User:Spidern/RFAR statement regarding Scientology

Statement by Spidern
I will openly admit that Scientology may have originally drawn me to Wikipedia as a motivation to edit; in parsing the main article I found many things that I took issue with from an editorial standpoint. That being said, I am moving into some other areas of interest as well. So I ask anyone that believes that my account to be single-purposed to consider my contributions outside of Scientology-related pages.

As being discussed by the editors working on the page at the time I first arrived, one significant problem with the Scientology page was its prominent use of primary sources. So being a fairly compulsive editor, I systematically rearranged the page in an intuitive attempt to improve it, removing secondary sources along the way. The quality of Scientology-related pages for the most part seems to have been compromised with the use of primary sources, which was an issue that I was working on (and still do, on a more limited basis). It must be noted, however, that promoting the use of secondary sources in the place of primary ones does not constitute a violation of WP:NPOV or WP:RS; quite to the contrary.

Now judging by the amount of effort that all of the involved editors put into WP:SCN, it sometimes becomes aggravating and counter-productive to deal with the unreasonable opposition we encounter. What we are dealing with here is not a persecution of editors due to their faith, but a situation where all available evidence suggests that individual editors closely connected with the Church of Scientology are attempting to cast it in a positive light. This is no different than employees of Microsoft editing the Windows Vista article.

As for the arbitration and eventual resolution of this matter, I ask that Arbitrators consider any prior evidence in addition to the actions taken by the parties in question which proceeded the original Arbitration ruling. '''Two particular edits are of interest: one from Dec 9, 2008 by 205.227.165.151 (talk) and the other occurring on May 9, 2007 by 205.227.165.244 (talk) (resolves to ws.churchofscientology.org). Both IPs are within the same class C range, which is owned by the Church of Scientology International'''. Historically, four more known Scientology-owned IPs performed edits almost entirely limited to Scientology-related pages, see 205.227.165.14 (talk • whois), 205.227.165.11 (talk • whois), 63.199.209.133 (talk • whois), and 63.199.209.131 (talk • whois). During January 2008, Misou (a confirmed sockpuppet on Wikipedia) was found by a checkuser on Wikinews to be using open proxies as well as IPs controlled by the Church of Scientology (Misou was subsequently banned). As recently as Oct 21, 2008, Shutterbug was banned from Wikinews for "disruptive behavior" and "Block evasion via proxies".

To conclude, I'd like to quote here a few points which were first illustrated by myself in the WP:AE thread: "Let the records show that it was found that there was indeed overlapping ip address usage belonging to a specific group of editors appearing to have a conflict of interest, who acted towards pushing a particular pov. Since those findings were announced, the pov-pushing (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), assumption of bad faith, (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18), and removal of reliable sources (19, 20, 21) has continued."

To echo what said, SPA accounts are never truly an issue unless a COI is apparent. I make every effort possible to present my changes in a neutral way. If you believe that I am not doing so, please show me diffs which you believe to be indicative of a bias. Also, the claim that I reverted any of your edits on Dianetics is false. Furthermore, you falsely claimed that the source you removed was previously added by me, which I refuted on the talk page. ← Spidern  →  06:53, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Response to Shrampes

Perhaps I'm jumping the gun a little with presenting the evidence, it was intended to illustrate that arbitration action is clearly needed here. But I would also argue that the Misou case on Wikinews is every bit as relevant here, considering that we're dealing with the behavior of a user named as a party in this RFAR. ← Spidern  →  18:06, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Response to Justallofthem