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Having said all this, I know I am not without fault, and acknowledge that I may have erred from time to time. I would hope that these faults would be assessed in the context of some intense personal attacks and misleading claims made against me and the subject of the article, on and off-wiki.
I consider myself a private person, and as such, I am unwilling to disclose any personal information besides what I have already disclosed. Given the speculation on and off-wiki about my involvement with the subject of this case, I will be willing to consider disclosing, in chambers, additional information to the ArbCom, if the ArbCom sees this as necessary and upon their request only.
Requests for community input include several WP:RFCs and reviews:
PatW ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been warned numerous times for personal attacks, and talk page disruption.
Per Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive383#User:PatW
Francis Schonken ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has tried to cast himself as a "neutral editor", but has failed to assist editors in the content dispute. Rather than offer help he seems to have decided to take it upon himself to "fix" the article. Being bold is a good thing sometimes, but dismissing other editors as "POV pushers" is unhelpful, as it is edit-warring with them. Evidence follows.
Diff evidence |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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Witnessing a vicious personal attack by User:PatW [9], this is what Francis had to say to him "Pat, Jossi interprets your comment above (and other comments on this page) as a personal attack." diff, instead of refactoring, or at minimum placing a warning in his talk page or at WP:WQA as customary.
When a BLP violation was posted by an anon user, on Feb 29, 2008) I asked Francis as a "non-involved" editor to take action and refactor the offending comment. [10] He did not respond, and did nothing. After no one did anything I refactored it myself, [11].
Francis Schonken came to help with the article upon the publishing of the The Register article, and despite his claims that he came as a neutral editor, he has injected himself in the dispute, and has shown very poor judgment in his interactions with editors he openly describe as "POV pushers", by applying the mistaken behavior that it is OK to revert their contributions because of his negative assessment of them. Most, if not all, reverts and ANI complains have been exclusively about editors that he has assessed as having a pro bias, while being overtly lenient about others. It seems that for Francis, dispute resolution does not apply to him. He objected to the attempts to dispute resolution, such as the negotiated community-enforced 1RR probation, and when the proposal passed it was not too soon that he sabotaged the probation on the basis of poor wording and by violating it, showing again a disregard for WP's dispute resolution process.
Momento ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), edits almost exclusively on Prem Rawat and related articles
I do not know what is the relevance of Citizendium in this arbitration, but in any case, see the the whole thread - The initial post was by a "Nik w", who signs as "A. C." ("Andrew Carpenter", maybe?) [23]; the reply was given by Dr. Robert H. Stockman, Religious Studies, DePaul University, [24], followed by my reply [25].
The table of edits can be improved for a better representation:
I am the webmaster of websites ex-premie.org and prem-rawat-talk.org where former followers of Prem Rawat give testimony on their time as followers of Rawat and discuss the topic. I also front other websites where the true owners are unwilling to risk the inevitable harrassment by current followers of Rawat by publishing their names.
It is my assertion that Jossi has no ‘conflict’ of interest in posting on Wikipedia because a conflict implies two or more interests. Jossi’s sole reason for being on Wikipedia is to present his Master, Prem Rawat, in as positive a light as possible, and he has done what is necessary to reach admin status to help do this. I’ll try to explain why I make this assertion. It is impossible to understand Jossi's role here without understanding more about the Rawat cult in a wider context than Wikipedia. From the early 80s to the late 90s, Rawat deliberately and pretty much successfully avoided all publicity. Until ex-followers started posting on usenet in 1996, an internet search for Rawat under any of his names would have yielded no results. I heard Rawat himself diss the internet as of no value. Then the ex-followers presence became one that the cult could not ignore, so in 1999 Rawat changed his mind, and put up his first website, and followers followed suit. Around this time the cult embarked on what is called the 'legitimacy' campaign to change Rawat’s image from the rich child guru from the 70s. I can give evidence of this campaign if the committee require it. Part of this campaign has been to denigrate Rawat's former followers that post on the internet. Again, I can give evidence of this if required.
I mention all this because Jossi has been at the heart of the attempt to establish legitimacy for Rawat on the internet from the start. He was the webmaster of Rawat's first website in 1999, as well as the webmaster of related websites such as Rawat's A/V company, Dunrite, and a followers' music website, Eversound. Again, if Jossi denies this (I doubt he would), I can provide evidence.
Jossi now claims to be a wide-ranging Wikipedian, but his beginnings on Wikipedia tell a very different story. His first 500 Wikipedia contributions, over 7 months, were almost exclusively on Rawat related articles:-
The only exceptions were a handful of edits to articles related to graphics design, and, tellingly, an edit to the WP:Hate Group article establishing that apostates of new religious movements could be viewed as hate groups. It is clear that during that time his was a prime example of a single purpose account that he repeatedly criticises others for. It is only later that Jossi widens his editing to other articles, although a check of the articles he authored will show that many are close to stubs. See Some of the Articles I have Created, -
One of the three important tenets of the Rawat belief system is service to Prem Rawat. Jossi is a dedicated follower, and is willing to do what it takes to please his Master.
Regarding Jossi's evidence above, I am sure it is largely accurate. What is missing is that when he acknowledged in 2004 that he is a 'proud student' of Rawat's, he declined to mention his involvement in Rawat's websites, which was a clear breach of WP:COI. Also, in all his edits, I have never seen him revert a pro-Rawat edit, regardless of the quality of the source. I have asked him to show me such a revert and he was unable or unwilling to do so. I have been asked to produce diffs to support this allegation. It is difficult to prove a negative, but here are two recent minor examples of poorly sourced pro-Rawat statements that had been in place some time before I edited them:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Prem_Rawat&diff=prev&oldid=149642855
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Prem_Rawat&diff=prev&oldid=181822308
It would be much easier for Jossi to produce, from his thousands of edits to Rawat related articles, a few examples where he has reverted, without being prompted, pro-Rawat edits. If he does so I will withdraw this allegation.
I appreciate that my evidence is not the kind that is expected here, and some of the committee may dismiss it as anecdotal or simply untrue, but I believe it is important that you understand the context of Jossi's involvement here. If Jossi really does believe in the Wiki project, he should be happy to avoid any possibility of further tarnishing Wikipedia's reputation by absenting himself from all Rawat related articles. This should apply to other long-time Rawat followers such as Momento and Rumiton. Myself, and, I believe, other former followers, would be happy to do the same and allow the article to be edited by neutral editors. The problem is that until the Register article, no else was interested in the subject.
A final word about my own contributions to talk pages. I have occasionally made comments to other editors about publishing information on them outside Wikipedia, and I have made other comments not related to the articles in question, that I have apologised for, and do so here again. -- John Brauns ( talk) 01:14, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Someone asked me which sources are not represented in the Rawat article, so here is my answer.
1. Press Articles. Genuine press articles about Rawat have usually been fair, and have usually been critical. Because of the publicity blackout that Rawat instituted from the mid 80s to the late 90s there have been very few recent press articles, but there are many from the 70s. The articles on Rawat's foundation's website ( http://www.tprf.org/press-room/magazines.htm) are all paid advertorials in obscure magazines, but there is a good collection on my website, http://ex-premie.org/pages/press_room.htm and http://www.ex-premie.org/gallery/news/index.html - none of which are listed on Rawat's site. There were links to a couple of these articles in the Wikipedia Rawat article but these have been removed.
2. The book 'Who is Guru Maharaj Ji'.
This book by follwer Charles Cameron published by Bantam in 1973, includes the text on the front cover 'The authentic authorised story of the 15-year-old Guru...'. Copyright was owned by Shri hans Productions which was one of the trading names of Divine Light Mission (now Elan Vital). The back of the book includes the text 'Why do more than six million people around the world claim he is the greatest incarnation of God that ever trod on the face of this planet?'. Rennie Davis writes in the intro 'Guru maharaj Ji is the Lord of the Universe...'. This book should be the basic source for how Rawat presented himself in 1973.
3. Elan Vital/Divine Light Mission Publications from the 70s.
These include transcripts of Rawat's speeches and those of his followers, including his wife. Whenever discussion of using these publications as sources has been discussed on the Rawat talk pages, the argument against is that everyone can pick out quotes supporting their point of view. Some of the quotes, however, leave the reader in no doubt that former followers' version of Rawat's history is the correct one.
4. The website, ex-premie.org.
The basic problem with Rawat as a notable person is that his notability stems from his claim in the early 70s that he could show people God face to face. Without that claim few would have come to him, and we would not be here having this discussion. Unfortunately there have been few press articles and no academic studies of Rawat in recent years. I have no doubt that were a reputable academic to research a paper on Rawat now, and were to examine dispassionately the claims made by former and current followers, using Rawat's speeches from the above mentioned publications, the resulting paper would pretty much support the version of Rawat's history that former followers put forward. Unfortunately, no such academic has found Rawat interesting enough to write such a paper, so the best information we have is the over 100 first hand testimonies of former followers on ex-premie.org, including his former right hand men. This site is currently excluded as a source because of WP:BLP, and I understand why those rules are in place. But my site has been in existence for over 10 years, and the most damaging allegations against Rawat have been published for over 7 years. This is not a transient blog, but a well documented account of Rawat's history, including named, corroborated eye-witness accounts of Rawat's behaviour. Elan Vital claimed copyright on the text of Rawat's speeches and other historical documents, but failed in their legal attempt to get them removed. This adds provenance to the content. I believe WP:BLP should be amended to cater for situations such as Rawat, where clear evidence of his life is available, but he is not sufficiently notable for an independent study to have been taken. -- John Brauns ( talk) 00:38, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
5. The website, mikefinch.com
Mike Finch was one of Rawat's earliest western followers, and was the person who organised Rawat's first trip to the UK, and helped organise his first trip to the USA. He was an instructor authorised by Rawat to reveal the 'secret' meditation techniques, and was a loyal followers for over 30 year. He has a PhD, and his website should be considered a reliable source for the Rawat article.
Jossi suggests that I summarise this evidence. As I explained, it is impossible to understand Jossi's role on Wikipedia without understanding the background. This is already a summary, and I will not further summarise. Of course if the clerk deletes this then there is nothing I can do, but this arbitration will be the poorer for that. -- John Brauns ( talk) 21:23, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Refering to my discussion forum Isabella states:- "Although they (the forum administrators) now moderate postings and edit comments by its members that may bring a criminal liability upon this forum or cross the line into hate speech". For the record, in the over two years the forum has been in existence we have never had to edit or delete posts for the reasons Isabella claims. -- John Brauns ( talk) 23:51, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
I have looked at the diffs Jayen posted that supposedly show Jossi reverting poorly sources pro-Rawat edits, and frankly for some of them I can't see much difference between the two versions in terms of which is more pro-Rawat. Other edits appear to be part of edit wars where Jossi, to maintain his admin status, had to intervene. I am refering to poorly sourced pro-Rawat edits such as those I linked to above, where no neutral or anti-Rawat editors were active, where Jossi, unprompted, recognised that the edit did not meet WP:BLP and reverted the edit. -- John Brauns ( talk) 01:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Momento falsely claims that I will do what ever I can to denigrate Rawat. This is untrue - I will not lie, unlike Rawat's supporters. The critical information on my website is true. Momento also claims; 'As an editor he usually confines himself to the "Talk" page. He never removes any vandalism or obvious BLP violations.' I have made very few edits (about 100) in the four years since I first contributed to Wikipedia, so it is not my place to police the articles. However, I did support the removal of the picture of Rawat's house on copyright grounds, and in the early days of the article I supported not including Rawat's protection of his paedophile lieutenant, Jagdeo, in the article. For the record, given the grossly distorted picture of Rawat's life in his Wikipedia article, I have little faith in the accuracy of any other Wikipedia article. My only purpose here is to do what I can to make the Rawat articles a little more reflective of the truth than they are, but I do not think that even this aim is worth much of my time. -- John Brauns ( talk) 01:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_28#Brief_history_of_editing_principles_used_for_this_article
After user:Vassyana's failed Good article review a complete condensed re-write had been made by user:Momento and user:Rumiton, supported by Jossi that replaced a longer version that had a degree of consensus. They rejected all my and User:Sylviecyn's objections to their version, both in the draft period and afterwards. 12:51, 13 May 2007 Diff comment by Andries on Momento's and Rumiton's complete rewrite Numerous other re-writes had been made and proposed by other contributors but the version by Rumiton and Momento remained unreverted in spite of my many criticisms. Then I decided that mediation was necessary. When the mediation between Momento and I was rejected. See Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/Rejected/28#Prem_Rawat_3, I became powerless to prevent the article becoming one-sided. Then the article received well-deserved bad publicity from the register. (I had no prior knowledge of the register article until it appeared.).
This register article brought in some new people in among others Francis Schonken who had little prior involvement in the article. Andries ( talk) 09:46, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Momento repeatedly removed undisputed sourced facts 29 November 2007, 29 November 2007 Andries ( talk) 19:03, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Andries has occasionally made mistake in paraphrasing sources, both in Rawat related articles and in unrelated articles. [26] He attributes these mistakes to his habit of quick but not very accurately reading of sources. [27] [28] Andries ( talk) 09:24, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Andries hereby denies that he is a (former) follower of Rawat. Andries ( talk) 08:25, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Jossi has repeatedly been unwilling or unable to assume Andries' good faith regarding his contributions related to Rawat. [29] 14 October 2007 "You have zero credibility in this project as it pertains to any assumptions of good faith, Andries."
Andries thinks that Jossi's attitute towards him is partially due to his occasional mistakes in paraphrasing sources in combination with the hypersensitivity of the subject and opposing POVs of Jossi and Andries. Andries hereby admits that he has sometimes focused on providing sources for statements that can be intended as critical, but this grew partially out of the habit of Momento to challenge anything critical. Andries hereby vehemently denies that Jossi's opinion that Andries is a bad faith editor has any basis in reality and hereby states that the fraction and seriousness of the mistakes that he made in Rawat related articles is lower and less serious than the mistakes that he made in in unrelated articles.
Andries (
talk)
09:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I have no doubt, that on unrelated topics, Jossi is, as described, a great Wikipedian, however, we are talking about one topic, and one topic only, and that would be the sphere of articles that reflect on Prem Rawat. Other unassociated articles should not be included in this discussion here, they have no bearing whatsoever on the claims made against him here. I have no grudge against Jossi personally and was completely unaware of his and Prem Rawat's existence until earlier this year. Unlike other editors who seem to have left out some pertinent information [30] [31], I do not have a conflict of interest that I am aware of. I have never been a premie, am not a premie now, and have never knowingly worked for any organization that is run for, by, or in association with, Prem Rawat. Nor do I have any prior affiliation of any kind with any of the other editors I have interacted with on this topic.
On a common sense basis, if I work for a company, and I also do some freelance journalism, and I spend some of my time criticizing my employer, is it not somewhat obvious that the vast majority of companies would frown on this practice, possibly leading to career problems? On the other hand, if I was to only write glowing reviews of my employer, I'm sure they would be fine with it. I have never seen Jossi write anything critical of Prem Rawat, this is basically what the term "Conflict of Interest" refers to, whether he admits it or not.
Whether Jimbo thinks so or not, there is a certain prestige that comes along with being a WP admin/janitor, especially for editors familiar with the system. So when Jossi makes a suggestion that editors should change certain things it should be in no way surprising to see other pro-Rawat editors jump in to help out minutes later, 3 minutes later in this case. As well as a similar effect here, leading, again, to another Pro-Rawat editor doing Jossi's bidding here 2 hours later. As an analogy, it's like having the cool guy from your high school in the car with you, egging you on. And conversely, when he admonishes someone else, it naturally has a momentary chilling effect. Rightly or wrongly, these things happen [32] [33]. Ironicly Jossi says above that he has never exerted "administrator influence" (quotes are his), and then immediately says "(whatever that means)"... well if you don't know what it means, a) you should find out, and b) you can't really claim you haven't done it, can you?!
Another example of his attempt at influencing the process is here [34], where he is defending a pro-Rawat editor who was nominated for admin status, nothing wrong with that, except there is a lot of criticism for someone who Jossi seems so enthusiastic about. In fact, Jossi uses 163 words here in support of this pro-Rawat editor, who apparently engages in this exact same POV pushing issue with Rawat. Attempting to marshall his forces? (for reference,In terms of words typed, it takes his next 21 votes [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] in support for admins, combined, for him to equal the verbosity he shows for this single pro-Prem Rawat editor.
Jossi indicates he worked on the Lord of the Universe (documentary), reading the talk page shows more of the same POV pushing that we are discussing here.
Above, Jossi says "During the same time I engaged in vigorous debates in talk page, providing sources when requested,".
Jossi is no stranger to making threats of censure, or of pointing out WP policy violations on the talk page to people who seem critical of Rawat, or opposed to his POV,as shown by other editors on this page. And yet, the only time I can find any reference to any pro-Prem Rowat editor being reprimanded in any way, is somewhat privately, on that user's talk page, not the in the article's talk page, in public as it were, where all the dissenting voices are challenged by Jossi.
[ This] was posted on the Prem Rawat talk page, I think it speaks strongly towards jossi's bias, and pretty much speaks for itself when you look at the diffs for the disambiguation page, specifically, [ [59]][ [60]][ [61]] Edit summary is "this is the correct meaning". So if I beome a premie, and then quit, unless I complain about it, I'm not an ex-premie? And if I do, I become a member of a "small group" (ambiguous term at best)? How is that the "correct meaning"?
Jossi says he has attemped to enforce civility and WP's behavioral/editing policies. I would say he is engaging in WP's version of Vexatious Litigation in an attempt to slow down the altering of the article, and to grind down the other authors, to "wait them out". Sooner or later, as is evidenced by the amount of editors that come and go on this article, many editors who do not have a "personal" connection to the subject get tired of bashing their head against the wall, and leave the article, Jossi however remains ever-vigilant.
My apologies, I am also a little over my 1000 words.
(I checked with the clerk, this is allowed, and kept as brief as possible)
Re the ex-premie disambiguation, you fail to mention in your reply that while other topics are covered in those searches, under the book search, in the top 10, Rawat's ex-premies appear twice, at 6, and 7, and under your scholar search, they appear at number 2 on the list. Certainly prominent enough to warrant a disambiguation page. Interestingly, you neglected to include a standard google search where the entire first page (1-10) are all Rawat's ex-premies.
My motivation:
Jimbo Wales' single known edit on the issue ( diff) was divisive while it contained straw man argumentation (see discussion at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 33#break 0). As such the edit was gefundenes fressen for yet another Cade Metz article (see link included in 4th paragraph of 'That's some catch, that catch-22' section at Why you should care that Jimmy Wales ignores reality: 'A great Wikipedian'). I don't like my name to be linked from some bad journalism, when this is the result of someone else's superficial comment (even if the 'someone else' is Jimbo Wales in this case). -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 06:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Kim Bruning ( talk · contribs) carefully negotiated with PatW to see his behaviour improved. [63] [64] It's quite possible to stand your ground in a civil fashion, after all. Would you be able to manage that? - PatW's reply: "Absolutely yes of course ... I am coming to realise that I have violated a number of rules here - eg 'soapboxing' which I only recently even heard of, and of course being occasionally horribly rude to Jossi and Momento. ..." 11:06, 11 March 2008
Wikipedia is not a vindicative system. I don't see any necessity to "prove" errors recognised by PatW, and for which he promised to improve. Was there uncorrected or incorrectible behaviour by PatW after this recognition (11:06, 11 March 2008)? -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 06:35, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
(note: there were more personal attacks by Jossi, for the convenience of this case, and unless compelled, I will limit myself to a single example)(update: challenged by Jossi above in #@User:Francis Schonken, point 6, I sent additional evidence regarding my points below to the ArbCom mailing list):
At Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat/Workshop#General discussion Merzbow wrote: "Why and how the [ Criticism of Prem Rawat ] article was turned into a redirect, but the material not actually merged (or merged and deleted), should be a key question here." Trying to clarify some things (I have done before, but some of it seems to have gone lost in the discourse):
Jossi's conduct during Momento's third WP:AN3 listing in February 2008 was experienced as inappropriate by the blocking admin:
I felt offended too: "As far as I'm concerned you'd better remove the list of 5 edits in 3 days you composed on me above, it is offensive, [...]" [73]
I'd like arbitrators to look in to this and see whether the uninvolved admin's assessment needs reviewing. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 17:14, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
There was a well-produced page with a good set of citations providing criticism of Prem Rawat and his business model at http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Criticism_of_Prem_Rawat&direction=prev&oldid=195507682. This page was originally set up by User:jossi in order to prevent criticism appearing on the Prem Rawat page itself. User:jossi was then involved in turning this into a redirect to the Prem Rawat page, without placing the criticism back on that page. This effectively resulted in the criticisms becoming hidden and lost to the type of reader who might be a likely prospect for Rawat's business. This story is told in some detail in the Register Article, which is well-researched, contains useful links to wikipedia diffs and should be read, I think, by anyone involved in this arb, particularly since that article has the propensity to bring wikipedia into considerable disrepute unless wikipedia arbitrators are seen to do something about the blatent POV-ineering that has so far been allowed to take place.
A much better story, in my opinion, of the pioneering phase of Prem Rawat's business than has ever appeared in wikipedia is provided at http://www.rickross.com/reference/vital/vital15.html, an article with a reference Sociological Review, 27, Page 279-296/1979, which I haven't checked but I've no reason to doubt its veracity, particularly since it gets an unlinked mention as Note 1 on the Prem Rawat page itself. A link to a page on the Rick Ross website, listing that Sociological Review Article was put on the Prem Rawat page but then removed, after User:jossi had made a contribution on the Prem Rawat talk page. The difficulty here is that the subscribers to Prem Rawat's services hold that any site that contains material that they don't like means that any link to anywhere on that site should be removed from wikipedia, regardless of whether a particular link is to something useful and informative [111] [112] [113] [114] (lovely bit of double-think) [115] (more double-think, and confusing the concept of 'reliable' with the concept of 'appropriate').
Hence User:jossi argues against Rick Ross in what is effectively an ad hominem attack, without taking account of the fact that the page linked to contains the material given in another reference on the Prem Rawat page (as I already mentioned).
Such circularity (repeated arguments) as is indicated on the Prem Rawat talk page between what I would suggest as representing, on the one side, secular, reasonable wikipedia contributors and, on the other side, those who overtly and covertly represent a POV in favour of Prem Rawat (in all cases, I would hazard, by being subscribers to Prem Rawat's services), is itself evidence that the neutral point of view sacred to the wikipedia project is being systematiclly abused by the latter group. This has been going on for years. My personal stance, if such be relevant, is that I am neither a subscriber nor an ex-subscriber to Prem Rawat's services, but I am conscious of the warning given by Richard Feynman that mind control is the most serious threat facing mankind, and when I see the victims of mind control desecrating the fine institution of wikipedia, which action is plain for all to see in the Prem Rawat article, I really feel that something should be done.
This link shows that Jossi Fresco, aka User:jossi, acts as a press contact for Prem Rawat's marketing machine. To allow such a person to be a wikipedia admin and involved in the shameful controversy surrounding the the Prem Rawat page, and other pages in the category of the same name gives rise to a very bad smell. The fact that he may do good works at the same time should not distract you from analysing what he is really up to, and it doesn't stack up to acting in good faith, in my opinion. Just a small point on whether we can accept User:jossi's word. He says here that he has never used his admin privilege to ban anyone anywhere. This link shows that he did. Matt Stan ( talk) 22:16, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
The rickross.com link referred to above by Matthew_Stannard ( talk · contribs) was deleted by myself from the Prem Rawat and DLM articles – not because of Jossi's comment, but because I realised, after having linked to the site myself in another article, that it is in violation of WP:EL#Restrictions_on_linking. I discussed my concerns on the talk page, and Msalt ( talk · contribs), considered neutral by all contributors to this article (I believe), concurred. Jayen 466 22:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Just because this has been a point of discussion between Momento and MSalt, here a description of that bit of edit history: The first edit was an attempt to arrive at a compromise version to address the various concerns people had expressed on the talk page
This edit had three components:
The compromise version still didn't address all concerns; Francis was unhappy with the insertion of Barrett, because he felt Barrett was characterising Rawat's DLM movement rather than his teaching, and Momento felt the lede did not give enough room to add the context within which the Schnabel had made his statement.
I agreed with Momento's view here that Schnabel had made his comment in the specific context of contrasting Rawat's style to that of another charismatic teacher and that the statement in the lede was not a good use of that source. In addition, various editors had made the point that Rawat does not seek to present an intellectual teaching; his teaching is, rather, that the meditative experience happens outside of the intellect.
I then shortened the passage to Rawat has been criticised for leading an opulent and materialistic lifestyle. with the edit summary (self-revert as per talk, let's leave the analysis of his teaching out of the lede then).
This deleted the sentence Rawat has been criticized for a lack of intellectual content in his public discourse that had previously been present and reverted my own insertion of and as emphasizing the superiority of direct experience over intellect. sourced to Barrett.
I announced the edit on the talk page in my response to Momento, saying OK; I have self-reverted now and taken the critique of his teaching out of the lede.
This description was inadequate. I did self-revert to the extent that I took out again the phrase sourced to Barrett that I had inserted and to which Francis had objected. Taking the critique of the teaching out of the lede was not a self-revert however, because it removed the sentence Rawat has been criticized for a lack of intellectual content in his public discourse that had been present before. On the other hand, both the edit summary and the talk page comment made it clear that I had done so. I also retained the revised wording opulent and materialistic compared to the earlier version by Lawrence which had sumptuous.
Francis pointed out to me on my talk page that my edit description was misleading. I agreed, apologised and crossed out "self-" on the talk page. Jayen 466 12:31, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
Bryan R. Wilson's Times obituary is interesting. He is described as an "influential sociologist who offered new and enduring insights into sects and religions ... one of the most brilliant and influential sociologists of religion of the past century". This is not a fringe figure, he is as mainstream in sociology of religion as you can get. To describe Massimo Introvigne as an obscure self-published author is likewise off the mark. His representation on Google Scholar is respectable for an author who writes much of his material in Italian, and he was one of the experts consulted by the German government's Enquete Commission on NRMs a few years back. J. Gordon Melton is I believe among the top five most prolific contributors to Encyclopedia Britannica and very widely published. Again, these are mainstream scholars, though it is true that they are a source of irritation to many self-appointed anti-cult campaigners. Jayen 466 17:12, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
Re the section "one edit war", the first diff you cite and comment on is this: - Momento deletes criticism of Rawat (with scholarly source) under edit summary “(As per talk "Lede")” [116].
What Momento removed was this: "Rawat has been criticized for a lack of intellectual content in his public discourse." You say, he deleted criticism of Rawat based on a scholarly source. But if we look at the source quoted, we find it says something totally different than what our article said there. Schnabel said,
"The purest examples of charismatic leadership are at this moment, still, Bhagwan and Maharaj Ji. This shows immediately that personal qualities alone are insufficient for the recognition of the charismatic leadership. The intelligent, ever-changing Bhagwan who gives daily performances is not more a charismatic leader than the pampered materialistic and intellectually quite unremarkable Maharaj Ji. As charismatic leaders, they, by the way, both have their own audience and their own function."
Now, where here does Schnabel criticise Rawat for a lack of intellectual content in his public discourse? In my view, this was not appropriately sourced, and Momento was absolutely correct to remove it. It needed revising, sourcing to another source, or whatever. As it stood it was at best an example of WP:SYN. Jayen 466 01:27, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Re the scholars page: What I supported here [117] was the edit you made to the article, rather than the edit to the scholars page, which I had not been aware of. Having said that, I find your comment fair that Jossi seems to have been concerned about the copyright implications of reproducing a negative article in full, but appears to have been less concerned about any such implications of reproducing positive articles in full. Perhaps he is human after all ;-) Jayen 466 01:11, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
It has been claimed ( [118], [119]) that Jossi has never reverted a pro-Rawat edit and would never do so. Trying to get a sense of SylvieCyn's and Jossi's interaction in the editing history of Prem Rawat just now, I happened to come across a series of edits in which Momento removed the section with links to various critics' sites [120] (justifiably so, in my view, as they fall short of the requirements outlined in WP:BLP and WP:EL), and in the next edit [121] Jossi reverted, restoring three of the four critics' sites (the fourth being dropped for copyright reasons). I was not making an effort to look for such an edit ... Jayen 466 15:09, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
I was sufficiently intrigued to waste an hour making such an effort. Here are five more reverts by Jossi of "pro-Rawat" edits:
Re the ex-premie disambiguation, note that according to books.google.com and scholar.google.com, by far the most common meaning of the word, as used in published literature, appears to be the one Jossi indicated: [134] [135] Jayen 466 20:13, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
It was my specific intent to illustrate the distribution of the word in published literature. (I actually thought, wrongly, that what your diff presented was the google result.) Internet usage is not always an accurate reflection of general language usage, especially where a term is used in the name of a website. Jayen 466 12:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
I see this issue as a battle between editors who think BLP policy should apply to the Rawat article and those that don't. Since The Register article, the Rawat article has been inundated with "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons" that " should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion". I have done that. Likewise, Jimmy Wales writes on the WP:VER policy page -"I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons". I will always remove "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living people" as frequently as editors put it in. And that includes links that violate WP:BLP and WP:EL and including "conjectural interpretations of a source" [136]? Some editors characterize this as "edit warring" it is not, it is following BLP policy :Examples -
Virtually every criticism of my editing involves me "aggressively removing unsourced or poorly sourced" material. I am not so much pro- Rawat as fiercely pro BLP policy
[153]. And here I am reverting an undiscussed pro-Rawat edit
[154].
Blocked for 24 hours by Nakon [155] after report by Cirt for repeatedly deleting photo of house [156] and links to anti-Rawat sites [157]]. Reviewing admin B agrees that photo should be removed [158] and is exempt from 3RR but links should not be removed. I stated my case [159] and repeat it here - BLP policy - "Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Verifiability. The three-revert rule does not apply to such removals". The anti-Rawat sites are self published blogs full of slander, OR and unverified material, all violations of BLP policy. I should not have been blocked.
Blocked for 24 hours by Vsmith [160] after report by Francis [161] for removing "Rawat also turned away from asceticism, and no longer denounced material possessions" 3 times in 24 hours. As I explained in talk [162], the Hunt summary is completely distorted. It violates BLP -Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that is a conjectural interpretation of a source. The three-revert rule does not apply to such removals". I should not have been blocked.
Jossi has done an excellent job as an admin on Rawat articles, he calms the waters and insists on Wiki policy. The level of criticism that he has been subjected to is appalling. Never the less, I don't believe my interpretation of BLP policy is "narrow", I believe it is "conservative". And that is in perfect accord with BLP policy which says "Biographies of living persons (BLPs) must be written conservatively". Every person is entitled to a "presumption of innocence" and "an important rule of thumb when writing biographical material about living persons is 'do no harm'". Wikipedia isn't going to be damaged by being conservative, it is going to be damaged by BLP's that slander and misrepresent their subjects. My involvement in Rawat articles is almost entirely dependent on the amount of BLP violating vandalism that occurs [163]. When things are quiet I am happy to involve myself in other articles where the subject is not being treated fairly.
John, the webmaster of two anti-Rawat sites, is clear about his POV. He will do what ever he can to denigrate Rawat. As an editor he usually confines himself to the "Talk" page [164]. He never removes any vandalism or obvious BLP violations.
Andries has always been upfront about Rawat, he thinks he’s a fraud. This is somewhat colored by the fact that Andries was a devotee of Sai Baba. He was indefinitely banned from that article for his behaviour. Like Johns Brauns, Nik Wright, Wowest and SylvieCyn, Andries is a poster on the anti-Rawat forum. As an editor, his poor English creates real problems. I’ve had too many conversations and disputes with Andries about his incorrect paraphrasing; coincidently, always on the wacky side [165]. To his credit, he once removed an obvious BLP violation which deserves mention [166].
When it comes to "disruptive editing" Francis Schonken takes the prize. He has tried to dominate the article since his first Rawat edit of 2008 on Feb 8. Without one word of discussion he inserted 30,000 bytes of undiscussed material into the article [167], I reverted it [168], onefinalstep reverted back and was reverted by DavidD [169] and he was in turn reverted by Francis Schonken [170], all without one word of explanation from Francis Schonken. On Feb 12, Francis Schonken again inserted 26,000 bytes of material [171] without discussion which was promptly reverted by Sarcasticidealist with the summary "reverting a very unhelpful step in the consensus process" [172]. On Feb 13, after discussion [173] WillBeback removed all links except for one [174] where upon Francis Schonken kept reinserting defamatory links to anti-Rawat sites whenever they were removed [175], [176], [177] [178] [179] [180] [181] [182]. At the same time he has filed numerous complaints against me from "slightly disruptive editing" [ [183]] to 3RR [184] to 1RR [185] with only one negative result against me (see above).
Jayen is a great editor. His editing is intelligent and neutral. He is clear in the talk page, he has a real passion for the underlying issues and he knows what "eschews" means. One of my two suggestions for remedy is that only Jayen466 be allowed to edit the article, he would do an excellent job.
One Edit War Msalt has made three false assertions in this section that fundamentally distort what occurred.
Simply put, Msalt is prepared to make things up to attack discredit me. Here he is stating that "Momento, you delete and add material 10 times every single day, usually with no discussion"
[191]. In fact, I made less than 20 edits in the week previous to that comment and 21 in the week before that
[192]. In the same period I made more than 150 posts to "Talk" and that's a 4 to 1, "talk" to "edit" ratio. No apology from Msalt.
One Talk Page Thrash
The photo failed on Copyright/not fair use grounds but I would still argue that inclusion in a BLP violates invasion of privacy, OR, verifiability, contact information and other grounds. For example, would giving the address of the house next door constitute giving "contact information", I would say so. Anything that provides a means to contact the subject of a BLP should be avoided, particularly when stuff like this appears on John Brauns anti-Rawat forum [193].
Sock puppeteer?
In Feb 2007, I was accused of being a sock puppeteer by Mael-Num [194], is that a relative of Maelefique (talk) [195], and blocked by Betacommand. Here's the argument but where is the evidence,not even a user check. Decide for your self [196] [197].
I endorse everything Jossi said. PatW's sole contribution to Rawat articles is to abuse those he sees as pro-Rawat. Momento ( talk) 03:09, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Nik Wright2's sole edit this year was his undiscussed insertion of 10,000 bytes of badly written OR [198]. It was reverted by Janice [199] and immediately reverted by Nik [200] and the article protected by Nandesuka. NikWright2 maintains below that his edit was "adequately discussed", but here is the tally of his talk comments which prove otherwise [201]. I totally reject the idea that students of Rawat have a COI in editing the article, whilst people who run and post on the anti-Rawat forum have none.
Here's Rumiton deleting some pro-Rawat puff [202]
Admin WillBeback came to the Rawat article with one purpose in mind, to add more criticism. In doing so he has abandoned NPOV and compromised his admin role. And since then he continues to complain about me including his latest that I don't show "good faith" towards him.
WillBeBack supported disruptive editing
The most extraordinary disruption to the Rawat article and the beginning of its current turmoil was created by Francis Schonken's undiscussed insertion of 30,000 bytes of badly written BLP violating OR [203]. This extraordinary action was condemned in the talk page and reverted by three different editors [204], [205], [206]. WillBeBack did and said nothing. And then without one word on the talk page he reverted back to Francis's "massive insertion" with the edit summary "no explanation for massive deletion" [207]. He now gives his reason that Francis Schonken is "a longtime and respected WP editor".
WillBeBack began making edits with "conjectural interpretations
A "conjectural interpretations of a source" is forming "an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information". In this case, making a summary of an article using only that portion of the information that suits your POV. WillBeBack summarized an article in the LA Times with this POV edit in the Rawat article [208] [209]. I wrote this entirely different summary in the talk page using the same article [210] (last paragraph in green section but note Jayen466's opinion above mine).
Recent example of WillBeBack's improper editing
On April 6 Will added this summary to the DLM article - "A 1980 article in The Washington Post reported that a Congressional Panel had singled out, among other controversial groups: "Guru Maharaj Ji's Divine Light Mission...as cults that employ manipulative techniques and turn children against their parents."" [211]. In fact, Will's summary has four major errors. First, it wasn't a "Congressional" Committee. Second, the Committee didn't "single out" DLM. Third, the Committee didn't describe DLM as a "cult that employs manipulative techniques and turn children against their parents". And fourth, the Committee didn't describe DLM as a "controversial" group [212]. I pointed this out talk, removed the flawed summary and provided an accurate one [213] in talk to discuss. Will restored the flawed version having corrected the "Congressional" error and swapped "singled out" to "listed" [214], even though the the Committee hadn't "listed", "singled" or "uttered" one syllable on the matter. [215]. The summary now falsely claims that "The Maryland House of Delegates committee listed, among other controversial groups: "Guru Maharaj Ji's Divine Light Mission ... as cults that employ manipulative techniques and turn children against their parents.". I pointed this out once again [216] and finally WillBeBack removes "controversial" and his false claim that the "Committee listed" anything. [217] But only to be replaced by new weasel words which still claim DLM was "listed" at the hearing.
Claims I opposed adding criticism to the Rawat article
WillBeBack started this talk page discussion by rudely and incorrectly claiming that I was opposed to adding criticism before he even asked me [218]. Within 24 hours of WillBeback's false assertion that I didn't want to add criticism, I was asking him what materiaI he wanted to include since some of the material is clearly in breach of BLP policy [219]. I have continued to discuss the issue, commenting five times on the subject before he made this recent claim, including this clear and unambiguous agreement to include criticism "There shouldn't be a "Criticism of..." article about Rawat or any other BLP. In order to not give undue weight, criticism should be included in the article ". [220], [221] [222] [223] [224]
Accusing me a making a Point
My widely discussed and long held POV is that "Criticism of (Name)" articles are inappropriate and a blight on Wikipedia. However, since WillBeBack was supporting a "Criticism of Rawat" article, I put aside my POV and wrote for the enemy. If "Criticism of (Name)" articles are the way of the future for Wikipedia then a good place to start would be with Jimbo Wales, so I created a "Criticism of Jimbo Wales" article in Good Faith. I created the page once and once only [225], objected to the "speedy deletion" as per the notice (which apparently counts as another creation) and made one comment on the talk page before Jossi cautioned me [226] and I took no further action. I have made no other comment to the talk page or any other Jimbo page. Fortunately the tide is turning and some people who supported "Criticism of (Name)" articles are having a rethink, so I applaud WillBeBack's request to merge "Criticism of Prem Rawat" with the main article.
Alan Watts
Contrary to Will BeBack's claim, I haven't said Watts is "an unacceptable, disreputable source". What has been said is that Watts quote as reported in the NYTimes is confusing and needs context. This quote was discussed over a month ago by half a dozen editors and the consensus was to leave it out. [227] Will insists it should go in a different Rawat article and if you don't agree, you're being "ridiculous" (see below).
Assumption of bad faith
Will BeBack gives an example of my bad faith, and he's right and I removed it. However during the discussion about Watts, Will BeBack is happy to say my opinion is "one of the most ridiculous arguments I've heard" [228]and tells another editor my argument is "plain ridiculous" [229].
Prior to publication of The Register article [230] the WP Rawat articles were in a state of sustained ‘ownership’ WP:OWN. Ownership by its very nature is rarely demonstrable by quoting sets of diffs and Arbitrators are therefore referred to the volume of edits and talk page contributions specific to the Rawat articles, most notably by User:Jossi, User:Momento and User:Rumiton. User:Jossi has quoted above, his total contributions to Wikipedia, however the statistics relevant to this Arbitration are those related to the Rawat articles only. The issue is not simply the sheer volume of Jossi’s edits and talk page contributions from April 2004 ( Momento’s from 2006 and Rumiton’s from 2007) but the percentage of the totals made by these editors singly and collectively, compared to all other contributors. The ratios are even more stark when editors who have predominantly agreed with User:Jossi and who had/have little or no WP involvement other than with the Rawat articles, are removed from the calculation.
Prior to February 2006 the ‘agreeing editors list’ comprised the now inactive users 64.81.88.140, 24.21.194.205, and User:Zappaz, the first two were Rawat article ‘specialists’ while User:Zappaz did have some other WP interests. In addition three other editors who are still active, share the “Jossi consensus” User:Janice Rowe, User:Rainer P. and User:Armeisen; again their User contribution logs show that they are predominantly only interested in the Rawat articles. In January 2006 User:Jossi was joined in active WP:OWN by User:Errol Vieth and in February 2006 by User:Momento; User:Errol Vieth became inactive in December 2006; User:Jossi and User:Momento were joined by User:Rumiton in March 2007. Following publication of The Register [231] article other editors arrived at the judgement that the Rawat articles were in urgent need of improvement. The difficulties related to the Rawat articles since the beginning of February 2008 can properly be characterised as a clash between those editors who are seeking to protect their ‘product’ of WP:OWN and those who are intent upon achieving a balanced and encyclopaedic article.
There have been frequent charges and counter charges by various editors for several years over the position of either current ‘students’ (followers) and of former followers of Rawat as editors of WP. The relevant part of WP:COI would seem to be: Examples/Close relationships [ [232]] Both current and former followers/students of Prem Rawat must be considered to be ‘caught’ by the “close relationship” provision of WP:COI, the only question is to what degree is the individual editor inhibited from working to NPOV. In this respect as ‘students’ of Prem Rawat both user:Rumiton and User:Momento are wrong to claim in their ArbCom statements that they have no WP:COI; User:Rumiton gives a clear statement of his COI on his User page [ [233]]
User:Jossi clearly is affected by WP:COI Examples/Close relationships, in addition he has a very specific COI related to his personal financial and career interests. When combined with culpability under WP:OWN, Jossi’s financial COI together with his COI Examples/Close relationships clearly brings WP:DUCK into play.
A source of contention, which has been used in a manner of sustained disruption by pro Rawat editors, has been the issue of the religious affiliation (or claimed affiliation) of academic commentators upon Prem Rawat .See [ [234]]. This issue arose because in response to the use of reference to the the work of Ron Geaves it was pointed out that Geaves was not only a long term follower of Prem Rawat but was instrumental in Rawat becoming exposed to a western audience. In a ‘tit for tat’ response pro Rawat editors kept demanding that the religious affiliation of other academics must be made explicit or their work be excluded on the grounds of COI .
Geaves continues to assist in the public promotion of Rawat as per [235] Film of Prem Rawat + Prof Ron Geaves of Liverpool Hope U & St Ethelburga’s and as such his work is a compromised source. Additionally Geaves is a source for other encyclopaedists such as Hunt, Barret and Chryssides, the latter of these has co-authored with Geaves while Barret is strongly associated with a Sociological perspective on New Religious Movements closely aligned to Geaves’ own. Geaves, Hunt, Barret and Chryssides have all been preferred in the WP:OWN editing of the Rawat articles over other references. See: [ [236]]
The combination of WP:OWN, and WP:COI together with the use of a compromised academic source aligned with a particular academic perspective raises very particular WP:NPOV issues. It would be expected that [ [237]] would resolve this, however the WP:OWN problems have involved consistent citing of [ [238]] as a basis for excluding references to research authorship.
User:Jossi has chosen to be both editor and administrator to the Rawat articles, as an editor and talk page contributor he may be entitled to work from a partial perspective but as an administrator he must be expected to act impartially at all times; this he has not done. As evidence of a wider problem, Jossi’s respective treatment of User:Momento and User:PatW is useful to consider. User:Momento has a long history of uncooperative editing, only recently being properly sanctioned [ [239]] however User:Jossi, other than some rather mild ‘scolding’ has never threatened User:Momento with any sanction, and most tellingly given Jossi’s very active administration of the Rawat articles he makes no mention in his evidence here regarding Momento’s attrocious behaviour. In comparison User:Jossi singles out User:PatW for a full listing of his crimes. -- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 10:54, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
User:IsabellaW’s evidence has the appearance of web stalking rather than the ‘research’ that is claimed, and had he/she actually looked at Wikipedia rather than sources extraneous to this case, would have found my authorship of an article critical of Ron Geaves, to be acknowledge, on my WP talk page [ [240]] on Jossi’s talk page [ [241]] and both acknowledgements linked from the Prem Rawat article talk page[ [242]]. Being critical of a ‘source’ is surely part of the necessary process of producing a sound article and I am puzzled that User:IsabellaW considers http://www.prem-rawat-critique.org/geaves.htm to be problematic in the context of the Rawat articles. The WP article on Geaves is not currently at issue here but, I have never edited there, unlike Jossi who as a co-religionsist of Geaves might be consider to have a COI. It is notable that Geaves is critical of the authors Foss & Larkin and that Jossi has been resistant to including Foss & Larkin as a source in the Rawat articles [ [243]]. As User:IsabellaW has introduced criticism of Geaves as an “ideals balance, fairness and NPOV” issue into this case, the Arbitrators may wish to consider whether the WP article Ron Geaves should now become part of their material consideration. -- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 12:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
User:Sylviecyn has asked for the material posted by User:IsabellaW to be removed, and as it stands the User:IsabellaW material barely counts as more than an ‘attack’. If the arbitrators do deciced that the User:IsabellaW material should remain as part of this case, then the following issues come into play.
[User:IsablellaW]] refers to Brian Wilson, presumably meaning Bryan R. Wilson. Wilson advocated an approach to apostasy that was not universally accepted by sociologists (anti = Benjamin Zablocki) but which was enthusiastically adopted by a small group of ‘sociologists of religion’. The ‘Wilson’ position was vigorously promoted on the Prem Rawat talk page by User:Zappaz in terms that seem designed to create a ‘rule’ that notable Rawat apostates – Mishler, Hand, Finch etc, can under no circumstances be referenced or even refered to. In rebuttal of the postion advocated by User:Zappaz. User:Andries quotes a personal email from David G. Bromley, an academic who may be considered sympathetic to Bryan R. Wilson, in which Bromley effectively dispels the basis of User:Zappaz’s argument [ [244]]. It should be noted that Jossi was active in consistent argument with User:Andries and at no time contradicted User:Zappaz. Despite Bromley’s letter, the editorial direction of the Prem Rawat article remained firmly linked to references favouring academics sympathetic to Bryan R. Wilson, including those academics who have a connection to CESNUR and Massimo Introvigne, that latter is not as User:IsabellaW claims a “Professor” and his own work is all self published. Ron Geaves (see [ [245]] is a regular contributor to CESNUR conferences, his submitted papers include From Divine Light Mission to Elan Vital: An Exploration of Change and Adaptation [246] also connected to CESNUR are J. Gordon Melton and George D. Chryssides. User:Jossi has been an active editor on the WP Geaves, Melton and Chryssides articles, in itself that may not be an issue but it is problematic if an enthusiasm toward certain academics translates into over reliance upon those academics as sources in a given article.
The affidavit that User:IsabellaW was previously linked from the Prem Rawat article, the link was removed by admin User:Vassyana as being to an “attack site” [ [247]] The affidavit was the basis of complaint which I sought to have resolved in a number of ways – [ [248]] which includes the following salient points regarding the affidavit: Authenticity: The linked .pdf document has no proof of authenticity. There is no identifiable named Notary, neither is there any identification of a legal case in which this document has been tested, nor any evidence that the claimed respondent has even received case papers, let alone lodged a response. There is no means for a Wikipedia reader to verify the existence of the document, other than as an item published by Elan Vital. It is acknowledged by the publisher of the .pdf document – Elan Vital, that at the time this affidavit is claimed to have been taken Elan Vital was seeking substantial costs from the claimed author of the affidavit, raising serious questions about the freedom of expression available to the claimed author. Subsequent to writing the above, a copy of the affidavit was added to a list of documents at [249] bizzarely the submission date is 18 months ! after the case was closed, the affidavit is item 59 while item 58 is 25/07/2005 Notice of Discontinuance (Whole Proceeding); the affidavit remains untested in the Australian Courts. Further the respondent’s name does not even accord with case number. User:Jossi’s attitude in relation to the use of the affidavit can be judge by [ [250]] [ [251]] [ [252]]
User:Jossi’s resistance to a challenge to the validity of the affidafit is not surprising as it was Jossi who included it in the article text [
[253]] as well as adding the web site that was subsequently described as an attack site [
[254]]
Although not tested in Australian courts the affidavit was submitted by the defendant in a US case [
[255]] in which
User:Jossi was a named party, this case was current at the time
User:Jossi was including the affidavit into the
Prem Rawat article text. The case concerned defamation of one of the individuals named in the affidavit by the webmaster and owner of the website quoted by
User:IsabellaW. The judge in the US case rejected the affidavit as having no validity; the website owner was required to publish an apology.
--
Nik Wright2 (
talk)
15:32, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
User:Jossi has objected to the use of the term 'party' [ [256]], in the absence of any documentation readily available to the arbitrators I have struck through the term "party" in case its use should have any misleading implications. -- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 09:06, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Re: User: Momento evidence = [ [257]] My edit, which I believed had been adequately discussed, caused significant annoyance to the majority of active editors and User: Momento’s consistent failure to adopt WP:Assume good faith is evidenced by his casting all those who do not agree with his position as “the anti-Rawat crew”. The assertion that followers/students do not have a COI is plainly wrong. It is not my evidence that former followers/students have no COI, and I specifically acknowledged my own in my RfA statement. That Rawat’s current followers are so unwilling to acknowledge a COI is in itself a ‘good faith’ problem.-- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 11:47, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Re: User: Rumiton evidence = [ [258]] User:Rumiton begins by claiming that the ‘article’ (Prem Rawat) is “difficult to work on”. This attempted impostion of a paradigm is unhelpful in the extreme. The Rawat articles a very easy to work on because in large measure there is ample source material, the only difficulties have been those arising from chronic failures under WP:COI and WP:OWN. Using some highly partial points User:Rumiton goes on to construct a form of apologism for Rawat, while otherwise extraneous to the case in question, it does help reveal the mindset and COI of a committed follower, for example he writes “The 1970s stuff that we have was commissioned by or written from a Christian religious point of view or a sociological standpoint, and neither is very helpful in gaining a fair understanding of his life and work.” To take this as a standard for editing WP would restrict the available sources only to those that are, in a highly POV sense, ‘helpful’. It is not the role of WP editors to assess sources in terms that “help” an “understanding” of a biographical subject’s “work”. It is the role of WP editors to critically assess sources so as to provide an accurate historical presentation of a ‘subject’. -- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 11:57, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Re: User:Jayen466 evidence = [ [259]] usefully demonstrates the problem of ‘preferred’ academics. Bryan R. Wilson may be a useful source but his work is ‘particular’, no matter how glowing his obituaries were. I did not describe as User:Jayen466, states that Massimo Introvigne is “obscure”, but Massimo Introvigne also represents a ‘particular’ view, and whatever his ‘expert’ credentials are, he is not a professor as is claimed.
J. Gordon Melton is yet another academic of a very particular view, and further, is indeed an encyclopaedist. Articles such as those related to Prem Rawat require broad based referencing; reliance upon sources which either represent a narrowly selected academic view, or which rely on mere reconstructions of other encyclopaedias will not provide the necessary broad base to make a good WP article. User:Jayen466's comment that “these are mainstream scholars, though it is true that they are a source of irritation to many self-appointed anti-cult campaigners.” rather suggests that User:Jayen466 may have her/his own WP:COI to acknowledge. Turning this case into a cult versus anticult question seems unlikely to add any elucidation. -- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 12:12, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Re: User:Vassyana evidence = [ [260]]
Vassyana contends that: "A long list of diffs was provided during the COI noticeboard discussion in the wake of the Register article. The links intending to demonstrate that Jossi's COI is a recurring issue don't do much to impugn Jossi. This contention is supported by quotation of six diffs which Vassyana contends show “Jossi adding or restoring criticism to the article”."
In both cases Vassyana’s contentions seem partial toward Jossi’s often very clear bias (insertion of references approriate to supporting the Rawat party line) or otherwise unrelated to what actually the diffs are concerned with. Further WP:COI can not be adequately tested on the basis of comparison of limited particular diffs but upon behaviour over time; the diffs given at [ [261]] are not well sorted on the basis of relevance but as a collection do contribute to the evidence of Jossi’s own partiality in editing the Rawat articles. The fact that some references may contain some material that is not wholly complimentary to Rawat does not make them ‘critical’ or provide evidence of Jossi 'writing for the enemy' if the overall terms of the specific reference accord with the ‘official’ line promoted by the biographical subject and his advisers and representiatives. See [ [262]]
As Vassyana notes, the case refered to was closed as “baseless” however given the volume of evidence now before the Arbitrators the dismisal of the evidence in the earlier case seems to have been overly hasty and deserves to be considered within the context of all the evidene in the present case.
Vassyana refers to: [ [263]] This is appropriate to the present case because it deals directly with attempts to achieve clarity over the editing of the Rawat articles under the tag team control of Jossi, Rumiton and Momento. Vassyana’s reply unfortunately did not address my concerns. However I am grateful to Vassyana for an intervention which he has not listed but which is also relevant to the current case: [ [264]]
-- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 13:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I have been doing research about Prem Rawat and his students, and about his detractors, and I have found valuable substantiated information which may be of interest in these proceedings.
I am not familiar in the rules of evidence of these proceedings, and I would be grateful for some guidance.
While Prem Rawat has been known to have students that were overly passionate about his teachings, his detractors also appear to be, at times, overly determined in their profile and actions. My research indicates that Prem Rawat has had for about 10 years a small group of active opponents/detractors who have repeatedly resorted to unethical and at times illegal methods to prevent him from sharing his message of peace, and to prevent people interested in this message to cultivate their interest.
The members of this fringe group appear to be the same people who are now battling here on WIKI on an effort to inject a negative bias into the Wikipedia entries about Prem Rawat.
This group at times, have manipulated the media. One of them from Bristol, UK, posting under the alias Andrew Carpenter, gave an interview to the leading Bristol Evening Post on June 17, 2003 and managed to get a full page cover article with his in silhouette to protect his anonymity ( http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-14218076.html). He claimed that he had discovered grave financial irregularities in the accounting of the Elan Vital UK Charity, which promotes Prem Rawats message of peace in the UK and that he had just filed a complaint with the UK Charity commission. He indeed filed a complaint with the charity commission, but the investigation found no wrongdoing by Elan Vital: the complaint was frivolous, the journalist was duped and Elan Vital was found by the Charity Commission to be in good compliance with rules and regulations. Similar fictitious tax complaints have been sent by this small group to regulatory authorities in India, Australia and more. In each and every case, they resulted in the complaint being dismissed by the authorities. This "Andrew Carpenter" also posted several "articles" in IndyMedia websites ( http://india.indymedia.org/en/2003/10/8160.shtml). There is evidence that this Andrew Carpenter is one of the active critics participating in this WIKI article with the user name Nik Wright2, ( http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-india/2006-March/0322-d4.html) and has also published on anti-Rawat sites critical articles, under his real name. ( http://www.prem-rawat-critique.org/geaves.htm)
In 2001-2004, on the forum/chat room on the internet where they gather, they have made threats against Prem Rawat and his family. Some postings incited people to drug and kidnap members of Rawats family, to poison the water of the resort where he holds events, and even to broadcast false alerts that anthrax had been found in the conference hall. One posting even included a picture of a large butchers knife, saying it was intended for Prem Rawat ( http://www.one-reality.net/hate_speech1.htm). The small group also published the private phone numbers and floor plans of Prem Rawats house, and more.
The current owner and managers of that forum are the two persons that appeared in The Register article (one is named here as John Brauns). Although they now moderate postings and edit comments by its members that may bring a criminal liability upon this forum or cross the line into hate speech, (they have learned that it does not serve their cause), their destructive obsession with the subject matter is still evident.
In October 2006, this group discussed publicly intentions to conspire against Wikipedia. For example, one of them posted: "the way for exes to deal with Wiki should be 'all or nothing. It would make sense if every forum member joined in the editing there, if only to make Jossi Fresco work for a living and discredit Rawat in the process. Just join in, add a phrase here and there, change or remove things that are false, add things that are missing, generally raise hell? I say just either dive in and edit the fu*cker silly, however you see fit, hit-and-run style, or leave well alone. But do it for fun, if you do it at all. Wiki is not as important as its editors would have us believe." This posting provides a sense for the intent of the members of this group. ( http://www.prem-rawat-talk.org/forum/posts/10027.html)
My sense, after conducting a lot of research, is that the topic of Prem Rawat attracts not just the mainstream but also people with polarized, extreme views, and threatening behaviors. It is important to not allow operatives of a handful of fringe detractors to take advantage of Wikipedia's name equity to lead their own, no-cost, self-serving campaign against Prem Rawat and his students. These people should instead use their own websites for that, where they can air their own grievances and critiques as much as they want, under our fair speech laws.
In light of the above, it is even more incumbent upon the arbitrators to uphold the WIKI standards and ideals and ensure that balance, fairness and NPOV prevails. IsabellaW ( talk) 19:25, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Some of persons posting against a fair article on Prem Rawat claim to be apostates and some appear to be apostates. Quite a bit of academic literature has been written about apostates and their reliability and credibility.
Brian Wilson, a professor of Sociology at Oxford University, challenges the reliability of the apostates' testimony: according to him, “apostates are to be seen as one whose personal history predisposes him to bias with respect to both his previous religious commitment and affiliations, the suspicion must arise that he acts from a personal motivation to vindicate himself and to regain his self-esteem, by showing himself to have been first a victim but subsequently to have become a redeemed crusader.”
Prof. Massimo Introvigne from CESNUR (www.cesnur.org) the Center for the Study of New Religions, distinguishes between three level of apostates: level 1, where the person exits the movement without any negotiation and in a manner that minimizes damage for both parties. level 2 is when the departure of the person involves negotiation, but there are no ill feelings left afterthat. Level 3 apostasy, according to Introvigne, is when the ex-member dramatically reverses his loyalties and becomes a permanent enemy of the organization he has left, join a group fighting the movement, and often claims victimization.
In light of the above, it appears that the group opposing Prem Rawat on the internet, and of which members are trying to shape the Wikipedia article, is made of Type 3 apostates, with all the related issues of limited credibility and ulterior motives.
For example, Gordon Melton. director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion and is a research specialist with the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said that when investigating groups, hostile ex-members invariably shade the truth and blow out of proportion minor incidents turning them into major incidents ( http://www.hightruth.com/experts/melton.html)
In addition to the ones previously mentioned, other persons from this apostates' group include:
1. User:TGubler, from Brisbane, Australia, who admitted to stealing information from a computer belonging to a student of Prem Rawat that contained Elan Vital financial data and other personal data. ( http://elanvital.com.au/faq/article.php?id=024) He was also found guilty of contempt of court, and sentenced to two months in prison.
2. User:John Brauns, User:Wowest, User:Sylviecyn aka User:Another Ex-Premie, User:Jim Heller, User:Nik Wright2
Note that an award winning investigative journalist in Australia, himself an interviewer of three Australian Prime Ministers, in an authenticated affidavit with the Queensland Supreme Court in 2005, acknowledged having been duped by this detractors group and stated: “The goal of the group are often obsessive, malicious, and destructive in nature. Through the use of the internet, they interfere with the rights of people to experience their own spiritual discovery and for the purpose of harassing individuals who are students of Rawat. The group’s actions have included contacting of employers of students of Prem Rawat, sending letters to regulatory agencies and the media with unsupported allegations and rabid personal attacks on the character of individuals. … and the internet publication of false and defamatory stories about Rawat designed to cast him in a false light.” ( http://www.elanvital.org/faq/JMG_AFFIDAVIT.pdf) The affidavit signed by this reputable investigative journalist includes the names of several of the persons named in this arbitration.
Another core person in this group also from Australia ( http://www.ex-premie.org/pages/neville2.htm), tried to disrupt a convention near Brisbane, and was later arrested with $25Million of drugs—the largest seizure in the history of Queensland-- as well as unsecured and unlicensed firearms. ( http://www.elanvital.com.au/faq/PDF/ackland_drug_bust.pdf)
I also note that John Brauns removed the posting in which his small internet group was called to action and conspire against Wikipedia. Last time I checked this posting was there, but has just been removed. It was posted by a "Nigel" on 08/20/2006, 11:27:13. Maybe Mr. Brauns could check his backup or archives and confirm this. IsabellaW ( talk) 03:24, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
With comments in brackets
84.9.49.223 ( talk) 13:34, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Note: I've flagged later additions (aside from replies) with the word Add:
This detailed look at the edit war behind the second revert in Jossi’s 2nd 1RR ANI report on Francis [265] illustrates the dynamic well:
- Momento deletes criticism of Rawat (with scholarly source) under edit summary “(As per talk "Lede")”
[266].
- Francis reverts “Undid revision 198191994 by Momento (talk) misunderstanding: read talk page again”
[267]
- Momento reverts, “Deleted according to BLP. See talk ‘The Lede’”
[268];
- revert by LAWRENCE
[269];
- compromise by Jayen466
[270];
- self-revert by Jayen466 per talk accidentally reinstalls Momento’s version
[271];
- reverted by Francis to LAWRENCE’S with honest summary
[272];
- reverted by Momento with misleading summary “added context”
[273];
- reverted by Francis with other changes (“undid revision by Momento”)
[274];
- reverted hours later by Janice Rowe
[275] with misleading summary (“This is a better, more accurate revision”).
Pro-Rawat editors wanted to remove a picture of Rawat's home for POV reasons (its extravagance emphasized his wealth). Their arguments and policies change as they fail (in 5 separate talk threads mercifully refactored by Francis) but the goal remains the same. Overall thread [276]. Momento and others were edit-warring throughout [277] [278] despite ongoing dispute resolution [279]-- warned [280] defiant [281]:
1) Invasion of privacy (Momento)
[282]
[283]
2) Verifiability (Jossi)
[284]
3) Self-published (Jossi)
[285]
4) Wrong house (Momento
[286], Armeisen
[287])
5) Public record that includes personal details (Momento)
[288]
6) Unsourced (Momento)
[289]
7) L.A. Times not a reputable source (Armeisen)
[290]
[291]
8) Copyright / not fair use. This argument, raised elsewhere, finally stuck after dispute resolution
[292] (and I supported that deletion
[293])
3 pro-Rawat, single purpose account editors who aggressively move to block any changes away from a pro-Rawat POV on these pages acknowledge strong ties to the subject -- long-time devotees Momento ( [294] in answer to [295]) and Rumiton ("as a practicing premie" [296], plus [297] [298]), and recently Janice Rowe, (“I know several followers of Prem Rawat” [299] ; coy about herself.)
At least one of these -- usually Momento -- is involved in essentially every edit war on this page, with Talk page support from Jossi and the other two. They are supported by less frequent editors such as User:Rainer P. ("when I joined the ashram") [300] and User:Armeisen ("I've practised knowledge since I was 22.") [301]
Momento openly brags about "editing while blocked” [302] soon after 12 Janice Rowe article edits in 45 minutes [303] [304] [305] [306] [307] [308] [309] [310] [311] [312] [313] [314] -- her first edits since October 6, 2005 [315].
To Vassyana [316] to Vassyana [317] to Lawrence [318] to B [319] to Sandstein [320] to Will Beback [321]
Momento et. al. aggressively use Wikipedia policies such as Biographies of Living Persons, Exceptional Claims [322] and Sockpuppets of Zoe Croydon [323]) to justify edit-warring with exemption from the 3-Revert rule. They stretch logic severely to reach these havens e.g. "It is clear that in reducing two articles in the LA Times to two sentences Will Beback has made 'a conjectural interpretation of a source'." [324]
Out of many examples:
Momento:
1) repeatedly deleted an image during its Image For Deletion process without comment
[325] against consensus
[326]
[327]
[328]
[329] even after a neutral editor warned that BLP does not justify removal
[330]].
2) After very picky complaints including "Hunt doesn't say 'critics alleged', Hunt says 'critics have focused on'" Momento says "I am not going to spend my time repairing other editors distorted and inappropriate edits. I'm going to delete them.”
[331] and s/he did
[332], line 68.
Add:
3) "There aren't two sides to the truth. It's either true or it isn't. So a compromise isn't a compromise, it's a failure."
[333]
Janice Rowe:
1) She reverted several edits with at once, possibly to avoid a 1-Revert Rule violation technically, with summary "Too many changes to be able to follow them"
[334].
2) Reverted 7 of my relatively uncontroversial edits, with misleading edit summary (describing 1 of the 7)
[335] and refuses to discuss on Talk.
[336] On her user page, says "I disagree with your edits. It's that simple."
[337]
Rumiton:
1) discussing scholarly sources: "Well sourced, Andries, means, among other things, unbiased. None of your miserable Dutch Protestants, no Catholics or Lutherans, no Buddhists even. No members of competing theologies."
[338]
Add:2)
"There are no 'comparatively unbiased' editors here... We have no choice now but to keep contesting."
[339]
Jossi frequently fails to assume good faith when opposed on content [340] [341] [342] even with Will Beback. [343] Admits as much [344]. Claims editors must earn good faith; [345] "Show us that you are not biased." [346] Accused me of sock puppetry without any grounds ( [347] spelling out [348]) even after a warning [349], and mocked my reminder about good faith. [350] My replies. [351] [352] He apologized [353] [354] but refused to acknowledge me as a "comparatively unbiased editor." ( [355] in reply to [356])
I acknowledge that Jossi is usually very polite even under fire, in general and to me personally (even flattering [357]).
Jossi speaks in a "voice of God" tone of authority on Rawat-related Talk pages, brandishing Wikipedia policy [358] [359] [360] [361] [362] [363] and often threatening or reporting less pro-Rawat editors, [364] [365] [366] sometimes resulting in Administrators Noticeboard reports by Jossi [367] [368] or blocks by outside admins [369]; in at least one case that admin felt they had not been told the full story and unblocked. [370] As far as I know, Jossi has never threatened or reported a pro-Rawat editor. Where Jossi has cautioned Momento, his tone is softer and often sounds like coaching. [371] [372] [373] [374] The strongest criticism Jossi has for Momento in this arbitration is "narrow interpretation of BLP".
When Momento is reported by others, Jossi always defends.
1) AN
[375] -- explicit defense
[376]
[377]
[378];
argued against sanctions
[379];
rebutted criticisms.
[380],
[381],
[382].
Add:2) 1RR
[383] -- explicit defense
[384]
[385]
Add:3) 3RR
[386] -- defends by attacking Francis
[387]; vainly seeks page protection instead of block
[388]. The admin wrote "Blocked 24 hours, absurd that this was delayed by an involved admin."
[389]
4) BetaCommand lifted a block for sockpuppetry despite considerable evidence, solely on Jossi's word.
[390]
Add: Even during this ArbCom proceeding, Jossi is continuing to speak as if he represents Wikipedia management and the ArbCom itself (including threats of "harm" to those who disagree) [391] in his opposition to good faith efforts to improve the page, [392] (In this case he is asserting that [WP:BOLD] editing is disruptive and not allowed, and all changes must be made point by point.) This is the crux of his misbehavior. Msalt ( talk) 17:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Momento's intransigence appears to be fed by a sense of administrative support. In one edit war, Momento threatened "I will apply to have any person who puts [this photo] back blocked". [393]
Jossi seeks punishment of Francis for reverting two unrelated edits in one day under 1-Revert Rule protection. Janice Rowe reverted 7 of my relatively uncontroversial edits at once with a misleading edit summary (above). Jossi refused to criticize and defended her edit [394], complaining about “multiple edits in rapid succession” (below); Jossi's comment actually encouraged people to revert for disagreement. I reintroduced 6 of the 7 edits later without controversy, haven't had time for 7th but plan to.
Janice reverted 2 edits at once under 1-Revert Rule [395], including one of the edits that Jossi attacked Francis for – no 1-Revert Rule complaint or warning by Jossi.
See "One Edit War" above. Jossi seeks sanctions on Francis here while ignoring Momento's clearly worse behavior. He frequently attacks opposing editors for edit warring, somehow having no problem with the pro-Rawat editors they war with. He has been cautioned about his double standards and fails to reply. [396] [397]
Jossi defended Janice Rowe's disuptive edit as a response to "multiple edits in rapid succession", Add: [398] which are, "in an article under 1RR probation, a very bad idea." [399].
Later, Jossi had no complaint (even when asked directly about the double standard [400]) about much more contentious edits by pro-Rawat editors: Momento edited the article 7 times in 63 minutes the next day [401] [402] [403] [404] [405] [406] [407] and 11 times on March 15. Janice edited 8 times in 89 minutes on March 16th, including reverting one of Francis’ edits in Jossi’s 1RR complaint [408] [409] [410] [411] [412] [413] [414] [415].
Add: Jossi himself has been described as following controversial edits with multiple further edits in a way that makes reversion more difficult. See [416], point 3.
Jossi and Momento openly complained when uninvolved editors got involved. [417] [418] [419] What is wrong with that?
They use subtle techniques to effectively own the page, starting multiple Talk threads on same issue, [420] [421] [422] tieing up other editors with minor disputes [423], long ref tags that include POV statements [424] ; misleading, vague or missing edit summaries ( [425] [426] [427]); and obstructing consensus when it works against their POV. (EG Jossi won't admit a huge argument = controversy [428]; won't concede L.A. Times is reliable [429], second half of section from "Jossi, can you please give us your opinion"). For Momento et. al. see "These Users Reject Consensus and Collaboration," above).
Momento and Jossi spend many hours daily monitoring the article, which Jossi admits and defends. [430] Add: Together, Jossi, Momento, Rumiton and Janice Rowe have made 43.6% of the 3,748 article edits on Prem_Rawat, and 41.7% of the 10,014 Talk edits. [431] [432].
Add:Another technique: pressure to restrict sources beyond Wikipedia policy to only certain scholars. (Cf Nik Wright2, [433] and [434], see also Jayen466 [435] and IsabellaW. [436]) Momento, going further, argues against any news media sources and aggressively deletes edits that don't match his/her standards, claiming BLP. [437] Dispute resolution was necessary even to use the Los Angeles Times as a source. [438] This too is a double standard -- compare Jossi's comment about a non-scholarly pro-Rawat book [ [439].
Add:Jossi created a Talk subpage ( /scholars) with summaries or full text of articles, which he puts forth as a fair repository of acceptable sources. [440] [441], point 5. Most are very difficult for the average editor to access. At least one source is non-scholarly, [442]; another (Downton, Sacred Journeys) was described as not scholarly in several reviews in journals. 3 of the scholars included are devotees of Prem Rawat, (Geaves, Messer and Dupertuis, [443]) though two don't mention that in their articles. When I looked up one article, I found that the excerpting removed mostly material critical of Rawat. After I added it all to the subpage, [444] (supported by Jayen466 [445]) Jossi asked me on my User:Talk to self-revert on copyright grounds, [446] even though the subpage has full texts of articles favorable to Rawat [447] [448] [449] (still there) -- and Jossi offered another. [450] Only when pressed [451] did he allow that I could add "some passages." (I re-excerpted instead.) Jossi also discouraged me from moving that discussion to Prem Rawat Talk. [452] Earlier, Nik Wright2 presented a detailed and neutral list of additional scholarly sources on Talk. [453] Jossi ignored a request to add them to /Scholars [454], then attacked Nik's effort as "spam-linking" and "disruption." [455] Momento threatened to delete it from Talk under BLP. [456] [457]
All these tactics drive off neutral and opposing editors, perhaps by design. [458] Several neutral editors apparently have given up -- sarcasticidealist, David P., Pax Arcane, relata refero, Jim62sch and John Broughton. In this very proceeding, Jossi apparently seeks to block two of the most active voices challenging him, Francis and Pat W (who, while obviously unable to avoid personal attacks, has at least recused himself from editing.)
1. Re: Deletion of the rickross.com external link, I put that link there myself as a compromise, and agree that removal was fair.
2. Re: The Revert In the Lede, thank you for shedding light on those events. In my reply to Momento, I assumed that Francis shared my thinking, which of course I don't know, so I struck those words.
3. Re: @User:Msalt, Momento's first deletion in One Edit War, I don't want to rehash the content argument. In a sense it doesn't matter -- reasonable people disagreed, and continue to disagree. Momento was reverted or changed by different editors and kept edit-warring, without seeking compromise or pursuing dispute resolution, and without being forthright in edit summaries about what s/he was doing. S/he does this again and again, hence two blocks for edit warring in the last two months.
1. Re: Jossi's second 1RR Parole Report on Francis, the first revert was deleting unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material in a BLP, exempt from 1RR. For context of the second, see my section "One Edit War" above; this was the second-to-last edit there.
2. Re: Jossi's "Background" on Francis, Francis' large revert had significant talk page support: [459] [460]
3. Re: "Francis Schonken takes a surprising lenient attitude towards WP:NPA", I understand the indirectness of Francis' Talk page response ("Jossi interprets") to refer to that fact that the comment in question is directly addressed to Momento and some undefined "bunch", and does not mention Jossi. It's not clear why this situation upsets Jossi so much, given that Francis is not an admin and was the only person who DID say anything. But Jossi has justified his double standard with Francis vs. Momento as retaliation for this one comment [461].
4. Generally: Francis' big revert was very bold indeed, and he has at times succumbed to edit warring, though not to the extent of Momento, Janice Rowe, etc. and then only in an attempt to restrain them. Even Jossi has apparently edit warred on these pages, pre-recusal. [462] I also think that, speaking frankly, Francis is not very effective at explaining himself in DR, possibly due to English not being his first language (which, on the other hand, has made him valuable as a translator).
In all cases though Francis operated in a good faith effort to keep the page neutral, as expressed forthrightly here, [463] operating for the interests of Wikipedia not himself.
Unlike those he attempts to restrain, Francis has made many edits and comments that favor the opposing (pro-Rawat) POV, when that serves neutrality or Wikipedia in general. [464]; [465] (second part); [466]; [467](last part, line 2,239); [468] This has been recognized even by Rumiton and Momento on a number of occasions. [469] [470] [471]
1. Momento's words -- "fundamentally distort", "make things up to attack me", "false assertions" -- are very close to personal attacks, and unfortunately typical. See also [472].
2. Re: "you delete and add material 10 times every day", I concede that my Talk page comment overstated Momento's editing frequency, but when I wrote that, I sincerely felt it to be accurate (and many days it is). Note my Talk page reply. [473] Using the statistics of Jossi (148 edits from 2/8 to 3/25) [474] and Momento (4 to 1 Talk to Edit ratio) [475], and not counting 15 days the article was protected, the actual numbers are 19 edits per day, 4.78 of them in the main article. I further concede that Momento's edits are not "usually" (though often) without Talk comment.
3. Re: One Edit War, Jayen466's revert, "his summary... shows his removal of analysis was deliberate", good point. That would have been a strong argument in Talk, had you made it instead of reverting without comment (unless I'm just not finding it, always possible with all these archives). In good faith, Francis and I both took Jayen's edit to be a mistake. Note that Jayen's edit summary, and talk page comment, both said "self-revert" which contradicts your point, since Jayen changed from LAWRENCE's version initially.
[476] Since you mentioned it here, though, I went back and noticed that Jayen later crossed out the word "self" on the Talk comment,
[477] inidicating that he probably did intend to change and not just revert to LAWRENCE. He couldn't change the edit summary though, of course. (Note: I struck my conjecture above that Francis shared my thinking; of course I don't know that, and Jayen466 added information in his reply to me.)
4. Re: one Edit War, Momento's point 3 - "I did not remove one word", this is disengenuous. It is obviously reverting if you re-add material after you add it a first time, and another editor reverts -- whether you click the Undo button or do it manually. The edit summary was misleading because Momento made it sound like a new edit, not reverting a revert -- in fact, he continues to do so right here. Francis can fairly be criticized for reverting, but at least he was forthright about what he was doing.
5. Re: Double standard, "What's wrong with these edits?", I won't rehash the arguments, but there was extensive talk page controversy over the first 5 of these 7 edits, as well as the burst of edits overall and Jossi's lack of response. See the Blind Revert section of Archive 32 [478] from first outdent on, and the Teachings Section section of Archive 33 [479] from "One of Momento's sudden burst" [480] on.
Rumiton claims to have never edit warred. Here's a recent, cut and dried example (and I can find more if anyone likes; he's not disputing this one though.) Note that he does not even claim BLP exemption from 3RR and edit war restrictions; the edit he kept reverting simply condensed pro-Rawat material.
1. 1980 tour details summarized by Msalt 19:54 Feb. 17, 2008
[481]
2. Rumiton reverts 04:00 Feb 18
[482]
3. Cirt reverts 04:59 Feb 18
[483]
4. Rumiton Reverts 05:48 Feb 18
[484]
5. Cirt Reverts 16:32 Feb 18
[485]
6. Louise.Po (new user) reverts this and another edit war (“Balyogeshwar”), 19:32 Feb 18
[486]
7. Msalt reverts 20:53 Feb 18
[487] with invitation back to Talk page
[488] . This edit held (to date).
Msalt (
talk)
05:19, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Rumiton complained about my characterization of him as a single purpose account. I will concede that calling someone a single purpose account is subjective, and that Rumiton has edited a number of other pages. I still think the description is fair but clearly reasonable minds could disagree. I also revised my original comments about "3 SPA editors involved in essentially every edit war" to be more precise. Msalt ( talk) 17:46, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
I thank the Committee for indulging the delay and the length of this evidence; I worked as hard as I could to keep it tight. Msalt ( talk) 03:29, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
My reply moved. Rumiton ( talk) 03:34, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Although Jossi could have edited about any subject on Citizendium, he chose Rawat. Why? Because apparently his purpose for participation in Wikipedia, Citizendium, or most any other place is to promote the Rawat religion and ensure that everything said about Rawat is as positive as possible. If Wikipedia is serious about its credibility, Jossi represents a classic example of someone we need to prohibit from editing certain articles or article discussions for COI reasons.
Please see all Talk contents here. The arguments on this page are continuations from Prem Rawat Discussions page (so as not to disrupt those discussions). They are not deliberate soapboxing but arguments that were germane to the article. I defend this here and exemplify here and here.
For many the contention that Prem Rawat has a revisionist agenda here is hard to deny. They say 'history is written by winners'. In Wikipedia are winners those who are supported by the most wealth (with most time & commitment)? Jossi is a self-confessed current employee 'of a related organisation' (presumably The PremRawat Foundation' or 'Elan Vital') and was certainly past web-master for Prem Rawat, whose wealth is not disputed.
My 'diatribes' have been criticised for being 'too lengthy'. Put that down to me not being 'A Renaissance Man' like Jossi, but merely a historian of a rather more old-fashioned style. I have been thanked by many people for my contributions and for challenging Jossi, Momento and Ruminton's spin on the past.
"I have been following your posts on Wikipedia...Most of my adult life has been as a premie...but I feel the revisionism that is going on is outrageous. I was very much around in those years that are being revised and my memories are so different. It was a brilliant time and I loved it and can see no reason to cover it up....this was a big chunk of my life that is being told in untrue way"
I observe Jossi and Momento driving reasonable voices from talk Pages associated with Prem Rawat through persistent passive-aggression.Their tireless resistance simply wears down patience. Their combined arguing style amounts to filibustering and frustrating consensus. There is public amazement that Wikipedia tolerates someone so clearly conflicted being an administrator on the PR article.
When I accused Jossi and Momento of being 'horrible liars' I unwisely chose to call a spade a spade. The Rawat discussion page is full of outright lies to which sometimes the only response is to say as I have done: "I was there, you were not - what you are saying is completely untrue" as illustrated in the last few days here and in the previous thread here. My involvement from the outset (April 2006) was civil and constructive. Over the next 3 years the 'elephant in the room' for most people was mainly Jossi's perceived COI. I became increasingly frustrated.
'It also looks like a whitewash. You can't just revert to a no criticism version if there is in fact significant criticism. Undue weight does not mean delete, but reduce.' David D. (Talk) 20:00, 6 February 2008 "It's a well-documented fact -- that Rawat claimed to be the Perfect Master, Lord of the Universe, who encouraged followers to surrender everything to him as their object of devotion. It's inexcusable to leave this historical fact out of the article." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.180.142.2 02:05, 8 February 2008
Add: NB. This was in response to a statement by Jossi. Since I wrote this reply Jossi removed the statement from his evidence. Next link has been updated to correct Diff. PatW ( talk) 18:31, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Above
here Jossi quotes me as making this comment to Momento after the peer review:
So you agree with "everything Vassyana wrote"? You really are stretching the boundaries of belief there. Could that possibly be a cynical comment? Let's get this straight because your words and actions so far suggest quite the opposite.
In fact Momento had said he agreed with everything Vassayana wrote and I was challenging him on this. Jossi above conveniently omits to include my next sentences which listed Vassayana's comments which plainly ran contrary to Momento's beliefs - otherwise surely he and Jossi would not have been so keen to submit the article for a 'Good Article' merit. Judge for yourselves whether Jossi is fairly representing my meaning. Here is what I actually wrote:
So you agree with "everything Vassyana wrote"? You really are stretching the boundaries of belief there. Could that possibly be a cynical comment? Let's get this straight because your words and actions so far suggest quite the opposite. Please don't play games with us here. Please confirm that you really agree that:
(from 11 March Article fails GA Review with cynical reaction from Momento) PatW ( talk) 02:46, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Although years ago I discussed Rawat on the ex-premie forum along with many others, there seems to be the suggestion that I and other editors are somehow acting on Wikipedia as part of a planned 'activist' assault. This is simply untrue in my case. NB. I do not reciprocate their accusation. I do not suggest that followers of Rawat are conspiring any more or less than their opponents. My sole contention is that Jossi being bother player and referee upsets the balance and that as an employee of a related organisation, he seems to have more COI than other more individualistic editors. PatW ( talk) 23:17, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
It would seem that if you come to Wikipedia with a single purpose you can quite easily exploit a loophole that exists in the policy to appear otherwise. If you have enough time you can apply yourself to other articles and thus escape being branded as a single-purpose editor - even if you truly may be so. I would argue that, since Jossi's historic commitment to the Rawat articles far outweighs his other activities, he is equally single-purposed as I or Momento, Ruminton or Sylviecyn etc. If not far more so.
These facts simply speak for themselves: Who has the more single-purpose here, him or I? PatW ( talk) 23:38, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Mainspace | Edits to PR articles- | Total mainspace edits- | % |
Jossi | 2307 | 22811 | 10% |
Momento | 1125 | 1278 | 88% |
Andries | 1114 | 8474 | 13% |
Rumiton | 674 | 1465 | 46% |
Francis Schonken | 146 | 13171 | 1% |
John Brauns | 92 | 109 | 84% |
Jayen466 | 81 | 2031 | 4% |
Msalt | 76 | 508 | 15% |
Janice Rowe | 67 | 128 | 52% |
Will Beback (combined) | 59 | 36213 | 0% |
Sylviecyn | 47 | 51 | 92% |
PatW | 22 | 22 | 100% |
Nik Wright2 | 16 | 16 | 100% |
Talk pages | Edits to PR talk | Total talk edits | % |
Jossi | 3891 | 11625 | 33% |
Andries | 2286 | 8149 | 28% |
Momento | 1577 | 2362 | 67% |
PatW | 747 | 805 | 93% |
Rumiton | 554 | 1363 | 41% |
Sylviecyn | 414 | 444 | 93% |
Francis Schonken | 383 | 1166 | 33% |
Will Beback (combined) | 377 | 15258 | 2% |
John Brauns | 307 | 362 | 85% |
Msalt | 296 | 493 | 60% |
Jayen466 | 162 | 543 | 30% |
Nik Wright2 | 37 | 53 | 70% |
Janice Rowe | 27 | 40 | 68% |
One of the points of contention with the Prem Rawat article has been the inclusion of criticism. Jossi himself started " Criticism of Prem Rawat" ("COPR") and would not allow any critical material to be placed in the main article. Later he endorsed the merger of that material into the main article, but over time most of it has disappeared. There is now a debate over whether to expand the main article in order to include more critical viewpoints, or resurrect the "Criticism" article. Momento has opposed both options. In order to make a point about it, he twice created a Criticism of Jimbo Wales "COJW" article. [501] [502] Since then he has refused to participate in discussions over the "COPR" article because he claims to be too busy working on the "COJW" article. [503] [504] This is despite that fact that he's never shown any interest in the biography or criticisms of Jimbo Wales, and despitethe opposition of other editors working on that topic. He has defended the creation of "COJW" even though he says that "COPR" is inappropriate. [505] Therefore it appears that he has been acting disruptively in order to illustrate a point about "COPR". ·:· Will Beback ·:· 01:24, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Momento asserts that my 21 edits are the source of some of the trouble with the article, while he and his 774 edits are presumably blameless. He writes 1) that I've made false claims about his creation of Criticism of Jimbo Wales, 2) that I've supported disruptive editing, and 3) that I've used "conjectural interpretations".
Contrary to the points he's tried to make, I assert that Momento's behavior in this arbitration goes to show that he is a POV-pusher, a tendentious editor, and an article owner. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 08:46, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
I the past few days, perhaps as a response to the appearance that the ArbCom is taking little action, there has been a noticeable increase in tendentious editing, article ownership, and incivility by the "pro-" editors.
I had prepared another statement with some links and diffs but have decided to not to post it in strong protest of IsabellaW's comments on this page. This is the last time I’m willing to tolerate any use of Wikipedia by followers of Prem Rawat to defame me.
Some background: This is the second time in two weeks IsabellaW has posted her so-called "research" that includes a link to a premie website that uses the real names of former Rawat followers (ex-premies) including photos, to defame them (myself included). The first time IsabellaW posted her libellous garbage was on March 11th on the Prem Rawat talk page. See diff. For your information, the only people in the world who accuse former followers of being a hate-group are the current followers of Prem Rawat, and his supporting organization, Elan Vital on its websites. What IsabellaW has posted isn't evidence of anything, nor is it rearch by any stretch of the imagination. I want it removed from this page and the Prem Rawat talk page.
The owner of the website IsabellaW cited, called "One-Reality.net," is Wikipedia user Gstaker, who also was the "John Doe" defendant in a California defamation lawsuit, the settlement of which required him to remove all defamation material and photos of San Francisco Attorney Marianne Bachers, who was the plaintiff in the matter. Jossi Fresco was a subpoenaed witness in that matter. The link to that website remains on the Gstaker user talk page, although Staker had been sternly warned by Vassyana last summer to remove it, after I complained then. See GStaker. By the way, while you're there, take a good, long, hard look at the history pages and diffs of Gstaker’s talk pages, just to give you a sense of the type and style of personal attacks I've been subjected to on Wikipedia by the devotees of Prem Rawat, with no action or reaction by Jossi Fresco, other than to warn me on my talk pages not to threaten legal action and to watch what I say. I’m not planning legal action now, nor am I threatening it. I simply want the defamation of my name removed from Wikipedia and I want it removed now. This is a very serious matter that has gone on long enough.
If anyone wants to ask me questions about this, please feel free to do so on my userpage or on the discussion page of this ARB. Thank you. Sylviecyn ( talk) 01:25, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
I'll keep this short, but will have to discuss the subject to some extent to do so. Prem Rawat has led a controversial life. He was born into an intense Sant Mat family in India and groomed as the successor to his father, the previous leader of his particular group and considered a satguru. In an extraordinary act, the audacity of which seems to escape most observers, he left his country and his family more or less permanently at the age of 13 and established himself in the USA. Inevitably he brought with him some of the ideas and customs of his homeland, and equally inevitably these ideas caused some havoc when applied rigorously in the west (hence the critical blogs from some ex-followers today.) After the initial, largely mocking media response, he withdrew from seeking any further publicity, and as a result of this, neutral, scholarly articles from the last 28 years or so are rare, though he has been very active internationally during this period. The 1970s stuff that we have was commissioned by or written from a Christian religious point of view or a sociological standpoint, and neither is very helpful in gaining a fair understanding of his life and work. That is why well-considered input from people who were there would be helpful, and it is why I personally feel disappointed that discussions so often end up like schoolyard hair-pulling matches. Either that or pompous, long winded rants that seem not intended to help the article, but to highlight how clever and important the writer is. I know I am not Snow White myself, but I hope my edits have shown at least an attempt to deal with the subject encyclopedically. Rumiton ( talk) 14:55, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Many of the statements you make above are unsupported by the refs you provide, as the Committee will find for themselves. I will just answer the allegation you made against me, as one of: 3 pro-Rawat SPA editors involved in essentially every edit war... I am not a SPA. I have made over 3000 edits on Wikipedia to a wide variety of articles of personal interest. I have concentrated on the Prem Rawat articles as they seemed to have needed the most help. I have never been involved in an edit war. Rumiton ( talk) 13:09, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for the apology, Msalt, but you have now created another problem. You point out [525] that at 1357 on Mar 10, I deleted a ref from Time Magazine on the subject of his family's "demonstration of worship". Yes, I did. You omit to note that 2 minutes later at 1359 I pasted it into a more appropriate section of the article. How on earth does moving text around to create readability have the effect of "subtlely deleting" it? You also say: "I will also concede that Rumiton does not edit war nearly to the extent that Momento does..." As far as I know, I have NEVER edit warred on any Wikipedia article, and Momento's revertings have almost all been in defence of WP:BLP and therefore are not edit warring either. Rumiton ( talk) 13:10, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Now you again accuse me of edit warring. Edit warring occurs when an editor “..repeatedly reverts content edits.” I restored text that you deleted without discussion which named the 10 overseas cities Prem Rawat spoke at in one year (1980). You had changed it to, “He also spoke at several cities in Europe and South America." This was not, in my opinion, “simply condensed” material, it was negative POV. My edit summary said "rv undiscussed deletion which included interesting and important information. Pls discuss." You later wanted to insert details about a house he bought 34 years ago and an arrangement arrived at with the Los Angeles Fire Department, not because it had anything to do with his notability but because it could be presented critically.
You further say, “I will concede that calling someone a single purpose account is subjective.” No it isn’t, it is clear-cut, and this is just another of your insults. SPA means someone who confines him/herself ONLY to one subject, and therefore lacks a wider Wikipedia perspective. I have made hundreds of edits to a wide range of articles, and have acted successfully as a mediator (on the Jesus Army page.) I hold a Master’s License and a degree in Nautical Science, and have edited maritime articles as an expert editor including Titanic related. See my Talk Page for the details.
You have said regarding the notability of ex-premies, "Certainly prominent enough to warrant a disambiguation page. Interestingly, you neglected to include a standard google search where the entire first page (1-10) are all Rawat's ex-premies." You must be running a different copy of Google to me. When I search for "Prem Rawat" only 2 sites come up that are negative about him, ex-premie.org and prem-rawat-talk.org. In the first ten, they appear as 6 and 7. After that they fade from the pages, and by the third page the hundreds of positive sites dominate. Sorry, I misunderstood. You were comparing ex-premies to premature babies and questioning the need for disambiguation. Disambiguate away!
Rumiton (
talk) 09:36, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Rumiton (
talk)
10:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Looking at the Sahaj Marg page you are apparently trying to restore, the refs you give are all either promotional (issued by the organisation), unreliable internet sites (blogs), or primary documents (courtcase precis etc.), which require interpretation by a reputable secondary source before becoming acceptable to Wikipedia, see WP:PSTS. There appear to be no reputable secondary sources who have looked at the Sahaj Marg, which no doubt was why the article was deleted in the first place. Jossi was only serving the stated goals of Wikipedia by redeleting it. You say: "he may not be able to properly use the administrative tools, given his direct involvement with controversial subjects." I can only say: Nonsense. He has shown himself to be extremely capable of neutrality. Rumiton ( talk) 13:24, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. I concur absolutely. Rumiton ( talk) 14:45, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
You now say I called Alan Watts an unreliable source. No such thing. I said his use of oxymoron ("sacred ignorance") made his meaning unclear and misleading. Rumiton ( talk) 13:16, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
I believe the problems associated with this article are mostly those of content. In any other article I am sure we could all cooperate, working within Wikipedia rules and guidelines, but it is not happening here. The article has become a growing mishmash of contradictions inserted by editors to support their POVs and counter the opposition, and the truth is not in it. The following is a summary of Prem Rawat’s work as I see it. Please don’t shout OR and SYN at me. I have heard these things before, but I believe the only way to make a stable article of this is for editors to think and act intelligently and independently, even if it means circumventing some of Wikipedia’s precepts. (Though I believe there is even somewhere a rule that says the rules should be disobeyed if it is necessary to create a good article.)
1.Prem Rawat is the heir to an Indian tradition of Sant Mat masters. It is a respected tradition, but not an uncontested one.
2.His title has variously been Guru, Satguru, Teacher and Master.
3.The tradition involved the teaching of Knowledge, (a set of four techniques for spiritual development and inner peace), Satsang), (keeping in touch with the guru and other practitioners), and seva, (service, helping the guru propagate the Knowledge.) Service extends to regarding the guru as an embodiment of divinity, referring to and serving him in that manner, and to him referring to himself the same way.
4.These four techniques, see particularly khecari mudra, and the practice of guru service are part of a long Guru-Disciple tradition which is respected, in fact revered, in India.
5.Another part of the tradition was the providing of accommodation and a renunciate, serving lifestyle to those who chose it. These houses were called ashrams. This tradition is also revered in India.
6.At the age of 12 he apparently unilaterally made the decision to take his message to the west.
7.Initially he and the other assistants he brought with him tried to apply traditional Indian methods, such as ashram living, to the spreading of his message. This provided benefits but also problems. Lacking a renunciate tradition, many westerners found themselves unsuited to the ashram lifestyle, and the ashrams were often seen as work houses and worse by the public.
8.As the Guru-disciple tradition was almost entirely unknown outside Asia, the publicity the adolescent guru received in the 70s was largely negative. Service was seen as servitude, he was criticised for not himself living a renunciate lifestyle, and the techniques, as they became publically known, were ridiculed.
9.In the early 80s, Prem Rawat closed the ashrams, abandoned the Indian peripherals and changed his public style to a more internationally acceptable presentation, while keeping what he saw as the essentials; service, satsang and meditation on the techniques. In recent years he has concentrated on airing videos of his public speeches, with an open invitation to proceed further only if people wish to.
10.From around 1980, Prem Rawat proceeded by word of mouth, not encouraging inspection by academics and journalists, so the sources that are available to us today in English are mostly from the very early period, often written by religious scholars or tabloid journalists, largely people with little understanding and scant respect for Indian traditions and practices. They misunderstood (and in some cases cynically misrepresented) the Indian terminology and the guru-disciple relationship itself. Even the very few that were fair and scholarly are now nearly 30 years out of date. If we are to create a good Wikipedia article we cannot rely on them.
Comments, please.
A large number of accusations, rebuttals and counter-accusations are flying about. I will be presenting evidence that reviews that other evidence and details my experiences with the topic.
A long list of diffs was provided during the COI noticeboard discussion in the wake of the Register article. The links intending to demonstrate that Jossi's COI is a recurring issue don't do much to impugn Jossi. (You may find the thread in question at: Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 22#Jossi COI diffs. I will not repeat all of the discussion and diffs present in that thread, but rather leave the archive link as evidence.)
Addressing the long list of diffs (one of the diffs is not Jossi's [526]), I didn't find very much that is even vaguely questionable. Most of them seem to be copyedits, revisions and expansions following reliable sources, removing unsourced claims, reversions of vandalism, etc. It seems like he's generally doing exactly what any Wikipedia editor should be doing when editing an article.
Jossi reverted another editor's addition of {{ credibility}} tags for a particular source using a dismissive edit summary (calling the addition "silly"). [527] The tagger restored the tags, was reverted by another user, again restored the tags and then self-reverted. This, by far, is the most potentially problematic diff I could find in the lot. It seems to be as isolated incident and it occurred nearly a year ago.
Jossi added some personal information about Prem Rawat that could be construed as promotional, but that seems perfectly normal for a bio. The material was added with sources and the edit summary encourages others to revert and/or object if they disagree with the addition. [528]
Jossi did remove a few categories, which was accompanied by a talk page explanation. [529] The categories have not been restored to the article.
Jossi engaged in some reverts against opponents, but these seem to be clear cases of BLP enforcement. [530]
For such a long list of diffs and strong accusations, I would expect clearer indications of wrongdoing and more than a few isolated instances.
Interestingly, the diffs provided include several instances of Jossi adding or restoring criticism to the article. [531] [532] [533] [534] [535] [536]
For the record, I have only reviewed the diffs up to the one numbered "62". After reviewing 55 diffs, with only two that could be construed in any rational way as remotely problematic (removed tag with dismissive summary; potentially promotional addition) and six showing willingness to add critical material, I stopped reviewing them due to the trend. The long list of diffs purporting to show Jossi's violation of WP:COI instead show little but (at worst) a few isolated instances. On the contrary, they appear to indicate that Jossi has edited within the rules of Wikipedia, even going so far as "writing for the enemy". It should be noted that this COI complaint was closed as baseless, which is consistent with how previous complaints about Jossi in relation to COI have been handled (see for example Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive 24#Jossi's Conflict of Interest). Vassyana ( talk) 16:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
What follows is a general overview of my participation, and discussions surrounding it, in the Prem Rawat article. I have linked to diffs when necessary for ease of reference. However, I am linking to the archive sections in question to avoid misrepresenting the exchanges and to avoid taking undue space here. Also, the context of my participation and the discussions surrounding my comments are important to consider.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 23#GA Review (Failed). My initial good article review that failed the candidate.
Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive 23#Comments on GA Review (Failed). The discussion immediately following, including the exchange between PatW and Momento mentioned multiple times above.
Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_23#Progress. After some initial work done on the article, I was asked for feedback and responded positively, seeing improvement.
Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_23#Moving on. (Diff: [537]) I provide some further clarification and feedback, noting flaws remain and commenting about appropriate sources.
Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_23#Primary sources. I recommended some guidelines on dealing with Divine Light Mission primary sources. Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Discussion. The main discussion about the proposed idea and related issues. Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Please. I implore people to focus on building the article, some further discussion.
Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive 24#Please 2. Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive 24#Cool down. I further implored people to work constructively. There was little response to my pleas. Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_24#Truce and Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Comments. A proposed "truce" and limited comments.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Current state of things. After an absence due to some computer issues, I returned to touch base. In the discussion, it is explained by some participants why they disagreed with the truce proposal. The explanations are important, as they reflect the broader concerns of some editors.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Prem_Rawat/Bio proposal - New Edits- Vassayana please comment. I was invited to comment in this section, and I did (diff: [538]). I noted that some editors on both "sides" seemed to be supporting a biased presentation (diff: [539]). Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Outside neutral source about the guru's divinity. I presented a source as an example of what I meant in the earlier section. Only Jossi responded.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Some thoughts. In this section, I defend Sylviecyn's right to disagree with me and object to my suggestions. I pressed some editors for more detailed and constructive feedback to little avail.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Important questions and Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Responses. Momento worked on a draft in an article talk subpage and imported it into mainspace. There were objections to the changes and I solicited explanations.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#BLP violations. I addressed what I felt at the time were BLP violations. I also expressed deep disappointment in the article, feeling it had become worse by way of advocacy from both supporters and detractors.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Moving right along. Accusations and bad faith were flying about. I made further pleas for peace. (The "comment above" mentioned in the thread is this: [540].)
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Removal of invisible message. I was involved in a minor dispute (of WP:LAME caliber had it continued) over an invisible message. (I was wrong and being more than a bit silly over such an inconsequential thing.) However, it is the discussion that follows that is important, as it reveals the editing atmosphere at that time.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Principles of Neutrality in Language. Nik Wright2 raised some concerns to my attention and I replied.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 25#DECA. A discussion regarding a business/material goods reportedly owned by Rawat. Another discussion important for understanding the atmosphere and context of the dispute and its participants. Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 25#Updated Version. A similarly important section to review.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 25#Mediation. I explained that formal mediation should not be used as evidence or a weapon against another editor. Snark flows freely throughout this thread from multiple parties.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 26#NPOV Criticism. In the archived section, I once again implore everyone involved to drop unproductive/snarky issues. Also, the section generally involves some back and forth between editors.
After that, my participation and awareness of the issues on the article declined, though my GA review and other comments were sporadically mentioned by editors on both "sides". In general, it seems as though there are a few new faces, but that the same issues with the editing atmosphere and behavior currently persist at the Prem Rawat article. Also, many of the same issues are being continually retread, which is a sign of the lack of progress in terms of atmosphere and consensus building. My apologies for the length of the linked material, but I feel overall it provides a good snapshot of my participation and of the ongoing dispute present at the article. If the arbitrators or participants need specific diffs or further elaboration, please leave a message on my talk page and I will do my best to assist. Vassyana ( talk) 18:18, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
The removal of a site is mentioned by Nik. [541] The accompanying talk page discussion is: Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#BLP violations. Vassyana ( talk) 14:00, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Jossi was perfectly correct in deleting any repost of the Sahaj Marg article under Wikipedia:CSD#G4. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sahaj Marg demonstrated a clear consensus for deletion. Unless significantly improved with independent reliable sources, reposts will be subject to speedy deletion without further discussion. This is a standard accepted practice on the wiki. Vassyana ( talk) 14:43, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
On his userpage ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jossi/About ) Jossi declares himself to be "a proud student of Prem Rawat". An impartial student? No. A proud one. Not exactly NPOV for starters is it?
Then, in his disclosure - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jossi/Disclosure - Jossi declares his intention "to continue to ... correct mistaken or out-of-date facts" What exactly is he trying to say here? How can a fact become 'out-of-date'? When revisionists get to write the history books?
That's precisely what he and other 'students' of Rawat have been trying to do in an article that predominantly portrays a whitewashed picture of Rawat and the claims to divinity that he undeniably made yet which he now wants to see expunged from the historical record.
More of Jossi's revisionist tendencies are evidenced here: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk%3AJossi&diff=130324547&oldid=130293611
Revera ( talk) 22:07, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I have read the Register article. I don't know if it is an accurate portrayal of the situation or not.
What I do know is that Prem Rawat has received a lot of press coverage [542], a lot of it critical. This is not adequately covered in the article.
I hope the arbcom committee, after reviewing all the evidence will be able to answer the following questions:
1) Given Rawat's large press and scholarly coverage, why is there so little of this criticisms in this article?
2) Should Jossi have any participation on these pages?
Question #2 is very important. After reviewing the page, it appears that that Jossi participates in every decision for the Prem articles, from something as mundane as word choice: Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_34#Is it accurate to say that Rawat tours 'extensively'? to something as intricate as how to handle criticisms: Talk:Prem_Rawat#Criticism_of_Prem_Rawat.
The situation is a bit surreal. We have an admin, with extensive participation and influence in Rawat articles...and we have a press release which says, contact this admin at the Prem Rawat foundation? [ [543]] And this editor despite being asked, has not disclosed his affiliation, though he is willing "to consider" disclosing further information if asked by the arbcom committee?
The situation gets even more surreal as we look at the COI policy page. Here is Jossi's first edit to it: [ [544]], where he starts right in on "religious leaders." His first edit to the page is to change the COI requirements for teacher/student relationships for editors! You can follow the diffs. Here is another I found alarming: [ [545]]
Hohohahaha ( talk) 15:39, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Clarification of the COI policy will be critical in this case, and it must be cautious. The COI policy should not exclude members of groups (paid or not), because these same members often know the most about topics they are writing on, and, they are often more neutral than ex-members or disgruntled members.
For instance, CDC epidemiologists know about CDC policies and findings regarding disease and health produced by their agency, Catholic teachers know much about Catholicism, professors at Harvard University know much about Harvard University (as do students), and so forth. Should any of these be banned just because they are a member of a certain group? Absolutely not.
I think in particular of one of the more productive Wiki editors who is a Lutheran pastor and writes frequently on those topics. He is getting paid to be a Lutheran pastor, so is a paid member of the group, and he has studied various aspects of Lutheranism for years and years, so offers an invaluable level of detail and accuracy to Wikipedia. Should he be banned? Absolutely not.
When I examine edit wars and conflicts across Wikipedia, those "anti" a group/topic/person are usually the ones most stridently promoting a POV when compared to other editors. More often than not these "anti" persons (e.g., ex-members, disgruntled members, etc.) are prone to what can be referred to as the Rush Limbaugh effect -- exaggeration and mis-representation of selectively chosen statements or content to promote a POV. Often, these claims have a small kernel of truth in them (i.e., an initial statement that is true) but they are taken so out of context and twisted and turned so much that they bear little resemblance to what a reasonable, knowledgeable layperson would get from the initial statement if read in context.
Another group that runs a strong risk of COI is bloggers (both for and against a topic). Editors who also run blogs and engage in other opinion-promotion activities seem to have the most difficult time abiding by Wikipedia's policy of neutrality and verifiability. (I am not saying that is the case with Prem Rawat as I have not examined the diffs carefully enough; I am just writing this because the COI policy that comes out of this case will affect us all.)
Here are some suggested policy statements:
Windy Wanderer ( talk) 22:40, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Jossi has established himself as promoter of one particular view on wikipedia, this I have noticed when one of the user approached him (only) for deletion of one article here [546], and jossi promptly deleted the same without any discussion about the topic, I noticed that arguments given for previous deletion of the same cult related article was notability issue and lack of secondary sources, which are/were absolutely untrue as i found plenty of secondary sources [547] and even found one complete category about the same topic on French wikipedia. [548]. This approach (as it appears to me) is highly discouraging for philosophy with which wikipedia was established, to give information and not to hide it. Most surprising aspect of all the discussion that i had so far, with members having direct involvement with the group in question, is they cannot tolerate any critical information about the subject, and as a result, the page then experiences edit wars and 3RR violations and looses stability. The most efficient way of dealing with COI (direct involvement) is NOT to block the user from editing to the article, but to make sure, that the user having COI do not remove any information from the article, but only add to the page with the domain s/he is more comfortable with, as removal of properly sourced information, blocks the complete picture of the article, If there are two contradictory information available about the subject which can be properly sourced then both should be added in the article.
Given users approaching Jossi for deletion of information (without any discussion or notice to others who may have interest in the related topic) seriously undermines the ethics expected from an administrator on wikipedia, Jossi's contribution to wikipedia as an editor are most welcomed, but he may not be able to properly use the administrative tools, given his direct involvement with controversial subjects.-- Cult free world ( talk) 12:14, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
There are 17 ref's i am able to find till now [549], still searching and will add more. Out of these 17 can you point out which one exactly is:-
On analyzing the history deeply, i found this delete was against the philosophy of wikipedia, first deletion was nominated by Jossi only [550], and second time, when someone tried to push back the cult promoters on wikipedia, the page was deleted by Jossi [551], Why Renee approached Jossi only ? and requested him to delete the page ? [552], which Jossi deleted promptly [553] if Jossi had not established himself as promoter of one particular view on wikipedia, why would people approach him for help in cult related articles ? Why no AfD tag on the page for other's to see and participate in deletion discussion ? To my understanding, Jossi's edits and usage of admin tools must have been highly biased, which gave members of groups (referred as cults) free will to manipulate wikiepdia article to suit their POV.I will try and explain the situation (Jossi with admin tools) with a very crude example, joy of jihadi terrorists when pakistan became nuclear nation. [554] A nuclear Pakistan need to be very careful and guard its nuclear facilities with 10000 troops, [555], else there is US [556]-- Cult free world ( talk) 06:50, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Kindly note, nomination for deletion was done by jossi, and who all are present in the nomination process ? [557]
Now my concern. Any person involved with one group, will have a POV towards other similar groups, and as such neutrality of usage of admin tools related with similar articles cannot be confirmed. I do not believe that deletion of a page by me is a neutral act if I have previously nominated the same article for deletion, that is over and above a declaration. Jossi's contribution are important for wikipedia, but his usage of admin tools may not be neutral. Can neutrality of a wikipedia article be confirmed which is written by all the above mentioned user's (with exception of don) ? -- talk-to-me! ( talk) 15:59, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Evidence by unsuspecting passer-by user:Mukadderat who got himself into trouble for nothing:
Regular participants of the editing in these topics throrughly forgotten what is wikipedia for and are engaged in thick wikipedia:Wikilawyering for whatever political purposes in lieu of discussion of editing merits. And user:jossi is among prime ocrhestrators of this.
Proposal 1: user:Jossi must be banned from any participation in this topic whatsoever, including discussion in talk pages, both becuse of his conflict of interest and behavior incompatible with position of administrator.
Proposal 2 the 1-RR rule must be revised that is someone's edits are reverted then if there are no valid objections stated in the talk page after a reasonable timewhen demanded, then the original athour has unconditional right to reinstate it and keep it there without any quotas until content objections (not simoply formal objections) delivered. I believe this proposal will decrease power of wikipedia:Wikilawyering in favor of content discussion.
Brief history While doing word search I occasionally run on this topic and did some minor changes, withoud adding any new content, mostly trying to provide various links between various pieces of info. In particular I added an innocent sentence into Criticism of Prem Rawat saying that the organization Divine Light where he was guru was also criticized. After a while I noticed it disappeared from the text. Looking into history, I noticed there was reversal of anons and I decided that disappearance of my text was "collateral damage" of fight with anon vandals, so I restored my piece without making much fuss. Next thing I see my text deleted again with ridiulous editu summary "removed unsourced material as per talk". I looked into the talk page and did'n notice any explanation. I restored my text and demanded explanation wich exactly reference they want, which was rather ridiculous request IMO: why would anyone need a reference to phrase "The Divine Light Mission with Prem Rawat as its guru was also criticized as a sect or cult." -- The article " Divine Light Mission" has a screenfull of references to this end. After that I received a notice on my talk page that the article in on 1RR probation and exact pointer where my edits were discussed.
After looking there, the first my feeling was that of a fly which occasinally flew into a dining room and being swatted. Rather than discussing any merits of my rather trivial edit, great energy was spent on desire to revert my edit whatever it costs on formal reasons. And it was started by user:Jossi, who is obviously vigilantly watches the aticle, and while not editing it himself, calls his army to arms against unwanted intruders. What happened next is a shame to wikipedia community: someone emitted a cry: "I already spent my 1 revert! Please, someone revert him!" If it is not shameless meatpuppetry then I am Jesus Christ.
Next thing and user:Jossi starts threathening me with sanctions if I not behave how in wants. And after 12 minutes!!!!' since his warning he implements his threat: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User:Mukadderat_1RR_probation_violation. In this page I defended myself with analysis why I consider this act as extemely inappropriate and frivolous, so I will not repeat myself.
Conclusion This extremeny brief edting episode demonstrates several acts of inappropriate beaviour of user:Jossi
I am a rather tolerant person and not edit warrior, as may be verified in some other controversial articles I edited, such as Islamophobia, Pontian Greek Genocide or Goy. But I see this beavior of user:Jossi as utterly incompatible with the position of an admn and here I decided to increase my levei of intoleance and I will be closely watching his editing activity to verify whether it is time to initiate a motion of desysopping this person. Mukadderat ( talk) 18:21, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I've been following this case with interest from afar, but I just wanted to add a note at my disappointment in seeing User:Jossi suggesting during this case that several people who don't share his POV might want to leave the article. Namely User:Francis Schonken [568], User:Maelefique [569] and (more subtly) User:Will Beback [570].
This more or less sums up the feeling I've had about the page from following the article and talk page for some months. If there's absolutely no element of WP:OWN here, then I'm a banana. Hypnotist uk ( talk) 12:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person
Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.
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Having said all this, I know I am not without fault, and acknowledge that I may have erred from time to time. I would hope that these faults would be assessed in the context of some intense personal attacks and misleading claims made against me and the subject of the article, on and off-wiki.
I consider myself a private person, and as such, I am unwilling to disclose any personal information besides what I have already disclosed. Given the speculation on and off-wiki about my involvement with the subject of this case, I will be willing to consider disclosing, in chambers, additional information to the ArbCom, if the ArbCom sees this as necessary and upon their request only.
Requests for community input include several WP:RFCs and reviews:
PatW ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been warned numerous times for personal attacks, and talk page disruption.
Per Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive383#User:PatW
Francis Schonken ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has tried to cast himself as a "neutral editor", but has failed to assist editors in the content dispute. Rather than offer help he seems to have decided to take it upon himself to "fix" the article. Being bold is a good thing sometimes, but dismissing other editors as "POV pushers" is unhelpful, as it is edit-warring with them. Evidence follows.
Diff evidence |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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Witnessing a vicious personal attack by User:PatW [9], this is what Francis had to say to him "Pat, Jossi interprets your comment above (and other comments on this page) as a personal attack." diff, instead of refactoring, or at minimum placing a warning in his talk page or at WP:WQA as customary.
When a BLP violation was posted by an anon user, on Feb 29, 2008) I asked Francis as a "non-involved" editor to take action and refactor the offending comment. [10] He did not respond, and did nothing. After no one did anything I refactored it myself, [11].
Francis Schonken came to help with the article upon the publishing of the The Register article, and despite his claims that he came as a neutral editor, he has injected himself in the dispute, and has shown very poor judgment in his interactions with editors he openly describe as "POV pushers", by applying the mistaken behavior that it is OK to revert their contributions because of his negative assessment of them. Most, if not all, reverts and ANI complains have been exclusively about editors that he has assessed as having a pro bias, while being overtly lenient about others. It seems that for Francis, dispute resolution does not apply to him. He objected to the attempts to dispute resolution, such as the negotiated community-enforced 1RR probation, and when the proposal passed it was not too soon that he sabotaged the probation on the basis of poor wording and by violating it, showing again a disregard for WP's dispute resolution process.
Momento ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), edits almost exclusively on Prem Rawat and related articles
I do not know what is the relevance of Citizendium in this arbitration, but in any case, see the the whole thread - The initial post was by a "Nik w", who signs as "A. C." ("Andrew Carpenter", maybe?) [23]; the reply was given by Dr. Robert H. Stockman, Religious Studies, DePaul University, [24], followed by my reply [25].
The table of edits can be improved for a better representation:
I am the webmaster of websites ex-premie.org and prem-rawat-talk.org where former followers of Prem Rawat give testimony on their time as followers of Rawat and discuss the topic. I also front other websites where the true owners are unwilling to risk the inevitable harrassment by current followers of Rawat by publishing their names.
It is my assertion that Jossi has no ‘conflict’ of interest in posting on Wikipedia because a conflict implies two or more interests. Jossi’s sole reason for being on Wikipedia is to present his Master, Prem Rawat, in as positive a light as possible, and he has done what is necessary to reach admin status to help do this. I’ll try to explain why I make this assertion. It is impossible to understand Jossi's role here without understanding more about the Rawat cult in a wider context than Wikipedia. From the early 80s to the late 90s, Rawat deliberately and pretty much successfully avoided all publicity. Until ex-followers started posting on usenet in 1996, an internet search for Rawat under any of his names would have yielded no results. I heard Rawat himself diss the internet as of no value. Then the ex-followers presence became one that the cult could not ignore, so in 1999 Rawat changed his mind, and put up his first website, and followers followed suit. Around this time the cult embarked on what is called the 'legitimacy' campaign to change Rawat’s image from the rich child guru from the 70s. I can give evidence of this campaign if the committee require it. Part of this campaign has been to denigrate Rawat's former followers that post on the internet. Again, I can give evidence of this if required.
I mention all this because Jossi has been at the heart of the attempt to establish legitimacy for Rawat on the internet from the start. He was the webmaster of Rawat's first website in 1999, as well as the webmaster of related websites such as Rawat's A/V company, Dunrite, and a followers' music website, Eversound. Again, if Jossi denies this (I doubt he would), I can provide evidence.
Jossi now claims to be a wide-ranging Wikipedian, but his beginnings on Wikipedia tell a very different story. His first 500 Wikipedia contributions, over 7 months, were almost exclusively on Rawat related articles:-
The only exceptions were a handful of edits to articles related to graphics design, and, tellingly, an edit to the WP:Hate Group article establishing that apostates of new religious movements could be viewed as hate groups. It is clear that during that time his was a prime example of a single purpose account that he repeatedly criticises others for. It is only later that Jossi widens his editing to other articles, although a check of the articles he authored will show that many are close to stubs. See Some of the Articles I have Created, -
One of the three important tenets of the Rawat belief system is service to Prem Rawat. Jossi is a dedicated follower, and is willing to do what it takes to please his Master.
Regarding Jossi's evidence above, I am sure it is largely accurate. What is missing is that when he acknowledged in 2004 that he is a 'proud student' of Rawat's, he declined to mention his involvement in Rawat's websites, which was a clear breach of WP:COI. Also, in all his edits, I have never seen him revert a pro-Rawat edit, regardless of the quality of the source. I have asked him to show me such a revert and he was unable or unwilling to do so. I have been asked to produce diffs to support this allegation. It is difficult to prove a negative, but here are two recent minor examples of poorly sourced pro-Rawat statements that had been in place some time before I edited them:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Prem_Rawat&diff=prev&oldid=149642855
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Prem_Rawat&diff=prev&oldid=181822308
It would be much easier for Jossi to produce, from his thousands of edits to Rawat related articles, a few examples where he has reverted, without being prompted, pro-Rawat edits. If he does so I will withdraw this allegation.
I appreciate that my evidence is not the kind that is expected here, and some of the committee may dismiss it as anecdotal or simply untrue, but I believe it is important that you understand the context of Jossi's involvement here. If Jossi really does believe in the Wiki project, he should be happy to avoid any possibility of further tarnishing Wikipedia's reputation by absenting himself from all Rawat related articles. This should apply to other long-time Rawat followers such as Momento and Rumiton. Myself, and, I believe, other former followers, would be happy to do the same and allow the article to be edited by neutral editors. The problem is that until the Register article, no else was interested in the subject.
A final word about my own contributions to talk pages. I have occasionally made comments to other editors about publishing information on them outside Wikipedia, and I have made other comments not related to the articles in question, that I have apologised for, and do so here again. -- John Brauns ( talk) 01:14, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Someone asked me which sources are not represented in the Rawat article, so here is my answer.
1. Press Articles. Genuine press articles about Rawat have usually been fair, and have usually been critical. Because of the publicity blackout that Rawat instituted from the mid 80s to the late 90s there have been very few recent press articles, but there are many from the 70s. The articles on Rawat's foundation's website ( http://www.tprf.org/press-room/magazines.htm) are all paid advertorials in obscure magazines, but there is a good collection on my website, http://ex-premie.org/pages/press_room.htm and http://www.ex-premie.org/gallery/news/index.html - none of which are listed on Rawat's site. There were links to a couple of these articles in the Wikipedia Rawat article but these have been removed.
2. The book 'Who is Guru Maharaj Ji'.
This book by follwer Charles Cameron published by Bantam in 1973, includes the text on the front cover 'The authentic authorised story of the 15-year-old Guru...'. Copyright was owned by Shri hans Productions which was one of the trading names of Divine Light Mission (now Elan Vital). The back of the book includes the text 'Why do more than six million people around the world claim he is the greatest incarnation of God that ever trod on the face of this planet?'. Rennie Davis writes in the intro 'Guru maharaj Ji is the Lord of the Universe...'. This book should be the basic source for how Rawat presented himself in 1973.
3. Elan Vital/Divine Light Mission Publications from the 70s.
These include transcripts of Rawat's speeches and those of his followers, including his wife. Whenever discussion of using these publications as sources has been discussed on the Rawat talk pages, the argument against is that everyone can pick out quotes supporting their point of view. Some of the quotes, however, leave the reader in no doubt that former followers' version of Rawat's history is the correct one.
4. The website, ex-premie.org.
The basic problem with Rawat as a notable person is that his notability stems from his claim in the early 70s that he could show people God face to face. Without that claim few would have come to him, and we would not be here having this discussion. Unfortunately there have been few press articles and no academic studies of Rawat in recent years. I have no doubt that were a reputable academic to research a paper on Rawat now, and were to examine dispassionately the claims made by former and current followers, using Rawat's speeches from the above mentioned publications, the resulting paper would pretty much support the version of Rawat's history that former followers put forward. Unfortunately, no such academic has found Rawat interesting enough to write such a paper, so the best information we have is the over 100 first hand testimonies of former followers on ex-premie.org, including his former right hand men. This site is currently excluded as a source because of WP:BLP, and I understand why those rules are in place. But my site has been in existence for over 10 years, and the most damaging allegations against Rawat have been published for over 7 years. This is not a transient blog, but a well documented account of Rawat's history, including named, corroborated eye-witness accounts of Rawat's behaviour. Elan Vital claimed copyright on the text of Rawat's speeches and other historical documents, but failed in their legal attempt to get them removed. This adds provenance to the content. I believe WP:BLP should be amended to cater for situations such as Rawat, where clear evidence of his life is available, but he is not sufficiently notable for an independent study to have been taken. -- John Brauns ( talk) 00:38, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
5. The website, mikefinch.com
Mike Finch was one of Rawat's earliest western followers, and was the person who organised Rawat's first trip to the UK, and helped organise his first trip to the USA. He was an instructor authorised by Rawat to reveal the 'secret' meditation techniques, and was a loyal followers for over 30 year. He has a PhD, and his website should be considered a reliable source for the Rawat article.
Jossi suggests that I summarise this evidence. As I explained, it is impossible to understand Jossi's role on Wikipedia without understanding the background. This is already a summary, and I will not further summarise. Of course if the clerk deletes this then there is nothing I can do, but this arbitration will be the poorer for that. -- John Brauns ( talk) 21:23, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Refering to my discussion forum Isabella states:- "Although they (the forum administrators) now moderate postings and edit comments by its members that may bring a criminal liability upon this forum or cross the line into hate speech". For the record, in the over two years the forum has been in existence we have never had to edit or delete posts for the reasons Isabella claims. -- John Brauns ( talk) 23:51, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
I have looked at the diffs Jayen posted that supposedly show Jossi reverting poorly sources pro-Rawat edits, and frankly for some of them I can't see much difference between the two versions in terms of which is more pro-Rawat. Other edits appear to be part of edit wars where Jossi, to maintain his admin status, had to intervene. I am refering to poorly sourced pro-Rawat edits such as those I linked to above, where no neutral or anti-Rawat editors were active, where Jossi, unprompted, recognised that the edit did not meet WP:BLP and reverted the edit. -- John Brauns ( talk) 01:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Momento falsely claims that I will do what ever I can to denigrate Rawat. This is untrue - I will not lie, unlike Rawat's supporters. The critical information on my website is true. Momento also claims; 'As an editor he usually confines himself to the "Talk" page. He never removes any vandalism or obvious BLP violations.' I have made very few edits (about 100) in the four years since I first contributed to Wikipedia, so it is not my place to police the articles. However, I did support the removal of the picture of Rawat's house on copyright grounds, and in the early days of the article I supported not including Rawat's protection of his paedophile lieutenant, Jagdeo, in the article. For the record, given the grossly distorted picture of Rawat's life in his Wikipedia article, I have little faith in the accuracy of any other Wikipedia article. My only purpose here is to do what I can to make the Rawat articles a little more reflective of the truth than they are, but I do not think that even this aim is worth much of my time. -- John Brauns ( talk) 01:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_28#Brief_history_of_editing_principles_used_for_this_article
After user:Vassyana's failed Good article review a complete condensed re-write had been made by user:Momento and user:Rumiton, supported by Jossi that replaced a longer version that had a degree of consensus. They rejected all my and User:Sylviecyn's objections to their version, both in the draft period and afterwards. 12:51, 13 May 2007 Diff comment by Andries on Momento's and Rumiton's complete rewrite Numerous other re-writes had been made and proposed by other contributors but the version by Rumiton and Momento remained unreverted in spite of my many criticisms. Then I decided that mediation was necessary. When the mediation between Momento and I was rejected. See Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/Rejected/28#Prem_Rawat_3, I became powerless to prevent the article becoming one-sided. Then the article received well-deserved bad publicity from the register. (I had no prior knowledge of the register article until it appeared.).
This register article brought in some new people in among others Francis Schonken who had little prior involvement in the article. Andries ( talk) 09:46, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Momento repeatedly removed undisputed sourced facts 29 November 2007, 29 November 2007 Andries ( talk) 19:03, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Andries has occasionally made mistake in paraphrasing sources, both in Rawat related articles and in unrelated articles. [26] He attributes these mistakes to his habit of quick but not very accurately reading of sources. [27] [28] Andries ( talk) 09:24, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Andries hereby denies that he is a (former) follower of Rawat. Andries ( talk) 08:25, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Jossi has repeatedly been unwilling or unable to assume Andries' good faith regarding his contributions related to Rawat. [29] 14 October 2007 "You have zero credibility in this project as it pertains to any assumptions of good faith, Andries."
Andries thinks that Jossi's attitute towards him is partially due to his occasional mistakes in paraphrasing sources in combination with the hypersensitivity of the subject and opposing POVs of Jossi and Andries. Andries hereby admits that he has sometimes focused on providing sources for statements that can be intended as critical, but this grew partially out of the habit of Momento to challenge anything critical. Andries hereby vehemently denies that Jossi's opinion that Andries is a bad faith editor has any basis in reality and hereby states that the fraction and seriousness of the mistakes that he made in Rawat related articles is lower and less serious than the mistakes that he made in in unrelated articles.
Andries (
talk)
09:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I have no doubt, that on unrelated topics, Jossi is, as described, a great Wikipedian, however, we are talking about one topic, and one topic only, and that would be the sphere of articles that reflect on Prem Rawat. Other unassociated articles should not be included in this discussion here, they have no bearing whatsoever on the claims made against him here. I have no grudge against Jossi personally and was completely unaware of his and Prem Rawat's existence until earlier this year. Unlike other editors who seem to have left out some pertinent information [30] [31], I do not have a conflict of interest that I am aware of. I have never been a premie, am not a premie now, and have never knowingly worked for any organization that is run for, by, or in association with, Prem Rawat. Nor do I have any prior affiliation of any kind with any of the other editors I have interacted with on this topic.
On a common sense basis, if I work for a company, and I also do some freelance journalism, and I spend some of my time criticizing my employer, is it not somewhat obvious that the vast majority of companies would frown on this practice, possibly leading to career problems? On the other hand, if I was to only write glowing reviews of my employer, I'm sure they would be fine with it. I have never seen Jossi write anything critical of Prem Rawat, this is basically what the term "Conflict of Interest" refers to, whether he admits it or not.
Whether Jimbo thinks so or not, there is a certain prestige that comes along with being a WP admin/janitor, especially for editors familiar with the system. So when Jossi makes a suggestion that editors should change certain things it should be in no way surprising to see other pro-Rawat editors jump in to help out minutes later, 3 minutes later in this case. As well as a similar effect here, leading, again, to another Pro-Rawat editor doing Jossi's bidding here 2 hours later. As an analogy, it's like having the cool guy from your high school in the car with you, egging you on. And conversely, when he admonishes someone else, it naturally has a momentary chilling effect. Rightly or wrongly, these things happen [32] [33]. Ironicly Jossi says above that he has never exerted "administrator influence" (quotes are his), and then immediately says "(whatever that means)"... well if you don't know what it means, a) you should find out, and b) you can't really claim you haven't done it, can you?!
Another example of his attempt at influencing the process is here [34], where he is defending a pro-Rawat editor who was nominated for admin status, nothing wrong with that, except there is a lot of criticism for someone who Jossi seems so enthusiastic about. In fact, Jossi uses 163 words here in support of this pro-Rawat editor, who apparently engages in this exact same POV pushing issue with Rawat. Attempting to marshall his forces? (for reference,In terms of words typed, it takes his next 21 votes [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] in support for admins, combined, for him to equal the verbosity he shows for this single pro-Prem Rawat editor.
Jossi indicates he worked on the Lord of the Universe (documentary), reading the talk page shows more of the same POV pushing that we are discussing here.
Above, Jossi says "During the same time I engaged in vigorous debates in talk page, providing sources when requested,".
Jossi is no stranger to making threats of censure, or of pointing out WP policy violations on the talk page to people who seem critical of Rawat, or opposed to his POV,as shown by other editors on this page. And yet, the only time I can find any reference to any pro-Prem Rowat editor being reprimanded in any way, is somewhat privately, on that user's talk page, not the in the article's talk page, in public as it were, where all the dissenting voices are challenged by Jossi.
[ This] was posted on the Prem Rawat talk page, I think it speaks strongly towards jossi's bias, and pretty much speaks for itself when you look at the diffs for the disambiguation page, specifically, [ [59]][ [60]][ [61]] Edit summary is "this is the correct meaning". So if I beome a premie, and then quit, unless I complain about it, I'm not an ex-premie? And if I do, I become a member of a "small group" (ambiguous term at best)? How is that the "correct meaning"?
Jossi says he has attemped to enforce civility and WP's behavioral/editing policies. I would say he is engaging in WP's version of Vexatious Litigation in an attempt to slow down the altering of the article, and to grind down the other authors, to "wait them out". Sooner or later, as is evidenced by the amount of editors that come and go on this article, many editors who do not have a "personal" connection to the subject get tired of bashing their head against the wall, and leave the article, Jossi however remains ever-vigilant.
My apologies, I am also a little over my 1000 words.
(I checked with the clerk, this is allowed, and kept as brief as possible)
Re the ex-premie disambiguation, you fail to mention in your reply that while other topics are covered in those searches, under the book search, in the top 10, Rawat's ex-premies appear twice, at 6, and 7, and under your scholar search, they appear at number 2 on the list. Certainly prominent enough to warrant a disambiguation page. Interestingly, you neglected to include a standard google search where the entire first page (1-10) are all Rawat's ex-premies.
My motivation:
Jimbo Wales' single known edit on the issue ( diff) was divisive while it contained straw man argumentation (see discussion at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 33#break 0). As such the edit was gefundenes fressen for yet another Cade Metz article (see link included in 4th paragraph of 'That's some catch, that catch-22' section at Why you should care that Jimmy Wales ignores reality: 'A great Wikipedian'). I don't like my name to be linked from some bad journalism, when this is the result of someone else's superficial comment (even if the 'someone else' is Jimbo Wales in this case). -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 06:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Kim Bruning ( talk · contribs) carefully negotiated with PatW to see his behaviour improved. [63] [64] It's quite possible to stand your ground in a civil fashion, after all. Would you be able to manage that? - PatW's reply: "Absolutely yes of course ... I am coming to realise that I have violated a number of rules here - eg 'soapboxing' which I only recently even heard of, and of course being occasionally horribly rude to Jossi and Momento. ..." 11:06, 11 March 2008
Wikipedia is not a vindicative system. I don't see any necessity to "prove" errors recognised by PatW, and for which he promised to improve. Was there uncorrected or incorrectible behaviour by PatW after this recognition (11:06, 11 March 2008)? -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 06:35, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
(note: there were more personal attacks by Jossi, for the convenience of this case, and unless compelled, I will limit myself to a single example)(update: challenged by Jossi above in #@User:Francis Schonken, point 6, I sent additional evidence regarding my points below to the ArbCom mailing list):
At Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat/Workshop#General discussion Merzbow wrote: "Why and how the [ Criticism of Prem Rawat ] article was turned into a redirect, but the material not actually merged (or merged and deleted), should be a key question here." Trying to clarify some things (I have done before, but some of it seems to have gone lost in the discourse):
Jossi's conduct during Momento's third WP:AN3 listing in February 2008 was experienced as inappropriate by the blocking admin:
I felt offended too: "As far as I'm concerned you'd better remove the list of 5 edits in 3 days you composed on me above, it is offensive, [...]" [73]
I'd like arbitrators to look in to this and see whether the uninvolved admin's assessment needs reviewing. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 17:14, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
There was a well-produced page with a good set of citations providing criticism of Prem Rawat and his business model at http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Criticism_of_Prem_Rawat&direction=prev&oldid=195507682. This page was originally set up by User:jossi in order to prevent criticism appearing on the Prem Rawat page itself. User:jossi was then involved in turning this into a redirect to the Prem Rawat page, without placing the criticism back on that page. This effectively resulted in the criticisms becoming hidden and lost to the type of reader who might be a likely prospect for Rawat's business. This story is told in some detail in the Register Article, which is well-researched, contains useful links to wikipedia diffs and should be read, I think, by anyone involved in this arb, particularly since that article has the propensity to bring wikipedia into considerable disrepute unless wikipedia arbitrators are seen to do something about the blatent POV-ineering that has so far been allowed to take place.
A much better story, in my opinion, of the pioneering phase of Prem Rawat's business than has ever appeared in wikipedia is provided at http://www.rickross.com/reference/vital/vital15.html, an article with a reference Sociological Review, 27, Page 279-296/1979, which I haven't checked but I've no reason to doubt its veracity, particularly since it gets an unlinked mention as Note 1 on the Prem Rawat page itself. A link to a page on the Rick Ross website, listing that Sociological Review Article was put on the Prem Rawat page but then removed, after User:jossi had made a contribution on the Prem Rawat talk page. The difficulty here is that the subscribers to Prem Rawat's services hold that any site that contains material that they don't like means that any link to anywhere on that site should be removed from wikipedia, regardless of whether a particular link is to something useful and informative [111] [112] [113] [114] (lovely bit of double-think) [115] (more double-think, and confusing the concept of 'reliable' with the concept of 'appropriate').
Hence User:jossi argues against Rick Ross in what is effectively an ad hominem attack, without taking account of the fact that the page linked to contains the material given in another reference on the Prem Rawat page (as I already mentioned).
Such circularity (repeated arguments) as is indicated on the Prem Rawat talk page between what I would suggest as representing, on the one side, secular, reasonable wikipedia contributors and, on the other side, those who overtly and covertly represent a POV in favour of Prem Rawat (in all cases, I would hazard, by being subscribers to Prem Rawat's services), is itself evidence that the neutral point of view sacred to the wikipedia project is being systematiclly abused by the latter group. This has been going on for years. My personal stance, if such be relevant, is that I am neither a subscriber nor an ex-subscriber to Prem Rawat's services, but I am conscious of the warning given by Richard Feynman that mind control is the most serious threat facing mankind, and when I see the victims of mind control desecrating the fine institution of wikipedia, which action is plain for all to see in the Prem Rawat article, I really feel that something should be done.
This link shows that Jossi Fresco, aka User:jossi, acts as a press contact for Prem Rawat's marketing machine. To allow such a person to be a wikipedia admin and involved in the shameful controversy surrounding the the Prem Rawat page, and other pages in the category of the same name gives rise to a very bad smell. The fact that he may do good works at the same time should not distract you from analysing what he is really up to, and it doesn't stack up to acting in good faith, in my opinion. Just a small point on whether we can accept User:jossi's word. He says here that he has never used his admin privilege to ban anyone anywhere. This link shows that he did. Matt Stan ( talk) 22:16, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
The rickross.com link referred to above by Matthew_Stannard ( talk · contribs) was deleted by myself from the Prem Rawat and DLM articles – not because of Jossi's comment, but because I realised, after having linked to the site myself in another article, that it is in violation of WP:EL#Restrictions_on_linking. I discussed my concerns on the talk page, and Msalt ( talk · contribs), considered neutral by all contributors to this article (I believe), concurred. Jayen 466 22:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Just because this has been a point of discussion between Momento and MSalt, here a description of that bit of edit history: The first edit was an attempt to arrive at a compromise version to address the various concerns people had expressed on the talk page
This edit had three components:
The compromise version still didn't address all concerns; Francis was unhappy with the insertion of Barrett, because he felt Barrett was characterising Rawat's DLM movement rather than his teaching, and Momento felt the lede did not give enough room to add the context within which the Schnabel had made his statement.
I agreed with Momento's view here that Schnabel had made his comment in the specific context of contrasting Rawat's style to that of another charismatic teacher and that the statement in the lede was not a good use of that source. In addition, various editors had made the point that Rawat does not seek to present an intellectual teaching; his teaching is, rather, that the meditative experience happens outside of the intellect.
I then shortened the passage to Rawat has been criticised for leading an opulent and materialistic lifestyle. with the edit summary (self-revert as per talk, let's leave the analysis of his teaching out of the lede then).
This deleted the sentence Rawat has been criticized for a lack of intellectual content in his public discourse that had previously been present and reverted my own insertion of and as emphasizing the superiority of direct experience over intellect. sourced to Barrett.
I announced the edit on the talk page in my response to Momento, saying OK; I have self-reverted now and taken the critique of his teaching out of the lede.
This description was inadequate. I did self-revert to the extent that I took out again the phrase sourced to Barrett that I had inserted and to which Francis had objected. Taking the critique of the teaching out of the lede was not a self-revert however, because it removed the sentence Rawat has been criticized for a lack of intellectual content in his public discourse that had been present before. On the other hand, both the edit summary and the talk page comment made it clear that I had done so. I also retained the revised wording opulent and materialistic compared to the earlier version by Lawrence which had sumptuous.
Francis pointed out to me on my talk page that my edit description was misleading. I agreed, apologised and crossed out "self-" on the talk page. Jayen 466 12:31, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
Bryan R. Wilson's Times obituary is interesting. He is described as an "influential sociologist who offered new and enduring insights into sects and religions ... one of the most brilliant and influential sociologists of religion of the past century". This is not a fringe figure, he is as mainstream in sociology of religion as you can get. To describe Massimo Introvigne as an obscure self-published author is likewise off the mark. His representation on Google Scholar is respectable for an author who writes much of his material in Italian, and he was one of the experts consulted by the German government's Enquete Commission on NRMs a few years back. J. Gordon Melton is I believe among the top five most prolific contributors to Encyclopedia Britannica and very widely published. Again, these are mainstream scholars, though it is true that they are a source of irritation to many self-appointed anti-cult campaigners. Jayen 466 17:12, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
Re the section "one edit war", the first diff you cite and comment on is this: - Momento deletes criticism of Rawat (with scholarly source) under edit summary “(As per talk "Lede")” [116].
What Momento removed was this: "Rawat has been criticized for a lack of intellectual content in his public discourse." You say, he deleted criticism of Rawat based on a scholarly source. But if we look at the source quoted, we find it says something totally different than what our article said there. Schnabel said,
"The purest examples of charismatic leadership are at this moment, still, Bhagwan and Maharaj Ji. This shows immediately that personal qualities alone are insufficient for the recognition of the charismatic leadership. The intelligent, ever-changing Bhagwan who gives daily performances is not more a charismatic leader than the pampered materialistic and intellectually quite unremarkable Maharaj Ji. As charismatic leaders, they, by the way, both have their own audience and their own function."
Now, where here does Schnabel criticise Rawat for a lack of intellectual content in his public discourse? In my view, this was not appropriately sourced, and Momento was absolutely correct to remove it. It needed revising, sourcing to another source, or whatever. As it stood it was at best an example of WP:SYN. Jayen 466 01:27, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Re the scholars page: What I supported here [117] was the edit you made to the article, rather than the edit to the scholars page, which I had not been aware of. Having said that, I find your comment fair that Jossi seems to have been concerned about the copyright implications of reproducing a negative article in full, but appears to have been less concerned about any such implications of reproducing positive articles in full. Perhaps he is human after all ;-) Jayen 466 01:11, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
It has been claimed ( [118], [119]) that Jossi has never reverted a pro-Rawat edit and would never do so. Trying to get a sense of SylvieCyn's and Jossi's interaction in the editing history of Prem Rawat just now, I happened to come across a series of edits in which Momento removed the section with links to various critics' sites [120] (justifiably so, in my view, as they fall short of the requirements outlined in WP:BLP and WP:EL), and in the next edit [121] Jossi reverted, restoring three of the four critics' sites (the fourth being dropped for copyright reasons). I was not making an effort to look for such an edit ... Jayen 466 15:09, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
I was sufficiently intrigued to waste an hour making such an effort. Here are five more reverts by Jossi of "pro-Rawat" edits:
Re the ex-premie disambiguation, note that according to books.google.com and scholar.google.com, by far the most common meaning of the word, as used in published literature, appears to be the one Jossi indicated: [134] [135] Jayen 466 20:13, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
It was my specific intent to illustrate the distribution of the word in published literature. (I actually thought, wrongly, that what your diff presented was the google result.) Internet usage is not always an accurate reflection of general language usage, especially where a term is used in the name of a website. Jayen 466 12:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
I see this issue as a battle between editors who think BLP policy should apply to the Rawat article and those that don't. Since The Register article, the Rawat article has been inundated with "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons" that " should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion". I have done that. Likewise, Jimmy Wales writes on the WP:VER policy page -"I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons". I will always remove "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living people" as frequently as editors put it in. And that includes links that violate WP:BLP and WP:EL and including "conjectural interpretations of a source" [136]? Some editors characterize this as "edit warring" it is not, it is following BLP policy :Examples -
Virtually every criticism of my editing involves me "aggressively removing unsourced or poorly sourced" material. I am not so much pro- Rawat as fiercely pro BLP policy
[153]. And here I am reverting an undiscussed pro-Rawat edit
[154].
Blocked for 24 hours by Nakon [155] after report by Cirt for repeatedly deleting photo of house [156] and links to anti-Rawat sites [157]]. Reviewing admin B agrees that photo should be removed [158] and is exempt from 3RR but links should not be removed. I stated my case [159] and repeat it here - BLP policy - "Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Verifiability. The three-revert rule does not apply to such removals". The anti-Rawat sites are self published blogs full of slander, OR and unverified material, all violations of BLP policy. I should not have been blocked.
Blocked for 24 hours by Vsmith [160] after report by Francis [161] for removing "Rawat also turned away from asceticism, and no longer denounced material possessions" 3 times in 24 hours. As I explained in talk [162], the Hunt summary is completely distorted. It violates BLP -Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that is a conjectural interpretation of a source. The three-revert rule does not apply to such removals". I should not have been blocked.
Jossi has done an excellent job as an admin on Rawat articles, he calms the waters and insists on Wiki policy. The level of criticism that he has been subjected to is appalling. Never the less, I don't believe my interpretation of BLP policy is "narrow", I believe it is "conservative". And that is in perfect accord with BLP policy which says "Biographies of living persons (BLPs) must be written conservatively". Every person is entitled to a "presumption of innocence" and "an important rule of thumb when writing biographical material about living persons is 'do no harm'". Wikipedia isn't going to be damaged by being conservative, it is going to be damaged by BLP's that slander and misrepresent their subjects. My involvement in Rawat articles is almost entirely dependent on the amount of BLP violating vandalism that occurs [163]. When things are quiet I am happy to involve myself in other articles where the subject is not being treated fairly.
John, the webmaster of two anti-Rawat sites, is clear about his POV. He will do what ever he can to denigrate Rawat. As an editor he usually confines himself to the "Talk" page [164]. He never removes any vandalism or obvious BLP violations.
Andries has always been upfront about Rawat, he thinks he’s a fraud. This is somewhat colored by the fact that Andries was a devotee of Sai Baba. He was indefinitely banned from that article for his behaviour. Like Johns Brauns, Nik Wright, Wowest and SylvieCyn, Andries is a poster on the anti-Rawat forum. As an editor, his poor English creates real problems. I’ve had too many conversations and disputes with Andries about his incorrect paraphrasing; coincidently, always on the wacky side [165]. To his credit, he once removed an obvious BLP violation which deserves mention [166].
When it comes to "disruptive editing" Francis Schonken takes the prize. He has tried to dominate the article since his first Rawat edit of 2008 on Feb 8. Without one word of discussion he inserted 30,000 bytes of undiscussed material into the article [167], I reverted it [168], onefinalstep reverted back and was reverted by DavidD [169] and he was in turn reverted by Francis Schonken [170], all without one word of explanation from Francis Schonken. On Feb 12, Francis Schonken again inserted 26,000 bytes of material [171] without discussion which was promptly reverted by Sarcasticidealist with the summary "reverting a very unhelpful step in the consensus process" [172]. On Feb 13, after discussion [173] WillBeback removed all links except for one [174] where upon Francis Schonken kept reinserting defamatory links to anti-Rawat sites whenever they were removed [175], [176], [177] [178] [179] [180] [181] [182]. At the same time he has filed numerous complaints against me from "slightly disruptive editing" [ [183]] to 3RR [184] to 1RR [185] with only one negative result against me (see above).
Jayen is a great editor. His editing is intelligent and neutral. He is clear in the talk page, he has a real passion for the underlying issues and he knows what "eschews" means. One of my two suggestions for remedy is that only Jayen466 be allowed to edit the article, he would do an excellent job.
One Edit War Msalt has made three false assertions in this section that fundamentally distort what occurred.
Simply put, Msalt is prepared to make things up to attack discredit me. Here he is stating that "Momento, you delete and add material 10 times every single day, usually with no discussion"
[191]. In fact, I made less than 20 edits in the week previous to that comment and 21 in the week before that
[192]. In the same period I made more than 150 posts to "Talk" and that's a 4 to 1, "talk" to "edit" ratio. No apology from Msalt.
One Talk Page Thrash
The photo failed on Copyright/not fair use grounds but I would still argue that inclusion in a BLP violates invasion of privacy, OR, verifiability, contact information and other grounds. For example, would giving the address of the house next door constitute giving "contact information", I would say so. Anything that provides a means to contact the subject of a BLP should be avoided, particularly when stuff like this appears on John Brauns anti-Rawat forum [193].
Sock puppeteer?
In Feb 2007, I was accused of being a sock puppeteer by Mael-Num [194], is that a relative of Maelefique (talk) [195], and blocked by Betacommand. Here's the argument but where is the evidence,not even a user check. Decide for your self [196] [197].
I endorse everything Jossi said. PatW's sole contribution to Rawat articles is to abuse those he sees as pro-Rawat. Momento ( talk) 03:09, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Nik Wright2's sole edit this year was his undiscussed insertion of 10,000 bytes of badly written OR [198]. It was reverted by Janice [199] and immediately reverted by Nik [200] and the article protected by Nandesuka. NikWright2 maintains below that his edit was "adequately discussed", but here is the tally of his talk comments which prove otherwise [201]. I totally reject the idea that students of Rawat have a COI in editing the article, whilst people who run and post on the anti-Rawat forum have none.
Here's Rumiton deleting some pro-Rawat puff [202]
Admin WillBeback came to the Rawat article with one purpose in mind, to add more criticism. In doing so he has abandoned NPOV and compromised his admin role. And since then he continues to complain about me including his latest that I don't show "good faith" towards him.
WillBeBack supported disruptive editing
The most extraordinary disruption to the Rawat article and the beginning of its current turmoil was created by Francis Schonken's undiscussed insertion of 30,000 bytes of badly written BLP violating OR [203]. This extraordinary action was condemned in the talk page and reverted by three different editors [204], [205], [206]. WillBeBack did and said nothing. And then without one word on the talk page he reverted back to Francis's "massive insertion" with the edit summary "no explanation for massive deletion" [207]. He now gives his reason that Francis Schonken is "a longtime and respected WP editor".
WillBeBack began making edits with "conjectural interpretations
A "conjectural interpretations of a source" is forming "an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information". In this case, making a summary of an article using only that portion of the information that suits your POV. WillBeBack summarized an article in the LA Times with this POV edit in the Rawat article [208] [209]. I wrote this entirely different summary in the talk page using the same article [210] (last paragraph in green section but note Jayen466's opinion above mine).
Recent example of WillBeBack's improper editing
On April 6 Will added this summary to the DLM article - "A 1980 article in The Washington Post reported that a Congressional Panel had singled out, among other controversial groups: "Guru Maharaj Ji's Divine Light Mission...as cults that employ manipulative techniques and turn children against their parents."" [211]. In fact, Will's summary has four major errors. First, it wasn't a "Congressional" Committee. Second, the Committee didn't "single out" DLM. Third, the Committee didn't describe DLM as a "cult that employs manipulative techniques and turn children against their parents". And fourth, the Committee didn't describe DLM as a "controversial" group [212]. I pointed this out talk, removed the flawed summary and provided an accurate one [213] in talk to discuss. Will restored the flawed version having corrected the "Congressional" error and swapped "singled out" to "listed" [214], even though the the Committee hadn't "listed", "singled" or "uttered" one syllable on the matter. [215]. The summary now falsely claims that "The Maryland House of Delegates committee listed, among other controversial groups: "Guru Maharaj Ji's Divine Light Mission ... as cults that employ manipulative techniques and turn children against their parents.". I pointed this out once again [216] and finally WillBeBack removes "controversial" and his false claim that the "Committee listed" anything. [217] But only to be replaced by new weasel words which still claim DLM was "listed" at the hearing.
Claims I opposed adding criticism to the Rawat article
WillBeBack started this talk page discussion by rudely and incorrectly claiming that I was opposed to adding criticism before he even asked me [218]. Within 24 hours of WillBeback's false assertion that I didn't want to add criticism, I was asking him what materiaI he wanted to include since some of the material is clearly in breach of BLP policy [219]. I have continued to discuss the issue, commenting five times on the subject before he made this recent claim, including this clear and unambiguous agreement to include criticism "There shouldn't be a "Criticism of..." article about Rawat or any other BLP. In order to not give undue weight, criticism should be included in the article ". [220], [221] [222] [223] [224]
Accusing me a making a Point
My widely discussed and long held POV is that "Criticism of (Name)" articles are inappropriate and a blight on Wikipedia. However, since WillBeBack was supporting a "Criticism of Rawat" article, I put aside my POV and wrote for the enemy. If "Criticism of (Name)" articles are the way of the future for Wikipedia then a good place to start would be with Jimbo Wales, so I created a "Criticism of Jimbo Wales" article in Good Faith. I created the page once and once only [225], objected to the "speedy deletion" as per the notice (which apparently counts as another creation) and made one comment on the talk page before Jossi cautioned me [226] and I took no further action. I have made no other comment to the talk page or any other Jimbo page. Fortunately the tide is turning and some people who supported "Criticism of (Name)" articles are having a rethink, so I applaud WillBeBack's request to merge "Criticism of Prem Rawat" with the main article.
Alan Watts
Contrary to Will BeBack's claim, I haven't said Watts is "an unacceptable, disreputable source". What has been said is that Watts quote as reported in the NYTimes is confusing and needs context. This quote was discussed over a month ago by half a dozen editors and the consensus was to leave it out. [227] Will insists it should go in a different Rawat article and if you don't agree, you're being "ridiculous" (see below).
Assumption of bad faith
Will BeBack gives an example of my bad faith, and he's right and I removed it. However during the discussion about Watts, Will BeBack is happy to say my opinion is "one of the most ridiculous arguments I've heard" [228]and tells another editor my argument is "plain ridiculous" [229].
Prior to publication of The Register article [230] the WP Rawat articles were in a state of sustained ‘ownership’ WP:OWN. Ownership by its very nature is rarely demonstrable by quoting sets of diffs and Arbitrators are therefore referred to the volume of edits and talk page contributions specific to the Rawat articles, most notably by User:Jossi, User:Momento and User:Rumiton. User:Jossi has quoted above, his total contributions to Wikipedia, however the statistics relevant to this Arbitration are those related to the Rawat articles only. The issue is not simply the sheer volume of Jossi’s edits and talk page contributions from April 2004 ( Momento’s from 2006 and Rumiton’s from 2007) but the percentage of the totals made by these editors singly and collectively, compared to all other contributors. The ratios are even more stark when editors who have predominantly agreed with User:Jossi and who had/have little or no WP involvement other than with the Rawat articles, are removed from the calculation.
Prior to February 2006 the ‘agreeing editors list’ comprised the now inactive users 64.81.88.140, 24.21.194.205, and User:Zappaz, the first two were Rawat article ‘specialists’ while User:Zappaz did have some other WP interests. In addition three other editors who are still active, share the “Jossi consensus” User:Janice Rowe, User:Rainer P. and User:Armeisen; again their User contribution logs show that they are predominantly only interested in the Rawat articles. In January 2006 User:Jossi was joined in active WP:OWN by User:Errol Vieth and in February 2006 by User:Momento; User:Errol Vieth became inactive in December 2006; User:Jossi and User:Momento were joined by User:Rumiton in March 2007. Following publication of The Register [231] article other editors arrived at the judgement that the Rawat articles were in urgent need of improvement. The difficulties related to the Rawat articles since the beginning of February 2008 can properly be characterised as a clash between those editors who are seeking to protect their ‘product’ of WP:OWN and those who are intent upon achieving a balanced and encyclopaedic article.
There have been frequent charges and counter charges by various editors for several years over the position of either current ‘students’ (followers) and of former followers of Rawat as editors of WP. The relevant part of WP:COI would seem to be: Examples/Close relationships [ [232]] Both current and former followers/students of Prem Rawat must be considered to be ‘caught’ by the “close relationship” provision of WP:COI, the only question is to what degree is the individual editor inhibited from working to NPOV. In this respect as ‘students’ of Prem Rawat both user:Rumiton and User:Momento are wrong to claim in their ArbCom statements that they have no WP:COI; User:Rumiton gives a clear statement of his COI on his User page [ [233]]
User:Jossi clearly is affected by WP:COI Examples/Close relationships, in addition he has a very specific COI related to his personal financial and career interests. When combined with culpability under WP:OWN, Jossi’s financial COI together with his COI Examples/Close relationships clearly brings WP:DUCK into play.
A source of contention, which has been used in a manner of sustained disruption by pro Rawat editors, has been the issue of the religious affiliation (or claimed affiliation) of academic commentators upon Prem Rawat .See [ [234]]. This issue arose because in response to the use of reference to the the work of Ron Geaves it was pointed out that Geaves was not only a long term follower of Prem Rawat but was instrumental in Rawat becoming exposed to a western audience. In a ‘tit for tat’ response pro Rawat editors kept demanding that the religious affiliation of other academics must be made explicit or their work be excluded on the grounds of COI .
Geaves continues to assist in the public promotion of Rawat as per [235] Film of Prem Rawat + Prof Ron Geaves of Liverpool Hope U & St Ethelburga’s and as such his work is a compromised source. Additionally Geaves is a source for other encyclopaedists such as Hunt, Barret and Chryssides, the latter of these has co-authored with Geaves while Barret is strongly associated with a Sociological perspective on New Religious Movements closely aligned to Geaves’ own. Geaves, Hunt, Barret and Chryssides have all been preferred in the WP:OWN editing of the Rawat articles over other references. See: [ [236]]
The combination of WP:OWN, and WP:COI together with the use of a compromised academic source aligned with a particular academic perspective raises very particular WP:NPOV issues. It would be expected that [ [237]] would resolve this, however the WP:OWN problems have involved consistent citing of [ [238]] as a basis for excluding references to research authorship.
User:Jossi has chosen to be both editor and administrator to the Rawat articles, as an editor and talk page contributor he may be entitled to work from a partial perspective but as an administrator he must be expected to act impartially at all times; this he has not done. As evidence of a wider problem, Jossi’s respective treatment of User:Momento and User:PatW is useful to consider. User:Momento has a long history of uncooperative editing, only recently being properly sanctioned [ [239]] however User:Jossi, other than some rather mild ‘scolding’ has never threatened User:Momento with any sanction, and most tellingly given Jossi’s very active administration of the Rawat articles he makes no mention in his evidence here regarding Momento’s attrocious behaviour. In comparison User:Jossi singles out User:PatW for a full listing of his crimes. -- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 10:54, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
User:IsabellaW’s evidence has the appearance of web stalking rather than the ‘research’ that is claimed, and had he/she actually looked at Wikipedia rather than sources extraneous to this case, would have found my authorship of an article critical of Ron Geaves, to be acknowledge, on my WP talk page [ [240]] on Jossi’s talk page [ [241]] and both acknowledgements linked from the Prem Rawat article talk page[ [242]]. Being critical of a ‘source’ is surely part of the necessary process of producing a sound article and I am puzzled that User:IsabellaW considers http://www.prem-rawat-critique.org/geaves.htm to be problematic in the context of the Rawat articles. The WP article on Geaves is not currently at issue here but, I have never edited there, unlike Jossi who as a co-religionsist of Geaves might be consider to have a COI. It is notable that Geaves is critical of the authors Foss & Larkin and that Jossi has been resistant to including Foss & Larkin as a source in the Rawat articles [ [243]]. As User:IsabellaW has introduced criticism of Geaves as an “ideals balance, fairness and NPOV” issue into this case, the Arbitrators may wish to consider whether the WP article Ron Geaves should now become part of their material consideration. -- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 12:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
User:Sylviecyn has asked for the material posted by User:IsabellaW to be removed, and as it stands the User:IsabellaW material barely counts as more than an ‘attack’. If the arbitrators do deciced that the User:IsabellaW material should remain as part of this case, then the following issues come into play.
[User:IsablellaW]] refers to Brian Wilson, presumably meaning Bryan R. Wilson. Wilson advocated an approach to apostasy that was not universally accepted by sociologists (anti = Benjamin Zablocki) but which was enthusiastically adopted by a small group of ‘sociologists of religion’. The ‘Wilson’ position was vigorously promoted on the Prem Rawat talk page by User:Zappaz in terms that seem designed to create a ‘rule’ that notable Rawat apostates – Mishler, Hand, Finch etc, can under no circumstances be referenced or even refered to. In rebuttal of the postion advocated by User:Zappaz. User:Andries quotes a personal email from David G. Bromley, an academic who may be considered sympathetic to Bryan R. Wilson, in which Bromley effectively dispels the basis of User:Zappaz’s argument [ [244]]. It should be noted that Jossi was active in consistent argument with User:Andries and at no time contradicted User:Zappaz. Despite Bromley’s letter, the editorial direction of the Prem Rawat article remained firmly linked to references favouring academics sympathetic to Bryan R. Wilson, including those academics who have a connection to CESNUR and Massimo Introvigne, that latter is not as User:IsabellaW claims a “Professor” and his own work is all self published. Ron Geaves (see [ [245]] is a regular contributor to CESNUR conferences, his submitted papers include From Divine Light Mission to Elan Vital: An Exploration of Change and Adaptation [246] also connected to CESNUR are J. Gordon Melton and George D. Chryssides. User:Jossi has been an active editor on the WP Geaves, Melton and Chryssides articles, in itself that may not be an issue but it is problematic if an enthusiasm toward certain academics translates into over reliance upon those academics as sources in a given article.
The affidavit that User:IsabellaW was previously linked from the Prem Rawat article, the link was removed by admin User:Vassyana as being to an “attack site” [ [247]] The affidavit was the basis of complaint which I sought to have resolved in a number of ways – [ [248]] which includes the following salient points regarding the affidavit: Authenticity: The linked .pdf document has no proof of authenticity. There is no identifiable named Notary, neither is there any identification of a legal case in which this document has been tested, nor any evidence that the claimed respondent has even received case papers, let alone lodged a response. There is no means for a Wikipedia reader to verify the existence of the document, other than as an item published by Elan Vital. It is acknowledged by the publisher of the .pdf document – Elan Vital, that at the time this affidavit is claimed to have been taken Elan Vital was seeking substantial costs from the claimed author of the affidavit, raising serious questions about the freedom of expression available to the claimed author. Subsequent to writing the above, a copy of the affidavit was added to a list of documents at [249] bizzarely the submission date is 18 months ! after the case was closed, the affidavit is item 59 while item 58 is 25/07/2005 Notice of Discontinuance (Whole Proceeding); the affidavit remains untested in the Australian Courts. Further the respondent’s name does not even accord with case number. User:Jossi’s attitude in relation to the use of the affidavit can be judge by [ [250]] [ [251]] [ [252]]
User:Jossi’s resistance to a challenge to the validity of the affidafit is not surprising as it was Jossi who included it in the article text [
[253]] as well as adding the web site that was subsequently described as an attack site [
[254]]
Although not tested in Australian courts the affidavit was submitted by the defendant in a US case [
[255]] in which
User:Jossi was a named party, this case was current at the time
User:Jossi was including the affidavit into the
Prem Rawat article text. The case concerned defamation of one of the individuals named in the affidavit by the webmaster and owner of the website quoted by
User:IsabellaW. The judge in the US case rejected the affidavit as having no validity; the website owner was required to publish an apology.
--
Nik Wright2 (
talk)
15:32, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
User:Jossi has objected to the use of the term 'party' [ [256]], in the absence of any documentation readily available to the arbitrators I have struck through the term "party" in case its use should have any misleading implications. -- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 09:06, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Re: User: Momento evidence = [ [257]] My edit, which I believed had been adequately discussed, caused significant annoyance to the majority of active editors and User: Momento’s consistent failure to adopt WP:Assume good faith is evidenced by his casting all those who do not agree with his position as “the anti-Rawat crew”. The assertion that followers/students do not have a COI is plainly wrong. It is not my evidence that former followers/students have no COI, and I specifically acknowledged my own in my RfA statement. That Rawat’s current followers are so unwilling to acknowledge a COI is in itself a ‘good faith’ problem.-- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 11:47, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Re: User: Rumiton evidence = [ [258]] User:Rumiton begins by claiming that the ‘article’ (Prem Rawat) is “difficult to work on”. This attempted impostion of a paradigm is unhelpful in the extreme. The Rawat articles a very easy to work on because in large measure there is ample source material, the only difficulties have been those arising from chronic failures under WP:COI and WP:OWN. Using some highly partial points User:Rumiton goes on to construct a form of apologism for Rawat, while otherwise extraneous to the case in question, it does help reveal the mindset and COI of a committed follower, for example he writes “The 1970s stuff that we have was commissioned by or written from a Christian religious point of view or a sociological standpoint, and neither is very helpful in gaining a fair understanding of his life and work.” To take this as a standard for editing WP would restrict the available sources only to those that are, in a highly POV sense, ‘helpful’. It is not the role of WP editors to assess sources in terms that “help” an “understanding” of a biographical subject’s “work”. It is the role of WP editors to critically assess sources so as to provide an accurate historical presentation of a ‘subject’. -- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 11:57, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Re: User:Jayen466 evidence = [ [259]] usefully demonstrates the problem of ‘preferred’ academics. Bryan R. Wilson may be a useful source but his work is ‘particular’, no matter how glowing his obituaries were. I did not describe as User:Jayen466, states that Massimo Introvigne is “obscure”, but Massimo Introvigne also represents a ‘particular’ view, and whatever his ‘expert’ credentials are, he is not a professor as is claimed.
J. Gordon Melton is yet another academic of a very particular view, and further, is indeed an encyclopaedist. Articles such as those related to Prem Rawat require broad based referencing; reliance upon sources which either represent a narrowly selected academic view, or which rely on mere reconstructions of other encyclopaedias will not provide the necessary broad base to make a good WP article. User:Jayen466's comment that “these are mainstream scholars, though it is true that they are a source of irritation to many self-appointed anti-cult campaigners.” rather suggests that User:Jayen466 may have her/his own WP:COI to acknowledge. Turning this case into a cult versus anticult question seems unlikely to add any elucidation. -- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 12:12, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Re: User:Vassyana evidence = [ [260]]
Vassyana contends that: "A long list of diffs was provided during the COI noticeboard discussion in the wake of the Register article. The links intending to demonstrate that Jossi's COI is a recurring issue don't do much to impugn Jossi. This contention is supported by quotation of six diffs which Vassyana contends show “Jossi adding or restoring criticism to the article”."
In both cases Vassyana’s contentions seem partial toward Jossi’s often very clear bias (insertion of references approriate to supporting the Rawat party line) or otherwise unrelated to what actually the diffs are concerned with. Further WP:COI can not be adequately tested on the basis of comparison of limited particular diffs but upon behaviour over time; the diffs given at [ [261]] are not well sorted on the basis of relevance but as a collection do contribute to the evidence of Jossi’s own partiality in editing the Rawat articles. The fact that some references may contain some material that is not wholly complimentary to Rawat does not make them ‘critical’ or provide evidence of Jossi 'writing for the enemy' if the overall terms of the specific reference accord with the ‘official’ line promoted by the biographical subject and his advisers and representiatives. See [ [262]]
As Vassyana notes, the case refered to was closed as “baseless” however given the volume of evidence now before the Arbitrators the dismisal of the evidence in the earlier case seems to have been overly hasty and deserves to be considered within the context of all the evidene in the present case.
Vassyana refers to: [ [263]] This is appropriate to the present case because it deals directly with attempts to achieve clarity over the editing of the Rawat articles under the tag team control of Jossi, Rumiton and Momento. Vassyana’s reply unfortunately did not address my concerns. However I am grateful to Vassyana for an intervention which he has not listed but which is also relevant to the current case: [ [264]]
-- Nik Wright2 ( talk) 13:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I have been doing research about Prem Rawat and his students, and about his detractors, and I have found valuable substantiated information which may be of interest in these proceedings.
I am not familiar in the rules of evidence of these proceedings, and I would be grateful for some guidance.
While Prem Rawat has been known to have students that were overly passionate about his teachings, his detractors also appear to be, at times, overly determined in their profile and actions. My research indicates that Prem Rawat has had for about 10 years a small group of active opponents/detractors who have repeatedly resorted to unethical and at times illegal methods to prevent him from sharing his message of peace, and to prevent people interested in this message to cultivate their interest.
The members of this fringe group appear to be the same people who are now battling here on WIKI on an effort to inject a negative bias into the Wikipedia entries about Prem Rawat.
This group at times, have manipulated the media. One of them from Bristol, UK, posting under the alias Andrew Carpenter, gave an interview to the leading Bristol Evening Post on June 17, 2003 and managed to get a full page cover article with his in silhouette to protect his anonymity ( http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-14218076.html). He claimed that he had discovered grave financial irregularities in the accounting of the Elan Vital UK Charity, which promotes Prem Rawats message of peace in the UK and that he had just filed a complaint with the UK Charity commission. He indeed filed a complaint with the charity commission, but the investigation found no wrongdoing by Elan Vital: the complaint was frivolous, the journalist was duped and Elan Vital was found by the Charity Commission to be in good compliance with rules and regulations. Similar fictitious tax complaints have been sent by this small group to regulatory authorities in India, Australia and more. In each and every case, they resulted in the complaint being dismissed by the authorities. This "Andrew Carpenter" also posted several "articles" in IndyMedia websites ( http://india.indymedia.org/en/2003/10/8160.shtml). There is evidence that this Andrew Carpenter is one of the active critics participating in this WIKI article with the user name Nik Wright2, ( http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-india/2006-March/0322-d4.html) and has also published on anti-Rawat sites critical articles, under his real name. ( http://www.prem-rawat-critique.org/geaves.htm)
In 2001-2004, on the forum/chat room on the internet where they gather, they have made threats against Prem Rawat and his family. Some postings incited people to drug and kidnap members of Rawats family, to poison the water of the resort where he holds events, and even to broadcast false alerts that anthrax had been found in the conference hall. One posting even included a picture of a large butchers knife, saying it was intended for Prem Rawat ( http://www.one-reality.net/hate_speech1.htm). The small group also published the private phone numbers and floor plans of Prem Rawats house, and more.
The current owner and managers of that forum are the two persons that appeared in The Register article (one is named here as John Brauns). Although they now moderate postings and edit comments by its members that may bring a criminal liability upon this forum or cross the line into hate speech, (they have learned that it does not serve their cause), their destructive obsession with the subject matter is still evident.
In October 2006, this group discussed publicly intentions to conspire against Wikipedia. For example, one of them posted: "the way for exes to deal with Wiki should be 'all or nothing. It would make sense if every forum member joined in the editing there, if only to make Jossi Fresco work for a living and discredit Rawat in the process. Just join in, add a phrase here and there, change or remove things that are false, add things that are missing, generally raise hell? I say just either dive in and edit the fu*cker silly, however you see fit, hit-and-run style, or leave well alone. But do it for fun, if you do it at all. Wiki is not as important as its editors would have us believe." This posting provides a sense for the intent of the members of this group. ( http://www.prem-rawat-talk.org/forum/posts/10027.html)
My sense, after conducting a lot of research, is that the topic of Prem Rawat attracts not just the mainstream but also people with polarized, extreme views, and threatening behaviors. It is important to not allow operatives of a handful of fringe detractors to take advantage of Wikipedia's name equity to lead their own, no-cost, self-serving campaign against Prem Rawat and his students. These people should instead use their own websites for that, where they can air their own grievances and critiques as much as they want, under our fair speech laws.
In light of the above, it is even more incumbent upon the arbitrators to uphold the WIKI standards and ideals and ensure that balance, fairness and NPOV prevails. IsabellaW ( talk) 19:25, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Some of persons posting against a fair article on Prem Rawat claim to be apostates and some appear to be apostates. Quite a bit of academic literature has been written about apostates and their reliability and credibility.
Brian Wilson, a professor of Sociology at Oxford University, challenges the reliability of the apostates' testimony: according to him, “apostates are to be seen as one whose personal history predisposes him to bias with respect to both his previous religious commitment and affiliations, the suspicion must arise that he acts from a personal motivation to vindicate himself and to regain his self-esteem, by showing himself to have been first a victim but subsequently to have become a redeemed crusader.”
Prof. Massimo Introvigne from CESNUR (www.cesnur.org) the Center for the Study of New Religions, distinguishes between three level of apostates: level 1, where the person exits the movement without any negotiation and in a manner that minimizes damage for both parties. level 2 is when the departure of the person involves negotiation, but there are no ill feelings left afterthat. Level 3 apostasy, according to Introvigne, is when the ex-member dramatically reverses his loyalties and becomes a permanent enemy of the organization he has left, join a group fighting the movement, and often claims victimization.
In light of the above, it appears that the group opposing Prem Rawat on the internet, and of which members are trying to shape the Wikipedia article, is made of Type 3 apostates, with all the related issues of limited credibility and ulterior motives.
For example, Gordon Melton. director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion and is a research specialist with the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said that when investigating groups, hostile ex-members invariably shade the truth and blow out of proportion minor incidents turning them into major incidents ( http://www.hightruth.com/experts/melton.html)
In addition to the ones previously mentioned, other persons from this apostates' group include:
1. User:TGubler, from Brisbane, Australia, who admitted to stealing information from a computer belonging to a student of Prem Rawat that contained Elan Vital financial data and other personal data. ( http://elanvital.com.au/faq/article.php?id=024) He was also found guilty of contempt of court, and sentenced to two months in prison.
2. User:John Brauns, User:Wowest, User:Sylviecyn aka User:Another Ex-Premie, User:Jim Heller, User:Nik Wright2
Note that an award winning investigative journalist in Australia, himself an interviewer of three Australian Prime Ministers, in an authenticated affidavit with the Queensland Supreme Court in 2005, acknowledged having been duped by this detractors group and stated: “The goal of the group are often obsessive, malicious, and destructive in nature. Through the use of the internet, they interfere with the rights of people to experience their own spiritual discovery and for the purpose of harassing individuals who are students of Rawat. The group’s actions have included contacting of employers of students of Prem Rawat, sending letters to regulatory agencies and the media with unsupported allegations and rabid personal attacks on the character of individuals. … and the internet publication of false and defamatory stories about Rawat designed to cast him in a false light.” ( http://www.elanvital.org/faq/JMG_AFFIDAVIT.pdf) The affidavit signed by this reputable investigative journalist includes the names of several of the persons named in this arbitration.
Another core person in this group also from Australia ( http://www.ex-premie.org/pages/neville2.htm), tried to disrupt a convention near Brisbane, and was later arrested with $25Million of drugs—the largest seizure in the history of Queensland-- as well as unsecured and unlicensed firearms. ( http://www.elanvital.com.au/faq/PDF/ackland_drug_bust.pdf)
I also note that John Brauns removed the posting in which his small internet group was called to action and conspire against Wikipedia. Last time I checked this posting was there, but has just been removed. It was posted by a "Nigel" on 08/20/2006, 11:27:13. Maybe Mr. Brauns could check his backup or archives and confirm this. IsabellaW ( talk) 03:24, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
With comments in brackets
84.9.49.223 ( talk) 13:34, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Note: I've flagged later additions (aside from replies) with the word Add:
This detailed look at the edit war behind the second revert in Jossi’s 2nd 1RR ANI report on Francis [265] illustrates the dynamic well:
- Momento deletes criticism of Rawat (with scholarly source) under edit summary “(As per talk "Lede")”
[266].
- Francis reverts “Undid revision 198191994 by Momento (talk) misunderstanding: read talk page again”
[267]
- Momento reverts, “Deleted according to BLP. See talk ‘The Lede’”
[268];
- revert by LAWRENCE
[269];
- compromise by Jayen466
[270];
- self-revert by Jayen466 per talk accidentally reinstalls Momento’s version
[271];
- reverted by Francis to LAWRENCE’S with honest summary
[272];
- reverted by Momento with misleading summary “added context”
[273];
- reverted by Francis with other changes (“undid revision by Momento”)
[274];
- reverted hours later by Janice Rowe
[275] with misleading summary (“This is a better, more accurate revision”).
Pro-Rawat editors wanted to remove a picture of Rawat's home for POV reasons (its extravagance emphasized his wealth). Their arguments and policies change as they fail (in 5 separate talk threads mercifully refactored by Francis) but the goal remains the same. Overall thread [276]. Momento and others were edit-warring throughout [277] [278] despite ongoing dispute resolution [279]-- warned [280] defiant [281]:
1) Invasion of privacy (Momento)
[282]
[283]
2) Verifiability (Jossi)
[284]
3) Self-published (Jossi)
[285]
4) Wrong house (Momento
[286], Armeisen
[287])
5) Public record that includes personal details (Momento)
[288]
6) Unsourced (Momento)
[289]
7) L.A. Times not a reputable source (Armeisen)
[290]
[291]
8) Copyright / not fair use. This argument, raised elsewhere, finally stuck after dispute resolution
[292] (and I supported that deletion
[293])
3 pro-Rawat, single purpose account editors who aggressively move to block any changes away from a pro-Rawat POV on these pages acknowledge strong ties to the subject -- long-time devotees Momento ( [294] in answer to [295]) and Rumiton ("as a practicing premie" [296], plus [297] [298]), and recently Janice Rowe, (“I know several followers of Prem Rawat” [299] ; coy about herself.)
At least one of these -- usually Momento -- is involved in essentially every edit war on this page, with Talk page support from Jossi and the other two. They are supported by less frequent editors such as User:Rainer P. ("when I joined the ashram") [300] and User:Armeisen ("I've practised knowledge since I was 22.") [301]
Momento openly brags about "editing while blocked” [302] soon after 12 Janice Rowe article edits in 45 minutes [303] [304] [305] [306] [307] [308] [309] [310] [311] [312] [313] [314] -- her first edits since October 6, 2005 [315].
To Vassyana [316] to Vassyana [317] to Lawrence [318] to B [319] to Sandstein [320] to Will Beback [321]
Momento et. al. aggressively use Wikipedia policies such as Biographies of Living Persons, Exceptional Claims [322] and Sockpuppets of Zoe Croydon [323]) to justify edit-warring with exemption from the 3-Revert rule. They stretch logic severely to reach these havens e.g. "It is clear that in reducing two articles in the LA Times to two sentences Will Beback has made 'a conjectural interpretation of a source'." [324]
Out of many examples:
Momento:
1) repeatedly deleted an image during its Image For Deletion process without comment
[325] against consensus
[326]
[327]
[328]
[329] even after a neutral editor warned that BLP does not justify removal
[330]].
2) After very picky complaints including "Hunt doesn't say 'critics alleged', Hunt says 'critics have focused on'" Momento says "I am not going to spend my time repairing other editors distorted and inappropriate edits. I'm going to delete them.”
[331] and s/he did
[332], line 68.
Add:
3) "There aren't two sides to the truth. It's either true or it isn't. So a compromise isn't a compromise, it's a failure."
[333]
Janice Rowe:
1) She reverted several edits with at once, possibly to avoid a 1-Revert Rule violation technically, with summary "Too many changes to be able to follow them"
[334].
2) Reverted 7 of my relatively uncontroversial edits, with misleading edit summary (describing 1 of the 7)
[335] and refuses to discuss on Talk.
[336] On her user page, says "I disagree with your edits. It's that simple."
[337]
Rumiton:
1) discussing scholarly sources: "Well sourced, Andries, means, among other things, unbiased. None of your miserable Dutch Protestants, no Catholics or Lutherans, no Buddhists even. No members of competing theologies."
[338]
Add:2)
"There are no 'comparatively unbiased' editors here... We have no choice now but to keep contesting."
[339]
Jossi frequently fails to assume good faith when opposed on content [340] [341] [342] even with Will Beback. [343] Admits as much [344]. Claims editors must earn good faith; [345] "Show us that you are not biased." [346] Accused me of sock puppetry without any grounds ( [347] spelling out [348]) even after a warning [349], and mocked my reminder about good faith. [350] My replies. [351] [352] He apologized [353] [354] but refused to acknowledge me as a "comparatively unbiased editor." ( [355] in reply to [356])
I acknowledge that Jossi is usually very polite even under fire, in general and to me personally (even flattering [357]).
Jossi speaks in a "voice of God" tone of authority on Rawat-related Talk pages, brandishing Wikipedia policy [358] [359] [360] [361] [362] [363] and often threatening or reporting less pro-Rawat editors, [364] [365] [366] sometimes resulting in Administrators Noticeboard reports by Jossi [367] [368] or blocks by outside admins [369]; in at least one case that admin felt they had not been told the full story and unblocked. [370] As far as I know, Jossi has never threatened or reported a pro-Rawat editor. Where Jossi has cautioned Momento, his tone is softer and often sounds like coaching. [371] [372] [373] [374] The strongest criticism Jossi has for Momento in this arbitration is "narrow interpretation of BLP".
When Momento is reported by others, Jossi always defends.
1) AN
[375] -- explicit defense
[376]
[377]
[378];
argued against sanctions
[379];
rebutted criticisms.
[380],
[381],
[382].
Add:2) 1RR
[383] -- explicit defense
[384]
[385]
Add:3) 3RR
[386] -- defends by attacking Francis
[387]; vainly seeks page protection instead of block
[388]. The admin wrote "Blocked 24 hours, absurd that this was delayed by an involved admin."
[389]
4) BetaCommand lifted a block for sockpuppetry despite considerable evidence, solely on Jossi's word.
[390]
Add: Even during this ArbCom proceeding, Jossi is continuing to speak as if he represents Wikipedia management and the ArbCom itself (including threats of "harm" to those who disagree) [391] in his opposition to good faith efforts to improve the page, [392] (In this case he is asserting that [WP:BOLD] editing is disruptive and not allowed, and all changes must be made point by point.) This is the crux of his misbehavior. Msalt ( talk) 17:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Momento's intransigence appears to be fed by a sense of administrative support. In one edit war, Momento threatened "I will apply to have any person who puts [this photo] back blocked". [393]
Jossi seeks punishment of Francis for reverting two unrelated edits in one day under 1-Revert Rule protection. Janice Rowe reverted 7 of my relatively uncontroversial edits at once with a misleading edit summary (above). Jossi refused to criticize and defended her edit [394], complaining about “multiple edits in rapid succession” (below); Jossi's comment actually encouraged people to revert for disagreement. I reintroduced 6 of the 7 edits later without controversy, haven't had time for 7th but plan to.
Janice reverted 2 edits at once under 1-Revert Rule [395], including one of the edits that Jossi attacked Francis for – no 1-Revert Rule complaint or warning by Jossi.
See "One Edit War" above. Jossi seeks sanctions on Francis here while ignoring Momento's clearly worse behavior. He frequently attacks opposing editors for edit warring, somehow having no problem with the pro-Rawat editors they war with. He has been cautioned about his double standards and fails to reply. [396] [397]
Jossi defended Janice Rowe's disuptive edit as a response to "multiple edits in rapid succession", Add: [398] which are, "in an article under 1RR probation, a very bad idea." [399].
Later, Jossi had no complaint (even when asked directly about the double standard [400]) about much more contentious edits by pro-Rawat editors: Momento edited the article 7 times in 63 minutes the next day [401] [402] [403] [404] [405] [406] [407] and 11 times on March 15. Janice edited 8 times in 89 minutes on March 16th, including reverting one of Francis’ edits in Jossi’s 1RR complaint [408] [409] [410] [411] [412] [413] [414] [415].
Add: Jossi himself has been described as following controversial edits with multiple further edits in a way that makes reversion more difficult. See [416], point 3.
Jossi and Momento openly complained when uninvolved editors got involved. [417] [418] [419] What is wrong with that?
They use subtle techniques to effectively own the page, starting multiple Talk threads on same issue, [420] [421] [422] tieing up other editors with minor disputes [423], long ref tags that include POV statements [424] ; misleading, vague or missing edit summaries ( [425] [426] [427]); and obstructing consensus when it works against their POV. (EG Jossi won't admit a huge argument = controversy [428]; won't concede L.A. Times is reliable [429], second half of section from "Jossi, can you please give us your opinion"). For Momento et. al. see "These Users Reject Consensus and Collaboration," above).
Momento and Jossi spend many hours daily monitoring the article, which Jossi admits and defends. [430] Add: Together, Jossi, Momento, Rumiton and Janice Rowe have made 43.6% of the 3,748 article edits on Prem_Rawat, and 41.7% of the 10,014 Talk edits. [431] [432].
Add:Another technique: pressure to restrict sources beyond Wikipedia policy to only certain scholars. (Cf Nik Wright2, [433] and [434], see also Jayen466 [435] and IsabellaW. [436]) Momento, going further, argues against any news media sources and aggressively deletes edits that don't match his/her standards, claiming BLP. [437] Dispute resolution was necessary even to use the Los Angeles Times as a source. [438] This too is a double standard -- compare Jossi's comment about a non-scholarly pro-Rawat book [ [439].
Add:Jossi created a Talk subpage ( /scholars) with summaries or full text of articles, which he puts forth as a fair repository of acceptable sources. [440] [441], point 5. Most are very difficult for the average editor to access. At least one source is non-scholarly, [442]; another (Downton, Sacred Journeys) was described as not scholarly in several reviews in journals. 3 of the scholars included are devotees of Prem Rawat, (Geaves, Messer and Dupertuis, [443]) though two don't mention that in their articles. When I looked up one article, I found that the excerpting removed mostly material critical of Rawat. After I added it all to the subpage, [444] (supported by Jayen466 [445]) Jossi asked me on my User:Talk to self-revert on copyright grounds, [446] even though the subpage has full texts of articles favorable to Rawat [447] [448] [449] (still there) -- and Jossi offered another. [450] Only when pressed [451] did he allow that I could add "some passages." (I re-excerpted instead.) Jossi also discouraged me from moving that discussion to Prem Rawat Talk. [452] Earlier, Nik Wright2 presented a detailed and neutral list of additional scholarly sources on Talk. [453] Jossi ignored a request to add them to /Scholars [454], then attacked Nik's effort as "spam-linking" and "disruption." [455] Momento threatened to delete it from Talk under BLP. [456] [457]
All these tactics drive off neutral and opposing editors, perhaps by design. [458] Several neutral editors apparently have given up -- sarcasticidealist, David P., Pax Arcane, relata refero, Jim62sch and John Broughton. In this very proceeding, Jossi apparently seeks to block two of the most active voices challenging him, Francis and Pat W (who, while obviously unable to avoid personal attacks, has at least recused himself from editing.)
1. Re: Deletion of the rickross.com external link, I put that link there myself as a compromise, and agree that removal was fair.
2. Re: The Revert In the Lede, thank you for shedding light on those events. In my reply to Momento, I assumed that Francis shared my thinking, which of course I don't know, so I struck those words.
3. Re: @User:Msalt, Momento's first deletion in One Edit War, I don't want to rehash the content argument. In a sense it doesn't matter -- reasonable people disagreed, and continue to disagree. Momento was reverted or changed by different editors and kept edit-warring, without seeking compromise or pursuing dispute resolution, and without being forthright in edit summaries about what s/he was doing. S/he does this again and again, hence two blocks for edit warring in the last two months.
1. Re: Jossi's second 1RR Parole Report on Francis, the first revert was deleting unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material in a BLP, exempt from 1RR. For context of the second, see my section "One Edit War" above; this was the second-to-last edit there.
2. Re: Jossi's "Background" on Francis, Francis' large revert had significant talk page support: [459] [460]
3. Re: "Francis Schonken takes a surprising lenient attitude towards WP:NPA", I understand the indirectness of Francis' Talk page response ("Jossi interprets") to refer to that fact that the comment in question is directly addressed to Momento and some undefined "bunch", and does not mention Jossi. It's not clear why this situation upsets Jossi so much, given that Francis is not an admin and was the only person who DID say anything. But Jossi has justified his double standard with Francis vs. Momento as retaliation for this one comment [461].
4. Generally: Francis' big revert was very bold indeed, and he has at times succumbed to edit warring, though not to the extent of Momento, Janice Rowe, etc. and then only in an attempt to restrain them. Even Jossi has apparently edit warred on these pages, pre-recusal. [462] I also think that, speaking frankly, Francis is not very effective at explaining himself in DR, possibly due to English not being his first language (which, on the other hand, has made him valuable as a translator).
In all cases though Francis operated in a good faith effort to keep the page neutral, as expressed forthrightly here, [463] operating for the interests of Wikipedia not himself.
Unlike those he attempts to restrain, Francis has made many edits and comments that favor the opposing (pro-Rawat) POV, when that serves neutrality or Wikipedia in general. [464]; [465] (second part); [466]; [467](last part, line 2,239); [468] This has been recognized even by Rumiton and Momento on a number of occasions. [469] [470] [471]
1. Momento's words -- "fundamentally distort", "make things up to attack me", "false assertions" -- are very close to personal attacks, and unfortunately typical. See also [472].
2. Re: "you delete and add material 10 times every day", I concede that my Talk page comment overstated Momento's editing frequency, but when I wrote that, I sincerely felt it to be accurate (and many days it is). Note my Talk page reply. [473] Using the statistics of Jossi (148 edits from 2/8 to 3/25) [474] and Momento (4 to 1 Talk to Edit ratio) [475], and not counting 15 days the article was protected, the actual numbers are 19 edits per day, 4.78 of them in the main article. I further concede that Momento's edits are not "usually" (though often) without Talk comment.
3. Re: One Edit War, Jayen466's revert, "his summary... shows his removal of analysis was deliberate", good point. That would have been a strong argument in Talk, had you made it instead of reverting without comment (unless I'm just not finding it, always possible with all these archives). In good faith, Francis and I both took Jayen's edit to be a mistake. Note that Jayen's edit summary, and talk page comment, both said "self-revert" which contradicts your point, since Jayen changed from LAWRENCE's version initially.
[476] Since you mentioned it here, though, I went back and noticed that Jayen later crossed out the word "self" on the Talk comment,
[477] inidicating that he probably did intend to change and not just revert to LAWRENCE. He couldn't change the edit summary though, of course. (Note: I struck my conjecture above that Francis shared my thinking; of course I don't know that, and Jayen466 added information in his reply to me.)
4. Re: one Edit War, Momento's point 3 - "I did not remove one word", this is disengenuous. It is obviously reverting if you re-add material after you add it a first time, and another editor reverts -- whether you click the Undo button or do it manually. The edit summary was misleading because Momento made it sound like a new edit, not reverting a revert -- in fact, he continues to do so right here. Francis can fairly be criticized for reverting, but at least he was forthright about what he was doing.
5. Re: Double standard, "What's wrong with these edits?", I won't rehash the arguments, but there was extensive talk page controversy over the first 5 of these 7 edits, as well as the burst of edits overall and Jossi's lack of response. See the Blind Revert section of Archive 32 [478] from first outdent on, and the Teachings Section section of Archive 33 [479] from "One of Momento's sudden burst" [480] on.
Rumiton claims to have never edit warred. Here's a recent, cut and dried example (and I can find more if anyone likes; he's not disputing this one though.) Note that he does not even claim BLP exemption from 3RR and edit war restrictions; the edit he kept reverting simply condensed pro-Rawat material.
1. 1980 tour details summarized by Msalt 19:54 Feb. 17, 2008
[481]
2. Rumiton reverts 04:00 Feb 18
[482]
3. Cirt reverts 04:59 Feb 18
[483]
4. Rumiton Reverts 05:48 Feb 18
[484]
5. Cirt Reverts 16:32 Feb 18
[485]
6. Louise.Po (new user) reverts this and another edit war (“Balyogeshwar”), 19:32 Feb 18
[486]
7. Msalt reverts 20:53 Feb 18
[487] with invitation back to Talk page
[488] . This edit held (to date).
Msalt (
talk)
05:19, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Rumiton complained about my characterization of him as a single purpose account. I will concede that calling someone a single purpose account is subjective, and that Rumiton has edited a number of other pages. I still think the description is fair but clearly reasonable minds could disagree. I also revised my original comments about "3 SPA editors involved in essentially every edit war" to be more precise. Msalt ( talk) 17:46, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
I thank the Committee for indulging the delay and the length of this evidence; I worked as hard as I could to keep it tight. Msalt ( talk) 03:29, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
My reply moved. Rumiton ( talk) 03:34, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Although Jossi could have edited about any subject on Citizendium, he chose Rawat. Why? Because apparently his purpose for participation in Wikipedia, Citizendium, or most any other place is to promote the Rawat religion and ensure that everything said about Rawat is as positive as possible. If Wikipedia is serious about its credibility, Jossi represents a classic example of someone we need to prohibit from editing certain articles or article discussions for COI reasons.
Please see all Talk contents here. The arguments on this page are continuations from Prem Rawat Discussions page (so as not to disrupt those discussions). They are not deliberate soapboxing but arguments that were germane to the article. I defend this here and exemplify here and here.
For many the contention that Prem Rawat has a revisionist agenda here is hard to deny. They say 'history is written by winners'. In Wikipedia are winners those who are supported by the most wealth (with most time & commitment)? Jossi is a self-confessed current employee 'of a related organisation' (presumably The PremRawat Foundation' or 'Elan Vital') and was certainly past web-master for Prem Rawat, whose wealth is not disputed.
My 'diatribes' have been criticised for being 'too lengthy'. Put that down to me not being 'A Renaissance Man' like Jossi, but merely a historian of a rather more old-fashioned style. I have been thanked by many people for my contributions and for challenging Jossi, Momento and Ruminton's spin on the past.
"I have been following your posts on Wikipedia...Most of my adult life has been as a premie...but I feel the revisionism that is going on is outrageous. I was very much around in those years that are being revised and my memories are so different. It was a brilliant time and I loved it and can see no reason to cover it up....this was a big chunk of my life that is being told in untrue way"
I observe Jossi and Momento driving reasonable voices from talk Pages associated with Prem Rawat through persistent passive-aggression.Their tireless resistance simply wears down patience. Their combined arguing style amounts to filibustering and frustrating consensus. There is public amazement that Wikipedia tolerates someone so clearly conflicted being an administrator on the PR article.
When I accused Jossi and Momento of being 'horrible liars' I unwisely chose to call a spade a spade. The Rawat discussion page is full of outright lies to which sometimes the only response is to say as I have done: "I was there, you were not - what you are saying is completely untrue" as illustrated in the last few days here and in the previous thread here. My involvement from the outset (April 2006) was civil and constructive. Over the next 3 years the 'elephant in the room' for most people was mainly Jossi's perceived COI. I became increasingly frustrated.
'It also looks like a whitewash. You can't just revert to a no criticism version if there is in fact significant criticism. Undue weight does not mean delete, but reduce.' David D. (Talk) 20:00, 6 February 2008 "It's a well-documented fact -- that Rawat claimed to be the Perfect Master, Lord of the Universe, who encouraged followers to surrender everything to him as their object of devotion. It's inexcusable to leave this historical fact out of the article." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.180.142.2 02:05, 8 February 2008
Add: NB. This was in response to a statement by Jossi. Since I wrote this reply Jossi removed the statement from his evidence. Next link has been updated to correct Diff. PatW ( talk) 18:31, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Above
here Jossi quotes me as making this comment to Momento after the peer review:
So you agree with "everything Vassyana wrote"? You really are stretching the boundaries of belief there. Could that possibly be a cynical comment? Let's get this straight because your words and actions so far suggest quite the opposite.
In fact Momento had said he agreed with everything Vassayana wrote and I was challenging him on this. Jossi above conveniently omits to include my next sentences which listed Vassayana's comments which plainly ran contrary to Momento's beliefs - otherwise surely he and Jossi would not have been so keen to submit the article for a 'Good Article' merit. Judge for yourselves whether Jossi is fairly representing my meaning. Here is what I actually wrote:
So you agree with "everything Vassyana wrote"? You really are stretching the boundaries of belief there. Could that possibly be a cynical comment? Let's get this straight because your words and actions so far suggest quite the opposite. Please don't play games with us here. Please confirm that you really agree that:
(from 11 March Article fails GA Review with cynical reaction from Momento) PatW ( talk) 02:46, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Although years ago I discussed Rawat on the ex-premie forum along with many others, there seems to be the suggestion that I and other editors are somehow acting on Wikipedia as part of a planned 'activist' assault. This is simply untrue in my case. NB. I do not reciprocate their accusation. I do not suggest that followers of Rawat are conspiring any more or less than their opponents. My sole contention is that Jossi being bother player and referee upsets the balance and that as an employee of a related organisation, he seems to have more COI than other more individualistic editors. PatW ( talk) 23:17, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
It would seem that if you come to Wikipedia with a single purpose you can quite easily exploit a loophole that exists in the policy to appear otherwise. If you have enough time you can apply yourself to other articles and thus escape being branded as a single-purpose editor - even if you truly may be so. I would argue that, since Jossi's historic commitment to the Rawat articles far outweighs his other activities, he is equally single-purposed as I or Momento, Ruminton or Sylviecyn etc. If not far more so.
These facts simply speak for themselves: Who has the more single-purpose here, him or I? PatW ( talk) 23:38, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Mainspace | Edits to PR articles- | Total mainspace edits- | % |
Jossi | 2307 | 22811 | 10% |
Momento | 1125 | 1278 | 88% |
Andries | 1114 | 8474 | 13% |
Rumiton | 674 | 1465 | 46% |
Francis Schonken | 146 | 13171 | 1% |
John Brauns | 92 | 109 | 84% |
Jayen466 | 81 | 2031 | 4% |
Msalt | 76 | 508 | 15% |
Janice Rowe | 67 | 128 | 52% |
Will Beback (combined) | 59 | 36213 | 0% |
Sylviecyn | 47 | 51 | 92% |
PatW | 22 | 22 | 100% |
Nik Wright2 | 16 | 16 | 100% |
Talk pages | Edits to PR talk | Total talk edits | % |
Jossi | 3891 | 11625 | 33% |
Andries | 2286 | 8149 | 28% |
Momento | 1577 | 2362 | 67% |
PatW | 747 | 805 | 93% |
Rumiton | 554 | 1363 | 41% |
Sylviecyn | 414 | 444 | 93% |
Francis Schonken | 383 | 1166 | 33% |
Will Beback (combined) | 377 | 15258 | 2% |
John Brauns | 307 | 362 | 85% |
Msalt | 296 | 493 | 60% |
Jayen466 | 162 | 543 | 30% |
Nik Wright2 | 37 | 53 | 70% |
Janice Rowe | 27 | 40 | 68% |
One of the points of contention with the Prem Rawat article has been the inclusion of criticism. Jossi himself started " Criticism of Prem Rawat" ("COPR") and would not allow any critical material to be placed in the main article. Later he endorsed the merger of that material into the main article, but over time most of it has disappeared. There is now a debate over whether to expand the main article in order to include more critical viewpoints, or resurrect the "Criticism" article. Momento has opposed both options. In order to make a point about it, he twice created a Criticism of Jimbo Wales "COJW" article. [501] [502] Since then he has refused to participate in discussions over the "COPR" article because he claims to be too busy working on the "COJW" article. [503] [504] This is despite that fact that he's never shown any interest in the biography or criticisms of Jimbo Wales, and despitethe opposition of other editors working on that topic. He has defended the creation of "COJW" even though he says that "COPR" is inappropriate. [505] Therefore it appears that he has been acting disruptively in order to illustrate a point about "COPR". ·:· Will Beback ·:· 01:24, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Momento asserts that my 21 edits are the source of some of the trouble with the article, while he and his 774 edits are presumably blameless. He writes 1) that I've made false claims about his creation of Criticism of Jimbo Wales, 2) that I've supported disruptive editing, and 3) that I've used "conjectural interpretations".
Contrary to the points he's tried to make, I assert that Momento's behavior in this arbitration goes to show that he is a POV-pusher, a tendentious editor, and an article owner. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 08:46, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
I the past few days, perhaps as a response to the appearance that the ArbCom is taking little action, there has been a noticeable increase in tendentious editing, article ownership, and incivility by the "pro-" editors.
I had prepared another statement with some links and diffs but have decided to not to post it in strong protest of IsabellaW's comments on this page. This is the last time I’m willing to tolerate any use of Wikipedia by followers of Prem Rawat to defame me.
Some background: This is the second time in two weeks IsabellaW has posted her so-called "research" that includes a link to a premie website that uses the real names of former Rawat followers (ex-premies) including photos, to defame them (myself included). The first time IsabellaW posted her libellous garbage was on March 11th on the Prem Rawat talk page. See diff. For your information, the only people in the world who accuse former followers of being a hate-group are the current followers of Prem Rawat, and his supporting organization, Elan Vital on its websites. What IsabellaW has posted isn't evidence of anything, nor is it rearch by any stretch of the imagination. I want it removed from this page and the Prem Rawat talk page.
The owner of the website IsabellaW cited, called "One-Reality.net," is Wikipedia user Gstaker, who also was the "John Doe" defendant in a California defamation lawsuit, the settlement of which required him to remove all defamation material and photos of San Francisco Attorney Marianne Bachers, who was the plaintiff in the matter. Jossi Fresco was a subpoenaed witness in that matter. The link to that website remains on the Gstaker user talk page, although Staker had been sternly warned by Vassyana last summer to remove it, after I complained then. See GStaker. By the way, while you're there, take a good, long, hard look at the history pages and diffs of Gstaker’s talk pages, just to give you a sense of the type and style of personal attacks I've been subjected to on Wikipedia by the devotees of Prem Rawat, with no action or reaction by Jossi Fresco, other than to warn me on my talk pages not to threaten legal action and to watch what I say. I’m not planning legal action now, nor am I threatening it. I simply want the defamation of my name removed from Wikipedia and I want it removed now. This is a very serious matter that has gone on long enough.
If anyone wants to ask me questions about this, please feel free to do so on my userpage or on the discussion page of this ARB. Thank you. Sylviecyn ( talk) 01:25, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
I'll keep this short, but will have to discuss the subject to some extent to do so. Prem Rawat has led a controversial life. He was born into an intense Sant Mat family in India and groomed as the successor to his father, the previous leader of his particular group and considered a satguru. In an extraordinary act, the audacity of which seems to escape most observers, he left his country and his family more or less permanently at the age of 13 and established himself in the USA. Inevitably he brought with him some of the ideas and customs of his homeland, and equally inevitably these ideas caused some havoc when applied rigorously in the west (hence the critical blogs from some ex-followers today.) After the initial, largely mocking media response, he withdrew from seeking any further publicity, and as a result of this, neutral, scholarly articles from the last 28 years or so are rare, though he has been very active internationally during this period. The 1970s stuff that we have was commissioned by or written from a Christian religious point of view or a sociological standpoint, and neither is very helpful in gaining a fair understanding of his life and work. That is why well-considered input from people who were there would be helpful, and it is why I personally feel disappointed that discussions so often end up like schoolyard hair-pulling matches. Either that or pompous, long winded rants that seem not intended to help the article, but to highlight how clever and important the writer is. I know I am not Snow White myself, but I hope my edits have shown at least an attempt to deal with the subject encyclopedically. Rumiton ( talk) 14:55, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Many of the statements you make above are unsupported by the refs you provide, as the Committee will find for themselves. I will just answer the allegation you made against me, as one of: 3 pro-Rawat SPA editors involved in essentially every edit war... I am not a SPA. I have made over 3000 edits on Wikipedia to a wide variety of articles of personal interest. I have concentrated on the Prem Rawat articles as they seemed to have needed the most help. I have never been involved in an edit war. Rumiton ( talk) 13:09, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for the apology, Msalt, but you have now created another problem. You point out [525] that at 1357 on Mar 10, I deleted a ref from Time Magazine on the subject of his family's "demonstration of worship". Yes, I did. You omit to note that 2 minutes later at 1359 I pasted it into a more appropriate section of the article. How on earth does moving text around to create readability have the effect of "subtlely deleting" it? You also say: "I will also concede that Rumiton does not edit war nearly to the extent that Momento does..." As far as I know, I have NEVER edit warred on any Wikipedia article, and Momento's revertings have almost all been in defence of WP:BLP and therefore are not edit warring either. Rumiton ( talk) 13:10, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Now you again accuse me of edit warring. Edit warring occurs when an editor “..repeatedly reverts content edits.” I restored text that you deleted without discussion which named the 10 overseas cities Prem Rawat spoke at in one year (1980). You had changed it to, “He also spoke at several cities in Europe and South America." This was not, in my opinion, “simply condensed” material, it was negative POV. My edit summary said "rv undiscussed deletion which included interesting and important information. Pls discuss." You later wanted to insert details about a house he bought 34 years ago and an arrangement arrived at with the Los Angeles Fire Department, not because it had anything to do with his notability but because it could be presented critically.
You further say, “I will concede that calling someone a single purpose account is subjective.” No it isn’t, it is clear-cut, and this is just another of your insults. SPA means someone who confines him/herself ONLY to one subject, and therefore lacks a wider Wikipedia perspective. I have made hundreds of edits to a wide range of articles, and have acted successfully as a mediator (on the Jesus Army page.) I hold a Master’s License and a degree in Nautical Science, and have edited maritime articles as an expert editor including Titanic related. See my Talk Page for the details.
You have said regarding the notability of ex-premies, "Certainly prominent enough to warrant a disambiguation page. Interestingly, you neglected to include a standard google search where the entire first page (1-10) are all Rawat's ex-premies." You must be running a different copy of Google to me. When I search for "Prem Rawat" only 2 sites come up that are negative about him, ex-premie.org and prem-rawat-talk.org. In the first ten, they appear as 6 and 7. After that they fade from the pages, and by the third page the hundreds of positive sites dominate. Sorry, I misunderstood. You were comparing ex-premies to premature babies and questioning the need for disambiguation. Disambiguate away!
Rumiton (
talk) 09:36, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Rumiton (
talk)
10:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Looking at the Sahaj Marg page you are apparently trying to restore, the refs you give are all either promotional (issued by the organisation), unreliable internet sites (blogs), or primary documents (courtcase precis etc.), which require interpretation by a reputable secondary source before becoming acceptable to Wikipedia, see WP:PSTS. There appear to be no reputable secondary sources who have looked at the Sahaj Marg, which no doubt was why the article was deleted in the first place. Jossi was only serving the stated goals of Wikipedia by redeleting it. You say: "he may not be able to properly use the administrative tools, given his direct involvement with controversial subjects." I can only say: Nonsense. He has shown himself to be extremely capable of neutrality. Rumiton ( talk) 13:24, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. I concur absolutely. Rumiton ( talk) 14:45, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
You now say I called Alan Watts an unreliable source. No such thing. I said his use of oxymoron ("sacred ignorance") made his meaning unclear and misleading. Rumiton ( talk) 13:16, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
I believe the problems associated with this article are mostly those of content. In any other article I am sure we could all cooperate, working within Wikipedia rules and guidelines, but it is not happening here. The article has become a growing mishmash of contradictions inserted by editors to support their POVs and counter the opposition, and the truth is not in it. The following is a summary of Prem Rawat’s work as I see it. Please don’t shout OR and SYN at me. I have heard these things before, but I believe the only way to make a stable article of this is for editors to think and act intelligently and independently, even if it means circumventing some of Wikipedia’s precepts. (Though I believe there is even somewhere a rule that says the rules should be disobeyed if it is necessary to create a good article.)
1.Prem Rawat is the heir to an Indian tradition of Sant Mat masters. It is a respected tradition, but not an uncontested one.
2.His title has variously been Guru, Satguru, Teacher and Master.
3.The tradition involved the teaching of Knowledge, (a set of four techniques for spiritual development and inner peace), Satsang), (keeping in touch with the guru and other practitioners), and seva, (service, helping the guru propagate the Knowledge.) Service extends to regarding the guru as an embodiment of divinity, referring to and serving him in that manner, and to him referring to himself the same way.
4.These four techniques, see particularly khecari mudra, and the practice of guru service are part of a long Guru-Disciple tradition which is respected, in fact revered, in India.
5.Another part of the tradition was the providing of accommodation and a renunciate, serving lifestyle to those who chose it. These houses were called ashrams. This tradition is also revered in India.
6.At the age of 12 he apparently unilaterally made the decision to take his message to the west.
7.Initially he and the other assistants he brought with him tried to apply traditional Indian methods, such as ashram living, to the spreading of his message. This provided benefits but also problems. Lacking a renunciate tradition, many westerners found themselves unsuited to the ashram lifestyle, and the ashrams were often seen as work houses and worse by the public.
8.As the Guru-disciple tradition was almost entirely unknown outside Asia, the publicity the adolescent guru received in the 70s was largely negative. Service was seen as servitude, he was criticised for not himself living a renunciate lifestyle, and the techniques, as they became publically known, were ridiculed.
9.In the early 80s, Prem Rawat closed the ashrams, abandoned the Indian peripherals and changed his public style to a more internationally acceptable presentation, while keeping what he saw as the essentials; service, satsang and meditation on the techniques. In recent years he has concentrated on airing videos of his public speeches, with an open invitation to proceed further only if people wish to.
10.From around 1980, Prem Rawat proceeded by word of mouth, not encouraging inspection by academics and journalists, so the sources that are available to us today in English are mostly from the very early period, often written by religious scholars or tabloid journalists, largely people with little understanding and scant respect for Indian traditions and practices. They misunderstood (and in some cases cynically misrepresented) the Indian terminology and the guru-disciple relationship itself. Even the very few that were fair and scholarly are now nearly 30 years out of date. If we are to create a good Wikipedia article we cannot rely on them.
Comments, please.
A large number of accusations, rebuttals and counter-accusations are flying about. I will be presenting evidence that reviews that other evidence and details my experiences with the topic.
A long list of diffs was provided during the COI noticeboard discussion in the wake of the Register article. The links intending to demonstrate that Jossi's COI is a recurring issue don't do much to impugn Jossi. (You may find the thread in question at: Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 22#Jossi COI diffs. I will not repeat all of the discussion and diffs present in that thread, but rather leave the archive link as evidence.)
Addressing the long list of diffs (one of the diffs is not Jossi's [526]), I didn't find very much that is even vaguely questionable. Most of them seem to be copyedits, revisions and expansions following reliable sources, removing unsourced claims, reversions of vandalism, etc. It seems like he's generally doing exactly what any Wikipedia editor should be doing when editing an article.
Jossi reverted another editor's addition of {{ credibility}} tags for a particular source using a dismissive edit summary (calling the addition "silly"). [527] The tagger restored the tags, was reverted by another user, again restored the tags and then self-reverted. This, by far, is the most potentially problematic diff I could find in the lot. It seems to be as isolated incident and it occurred nearly a year ago.
Jossi added some personal information about Prem Rawat that could be construed as promotional, but that seems perfectly normal for a bio. The material was added with sources and the edit summary encourages others to revert and/or object if they disagree with the addition. [528]
Jossi did remove a few categories, which was accompanied by a talk page explanation. [529] The categories have not been restored to the article.
Jossi engaged in some reverts against opponents, but these seem to be clear cases of BLP enforcement. [530]
For such a long list of diffs and strong accusations, I would expect clearer indications of wrongdoing and more than a few isolated instances.
Interestingly, the diffs provided include several instances of Jossi adding or restoring criticism to the article. [531] [532] [533] [534] [535] [536]
For the record, I have only reviewed the diffs up to the one numbered "62". After reviewing 55 diffs, with only two that could be construed in any rational way as remotely problematic (removed tag with dismissive summary; potentially promotional addition) and six showing willingness to add critical material, I stopped reviewing them due to the trend. The long list of diffs purporting to show Jossi's violation of WP:COI instead show little but (at worst) a few isolated instances. On the contrary, they appear to indicate that Jossi has edited within the rules of Wikipedia, even going so far as "writing for the enemy". It should be noted that this COI complaint was closed as baseless, which is consistent with how previous complaints about Jossi in relation to COI have been handled (see for example Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive 24#Jossi's Conflict of Interest). Vassyana ( talk) 16:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
What follows is a general overview of my participation, and discussions surrounding it, in the Prem Rawat article. I have linked to diffs when necessary for ease of reference. However, I am linking to the archive sections in question to avoid misrepresenting the exchanges and to avoid taking undue space here. Also, the context of my participation and the discussions surrounding my comments are important to consider.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 23#GA Review (Failed). My initial good article review that failed the candidate.
Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive 23#Comments on GA Review (Failed). The discussion immediately following, including the exchange between PatW and Momento mentioned multiple times above.
Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_23#Progress. After some initial work done on the article, I was asked for feedback and responded positively, seeing improvement.
Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_23#Moving on. (Diff: [537]) I provide some further clarification and feedback, noting flaws remain and commenting about appropriate sources.
Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_23#Primary sources. I recommended some guidelines on dealing with Divine Light Mission primary sources. Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Discussion. The main discussion about the proposed idea and related issues. Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Please. I implore people to focus on building the article, some further discussion.
Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive 24#Please 2. Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive 24#Cool down. I further implored people to work constructively. There was little response to my pleas. Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_24#Truce and Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Comments. A proposed "truce" and limited comments.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Current state of things. After an absence due to some computer issues, I returned to touch base. In the discussion, it is explained by some participants why they disagreed with the truce proposal. The explanations are important, as they reflect the broader concerns of some editors.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Prem_Rawat/Bio proposal - New Edits- Vassayana please comment. I was invited to comment in this section, and I did (diff: [538]). I noted that some editors on both "sides" seemed to be supporting a biased presentation (diff: [539]). Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Outside neutral source about the guru's divinity. I presented a source as an example of what I meant in the earlier section. Only Jossi responded.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Some thoughts. In this section, I defend Sylviecyn's right to disagree with me and object to my suggestions. I pressed some editors for more detailed and constructive feedback to little avail.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Important questions and Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Responses. Momento worked on a draft in an article talk subpage and imported it into mainspace. There were objections to the changes and I solicited explanations.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#BLP violations. I addressed what I felt at the time were BLP violations. I also expressed deep disappointment in the article, feeling it had become worse by way of advocacy from both supporters and detractors.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Moving right along. Accusations and bad faith were flying about. I made further pleas for peace. (The "comment above" mentioned in the thread is this: [540].)
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Removal of invisible message. I was involved in a minor dispute (of WP:LAME caliber had it continued) over an invisible message. (I was wrong and being more than a bit silly over such an inconsequential thing.) However, it is the discussion that follows that is important, as it reveals the editing atmosphere at that time.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#Principles of Neutrality in Language. Nik Wright2 raised some concerns to my attention and I replied.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 25#DECA. A discussion regarding a business/material goods reportedly owned by Rawat. Another discussion important for understanding the atmosphere and context of the dispute and its participants. Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 25#Updated Version. A similarly important section to review.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 25#Mediation. I explained that formal mediation should not be used as evidence or a weapon against another editor. Snark flows freely throughout this thread from multiple parties.
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 26#NPOV Criticism. In the archived section, I once again implore everyone involved to drop unproductive/snarky issues. Also, the section generally involves some back and forth between editors.
After that, my participation and awareness of the issues on the article declined, though my GA review and other comments were sporadically mentioned by editors on both "sides". In general, it seems as though there are a few new faces, but that the same issues with the editing atmosphere and behavior currently persist at the Prem Rawat article. Also, many of the same issues are being continually retread, which is a sign of the lack of progress in terms of atmosphere and consensus building. My apologies for the length of the linked material, but I feel overall it provides a good snapshot of my participation and of the ongoing dispute present at the article. If the arbitrators or participants need specific diffs or further elaboration, please leave a message on my talk page and I will do my best to assist. Vassyana ( talk) 18:18, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
The removal of a site is mentioned by Nik. [541] The accompanying talk page discussion is: Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 24#BLP violations. Vassyana ( talk) 14:00, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Jossi was perfectly correct in deleting any repost of the Sahaj Marg article under Wikipedia:CSD#G4. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sahaj Marg demonstrated a clear consensus for deletion. Unless significantly improved with independent reliable sources, reposts will be subject to speedy deletion without further discussion. This is a standard accepted practice on the wiki. Vassyana ( talk) 14:43, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
On his userpage ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jossi/About ) Jossi declares himself to be "a proud student of Prem Rawat". An impartial student? No. A proud one. Not exactly NPOV for starters is it?
Then, in his disclosure - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jossi/Disclosure - Jossi declares his intention "to continue to ... correct mistaken or out-of-date facts" What exactly is he trying to say here? How can a fact become 'out-of-date'? When revisionists get to write the history books?
That's precisely what he and other 'students' of Rawat have been trying to do in an article that predominantly portrays a whitewashed picture of Rawat and the claims to divinity that he undeniably made yet which he now wants to see expunged from the historical record.
More of Jossi's revisionist tendencies are evidenced here: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk%3AJossi&diff=130324547&oldid=130293611
Revera ( talk) 22:07, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I have read the Register article. I don't know if it is an accurate portrayal of the situation or not.
What I do know is that Prem Rawat has received a lot of press coverage [542], a lot of it critical. This is not adequately covered in the article.
I hope the arbcom committee, after reviewing all the evidence will be able to answer the following questions:
1) Given Rawat's large press and scholarly coverage, why is there so little of this criticisms in this article?
2) Should Jossi have any participation on these pages?
Question #2 is very important. After reviewing the page, it appears that that Jossi participates in every decision for the Prem articles, from something as mundane as word choice: Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_34#Is it accurate to say that Rawat tours 'extensively'? to something as intricate as how to handle criticisms: Talk:Prem_Rawat#Criticism_of_Prem_Rawat.
The situation is a bit surreal. We have an admin, with extensive participation and influence in Rawat articles...and we have a press release which says, contact this admin at the Prem Rawat foundation? [ [543]] And this editor despite being asked, has not disclosed his affiliation, though he is willing "to consider" disclosing further information if asked by the arbcom committee?
The situation gets even more surreal as we look at the COI policy page. Here is Jossi's first edit to it: [ [544]], where he starts right in on "religious leaders." His first edit to the page is to change the COI requirements for teacher/student relationships for editors! You can follow the diffs. Here is another I found alarming: [ [545]]
Hohohahaha ( talk) 15:39, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Clarification of the COI policy will be critical in this case, and it must be cautious. The COI policy should not exclude members of groups (paid or not), because these same members often know the most about topics they are writing on, and, they are often more neutral than ex-members or disgruntled members.
For instance, CDC epidemiologists know about CDC policies and findings regarding disease and health produced by their agency, Catholic teachers know much about Catholicism, professors at Harvard University know much about Harvard University (as do students), and so forth. Should any of these be banned just because they are a member of a certain group? Absolutely not.
I think in particular of one of the more productive Wiki editors who is a Lutheran pastor and writes frequently on those topics. He is getting paid to be a Lutheran pastor, so is a paid member of the group, and he has studied various aspects of Lutheranism for years and years, so offers an invaluable level of detail and accuracy to Wikipedia. Should he be banned? Absolutely not.
When I examine edit wars and conflicts across Wikipedia, those "anti" a group/topic/person are usually the ones most stridently promoting a POV when compared to other editors. More often than not these "anti" persons (e.g., ex-members, disgruntled members, etc.) are prone to what can be referred to as the Rush Limbaugh effect -- exaggeration and mis-representation of selectively chosen statements or content to promote a POV. Often, these claims have a small kernel of truth in them (i.e., an initial statement that is true) but they are taken so out of context and twisted and turned so much that they bear little resemblance to what a reasonable, knowledgeable layperson would get from the initial statement if read in context.
Another group that runs a strong risk of COI is bloggers (both for and against a topic). Editors who also run blogs and engage in other opinion-promotion activities seem to have the most difficult time abiding by Wikipedia's policy of neutrality and verifiability. (I am not saying that is the case with Prem Rawat as I have not examined the diffs carefully enough; I am just writing this because the COI policy that comes out of this case will affect us all.)
Here are some suggested policy statements:
Windy Wanderer ( talk) 22:40, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Jossi has established himself as promoter of one particular view on wikipedia, this I have noticed when one of the user approached him (only) for deletion of one article here [546], and jossi promptly deleted the same without any discussion about the topic, I noticed that arguments given for previous deletion of the same cult related article was notability issue and lack of secondary sources, which are/were absolutely untrue as i found plenty of secondary sources [547] and even found one complete category about the same topic on French wikipedia. [548]. This approach (as it appears to me) is highly discouraging for philosophy with which wikipedia was established, to give information and not to hide it. Most surprising aspect of all the discussion that i had so far, with members having direct involvement with the group in question, is they cannot tolerate any critical information about the subject, and as a result, the page then experiences edit wars and 3RR violations and looses stability. The most efficient way of dealing with COI (direct involvement) is NOT to block the user from editing to the article, but to make sure, that the user having COI do not remove any information from the article, but only add to the page with the domain s/he is more comfortable with, as removal of properly sourced information, blocks the complete picture of the article, If there are two contradictory information available about the subject which can be properly sourced then both should be added in the article.
Given users approaching Jossi for deletion of information (without any discussion or notice to others who may have interest in the related topic) seriously undermines the ethics expected from an administrator on wikipedia, Jossi's contribution to wikipedia as an editor are most welcomed, but he may not be able to properly use the administrative tools, given his direct involvement with controversial subjects.-- Cult free world ( talk) 12:14, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
There are 17 ref's i am able to find till now [549], still searching and will add more. Out of these 17 can you point out which one exactly is:-
On analyzing the history deeply, i found this delete was against the philosophy of wikipedia, first deletion was nominated by Jossi only [550], and second time, when someone tried to push back the cult promoters on wikipedia, the page was deleted by Jossi [551], Why Renee approached Jossi only ? and requested him to delete the page ? [552], which Jossi deleted promptly [553] if Jossi had not established himself as promoter of one particular view on wikipedia, why would people approach him for help in cult related articles ? Why no AfD tag on the page for other's to see and participate in deletion discussion ? To my understanding, Jossi's edits and usage of admin tools must have been highly biased, which gave members of groups (referred as cults) free will to manipulate wikiepdia article to suit their POV.I will try and explain the situation (Jossi with admin tools) with a very crude example, joy of jihadi terrorists when pakistan became nuclear nation. [554] A nuclear Pakistan need to be very careful and guard its nuclear facilities with 10000 troops, [555], else there is US [556]-- Cult free world ( talk) 06:50, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Kindly note, nomination for deletion was done by jossi, and who all are present in the nomination process ? [557]
Now my concern. Any person involved with one group, will have a POV towards other similar groups, and as such neutrality of usage of admin tools related with similar articles cannot be confirmed. I do not believe that deletion of a page by me is a neutral act if I have previously nominated the same article for deletion, that is over and above a declaration. Jossi's contribution are important for wikipedia, but his usage of admin tools may not be neutral. Can neutrality of a wikipedia article be confirmed which is written by all the above mentioned user's (with exception of don) ? -- talk-to-me! ( talk) 15:59, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Evidence by unsuspecting passer-by user:Mukadderat who got himself into trouble for nothing:
Regular participants of the editing in these topics throrughly forgotten what is wikipedia for and are engaged in thick wikipedia:Wikilawyering for whatever political purposes in lieu of discussion of editing merits. And user:jossi is among prime ocrhestrators of this.
Proposal 1: user:Jossi must be banned from any participation in this topic whatsoever, including discussion in talk pages, both becuse of his conflict of interest and behavior incompatible with position of administrator.
Proposal 2 the 1-RR rule must be revised that is someone's edits are reverted then if there are no valid objections stated in the talk page after a reasonable timewhen demanded, then the original athour has unconditional right to reinstate it and keep it there without any quotas until content objections (not simoply formal objections) delivered. I believe this proposal will decrease power of wikipedia:Wikilawyering in favor of content discussion.
Brief history While doing word search I occasionally run on this topic and did some minor changes, withoud adding any new content, mostly trying to provide various links between various pieces of info. In particular I added an innocent sentence into Criticism of Prem Rawat saying that the organization Divine Light where he was guru was also criticized. After a while I noticed it disappeared from the text. Looking into history, I noticed there was reversal of anons and I decided that disappearance of my text was "collateral damage" of fight with anon vandals, so I restored my piece without making much fuss. Next thing I see my text deleted again with ridiulous editu summary "removed unsourced material as per talk". I looked into the talk page and did'n notice any explanation. I restored my text and demanded explanation wich exactly reference they want, which was rather ridiculous request IMO: why would anyone need a reference to phrase "The Divine Light Mission with Prem Rawat as its guru was also criticized as a sect or cult." -- The article " Divine Light Mission" has a screenfull of references to this end. After that I received a notice on my talk page that the article in on 1RR probation and exact pointer where my edits were discussed.
After looking there, the first my feeling was that of a fly which occasinally flew into a dining room and being swatted. Rather than discussing any merits of my rather trivial edit, great energy was spent on desire to revert my edit whatever it costs on formal reasons. And it was started by user:Jossi, who is obviously vigilantly watches the aticle, and while not editing it himself, calls his army to arms against unwanted intruders. What happened next is a shame to wikipedia community: someone emitted a cry: "I already spent my 1 revert! Please, someone revert him!" If it is not shameless meatpuppetry then I am Jesus Christ.
Next thing and user:Jossi starts threathening me with sanctions if I not behave how in wants. And after 12 minutes!!!!' since his warning he implements his threat: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User:Mukadderat_1RR_probation_violation. In this page I defended myself with analysis why I consider this act as extemely inappropriate and frivolous, so I will not repeat myself.
Conclusion This extremeny brief edting episode demonstrates several acts of inappropriate beaviour of user:Jossi
I am a rather tolerant person and not edit warrior, as may be verified in some other controversial articles I edited, such as Islamophobia, Pontian Greek Genocide or Goy. But I see this beavior of user:Jossi as utterly incompatible with the position of an admn and here I decided to increase my levei of intoleance and I will be closely watching his editing activity to verify whether it is time to initiate a motion of desysopping this person. Mukadderat ( talk) 18:21, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I've been following this case with interest from afar, but I just wanted to add a note at my disappointment in seeing User:Jossi suggesting during this case that several people who don't share his POV might want to leave the article. Namely User:Francis Schonken [568], User:Maelefique [569] and (more subtly) User:Will Beback [570].
This more or less sums up the feeling I've had about the page from following the article and talk page for some months. If there's absolutely no element of WP:OWN here, then I'm a banana. Hypnotist uk ( talk) 12:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person
Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.