User:とある白い猫/CSI/Scientology

Relevant RFAR Cases

 * (2005)
 * (2006)
 * (2007)
 * (2008)

Durova


Hi, I am going to collect evidence for the Scientology RFAR as an independent third party. I want to point out that I am not the wiki-police nor do I have any kind of official role.

On your statement you mentioned several users from an old arbitration case that has changed usernames. Just to verify (although it is rather obvious) Is the case in question Requests for arbitration/COFS? Also can you tell me which users became who so that I have a better map of the accounts involved. If you could post them in the following format it would be of great help. Please also put a * after the connections that are offical (backed by a SSP or RFCU).



I intend to draw a graph like User:White Cat/RFAR/graph to document individual users activity.

To what extent are you involved with the Scientology dispute? Have you made any significant contribution to Scientology related topics? To what extent have you used admin tools?

-- Cat chi? 17:26, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * COFS became Shutterbug, Justanother became Justallofthem, and Smee became Cirt. Best,  Durova Charge! 17:49, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Regarding your followup: other than nominating Rick Ross for courtesy deletion per my longstanding offer to BLP subjects who want to opt out, I don't recall editing this topic at all. The situation came to my attention through the conflict of interest noticeboard in spring 2007 after a checkuser report confirmed that several accounts were editing through official Church of Scientology servers.  I care very little about Scientology or new religious movements, but I care very much about the integrity of Wikipedia.  So, like a variety of other sticky disputes, I tried to work out the problem at the community level and then initiated a request for arbitration.  As initiator I was formally a named party at last year's COFS arbitration.  I initiated the present case also.  A while after last year's case ended I began mentoring Cirt.  I conominated his RFA.  To the best of my recollection I didn't use administrator tools at any time in this dispute.  Hope that answers your questions.  Durova Charge! 19:07, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the quick answers.
 * At Requests for adminship/Cirt I am looking at an implied discussion between you and Jossi which was removed for "security reasons" care to elaborate what is going on there. Jossi believes his conduct on that RFA is the main reason why you find him unsuitable.
 * -- Cat chi? 00:28, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * With respect--because it looks like you're honestly doing your best--this question places me in a rather difficult position. It's been my long-held view that ethical decisions where good people disagree belong in the hands of the individuals who live with the consequences.  This regards Cirt's privacy, not my own, and so I really must defer to him.  Durova Charge! 02:32, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I see. Fair enough, I'll talk to him. The private info is probably oversighted by now. -- Cat chi? 07:45, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Jayen466


Hi, I am going to collect evidence for the Scientology RFAR as an independent third party. I want to point out that I am not the wiki-police nor do I have any kind of official role.

On your statement you state that the IPs registered to the Church of Scientology should be allowed to edit the site and the existing ban lifted. Could you point me to the enactment of the ban? A diff would do. Why do you think such a ban was placed?

What if significant disruption comes from the Church of Scientology IPs. If such activity comes from a random high school IP, it is customary to block them. There are several measures to let "good users" edit. For example editing anonymously (IPs) can be blocked while user accounts are allowed to edit. This would help filter any disruption coming from public computers. I do not believe this was available in September 2007. I am merely trying to investigate a possible way to make everything work with this. What do you think?

Could you demonstrate examples of poor sources used by different editors. I want to get the feel of what kind of sources you feel should not be used on the relevant articles.

To what extent are you involved with the Scientology dispute? Have you made any significant contribution to Scientology related topics?

-- Cat chi? 18:49, 15 December 2008 (UTC):Hi Cat, nice to hear from you. You've long had a credit on my user page for the flags thing. ;-)
 * First off, there hasn't been a ban, although some users would like to see the Scientologist editors banned now. I am not quite clear which of the existing remedies they are supposed to have violated. The remedies of the previous arbcom case, which I was not involved in, are here.
 * Some examples of poor sourcing are on the evidence page, a few more are on the associated talk page. My view is – and that is my view, others see it differently – there hasn't really been one-sided disruption by Scientology IPs so much as simply an adversarial relationship between Scientologist editors and anti-Scientology editors. They haven't cooperated much for the good of the article. Anti-Scientology editors have pushed for inclusion of material from press sources (including downmarket ones), and prominent topics on websites like http://www.whyaretheydead.net, http://www.lermanet.com, and http://www.xenu.com – resulting in articles whose tone and content is quite similar to what is on these websites, and quite a long way removed from what you find in scholarly sources. It's a bit like writing the article on Islam based on the editorial tone and the key points of interest highlighted in http://www.prophetofdoom.net (have a quick look at http://www.prophetofdoom.net and compare it to our featured article on Islam: the approach of the anti-Scientology sites is quite similar). Scientologist editors have tried to resist these efforts, but they have usually been outnumbered, leading to articles that are more adversarial, disrespectful, ridiculing and negative in tone than the existing scholarship. On the whole, scholarly books and papers have been used very little, except for publications by Stephen A. Kent, who is by far the most hostile scholar.
 * I haven't done an awful lot of editing on Scientology-related topics here. I have kept an eye on Scientology as a state-recognized religion for the past year or so and have recently started to contribute to Scientology beliefs and practices. But I've long been aware that our Scientology articles mostly don't cite books and scholarly papers, but primary sources, websites and press articles.
 * If you want to collect evidence, there are several approaches open to you: (1) Search here and then check what sort of sources are cited in these articles, especially in BLPs for prominent Scientologists. (2) Check article talk pages like Talk:Scientology and Talk:David Miscavige and their associated archives, and cross-reference that to the associated edit wars in the article history to get a feel for the climate. (3) Check the user contributions for other notable editors such as User:AndroidCat, User:Fahrenheit451, User:GoodDamon, User:Justallofthem, User:Misou, User:Shutterbug, User:Spidern and contrast their approaches to sourcing, editorial voice etc. The current emphasis on User:Cirt in the arbcom is a bit unfortunate; it's just because this arbitration case started out as two AE threads, one of which was specifically about Cirt. I think broadening the evidence to include other editors would probably be helpful. When there have been edit wars, two "camps" have usually formed. One of the challenges will be to get the two camps to work with each other, rather than against each other. I think the way forward lies in both sides buying into the idea of using the most reliable and most high-quality secondary sources, and foregoing sources that are bound to be controversial with the other side. Hope this has been helpful. Cheers, Jayen 466 01:42, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

GoodDamon


Hi, I am going to collect evidence for the Scientology RFAR as an independent third party. I want to point out that I am not the wiki-police nor do I have any kind of official role.

On your statement you mention sockpuppetry and single purpose role account usage.

I was wondering if you could tell me which users became who (sockpuppetry) so that I have a better map of the accounts involved. If you could post them in the following format it would be of great help. Please also put a * after the connections that are offical (backed by a SSP or RFCU). Feel free to identify which ones are role accounts.



I intend to draw a graph like User:White Cat/RFAR/graph to document individual users activity.

To what extent are you involved with the Scientology dispute? Have you made any significant contribution to Scientology related topics?

-- Cat chi? 17:47, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It's hard to tell which accounts specifically became who or how they're associated with each other, because there are quite a few, and they have all edited concurrently. User:Cirt put together a very helpful chart of the accounts and their specific IP address associations here on the ArbCom evidence page.


 * I am heavily involved in part of the dispute, although I regard it as a very simple matter of accounts inappropriately editing from Church of Scientology IP addresses. I am not that involved in their counter-complaints and the complaints of otherwise unassociated editors against User:Cirt himself, although I consider them to be largely without merit. -- Good Damon 18:46, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Jossi

 * - retired

Hi, I am going to collect evidence for the Scientology RFAR as an independent third party. I want to point out that I am not the wiki-police nor do I have any kind of official role.

On your statement you point out a confusion on why you are an involved party. It seems like Durova feels you have a history that make you unsuitable to regulate the dispute. Have you gotten involved with the Scientology dispute at any point aside from "a couple of comments at WP:AE". Have you gotten involved with any of the disputes related to Scientology in the past (before the WP:AE involvement)?

To what extent are you involved with the Scientology dispute? Have you made any significant contribution to Scientology related topics? To what extent have you used admin tools?

-- Cat chi? 17:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * (a) I have not edited any Scientology related articles, besides a few edits related to Tom Cruise, and that was a while ago
 * (b) I made a few comments at WP:AE in the prelude to this ArbCom case
 * (c) Durova finds me unsuitable, probably because I opposed quite vigorously Cirt's request for adminship and my previous interactions with her about Cirt's behavior. See Requests_for_adminship/Cirt
 * (d) Never used admin tools in this context
 * Hope this answers your question. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 23:42, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Misou

 * - no reply

Hi, I am going to collect evidence for the Scientology RFAR as an independent third party. I want to point out that I am not the wiki-police nor do I have any kind of official role.

On your statement you talk about an overwhelming need for an arbcom case. What do you feel the past arbcom case was not able to address?

You state that there will be no peace ever as long as the discrimination continues. Can you specify what you mean by that?

To what extent are you involved with the Scientology dispute? Have you made any significant contribution to Scientology related topics?

-- Cat chi? 18:33, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Bravehartbear


Hi, I am going to collect evidence for the Scientology RFAR as an independent third party. I want to point out that I am not the wiki-police nor do I have any kind of official role.

On your statement you state that you think the case was filed prematurely. Several other editors seemingly feel that the arbcom case was inevitable.

You also mentioned that some of the older editors (pro-scientology ones in your words) are back. Wouldn't that qualify as sockpuppetry?

To what extent are you involved with the Scientology dispute? Have you made any significant contribution to Scientology related topics?

-- Cat chi? 18:14, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * On your statement you state that you think the case was filed prematurely. Several other editors seemingly feel that the arbcom case was inevitable.
 * I do not understand how can the arbcom case was inevitable when the edit warring took place in a period of two days and the page was frozen! I don't see much done to resolve the dispute but I believe arbcom case was brought to remove the oposition instead just solving the dispute.
 * You also mentioned that some of the older editors (pro-scientology ones in your words) are back.
 * Yes, the Scientology slanted editors came out because drastic changes were done in the page. If you look in the Scientology main page over 180 edits were done by one person: Spidern since Oct 31, 2008. The edits were done in such a speed that it rattled out the pro-Scientology slanted editors. I have to say that those edits were done in anti-Scientology slant with lots of references to personal anti-Scientology websites. Before that, the page didn't change much for a very long time. In the month of August there only 12 edits done in the page. My last edit I think it was done prior to this period in 28 Oct 2008. To be fair Shutterbug did some edits before this period on 30 Sept 08 and before.

Score 193 edits by spidern / 7 edits by Su-Jada / 7 edits by Cirt / 18 edits by Shutterbug
 * Edits done in the Scientology Main since 31 Oct
 * 31 Oct: Over 50 edits by spidern
 * 1 Nov: 2 edits by spidern
 * 2 Nov: 8 edits by spidern
 * 3 Nov: 3 edits by spidern
 * 4 Nov: 7 edits by spidern
 * 5 Nov: 17 edits by spidern / 3 edits by Su-Jada / 4 edits by Cirt
 * 7 Nov: 11 edits by spidern
 * 12 Nov: 0 edits by spidern / 0 edits by Su-Jada / 1 edits by Cirt
 * 21 Nov: 5 edits by spidern
 * 22 Nov: 5 edits by spidern
 * 23 Nov: 27 edits by spidern
 * 24 Nov: 57 edits by spidern / 3 edits by Su-Jada / 1 edits by Cirt / 11 edits by Shutterbug // Edit waring started
 * 25 Nov: 1 edits by spidern / 1 edits by Su-Jada / 1 edits by Cirt / 7 edits by Shutterbug
 * 25 Nov: Page was frozen by Cirt
 * As you can see betwen Spidern and Cirt there were around 200 edits and betwen Su-Jada and Shutterbug only around 25 edits. The edit warring took place during a period of 2 days. I want to note that Misue didn't made any edits during this period.
 * What I see is that a single editor (Spidern) took ownership of the page supported by Cirt. Then this rattled out Su-Jada and Shutterbug. An edit waring started and the page was frozen. I believe that Su-Jada and Shutterbug contributions are required to balance out the anti-Scientology slant of some editors, some that keep anti-scientology websites.
 * Wouldn't that qualify as sockpuppetry?
 * The question of sockpuppetry has being brought in before but these editors have clearly different styles and personalities and do edits from different locations that place them in different countries at the same time. So is clear is not the same person.
 * To what extent are you involved with the Scientology dispute?
 * No much, just gave my POV in the talk page, I got involved just before the arbcom case was brought up and I didn't know that there was a dispute until the page was frozen recently. All I know is what I read in the talk page. I noticed some serious discrepacies and point them out in the talk page, afther that the page was frozen to my frustation. Bravehartbear (talk) 05:25, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Have you made any significant contribution to Scientology related topics?
 * Yes, that is mostly my main interest in Wikipedia. I work in the military and stay busy. I have done some edits from my work so they can't acuse me of sockpuppetry because is clear that I have access to military (.mil) servers. And I'm also a Scientologists, I'm sure if I had done edits from a church location I would be accused of being a sock puppet too. Bravehartbear (talk) 05:25, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for your response.
 * Several people suggested that involvement of people affiliated with the Church of Scientology would fall under Conflict of interest which in a nutshell asks editors to not edit Wikipedia to promote their own interests, or those of other individuals or of organizations. What is your view on that?
 * How can you be so sure sockpuppetry is not the case. In the past people have went great extents in an attempt to fool the system particularly if they were sanctioned at some point. According to this table all those editors could be the same person. I see the use of a number of open proxies around the planet which is not a very good sign.
 * There are many ways to edit from .mil IPs w/o having any kind of affiliation with the United States Armed Forces so unfortunately such use isn't an automatic license of innocence. For example even elementary grade students attending DoDEA schools have .mil ips. I am merely pointing out that I have to consider every possibility.
 * -- Cat chi? 11:02, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * 1. Conflict of interest provides guidance to editors that may have conflict of interest on how to do edits.

Editors who may have a conflict of interest... This section of the guideline is aimed at editors who may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy... Defending interests In a few cases, outside interests coincide with Wikipedia’s interests. An important example is that unsupported defamatory material appearing in articles may be removed at once. Anyone may do this, and should do this, and this guideline applies widely to any unsourced or poorly sourced, potentially libelous postings.
 * I believe that the Scientology editor are following the guidance of COI by;
 * Stating clearly their interest
 * Maintaining a NPOV
 * Discusing issues in talk page
 * To say that Scientologists can't edit is like to saying that a black person can't write about black history or Jew about the holocaust, or a Christian about Jesus or an American about U.S. history. We are all bias in some way or another, still when it comes to work we stay objective.  I want to make you aware that those editors that maintain anti-Scientology websites like xenu.net are also editors in Wikipedia. So how you know who has a conflict of interest and who doesn’t. The only way to know is to look at the edits.
 * At least the Scientology inclined editors have been strait forward on who they are. Judge me by the quality of my work and not by my faith. Assume good faith.
 * Being that Scientology has some serious PR problems and is look down upon generaly, the page policed hard enoght that will prevent any pro-scientology slant in the article. And any pro-scientology edit will be reverted quick enoght. I don't see that we have any problems with the page being too pro-Scientology, the oposite is the reality. And the Scientologist are acting in the best interest of WP by pointing this out.
 * 2. I think the accusations sockpuppetry are being used to cover up some very serios problems in the page as pointed out by Jaden. I think that these issues should be addresses first. The editors being acused of sockpuppetry have hardly done any edits and have done nothing wrong exept to point out some serios issues in the page and I think that is more important to address the issues they have pointed out before going in unto any futher investigation. But I have had communication with some of these editors and I assure they are different people with different styles and personalities (and e-mail addresses).
 * 3.I don't have nothing to prove, my edits are not in question here, neither I was part of the edit warring. If you want my military e-mail I will give it to you. There is no reason to douth my good intentions. My edits have been done from multiple deployed locations. Right now I'm in a hotel in Guam, I don't think that a student do that. Bravehartbear (talk) 15:47, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Your inline comments made the text confusing. I have attempted to reformat it so that I can follow it. I hope you do not mind. I have numbered them too. -- Cat chi? 19:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Why don't you look at the edits?
 * Look at this: "Former members, journalists, courts, and authorities in multiple countries have described Scientology as a cult and an unscrupulous commercial enterprise. Critics claim that the organization has a history of harassing its critics and abusing the trust of its members. Time Magazine describes Scientology as "a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner."
 * The lead under Wikipedia rules is suposed to be ambigious but here is a direct quote attacking Scientology. The lead already states that some journalist view scientology negatively, why then this is stated again and again with a direct quote to drive a POV further: "Time Magazine describes Scientology as "a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner."
 * Even editors that are not in Scientology like Jaden are screaming foul. The issue here is that Wikipedia is being used to do a direct attack on a religion. This is the real issue here, everything else is just to cover up this fact.
 * Bravehartbear (talk) 15:47, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I will be looking over everyones edits in great detail in due time. I am merely at the Q&A phase of my case giving everyone the benefit of the doubt rather than raining accusations after another. If anything I am trying to be fair to everyone involved regardless of their affiliation.
 * RFARs aren't designed to solve content disputes. Arbitrators will not have any say over the content issues. Arbcom will look over the conduct of individual editors. Arbcom does not have the authority to decide on what content should stay and what content should go. Thats strictly and editorial decision. By saying all this I am merely trying to explain you the rfar process.
 * In general lead should not be controversial. However this still is a content issue.
 * Again this isn't the place to discuss the content.
 * -- Cat chi? 19:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Shutterbug


Hi, I am going to collect evidence for the Scientology RFAR as an independent third party. I want to point out that I am not the wiki-police nor do I have any kind of official role.
 * 1) On your statement you talk about your use of public internet hubs and not proxies. To what extend do you move around?
 * 2) I am not asking for any private info but I want to have a general idea on the distances you travel giving me an idea of how many different IPs you would be using. This may help resolve weather or not the ips are public ones or not.
 * 3) Another thing you state is that you use "computers in the Church of Scientology" yet on the next paragraph you state that you have never been to the "church of scientology san francisco". TO my untrained eye it seems the two statements are contradicting each other. Care to elaborate?
 * 4) To what extent are you involved with the Scientology dispute? Have you made any significant contribution to Scientology related topics?
 * Hi Cat, sorry, I wasn't around to see your question. Here is an answer:
 * I am working from two locations, one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast. In between I am logging in from airports or internet cafes. When using wireless I am going through a VPN/SSL connection (or something like that, hub, proxy, maybe there are different names for this). The idea is that the wireless line can be hijacked and using a SSL connection helps preventing that.
 * During a normal week I am using 4-5 different internet lines. I guess that makes 4-5 IPs.
 * There are thousands of scientology groups in existence (7,500, per the latest publications). I assume most of them have internet. Some of them have wifi and I used it there. Others have computers for use, e.g. to watch the scientology video channel or to log in on other scientology sites. I used those too. Or I plugged in my notebook in a network outlet and used this line for internet, like in a hotel. This whole discussion is ridiculous, trying to tie editors to IP addresses will never work. And I haven't even tried (yet) editing on Wikipedia through my phone. As for the above statement: I have never been to the "Church of Scientology San Franscisco". That's what I meant. I know most Churches in Southern California, New Jersey, Florida and New York as well as Canada. But somehow I missed SF in my trips.
 * I think I am the cause for the Scientology dispute or at least created enough contrast so the "two sides" (pro/con) could be seen better. I am active as a Wikipedia editor since 2007 and before I showed up the motto was "happy adding of trash material" to the scientology-related articles and "happy ignoring of anything neutral or anything perceived positive". I registered for the purpose of improving the Wikipedia articles on Scientology. My point of critic was and is that primary sources are used instead of reliable sources and that "reliable sources" of the lowest possible quality are used and promoted (I dare say BECAUSE they contain negative material about scientology or related subjects), instead of looking for better material (which would be neutral and defensible). The mass removal of primary sources that happens in the articles right now is what I wanted in 2007. But then, as in Scientology, it again is done in a one-sided way. Dozens of primary sources (to scientology websites) were removed and the trash links to private hate sites kept, including to porn mags (example "Penthouse", which seems to be "ok" as long as the "content" is "anti-scientology").
 * You could say I am guilty of polarizing. My contributions were not worthless or a violation of Wikipedia policy. They were just unpopular because the majority of those who are hanging out in the article (or "watching over it", such as Cirt and AndroidCat) are anti-scientology editors. Their POV/COI problem has never been addressed and I cannot detect any willingness to look at at. Which - if not addressed - would make this Arbcom another farce and a guarantee for the next edit war. Shutterbug (talk) 05:06, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Cirt


Hi, I am going to collect evidence for the Scientology RFAR as an independent third party. I want to point out that I am not the wiki-police nor do I have any kind of official role.

On your statement you state that you want to "clear the air" and that you are trying to recall past attempts of dispute resolution.

To what extent are you involved with the Scientology dispute? Have you made any significant contribution to Scientology related topics? To what extent have you used admin tools?

-- Cat chi? 18:08, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for looking into this as an independent third party, I welcome your input into the Arbitration Case and will get back to your above queries soon. Cirt (talk) 22:26, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * In response to your questions: I am a significant contributor to a good number of high-quality content articles related to Scientology, Durova discusses some of my quality contributions in her evidence in the Arbitration case, here: Requests_for_arbitration/Scientology/Evidence. I have used admin tools to block a user that had already received a Level-4 vandalism warning from, and I have used admin tools to block sockpuppets of User:DavidYork71 that were vandalizing the GA article Project Chanology, but only after this pattern of abuse had been identified  by other administrators. Cirt (talk) 23:19, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I noticed that posted above, if you have any questions feel free to contact me. Thank you for your time, Cirt (talk) 23:20, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Shrampes

 * - no reply

Hi, I am going to collect evidence for the Scientology RFAR as an independent third party. I want to point out that I am not the wiki-police nor do I have any kind of official role.

On your statement you talk about accidentally bumping into the Scientology dispute when Spidern reverts you. Could you specify when was that (if possible with a diff). Were you aware of the Scientology dispute in question? Were you involved with the dispute before your encounter with Spidern in any other way?

To what extent are you involved with the Scientology dispute? Have you made any significant contribution to Scientology related topics?

-- Cat chi? 18:22, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Justallofthem


Hi, I am going to collect evidence for the Scientology RFAR as an independent third party. I want to point out that I am not the wiki-police nor do I have any kind of official role.

On your statement you accuse Cirt of being an aggressive POV-warrior. Your post almost entirely covers the conduct of Cirt. To my untrained eye the evidence you presented documents an IP removing sourced content from an article (simple vandalism) and Cirt warning such a vandal. Would you care to elaborate?

Also you seemingly are trying to say that Cirt has some sort of a record. Would you mind elaborating on that?

To what extent are you involved with the Scientology dispute? Have you made any significant contribution to Scientology related topics?

-- Cat chi? 18:03, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi. I appreciate you looking into this. I will give you some food for thought in the course of the next day or two. Please check my contributions under this account and also under and  - those are the accounts I did almost all of my editing in the Scientology-series before my present account. Later. --Justallofthem (talk) 21:27, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi. I am going to use this thread to list things that you might want to look at. First take a look at the interaction of Cirt and I in the below articles (go to that part of the article and talk history). Look at Cirt's behavior in the areas of BLP (if applicable), POV and undue weight, and sourcing. Usually, Cirt does something off-beat and POV, I catch him at it, we go round and round, Cirt will not back off until RfC or 3O makes it abundantly clear that he will not get away with it. Rinse. Repeat. Ad nauseum. These are off the top of my head - I will come up with better examples later for you. Remember that =  and that  and  = me.
 * Philip Gale
 * The Bridge (2006 drama) - Undue weight.
 * Profit!!1!
 * You know what to do. Go CSI! --Justallofthem (talk) 21:41, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * You know what to do. Go CSI! --Justallofthem (talk) 21:41, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Spidern


Hi, I am going to collect evidence for the Scientology RFAR as an independent third party. I want to point out that I am not the wiki-police nor do I have any kind of official role.

On your statement you said you'll "openly admit that Scientology may have originally drawn me to Wikipedia as a motivation to edit". Care to elaborate on that?

You mention a dispute on Wikinews. While that has no official bearing on wikipedia, I'd like to hear more about that. It seems the blocks were temporary or at least are no longer in effect.

Bravehartbear suggests "Scientology slanted editors came out because drastic changes were done" in the Scientology article by you. How would you like to respond to that? Do you think you should be added as an involved party?

To what extent are you involved with the Scientology dispute? Have you made any significant contribution to Scientology related topics?

-- Cat chi? 17:47, 15 December 2008 (UTC) On your statement you said you'll "openly admit that Scientology may have originally drawn me to Wikipedia as a motivation to edit". Care to elaborate on that? I had originally made a statement on the RFAR before the actual arbitration case was accepted. The statement was lost when the case was reformatted on a separate page. Because of its relevancy here, I will repost the statement as a user subpage (although I may repeat some information in my replies to proceeding questions). As for "why" I chose Scientology: the Scientology topic in particular is a broad topic, which presented a good challenge for me to improve upon. I always enjoy a challenge.
 * Reply:

As seen on WP:SCN, I declared my intention to improve Scientology-related pages which made use of primary sources and ambiguous language. By ambiguous language I mean run-on sentences which are no longer intelligable (see my first edit on Scientology), "loaded" language (words that carry a specific meaning for Scientologists which is not shared by outsiders). I also stated that I wished to improve the neutrality of said pages, which includes slants going either way. You mention a dispute on Wikinews. While that has no official bearing on Wikipedia, I'd like to hear more about that. It seems the blocks were temporary or at least are no longer in effect. My primary intention behind including the Wikinews diffs was to illustrate that there is a certain amount of disruptive behavior associated with these account names. Although you are correct in stating that the edits in question took place off of Wikipedia itself, the past behavior on Wikinews may provide insight into the motivations of accounts registered under the same name here, editing under the same topic.

Furthermore, please see arbitration policy, which states that "Evidence and brief arguments may be added to the case pages by disputants, interested third parties, and the Arbitrators themselves. Such evidence is usually only heard by the Committee if it has come from easily verifiable sources - primarily in the form of Wikipedia edits ("diffs"), log entries for MediaWiki actions or web server access, posts to the official mailing lists, or other Wikimedia sources. The Committee reserves the right to disregard certain items of evidence or certain lines of argument, most notably if they are unverifiable." Bravehartbear suggests "Scientology slanted editors came out because drastic changes were done" in the Scientology article by you. How would you like to respond to that? Do you think you should be added as an involved party? I started editing the Scientology page on Oct 31, as seen in my first diff there. The fashion in which I edited (in bursts, sometimes up to 50 edits in a single session) happened because I have a compulsive personality at times. I have a passion for editing; in reading through the Scientology article I found many problems with the article which I saw that I could attempt to alleviate. After my first 87 edits to Scientology (according to Bravehartbear's evidence) I made no edits to the page for 2 weeks (14 days) and nobody refuted my edits in general. At the beginning of my period of inactivity, Cirt and Jayen466 voiced their support of my edits in general and and nobody expressed any doubts concerning them. Had anyone disagreed with them done so in a typical Wikipedia fashion, we may have avoided locking the page and ending up in arbitration in the first place.

Before the edit war, I was in discussion with other editors to determine any good secondary sources that could be used in the page. During the confusion of the edit war, I restored a good scholarly source which was lost in the turmoil.

While I believe that I have acted responsibly under the circumstances, and did everything possible to avoid coming to dispute resolution, I will not object to the arbitrators adding me as a party if they see it fit. To what extent are you involved with the Scientology dispute? Have you made any significant contribution to Scientology related topics? As anyone looking at my edit history can see, I have edited a number of Scientology-related articles on English Wikipedia. Mostly, the edits reflect my stated intention above (remove primary sources, make language more understandable, improve neutrality) as well as making general improvements from an editorial standpoint. Should anyone believe that I am not sufficiently accomplishing any of these tasks, I respectfully ask that they provide diffs that indicate otherwise so that I may examine my behavior and improve upon it.

Should you require any further information in your independent investigation, please don't hesitate to ask. ← Spidern  →  14:51, 16 December 2008 (UTC)