User talk:Ronabop/Archive October 2003-March 2006

Hi Ronabop :) I hope you like the place and choose to stay.

Some links that may be of use:

Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers
Wikipedia:How to edit a page
Wikipedia:Village pump - ask questions you may have here, or leave a message on my talk page

Keep contributing :) Dysprosia 07:09, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Still learning social syntax.... added three hypens. Thanks for the links.

Hey :) Just a tip - you don't need to put underscores in links, you can use spaces -- [[blonde joke]] will work too . Just a tip to help you out! :) Dysprosia 08:01, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Hello Andew Weil, your the only one who could help me, can you try to tell user:Mr-Natural-Health to agree to my cease fire terms, along w/ user:RK (who is sort of agreeing to them), i know you fought hard for MNH, im counting on you to do it again!

PS. I apologize for posting this on my live journal http://www.livejournal.com/users/crown_royal_200/9944.html, i was only joking when i said i was MNH.

Unitarians

On Jesus you reverted my edit, and seem to suggest that modern unitarians believe Jesus is the son of god. That is a small minority of Unitarians in North America. Is this a misunderstanding, or do you know of a large group of current unitarians who believe this? Thanks. NealMcB 16:15, 2004 May 9 (UTC)

Two-Spirit

Hi, I left you a (friendly) message at Talk:Two-Spirit. Hyacinth 20:31, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Vandalism on Demographic history of Kosovo

Hi. Just to clear my name, I noticed some suspicious anon edits on this article, changing lots of numbers from Serbian to Albanian and back, hence I reverted it to the last version before the anon edit war from 13:08, September 9, 2005 Curpsbot-unicodify, and also changed Kosovo and Metohija to Kosovo as it was voted on on the Kosovo talk page. Personally i do not know which numbers are correct, and I hope you did not mean me with rv vandal. Please also note that the proper name in English is Kosovo, for what is Kosova in Albanian and Kosovo i Meto... in Serbia. Thanks -- Chris 73 Talk 13:42, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome -- Chris 73 Talk 16:21, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Solar_power#Nov_14_reversion

I curious to which version did you revert this article? Talk:Solar_power#Nov_14_reversion --D0li0 11:59, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes lots of work on this article seems to have been dropped by this reversion and there was no obvious vandal being reverted. Lumos3 14:41, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Mike Doren

When I went to check out the Mike Doren article I noticed that it was being considered for deletion. Why? I think that it would be a shame to delete it, because if you look at the discussion group it is fairly evident that the article has some use to people. I hope you decide to keep the article up. Thank you

PMD

I see pumpkins everywhere. Even as we speak millions of Canadians are monting there pumkin steeds and proceeding south to overthrow the US. Pumpkins of mass destruction. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 11:08, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Astral Projection

What I need is Psychic ability. I like the way they used * to try and confuse me. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 11:29, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You forgot Poland

If you will find some time, take a look at my post.Talk:You forgot Poland Mieciu K 12:15, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

See that page. Ronabop 08:44, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's better now.If you are interested in those kind of things you might want to do some research on the Polish contribiution in the first Gulf War. The brave endeavour of an improvised hospital-evacuation ship "ORP Wodnik" with an improvised helipad, which spent almost the entire desert storm operation in one of the Gulf states port, should be in the Wikipedia :) Mieciu K 17:15, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Abortion Entry

There is a difference between promoting one's web site and adding a significant contribution to a Wikipedia article. If you look at my contribution history, then you know I'm not a spammer, but a sincere contributor. abortion.jcsm.org The scriptures on abortion are pertinent for the abortion entry and the link should stay. What if someone else posted it? Then what would you say?--Jason Gastrich 15:15, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

See your talk page. Ronabop 04:52, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

He regularly deletes criticism from his talk page.Harvestdancer 18:28, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

EffK is forced to Abandon a Corrupted Wikipedia

I refer you to my response of a few moments ago at 15 December [[1]],http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/EffK/Evidence#3_December_2005 EffK 02:15, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Countdown

I live above the Arctic Circle. So the sun does not rise here from December 01 to January 12. We get abot 2 hours of twilight and the rest is night. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 16:32, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Jesus, a historical reconstruction

I addressed your comments on talk:Jesus (part6)

(Mullerb 01:18, 20 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]

Maryja

Yeah, but the question is this: "do the views of our viewers/listeners reflect our policy"? It [a-s] is in no way institutionalised, and is not encouraged. There is currently an unfair smear campaign against the radio (for daring to hold political views), and I have vowed protect the NPOV of the Wiki article to the last word. Ksenon 12:41, 24 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Have you given up trying reason with Ksenon? Radio Maryja needs help--Milicz 05:26, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It needs work, but my efforts are mostly non-confrontational. Ronabop 14:32, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The radio draws criticism, but to introduce the station as controversial right up front would require a new policy where any concept or entity that draws any criticism (99.9% of articles out there), big or small, to be labelled as such. All criticisms are included in the article. Milicz is basically trying to shift the delicate NPOV balance towards the controversial side, totally ignoring the radio's real message and, perhaps unknowingly, participating in a smear campaign against the station. Milicz has gone so far as to demand my block... true to the Wikipedian spirit? Ksenon 06:57, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thou shalt not give Hitler posthumous victories.

Thank you very much for your suggestion. I'm going to think this over before I act. As you probably noticed, it's a very sensitive topic. Best wishes, Durova 04:13, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like we saved over each other. My computer shut down and I had to reboot. I've fixed the bug that crept into the text. I hope that didn't overwrite your changes. Feel welcome to redo anything that was lost. I'm starting a less POV title and moving the article in the meantime. Regards, Durova 06:45, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the invite to the Scientology Project

But I don't understand the meaning of the letters "NRM" in the statement, "I like the NPOV challenge of NRM's," could you enlighten me please ? Terryeo 11:57, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

okay, got it. NRM = New Religious Movement. cool. Well, it looks like a vast project. R. Hubbard's writings have been estimated at 25,000,000,000 words. Additionally a lot of people have written a lot of stuff in reaction. heh ! And the Cos has written a lot of stuff in addition to what Hubbard wrote. Its a vast project. Thanks for the invite or heads up and I'll have a look at the project and take appropriate lines of action if I deceide to join the project, have a good one :) Terryeo 12:35, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Lol, message recieved while I was writing a description out on your talk. The wikipedia project on it only has a handful of members so far, working to achieve consensus, so more hands is always helpful! Ronabop 12:40, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again Ron. Re: your template under development, My opinion of Scientology Beielfs is at my Wiki page; what that means when applied to beliefs vs practices is this. There aren't any beliefs worth mentioning, it isn't built on beliefs, it doesn't have enough beliefs enough to bet a farthing on. Therefore it necessarily follows 99 percent of it is practices. Do you find this opposite and contrary to almost every other religion on the planet (maybe similar to Buddhism)? me too. Terryeo 14:55, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Revisions on alternative medicine

I have shortened the section on increased risk: Alternative Medicine. I hope it is satisfactory now. (Just for your information, it is legal to quote from PubMed. In fact that is the purpose of such resumes.) -- Fyslee 18:55, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hehe

Howdy! You don't know me, but I just read a random comment you made on a on an article talk page back in November and it really made me chuckle out loud. While it was a good comment with much truth behind it, I don't know if it was intended to be funny or not ..but I laughed. That being said,

I award this *Barnstar of Good Humor* to Ronabop for a particular piece of wit written on November 4, 2005 that made me laugh!

In case there is any confusion as to which remark I found funny seeing as how you have made several posts on that page, I am referring to:

Sometimes I ask myself, "Self, how could you POV push in Wikipedia, while still keeping within technical NPOV boundaries?". Since I've watched more than a few POV skirmishes over the years, one way that seems quite popular is to over-source, and over-detail, one side of an argument. So, for example, if the article is about Foo, a pro-Foo POV pusher might see that there are 10 sentences neutral or opposed to Foo, and then write 20 well-sourced sentences in favor of Foo. The neutral, pro-, and anti-Foo pushers are then compelled to do the same, just to keep an article reasonably balanced, eventually creating an article of rather severe bloat, which then has the controversy section split off into a separate entry, just to keep the parent article at least somewhat encyclopedic. So maybe the solution is to split out controversies and depictions into their own articles? Ronabop 09:47, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Keep up the good work, and good humor that "...lightens the mood, defuse conflicts, and make the Wikipedia a generally better place to be." --Naha|^(talk) 23:39, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Template:ScientologySeries

I'm entirely unsure about this series template ... the previous series template (old versions of Template:Scientology) was basically almost impossible to do NPOV, and this version is arguably not NPOV either (e.g.' critics are hot on the Introspection Rundown, but a Scientologist would argue it was a side-issue at best). What does this do that the category series doesn't? - David Gerard 12:25, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yah, It's hard to do. Like I noted on your talk page, maybe we can do it right, and make it part of a legitimate series, which a category can't do. Hope springs eternal. :-) If the template needs to be changed, lets change it! Ronabop 12:39, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would first say, "organizational groups" should become "organization" This allows an overview. Groups can be placed in the overall structure like bricks placed in a wall. An individual brick might be examined in more detail. But when you are looking at a shiny spot on a brick, you are getting no information about how the wall is constructed. Terryeo 17:01, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense, can't see any big conflicts with the change, soo.... Done! Ronabop 17:13, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ronabop, you asked for comment on the banner at Science of Survival. I noticed it at Dianetics to. The symbol is copyrighted and I suggest you obtain approval for its use, if you haven't. My main objection is the term "Xenu" and its use on the net. This term appears nowhere in Scientology publications to my knowledge. Its use first on the banner suggests the banner is the tool of controversy rather than hallmarking the article as representative of the substance of Dianetics and Scientology. I have not been involved here much as editor beyond the Dianetics article. You may see my views there regarding an article conceived from the context of "Controversy only" as opposed to the context of the substance of the actual subject. I seem to have a dispute as well with my Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health article with that same author, who is an Administrator. Would you be willing to consider helping me with other issues of this character if I identify them to you? Spirit of Man 20:30, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ronabop, thanks for deleting the Xenu thing. I think your content is fine now and clearly separates Controversy from substance. The banner is still large. I noticed Nuview commented on Dianetics and probably removed it. Maybe it should be smaller and towards the bottom rather than in the high value realestate at the beginning of articles. Spirit of Man 03:59, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ronabop, I see the "Xenu" issue is back in the Beliefs section again. This is not a Scientology belief. It is not published in any Scientology document as a belief, such as the Creed. The Creed is a public statement of belief. I have never seen it in Scientology at all. The only place I have seen it is where someone wants to stir up trouble and emotionalize an issue where there is none. On the DMSMH page ChrisO tried to cite a hand written note on a confidential Class VIII lecture mentioned in an anti-Scientology book to justify extensive edits appears claiming to be the source of the volcano on the book. This is like slinging mud at a white statue and saying the statue now believes in mud. Whatever the truthfulness of the Xenu incident, true or false, it is not a belief. It should be removed. I believe its intent is malicious, like mud on a white statue and should not be allowed to re-enter the beliefs portion of the banner. Spirit of Man 21:03, 30 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are you saying that all the people who were outraged when they finally reached OT III and were told that Body Thetans are caused by Xenu and his space planes are liars? Even though their stories all corroborate? To say Xenu is not a Scientology belief is disingenuous because there are many levels to Scientology belief that are gradually revealed as one moves forward in the Auditing. Just because it's not in the Creed means nothing, because you know and I know there are plenty of important tenets of Scientology that are also not listed in the Creed. wikipediatrix 21:15, 30 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Barnstar

Thanks for the barnstar! I was just trying to redirect his energies in a more positive direction ;-) TomTheHand 15:56, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scientology Template

I've responded to your query on User talk:Silence. My only question is: why is it somehow OK for you to spam all the Scientology articles with a mass-posted gigantic, unwanted, unhelpful, inefficient template, and then to mass re-add that article even after receiving complaints (and without having addressed any of them), but it's not OK? Are you somehow special, that you can do mass-linkboxing and noone else is allowed to do anything about it? Seems a tad strange. You asked for feedback on the boxes, and when I gave it on you, spending over an hour carefully pouring over all the pages you added the box to and seeing which ones it was appropriate on and which it wasn't, you mass reverted me without any justification. This hostile and elitist behavior really isn't the best way to get feedback on an idea of yours.

Spam? Adding a template is spamming, now? I tried to add it to article which were significant to scientology itself, rather than every scientology-related-article-under the sun. If it doesn't belong on some articles, well, remove it with an explanation, hey, that's a *good thing*, I think (an explanation goes a long way). As far as the template being massive, ithad started out much smaller, others have been expanding it and adding to it. I've been trying to slim it down, condense it to core information, but it's wikipedia... I don't have final say in such things. :-) Yes, I had asked for feedback, but massive deletes with minimal information prvided certainly wasn't feedback that I could understand. Ronabop 23:41, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your demands are also extraordinarily ridiculous. You respond to my justified layout changes by saying "if you think the article's too short, then expand it" (i.e. asking, no, demanding that I write literally hundreds of pages of article text just to do the simple task of deciding where a template can go), and asking that I somehow "fix" the longer pages (did it never occur to you that that's EXACTLY what I did with my recent edits?), in other words saying "no matter what you say or do, because I like these templates, they stay forever, and your only recourse is to waste months of your life editing the articles around the templates if you want them to fit acceptably into their article context, not to do anything about the actual source of the problem, i.e. the templates". No thank you.

Uhm, I didn't see a lot of "justified layout changes" to either the template, or the articles, in most of your messages. Just a bunch of deletion without any explanation for the deletions. Ronabop 23:41, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You have directly caused messes like Symbols of Scientology, shown no remorse or willingness to fix your own mistakes, made ridiculous and extremist demands of anyone who doesn't agree with everything you do, willfully disregarded the layout of _dozens_ of pages (like Symbols of Scientology and Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health) just to serve your own interests in spreading a pretty colored box you happen to like, and, even worse, reverted the hard work of others when they tried to give you feedback or fix the articles you'd caused serious damage to with your blind and heedless copy-pasting. An apology and a change in behavior are both in order for you if this mass-linkbox-spam problem is to be resolved peacefully, which is what I thought was your intent before I saw the mass-reverts and arrogant demands. -Silence 17:25, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remorse? I didn't commit a crime, I added a template to a page. If it made a page bad, yeah, that needs to be fixed. It looks like the template ran into the box on Symbols of Scientology, so that might need to be changed, or not use the box on that page. I'm not sure what the issue is with Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health... A picture got moved. I noted some people have moved the template down on various pages, and I agreed with some changes, disagreed with others, but as long as I could tell (from user notes, or something obvious) that it was making the pages better, I didn't touch it. But these are single page issues, hardly grounds for giving (or taking) offense, no? If it doesn't belong somewhere, and there's a reason it doesn't belong, thats a good reason to not have it there. Ronabop 23:41, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Scientology series box

Dear Ronabop: I do like the idea of your Scientology series box, since I do think it would help to bring together articles on crucial Scientology subjects. However, I do think the articles you have chosen for the series box are taken from a very critical perspective. For example, the first entry under "Beliefs" is Xenu, as if it was the paramount belief of the subject; the vast majority of Scientologists haven't even got to Clear yet, besides OT3, and it could not possibly be considered core doctrine; likewise Implants is also listed.

I'm not sure offhand who put Xenu on top, I agree it's unlikely to be central to most scientologists. I was the one who added Implants, but not because of Xenu, but because, as I understand it, Implants are more common in Scientology (i.e. negative birth experiences, psychiatric treatments, etc.). Ronabop 23:50, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mean to be unhelpful. Before grasping "implant" a person would need to grasp "engram" and then, additionally, have some confidence of: "an individual has lived many lives" because an implant is a particular sort of engram and in addition to being a particular sort of engram, is one which has happened long, long ago. Terryeo 12:39, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Surely shouldn't ARC, KRC, Comm cycle, Auditing, Tone scale etc. - the crucial fundamentals of the subject - all be under Beliefs, and a separate section perhaps for the OT levels? (The content of the OT levels and the levels to Clear are not tightly related.) We are missing what the subject actually is, and merely contain a critic's view of what it is. Likewise, under Practices, we have the Introspection Rundown listed, again as if it was core doctrine; it is core to a critical perspective, yes, but not to the followers of the religion itself, and indeed is only used more or less as a last resort. The Controversy section is more or less only relating to dirty laundry of the CoS, and indeed this in itself makes the invalid assumption that Scientology is the CoS, and nothing else (which is not the case; the subject of Scientology, and the Church of Scientology, are different and distinct).

There are a bunch of things (as you mentioned) that probably belong in beliefs, hence my requets for feedback and other editors to step in... ARC was in there at one point. I thought I had pulled introspection rundown, maybe I missed it. I'm not quite sure how to handle the controversy section... it got bloated really fast, so it may be a minor POV-pushing problem. Ronabop 23:50, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and FWIW, I didn't have it in there in the first place, somebody else started it [2].... we don't have a "Controversy" section in the christianity series, Judaism series, etc. Ronabop 23:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And Organisation has great potential - you could even do a little org board using a table, and have explanations on what each division is and what parts of Scientology belong to it - but instead it contains the darker parts, the parts not seen by average Scientologists, and parts which belong to the CoS, not Scientology. I would edit the series infobox myself, and change the articles that it is listed on, but you seem defensive against people doing this, so I shall not. I would however be most grateful if you would give the above some thought. Best regards, --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 19:32, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh no, please edit it. Just keep in ind that I seem to be the one getting "blamed" for the edits. :-) Now that I have apparently caused a stir, I'm going to be a little less bold, I suppose. Ronabop 23:50, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ronabop, you asked me in regard to the Scientology Template: "Terryeo Click on this: Past Lives and see where it goes...." and my answer is, that's fine. Scientology is not unusual in believing we are immortal spiritual beings and again, not unusual in believing past lives or reincarnation might be true. Where you posted on my talk page, that editor is the guy who modified that link, he and I talked a little on his talk page. In a larger view words like "Thetan" might become linked to the same articles Christianity could be writing (spiritual being or spirit). BTW, its a real contribution you're doing and various persons seem able to talk with you as a neutral party. :) Terryeo 12:36, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Click on the Infobox's "Thetan," heh ! Terryeo 15:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

here I am vacillating. I've re-thought it over and changed to "past lives" so it links to a Scientology treatment of the subject. heck, reincarnation is okay, but its a scientology subject template. But come to think of it, within the subject's page we probably want to link to reincarnation. Terryeo 17:17, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The template

Hey, Ronabop, I posted on the talk page of WP:SCN but you may not have seen it there. I've had to take some time to think about the template (and also to do some research), and while I applaud your being bold in creating the template, I have enough doubt about it about it that if it were my template, I would hold off on putting the template on any more articles, or even re-adding it to articles from which it had been taken off.

The problem with the "be bold" policy, which they never seem to mention beforehand, is that you have to be ready for other people to boldly undo your efforts. That's the reason that they figure a policy like "be bold" can work, is that the wiki system makes it so easy to undo bad changes. (of course, this does not take the feelings and frustration into account...) My honest advice would be to immediately stop re-adding the template, to show people that you're approaching this in an open-minded, reasonable fashion. Then leave polite messages for the people who've been removing the template, asking if they can leave off removing the template as a similar sign of good faith and reasonableness, prior to discussion. Then of course, discuss.

One of the pages that I suggest might give you more idea why people are having problems with the template is WP:CLS, which suggests a different role for article series boxes than the other pages you've listed. -- Antaeus Feldspar 03:23, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just got there a while back (after some more re-adding, I stumbled upon it), and did quite a bit of reading/writing. I'm peeking around similar series (religious ones, mostly) to see how they categorize/series/list themselves. Ronabop 03:34, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Infoboxin' in the free world

Ronabop, I think the Template is great as is, and can see no legitimate reason why anyone, regardless of how they feel about Scientology, to object to an infobox that provides handy and pertinent links to other Scientology articles. Any complaints about the box affecting an article's formatting are easily fixed, and in several cases I have done so myself. wikipediatrix 04:27, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have to point out that infoboxes and article series boxes are two different things. -- Antaeus Feldspar 15:36, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to use the terms interchangeably. Series templates seem to me to logically be a type of infobox, irrespective of the bylaws of Wikipedia jargon. Sue me. *smile* wikipediatrix 18:11, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The "Controversy" section bothers me a tad, as we don't have "Controversy" in the boxes on Judaism, Christianity, etc. Some folks might see it as POV pushing. I'm looking for consensus on it, but it's hard to find. Ronabop 04:36, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To that, I would say that Scientology is not comparable to other religions in that respect. Scientology is not just a religion, it is a complex web of shell corporations that are non-autonomous - that is to say, they all take their orders directly from the top. Even within Catholicism, the Pope does not micro-manage the day-to-day operations of every Catholic church, each of which has a certain degree of autonomy. This, combined with the simple fact that Scientology has verifiably committed scores of atrocities (and their proclivity for switching from wanting to be treated like a religion one moment and then like a corporation the next) makes the inclusion of a "controversy" section absolutely necessary. To leave it out would be lying by omission. wikipediatrix 04:49, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's an interesting problem, as I have heard people fearful of having a "Catholic" US president who would "take orders from the pope". (And then there's Free Zone, no orders from the top, they believe they are scientologists, but the CoS disagrees...) I grew up LDS, and I know there's a long standing complaint about LDS business ventures and church actions, along with Catholic business ventures and church actions, the actions of christian televangelists etc... basically, it seems to me that one way to demonize any given belief set is to characterize it as a money-making scam, and highlight any and every piece of dirt possible. Inquisitions, Jihads, massacres, witch-hunts, pedophilliac priests, drug-taking leaders, etc. all get lumped on the shoulders of current believers. I have some family and friends who view all belief systems (including atheism systems) that take in income from adherents as "exploitive scams", and like to dig up dirt to make their point, though, thankfully, most of them aren't bothering to work on wikipedia boxes. I suppose one thing that differentiates Scientology is that most of the "dirt" has been within the last 50 years, as compared to some other belief systems, whose dirt has mostly died down a good 100 years or so (with some exceptions, of course). Maybe after a while CoS and Free Zone will take the same path, and after a while, early shaky history will be brushed off. I'm certainly not going to go start messing with the Islam and Christianity templates to add a controversy section, noting the modern connections, but this kind of issue (omitted atrocities by various groups) is why I pause when working on this. Ronabop 05:38, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for presenting your point of view Ronabop, it makes a difference. The "infobox" or whatever label finally gets attached to it presents various Scientology articles. It shouldn't be included in the Engram article. Things like "ARC" and "tone scale" are practices, that is yes, after you get educated in those areas then they are knowledge but they aren't really beliefs at any time. Things like "man's spirit is eternal" (not mentioned yet) are beliefs. "Man is basically good," there's another belief but the beliefs are so basic that they are not Scientology articles. I would say "Knowledge" (by definition) is the only bottom line belief of Scientology. Suppositions like "Man is basically good and trying to survive" and "Man's spirit is eternal" are beliefs of Scientology. Terryeo 15:47, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A NPOV must not become synonymous with revisionism, censorship, whitewashing, or political correctness. One must present both sides of any controversy. To leave out one side amounts to promoting the other side's POV.

One must:

present the facts about each side's POV, but
not present each side's POV as facts

IOW, just tell the story without taking sides.

This may well include telling what each side thinks of the other side's POV. -- Fyslee 05:49, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Study Tech

You posted: LRH didn't discover new tech, this is all old tech (look up a word, see/feel the real thing, start small)) And it will be cool if LRH isn't presented as "discovering" new tech. However do you know of any source of information that specifies 10 ways in which a word can be misunderstood like HCOB 17 July 79RB Issue I The Misunderstood Word Defined, does? Is there another body of study technology extant on our planet that actually works? Has any other person of any race, color or creed made placed the responsibility for understanding on the student, defined barriers and produced a workable study technology? Possible Hubbard didn't create it all, after all, it is nothing but a recognition of human nature, but Hubbard codified it. Hubbard put it into a useable format that works every time for everyone who applies it. Terryeo 14:52, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, my change comment was "LRH didn't discover new tech, this is all old tech (look up a word, see/feel the real thing, start small))", nothing about cool or not. User:Antaeus Feldspar came up with the word "devised", as an alternative to "discovered" and "refined", which is think is a good compromise. In regards to your other comments, there are lots of sources in linguistics and educational studies which catalog and document communication and cognition errors, LRH chose just a few things to emphasize as part of his program steps. As far as as creating codified study technologies for students, that placed the onus of learning on the student, and resulted in successfully educating students...well, that goes all the way back to Plato, as does hands-on teaching outside of a closed classroom (feel the real thing), along with teaching in "gradients" (start with the basics, and work towards complexity, i.e. don't try quantum physics before understanding basic math). I'm not sure about your assertion "that [it] works every time for everyone who applies it", as it's a non-provable a priori statement... if the tech doesn't work in a study or test of its effectiveness, a critic of that study or test can simply say they student wasn't properly applying the technique. *shrug*. That's a long-term historical debate about education methods. Anyways, debate which is critical specifically about study tech's effectiveness can be found here [3] Ronabop 02:12, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now you're talking! Hubbard's study tech bulletins spell out where he got his ideas from and the Greek Acadamy was the foundation. Yeah, maybe I exaggerate and maybe someone can make it fail by applying it. But I've not seen that happen yet, while I have seen it work many times, many people. Did it with an almost graduated high school student who was doing poorly at math because he had never gotten the earlier gradient, fractions. He went, "wow, so that is what fractions are!" lol Terryeo 17:07, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

modifying categories

I looked at the categorization as you asked, and I noticed that it did need to be changed. Since it might not be apparent why the changes were so large, I thought I'd explain.

Ordinarily, very simple rules do the whole job: an article goes into the most precise categories that apply to it. Because it's in those precise categories, it doesn't need to go in the more general parent categories as well (so if we moved Brad Pitt to Category:American film actors, we'd move him out of Category:American actors by medium, for instance.) By default, the article's own title is used as the "sorting tag" that determines where the article appears on the category page, but sometimes this would create too much clustering. We have the option of using syntax similar to the "piped link" in those cases; instead of what appears after the pipe symbol being the text shown on the screen for the link, that text is used as the "sorting tag". So, the category tag [[:Category:American film actors]] would put Brad Pitt in that category, listed under "B", but [[:Category:American film actors|Pitt, Brad]] would list him in the category under "P".

However, some articles are "defining articles" for their category -- for instance, Scientology beliefs and practices is the defining article for Category:Scientology beliefs and practices. These articles are categorized differently: They get a sorting tag of "*", to ensure they show up in a special section of the category page before all other articles, and unlike other articles which only appear in the most precise categories they fit into, they appear in their own category and the immediate parent categories of that category (so Scientology beliefs and practices should be in both Category:Scientology beliefs and practices and Category:Scientology.) This is a little bit easier to understand, I think, as "a defining article should be in every parent category that the category it defines is in."

And actually, looking just now, I've spotted someone's mistake, God knows how long it's been there: Scientology beliefs and practices is in Category:Scientology beliefs and practices (which is right, it's in the category it defines), Category:Scientology (which is right, it's the direct parent of the category the article defines) and Category:New religious movements (which is wrong -- it's the parent category of the parent category. So, you're not the only one who finds this stuff tricky! -- Antaeus Feldspar 14:16, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Insane?

You're welcome. Why would you be going insane? :) (Entheta 06:26, 14 January 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Oh no! Who? The galactic confederacy? (Entheta 08:22, 14 January 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters

Any chance I might persuade you to reconsider your opposition? Since I was nominated, I'd like it to pass. You raise several issues, that others have mentioned. One is vandalism: indeed, I committed exactly one act of vandalism, and reverted it myself after 3 minutes, 9 months ago, and prior to 95%+ of my WP editing. The other is the 8 month old RfC. That RfC remains as insubstantial now as it was when written: no complaint was stated, and no effort at "resolution" had ever been made. Unfortunately, I think a lot of RfA voters who are unfamiliar with a particular editor assume "where there's smoke, there's fire"; and the effect is that a few early oppose votes with old grudges can kill a nomination.

The truth is that I will probably continue to strive to bring a number of controversial topics toward NPOV (whether or not promoted to adminship), and the chance of encountering another spurious RfC against me at some point is almost guaranteed. I've found, over time, that most of those threatening to write one get themselves blocked from WP (either long-term or indefinitely, prior to writing it: I can list about ten examples, literally, of editors who threatened an RfC against me, and have been blocked... not by me, obviously, and for reasons little related to anything I ever did). I really encourage you to look at my answer to one of the questions about how NPOV editors in conflict-prone topics seem to be de facto prevented from adminship, even though such are very much needed.

On the last thing, however, I certainly cannot in good faith make any recusal from editing David Mertz. I may well, in practice, not do so, since it doesn't look like there's going to be anything needing fixing, and it's watchlisted against vandalism by enough editors now. But the principle is just simply wrong, and winning adminship is not worth violating my principles, and more importantly, encyclopedic principles (though it seems pretty clear I could win some votes by telling an untrue sob story about how wrong I was to edit the page on me while conforming with WP:NPOV and WP:NOR). That's not going to change with a couple months, or a year, or a decade: an unreflective ban on editors working on topics they are knowledgeable is just plain wrong. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 17:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most of my work is in difficult topics like Jesus, Scientology, and the whole middle east mess (too many articles to mention).

It can be brutal, and trying. IMSNHO, good WP editors *must* rise above their own opinions, and be able to present many sides, in such a way that "Truth" (with a capital T) is never presented as such. Admins must go even higher, in that they may feel they personally *know* the Truth (with a capital T), but defer to the many editors, with their own perceptions, even if the majority seems "wrong". I'm not sure you're ready for that yet. (sorry) Nothing personal, as I like your work, but depicting truth is elusive, and I hav'nt seen many edits. Ronabop 00:08, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh well... I can't argue with your reasoning here. Obviously, I don't reach the same conclusion, but you're coming from a very reasonable line of thinking on this. Thanks. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:04, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually... I do want to comment slightly more. Does it seem right to you that if you are nominated on RfA it will fail because of the topics you've edited? I have not looked through your edit history, but I know a priori that if you've worked on those topics, there are a lot of POV-warriors in the wings who would come forward to oppose your nomination. If you look at my actual edits, and at my talk page comments on whatever issues POV-warriors raise, I am certain that you'll see exactly the "rising above" that you mention... but nonetheless, no matter how one acts otherwise, insisting on NPOV on certain topics pisses off the POV-warriors (such as many of those most vocally opposing my RfA). Were you nominated, I can say with pretty good certainty that a half-dozen people with strong opinions on Jesus or Scientology would come forward with quick criticisms, and another dozen will casually look at these comments and think that "there must be something to these objections". Which then means that you need quite a large number of active supporters to reach 75-80% support votes on an RfA, because of a small number of spoilers. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are assuming that editing on a controversial topic implies that an RfA will fail because of opposition, which pre-supposes that an editor has been over[t]ly POV-ish. While it's quite possible to work on a difficult topic and make enemies, it's also possible to work on a difficult topic and make friends who can respectfully disagree, and thus, support an RfA, because while you may be vehemently opposed on an issue to them, they can still respect you, and trust you in an admin capacity. Ronabop 11:04, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Ronabop

Regarding Gold Base. Despite certain people screaming that Gold Base headquarters the RTC (Religious Technology Center), there has been no information about that published. At least none that anyone has brought forth. Gold Base is where Scientology makes their E-meters, makes films and so on. Training films are made there. But RTC has its address in the complex of Church of Scientology's buildings in Los Angeles. From what I have read, people like Tom Cruise might be invited to Gold Base now and then for meetings or heck, maybe just to spend a week end with David Miscaviage. Please don't be misled by people claiming information about it without a good source of information. From Scientologist's point of view it is the location where real artistry and engineering takes place. For example, Hubbard's very old audio tapes are re-recorded with maximum quality sound and so on. Terryeo 10:02, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RfA Thanks!

Okay, this is perhaps a bit overdue, but thank-you for your support in my recent RfA! I passed with a final ~~vote count~~ consensus of (82/1/0), which was a lot of support that I really appreciate. I'll try to live up to the expectations; and on that note, if there's ever something I do wrong (or don't do right), please spit in my general direction. Cheers! --P e ruvianLlama^(spit) 05:31, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Abortion Talk page

Can you please visit this page and make an assessment? Two editors have removed a straw poll (that you voted in) that was going against them. And alsop woped out discussion and commentary. I can't believe that discussion is banned from the discussion page. Thank you.84.146.237.55

Asian fetish testosterone section

Please reconsider your vote on that. The section was written by a bogus user, containing fake content. None of the sources are relevant. Infinity0 ^talk 12:09, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome back

Hi Ronabop, glad to see you editing in the Scientology pages again. Your template is still mostly intact and helpful. I would like to get into communication with you about the first sentence of the Dianetics article, if I might. My reasoning for including "activity" in the first sentence is given at the bottom of the Dianetics talk page. Have a good one. Terryeo 14:01, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Request for Comments - Terryeo

I've posted a Request for Comments on User:Terryeo. I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that his persistent misconduct on a range of Scientology-related articles will require an intervention from the Arbitration Committee and probably a lengthy ban. I'll keep the RfC open for a limited period before submitting it to the ArbCom as a Request for Arbitration. Please feel free to add any comments to the RfC, which is at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Terryeo (but please ensure that you add your comments to the right section of the RfC). If you have any additional evidence, please add that to the RfC. I will be posting this note to a number of users who've been directly involved in editing disputes with Terryeo. -- ChrisO 23:26, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Skull and Bones article edits related

To your comment on my talk page, can you elaborate? Much of the information does come from existing books and articles (i.e., I don't make things up!), though it is my text as well as my cross-referencing in the documented membership rosters input, which was left out of all these other books because it was not available until 2003, for the most part. Any suggestions? What about a section describing sources in the beginning of the text? I have though of that actually before... I'm off to do some editing now... --ReSearcher 04:51, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Several portions of text appear to be plagarized or stolen from existing sources. These: [4][5] [6][7] are just a few examples where the *exact* same phrasing was used in both original texts, and in the wikipedia article. While it's perfectly acceptable to quote sources, we have to note that the text is not originally the intellectual property of wikipedia. We can't just copy and paste text into thearticle as if we wrote it. See WP:CITE and WP:FU.

Also, because the article subjects (especially the portions alleging large scale conspiracy and/or collusion in drug trades) are likely to be argued about or contested in some way, we need to make sure that any portions which may be debateable have proper in-line citations and referencesso that other editors can verify *exactly* what is being said. See: WP:V and WP:FN for details on how we do this in articles. If you take a look at other controversial articles that have been well foot-noted, such as Intelligent_Design, or Abortion, you can see that the general style allows for a variety of sources and methods of checking text, in such a way that if somebody wants to know exactly *where* something was stated, they can click on the reference number, and find the exact book and page involved.

As far as handling topics of great scope and depth, this requires judicious editing as well as splitting article sub-topics out. For one example of how a single article has spawned many sub-articles (in a similar scope/field), there are the Freemasonry articles, which eventually go quite deep into historical issues, scandals, accusations, etc. Another way of reducing article size down is by removing colorful language and metaphors that are not dry and encylopedic, or eliminating superflous phrases and prose. See WP:WEASEL and WP:APT, along with WP:1SP For example, in the main article, there is currently the following sentence:

"Some people, like the first rigorous outside researcher of the secret society, the late Dr. Antony Sutton (PhD, Stanford, economics), say that Skull and Bones is a U.S. chapter of an early 1800s German secret society."

The word "first rigorous" is a peacock term, "Some people" is a weasel term, some of the information isn't relevant to the article at all ("late"), and some is redundant (that S&B is a US secret society, this is stated earlier in the article). We can strip that sentence down to:

"According to Dr. Antony Sutton, Skull and Bones is a U.S. chapter of an early 1800s German secret society^{[citation needed]}.

Half the words, yet it still has all of the content relevant to the article (though it lacks a citation at this point). Ronabop 06:58, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RFC on MEMRI page

Hi, I'm one of the 3 eitors referred to in the MEMRI RFC. I've added my 2 cents on MEMRI's talk page but I'm unclear about what happens now. I was going to leave messages on the users talk pages who have posted on the article's talk page informing them of the RFC, but thought this might be considered bad form (I was going to inform ALL of them -not just I think might agree with me). Is that the right thing to do or are you (or someone else) supposed to do that? Armon 12:33, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Informing good, campaigning bad? The culture, as I understand it, is that letting people know about an issue is good, but trying to influence them one way or another is bad. Ronabop 00:05, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MEMRI page

Hi Ronabop, thanks for coming to edit on the MEMRI page. The talk page on that article is overlong, so I am commenting here for clarity. I noticed that you added a sentence of criticism in the top section. It was an editorial consensus that we keep the top section free of criticism and move all the contraversial stuff to its own section. If we add that Le Monde etc have publihsed critical articles on MEMRI to the top section, then people will want to add that others have supported the org, etc, and the section gets overlong. Just letting you know why people have gone and deleted what you have added since I know that can be really frustrating. elizmr 15:08, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Er, what? My *only* two edits to the MEMRI article fixed a broken wikilink, and my only two edits to the talk page were towards the bottom, after the RFC started... perhaps you have my user ID mistaken or something? Have you edited for content, changing the wikilink? I just didn't want a broken link, I was trying to stay out of editing the live page because of content disputes. :-) Ronabop 09:57, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. I'm sorry. My mistake. Take care, Elizmr