User:FrigidNinja/Talk

Request for comment
An incident has occurred within the church involving some type of sexual scandal. There is a discussion between the churches ip and members of Wikipedia if this : Between 1984 and 1989 John Langworthy was a youth minister at Prestonwood Baptist Church. On January 22nd, 2013, Langworthy pled guilty to five of eight felony counts of gratification of lust against young boys, receiving a suspended sentence of 50 years. He was also required to register as a sex offender. The offences occurred at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, MS.[11] It was reported that Langworthy also admitted, in a pulpit confession, to prior sex offenses at Prestonwood Baptist Church. Some of the alleged victims made complaints to Prestonwood Church at the time, which were dealt with internally by church officials.[12] There are now allegations that Prestonwood Baptist Church covered up Langworthy's offenses by failing to report them to the proper authorities. [11] Should be in the article or not. Please refer to the discussion above.

Thanks for asking for help on this issue. For the record there is a lot of Original Research in this summary above not the least of these is that these are all "allegations" as it pertains to Prestonwood. Also, Mr. Langworthy pled guilty to charges from his time prior to coming to Prestonwood between 1980-1984 not after at Morrison Heights as is stated above 216.62.217.90 (talk) 21:46, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

The graf above needs some work, but according to the statement from Jack Graham, as reported by WFAA -- http://www.wfaa.com/news/investigates/Disturbing-revelations-about-former-Prestonwood-minister-127284918.html --, Langworthy did appear to have molested at least one teenager at Prestonwood. His confession from the pulpit mentioned children in Texas and Mississippi, and stated that he left Texas because of "indiscretions" at Prestonwood -- http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/11/27/former-prestonwood-ministers-attorney-wants-sex-abuse-case-dropped/. The guilty pleading mentioned above is connected to six men in Mississippi, prior to his arrival in Texas, but it was handled through the Mississippi court system. Crimes in Texas would not have standing. The WFAA report states that two Prestonwood teens had come forward. Langworthy was fired by the church, and the church did not report him to police as required, again according to the WFAA press report. All this seems to parallel in terms of relevance with the existing Joe Barton information that has remained on the page and is not in question here: A staff member is connected to contact or attempted sexual contact with a minor and then is fired, all of which is in the public record and acknowledged by the church. The additional issue with Langworthy is that the church was required to report him to the police and, according to press reports, did not. There is no original research in this; undue weight may be in play, but I'd say there's hardly been enough discussion here to warrant that finding. Carter (talk) 17:07, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It is very sad when this sort of thing happens and it hurts people connected with the church or organization involved but any article on Wikipedia has to be as complete as possible provided it is balanced. Furthermore, my thanks to the people who asked for the RfC.  I want to make two points and follow them up with a suggestion:
 * Anyone connected with the Church (and this includes all users of the IP since they are on the premises and have some sort of contact with it) should declare the fact so that any potential conflict of interest is clear.
 * The recently eliminated section "Child Sex Abuse Controversy - John Langworthy" seems to me to be a little unbalanced. This article is not about him but the church.
 * I therefore suggest that the necessary additional information be added at the end of the section now entitled "Wrongdoing" as a separate paragraph which might run as follows: "In 2013 allegations were made that, in 1989, the church had failed to comply with the law by not reporting an alleged incident of abuse by the then music minister, John Langworthy, but simply dismissed him.  In 2011, Langworthy admitted publicly that he had abused one of his young students in Plano during the late 1980's in a pulpit confession to the church. in Mississipi where he was then working and was later convicted of offences against teenagers in that state dating from the early 1980's.

Let me preface by saying that any abuse by a child is a horrible, horrible thing and i'm glad Mr. Langworthy is paying for his actions in Mississippi from the early 1980's. However, I still do not see how any of these allegations as they relate to Prestonwood are relevant and encyclopedic. These allegations are from 24 years ago and the church has been adamant that they handled it in their own words "forthrightly" and in no way tried to cover this up. Also the main WFAA story that keeps getting referenced is from August of 2011 so if it has not been relative for the past 20 months then why is it all of a sudden relative??? Dirkmavs (talk) 01:21, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * They're relevant and encyclopedic because the incidents and how the church handled them are part of the history of the church, same as the Joe Barton incident. As to why its become relevant now, someone recently noticed that it was missing, added it, an edit war started, and an RfD was made. Just because something's been missing from a Wikipedia article for a period of time doesn't mean it wasn't encyclopedic, just that no one had acted to include it. Carter (talk) 12:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree completely with Carter's comments. While the church is satisfied that it dealt with the situation "forthrightly", this forthrightness did not apparently comply with the requirements of the legislation in force at that time. I would further point out that the story seems to be snowballing with the "Chris Tynes Saga".  I proposed a brief statement of the facts earlier: Can you honestly maintain and demonstrate that anything in it is untrue?  If they are true, then they are encyclopaedic in the sense that if there is an article on the Church, this is part of its history and should be included. Jpacobb (talk) 19:33, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

While I don't have a dog in this fight, I think this probably touches on undue weight territory, if not notability, in some regards, as well. Also, the length of time (24 years), along with the fact that the church did deal with the issue publicly (even if charges weren't properly filed with the police) makes it even less notable. Just because something is factual doesn't make it encyclopedic. If Wikipedia listed every sexual offense in a school, church or other public institution, their servers would collapse. In this particular case, I don't see that this is really all that notable in an encyclopedic sense, and the primary source that seems to be driving the story (abpnews) isn't a reliable source.--Lyonscc (talk) 20:09, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment: "Notability" is not relevant here, it is a criterion for deciding whether or not there should be an article on any given subject. Once the article is created, material which does not meet WP:Verifiability excludes itself but the range of reliable sources widens.Jpacobb (talk) 14:57, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more with Lyonscc. We're talking about nearly a quarter century timeframe here and the church has commented on their openness at the time of the firing of Mr. Langworthy. You can choose to not like their answer if you like, but the truth is the church said they responded "firmly", "forthrightly" and with no secrecy or coverup. There have been no legal issues with this case as it relates to Prestonwood nor will there be any impacting Prestonwood based on the WFAA investigate article previously mentioned due to the of statue of limitations being long gone. Also any attempts to tie this in with the Joe Barron section already on the wiki page are not good comparisons because 1. In this very talk page there is an old discussion about revisiting this issue down the road once we better know the impact for good or bad of Mr. Barron on the church (which i will soon initiate and will ask for input) but more importantly 2. Mr. Barron was charged with this crimes while an employee at Prestonwood whereas in the case of Langworthy all his charges are from Mississippi before he came to Texas. Dirkmavs (talk) 20:50, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Passage of time is irrelevant. Just because it's in the past doesn't mean it's not part of history. The Barron incident and Langworthy are notable in that they involvement church leaders. I'm a little concerned that the "impact for good or bad ... on the church" is being considered a standard for inclusion. That would seem to be veering pretty heavily into NPOV territory. As for the issue of Mississippi charges vs. a lack of Texas charges, Prestonwood acknowledged at least one incident connected to the church and dismissed him over it. That's a pretty straightforward connection. Carter (talk) 13:16, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed. If it is part of the church's history, and there is WP:RS coverage, then it should be included in the Article. ReformedArsenal (talk) 10:59, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I have included a paragraph on the lines suggested above. I note that almost all Dirkmavs' edits are on this article page or that of the church's pastor Jack Graham (pastor) and sense there is a Conflict of Interest here.Jpacobb (talk) 13:39, 19 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you Jpacobb. I'd suggest a slightly different text to make clear where the allegations came from:
 * In August 2011, John Langworthy confessed to sexual abuse of teenage boys in Mississippi and Texas over a period of 22 years, which encompassed his time as music minister at Prestonwood in the late 1980s. Following Langworthy's confession, questions were raised by SNAP as to the number of victims at Prestonwood, how the church reacted, and whether or not police were informed. According to a church statement, Prestonwood fired Langworthy in summer 1989 after after allegations that he "had acted inappropriately with a teenage student." Carter (talk) 14:04, 19 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the comment. I put the events in that particular order because, so far as this article is concerned, the major issue is not Langworthy's actions in general, but the church's handling of what happened in Prestonwood. So I put it first, as the "lead" and to keep the balance so far as the subject of this article is concerned.  If you can add extra RS material (which I think you can) or improve the presentation of the references, I'd appreciate it very much but I think my order is the more appropriate one in this context. Jpacobb (talk) 14:26, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Again, I'd say this really does fit into WP:UNDUE territory. Typically, pages about existing organizations (like churches, schools, etc.) have been treated in Wikipedia similar to Biographies of Living Persons, in terms of threshhold for including/excluding information. I only referenced WP:NOTABLE, because that also tends to be referenced at times for BLP inclusive items. ReformedArsenal wrote, "If it is part of the church's history, and there is WP:RS coverage, then it should be included in the Article." - this is not a standard for any item in Wikipedia - just because something is true and has WP:RS coverage doesn't make it automatically relevant for inclusion in Wikipedia. If this was the case, then churches could list every clothing drive, homeless mission, etc. that gets reported in a local paper/news station, etc. in Wikipedia. In the same way that WP discourages self-promotion in biography and organization pages, it also discourages the opposite, particularly in tangential matters.

In this case, we are talking about an event 24 years ago in which this organization released a staff member for wrongdoing (which isn't really notable, by itself, absent a larger pattern), and erred in not reporting him to the authorities (which, if you look back to 1989, was not the public awareness issue that it is now). Most certainly, this was very damaging to the victim, but even so, it is not really encyclopedic for inclusion in Wikipedia. Also - (as mentioned above) - ABP News isn't a WP:RS.--Lyonscc (talk) 15:56, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it's clear there's disagreement as to the encyclopedic value. A list of every clothing drive and date wouldn't be encyclopedic, but if ministering and serving homeless persons is part of the church's ministry, including that would be worthy. Can you articulate why you think ABP News isn't a WP:RS? They look to have a strong organizational structure, an independent board of directors, staff includes professional journalists, and a 23-year history. They're a specialty press, but I don't see anything that doesn't make them a WP:RS News Organization http://www.abpnews.com/about Carter (talk) 16:25, 19 March 2013 (UTC)


 * In the past, I've tried a few times to use them in a WP:BLP (I think Rick Warren's was one of them), and it was shown that a number of their 'news' articles are published without editorial review, and that a number of their hard news articles were actually opinion pieces. As such, they were nixed, so I've never used them since.  As for inclusions of homeless ministries, women's shelters, etc., they've been deemed in the past as self-promotion (when specifically listed out, beyond passing mention).  In reality, what is missing with the Langworthy incident is a pattern of wrongdoing on the part of Prestonwood.  For an egregious example - the Catholic church Priest/sex-abuse scandals were significantly notable because there was a discernible, long-term pattern of tolerating sexual abuse (on the part of the Church hierarchy) and not firing employees guilty of wrongdoing.  It was the pattern and the systemic neglect that made the abuse notable.  In the case of Langworthy, Prestonwood's involvement was neither negligent (they immediately released Langworthy when the allegations came to light) nor was it systemic.  Show me any organization - regardless of vocation, secular or sacred - with 50+ employees and 25+ years of operation, and I'll guarantee you that someone has been fired/removed from them for criminal reasons.  That's not news or encyclopedic.  If the fired individual has a Wikipedia page, it is likely to be perfect for inclusion on that page.  Without a larger pattern of abuse/neglect, though, the parent organization isn't really responsible, nor is the event really notable enough for inclusion in its Wiki article.--Lyonscc (talk) 16:43, 19 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Scanning several recent articles on ABPnews, there seems a clear delineation between news pieces and opinion pieces (although that doesn't mean people haven't tried to use opinion pieces inappropriately as WP:RS). Can you point to specific articles that demonstrate the bias you're attributing to them? Carter (talk) 17:32, 19 March 2013 (UTC)


 * The ABP"news" is nothing more than a blog with the sole purpose of writing anti-Southern Baptist, anti-conservative Baptist, anti-Mega church, etc, etc, etc opinion pieces. It's hard to understand i realize if you don't understand Baptist politics 216.62.217.90 (talk) 18:32, 19 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I'll admit that I don't understand/follow Baptist politics, but ABPnews is clearly more than a blog. To be clear, there is an ABPnews Blog (http://www.abpnews.com/blog/) and there are opinion pieces on the site to (just like most newspapers have an op-ed page, but there's also straightforward news reporting on the site, and that's what was being used as a WP:RS in this article. Carter (talk) 11:41, 20 March 2013 (UTC)


 * While I don't know that I can comment on their particular "slant", every appearance of the site is that it is self-published and is privately maintained. It is clearly being run on a Wordpress self-publishing site, and is not a professional news organization, which means that it is not a Reliable Source--Lyonscc (talk) 21:04, 19 March 2013 (UTC)


 * They're not using Wordpress. View source on their page and you can see they're using Joomla as their CMS, which is pretty widely used by a wide range of associations and groups. At the risk of being rude, I'm not convinced by your assessment of them as not WP:RS. Carter (talk) 03:02, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

When I dig into a number of ABP's pages (or open subsections in full-screen), I get a "powered by Wordpress" notice at the bottom. Additionally, they have no physical publications, advertisers, an ombudsman or other items you would expect from an actual news site, nor does their content seem to go through any sort of editorial peer review. I continued to dig into their archives last night, and they're little more than a well-dressed 'discernmentalist' site with some of their content written more neutrally, so as to appear to be fact-based. Even so, there is nothing on the site that identifies policies/processes/information that would lead one to conclude that this is a legitimate WP:RS. Instead, it would be most accurately categorized as WP:SPS.--Lyonscc (talk) 19:37, 20 March 2013 (UTC)


 * This is getting quite far afield considering that there are WFAA and KTVT sources that are not in dispute as to reliability, and that Prestonwood does not dispute the fact that Langworthy was dismissed from the church following allegations of inappropriate contact with a teenaged church member. That said, please provide a link for the sort of page you're referring to; I see no mentions of WordPress on the news sections of the site. As to your other statements: They do accept advertising and have at least one banner ad running across the top of site pages (Journey to the Cross); it does have print reach through partnerships with regional publications, including Word & Way ; they run corrections ; they have a strong institutional structure ; there is a clear labeling of opinion vs. news material; etc. Trying to dismiss them as WP:SPS and calling them "just a blog" is disingenuous. Carter (talk) 01:26, 21 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree that use of abpnews is a tangential issue. I did miss the (single) advert, so you're correct on that, though they also clearly state that it is entirely volunteer-staffed (supporting my contention that it is not a professional publication).  As for examples, if you look at a number of the current "top stories" - like the one about Bobby Jindal and the Louisiana tax changes, the article is primarily an opinion piece couched as hard news.  In no way does this look like a hard news site that could be used as a primary or secondary source.  At best, they reference mostly secondary sources and repackage them for their audience.  And yes, they are a WP:SPS, which is not a knock on them, just a statement of fact.  If this is a hill you really want to die on, we can go through the WP arbitration processes, starting with getting a third opinion.


 * Going back to the subject of Prestonwood, which would make the abpnews item moot, you've not demonstrated that it is encyclopedic. Just because something is factual doesn't make it encyclopedic.  In the case of Prestonwood and Langworthy, the story is about Langworthy, not Prestonwood.  If there was a case of coverup and retaining a known felon, or a systematic pattern of abuse, this would be about Prestonwood.  As it is, though, it is not.  Even the Barron bit is more a case of recentism, where Prestonwood was completely in the right in the actions it took, and probably shouldn't be included, either.--Lyonscc (talk) 17:21, 21 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Please look a little more carefully at APBnews. On http://www.abpnews.com/about it clearly states "The work of ABPnews is performed by four full-time staff members, plus a development associate who serves in a shared position with the Baptist Standard newspaper. Another member of the team provides social media expertise on a contract basis." That's a paid professional staff of six. It is the board of directors are volunteers, which is common for nonprofit boards of directors. If this is the Jindal article you're referring to, http://www.abpnews.com/culture/politics/item/8306-la-faith-leaders-oppose-tax-plan#.UUwt6hfvuSp, then it's a report on church leaders' letter opposing Jindal's budget; that's not an opinion piece its reporting on a response of interest to APBnews readers to the budget. The reporter isn't taking a stance; he's reporting on a stance that people in a position to speak for their congregations are taking. Compare to this article from The Advocate (the main newspaper in Baton Rouge) -- http://theadvocate.com/home/5467931-125/clergy-deliver-concerns-about-tax . If you want to request a WP:3O, I'm fine with that. You may have run into a problem with it as a source in the past, reporters do get things wrong sometimes, but it's pretty clear that APBnews is meets the WP:RS standard.


 * As to the new claim of Recentism, maybe that's valid, maybe it's not. That's a hard one to argue for/against since there's a lot of subjectivity. As I said, I'd think both Langworthy and Barron, given their positions within church leadership, are notable and how they were dealt with are relevant to the history of the church. Again, if you want to invoke WP:3O fine, but we should probably hash out text first. One thing that does strike me is that the "Wrongdoing" section head is imprecise, implying wrongdoing by Presonwood. Perhaps it should be "Staff Wrongdoing" or "Scandals Involving Prestonwood Staff". Carter (talk) 10:45, 22 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Ah, you are correct - I misread the paragraph regarding unpaid staff. That makes it a slightly better source, though it still appears to be fairly unaccountable when compared to WP-accepted reliable sources, and it does still have a number of features of self-published sources.  If it were critical to include something from the source, I'd want it to go through arbitration, just so that we have it well-documented the next time someone wants to use abpnews we know whether to accept or reject it as an RS.


 * And yes, WP:RECENT has a degree of subjectivity, and one of the tests I've seen admins use is to say "in 50 years, will this still matter enough for inclusion"? Will it accurately reflect the story of the article's subject?"  In this particular case, absent a larger story (coverup, systematic abuse, etc.), I think it's pretty clear that it's a no on inclusion of this type of information, be it Prestonwood Baptist Church or Podunk City High School.--Lyonscc (talk) 14:45, 22 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm still not seeing WP:SPS, maybe WP:NEWSBLOG for some parts of ABPnews, but the bulk of it falls clearly as WP:RS. It's clear you don't like the source, but you keep moving the goalposts. As for WP:RECENT the standard is 10 years, not 50. How about as a compromise include Langworthy (text still to be TBD) and add a tag for the entire Wrongdoing section? Carter (talk) 15:21, 22 March 2013 (UTC)


 * How about as a compromise, we leave Langworthy out until a pattern is established or a coverup is proven?--Lyonscc (talk) 13:25, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
 * This sounds reasonable to me. It will clear up most of the controversy, because it will be more notable, have better sources available, and won't be accused of recentism.  If this explodes into a major scandal in the mainstream media, it will also be clear of undue weight. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 00:38, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
 * At this point, I'll defer to waiting/watching. Carter (talk) 10:56, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Happogata_Shuriken.JPG DIE!! I HEREBY INVALIDATE YOUR ARGUMENT!!!