Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Hunger/Evidence

Standards for writing about living persons
Hello Pedant17 - Regarding your note below, it is not my opinion but Wikipedia policy that biographies of living persons must be treated with great care. See []. As it says:

"Information available solely on partisan websites or in obscure newspapers should be handled with caution, and, if derogatory, should not be used at all."

Also, see my note below on Rick Ross. --Jcoonrod 23:28, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you for throwing some light on your references to "writing about living people".


 * I note that your reference to Wikipedia's notes on Biographies of living persons comprises a Wikipedia Guidline rather than a Wikipedia Policy, and refers primarily to biographical articles.


 * Rigid application of such guidelines to non-biographical articles would possibly discourage the use of material from "partisan websites" such as the Hunger Project site, which zealously promotes the cause of the Hunger Project, but probably not from non-partisan multi-viewpoint sites such as that of the Rick Ross Institute, which acts as a repository for study.


 * -- Pedant17 06:25, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The relevance of Rick Ross's archives
Hi John

You responded to my statement about Rick Ross's website. I wrote:

... Rick Ross (sufficiently notable to have his own entry in Wikipedia as early as May 2004), whose well-sourced and variously-opinioned archives get characterised (without evidence) as a "shrill POV site".

You replied on the Hunger project arbitration evidence page in the section headed "The nature of Rick Ross's attacks on THP":

In response to the comment above about the validity of Rick Ross as a source, please see this example of his writings for a sense of his standards for writing about living people - [] - which clearly differ from Wikipedia standards.

Allow me to comment as follows: Saddam Hussein, born near Tikrit in Iraq about 1937, served as President of Iraq from 1979. However, following a series of military encounters with Iran, Kuwait, Poland, Australia and the United States of America, he no longer exercises day-to-day governance over the country. I would submit that the foregoing bare facts so lack a point-of-view that any diligent and knowledgable Wikipedia-editor would feel obliged to supplement them with some clearly-labelled and well-referenced contrarianist POV. And Wikipedia operates in this way: incrementally adding multiple points-of-view. Even when discussing living persons. Even when documenting the Hunger Project...
 * Your sample of Rick Ross's work comes not from Rick Ross's own "shrill POV site" site (which we both specifically mentioned as the subject of discussion), but from the www.cultnews.com site.
 * Your sample of Rick Ross's prose, though not written to Wikipedia standards, comes from a non-Wikipedian milieu and represents a non-encyclopaedic genre. As a journalistic opinion-piece, credited and cross-referenced as it stands, it would however serve admirably as a source-document and/or a reference-document for content in a Wikipedia article, exemplifying the sorts of accusations ongoingly hurled at the Hunger Project.
 * Your single sample of Rick Ross's clearly-expressed opinion does not necessarily represent the wealth of material archived at Rick Ross's site. See for a different tone the statement of Rick Ross's lawyers, with its embedded references to a substantial wealth of scanned source-documentation. Or note that the site's links or references for Landmark include links to varied and balanced webpages such as Rants and Raves and to a not-unfavorable Time magazine article.
 * You seem to suggest a special standard should apply to "writing about living people". (de vivis nil nisi bonum, perhaps). This puzzles me -- I would expect journalistic pieces to call living figures into question non-hagiographically, and I would also expect encyclopedias not to shy away from known and documented controversies... Suppose you were to look up Saddam Hussein in Wikipedia. Given a neutral-point-of-view requirement, and due respect paid to living persons, you might find something like the following text:

-- Pedant17 05:04, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I have great respect for cult experts and exit counselors, and the ones I am familiar with do not endorse Rick Ross. For example, see: [] on the most reputable anti-cult site I'm aware of.


 * Not having a cult to defend, I don't necessarily regard the "anti-cult" label that you use as referring to any sort of actual grouping, let alone a unitary entity with an established view. I've noted bitter attacks on Anton Heim, the authority that you quote on "the most-respectable anti-cult site I'm aware of", and I note also his avowed Christian slant in the article which you have referenced. But not to get into sectarian and sub-sectarian strife: I believe that confusion may arise here between Rick Ross, an individual whom not everyone admires, and the www.rickross.com website, the original subject of our discussion, and which, as I've intimated previously, archives a lot of material that one need not tar with the brush of an anti-Rick Ross view.


 * Winston Churchill made many political enemies over a long parliamentary career. Did many of them begrudge him his Nobel Prize for literature, won for his works in history, biography and "oratory in defending exalted human values"?


 * -- Pedant17 06:25, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * www.cultnews.com is a Rick Ross website.


 * The meaning of this statement seems ambiguous to me.


 * Do you mean to imply that Rick Ross owns and/or controls the site www.cultnews.com ?


 * Do you mean to imply that the site www.cultnews.com occasionally publishes material written by Rick Ross ?


 * Do you mean to imply something else?


 * In any event the relevance of this claim escapes me.


 * -- Pedant17 06:25, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The accusations against THP are hurled only by Rick Ross, as far as I know, and are only backed up by the same ancient and largely discredited articles currently being resurrected here.


 * -- Jcoonrod 23:28, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * For other accusors of the Hunger Project, see for example the Usenet archives.


 * The staying-power of the "ancient" articles appears remarkable -- particularly in the wake of attempts to suppress them. If they remain only "largely discredited", please provide the information to discredit them completely, or at least point out exactly which parts of them you claim as discredited.


 * Take for example, the article by Carol Giambolvo, originally written in 1987. One can can pay particular attention to this article because the Hunger project stated in January 2003: "Most of the false and misleading statements on the web can be traced to Carol Giambalvo."


 * Giambalvo makes or implies a series of charges against the operation and attitudes of the early Hunger project. She does so in detail, drawing both on her own experience and on the published statements and comments of insiders and external commentators, carefully referencing her material with 60 footnotes. She demonstrates with specific quotations the strong emotional manipulation and verbal jiggery-pokery used to manipulate Hunger-Project workers. -- How has the Hunger Project gone about discrediting Giambalvo's work? It published (then removed from the web) a "response" in which it points out one error of numerical fact, produces a series of brief bland statements about itself, and selectively ridicules one single paraphrased point in Giambalvo's criticism of the philosophy and of the language used. It gives no contemporary dates for the facts with which it contrasts Giambalvo's data. It provides no references or supporting material to buttress its case, and fails to address major portions of Giambalvo's work: the links to psychological manipulation, the leadership-veneration, the inculcation of dubious philosophical concepts, the issues of hyper-self-identity-with-the-cause and the specific repudiations of the Hunger Project by the aid community, to name but a few.


 * Failing a detailed point-by-point refutation -- real refutation rather than a series of spin-jobs and/or suppressions -- those pesky "ancient" articles seem likely to live on in cyberspace as expressing at least some shreds of truth.


 * -- Pedant17

1. When Carol voluntarily removed her article from the Web, she requested that I remove the rebuttal, which I did. There exist point-by-point rebuttals to all published artticles I'm aware of that contain false or misleading statements about The Hunger Project.

2. Yes, Rick Ross owns cultnews.com. The Internet WHOIS record on the www.cultnews.com websites reads:

WHOIS Record For cultnews.com Registrant: Ross, Rick 113 Pavonia Ave. #323 Jersey City, NJ 07310-1756 US Domain Name: CULTNEWS.COM Administrative Contact, Technical Contact : Ross, Rick rickross@RICKROSS.COM 113 Pavonia Ave. #323 Jersey City, NJ 07310-1756 US Phone: (201) 434-9234 Fax: (201) 435-7108 -- Jcoonrod 01:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

JCoonrod, my understanding is that Carole involuntarily removed her article from her AOL web site at AOL's insistence, but that it's still online elsewhere. I'd be interested in seeing your rebuttal--is it available, either online or privately? Phr (talk) 08:48, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Phr, I am referring to her May 2006 voluntary decision to remove it from the Dutch site - a site which posted both it and my rebuttal to it - not the 2003 removal from her AOL site, as AOL concluded it violated their terms of service.--Jcoonrod 11:30, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I've managed to get hold of a copy and will look at it. Thanks.  Phr (talk) 12:06, 31 July 2006 (UTC)