Talk:Greek reconstructionism/Archive 1

I seem to be the first person here. While the only thing that I've posted is a link to the Hellenismos article, I'm not suggesting that this become a ... is it called a "disambulation page", one of those sketchy things that points the reader in the direction of where he should be?

Hellenismos is not, by any stretch of the imagination, all of Hellenism. It's a term that mostly seems to apply to Hellenion, Elaion, and their sometimes warring camps of supporters. To turn this into a disambulation page would be to undermine the netrality of this section of Wikipedia, by structuring all other Hellenic Reconstructionist and Traditionalist factions and movements out of the discussion, in effect putting Wikipedia in the position of promoting those two organizations at the expense of their would-be competitors. Just something to think about.

Hellenion and Wicca
When I edited this article, I removed a line stating that many members of Hellenion practice Hellenic Wicca. This is factually inaccurate; as the Hellenion Mission Statement quite clearly states, Hellenion does not encourage or endorse Wiccan practices as a part of Hellenic religion. I know about half of the approximately 50 current members of Hellenion, and as far as I know, none of them self-identify as Hellenic Wiccan. While Hellenion is more open to magical practices than other Hellenic organizations, the usual argument is that such practices are demonstrably historical and are being reconstructed in a way that is compatible with the beliefs of the ancient Greeks. Regardless of one's personal beliefs about the appropriateness of magic, it is obvious that this is completely unrelated to Wicca. AdelaMae 22:48, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Come watch NPOV lose a round!
Relevant section: The Hard Recon Controversy.

In this section, I presented both sides of the argument, which I'm supposed to do, at least in theory, under the NPOV policy ("Neutral Point of view", described by Jimbo Wales, the founder of this site, as being the one thing that is "absolutely non-negotiable"). It would seem that somebody doesn't care for the concept of NPOV. In fact, he's not cared for it twice, on two occasions turning what had been an objective and neutral explanation of the viewpoints advanced into a press release for Elaion, in which opposing points of view have either been ignored or distorted. Take a look at some of the pages in the "external links" section, and you'll see what I mean.

Explaining the controversy as being one between those who are in favor of pandering to "the lowest common denominator" (the individual's own words) and those who are not is hardly NPOV at all and it is, at best, a gross distortion of the commentary of the particular author being cited. The sad reality is that the individual in question is likely to get the last word. He seems to have an endless amount of time to throw at this and I don't, so regardless of what policy has to say on the subject of POV, I guess policy is just going to have to take a back seat to persistence.

Note to the Above Editor /Vandal
It is quite apparent you are not a Hellenic Reconstructionist and have some agenda to push. That is fine, but you should probably do it under the Christo-Hellenist subject heading and quit speaking for Hellenion, Eliaon, Thiasos Olympikos and the Society for the Gentile Hellenes and other Hellenes who do not subscribe to your blatant agenda. If you think that my edits are violating NPOV, I urge you to go publicly request feedback and discussion from any of these groups publicly on their forums. You obviously have a vested interest in portraying your group as being more relevant than it actually is. That is to be expected - but not at the expense of everyone else. Your POV is anything but neutral and is so obviously biased, it is laughable.

Reply From 65.182.172.109:
Comment from "above editor": In other words, black is white, night is day, yadda, yadda, yadda. I present both sides of the argument, you present only one, and you want to pretend that's more NPOV? That's like pretending that the desert is wetter than the sea, something so far removed from reality as to defy any response more detailed than sheer slackjawed disbelief. If anybody is looking in, please keep an eye on this guy, because he clearly has no intention of dealing honestly.

Reply to Aforementioned Editor /Vandal
Comment to Christo-Pagan (IP address: 65.182.172.109) from outside of Chicago; Firstly, anyone can go back and look through the edits to this page. When they do, it will become plain as day that you are obsessed with controlling the content of this entry. The fact is, you are not being objective in the least - you are willfully trying to manipulate this page into being an advertisement for your group, you post huge portions from your own website onto this page (e.g., your 'critique' of Hard Recon is lifted entirely from your own website) and several paragraphs have been wasted describing the practices of "Christo-Hellenism." Neutral edits and corrections have been done - to wit, your repeated inaccurate assertion that Elaion exists mainly in Europe and Australia was corrected by me. However, when corrected to more accurately state that Elaion has many members in the US, *you* deleted it from the entry. That's kind a of strange for someone pretending to be 'neutral', right? There is also, curiously enough, whole paragraphs dedicated to Elaion and none to Hellenion. Again, strange for someone pretending to be 'neutral.' There is also no discussion of any other Hellenic groups and you give the misinformed impression that only three have any kind of impact; Elaion, Hellenion and "Christo-Hellenists." While being laughable, I find this strange for someone pretending to be 'neutral.' To put this in language you would understand; I don't think Jesus or Paul would take to your tactics - please read, Matthew 10:14, Matthew 7:2-7, Romans 12:17-21, Matthew 15:18-20.

Wikipedia is for the NPOV - not for promoting and advertising a small group of Christians. The information you have given on Hellenion and Elaion is inaccurate and is an obvious attempt to further your own agenda. Unlike you, I simply do not have the time to endlessly edit this page - so, I have contacted representatives from Hellenion, Elaion and any and all who are willing to present a more balanced view. If necessary, I leave it up to them to contact the Wikipedia moderators to put a stop to your blatant propaganda and misinformation. Hopefully, the endless non-neutral blathering and propaganda can finally be redacted from this entry and Mark will be free cut and paste his website to a "Christo-Hellenist" entry.

I am not even a practitioner of Hellenic religion, but I know enough to recognize *numerous* glaring falsehoods and inconsistencies in this entry as offered by 65.182.172.109 on 10/14/05. I again urge any and all who are *really* interested in an unbiased understanding of Hellenic religion, to contact established groups such as Hellenion, Elaion, Thiasos Olympikos and the Society for the Gentile Hellenes rather than some anonymous E-tyrant who feels the need to control the presentation of the topic. Hopefully representatives of these groups will flesh out the facts in this one-dimensional entry, rather than letting the current revisionist speak for all of Hellenism.

Quick comment: The reader will notice that I've never removed the links to Hellenion, Elaion et al., or in any way tried to keep others from visiting their sites. I am, however, intrigued by       this belief that presenting both sides of an argument instead of just one somehow makes the article more "two dimensional".

Give me a break
Care to back up this assertion that I "lifted the copy from my own page"? I took a look at the sources and reported what they had to say, not just as I wish to do, but as I'm required to do, and as you are, too. "No original research", remember? Unlike you, I reported what BOTH sides had to say, instead of just inserting an editorial which reported what only one side had to say. In case you've forgotten, that's what NPOV means. It doesn't mean, "just report what the side I want to favor has to say".

Reverting an edit that is in clear violation of those stated rules, coming straight from the founder of the site, is not "vandalism" under any sane definition of the word. Taking an article that gives the arguments of both sides and replacing by the spin given by just one side, in effect turning it into a press release for one of the parties in question (Elaion), is vandalism. It is a violation of the NPOV policy, and when you give your personal gut reaction as a justification for this defiance of that policy, you're engaging in original research, as defined on this site.

Somebody wanted me to "assume good faith". That, like any other rule, has to be tempered with a little common sense. Yes, assume good faith as far as the observable facts allow, but if this person is asking me to ignore what is in front of my own eyes just to give him a warm and cozy feeling, then he's asking too much. For a policy to mean anything, and let's not lose sight of the fact that "assume good faith" isn't the only one, one has to be able to call somebody on it when he ignores that policy, as our propagandist for Elaion is doing right now. The only real question is "do the policies really mean anything, or do they retreat before a show of belligerence". If it's the latter, you might as well just hand Wikipedia over to the vandals, because they're going to win in the end.

Rebutting some more shameless BS from the above advocate for Elaion
First of all, let us put to rest any idea that this individual arrived with the intention of promoting anything like NPOV. When he writes something like

I again urge any and all who are *really* interested in an unbiased understanding of Hellenic religion, to contact established groups such as Hellenion, Elaion, Thiasos Olympikos and the Society for the Gentile Hellenes rather than some anonymous E-tyrant who feels the need to control the presentation of the topic.

on can not help but notice the tone being taken - that of promotional literature, the word "unbiased being used as if it were a synonym for "what I want people to hear". Aside from the man's remarks being an incredible, almost sociopathic inversion of reality, in that I've been fighting to see to it that both sides of the argument get heard (while this guy has been fighting to see to it that only one does - that of Elaion), it also runs head-on into the reality that the claims being made are logically incompatible. First, I'm supposed to be a member of the Shrine of the Sleeping Gods, a Christo-Hellenic group. Why is this? By the man's own admission, he knows that I'm an anonymous editor, meaning that he doesn't know who I am. Yet he pretends to know which group I belong to. So, which is it - do you know who I am or don't you, my friend? Or are you concluding that I must be a member of that specific Christo-Hellenic group simply because my ISP does business in Chicago? Implying that everybody in Chicago is a Christohellenist? Given that the Chicago metropolitan area has well over 8 million people, that would certainly not be a "small group", would it? :)

But, at the same time, he insists that quotes taken from Mark Hendricks' Midwestern Hellenists Page are taken from my page. Mr.Hendricks, however, is not a Christo-Hellenist. He's merely a Hellenic Recon who refuses to jump onto Elaion's bandwagon of hate, and offers some intelligently argued reasons for not doing so. Reasons which, by the way, Hellenion (one of the groups that our Elaion supporter recommended) seems to agree with, itself, if you take a look at just how many syncretists they have in their own ranks. Therefore, our Elaion supporter is simultaneously saying that I am a Christohellenist and a pure Hellenic Recon, in other words that I both am and am not a syncretist. So which is it? Because both can't be true.

As for characterizing the group in question as being "a small group of Christians", I would remind a certain editor that we are not to use Wikipedia as a soapbox for our opinions or an opportunity to publish our speculations as fact. Part of that description is clearly a baldfaced lie: as these people are clearly on record as worshipping all of the Olympian gods, they most certainly do not qualify as "Christian". As for their numbers, how would you know? If any census of them has ever been taken, its results certainly haven't been published anywhere. The most we can say is that the highly localized lists run by a single one of their chapters have had memberships on the orders of about 2/3 of that which Elaion had to scour an entire planet to find, so if any group in this incident would qualify as small and inconsequential, it would have to be Elaion.

These facts are out in the open for all to see, and no amount of ranting and raving on your part will make them go away. But then the facts have never really been what your argument has been about, have they? Throwing out accusations at random in the manner of a classic Usenet troll, "tossing a little mud to see if it will stick" as some would put it, and hoping that others can be browbeaten into seeing things the way you want them to has been your game from the start. No great surprise in that - it's par for the course for a propogandist. The thing is, that's not what Wikipedia is here for. Wikipedia is here to introduce people to a variety of viewpoints and sources so that they can pick and choose and work out their own conclusions for themselves. That's the point of NPOV. The question is, are you prepared to respect that, or are you going to continue to try to bully people into giving you what you want, regardless of what Wikipedia policy has to say on the matter?

Justification for Modifying Entry
I have edited two sections for lack of NPOV and for brevity. I think the current manifestation of the "Hard Recon Controversy" is intentionally inflammatory to groups the author disagrees with and only detracts from the article by personalizing the issue. I personally think it should be deleted as irrelevant. There have been several edit wars and dueling revisions in the history of this entry. This is the longest sub-section of the entry which in it's current manifestation has a point by point bulleted refutation of an other group's stated beliefs, with the only source cited being a personal geocities page with only three very small pages. The "Hard Recon Controversy" section is almost wholly based off this web page and almost all of the content in the section is directly cut and pasted off this page. Nowhere on the page, is it stated that the material is public domain. Providing an outside link to this web page at the end of the entry would suffice, rather than the author championing his personal opinions in a supposedly neutral Wiki entry.

More shameless BS posted by Elaion's promoter
Nothing was "cut and pasted", and there is no law against paraphrasing what somebody else has written.

Once again, NPOV requires the telling of both sides of an argument, even if one side should want to have the other side silenced on the basis that it feels that dissent from its own views is "inflammatory". Anybody can declare anything to be "inflammatory", and in the case of a passage in which the tone is as reasoned as the material somebody keeps trying to delete, the accusation is as laughable as the one of copyright violation. If we take to blocking coverage of viewpoints on the basis that somebody, somewhere might not like them, NPOV is going to become meaningless in an awful hurry.

Oh, and by the way, my name is not "Mark Hendricks". (Note the address of the Yahoo site I've linked to (and which somebody else is referring to), and read the user name off of it). But we're been through this already, haven't we?

Accuracy Dispute
If there are any third parties or mods who are uninvolved with this dispute: would you please offer a critique of the entire article. I feel that IP 65.182.172.113 is monopolizing this entry and rather than attempting to reconcile or address any of the perceptions of bias and inaccuracy felt by other editors, is controlling the entry in an extremely biased and inaccurate manner. I feel that the *entire* article needs to be re-analyzed and re-written. IP 65.182.172.113 personally insults and attacks any editor

Comment: Calling somebody on outrageous behavior does not constitute "a personal attack". This gentleman has already been shown to be a liar, and now wishes to hide behind a willfully absurd misreading of policy in order to shield his actions from criticism.

No go.

who makes even minor edits to this overtly biased entry. Said party also has cut and pasted long passages from a webpage

Comment from 65: This is a baldfaced lie which has already been addressed, and 71 is now trying to push by just being persistent enough.

here which appears as nothing but an inflammatory rant against someone who holds differing religious beliefs:

No, that's a reasoned critique of a position taken. This is an excellent example of 71's use of genuinely inflammatory rhetoric in an attempt to silence views he doesn't want to have heard.

this is a violation of copyright as this page is not public domain.

No, that is BS because I didn't quote the material on the page, I paraphrased it - a fact, not an opinion, easily confirmable by anybody who follows the link and compares and contrasts the passages in question.

Please read over the web page cited. The information on this geocities page does not appear to be neutral and thus is not a reliable or accurate source of information -

No, a reference does not have to take a neutral position. Certainly Elaion's homepage, which you've recommended as a reference, does nothing of the sort, rendering this argument an exercise in hypocrisy.

[posted emails containing personal info removed. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 16:32, 10 February 2006 (UTC)]

especially considering the site the page is on only has three very short pages.

Please review the outside links in the entry or see the following as sources: Belief-Net Article LJ Recon Community Thiasos Olympikos Supreme Council of Ethnikoi Hellenes

I am not a Hellenic Reconstructionist. However, I have done in-depth research on the subject and interviewed numerous leaders in various reconstructionist religions for my MA thesis. I am subscribed to dozens of reconstructionist e-lists and forums. I have no vested interest in this topic, other than advocating a more accurate depiction of Hellenic Reconstructionism in contrast to the way it is currently being portrayed to the researchers and cyber denizens who would happen to stumble upon this entry.