Talk:Scientology in Germany/Archive 4

"Hysteria"
Re the contested sentence "German fears and concerns about new religious movements reached a level resembling hysteria in the mid-nineties, becoming focused mainly on the Church of Scientology." I agonised over this one a long time; if you look through the edit history, I had several times changed to and fro from "reached unprecedented heights" to "reached levels resembling hysteria". There is a remarkably broad spectrum of sources using the term "hysteria" about what happened in the mid- to late 90s in Germany – it includes scholars like Willms ("Zwischen dem Erscheinen der Scientology-Organisation in Deutschland zu Beginn der 1970er Jahre und der Mitte der 1990er Jahre beobachteten Hysterie um diese Erscheinung ...") and Seiwert, Lutheran church spokesmen like Fincke and Nüchtern (cited in Seiwert), as well as German and international mainstream media. I propose we could say "widely described as resembling hysteria", if editors are uncomfortable stating it in the article's editorial voice. -- JN 466  23:27, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I think our guideline WP:LABEL applies here. We should not apply labels in Wikipedia's voice. The phrase "reached levels resembling hysteria" strikes me as too vague anyway. The phrase "reached unprecedented heights" is dubious as well. See WP:PEACOCK.  Also, we should avoid statements in our voice that characterize the German people as a whole. For example  "As noted by the religious scholar Hubert Seiwert, Germans came to see ..."   would be better phrased "The religious scholar Hubert Seiwert suggests that Germans came to see ..." Most of the article discusses the German government, courts,  parliament, etc. That's much more appropriate than talking about "the Germans." Here is one possibility for the initial disputed sentence "Fears and concerns about new religious movements reached a high level in the mid-nineties, becoming focused mainly on the Church of Scientology. Many commentators later used the word 'hysteria' to describe the public reaction [citations]."--agr (talk) 03:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd be fine with that wording. -- JN 466  11:17, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * This will not happen. See statement below and reply. Wispanow (talk) 03:42, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Comment by User:EdJohnston (moved from moderated discussion to article talk page)

 * The original WP:AE problem (in my view) was that Wispanow was making controversial changes to the article and claiming that the article was not neutral, but when challenged, he could not back up his view with sources. Apparently he still does not have time to find suitable sources, so I would support User:SilkTork's position on this. Some of Wispanow's comments here in the moderated discussion begin to push the limits of a proper discussion, like: "'Thats why i often call German politicians screaming little monkeys, trying anything to get attention and look important, while they are dancing to the music of the courts (in human rights, but many areas are related to this).'"This sort of comment suggests a personal agenda about political matters in Germany and not a sincere desire to add neutral content to the article. Wikipedia is not about to describe German politicians as screaming monkeys. I would welcome Wispanow's withdrawal of his comment about the monkeys. EdJohnston (talk) 21:52, 23 March 2010 (UTC)