Talk:International Cultic Studies Association/Archive 1

moon

Cut from article:

• To avoid internal political debates, AFF did not have a membership base.
• This resulted in the professionalism which Barney had intended from the start.

Generally, someone who only wants one point of view presented will retain complete control. "Avoiding ... debates" is an way of saying this without really saying this.

I see no evidence that ICSA had any professionalism. It was an anti-Moon group from the start, which denied that religious conversion to the Unification Church was even theoretically possible.

It's not "professional" to begin research with a priori notions. Objective sociologists seek to "find out what is so" rather than to "prove what we know". --Uncle Ed 19:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I am very interested in your notion that "it was an anti-Moon group from the start", do you have citations/evidence for this? Smeelgova 19:54, 17 November 2006 (UTC).

Professional status

Cuts:

• It is based in the United States and is one of the largest professional organizations in this field.
• It publishes the journal Cultic Studies Review.

I asked last month but got no response. So I'm asking again: is this an advocacy organization, or some kind of neutral scientific body, or what? --Uncle Ed 18:37, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

It bill itself thusly:

The International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) is an interdisciplinary network of academicians, professionals, former group members, and families who study and educate the public about social-psychological influence and control, authoritarianism, and zealotry in cultic groups, alternative movements, and other environments. Founded in 1979 as AFF (American Family Foundation), ICSA took on its current name in late 2004 to better reflect the organization's focus and increasingly international and scholarly dimensions.

ICSA, the leading professional organization concerned about cultic groups and psychological manipulation, is known for its professionalism and capacity to respond effectively to families, former and current group members, helping professionals, and scholars."Tanaats 00:17, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

What was the reason for cutting "It publishes the journal Cultic Studies Review."?Tanaats 00:17, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

One more cut:

• bills itself as an interdisciplinary research and education foundation devoted to the study of cultic phenomena.

If there is any indication that this group is "scientific" or "objective", we can add such information provided it is properly sourced.

I don't follow..."Bills itself" it objectively true."Tanaats 00:17, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Or if there is a dispute over whether their anti-cult POV is justified or not, then we should apply usual NPOV policy and explain both sides of that dispute fairly. For example:

• deprogrammers and "exit counselors" A, B, and C called ICSA an "objective, scholarly source of information on dangerous cults"; while,
• NRMs whose members were kidnapped by ICSA-referred deprogrammers condemned the organization as "shady and self-serving".

No problem here with introducing a counterpoint. Do you have references for the "deprogrammer" thing or is that a possible example? Tanaats 00:17, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

You get the idea. --Uncle Ed 18:46, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Yep. Tanaats 00:17, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

UNmatching sources?

This text:

"ICSA portrays cults as "unethical" and "manipulative" organizations which trick[2] unsuspecting "normal" people into a life of pointless, harmful devotion to the self-centered goals of the groups leaders. ICSA estimates that roughly half[3] of cult recruits are harmed psychologically by their association with the group."

Is using sources related to Langone, but not to this association. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:59, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

You're right I tried to improve it. However, as Executive Director of the ICSA I think it is relevant to the ICSA topic to quote Langone. Tanaats 01:15, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Merge "Activism" and "Activities"?

It seems to me that "Activism" and "Activities" cover the same idea and should be merged. Tanaats 01:13, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and (1) put "Origins" at the beginning of the article, and (2) combined "Activities" with "Activism". Tanaats 01:31, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Changes to opening paragraph

I've made what I feel are improvements to the opening paragraph. This included moving the sentence about counseling referrals down to the "Origins" section. Tanaats 03:21, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

what is the affiliation

Is this part of the Christian countercult movement? — coelacan talk — 16:58, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

If you can find a verifiable cite from an RS go ahead and add "<Whomever> states that the ICSA is part of the CCM." Tanaats 17:38, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

However, I think that you will have trouble finding such a cite. The ICSA is well known to have a deliberate secular orientation. Tanaats 17:40, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I was asking, not asserting. There's no mention of secularity or religiosity in the article. — coelacan talk — 18:22, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

You're right, and I don't find a cite for it either. Tanaats 18:30, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

You can't find a cite for their secularity? — coelacan talk — 18:35, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Tanaats 18:49, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, found this. One of the CCM groups says they are secular: "The ICSA, the world's largest secular cultinformation organization, is one of professional organizations recommended by Apologetics Index"[1] If you consider that a reliable source. — coelacan talk — 20:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Tanaats 23:23, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Naheed Vatcha

Very few google hits, but "Ms" Naheed co-authored a paper on the cult aspects of life at Enron. Wjhonson 07:17, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

What is WP:OTRS? Wjhonson 15:56, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Mention of specific person

Jkelly, why do you keep deleting the Naheed Vatcha mention? See here. Tanaats 19:28, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi. We're upsetting someone, because we are repeating information from an inaccurate, or perhaps simply out of date, wesbite. It is not more important that we repeat their staff list verbatim than it is to get things right, or more important to reproduce their staff list than it is to avoid reposting personal information about people who are not famous. I don't know why we're republishing their staff list in the first place, but we now have good reason to think that there's something wrong with it, and that should be enough for editors here to stop reverting. Jkelly 20:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Since you have deigned to explain, I'm sorry about the "unexplained" dig on my latest edit comment.

Now please explain how you know that this information is inaccurate, as well as whence the complaint comes. Tanaats 20:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

There's no need to apologise to me, although it would be nice if, when an administrator shows up at an article, you don't immediately revert them, especially when the matter is about a not famous living person. As Wikipedians, we need to make good judgements about what we include in our articles. I'd like someone to explain why we're republishing this staff list in the first place, instead of linking to it. Jkelly 20:33, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

How do we know, in the first place, that you're an Administrator? --Tilman 22:09, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I've protected the article, as someone here obviously believes it is more important to repeat the staff list than it is to get things right, or listen to concerns about living people. That's really, really not what we're about here, but it isn't clear to me that my repeating it is going to change someone's mind. Can anyone here explain why we're republishing the website's staff list in the first place? Jkelly 20:19, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

You are an admin then. As such have no excuse for removing well sourced material with an edit comment like "unsourced claim about a living person". The mention was well-sourced. Please explain yourself properly before wielding your admin powers. I'll be quite happy to open a discussion on WP:AIN to check whether or not you are behiving properly. Tanaats 20:25, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

If you want other admins to review my actions, the place to do that is WP:AN/I, not AIN. Is there some reason that including this person's name in this article is more important than taking the time to fact-check and discuss? Jkelly 20:33, 11 February 2007 (UTC).

You ask now about fact-checking and discussing? You were the one to make an improper unlateral deletion of well-sourced material without discussing at all first. I think that you owe an apology before we proceed. Tanaats 20:38, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

If what you want out of this conversation is for me to say to you that your approach to this issue has been okay, I'm afraid that I cannot help you. Let me put it to you this way; given that we're upsetting someone, given that we're republishing information about living people based on a website we know next to nothing about, given that we should stop doing that, and given that my edit was immediately reverted, what would you say would be the best way for me to proceed? Imagine that you had the responsibility for making it right. What would you do? Jkelly 20:45, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

My response:

• First of all, you never identified yourself as an admin. I had to deduce that fact when you protected the page.
• Even as a lowly two-month old editor I know that making deletions of well-sourced material is inappropriate unless consensus has been reached prior to deletion. The only exception of which I am aware is WP:BLP, however you have yet to make a case for that. You only say that we are upsetting someone. As far as I know, merely upsetting someone does not qualify as a violation of WP:BLP.
• You know next to nothing about the website. And you never made an attempt to learn what we know about it.
• Your edit was reverted because you removed well-sourced material without first identifying yourself as an admin and without any prior discussion here.
• The the best way for you to proceed is to apologize and to behave properly going forward. If you still think that I'm offbase, then let's discuss it on AN/I. If I am corrected there than I shall be happy to accept the correction and apologize to you instead. Tanaats 20:59, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

de-indent What I'd like is for it to not matter to you whether it's an admin, newbie, anonymous editor, whoever. If someone removes information about a non-famous living person from an article, the thing to do is not to immediately revert them, regardless of whatever role that they may have in Wikipedia's environment. As editors, we should care deeply about getting things right, ask ourselves why someone might be making the edit that they are making, and discuss the issue if necessary. The urgent concern is not to make sure that the article reproduces the website's staff list verbatim. It's more important to be very conservative, and make sure that if, in the end, we are going to include information about a non-famous living person, that the information comes from a fact-checked, reviewed, source. Jkelly 21:09, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. So we can't trust the ICSA website in an article about ICSA? Get real. --Tilman 21:42, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Jkelly, I just can't believe that I have to repeat this. You removed the material without proper explanation. I can't go around and just delete mentions of living persons in the articles I that edit without proper explanation. I'd get my butt kicked hard, every time, and properly so. It was up to you to explain, at least in your edit comments, why this was a BLP violation.

I just can't believe that you are giving lectures about the reversions of your unilateral deletions of well-sourced material which were done without proper explanation, either before or after the fact.

As for "if we are going to include"... there is no we here. It is no longer appropriate for you to discuss content issues on this article. That is the domain of editors, and having already exercised your admin privileges here you must recuse yourself from editing. Unless you wish to revert your exercise of admin privileges and remove the protection. Tanaats 21:51, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

"We" are Wikipedians. If you're not interested in having a conversation about how to go forward with this article with me, that's your perogative; you're under no obligation to. I'll gladly remove the protection if there's a good-faith commitment to not continue to add people's names to it when the only source is that website. I'm really having a hard time understanding why it's so very important to you that we republish this staff list. If you don't feel comfortable discussing that here, you should feel free to email me. Jkelly 22:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I will open a discussion on ANI. If your conduct is proper then I need a really good lecture to help me to understand. Tanaats 22:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Again - this is the ICSA article, sourced with the help of the ICSA website re: its own staff members. Then you pop up from nowhere claiming that ICSA for some reason is wrong about who works there???? --Tilman 06:12, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Tanaats, you seem to have a rudimentary knowledge of wikipedia policy at best, as evidenced by the above statements. Jkelly "must" not do anything simply because you insist on it, and your general demeanor seems rude and boorish. Jkelley is following established wikipedia policy as per WP:V and WP:BLP.

"I can NOT emphasize this enough.There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative "I heard it somewhere" pseudo information is to be tagged with a "needs a cite" tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons." --Jimbo Wales

You do not dictate policy at wikipedia, and Jkelly has every right to discuss this issue, edit and end a revert-war or remove inappropriate material just like any wikipedian. - WeniWidiWiki 22:25, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

It just got even weirder: the person has now been deleted from the website [2] --Tilman 06:29, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Ye gods! Ok, various points to all and sundry;

1. Yes, an organization's website is usually a reliable source for information on who works there. However, that does not mean it can't be wrong. You can cite the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time magazine, and a half million other publications as 'reliable sources' that "George W. Bush is the current president of the United States"... but if he died of a heart attack tomorrow that 'verified' information from 'reliable sources' would then be false. Things change, and if there is a reasonable chance information may be false/outdated we remove it.
2. When people send in OTRS complaints about the accuracy of information in Wikipedia the first response is usually to remove the information and keep it out, going so far as protecting pages and/or blocking people if need be, unless solid proof of accuracy can be found. That is apparently what Jkelly did here and thus seems generally proper. Had he been acting on personal views rather than OTRS then protecting a page after edit warring over it would definitely be a bad idea, but WP:BLP related issues (essentially anything about a living or recently deceased person which is disputed) are an exception.
3. It obviously wasn't clear that this is what was going on and that has led to a great deal of unnecessary confusion and consternation. Jkelly, was presumably trying to avoid saying too much because OTRS communications are confidential. However, I would think that something like, 'We received an OTRS notice indicating that this information is incorrect. Please do not restore without solid proof of accuracy', would be ok... and help avoid the subsequent confusion.
4. When you don't know/agree with what is going on the best course of action is to do nothing on the article itself until you have gotten a clearer understanding from talk page discussion. The world would not stop spinning if this person's name were left off this page for a few days... even if they WERE an active staff member there. Revert warring, calling actions improper, launching investigations, et cetera... all are less than helpful actions while still in the 'do not know what is going on' stage. You should do so only if you have all the facts and still feel it is needed OR if you have gotten no response / explanation after making every effort to discuss the issues.

We all good? --CBD 13:46, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Your comments about the best course of action are appreciated. In hindsight, you are right. My POV on the course of events is of course in the ANI discussion. I would have sat and taken the deletion of the one person. But after cementing his unexplained edit by page protection he then started criticizing other content of the article and started talking about taking out all mentions of ICSA staff, board members, and advisory members. As far as I was concerned there were more arbitrary deletions coming up, to be enforced by further inappropriate use of admin privileges. An admin was taking over the article. That is why I took it to ANI. It wasn't just the one deletion. Tanaats 16:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

You said OTRS communications are confidential. That is the problem: an admin is making a decision based on "secret evidence". In theory, a prankster with the address naheed.vatcha@hotmail.com could make an OTRS complaint and make a claim, that can't be verified by the people who edit the article. That is an excellent way to bypass the community that knows about the topic. It reminds me of Barbara Schwarz - after she was banned several times from editing because of violating WP:NPA, she (apparently) made a complaint through some channel that resulted the apparence of an arm of Jimbo, who made a change that was reverted (the dispute was about a fact that Barbara had admitted herself to a newspaper). After his arguments were unsuccessful, he deleted the entire article. After a lengthy discussion, the article was restarted, rewritten from scratch, and has mostly the same facts as the deleted article, and Barbara is still unhappy. Nevertheless, for a few days, she got what she wanted (no article at all, despite being a very public person). --Tilman 16:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Protection

Now that this person is deleted from the ICSA website [3], I think that the controversy is moot. Can someone unblock the article, or should I ask elsewhere? --Tilman 16:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I've unprotected it. Jkelly 17:54, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Education

the dictionary gives the defiition of education as "a body of knowledge acquired while being educated". Knowledge in turn is defined as "facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education"

There is no evidence that the information offered is factual, and since the organisation in question is biased against groups they dub "cults", another definition of knowledge pops up: "true, justified belief; certain understanding, as opposed to opinion." - the distinction between knowledge and the information the ICS professes is quite apparent in this case. Sfacets 12:24, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Your assumption that they have a bias against certain groups is your own POV. The fact of the matter is they have a diverse and large group of individuals on the Editorial Review Board, including some that have actually been known to support some of these controversial groups in the past, such as Eileen Barker... Smee 12:27, 20 February 2007 (UTC).

Well they do have a bias - for one they define the groups as "cultic" - and offers classes to combat the percieved influences these minority groups have. Instead of using a word such as "education", which connotes that they impart the strict truth - why not use a more-neutral word? They are not imparting the truth (which is indivisible) here, rather their opinions on what the truth is. Education is about imparting a wide truth, or general knowledge, whereas it is obvious that this group is not attempting to impart such knowledge, but rather their own narrowed-down description of what a 'cult' is. Sfacets 12:49, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Even the definition you gave above shows how the use of this term is just fine. "a body of knowledge acquired while being educated" - is a very vague description, while your second definition does not have to be absolute and pertain to specific "facts" but rather to "information", "skills" and "a body of knowledge". Surely this is what the ICSA is imparting in this case. Smee 13:08, 20 February 2007 (UTC).

Reliable Organization?

I've been trying to learn whether or not this org is credible and NPOV; best I can tell thusfar, they are:

• included on QuackWatch.com's list of Reliable Agencies and Organizations, which "lists organizations that have produced reliable publications for many years." [4]
• included on FACT.net's list of (reviewed) organizations. [5]
• according to their website, "ICSA does NOT maintain a list of "bad" groups or "cults." We nonjudgmentally list groups on which we have information. Groups listed, described, or referred to on ICSA's Web sites may be mainstream or nonmainstream, controversial or noncontroversial, religious or nonreligious, cult or not cult, harmful or benign. We encourage inquirers to consider a variety of opinions, negative and positive, so that inquirers can make independent and informed judgments pertinent to their particular concerns." [6]

Anyways, I list this here in case someone else was wondering the same thing. --Xiaphias 03:17, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. The first two points make them more reliable than many other used and accepted sources.--Svetovid 12:02, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Creation of new categories

Hello, it's a good idea to examine and follow the guidelines outlined at WP:NCCAT before creating new categories and adding articles to it. thanks Deconstructhis (talk) 16:02, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Potentially Controversial

This article fails to include a presentation of the position that this organization's methodological approach is fundamentally unsound, a perspective that is shared by many mainstream social scientists. Until this information is included in the article in a properly referenced fashion, it is my opinion that this article's content is intrinsically non-neutral. cheers Deconstructhis (talk) 20:49, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

It basically reads like an ad since it is sourced from the organization only. I've also added the advertisement tag.PelleSmith (talk) 03:52, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

List of employees?

It seemed a little strange to me that so many employees are listed, most of them not notable (or at least not having articles yet.) I could imagine that this might cause problems for some of them in their lives or careers. I've also posted a note on the BLP board. Wolfview (talk) 04:53, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

This has been corrected by non-notable names taken off. Thanks. Wolfview (talk) 02:30, 15 September 2010 (UTC)