Because it's near the end of the year and I feel in the compiling mood, here are some information-transfer stations for biologically immature units.
St. Alban's Episcopal School: This is now just St. Alban's Episcopal Church (490 Farragut Circle, El Cajon, Calf.), but from the polyester part of the 1970s until 1987-ish, it was a working K through 6th grade elementary school alongside a functioning church. Laid back atmosphere, partially screwed-up neighborhood, people willing to do daycare on Saturday mornings (!), and yet it still died fast when one parent thought his or her child was being under-educated and they called everybody else on the mimeographed list of parent's telephone numbers and suddenly an entire grade defected. They used the buildings for a short-lived ACE ("accelerated Christian education") school in the 1990s, but ACE is a memorization scam using workbooks and not a real education so it went under.
Clairemont Christian: This was a monster two-campus school that could teach children from preschool to high school Seniors; the elementary school was at 3520 Mt. Acadia Boulevard, the junior high/high school at 3811 on the same street. Most of the combo church-schools in Southern California had anywhere from 50 to 150 students; these people had at least 300 students between the two campuses. Was killed off sometime in the 1990s after existing since the 1970s, probably during the post-unRapture of the G.H.W. Bush administration or the "give up on the Rapture, join a Militia" fervor of the Clinton Era. Did I mention these people were Evangelical?
La Mesa Christian: As with St. Alban's, this was a school with an attached church on the same property (9307 Jericho Road near the La Mesa-El Cajon border), so some of the classrooms were used for Sunday school. As it was an Independent Fundamental Baptist outfit, they had the ripoff Boy Scout "Awanas" group along with a massive paddle for hitting children who broke the rules. The church was founded in 1963, the school in 1974; through most of its existence it was a Kindergarten to Junior High; though it did try to have a tiny high school at one point. They went through three or four Pastors* who were not also the school principal before the organization was purchased by a Philip Sherwood who oversaw the slow death of the place in the 2000s.....the number of students dropped to the point where they had to rent rooms to another Christian school, they changed the name of the mother church from Jericho Road Baptist to Shiloh Baptist, while the buildings needed refurbishing. Around 2013 the buildings were sold to Calvary Chapel of El Cajon, while Pastor Sherwood found a defunct Lutheran church in Lemon Grove (2770 Glebe Road) to move his Shiloh church and "academy" - which is around 40 students if we can trust the Internet, though Google Maps claims LMCS is on Glebe now.
Mt. Helix Elementary: A secular private school set up around 1970 by a husband-wife team of ex-public school instructors in a custom-built two-story school built into the side of a hill at 3317 Kenora Drive in Spring Valley. Not to be confused with the existing Mount Helix Academy in the mall on the corner of Severin Drive and Amaya Street in La Mesa. They offered art classes, had an Apple ][ computer room (other schools on this list had two or three machines), and a goat in a paddock. Unfortunately they started experimenting on the school structure, which was bizarre for a San Diego-area K-6 school; they instituted a homeroom system which I think they later abandoned. Mt. Helix Elementary died in the late 1980s, was turned into a Waldorf School (i.e. using Rudolf Steiner's theories of education), is now a Christian Fundamentalist institution where the students are half-homeschooled.
Southport Christian Academy: An ACE school run on the very cheap (and for an ACE that's something), Southport was a Foursquare church that doubled as a school, what ex-fundamentalist blogger Darrell Dow calls a "basement Bible school", with the high school upstairs in the nave, the lower grades in separate rooms in the basement. All the grades higher than first or second used those combination folding chairs with built-in writing boards. ACE was started in 1970 by Texas pastor Donald Howard, and it has become one of a number of ways to educate homeschooled children. It's also chintzy, one-dimensional, and punitive as one blogger pointed out. The only difference between Southport and other ACE schools was that keeping students in seperate cubicles was not done; instead a teacher was used as a docent, watching everybody in the class, and everything had to be done silently. The church is still at the same location (216 E 16th Street, National City) but the school appeared and disappeared within less than two decades.
Apple School: Mentioned in our list of Scientology outlets in San Diego County; I can only add that they did not tell non-Scientologists that they were sending their children to a school based on Hubbard educational philosophies until the winter open house, because there were no framed pictures of L. Ron Hubbard on the wall. Still would love to find out about that prototype Apple School in Del Mar and their previous Chula Vista "nunnery" location.
Lutheran High of San Diego when it was on Orange Avenue: This is now Faith Lutheran (5218 Orange Avenue) which shares space with a "Church of the Nations" that does English and Amharic (Ethiopian) services. Doubling up two churches in one space is becoming more common in San Diego county, as are churches in strip mall storefronts. Lutheran High operated from this location from 1988-1999 before moving to 2725 55th Street and operating out of the Sunday school buildings of Holy Spirit Catholic Church, and then moving on to their present space on the outskirts of Chula Vista.
When it was at Orange Avenue location the student body and the neighborhood clashed horribly; there were a few muggings and attacks on students in the park across the street in the early 1990s for clothing items, sports equipment (a basketball); a massive fight by students from a nearby public school was witnessed, an abandoned car parked near the school was burned to the ground over the Christmas break. Beyond the neighborhood, the rooms were tiny and the freshmen and the seniors did not get along. It didn't help that the instructors thought square-dancing practice was a morale booster on rainy days.
Fairhavens Christian School: Last but not least, this was the model of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist K-12 school; very basic. High School Seniors forced to do gym, candy sales (World's Finest Chocolate), begging at local businesses (!?), other piddling nonsense alongside the other grades. Fairhavens the church had been around since the early 1970s; Fairhavens the school lasted from 1993 to 2001, sunk by replacement Pastor/spiritual dictator Preston Bunnel who had come** from the Leningrad oblast' where he had been trying to convert Saint Petersbergers to the wacky religion of Fundamentalism (and probably failing.) Bunnel had talked Pastor Lawrence "Larry" Gibson (now running a church in central California) into signing over the church and school for a missionary gig allegedly in Japan (though Gibson spoke fluent Spanish.) Bunnel then had an affair with the church/school secretary for an unknown period of time (possibly with other women as well), was found out, then put the control of the church in the hands of the deacons while he would still preach. It was unknown if everybody in the church knew at that point. The preaching got wild, according to witnesses; he would have his son lay as if dead in the aisle to illustrate some point, and he rambled more than usual. The school became this rule-bound crazyhouse. Finally he tried to seize control back and the deacons and other senior church members decided to kill the church before Bunnel dragged it in the mud more. Bunnel went back to the deep South, worked at a car dealer for a few years before befriending a man named Eric Capaci, who is the "Senior Pastor" of "Gospel Light Baptist Church" in Arkansas. Even though extramarital affair(s) are ground(s) for defrocking an IFB preacher, Capaci did some mumbo-jumbo and Bunnel was back as a pastor, first at GLBC, then at another, smaller church.....who found out about Bunnel and failed in their bid to throw the guy out.
***
Things to look out for in IFB schools:
Kindergardens are huge. They will take up nearly one-third of the student body. Most will not carry on into that school's first grade because many parents use IFB Kindergarten as an extended Sunday school before sending their children to public school.
Public school students using the IFB school as a one-semester escape. They are a minority of students, but they do appear and disappear from time to time. Author saw this happen numerous times, most were troubled boys, though one was a girl fleeing cliques at some junior high.
Always keep your records - they won't. These schools die quick; if you send your children to one, keep photocopies of school transcripts for college (even community college.)
They do a miserable job of teaching science. Too many use Bob Jones University or A Beka (Pensacola Christian College) textbooks, which are shot through with Creationism, Young Earth or otherwise. If you have to send Johnny or Janey to an IFB school, make them take science classes for HS credit at the local community college.
They will hit your kid with a cricket bat. They call it a paddle, and some people love doling out the harshness to grade schoolers.
They love appearances. The genius rough-looking kid will always be graded down, while the clean-cut mediocrity will be showered with awards.
They are making a cult out of the King James version of the Bible. You can't show up with anything but a KJV as your school Bible. Some nuttier pastors think the King James version is the "easiest to comprehend" - which is a statement only a fanatic or a blowhard could make.
_________________
*The Pastor-Principal was named Walt Lindquist, possibly either the original Associate Pastor or the head man. One of the pastors was named Frank Williams, his wife died and he left the church, possibly returned his collar. One of their later pastors (or was that a youth pastor?) was a younger Filipino man. There were a lot of youth pastors who blew through; one guy nearly got mangled on his overpowered Kawasaki motorcycle.
** Bunnel blew in unannounced and just hung around. Most previous missionaries came to collect funds (after showing the congregation an interminable slide show of their doings "in country") and then left "for the field" after attending to religious and family business. If they performed, they would show up for special chapels attended by the entire school. One school had a "missionary week" where you would go from room to room looking at their "acts." It was like the "entertainment market" club in Dallas, Texas Bill Hicks describes here, except it would always lurch back into conversion no matter the angle.
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Monday, October 5, 2015
List of Defunct Chain or Independent Stores and Restaurants that Operated in Southern California, 1979-2015
Just because I like making lists, here are a number of stores and restaurants I remember that are now dead.
Doodleburgers (possibly also "Doodle Burgers"): Wonky chain of San Diego hamburger restaurants with tables that had Converse shoes on their feet and other late-70s/early-80s gimcrackery. Had a restaurant on India Street and one on Alvarado Road in La Mesa; possibly others. Vanished sometime in the mid-1980s. Decent hamburgers.
Fedmart: What Target is now, Fedmart was in the 1970s; big-box store that sold all the big-box stuff. The ones I saw had green exteriors with a white stripe and an "auditorium" staggered-half cone opening instead of the crappier overhangs you would see during the '80s.
Food Basket: Yeah I know they were always Albertsons, but the one I would go to as a child was stuck in the 1970s deep into the 1980s, before it was remodeled and renamed. The cheesy wall clock in the back never worked, they sold Mexican food out of racks with cheap flowery metalwork, they tried to sell women's clothing in a corner that later became a deli, they sold the generic food later featured in Repo Man (1984).
Carlos Murphy's: Part of the miasma of '80s/'90s chain restaurants where the food was OK but all the real effort was in the decor. Fake wooden Japanese Zeros "smashed" through the walls, tin ceilings painted oddly, a space for a live band, joke photos - Buca di Beppo does the same thing now, but it's all Italian instead of '80s mishmash. The one I mostly went to has now become Casa de Pico in La Mesa.
Federated: Never went there (because all the stores were in Los Angeles), but I saw all their ads on KTLA. Those spots were where a young Shadoe Stevens got to show off his alleged weirdness; Federated was a chain of electronics stores.
Fotomat: We had a number of the little photo dropoff-pickup booths, and more then one became a keygrinder shop afterward.
Crown Books: Very much the Borders of the 1980s, Crown Books (mocked as "Clown Books" on Larry Himmel's San Diego at Large TV show) was a stock '80s bookstore selling paperbacks, maps, role-playing games on a back shelf, etc. Weirdly, the name was recycled to liquidate books years after the chain died in the 1990s; in the early 2000s they took over a number of locations in San Diego with the Crown Books logo on a plastic tarp sign hung outside and on a back wall. The liquidator Crown sold framed posters and classic music CDs on top of the coffee table tomes and softcover "serious" books.
Home Federal Savings and Loan: Yes, we had a number of those after the chain went under in 1992. A two-building set (banking and loans) remain as ruins in the "Mad Max mall" on the corner of Austin Drive and Sweetwater Road as of this writing. La Mesa had one that was later a barbecue grill store and a preschool after that.
Family Foods: The reason why the "Mad Max mall" went south (beyond negligent management); this was the other supermarket in that stripmall. They had a Vons that became a church, but this supermarket remained open as part of the "Family Foods" mini-chain until they went under in 2008. After that, the mall began to look more and more ragged because the only goods stores were a liquor store/bodega and a pizza parlor. Some of the storefronts are now storage for costume places. It's less like a mall and more like a tenants' hotel for non-commercial spaces.
California Electronics & Industrial Supply: Wonderfully dirty electronics surplus place in El Cajon. Tube sockets, transformers, automation equipment, cable, nuts, bolts, washers, boxes, etc. Died three our four years ago. Down the same street is Murphy's Surplus, which does much of the same thing, but with a lot more of a military-surplus communications angle.
Waldenbooks: They morphed into Barnes & Nobels, which sells the same stuff. Every mall had one in the '80s and early '90s.
Tommy McGees: A "comedy restaurant" where the waiters wore goofy costumes and made wisecracks. Came and went in the mid-1980s. Another short-term La Mesa eatery.
Short-Term Rummage Stores: A phenomena that seems to have vanished, these were storefronts that sold cheap used clothes and other secondhand crapola, but only for a month or two. I saw one in Casa de Oro (in a since-demolished storefront.) During the Bush II years, there were a number of short-term overstock sellers pushing suitcases and umbrellas, all nameless and gone in three months.
Haggens/Vons: The reason why this list was made; these douchebags bought up all the functioning Vons stores in San Diego county, renamed them, then decided to shut everything down after a poor summer. Screw these guys!
Doodleburgers (possibly also "Doodle Burgers"): Wonky chain of San Diego hamburger restaurants with tables that had Converse shoes on their feet and other late-70s/early-80s gimcrackery. Had a restaurant on India Street and one on Alvarado Road in La Mesa; possibly others. Vanished sometime in the mid-1980s. Decent hamburgers.
Fedmart: What Target is now, Fedmart was in the 1970s; big-box store that sold all the big-box stuff. The ones I saw had green exteriors with a white stripe and an "auditorium" staggered-half cone opening instead of the crappier overhangs you would see during the '80s.
Food Basket: Yeah I know they were always Albertsons, but the one I would go to as a child was stuck in the 1970s deep into the 1980s, before it was remodeled and renamed. The cheesy wall clock in the back never worked, they sold Mexican food out of racks with cheap flowery metalwork, they tried to sell women's clothing in a corner that later became a deli, they sold the generic food later featured in Repo Man (1984).
Carlos Murphy's: Part of the miasma of '80s/'90s chain restaurants where the food was OK but all the real effort was in the decor. Fake wooden Japanese Zeros "smashed" through the walls, tin ceilings painted oddly, a space for a live band, joke photos - Buca di Beppo does the same thing now, but it's all Italian instead of '80s mishmash. The one I mostly went to has now become Casa de Pico in La Mesa.
Federated: Never went there (because all the stores were in Los Angeles), but I saw all their ads on KTLA. Those spots were where a young Shadoe Stevens got to show off his alleged weirdness; Federated was a chain of electronics stores.
Fotomat: We had a number of the little photo dropoff-pickup booths, and more then one became a keygrinder shop afterward.
Crown Books: Very much the Borders of the 1980s, Crown Books (mocked as "Clown Books" on Larry Himmel's San Diego at Large TV show) was a stock '80s bookstore selling paperbacks, maps, role-playing games on a back shelf, etc. Weirdly, the name was recycled to liquidate books years after the chain died in the 1990s; in the early 2000s they took over a number of locations in San Diego with the Crown Books logo on a plastic tarp sign hung outside and on a back wall. The liquidator Crown sold framed posters and classic music CDs on top of the coffee table tomes and softcover "serious" books.
Home Federal Savings and Loan: Yes, we had a number of those after the chain went under in 1992. A two-building set (banking and loans) remain as ruins in the "Mad Max mall" on the corner of Austin Drive and Sweetwater Road as of this writing. La Mesa had one that was later a barbecue grill store and a preschool after that.
Family Foods: The reason why the "Mad Max mall" went south (beyond negligent management); this was the other supermarket in that stripmall. They had a Vons that became a church, but this supermarket remained open as part of the "Family Foods" mini-chain until they went under in 2008. After that, the mall began to look more and more ragged because the only goods stores were a liquor store/bodega and a pizza parlor. Some of the storefronts are now storage for costume places. It's less like a mall and more like a tenants' hotel for non-commercial spaces.
California Electronics & Industrial Supply: Wonderfully dirty electronics surplus place in El Cajon. Tube sockets, transformers, automation equipment, cable, nuts, bolts, washers, boxes, etc. Died three our four years ago. Down the same street is Murphy's Surplus, which does much of the same thing, but with a lot more of a military-surplus communications angle.
Waldenbooks: They morphed into Barnes & Nobels, which sells the same stuff. Every mall had one in the '80s and early '90s.
Tommy McGees: A "comedy restaurant" where the waiters wore goofy costumes and made wisecracks. Came and went in the mid-1980s. Another short-term La Mesa eatery.
Short-Term Rummage Stores: A phenomena that seems to have vanished, these were storefronts that sold cheap used clothes and other secondhand crapola, but only for a month or two. I saw one in Casa de Oro (in a since-demolished storefront.) During the Bush II years, there were a number of short-term overstock sellers pushing suitcases and umbrellas, all nameless and gone in three months.
Haggens/Vons: The reason why this list was made; these douchebags bought up all the functioning Vons stores in San Diego county, renamed them, then decided to shut everything down after a poor summer. Screw these guys!
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Copy of "Addendum to the last post....."
Some things I forgot to tack on:
Deleting stuff. Just like with creating unpersons, you can't completely obliterate information. Somebody somewhere has a html copy of some blog you thought you deleted in 2000 just because your description of GAZ 21 Volga cars gives him a weird erection. I've seen it time and again where the information on a website was scraped from another, closed, website which may itself have come from another dead page. Now that you can do screenshots instead of printing it off and then typing it up, the image of whatever catches the collector's fancy is there in his/her hard drive. The way we deal with much information on the web is now like a mosaic, and what was on certain missing pieces can be inferred by references to the missing bits on the surviving components. Jimmy Wales has tried this a lot on his Wikipedia talk-page, burying the times he's stuck his leg into his mouth, but the sheer act of repeated deletion means people will be there taking "before" and "after" screenshots just for laughs.
Wiki-communism. There is a lot of back-and-forth about how Wikipedia is the second coming of Communism because it's a collective organization, with a hierarchy, and lots of rules, and a "beloved"leader-figure....and I have to laugh, because those terms could also describe the American Continental and Militia forces during the American Revolutionary War (or American War of Independence if you are British.) Like the Wikipedists, the soldiers and sailors weren't paid either. Jimbo Wales is not a Marxist; from everything I've read, he is a hard-core fan of Ayn Rand. He wanted ads on Wikipedia and that created the friction between Wales and Larry Sanger (the only guy with a Ph.D [as far as I know] at Bomis, Wales' original company.) In truth, if Wales could charge for different levels of information at Wikipedia, he probably would.....which is why he has tried to capitalize on his leadership/creatorship of Wikipedia in as many ads as possible.
(You knew the reference above had to appear.)
Deleting stuff. Just like with creating unpersons, you can't completely obliterate information. Somebody somewhere has a html copy of some blog you thought you deleted in 2000 just because your description of GAZ 21 Volga cars gives him a weird erection. I've seen it time and again where the information on a website was scraped from another, closed, website which may itself have come from another dead page. Now that you can do screenshots instead of printing it off and then typing it up, the image of whatever catches the collector's fancy is there in his/her hard drive. The way we deal with much information on the web is now like a mosaic, and what was on certain missing pieces can be inferred by references to the missing bits on the surviving components. Jimmy Wales has tried this a lot on his Wikipedia talk-page, burying the times he's stuck his leg into his mouth, but the sheer act of repeated deletion means people will be there taking "before" and "after" screenshots just for laughs.
Wiki-communism. There is a lot of back-and-forth about how Wikipedia is the second coming of Communism because it's a collective organization, with a hierarchy, and lots of rules, and a "beloved"leader-figure....and I have to laugh, because those terms could also describe the American Continental and Militia forces during the American Revolutionary War (or American War of Independence if you are British.) Like the Wikipedists, the soldiers and sailors weren't paid either. Jimbo Wales is not a Marxist; from everything I've read, he is a hard-core fan of Ayn Rand. He wanted ads on Wikipedia and that created the friction between Wales and Larry Sanger (the only guy with a Ph.D [as far as I know] at Bomis, Wales' original company.) In truth, if Wales could charge for different levels of information at Wikipedia, he probably would.....which is why he has tried to capitalize on his leadership/creatorship of Wikipedia in as many ads as possible.
(You knew the reference above had to appear.)
Copy of "The Things Wikipedists and Wikipediocratists Don't Seem to Understand....."
.....could fill another set of encyclopedias. To keep things short I will mention two, at least this time.
Point One: Wikipedia is doomed to failure
A real encyclopedia is written, edited, published - and thus finished. You can write yearbooks to add information or new, updated editions every decade, but a published encyclopedia is done. Wikipedia, conversely, is never finished; it must always keep up with current events (for reasons beyond me), and it never tries to limit what it covers, so Pokemon character lists exist on the same site as the biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Certainly it's nice to have all this information together somewhere, but the end result is an unwieldy, incoherent mess. And then there's the issue of article fidelity; how many articles have hoaxed or malicious material? How many articles are hoaxes, like the fictional Soviet director Yuri Gadyukin?
A friend of mine, "Stierlitz", once called a plan to make a display encyclopedia set out of the English-language Wikipedia "[p]ure derp", but I think he had it wrong. To actually hold one of the 2,050 volumes in your hands, to see how lumpy many of the articles would look on the printed page, notice how the style can shift from paragraph to paragraph, that would dissuade people far more that Wikipedia is a worthwhile endeavor than anything I could actually write here, even without talking about MONGO.
So this is what Wikipedia really is, a giant tumor-filled shark swimming through a sea of information. A real shark would stop growing, but Wikipedia is an unnatural technological being which grows as it moves, and has no instructions to stop growing or shed unnecessary parts of itself. Such a thing is destined to die badly once it stops moving, and so it is with Wikipedia. `Bots have replaced content writers, editors are dropping, more and more articles have "hats" from years ago asking for the article to be re-formatted or merged with another article. If there had been a limit to the amount of information possible to display, or if each Wikipedia had been designed to be broken up between arbitrary categories (a History Wikipedia, a Science Wikipedia, a Pop-Culture Wikipedia), it wouldn't be the fiasco it is now. It would be a different fiasco, but possibly one more manageable.
Point Two: Banning people and deleting their work doesn't end "the problem"
Seriously, kicking people out DOES. NOT. WORK. Either they start up revenge blogs, or revenge messageboards, or they are just lazy and sockpuppet the site they were banned from. Take the example of "ScienceApologist" (now QTxVi4bEMRbrNqOorWBV); he started on Wikipedia in 2004, got into argument over argument over "fringe science" articles, blocked multiple times, was "permanently banned" in 2011. Spent from early 2011 to the summer of 2013 as a Wikipedia unperson, finally let back in under that bizarre handle. During his exile, became "iii" on the Wikipediocracy messageboard when it appeared in 2012. It should be said here that the man who runs the Wikipediocracymessageboard blog is none other than "Herschelkrustofsky", who was thrown off of Wikipedia against the site's own rules
a decade ago, because people like "SlimVirgin" and "Cberlet" hated his
articles on Lyndon LaRouche and the LaRouche Youth Movement. "Cberlet"
is (shock! horror!) Chip Berlet, who may still be with Political Research Associates; back in 1989, his associate Dennis King wrote an expose titled Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, which gives the reader an idea of where Berlet and King saw LaRouche going.
It should be pointed out that the ban/delete culture slowly creates paranoia about sockpuppets, which beget a plethora of "rules" (which are repeatedly bent), which creates this inquisitor/commissar class, and before you know it the website begins to resemble the Imperium of Man in the Warhammer 40,000 gaming universe, aka what would happen if the Spanish Inquisition, an S&M parlor, and Frank Herbert's Dune were mashed together while everybody was out of the minds on LSD. This is why people quit (unless they like the abuse), and why this sort of thing is ultimately fatal for a free labor project like Wikipedia: nobody likes a creeping police state.
Point One: Wikipedia is doomed to failure
A real encyclopedia is written, edited, published - and thus finished. You can write yearbooks to add information or new, updated editions every decade, but a published encyclopedia is done. Wikipedia, conversely, is never finished; it must always keep up with current events (for reasons beyond me), and it never tries to limit what it covers, so Pokemon character lists exist on the same site as the biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Certainly it's nice to have all this information together somewhere, but the end result is an unwieldy, incoherent mess. And then there's the issue of article fidelity; how many articles have hoaxed or malicious material? How many articles are hoaxes, like the fictional Soviet director Yuri Gadyukin?
A friend of mine, "Stierlitz", once called a plan to make a display encyclopedia set out of the English-language Wikipedia "[p]ure derp", but I think he had it wrong. To actually hold one of the 2,050 volumes in your hands, to see how lumpy many of the articles would look on the printed page, notice how the style can shift from paragraph to paragraph, that would dissuade people far more that Wikipedia is a worthwhile endeavor than anything I could actually write here, even without talking about MONGO.
So this is what Wikipedia really is, a giant tumor-filled shark swimming through a sea of information. A real shark would stop growing, but Wikipedia is an unnatural technological being which grows as it moves, and has no instructions to stop growing or shed unnecessary parts of itself. Such a thing is destined to die badly once it stops moving, and so it is with Wikipedia. `Bots have replaced content writers, editors are dropping, more and more articles have "hats" from years ago asking for the article to be re-formatted or merged with another article. If there had been a limit to the amount of information possible to display, or if each Wikipedia had been designed to be broken up between arbitrary categories (a History Wikipedia, a Science Wikipedia, a Pop-Culture Wikipedia), it wouldn't be the fiasco it is now. It would be a different fiasco, but possibly one more manageable.
Point Two: Banning people and deleting their work doesn't end "the problem"
Seriously, kicking people out DOES. NOT. WORK. Either they start up revenge blogs, or revenge messageboards, or they are just lazy and sockpuppet the site they were banned from. Take the example of "ScienceApologist" (now QTxVi4bEMRbrNqOorWBV); he started on Wikipedia in 2004, got into argument over argument over "fringe science" articles, blocked multiple times, was "permanently banned" in 2011. Spent from early 2011 to the summer of 2013 as a Wikipedia unperson, finally let back in under that bizarre handle. During his exile, became "iii" on the Wikipediocracy messageboard when it appeared in 2012. It should be said here that the man who runs the Wikipediocracy
It should be pointed out that the ban/delete culture slowly creates paranoia about sockpuppets, which beget a plethora of "rules" (which are repeatedly bent), which creates this inquisitor/commissar class, and before you know it the website begins to resemble the Imperium of Man in the Warhammer 40,000 gaming universe, aka what would happen if the Spanish Inquisition, an S&M parlor, and Frank Herbert's Dune were mashed together while everybody was out of the minds on LSD. This is why people quit (unless they like the abuse), and why this sort of thing is ultimately fatal for a free labor project like Wikipedia: nobody likes a creeping police state.
Copy of first post "Why This Blog?" of the other blog, "Wikipedia Sucks!"
Good question. Pretty much Jimmy Wales' baby has gone from the "hot shit, website of THE FUTURE"
to a crumbling, `bot-filled wreck in less than twenty years. It's also
full of outright fabrications, spastically myopic coverage of certain
topics, edit wars, super-trolls (Willy on Wheels, anyone?), and paid
corporate spamming....but we will get to that in time.
The other kludge we will be examining is Wikipediocracy, mainly its message board. The problem here is that many of the Wikipediocrats are ex-Wikipedians, including some of their most monomaniacal editors and content providers like "ScienceApologist" (who posts as "iii"), or "Afadsbad" (who under the name "enwikibadscience" could not stop writing about Cwmhiraeth's Wikipedia idiocy), and the Ukraine-supporting "Kiefer.Wolfowitz." It doesn't help that the guy who is mainly considered to be the supremo of the board, "EricBarbour" actually is only a moderator, and not an administrator, so the poor user is left to the tender mercies of "Zoloft" (a certain Mr. Burns of San Diego, California) and the master do-nothing "greybeard" (allegedly one of the old-timey Usenet guys from the era of cocaine spoons and leisure suits.) Much like with sausage, if you like Wikipediocracy's blog, you definitely don't want to see how they come up with ideas for it on the message board.
It's going to be a bumpy ride.....
The other kludge we will be examining is Wikipediocracy, mainly its message board. The problem here is that many of the Wikipediocrats are ex-Wikipedians, including some of their most monomaniacal editors and content providers like "ScienceApologist" (who posts as "iii"), or "Afadsbad" (who under the name "enwikibadscience" could not stop writing about Cwmhiraeth's Wikipedia idiocy), and the Ukraine-supporting "Kiefer.Wolfowitz." It doesn't help that the guy who is mainly considered to be the supremo of the board, "EricBarbour" actually is only a moderator, and not an administrator, so the poor user is left to the tender mercies of "Zoloft" (a certain Mr. Burns of San Diego, California) and the master do-nothing "greybeard" (allegedly one of the old-timey Usenet guys from the era of cocaine spoons and leisure suits.) Much like with sausage, if you like Wikipediocracy's blog, you definitely don't want to see how they come up with ideas for it on the message board.
It's going to be a bumpy ride.....
Copy of "The Battle Over Scientology: Part III"
I refrained from calling this the last Scientology post
because I'm certain that new nonsense will spring up when the church
collapses or David Miscavige suddenly dies or there is some sort of
impossible coup and Miscavige flees to Honduras, because the
merry-go-round of Scientology on Wikipedia isn't broken; they just
flipped off a switch.
The Odd "Articles"
I could bring up the recent stupidity that happened on Reddit when somebody posted part two of this on a Wikipedia-criticism subforum ("subreddit"), but I will let that stand on its own. However, just for "Folsomdsf" and "willfe42" I will write this: NO, I am NOT a Scientologist; you two feebs couldn't point at a Scientologist if Chick Corea was humping your leg like a dog.
Anyway, the "articles"....all of them are quasi-internal and they deal with Scientology, either subjects or Wikipedians. During 2010 through 2011, there was Neutrality in Scientology, a "short term views page" focused on pushing the "neutral point of view" on to all Scientology articles and BLPs ("biographies of living persons") of Scientologists. Some of the people involved were: SchuminWeb (Ben Schumin of Anonymous), FT2 (of "The Anvil email" fame), Scott MacDonald (once accidentally blocked himself), Youreallycan (as sock account Off2riorob; later blocked for nasty emails), Deirdresm (ex-Sci; thought Scott MacDonald was acting as a proxy for banned users), and finally Stanistani (William "Monty" Burns, the human link to Wikipediocracy.) Things done included deleting the Astra Woodcraft and Kendra Wiseman articles to lump them together into the Exscientologykids.com stub, while leaving the Jenna Miscavige Hill article by itself, even though Hill was also a founding member of the Ex-Scientology Kids website! They couldn't merge the Orientation: A Scientology Information Film stub into some other article, and Stanistani couldn't vaporize the Leipzig Human Rights Award article, even though the last time the award was given was 2003, to Andreas Heldal-Lund of Operation Clambake (aka xenu.net.)
Another "odd article" was Articles for deletion/Scientology Public Relations from 2006, the subject of which now redirects to the Office of Special Affairs article. Antaeus_Feldspar (Joseph Crowley) voted for its deletion, while Republitarian decided to have a fight with TheFarix and Orsini over the name of the guy who wrote the article, Lord Xenu (who has since vanished into oblivion.) The whole thing was idiotic and quickly buried.
Then there was the July-September 2007 Requests for arbitration/COFS mess. COFS was the original name of Shutterbug, and that was how she was forced to change names, by a committee made up such wonderful people as SheffieldSteel (real name unknown; possibly a sockpuppet, or a guy in Belgium posing as North Carolina college student; only on Wikipedia to harass people), Durova (Lise Broer), Lyncs (as Justanother), Misou (sock of Shutterbug?), Jehochman (Jonathan Hochman), Cirt (as Smee), and Lsi John (name unknown, all that remains is a page of animal photos.) The accusations were mostly conflict-of-interest editing. Following Wikipedian tradition, the block log at the bottom is full of other names blocked or banned: Shutterbug, Makoshack, and Misou banned from Scientology editing for 30 days in 2007; Anybody and Justahulk warned to avoid each other by Rlevse in 2008; Pieter Kuiper topic banned from Scientology for two weeks in 2010 by Tim Song (Wikipediocracy's Tryptich); finally, Courcelles giving Shutterbug the "indefinite ban" in September of that same year for sockpuppeting.
The article Church of Scientology editing on Wikipedia is a weird "hurrah for our team!" article talking about Virgil Griffith's WikiScanner software that discovered how many IPs were Church owned and how the Church can't edit pages about itself. The page history is interesting; begun by Chesdovi in late August of 2010, nominated for deletion by Robofish, worked on by Cirt from August to September of 2010, then handed over to a number of different people who gnomed it until 2015. Meanwhile Chesdovi decided to refrain from Wikipedia editing for a month in early 2012, and never returned (possibly hit by a Jerusalem bus.)
Lastly, there was a WikiProject Scientology, set up by David Gerard in 2005. It was supposed to do what the later Neutrality in Scientology page did, but as a WikiProject it was far flashier and easier to find, though that didn't stop it from becoming a ghost town after October 2014. When the WikiProject Soviet Union was founded the same year as the Scientology one, and that project is still going strong, something had to have gone horribly wrong with Gerard's baby.
"Scientology is a UFO religion"
That statement shows the bone ignorance of the person who repeats it. If anything, Scientology is an "ancient astronauts" religion due to the Xenu story, except unlike most ancient astronaut theories (which have aliens building Stonehenge or carving the Nazca Lines of Peru) Hubbard's tale takes place before humans evolved on Earth. Due to the multilevel structure of Scientology, it takes years to get to read the "Operating Thetan III" materials or hear Hubbard recount the story of "Incident II" on the Ron's Journal 67 tape (recorded in 1967 on a Scientologist-run ship in some Mediterranean harbor.) Scientologists are told to not speak of the things they learn to "uninitiated" lower-level members or outsiders at all. L. Ron never claimed that he got his knowledge after being taken aboard a flying saucer; Excalibur was written after a laughing gas "trip" in a dentist's office in the late 1930s, while Dianetics was hammered together from that material and other readings in 1950, and Scientology grew from that.
Now there are UFO religions, like Raëlism (founded in France in 1974), or the Aetherius Society (founded in London, England in 1955), or Unarius Academy of Science (founded in Los Angeles in 1954, now in El Cajon, California); even that joke super-pastiche The Church of the SubGenius (founded in Dallas, Texas in 1979) has UFOs taking away the faithful on X-Day when the aliens come to destroy the planet. Weirder yet, the long-exposed hoax/"fiction" of UMMO has given birth to a "Daughters of UMMO" cult in Bolivia. The difference is that these groups were not founded by science-fiction writers (Ivan Stang, et. al. of the SubGenius Church are parodists, certainly, and the "Daughters of UMMO" are more of a syncretic group), but by people claiming to have had experiences they claim are genuine (whether they were or not is beyond the scope of this article, but I am not a member of any group listed.) Scientology, when it was Dianetics, was a form of abreaction therapy in combination with self-hypnosis; it began getting the "space opera" trappings when people claimed to enter memories of previous lives when hypnotically regressing to early childhood, and the past lives started becoming extraterrestrial when they went further back (whether that was due to Hubbard's direct or indirect influence or not I cannot say*.) Nothing of anything written within this section counts however, because Wikipedia has decided Scientology is a UFO religion, Google re-transmits that, and the press goes along. Just to screw with Google, Scientology is NOT a UFO religion.
How to Have a New-Age Article on Wikipedia Without the Mess
1. Be obscure. Do a search for "Rational Culture" or "Cultura Racional." You won't find anything. However, if you type in Universe in Disenchantment you will stumble across the article on Tim Maia, a Brazilian musician/national treasure, who had joined the Rational Culture cult for a short time in the 1970s, by reading their holy book Universe in Disenchantment. Ivan Stang clued me into this Brazilian religion in his 1988 book High Weirdness by Mail, where he wrote that the RC organization at the time was claiming their books were being dropped out of UFOs and that they had healing properties (!) because of that.
2. Have a fixer. If you look at older versions of the article on Prem Rawat, there is no clue he ran a cult (Divine Light Mission.) Why? Because of an employee of his, Jossi Fresco Benaim aka Jossifresco, who was made an administrator, and later thrown out (though allegedly still editing Rawat material under a sockpuppet.)
3. Be loved outside of Wikipedia. A good example would be Sri Chinmoy, the now-deceased weightlifting guru, though he had to have a number of fixers keep any of his darker elements from being on Wikipedia. People like: Fencingchamp, Vivvvek (a "single-purpose account"), Wiki9898zzz (another SPA), and Chotochele (ditto), among others kept the controversies away. So the article has expanded and contracted over, and over, and over, again. But notice we hear none of it, because the truly obnoxious users are elsewhere. Probably wearing Guy Fawkes masks.
***
* The Research Council of the American Medical Association stated in 1985:
“....memories obtained under hypnotic interventions contain confabulations, pseudomemories and inaccuracies. Self-report, alone, cannot be used to determine the reliability of true from false memories.” (Quote taken from here.)
For the record, William Burns' nickname is not "Monty." I call him that because his actions resemble that of The Simpsons' Montgomery Burns character, though in truth, he is really Steven McGeady's Mr. Smithers.
The Odd "Articles"
I could bring up the recent stupidity that happened on Reddit when somebody posted part two of this on a Wikipedia-criticism subforum ("subreddit"), but I will let that stand on its own. However, just for "Folsomdsf" and "willfe42" I will write this: NO, I am NOT a Scientologist; you two feebs couldn't point at a Scientologist if Chick Corea was humping your leg like a dog.
Anyway, the "articles"....all of them are quasi-internal and they deal with Scientology, either subjects or Wikipedians. During 2010 through 2011, there was Neutrality in Scientology, a "short term views page" focused on pushing the "neutral point of view" on to all Scientology articles and BLPs ("biographies of living persons") of Scientologists. Some of the people involved were: SchuminWeb (Ben Schumin of Anonymous), FT2 (of "The Anvil email" fame), Scott MacDonald (once accidentally blocked himself), Youreallycan (as sock account Off2riorob; later blocked for nasty emails), Deirdresm (ex-Sci; thought Scott MacDonald was acting as a proxy for banned users), and finally Stanistani (William "Monty" Burns, the human link to Wikipediocracy.) Things done included deleting the Astra Woodcraft and Kendra Wiseman articles to lump them together into the Exscientologykids.com stub, while leaving the Jenna Miscavige Hill article by itself, even though Hill was also a founding member of the Ex-Scientology Kids website! They couldn't merge the Orientation: A Scientology Information Film stub into some other article, and Stanistani couldn't vaporize the Leipzig Human Rights Award article, even though the last time the award was given was 2003, to Andreas Heldal-Lund of Operation Clambake (aka xenu.net.)
Another "odd article" was Articles for deletion/Scientology Public Relations from 2006, the subject of which now redirects to the Office of Special Affairs article. Antaeus_Feldspar (Joseph Crowley) voted for its deletion, while Republitarian decided to have a fight with TheFarix and Orsini over the name of the guy who wrote the article, Lord Xenu (who has since vanished into oblivion.) The whole thing was idiotic and quickly buried.
Then there was the July-September 2007 Requests for arbitration/COFS mess. COFS was the original name of Shutterbug, and that was how she was forced to change names, by a committee made up such wonderful people as SheffieldSteel (real name unknown; possibly a sockpuppet, or a guy in Belgium posing as North Carolina college student; only on Wikipedia to harass people), Durova (Lise Broer), Lyncs (as Justanother), Misou (sock of Shutterbug?), Jehochman (Jonathan Hochman), Cirt (as Smee), and Lsi John (name unknown, all that remains is a page of animal photos.) The accusations were mostly conflict-of-interest editing. Following Wikipedian tradition, the block log at the bottom is full of other names blocked or banned: Shutterbug, Makoshack, and Misou banned from Scientology editing for 30 days in 2007; Anybody and Justahulk warned to avoid each other by Rlevse in 2008; Pieter Kuiper topic banned from Scientology for two weeks in 2010 by Tim Song (Wikipediocracy's Tryptich); finally, Courcelles giving Shutterbug the "indefinite ban" in September of that same year for sockpuppeting.
The article Church of Scientology editing on Wikipedia is a weird "hurrah for our team!" article talking about Virgil Griffith's WikiScanner software that discovered how many IPs were Church owned and how the Church can't edit pages about itself. The page history is interesting; begun by Chesdovi in late August of 2010, nominated for deletion by Robofish, worked on by Cirt from August to September of 2010, then handed over to a number of different people who gnomed it until 2015. Meanwhile Chesdovi decided to refrain from Wikipedia editing for a month in early 2012, and never returned (possibly hit by a Jerusalem bus.)
Lastly, there was a WikiProject Scientology, set up by David Gerard in 2005. It was supposed to do what the later Neutrality in Scientology page did, but as a WikiProject it was far flashier and easier to find, though that didn't stop it from becoming a ghost town after October 2014. When the WikiProject Soviet Union was founded the same year as the Scientology one, and that project is still going strong, something had to have gone horribly wrong with Gerard's baby.
"Scientology is a UFO religion"
That statement shows the bone ignorance of the person who repeats it. If anything, Scientology is an "ancient astronauts" religion due to the Xenu story, except unlike most ancient astronaut theories (which have aliens building Stonehenge or carving the Nazca Lines of Peru) Hubbard's tale takes place before humans evolved on Earth. Due to the multilevel structure of Scientology, it takes years to get to read the "Operating Thetan III" materials or hear Hubbard recount the story of "Incident II" on the Ron's Journal 67 tape (recorded in 1967 on a Scientologist-run ship in some Mediterranean harbor.) Scientologists are told to not speak of the things they learn to "uninitiated" lower-level members or outsiders at all. L. Ron never claimed that he got his knowledge after being taken aboard a flying saucer; Excalibur was written after a laughing gas "trip" in a dentist's office in the late 1930s, while Dianetics was hammered together from that material and other readings in 1950, and Scientology grew from that.
Now there are UFO religions, like Raëlism (founded in France in 1974), or the Aetherius Society (founded in London, England in 1955), or Unarius Academy of Science (founded in Los Angeles in 1954, now in El Cajon, California); even that joke super-pastiche The Church of the SubGenius (founded in Dallas, Texas in 1979) has UFOs taking away the faithful on X-Day when the aliens come to destroy the planet. Weirder yet, the long-exposed hoax/"fiction" of UMMO has given birth to a "Daughters of UMMO" cult in Bolivia. The difference is that these groups were not founded by science-fiction writers (Ivan Stang, et. al. of the SubGenius Church are parodists, certainly, and the "Daughters of UMMO" are more of a syncretic group), but by people claiming to have had experiences they claim are genuine (whether they were or not is beyond the scope of this article, but I am not a member of any group listed.) Scientology, when it was Dianetics, was a form of abreaction therapy in combination with self-hypnosis; it began getting the "space opera" trappings when people claimed to enter memories of previous lives when hypnotically regressing to early childhood, and the past lives started becoming extraterrestrial when they went further back (whether that was due to Hubbard's direct or indirect influence or not I cannot say*.) Nothing of anything written within this section counts however, because Wikipedia has decided Scientology is a UFO religion, Google re-transmits that, and the press goes along. Just to screw with Google, Scientology is NOT a UFO religion.
How to Have a New-Age Article on Wikipedia Without the Mess
1. Be obscure. Do a search for "Rational Culture" or "Cultura Racional." You won't find anything. However, if you type in Universe in Disenchantment you will stumble across the article on Tim Maia, a Brazilian musician/national treasure, who had joined the Rational Culture cult for a short time in the 1970s, by reading their holy book Universe in Disenchantment. Ivan Stang clued me into this Brazilian religion in his 1988 book High Weirdness by Mail, where he wrote that the RC organization at the time was claiming their books were being dropped out of UFOs and that they had healing properties (!) because of that.
2. Have a fixer. If you look at older versions of the article on Prem Rawat, there is no clue he ran a cult (Divine Light Mission.) Why? Because of an employee of his, Jossi Fresco Benaim aka Jossifresco, who was made an administrator, and later thrown out (though allegedly still editing Rawat material under a sockpuppet.)
3. Be loved outside of Wikipedia. A good example would be Sri Chinmoy, the now-deceased weightlifting guru, though he had to have a number of fixers keep any of his darker elements from being on Wikipedia. People like: Fencingchamp, Vivvvek (a "single-purpose account"), Wiki9898zzz (another SPA), and Chotochele (ditto), among others kept the controversies away. So the article has expanded and contracted over, and over, and over, again. But notice we hear none of it, because the truly obnoxious users are elsewhere. Probably wearing Guy Fawkes masks.
***
* The Research Council of the American Medical Association stated in 1985:
“....memories obtained under hypnotic interventions contain confabulations, pseudomemories and inaccuracies. Self-report, alone, cannot be used to determine the reliability of true from false memories.” (Quote taken from here.)
For the record, William Burns' nickname is not "Monty." I call him that because his actions resemble that of The Simpsons' Montgomery Burns character, though in truth, he is really Steven McGeady's Mr. Smithers.
Copy of "The Battle Over Scientology: Part II"
To paraphrase Alex in Kubrick's version of A Clockwork Orange: "This is the real boring and like nitpick-y part of the story beginning, O my brothers and only friends."
The 2008-2009 Request for arbitration on Scientology
That is a document that screams to be seen, because it's part CYA exercise, part kangaroo court because anybody who spoke up for Scientology (or who was suspected of being pro-Scientology) was blocked or banned. The RfA began on December 11, 2008 and ran through to May 28, 2009. After all the decisions were made it was amended five times, mostly in 2012 (once on the same day - the First of June at 2:10 and 2:40AM!), with the last amendment on September 19, 2013.
To
make it worse, all of the evidence has been "courtesy blanked" so you
have to go into the article history to see all of this stuff, most of
which would be laughed out of even an Albanian court when Enver Hoxha
was leader:
(Lyncs as Justallofthem on Cirt, taken from here.)
The accounts originally involved in this fiasco were Durova (the filing party), Justallofthem (aka Lyncs), Cirt, Jayen466 (Andreas Kolbe), Jossi (later-banned sockpuppet of Jossi Fresco), Shutterbug (puppetmaster of Misou), Misou (sockpuppet), GoodDamon, Bravehartbear, Shrampes (another Shutterbug sockpuppet!) Once the ball was rolling, the list grew voluminously; there were four more Shutterbug sockpuppets (Derflipper, Grrilla, Su-Jada, TaborG); real people like Rick Ross (the cult deprogrammer/expert, not the rapper), Tory Christman (aka "Tory Magoo", an ex-Scientologist on YouTube), Hkhenson (Keith Henson the Scientology critic), Karin Spaink (Dutch journalist then involved with legal proceedings with the Church over posting the Fishman affidavit online), David Gerard (mentioned in the last post); also a number of people only known by Wikipedia handles, so around 45 accounts in all. It quickly turned into a melee worthy of a Shaw Brothers movie; Rick Ross and Jayen466 sniping over Ross' "biography of a living person", while
Ross accused Jayen466 of being a follower of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, GoodDamon hammering Shutterbug/Misou over "civility" while defending Cirt, etc.
One of the best statements made during the original process was by AndroidCat:
I certainly didn't want to participate in the annual time-suck, but having been named as a party to this event, listed among the guilty, perhaps I should leave a few words.
I doubt this will be much of a patch on a continually erupting problem. (One almost suspects this as gamesmanship as part of someone's plan.)
Even with theWikiHitThemWithSticksHitThemWithSticks! topic-banning of involved editors, the problem will continue.
Expecting that institutional socks will vanish and CHECKUSER requests will decrease after several institutional IP ranges are blocked is .. wow. If institutional editing is assumed, then this is an institution that is well known for setting up dummy ISP accounts to hide ownership.
Expecting that the articles will drift to some happy norm: That's not going to happen. It's a topic that polarizes even among academic circles.
Here's a heretical notion: the articles have been hugely improved by conflict. Is there a way to limit it and harness it?
Umm... The arbitrator discussion seem to be giving the impression that Jossi has just stepped out for a smoke or something, and when he returns, he'll have to get back in line. Aren't we talking about rather severe warping of Wikipedia policies, guidelines and articles going back over several years? Almost.. even.. a dreaded.. Single Purpose Account? (Sorry if this has all been previously discussed privately on secret channels, I like candor, transparency, and honesty, and hope this is properly addressed out in the open.)
Metz, Cade (2008-02-06). "Wikipedia ruled by 'Lord of the Universe'". The Register.
Metz, Cade (2009-01-09). "'Lord of the Universe' disciple exits Wikipedia". The Register.
My general impression is that this RFAR is a side-line for some sort of Wikipedia political faction maneuvering. brb, popcorn. AndroidCat (talk) 06:41, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
***
Being cool about it didn't help; AndroidCat was topic-banned from Scientology.
Wikipedia Hackery vs. the Scientology Spinoffs
One of the issues not really discussed by the Scientology critics are the ex-Scientologists who go into business for themselves. According to Kristi Wachter the Scientology-watcher, 65% of Scientologists go inactive one year after achieving the level of Clear. She also estimates there have been 15,013 Clears from 1976 to 2004 based on figures printed in Auditor, a Scientology magazine.
Look at the Wikipedia article on Eckankar; no mention that Paul Twitchell, the group's creator, was an ex-Scientologist. He was, and his article is a monument of bad Wikipedia writing.
In Berkeley, California, there is the Berkeley Psychic Institute, founded by Lewis S. Bostwick in 1973; group is also called the Church of Divine Man. Not a word in the Wikipedia about Bostwick's time in Scientology, nor his modifications of "the Tech." The fact that the article is nothing more then a large stub with links doesn't help.
The article on est, now called Landmark Worldwide (and no longer owned by Werner Erhard) mentions nothing about Erhard's connection to Scientology, though his BLP does.
The Wikipedia article on Adi Da actually mentions his time in Scientology and is pretty balanced, proof that you can write a decent article on Wikipedia if you put your mind to it.
Finally we should mention the article on The Process Church of the Final Judgement, which began in 1964 as "Compulsions Analysis", a fact left out by the article. The Process Church quickly created a new orientation and theology after L. Ron Hubbard declared them a "Squirrel Group" (i.e. a group "unlawfully" using "the Tech") in 1965. Christ, Satan, Lucifer and Jehovah took the place of going Clear (Xenu hadn't appeared yet in Scientology.) Co-founder Robert DeGrimston's quasi-Biblical writings are out there for the reading, all 520 pages of them.
In 1970 Hubbard published a list of so-called "Squirrel Groups" and that any Scientologist who had been a part of those groups at any time was out. They were:
Abilitism – USA
The American College Propriotary Ltd. – Australia
Amprinistics – USA, Aus. [,] New Zealand, UK
The Assoc. of Int’l Dianologists – USA
The Aus. Center of Applied Psychology – Aus
Balanced Determinism – USA
The Brotherhood – USA
Calif. Assoc. of Dianetic Auditors – USA
Calif. Dianetic Fdn. – USA
Church of the final Judgement – USA, UK, EU, Mex.
Church of Satan – USA, UK, EU, Mex.
Christan [sic] Spiritual Alliance – USA
Dianology – USA
E-Therapy – USA
Eumentics – UK
Harmonistics – USA
Institute of Ability – USA
Int’l Awareness Center – USA
New Principles – USA, UK
Personal Creative Fdn. – USA
The Process – USA, UK, EU, Mex.
Reform Church of Scientology – USA
Sciognostics – USA
Self-Realization – UK, USA
Trichotomy – USA
Trinitology – USA
Triology – USA
Vacuum Cleaning Procedure – USA
World Society for Everyman’s Freedom – USA
Notice that the Process Church is on the list twice, because Hubbard hated them that much. Later four names were added:
Eductivism – USA
Anderson Research Fdn – USA
Defense or Thought – USA
Erhart [sic] Seminar Training (EST) – USA
Very few of these groups have been mentioned by Wikipedia, and Wikipedia still lacks a page for Scientology offshoots.
***
We will finish our look at Scientology on Wikipedia by examining some bizarro articles ("Neutrality in Scientology", the AfD on "Scientology Public Relations"), and how other cults control their articles. After that an article on Howard Keith Henson, and we can finally discuss the LaRouche war.
The 2008-2009 Request for arbitration on Scientology
That is a document that screams to be seen, because it's part CYA exercise, part kangaroo court because anybody who spoke up for Scientology (or who was suspected of being pro-Scientology) was blocked or banned. The RfA began on December 11, 2008 and ran through to May 28, 2009. After all the decisions were made it was amended five times, mostly in 2012 (once on the same day - the First of June at 2:10 and 2:40AM!), with the last amendment on September 19, 2013.
Cirt's inability to edit in good faith alongside a Scientologist # 2
Xenu Xenu Xenu Xenu. There, I said Xenu. Cirt seems to think that Scientologists cannot say Xenu. What an odd concept and what a total misunderstanding of what Scientology is and how it works. And then to imply that a Scientologist that edits anything related to confidential materials must be an agent or something is just plain misleading and bad-faith. Here is the deal. Ex-Scientologists and critics assert that Xenu is mentioned in some upper-level Scientology materials and they use the Xenu story out-of-context to marginalize and ridicule Scientology. OK. That is true, they do assert that and do that. What is also true is that the upper levels are confidential and no Scientologist in good standing that has done these levels may discuss what they contain because that would be a breach of the confidentiality agreement. That does NOT mean that Scientologists cannot discuss how the alleged upper-level materials are already presented in reliable sources. That is all I personally ever do, make sure that articles correctly interpret reliable sources in an NPOV fashion. Do you get the difference? If I have done the levels (and I am not going to reveal personal information), I cannot discuss what they contain from my own first-hand knowledge but I can certainly discuss if a reliable source is being represented correctly and fairly. I do not need any "special permission" for that. Nor have I any. Nor do I "get in trouble" for what I do here on Wikipedia. Cirt proves again that s/he cannot edit in good faith alongside a Scientologist and now tries to get the lot of us barred. Sheesh.(Lyncs as Justallofthem on Cirt, taken from here.)
The accounts originally involved in this fiasco were Durova (the filing party), Justallofthem (aka Lyncs), Cirt, Jayen466 (Andreas Kolbe), Jossi (later-banned sockpuppet of Jossi Fresco), Shutterbug (puppetmaster of Misou), Misou (sockpuppet), GoodDamon, Bravehartbear, Shrampes (another Shutterbug sockpuppet!) Once the ball was rolling, the list grew voluminously; there were four more Shutterbug sockpuppets (Derflipper, Grrilla, Su-Jada, TaborG); real people like Rick Ross (the cult deprogrammer/expert, not the rapper), Tory Christman (aka "Tory Magoo", an ex-Scientologist on YouTube), Hkhenson (Keith Henson the Scientology critic), Karin Spaink (Dutch journalist then involved with legal proceedings with the Church over posting the Fishman affidavit online), David Gerard (mentioned in the last post); also a number of people only known by Wikipedia handles, so around 45 accounts in all. It quickly turned into a melee worthy of a Shaw Brothers movie; Rick Ross and Jayen466 sniping over Ross' "biography of a living person", while
Ross accused Jayen466 of being a follower of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, GoodDamon hammering Shutterbug/Misou over "civility" while defending Cirt, etc.
One of the best statements made during the original process was by AndroidCat:
I certainly didn't want to participate in the annual time-suck, but having been named as a party to this event, listed among the guilty, perhaps I should leave a few words.
I doubt this will be much of a patch on a continually erupting problem. (One almost suspects this as gamesmanship as part of someone's plan.)
Even with the
Expecting that institutional socks will vanish and CHECKUSER requests will decrease after several institutional IP ranges are blocked is .. wow. If institutional editing is assumed, then this is an institution that is well known for setting up dummy ISP accounts to hide ownership.
Expecting that the articles will drift to some happy norm: That's not going to happen. It's a topic that polarizes even among academic circles.
Here's a heretical notion: the articles have been hugely improved by conflict. Is there a way to limit it and harness it?
Umm... The arbitrator discussion seem to be giving the impression that Jossi has just stepped out for a smoke or something, and when he returns, he'll have to get back in line. Aren't we talking about rather severe warping of Wikipedia policies, guidelines and articles going back over several years? Almost.. even.. a dreaded.. Single Purpose Account? (Sorry if this has all been previously discussed privately on secret channels, I like candor, transparency, and honesty, and hope this is properly addressed out in the open.)
Metz, Cade (2008-02-06). "Wikipedia ruled by 'Lord of the Universe'". The Register.
Metz, Cade (2009-01-09). "'Lord of the Universe' disciple exits Wikipedia". The Register.
My general impression is that this RFAR is a side-line for some sort of Wikipedia political faction maneuvering. brb, popcorn. AndroidCat (talk) 06:41, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
***
Being cool about it didn't help; AndroidCat was topic-banned from Scientology.
Wikipedia Hackery vs. the Scientology Spinoffs
One of the issues not really discussed by the Scientology critics are the ex-Scientologists who go into business for themselves. According to Kristi Wachter the Scientology-watcher, 65% of Scientologists go inactive one year after achieving the level of Clear. She also estimates there have been 15,013 Clears from 1976 to 2004 based on figures printed in Auditor, a Scientology magazine.
Look at the Wikipedia article on Eckankar; no mention that Paul Twitchell, the group's creator, was an ex-Scientologist. He was, and his article is a monument of bad Wikipedia writing.
In Berkeley, California, there is the Berkeley Psychic Institute, founded by Lewis S. Bostwick in 1973; group is also called the Church of Divine Man. Not a word in the Wikipedia about Bostwick's time in Scientology, nor his modifications of "the Tech." The fact that the article is nothing more then a large stub with links doesn't help.
The article on est, now called Landmark Worldwide (and no longer owned by Werner Erhard) mentions nothing about Erhard's connection to Scientology, though his BLP does.
The Wikipedia article on Adi Da actually mentions his time in Scientology and is pretty balanced, proof that you can write a decent article on Wikipedia if you put your mind to it.
Finally we should mention the article on The Process Church of the Final Judgement, which began in 1964 as "Compulsions Analysis", a fact left out by the article. The Process Church quickly created a new orientation and theology after L. Ron Hubbard declared them a "Squirrel Group" (i.e. a group "unlawfully" using "the Tech") in 1965. Christ, Satan, Lucifer and Jehovah took the place of going Clear (Xenu hadn't appeared yet in Scientology.) Co-founder Robert DeGrimston's quasi-Biblical writings are out there for the reading, all 520 pages of them.
In 1970 Hubbard published a list of so-called "Squirrel Groups" and that any Scientologist who had been a part of those groups at any time was out. They were:
Abilitism – USA
The American College Propriotary Ltd. – Australia
Amprinistics – USA, Aus. [,] New Zealand, UK
The Assoc. of Int’l Dianologists – USA
The Aus. Center of Applied Psychology – Aus
Balanced Determinism – USA
The Brotherhood – USA
Calif. Assoc. of Dianetic Auditors – USA
Calif. Dianetic Fdn. – USA
Church of the final Judgement – USA, UK, EU, Mex.
Church of Satan – USA, UK, EU, Mex.
Christan [sic] Spiritual Alliance – USA
Dianology – USA
E-Therapy – USA
Eumentics – UK
Harmonistics – USA
Institute of Ability – USA
Int’l Awareness Center – USA
New Principles – USA, UK
Personal Creative Fdn. – USA
The Process – USA, UK, EU, Mex.
Reform Church of Scientology – USA
Sciognostics – USA
Self-Realization – UK, USA
Trichotomy – USA
Trinitology – USA
Triology – USA
Vacuum Cleaning Procedure – USA
World Society for Everyman’s Freedom – USA
Notice that the Process Church is on the list twice, because Hubbard hated them that much. Later four names were added:
Eductivism – USA
Anderson Research Fdn – USA
Defense or Thought – USA
Erhart [sic] Seminar Training (EST) – USA
Very few of these groups have been mentioned by Wikipedia, and Wikipedia still lacks a page for Scientology offshoots.
***
We will finish our look at Scientology on Wikipedia by examining some bizarro articles ("Neutrality in Scientology", the AfD on "Scientology Public Relations"), and how other cults control their articles. After that an article on Howard Keith Henson, and we can finally discuss the LaRouche war.
List of "Wikipedia Sucks! (And So Do Its Critics.)" Posts
FLOP: Why Wikipedia Criticism Will Always Be A Waste Of Time
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3Comment count
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234View count
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9/25/15
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The Infamous "Not Censored" IRC chat, January 2012
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120View count
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9/22/15
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Addendum: Who the Major Players of the LaRouche Edit War Were
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78View count
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9/17/15
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The Lyndon LaRouche Edit War, 2003-2007
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1Comment count
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164View count
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9/11/15
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The Greasy World of Howard Keith Henson
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147View count
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9/5/15
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A List of Administrators Who Blocked Themselves, 2010
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1Comment count
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281View count
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9/3/15
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Wikipedia Lost 300 Million Views This Year and Nobody's Talking About It....
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6Comment count
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455View count
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8/31/15
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The Battle Over Scientology: Part III
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466View count
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8/30/15
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Jimbo and Larry Lessig "Start" the Presidential Campaign Trail - on Reddit
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15Comment count
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190View count
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8/26/15
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Guest Post: Why Wikipedia Will Fail
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12Comment count
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372View count
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8/25/15
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The Battle Over Scientology: Part II
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2Comment count
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211View count
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8/20/15
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Stuff That Has Nothing to Do with Wikipedia: "Communism Kills" of Tumblr
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440View count
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8/11/15
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The Battle Over Scientology: Part I
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361View count
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8/8/15
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The Cults That Screwed Up Wikipedia; Future Tumblr Nonsense
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63View count
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7/22/15
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Reddit: Probably Screwed Anyway
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70View count
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7/14/15
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A Fluffernutter-Ironholds IRC Fragment, 2011
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184View count
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7/9/15
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Wikiscuttlebutt: SlimVirgin and Others
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248View count
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7/5/15
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Stuff that has Nothing to Do With Wikipedia: "You just got logic'd" of Tumblr
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1208View count
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6/30/15
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Vaoverland and Vegaswikian: Dead Administrators Self-Promote while Living Ones Promote Las Vegas
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188View count
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6/29/15
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Is Vigilant of Wikipedia/Wikipediocracy actually Alan P. Petrofsky?
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257View count
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6/17/15
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Wikipediocracy's Messageboard Reduced to Flaming Lake of Shit
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140View count
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6/3/15
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Wiki-Douchebaggery: Beyond My Ken as an Example
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314View count
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5/31/15
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A Short, Open Post to the Administration of Wikipediocracy's Messageboard
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63View count
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5/14/15
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The Beyond My Ken Video, embedded
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19View count
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5/11/15
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Paid Editing as a Hobby: the Beyond My Ken story
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2Comment count
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667View count
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5/6/15
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The Weakest Link of a Badly-Rusted Chain: the BLP
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48View count
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4/12/15
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The Paid Editing Clusterfuck of Wifione
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119View count
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3/20/15
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Despite Appearences.....
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39View count
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3/19/15
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January Grab-Bag
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91View count
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1/12/15
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Some last-minute sucker punches.....Averted!
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43View count
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12/31/14
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Wikipedia Tags and Eastern European Politics
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26View count
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12/25/14
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Before Wikipedia: Search Bastard and 3Apes
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316View count
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12/23/14
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Roshuk asks: "Was Wikipedia Ever Meant to be Transparent?"
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62View count
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12/14/14
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As above, so below....
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247View count
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12/9/14
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"Operation Swill" and TGI Friday's - or: Don't Go To New Jersey, And Don't Look It Up On Wikipedia
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5Comment count
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143View count
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11/12/14
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A Guest Post on Jimmy Wales
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159View count
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11/6/14
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Addendum to the last post...
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85View count
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10/27/14
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The Things Wikipedists and Wikipediocratists Don't Seem to Understand.....
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133View count
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10/26/14
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Why This Blog?
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86View count
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10/18/14
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