Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manipulation of BLPs/Evidence

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum of 500 words and 50 diffs. Giving a short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 500 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

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Overuse of insinuation and anonymous sources
BLP policy discourages the use of insinuation and allegations against living persons attributed to anonymous sources. At BLP it says "Be wary of sources that use weasel words and that attribute material to anonymous sources." Will Beback and SlimVirgin have extensively used this sort of material at Lyndon LaRouche and LaRouche movement, and have defended its use and refused to remove questionable material. For example, at Lyndon LaRouche it says that Frances Piven, a university professor, "was almost pushed down a flight of stairs by someone calling her a fascist and CIA agent." There is no evidence that this has anything to do with LaRouche or members of his movement, but its inclusion in the article implies that it does. When challenged on this point, Will Beback said "The Piven material was discussed extensively with previous HK socks back in February. Talk:Lyndon LaRouche/Archive 23. Please stop repeating the same complaints." (diff) Following the link in this response, I found only this comment by SlimVirgin: "Once again—they appeared in the Washington Post, they do name LaRouche and his followers, and they're consistent with stories that appeared in many publications, including other high-quality ones." (diff)

At LaRouche movement, there is a very long section entitled "Alleged violence and harassment." It is a list of allegations, many of them from anonymous parties prepared by Will Beback. For example, "While Girvin was being interviewed on a sidewalk by a TV reporter, someone walked behind her and said "Polly, you're going to die" which the reporter said sounded like a threat." The inclusion of this in the article implies, without giving evidence, that this "someone" was a LaRouche movement supporter. As a typical example of an anonymous allegation, there is: "A student who asked a critical question of LaRouche at a rally was reportedly abused verbally by campaign workers and called a "prostitute" by a LaRouche aide." There is an ongoing Request for Comment about the length of the section, in which 9 editors say the section is a problem, and one editor, Will Beback, disagree. I raised the issue of the use of anonymous sources and cited the section of BLP about it. Will's response was to say "It's standard across Wikipedia to use reports in reliable sources, even when those reports use anonymous sources." (diff) Waalkes (talk) 13:16, 4 August 2011 (UTC) — Waalkes (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

Guilt by association
Will Beback and SlimVirgin have added much material to LaRouche articles that relies on guilt by association. At WP:BLPSTYLE it says "Beware of claims that rely on guilt by association, and biased or malicious content." Right now Will Beback is engaged in a battle with three other editors at Talk:Lyndon LaRouche, because Will is insisting that material about Roy Frankhouser that is unrelated to LaRouche be re-added to the article strictly for guilt by association purposes. diff diff Waalkes (talk) 20:56, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia needs a guideline to distinguish between disruptive editing aimed at search engine optimization, and good enthusiastic editing.

 * See, for example, the discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Wikibombing.


 * Note a potential problem with the traditional formulation that the effects of edits matter more than the motivations. Such a supposition, without further clarification, would implicate as a WikiBomber anyone who writes a new article, makes links to it on other pages so it won't be an orphan, and nominates it at DYK.

ArbCom needs to get better at handling requests for recusal.

 * User talk:Shell Kinney/Archive 16


 * Noting also the e-mails that the Committee has seen, and which were subsequently leaked.

This is directly relevant to this case, because it speaks to the interactions between multiple editors with respect to Cirt's editing of BLPs. Requests that a member of the Committee recuse may sometimes be very legitimate, and should be treated seriously. If the member decides that recusal in not needed, they should explain that to the complainant. If the complainant persists in requesting recusal, the member should quickly disengage from further debate with the complainant, ask the rest of the Committee to evaluate the situation, and, generally, abide by the Committee's consensus. If the Committee agrees that there should be no recusal, there should be a clear statement to that effect, from the Committee as a whole. If, after that, the demands continue, that should be treated as disruptive editing. No single editor, nor small group of editors, should be able to to undermine the will of the community expressed in an election. Please note that the exact same pattern took place for Elen in the Noleander case. (Given that Cirt entered willingly into the e-mail conversations, which occurred off-site, I do not think that sanctions against SV can be justified, but I find the prosecutorial tone directed at Cirt disturbing. Clearly, Shell did nothing to require recusal.)

Jehochman's closure of the Cirt RfC/U was clumsy but good-faith.
I do not think the evidence previously presented elsewhere on this page rises to the level of requiring findings of any sort against Jehochman. I will note, first, that his closure of the content RfC about the Santorum neologism was generally regarded as helpful. It's true that the closure of WP:Requests for comment/Cirt was marked by impoliteness on his part, and was premature. When asked about having cut off productive discussion that was in progress, , he responded obnoxiously , , but the community was able to deal with it, and it isn't something that requires ArbCom action.

Evidence presented by Cla68

 * Prioryman was active in the Cirt RfC, especially in casting aspersions upon and bollocking other editors:
 * He appears to have become involved after the dispute spilled-over into the DYK forum, where Prioryman was an active participant:       Here, Prioryman should have revealed his prior involvement in this subject area then accuses the other editor of having an ax to grind begins a campaign on behalf of Cirt
 * Prioryman then became involved with the Santorum neologism article:
 * Prioryman then attacked an essay Jayen and other editors wrote in response to Cirt's editing of the Santorum article:   campaigning to get it deleted then changes mind after links to Cirt are hidden  (check edit summary)             Prioryman conducted an experiment which he said discredited the Wikibombing theory
 * This, this and this appear to be false statements.
 * Last year the Committee noted at ARBCC that ChrisO (Prioryman's previous account) was sanctioned in four previous ArbCom cases, including being banned from Scientology related BLPs. ChrisO, on or around 30 August, invoked Right to Vanish (RtV).  The Committee noted that ChrisO had invoked this right while sanctions were being considered, and topic-banned him from climate change articles, apparently making that the fifth ArbCom sanction that ChrisO has received.
 * ChrisO started an alternate account, L'ecrivant, on 30 August, the same day he invoked RtV. Apparently, the Committee only found out after this abusive sock was blocked.
 * This shows that ChrisO was operating his old account under a new name at the same time he was operating L'ecrivant. The account was subsequently blocked.
 * The Prioryman account was started in November, and, for unknown reasons, was allowed to continue editing by the Committee See the log summary.
 * When the request for this case was made, Prioryman appears to have lied again.

Evidence presented by Anthonyhcole
If I haven't provided diffs by the time the window for submissions closes, please delete or disregard this. I think I see an underlying problem wrt topics such as alternative medicine, fringe theories, cults, races, sexuality. In most of these cases it is clear which side the angels are on. We (angels) are opposed to racism, sexual bigotry, anti-scientific nonsense, cults, and evidence-free "therapies". Guardian angels have descended upon these topics to protect articles from the taint of the evil ones. And I, for one, am immensely grateful for their presence. I think all right-thinking Wikipedians are.

There are some guardians who are across their subject, mostly patient and polite, and who constantly tend a neutral but firmly honest article. at Acupuncture, and and  in the autism theories articles are fine examples, and there are many more.

There are, however, some guardians of reason who can't seem to help themselves from turning articles about these contentious subjects into blatant indictments of either the subjects themselves or their proponents, and turning biographies of the proponents of reason into hagiographies, and are happy to misrepresent sources, battle, game, ignore WP:BLP and basically do anything else they can get away with in order to achieve this. I'm not referring to one editor here; I've seen this behaviour in alternative medicine, climate change, fringe theories, pseudoscience and new religious movements. This is bad practice because (1) the subjects and their friends and supporters, and anyone else for that matter who sees these articles, will view Wikipedia as a biased and untrustworthy source, and (2) unbalanced articles are a source of constant conflict, and drain the time and energy of editors engaged in or mediating the disputes.

But because this second type, the Darwin's bulldog, the avenging angel type, is pushing in the right direction, they are held in the same regard as the more modest, diligent and polite first type by the admin corps, and pretty much never sanctioned or admonished.

This is a problem.

That's all. I don't have the time or energy to look for diffs for this. Wouldn't really know where to begin, without unfairly arbitrarily picking on a few exemplars.

Evidence presented by Collect
Really - evidence is needed that WP:BLP is violated on a regular basis by those with POVs concerning categorization, labelling, and characterization in BLPs for people in some perceived religious (cult), political, sexual orientation or other group?

showing clear COATRACK problems in BLPs. ,,   etc. Many similar ones exist - this is chosen primarily because the people involved were in "in the news" recently - there are hundred of other examples.

shows a typical categorisation/labelling "discussion" on BLP/N - showing that this is more than a mere "content dispute" issue. And, of course, which led to the Jimbo page "discussion."

showing problematic material deleted from a clear BLP by. If an edit is a BLP violation in one article, it is a BLP violation in all articles. This shows a pattern of behaviour with which many other examples have been furnished to Arbcom by others.

shows discussions on Jimbo's talk page (current page - there are a huge number in the past) showing the reasoning behind those who violate the WP:BLP requirements. Including such elucidating statements as:
 * Ok, I accept we know by wp:consensus that The Advocate is not re liable (and they practically think the same of Wikidpedia, duh [3], and OMG they getting parroted by E! Online [4]). The real question is whether ABC churnalism is any better. And by the way, that's a different article and different actor. It didn't involve the consensus decider Off2riorob yet, but I can presume what his AN-powered action will be given that his buddy Collect already weighed in. I guess Deep Throat would have had to wait for his name to be published before anything based on him could be included in Wikipedia, regardless where published. Shit, that took 30 years. Long live Nixon. inter alia

We also see how the POV of editors extends to using barnstars as rewards for such behaviour at inter alia.

The evidence here given, and given by others, shows that Arbcom must require scrupulousness in editing of biographies and articles which in any way touch upon specific living people. This is part of the same principle that Wikipedia is intended to be an encyclopedia, and is not a "content dispute" but one of the greatest import to the survival of the project. Motions to place the issue under the rug will not help arbcom, or anyone. Else we shall have the default standard on biographies to "scruplelessness." Cheers. Collect (talk) 11:57, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Anent above: User:Collect/counting edits now has a colloquy which I suggest is of direct interest here.

Also at I suggested an objective empirical test which would obviate much discussion. I ask the committee to discuss each colloquy. Collect (talk) 12:42, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

@FuFo who seems to think this page is used to comment on others - was the post I was responding to. I suggest you use the Talk page for further such stuff. Collect (talk) 14:32, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by FuFoFuEd
Despite the fact that I am misrepresented above as a champion of BLP violations (and I wasn't even notified of this discussion about me), I invite anyone to read my posts for instance here, here, here or here to get a true picture. Generally, WP:BLP points to the removal of contentious and poorly sourced information. Someone giving one or more interviews about his sexual orientation, interviews which get widespread media coverage, is a bit different than just a few tabloids making some assertions with the subject contradicting them or refusing to comment. FuFoFuEd (talk) 13:47, 16 August 2011 (UTS)

Not long ago User:Collect said "the idea that every source one does not like must be reconfirmed is not found in any WP policy." Before that he said that "The only person able to say what a person believes is ... that person. Adding material to the contrary is quite against common sense and logic, but is found in far too many BLPs and other articles on Wikipedia." I wonder how that applies to Evans' new self-proclaimed girlfriend interviewed by a tabloid you've probably never heard of being used by User:Collect to argue that because Evans "shows up with a girlfriend" (and his publisher refuses to comment either way) implies that "that the 'gay' adjective may well be misplaced at this point in time." The Daily Mail cited in Collect's diff cites a snippet of the original story in the obscure first tabloid. No worrying churnalism there, I guess, only the "pro-gay" one is troublesome. The other two "refs" Collect gives make no mention whatsoever of Evans' sex life or intimate affairs with anyone, unless you count his tropical fish. FuFoFuEd (talk) 15:38, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

If you want to see some concerning article written for and by "Dubious Irony", look at for instance; trial by media+Wikipedia. As for the typical BLP conflict, it usually goes like this or this. And you don't need a special hearing to figure that out. I also agree with Lambanog's main thrust, although the means may be slightly more subtle; see or  for other examples. FuFoFuEd (talk) 17:49, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

The more hilarious parts of BLP enforcement come into play when the person is not even alive. And concerns about "meatpuppets". FuFoFuEd (talk) 09:02, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by DracoEssentialis
Responding to the invitation to provide evidence of biased editing in biographies, here are some additional examples. Please read the following not as an attempt to single out particular users, but as evidence of a site-wide problem:


 * Kimberly Kagan

From negative to bordering on puffery in 34 edits.


 * A biography created with a clear negative bias:.


 * Bias removed:.


 * Introduction of an article critical of the subject in External Links section:.


 * Information on subject’s political views is deleted instead of sourced:
 * (I did a quick search and found this more recent article mentioning that she is a neoconservative theorist ).


 * Deletion of the article critical of the subject from External Links section:.


 * Reinsertion:.


 * And another removal:.


 * The article now has a section that reads very similar to subject’s biography on her own site:, inserted by an IP that geolocates to Washington, DC.

In its current version, with the above issue still present, the article lacks balance. See .


 * Sheila Widnall

What controversy?


 * The Controversy section does not seem to have much to do with the subject of this BLP:.


 * This diff shows that all instances of Widnall’s name in this section were changed to William Cohen (whose article also has issues) by an SPA on May 26, 2011.


 * The Controversy section itself was inserted on March 20, 2011 by a user with 16 edits. Note that the contributor used the same misspelling of Ronald Fogleman (“Fogelman”) as the author of the article listed as a reference . In fact, the whole section was copied almost verbatim off of the humanevents.com site.

On to the author of the piece on that site, one


 * Jed Babbin

Overall lack of balance, 3 interesting references, and a lovely “Notable quote”.


 * Michael Eric Dyson

An American academic and author of 18 books, notable in Wikipedia for officiating at the wedding of a celebrity couple (!).


 * Advertising a reality TV show about a celebrity couple, this section, which merely namechecks the biography's subject, was added to the article on June 11, 2010 and remained there for over a year – until July 8, 2011:.


 * Dyson’s article was viewed by over 8000 people in the past 30 days.

And while


 * David Hackworth

died in 2005, his biography still looks like something that shouldn’t be on an encyclopaedic site aspiring to neutrality. This biography attracts an average of 6000+ views per month.

Delicious carbuncle

 * Delicious carbuncle has systematically used Wikipedia Review for wikihounding and off-wiki harassment of Cirt. His stated intention was to force Cirt out of a topic area.
 * In December 2010, as part of his campaign, DC repeatedly disrupted Jamie Sorrentini to make a WP:POINT against Cirt despite multiple warnings. Two uninvolved admins called it "an egregious BLP violation for which DC should have been blocked at the time" and "a deliberate BLP violation as a WP:POINT maneuvre ... [in] a campaign of bad-faith harassment against another wikipedian, conducted at the expense of a BLP subject"  Consequently he was topic-banned (later overturned on procedural grounds).

Prioryman

 * Cla68 has posted a mass of undifferentiated diffs showing many uncontentious edits, attempts to work with other editors to resolve issues and asking relevant questions about RfC/U evidence. None violated any restrictions or policies.
 * I did not continue to operate my old account. I don't know why it was blocked and I assumed that was just standard practice for vanished accounts.
 * Like many other DYK editors I deplored the way Cirt was bullied into removing five approved DYKs. I sought unsuccessfully to find a solution that would have community support. This was not in any way a "campaign" or "activism" but was an attempt to maintain the integrity of DYK while addressing some legitimate concerns.
 * My sole involvement with the Santorum article was a handful of uncontentious wikignoming edits such as adding wikilinks and correcting an error.
 * I have explained here why I stuck my oar into the RfC/U. I was deeply concerned at the poor quality of some of the evidence being used against Cirt, particularly the unevidenced Googlebombing allegation, and the lack of assumed good faith. I pointed out flaws in some of the evidence and highlighted DC's harassment campaign on WR. These were matters of fact highly relevant to the RfC/U. My contributions to the RfC/U were modest - 46 (4.3%) out of 1070 edits to the RfC/U talk page and I supported views that attracted a majority of editorial support on the RfC/U page.
 * I avoided commenting on Scientology BLPs because of my voluntary restriction on editing them. I felt that it was not necessary to disclose my previous involvement with such articles, as it was not germane to my comments related to other articles.
 * When I made this remark I had forgotten entirely who LL was. DC later posted a reminder that I had made a throwaway comment about him in a Usenet post 10 years ago. I know nothing about LL other than his name and reputation and have never edited or even read anything to do with him on Wikipedia. If I misled, I did so inadvertently and I apologise for that.
 * I stand by this statement. I am not involved in any disputes in any of the topic areas covered in the RfC/U, nor have I been for a very long time. I have never been involved at all in the vast majority of the articles discussed. Prioryman (talk) 21:52, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Wnt
It is difficult to give evidence for such a very wide-ranging proceeding. But the premise is wrong: the conflict here is not to diminish or increase particular reputations. Rather, this is almost purely a Wikipolitical conflict between deletionists and inclusionists. One side makes use of every policy, including BLP, to oppose what they don't like, while the other defends Wikipedia's breadth of coverage. For example, at Requests for comment/Use of classified documents I was supported by Cirt and DGG, and opposed by Viriditas and JN466 and to some degree by Resident Anthropologist. In User:Scott_MacDonald/Removal_of_reviewer_rights_from_User:Wnt and a range of other WP:Pending Changes debates I was opposing Scott MacDonald and Off2riorob. But regarding BLP per se I would suggest:


 * ArbCom should dispel any impression it has created that BLP overrides all other policies, except where explicitly stated. Such claims generally tend to increase the temperature and uncertainty of discussions.
 * It should be made clear that Wikipedia policies apply to removal of text just as much as addition. Removing mention of March 13 despite the sources because you think it's not important violates WP:OR. Removing mention of open homosexuality from someone's page because you personally think it's a "negative" thing violates WP:NPOV. (And in that case, created a vacuum subsequently filled by a dubious edit from another editor, leading directly to gossipy news coverage) Removing rebuttals of association with a madman violates WP:BLP.

The BLP policy leads to censorship and should therefore be abolished
The goal of the BLP policy is to prevent sensationalist tabloid gossip to infect Wikipedia. There is also a legal dimension to this as the BLP policy explains. What happens in practice, however, is that editors use the BLP policy as a stick to keep information they don't like to see in a BLP article out of the article, regardless of that information really being the sort of unreliable "sensationalist tabloid gossip" the BLP policy was meant to address.

E.g. one can have reasonable arguments for and against inclusion of the fact that Rick Perry was an attendee of a Bilderberg conference in 2007 see here. But to make a BLP issue out of talk page arguments see here and go after editors who "violate BLP" because of that, amounts to censorhip. You then give way too much power in this discussion to the people who argue against inclusion of this fact.

The outcome of this particular discussion may not be affected by the invoked BLP dimension here, but this whole attitude that exists in general of invoking an additional BLP dimension to some discussion is not ok. Count Iblis (talk) 18:10, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Implementing the BLP policy provokes edit warring
The boundary of what constitutes a BLP violation and what not, is not well defined. In some cases editors will have totally diverging opinions on this. Then because the BLP policy gives editors the right to revert BLP violatons without limit, basically treating these as vandalism edits, this can lead to conflicts between editors, edit wars etc.

An example of such an issue is the sexual preference of people. This AN/I discussion is a good example of a disagreement that escalated. Count Iblis (talk) 23:53, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Will Beback's Incivility and Personal Attacks
Will Beback has been present through out the controversy around Cirt. At all the ANI threads and Mailing lists. Will often assumes bad faith in those in disagreements with him. This practice involves Casting Aspersions without any substantial evidence.

Will Beback implies those critical of Cirt of simply being "supporters of cults and new religious movements"

Will Beback casts aspersions on others of having a Conflict of Interest while pursuing Cirt. Will claims a "clear connection between the anti-"Cirt faction" and Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh), Twelve Tribes communities, est/Landmark Education, Transcendental Meditation movement, etc." Will has failed to to provide evidence of any such connections, using them soley as ad hominem to gain an upper hand in disputes.

Will Beback has described the RFC/U as "editors with clear conflicts of interest are trying to get Cirt to leave, or at least to stop editing articles related to new religious movements." Will describes the opposing of all being "longtime members of new religious movement"

Will Beback has accused Off2riorob and Jayen466 of being Osho followers who are out to get Cirt for his POV editing there. After one denial and one detailed history. Will Beback continues to excessively Taunting and baiting Off2riorob and Jayen466

Will Beback has argued that members of religious communities are incapable of writing Neutrally about their religion. .

Will has failed to to provide evidence of any such connections, either here or anywhere else on Wikipedia. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 19:17, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Response to MathSci and Will Beback
Since "allegations of conduct problems" have appeared with actual evidence has appeared I am obliged to respond. My publishing name is B. Gibson Barkley, (Thus why one account is ). I am an Anthropologist studying at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. My primary research interests are New and Alternative religions of the Western World. Like most people in Chattanooga, I was extremely skeptical of the Twelve Tribes communities when it returned to Chattanooga after nearly thirty years of self imposed exile. I began researching them and continue to do so to this day. In November I have been Invited to Co-present at the American Academy of Religion. Part of my research has been indeed taking photographs of ritualistic events including weddings Weddings and smaller rituals. I have uploaded a couple of images from those events onto commons as we encourage people with unique vantage points to do. I am currently finishing up a paper on Wikipedia's "Cult Wars" specifically focusing on the ArbSci event. My thesis is quite simple that the culture of Wikipedia was incompatible with Church of Scientology usual demands complicated by non-specialists (or even really stupid people) in the religion areas in general. I created as role account with hopes of getting Requests for permissions I sent it to the wrong person and OTRS got it. User:Keegan offered instead to have copies of some deleted pages instead. That was an acceptable compromise, thus used that account to create a page [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:A_NRM_Researcher&direction=prev&oldid=371414641 linking to my Real Life identity to the account. (i.e B. Gibson Barkley)]. My account thus was used to make sheet in userspace to makes notes. Despite a big ho-ha at the SPI and ANI, no one found evidence of misuse of any the accounts.

My work at the article Twelve Tribes communities. Admittedly it has been a WP:WALLEDGARDEN not because I chased people off with ownership but because they were largely local interest and small size. It was really big in Chattanooga then so naturally something to write about. I was thanked on Wikipedia by their Web Guru and invited Editor of the News at Factnet and one of their most critical ex-members. I'll be analyzing evidence of MathSci's tomorrow in WorkShop. I think he is acting in good faith here. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 05:19, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

As to our standards of level on certain articles on the states of NRM scholarship those are worth discussion in BLP area in particular. I will post about them soon in workshop as well. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 05:19, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Culture of Smearing or Misrepresenting Article Subjects Who Hold Minority Views
I've noticed that on articles about BLP subjects who do not hold popular views or views that some editors have a disdain for, that references backing them are removed inappropriately while often questionable references are added or allowed to remain. Examples I would give that I am familiar with are the articles on Mary Enig and Joseph Mercola. The BLP status of these articles do not seem to have offered significant protection for them despite admin supervision.



Diff of before and after I started work on it – over 300 edits and 5 months later and after the article size increased by a third and the number of sources doubled before it was pared back again due to complaints (hist) – I was amazed at the amount of resistance my efforts to improve the article met with despite the fact I was fixing, improving, and adding citations; dealing with tags that had been placed on the article near four years previously; and updating information. It was clear to me that the article had not deteriorated simply due to neglect but that it was actively being sabotaged.

A tactic frequently used is the removal of sources. Removal of sources in many instances can be considered vandalism and if done by an IP account would likely draw attention but there are editors out there who engage in such editing pattern with little regard as to the trouble and effort to find and format such sources. They do not tag and state their problems; they do not find better sources to refute the sources presented—they simply remove and not for BLP reasons. A harder line should be taken against such behavior. It violates WP:Editing policy, specifically WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM. Lambanog (talk) 16:01, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Some articles related to new religious movements seem to form a walled garden with agenda-driven editing
As exemplified by his own evidence above concerning Will Beback, I find that some of ResidentAnthropologist's own editing of wikipedia seems agenda-driven and problematic, taking into account his multiple accounts, one of them abandoned because it was compromised. These accounts are duplicated on Commons, where images and short videos have been uploaded. ResidentAnthropologist has routinely deleted criticism from Yellow Deli before it was merged into Twelve Tribes communities, and appears to have exercised ownership of that article. That community—a new religious movement which some have called a "cult"—is a group of living people, so would appear to be one of the few topics so far which falls directly within ResidentAnthropologist's poorly framed initial RfAr. Part of ResidentAnthropologist's agenda seems to be the silencing of criticism and, as a corollary, critics. Merging articles such as the BLP of Eugene Spriggs, the founder of this Messianic community, seems to be one method of suppressing criticism.

The phenomenon of what has sometimes been called "cult apologist" has been analysed in the academic literature, for example in the book "Misunderstanding cults: searching for objectivity in a controversial field" published by University of Toronto Press, where there is a nuanced explanation of this historical term, now often avoided and usually deprecated by academics. In that book the research methods of academics like James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton, both specialising in religious studies, are discussed. The criticisms of their approach (especially by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi) seem to have been suppressed in their BLPs, sometimes by the subjects themselves. In the wikipedia article cult apologist, where the historical term, its nuances and misuses are explained, the source mentioned above appears [23/08/2011] in "further reading" but is questioned when cited in the lede. In that sense, this related set of articles seems to have become a WP:WALLEDGARDEN and even to some extent a WP:BATTLEGROUND. The wikipedia articles concerned often do not seem to reflect current scholarship in a balanced way. (Note: this is not intended as a general description of how new religious movements are treated on wikipedia, but my personal first impressions of the small number of articles linked directly or indirectly to Twelve Tribes communities.)

Update: I was aware of some of the information now disclosed by ResidentAnthropologist. As I understand it he is an undergraduate, majoring in religion and anthropology, about to begin his fourth year of study. There is no suggestion that he has misused his accounts, although here and on Commons his self-description as a researcher in anthropology or new religious movements is slightly misleading. The particular subject matter touches highly emotive issues that affect different people in different ways; that makes it hard or confusing for even very well-meaning editors to maintain complete objectivity and can result in questioning the motives of other editors. As Will Beback has pointed out on the workshop page, the deleted article User:A NRM Researcher/Wikipedia Cult Wars, once linked to CULTWARS, is an example of this kind of confusion.

BLP policy being used as a magical censorship hammer and needs to be rewritten to prevent further abuse
Back in October 2010 myself and several other editors were treated by what I still regard as a textbook example of BLP policy abuse. In the talk page of Weston Price article what should have been a WP:RS debate regarding the use of Stephen Barrett (see Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_79) quickly degenerated into BLP regarding Stephen Barrett. (see Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive97)

The situation got so bad that the whole mess was escalated to Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents/Problem_on_BLP_noticeboard where User:Ludwigs2 pointed out evidence of "user page harassment" where "multitudinous posts to the user talk pages of the people you are arguing with (since the 20th I count 15 posts to BruceGrubb, 34 to Griswaldo, 31 to the Founders Intent, and 50 to me), mostly argumentative posts or warning templates."

The administrators Scott Mac and User:Jclemens both ruled that no BLP issues existed (as well as the majority of the community) with Jclemen (the original author of WP:CRYBLP) stating and I quote "I concur with Scott Mac: there is no BLP issue to justify the edits made in the name of BLP. Making edits and calling them "BLP" when no BLP issue actually applies is disruptive editing, as I've articulated in WP:CRYBLP."

The kicker to all this is the article itself was NOT a BLP as Weston Price has been dead since 1948! This entire BLP issue involved the use of a source and not the article itself!

A much milder version of this can be seen in Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive119

These are the most extreme versions that I have personally been involved in but they show that BLP as it is currently written has serious problems and needs to be redone to prevent such abuse in the future.--BruceGrubb (talk) 09:31, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

The daily news is not encyclopaedic
Dominic Strauss-Khan Sexual assault article. 3,500+ edits to article and talk page. Additional edits in main article, plus related edits in the article of his wife, also numerous threads in ANI and BLPN. Approx 120 references mostly to bollocks of one sort or another.

The Florida child murder case where the mother was acquited full of the same newsey bollocks, the selection of bits and pieces equating to SYNTH. The murder in Italy with the convicted American is again the same thing. In both these articles we have a compendium of news articles masquerading as an attempt to precise a novel on the killing that is yet to be written.

The LaRouche and the Scientology articles are more or less the same thing. A pulling together of news cuttings around single events, with zero analysis, just selection of the op-ed polemic.

The main issue with the Santorum article was the inclusion of the speculations of TV pundits, all of which were reacting to a daily news item.

Almost all of the BLP issues have at their source current news events. It doesn't matter whether the event happened last week, or 10 - 40 years ago. The sourcing is almost all news reportage. Whether it is the ravings of the Norwegian child killer, or the ravings of a media controversialist, it might be news as entertainment but it should not be added to the articles of the subjects they rave about.

User:Mathsci playing fast and lose with BLP at this very case page
In his evidence here, User:Mathsci falsely suggests that two living academics, J. Gordon Melton and James R. Lewis have been critiqued and analyzed by other scholars as "cult apologists." While it is true that these two scholars are among a group who have had their research practices and conclusions criticized by a handful of other scholars who claim that they have been biased in favor of the religious groups they study, this has not been investigated as a form of "cult apology," since that term is not used by scholars at all. It is a pejorative used by non-academic cult critics. It is used in the introduction of Misunderstanding Cults, along with "cult-bashers" as hyperbole, not as a serious category for scholarly investigation. This was pointed out to Mathsci, twice, with a request that he choose a neutral way of describing the situation. Yet he refuses to do so. IMO he's misrepresenting a source in order to give validity to a pejorative term, that he is then associating with two living people, and that is a manipulative way of violating the BLP policy.

New Religious Movements
I take exception to Mathsci´s description of the situation at articles related to the topic of "cults/NRM´s". Especially I take issue with his suggestion that derogatory information about prominent sociologists studying NRM's which is mostly produced by the Anti-Cult lobby shold have a greater presence in wikipedia. This would be a BLP issue. In general Resident Antyhropologists account and arguments are sound in my judgement. (I am also an anthropologist who has worked with a group sometimes negatively described as a "cult"). Editing wikipedia have observed that cetain editors seem very focused on amassing certain kinds of usually negative information about certain religious/political organizations in the articles about those groups as well as articles relatively tangential to those topics. I have seen this occurring in articles about people who are affiliated with scientology (here I have seen some peculiar editing by Cirt) and in articles regarding lyndon la rouche (with peculiar editing by slimvirgin). In both cases I was surprised that editors that I otherwise respected a lot seemed to suspend their editorial judgment in editing articles relating to these subjects. I have noted similar behavior by other editors at articles regarding Jehovah's Witnesses (user BlackCab seems to be particularly interested in including negative information but she is mostly balanced out by a nuber of other editors trying to insert mostly what they view as positive information). The situation at articles about Falun Gong is similar and well known to ArbCom. I have my sef taken most cult/NRM related articles off my watchlist because IO found it too stressfull to edit them from a neutral POV (walled garden's yes, but generally from the opposite pov of what mathsci suggests - or in some cases just chinese stand offs between editors from both pro and ati sides). In any case, since I am not presenting any evidence but just my viewpoint, I am only writing this here because I think that the solution has to be to let those articles rely to a greater degree on academic sources written by social scientists who are specialists in these topics, and not from the pov of either the organizations themselves or from those who are opposed to them. Therefore Mathsci's apparent buying into the anti-Cult lobby's propaganda by attempting to sow suspicion around several of the most respected academic authorities seems particularly unfortunate to me and caused me to post here.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:49, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Jayen466
Presented for post-mortem analysis and reflection:
 * Jay Brannan: Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive125
 * Stephanie Adams: Articles_for_deletion/Stephanie_Adams_(2nd_nomination), Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons

Will Beback
Will Beback has tendentiously sought to include gossip about Tim Cook's sexual orientation in his biography. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BLPN#Tim_Cook. Suggesting something incorrect is one thing. Continuing to argue against all reason in the face of a consensus to the contrary is another.