempted upgrade
This page contained a high level of redundncy and fragmentation. I have tried to integrate the material into a more coherent narrative and to remove duplicated links. Further comments and contributions are most welcome. cat yronwode Catherineyronwode 13:08, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Better sourcing on business career
I added some better sourcing on his business career, and restored the Napoleon Hill letter, whcih had been dropped, but which went a long way toward plcing his notability in full historical context. Funny how since the last time i had checked in the article had gone from 4.500 k to 1,200 k and was tagged for non-notability. It almost seems as if someone named User:hrafn has embarked upon a deletion campaign against early 20th century non-fiction authors. i saw the same sort of thing at the Wallace Wattles page recently. Hmmmm. Perhaps we have a one-track-mind editor on the prowl, someone who hates self-help, New Thought, and success authors of 100 to 50 years ago. Is that possible? If so, i wonder what could motivate such a person. Well, i fixed what i could and upgraded as i could. I'm always happy to help improve Wikipedia. The new citation standards are an exciting challenge to meet! Collegially, cat yronwode a.k.a. "64" 64.142.90.33 (talk) 08:50, 1 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I see you have complained about incivility on Hrafn's talk page. "One-track-mind editor" is far from civil, in addition to the bad faith you've shown here. And refusing to allow editors to post on your user talk page is not in the collaborative spirit of the wiki. Aunt Entropy (talk) 17:57, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Catherine's time-travelling crusade
In her latest piece of 'wikipedia policy doesn't apply to me' editing, Catherine has copied several paragraphs off SMILE BIG TODAY.com (a very reliable source, I'm sure) without attribution, and cited to a completely different source that was written in 1909, before many of the events the paragraphs narrates took place. Little things like WP:COPYVIO & WP:V don't matter if what you're introducing is the wP:TRUTH do that Catherine? HrafnTalkStalk 10:13, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

On closer examination, this material appears to have come from a derivative source, http://ptrx.multiply.com/photos/photo/22/9, which contains even more of Catherine's additions (which, wonder of wonders, are likewise generally not contained in her cited sources). HrafnTalkStalk 10:26, 1 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Your mistake. The information came from the book cited, not from the three or four web pages that also quoted from the same book. It was also previously on Wikipedia, from whence the other sites may well have copied it. I will now restore the material that you erroneously throught was a copyright violation, with a clearer explanation of its source, so that you can understand its provenance. catherine yronwode a.k.a. "64" 64.142.90.33 (talk) 21:04, 1 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Do not accuse your fellow editors of committing illegal acts. You have now gone past gratuitous personal insult and into libel and slander, impinging on my ability to secure employment as a freelance writer. This is intolerable and will be treated as such. catherine yronwode a.k.a. "64" 64.142.90.33 (talk) 22:25, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Not "from the book cited"
As this dif demonstrates, Catherine cited the statements "Hannel's great hit, The Master Key System, written in 1912, when he was 46 years old" & "The book was heavily promoted in the pages of Elizabeth Towne's New Thought magazine The Nautilus, and by 1933 it had sold over 200,000 copies worldwide." to ''

How could this therefore come "from the book cited" when it was written three and 24 years, respectively, before these events took place?


 * Well, obviously that cite was a paste-and-copy mistake. The data came from the haanel.com page. Thanks for finding it. I shall fix it. --cat yronwode a.k.a. "64" 64.142.90.33 (talk) 04:47, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Except that neither of these statements is found in that source either. Also, haanel.com probably isn't the most reliable of sources (anonymous authorship of much of the material and commercial rather than scholarly motivation). HrafnTalkStalk 06:08, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * You are corect; the "greatest hit" line is not at haanel.com -- it seems to have originated at Wikipedia, long ago. The date, however, needs no citation -- it is the publication date and that's that. Likewise, one needs no citation to do the math and figure out how old Haanel was at the time.


 * Interestingly, haanel.com is NOT, as you so blithely state, "anonymous." It was written by C. W. Evans-Gunther, as stated right on the main page, and uses a whole stack of primary and secondary sources, all spelled out, for its documentation. Here they are, since you seem to have missed them (some are web site links):

Ancient Arabic Order of the Mystic Shrine Book of St. Louisians, 1906 The Canadian Biographical Dictioanry and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men, Ontario Volume, 1880 Castle Gardens website ChicagoGenealogy.com Diana and Gayle's Tipword-Soward Files Dunn-Pinson Genealogy Files Grand Lodge of Missouri Latter Day Saints Family Search website Rootsweb (several Lists, especially StLouis-MO) It would be difficult to list all the folk on various Rootsweb Lists who sent information or images but without them a good part of the article would have been impossible. Special thanks to them. St. Louis City and Missouri Directories, from 1871 to 1946 St. Louis - History of the Fourth City, Walter B. Stevens, 1909 St. Louis Library (to whom go many thanks considering their workload) United States Census Reports from 1850 to 1880 and 1900 to 1930 I did not see anything "commercial" at the haanel.com site, either, as you charged -- no mention of items for sale, no prices, no method of payment, no shopping cart. It contains links to a publisher's web site at another domain, but they are not even affiliate links. You seem to have superficially skimmed the site, drawn a mistaken conclusion, and brought it here, expecting to convince others. You have not convinced me. I recall that you deleted this good source site a while back, during your wild slicing of the Haanel article from 4,00-plus to 1,000-plus bytes, right before you announced your intention to see it deleted on the grounds that Haanel was not notable. But the site looks well researched; it is non commercial, it is credited to an author who in turn credits sources and has done a great deal of research in books as well as on the web. cat yronwode 64.142.90.33 (talk) 08:17, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

On closer examination, Catherine is however correct that this website copied this material verbatim from an old (and wholly unsourced) version of this page in November 2007 (as did Catherine herself). I have therefore sticken the WP:COPYVIO complaint. HrafnTalkStalk 03:24, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * As far as i can tell, the haanel.com site did not copy Wikipedia, but the Wikipedia page at one time credited the haanel.com site. The "greatest hit" line is all over the web now, not just at one site, and seems to have come from Wikipedia; i do not know who wrote it. cat yronwode 64.142.90.33 (talk) 08:17, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for admitting your error and for striking through your allegations that i committed deliberate copyright violation and plagiarism as part of a so-called "Copyvio Crusade."


 * Unfortunately, a strike-through is insufficient as the title you gave that section repeats the accusation and thus endangers my empoyability as a freelance writer. As such, it constitutes libel. I have asked the Wiki oversight admins to remove this entire section.


 * You have also accused me of deliberate copyright violation in the Haanel article on Talk:The Science of Getting Rich, an entirely unrelated page. That too is unaccetable and must be removed.


 * You are using Wikipedia to publish libellous accusations against me. Accusations of plagiarism and a deliberate "crusade" of copyright violation cannot be taken lightly by an author. I intend to pursue this matter until the libel is removed. I want you to realize WHY i am doing so: you crossed a definite legal line in your escalating campaign of verbal abuse against me when you used your assumed position of authority as my fellow editor to damage my hirability as a freelance writer.


 * I could delete the material on both pages, but i am firmly opposed to anyone but the author of a post deleting his or her material from a talk page. It is up to you -- or to the Oversight admins -- to get the material removed. If you are a person of any integrity, you will understand why i insist upon this.


 * cat yronwode a.k.a. "64" 64.142.90.33 (talk) 04:47, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The structure of your edits (short lines of even length, making it clear that the material was copied from somewhere) and the existence of this material elsewhere on the internet made a prima facie case for WP:COPYVIO. That closer examination later disproved this does not make the original accusation "libel". Given your continual haranguing of me (on multiple talkpages) for attempting to see that WP:V is enforced, your complaint of an "escalating campaign of verbal abuse against [you]" is decidedly WP:POT. HrafnTalkStalk 06:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, dear Lord. The short, even lines came about because i had been edit-conflicted so often that night that i decided to edit offline, using an html text editor called BBEdit. It has a wrap function that i set by default at 65 characters because i have a congenital eye condition called nystagmus that makes it very difficult for me to read long lines of type. (Drop on over to the Yahoo group ann-list [the nystagmus network list] and meet a few of my narrow-column friends if you think i'm lying.) I forgot to turn off the default hard-wrap function in BBEdit when i dumped the text into the Wiki window, so it came back hard-wrapped. I soon corrected that, as it caused some coding errors with the wiki media software.


 * I asked you days ago to "please slow down," over on the Wallace Wattles talk page when you called me "rude" for no reason, but you have only become more agitated and hostile since then. Stop, please. Relax. Take a good long, serious look at yourself, hrafn. You are making foolish errors, one after another, working from a state of hyper-vigilant suspicion that is leading you off-track. You call an obviously signed web site (with a public email address, no less!) "anonymous" and say that it is "commercial" when the domain lists nothing for sale and accepts no method of payment. You make unfounded and dreadful accusations against your fellow editors and justify these claims because you are unaware of that a person's need to use a narrow column-width is often a sign of limited eye function and to your mind, narrow columns can mean only one thing: a "prima facie" sign of plagiarism!


 * I mean, really: You accused me of of the serious, bannable-from-Wikipedia, totally illegal offence of plagiarism for no other reason than that i used a 65 character line length text editor which i need in order to see well enough to type.


 * I'm sorry, but that is ridiculous. It is not only a clear assumption of bad faith, it reflects very poorly on your powers of logical deduction.


 * I hope that by thinking this over and slowing down, you can develop a more positive outlook toward our collaboration here.


 * catherine yronwode

Ahh, so it is not "rude" to call somebody a "DESTROYER", "lazy and "a bully", as you did here. This is a wrinkle on WP:CIVIL that I hadn't previously been aware of. HrafnTalkStalk 16:52, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The exhortation i gave was this: "BE A HELPER, not a DESTROYER. Don't be lazy and don't be a bully."


 * An ehortation is never a direct accusation. I chose the exhortatory form precisely because it echoes the well-known Wikipedia and Google exhortaions: "Assume Good Faith "and "Don't be evil."


 * People who encounter the Google corporate motto do not think that Google is calling them "evil" .... or do they? Perhaps the paranoid ones do. That might be a good test of a person's emotional equilibrium mechanism: if they think that Google is being "rude" to them, they may feel under attack from things that others see as simple exhortations.


 * The material addressed directly to you (using the second person pronoun) was as follows: "Don't threaten to pull important information out of an article because you think no one will rise to the challenge of your lazy cite tag."


 * In this instance the word "lazy" refers directly to your cite-tag, not to your anonymized "self."


 * The closing is another exhortation: "DO SOME WORK AROUND HERE and improve the article."


 * And that is always good advice.


 * I am still shocked that you charged me with the illegal act of plagiarism and copyright violation merely because i used a 65-character-width text-editor and that you have not rsponded to this matter in any way. Your assumption of bad faith remains as a barrier between us, a stumbling block to future collaborative efforts here. I would greatly value an apology -- not a curt "on closer look i find" justification or a flat "my mistake" statement, but a real, true apology addressed to me as a human being whose livelihood has been potentially damaged by your careless and poorly-founded accusation.


 * I know now that you have a tendency to skim-read (else you would have never said that the haanel.com site was "anonymous") and that you jump to negatve conclusions rapidly (else you would not not have characterised a domain with no price tags, no shopping cart, no methods of payment, and no way to order anything a "commercial" site). The combination of these tendencies are not good traits in an editor. Basing your logic on those two misconceptions, you branded a very good site, which publishes accurate secondary reasearch about Charles F. Haanel, as non-refernceable by Wikipedia and then pulled out all the data that cited that site. Ultimately, you cut the page from 4,000-plus bytes to 1,000-plus bites and tagged it for non-notability of the biography subject.


 * I was kind when i spoke of your "lazy" cite-tagging. I now revise my opinion. I think, based on your actions here and at other pages that deal with theistic, spiritual, metaphysical, and religious topics, as well as your surprising reference to my having "sacred cows" and being in pursuit of some warped idea of "truth", that you think i am a follower of one of these religio-mystical groups and that i am defending my chosen group or groups from your "enforcement" (your word) of Wikipedia verifiability standards.


 * Well, i am opposed to your campaign of deletion and tear-down of non-science pages at Wikipedia -- but not because i belong to any of these groups. I simply want Wikipedia to contain useful information. Your campaign of "enforcement" is lop-sided and selective, targeting only pages that fall within a few specific categories, primarily Christianity and New Thought. On the surface it *looks* like a campaign to improve Wikipedia by holding author-editors to a high standard of source-citation, but the cite-tagging is only a first step in your war against these ideas, for you use the low-traffic lack of response to you cite-tags as a way to delete material until the page is a stub, and then get it deleted as non-notable.


 * Here is how i arrived at this theory: The Charles F. Haanel page used to have the picture of Haanel on it. The picture was deleted when the article was cut to 1/4 of its former byte-count. Why would someone delete a picture of an author from his bio page? When i reasserted the code for an earlier version of the page, the picture popped right up again. It had not been scrapped from Wikipdia due to any sort of copyvio issue, apparently. It had just been "vanished." Right after the picture vanished, the page, now a stub, was tagged for non-notability of its subject. Meanwhile another page, describing a book the author had written, had already been deleted as non-notable. (I don't know what was on that page, as it is gone, but i intend to ask an admin to place a copy of the largest-byte-size version of it, before cite-tagging and deletion, in my personal sandbox so that i can see if it is worth my time to improve.


 * That deletion of an inoffensive image, coupled with the deletion of all mention of the haanel.com sites, coupled with your behaviour on the Wallace Wattles talk page (where you seriously proposed striking out the entire article), coupled with your edit history, which is focussed on "verifiability enforcement" issues against a narrow range of Christian and New Thought pages, coupled with your off-kilter assumption that anyone who writes text on a New Thought page must hold New Thought as a "sacred cow" (even when their edit-history shows them to be a person who also edits pages on celebrities, Spiritualism [a religion that can hold views that oppose those of New Thought], fortune telling [ditto], stage-magic, and breeds of dogs) has led me to hypothesize that you are intentionally trying to disrupt the work of anyone who attempts to write or edit in the Wikipedia sections dealing with New Thought and Christianity, be they believers or bystanders -- and you apparently can't imagine that anyone would want to write about such topics if they were not believers.


 * This is not an accusation, hrafn. It's a theory. Please correct me if i am wrong. Provide me with some examples of your making improvements to pages in the Christianity or New Thought categories by either sourcing old text or writing new and informative text.


 * In the meantime, i would like to ask you some questions. I hope that you will reply.


 * What relationship do you have to Christianity, creationism, New Thought, or spirituality in general? What do you think of people who believe in such things? Do you think that Wikipedia should uphold articles that describe or are based upon the scientific method? Do you think Wikipedia is damaged by publishing articles that are premised on spiritual beliefs?


 * I'll be glad to reply to any questions you ask me in return, of course, and i will even volunteer a few pre-answers of my own that may go a ways toward explicating my own editing history: (1) I am Jewish; (2) i am not a stage magician; (3) i own one dog; (4) i own no music or videos featuring Lil'C, Amy Winehouse, Krumping, or Joe Stampley, even though i worked on their pages; (5) i support the theory of evolution because it suits my worldview as a naive realist; (6) i believe that most of each person's so-called "personality" is genetic in origin, although modified by individual imprinting and acquired responses to pleasurable stimuli and to negative stimuli, but that the specific gamut of responses a person has to negative stimuli -- e.g. self-righting optimism, life-long paranoia, temporary fear followed by forgetfullness, future planning to avoid the stimulus, fault-finding, etc. -- is largely genetic in origin as well, and, further, that some familial-genetic strains of humans have a "spirituality" response both to pleasurable stimuli and to negative stimui that is not going to be changed by removing spirituality material from Wikipedia.


 * cat yronwode a.k.a. "64" 64.142.90.33 (talk) 20:16, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Catherine, you need to stop with legal threats, as they will get you blocked straightaway. And you need to assume good faith if you expect it from others. (This would have been posted to the editor's talk page, but she refuses messages on her talk page) Aunt Entropy (talk) 18:04, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The legal threat is real. Ask yourself, would you really care about getting blocked from Wikipedia if you were out of job because hrafn used Wikipedia to accuse you of illegalities that resulted in your becoming unhirable? A public apology to offset the public accusation would suffice -- note that he has not made one. catherine yronwode a.k.a. "64" 64.142.90.33 (talk) 20:16, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * He struck it, and apologised, so you need to let it go. And please, try to assume good faith. And regarding personal attacks: if I were to add, "Don't be a whiner", that would be a personal attack, despite it being an exhortation. Got it? Aunt Entropy (talk) 23:58, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * FWIW, I see no legal threats. A legal threat is threatening to take an editor here or something here into a legal forum. Saying someone here may have committed a copyright violation is a statement that goes here routinely. At threat to prosecute or sue them for making a copyright violation is a legal threat. Saying that "you have accused me of X, and X is something that other people think illegal" is not a legal threat on either side. (btw, plagiarism, as distinct from copyright violation, is in most contexts is most places not illegal,) We need to have some way of talking about whether something is or is not a copyright violation. I tell people that what they've written may be -- or sometimes even "unquestionably is" a copyright violation dozens of times a day, as I delete articles or give warnings in that connection. Aunt E, and cat, you've both been using the term much too loosely and a little carelessly.  It helps to always word things so they don't get escalated. Once two people start talking about legal threats, it sometimes turns out that they both of them get banned. But this sort of discussion does not belong on an article talk page. DGG (talk) 19:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC)