Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-09-02 Relationship between religion and science

Comment by Catherineyronwode

Proleptic preface

I apologize in advance for the length of the following. I have been documenting this material offline for a while. I brought it together at my user space on September 4, 2008 with the idea of making an AN/I report against hrafn. On Spetmeber 6th, on finding this mediation discussion in progress, i realized that this mediation page is a far better place to post the results of my reasearch.

In the interest of full disclosere, i will also note that right after i placed this material online at my own user sub-page sandbox and asked three or four editors to look it over and help me with typos and grammar, i was brought up on an AN/I report by dave souza, one of the accused "cabalists" here.

Souza was aware of my tentative work on an AN/I report against hrafn, as he noted here, on my talk page.

My private AN/I sandbox page also received an uncomplimentary drive-by visit from Jim62sch.

And here is the possible "cabal" participant Orangemarlin warning possible "cabal" editor hrafn about my AN/I sandbox. He found it "boring," or so he said. So, again, they seem to be playing tag with one another. Wether this is evidence of cabalishness, i leave it to the reader to consider.

Neither dave souza nor Jim62sch nor Orangemarlin was previously known to me. The only editor i was trying to understand was hrafn. I was actually surpised to see the four of them named together in this mediation request, as i had only learned of their interconnection through their mutual discussion of my sandbox. They do seem to know each other and they may indeed work together.

I beleive that these four editors were viewing my sandbox as a result of their having become involved in deleting some edits that my husband recently made, in his first attempt to edit at Wikpedia in a year or more. (He created a POV-fork that he called "Psudoskepic target" as a sort of demonstration of what he found unaccpetable among the anti-religion folks because some religiouse topics had been categorized as "pseudoscience." (His method of demonstrating this was more or less an "Other Stuff Exists" exercise, but he is not familiar with Wikipedia mores.) They may have been following my husband's edits and found my sandbox about hrafn, where my husband had commented -- but, in any case, i had not previously conflicted with them.

As i said, what i offer below is simple evidence of hrafn's months-long use of non-consensual deletes and redirects that effaced or eliminated useful Wikipedia pages about small, minority religions and spiritual beliefs, including Unity Church, Church of Divine Science, and so forth.

I am not a member of any of these religions, just an editor who noticed something disturbing enough that i documented it. I hope it is of use in this mediation discussion.

And, again, my apologies for the length.

cat yronwode (updated Catherineyronwode (talk) 08:20, 7 September 2008 (UTC) )[reply]

Premise

Editor hrafn is engaging in a disruptive, biased, tendentious, and POV-pushing war against New Thought and Christian pages.

Hrafn's Incivility

My main purpose here is not to enforce civility rules, but i will note that hrafn is given to incivil laguage and to making threats:

"Put up or shut up!

TROLL

"I would (...) suggest that he takes his irrelevant intellectual masturbations elsewhere."

"If you want this article to exist, prune it back to a cited stub."

Documenting hrafn's war against New Thought biographies and books

Since hrafn's war on both religious and secular New Thought pages is a gradual process, it is difficult to document, but i suggest that anyone interested in how this technique has been applied should start by checking the page for Wallace Wattles and the page for Charles F. Haanel. Both were New Thought authors. Read the revision hisory of each page for the byte-count numbers. Watch them grow as editors contribute and then gradually shrink as hrafn plays the "verifiability" card to trash the work that others have added in good faith. If you have time, read the talk pages for the two biographies.

Hrafn's technique is to engage in hostile cite-tagging (placing multiple fact-tags on the page, generally one per paragraph) followed by spurious tagging, spurious redirects, and undiscussed deletion.

If he bothers to post to the article's talk page, he usually starts with a "warning" like this:

This article is in flagrant violation of WP:V. 
Material that is not cited to a source is unverifiable, 
and may be challenged and deleted, per wikipedia policy. 
Please do not make contributions without citing them to 
reliable sources. HrafnTalkStalk

The fact-tags insist on "verifiability" and at first he poses as one who is simply "enforcing verifiability." If no other editor wanders by to add the cites, he eliminates the data and a second round of hostile cite-tagging ensues. Byte-count can drop 75% in a month or two.

If no editor defends the page, the destruction escalates.

• Images may be removed with no discussion (see blow).

• The article may be tagged for deletion due to non-notability of the subject (see below).

• The article may be redirected or merged to another page with no discussion, and none of the data on the page will be carried over to the redirect page -- it will simply be effaced (see below).

• The article may be deleted with no discussion (see below).

Example Charles F. Haanel

This article on a New Thought writer was stripped of its image with no justification. Compare Charles Haanel page, edited by Hrafn (Talk | contribs) at 04:20, March 31, 2008 with Charles Haanel Page, edited by Hrafn (Talk | contribs) at 17:51, June 25, 2008. Removal of images further reduces byte-count. (see here and, after the now-stubbed page was restored, see here for a second example).

False reasons were used in edit-comments to support these deletions:

17:51, 25 June 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs) (1,605 bytes) 
(tag -- source is not reliable ( commercially-motivated source 
of anonymous authorship & unknown editorial & fact-checking standards); 
template -- no WP:RS = notability not established) (undo)

The source above-mentioned was said to be of anonymous authorship. In fact, a check of the source shows that it was authored by C. W. Evans-Gunther (so stated on the top page). Furthermore, the site itself contains a long reference-list of books that were utilized in its creation. Note also hrafn's "non-notability" tag. This is spurious as well.

More information on the attempts to destroy the Charles F. Haanel page can be found on the Charles F. Haanel talk page.

Example

The Master Key System

This page, about The Master Key System, a book by Charles F. Haanel, was deleted.

Non-notability of a biographical subject can be spuriously heightened by removal of connecting wiki-links. In the case of Charles F. Haanel, there was at one time a page about a popular book he wrote in 1912 (still in print) called "The Master Key System." That page has already been deleted and in order to even learn what was there, i will have to find an admin who will give me a copy of the version of the page when it was at its highest byte-count. I am not saying that the missing "Master Key System" page is notable, only that it was deleted by hrafn without discussion by being merged into the author's page, and then the author's page was incrementally cut from 4,000 bytes to 1,000 bytes, and then tagged for non-notability -- so i am very curious about that deleted page, as you can imagine.

Example

International New Thought Alliance

The article on the International New Thought Alliance should never have been a bone of contention. It simply gave the 100-year history of a notable spiritual and philosophical organization that is low-key, non-contentious, and does not proselytize.

Compare this version of the International New Thought Alliance page to the current version, as of Sept. 4, 2008

The earlier version of the INTA article was footnoted according to earlier versions of Wikipedia sourcing guidelines and did not reflect the latest version of Wikipedia in-line sourcing guidelines, but the sourcing of the article could have been remedied and brought up to current standards. Instead, hrafn deleted material, incrementally, against the attempts by the editor Madman to source the article, until it had been reduced from 6,330 bytes to 1,791 bytes over a period of 3 1/2 months.

INTA
15:15,  7 July  2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)           (1,791 bytes) 
 8:56, 21 March 2008 Globalprofessor (Talk | contribs) (6,330 bytes)

As is typical when hrafn attacks a New Thought article, 75% of the INTA article text was removed incrementally, over a period of two or more months.

In the case of the INTA article, you can see that along the route to taking a probable C-class article to tagged-and-flagged stub-hood, there were complete deletions and restorations of the article, as a close reading of the article's revision history will disclose.

Meanwhile, on the relevant INTA talk page you will see hrafn's aggressive intentions, clearly stated with the threat "If you want this article to exist, prune it back to a cited stub."

I think if you read the talk page, the level of hostility and aggression will be more than evident.

Example

Napoleon Hill

Over the course of 3 months, hrafn took the bio of the New Thought writer Napoleon Hill from this long B-Class Napoleon Hill biography which merely needed some sourcing per new guidelines to an about-to-be-deleted Napoleon Hill stub.

The byte-count and date recap tells the story:

Napoleon Hill, once a B-Class biography, now a stub
15:37, August 17, 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)      (2,439 bytes)
02:02, April  19, 2008 Johnlocke2 (Talk | contribs) (7,695 bytes) 

Example

Divine Science

Here you will find a complete account of how hrafn deleted the entire New Thught religious denomination of Divine Science without going through any standard Wikipedia discussions and how User:Madman recreated the article and named it Church of Divine Science.

Example

Affirmative prayer

Afirmative Prayer is a specific form of prayer used in New Thought religiious denominations. It is not supplicatory prayer.

Here the Affirmative prayer page was said to have been deleted by hrafn without discussion.

I know Affirmative prayer existed because i once did some edits on it. It now redirects to Prayer -- but the New Thought text about Affirmative prayer was deleted when the reditect was made. This was done without discussion or concensus agreement.

Because this page dealt with specific New Thought religious techniques and was deleted-through-redirect it should be restored so that the lost textual matter can be inserted as a sub-section on the Prayer page.

Example

Affirmations

Affirmatons are a form of self-talk used by secular and religious New Thought adherents, and other groups as well. (They are not the same as Afrirmative prayer.)

The Affirmations page was said to have been deleted by hrafn without discussion. I know Affirmations existed because i once did some edits on it. It now redirects to the dab page Affirmation with no mention of the text or the meaning assoicated with Affirmations in New Thought religion. Here is where the redirect-and-deletion occured :

# 16:03, 30 April 2008 Low Sea (Talk | contribs)    (1,113 bytes) 
(removed terminology implying negative biases and removed 
erroneous use of supplicatory (which is contrary to affirmation))
[an editor simply tried to remove the negative word hrafn had added]

["supplicatory" was a term added added by hrafn]
# 16:05, 21 April 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)       (1,142 bytes) 
(rm self-link)  
[it became a "self-link" because hrafn had redirected the page out 
of existance]

# 22:40, 19 February 2008 Vernon39 (Talk | contribs) (1,146 bytes) 
(add link to "Affirmation" article) 
[Affirmations article existed at this point, hence the link from 
the dab page]

Example

One mind

This is a technical religous term among some New Thought religious denominations, i believe. I copy edited it but am fairly unfamiliar with the page. Apparently text was deleted by hrafn, as per this commentary.

This may be typical of was was being noted in the request for help. These edits are sequential and took place on one day, with no talk-page concensus:

06:27, April 19, 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs) (10,705 bytes)
06:25, April 19, 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs) (10,686 bytes) 
06:13, April 19, 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs) (13,868 bytes) 
02:13, April 19, 2008 69.22.232.176 (Talk)    (14,265 bytes) 

Example

Malinda Cramer

A converstion about page deletion and restoration of the Malinda Cramer biography is here.

Examples of repeated redirects of the page by hrafn, each time trashing all text it contained:

# 14:32, 16 May 2008 Madman2001 (Talk | contribs)   (941 bytes) 

# 14:15, 16 May 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)        (25 bytes)
# 14:12, 16 May 2008 Madman2001 (Talk | contribs) m (505 bytes) 

# 14:10, 16 May 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)        (25 bytes) 
# 14:01, 16 May 2008 Madman2001 (Talk | contribs)   (505 bytes) 

Example

Charles Fillmore

Here was the unsourced but generally accurate bio of Charles Fillmore, the founder of the Unity Church denomination as edited by 71.247.78.33 (Talk) at 01:50, February 15, 2008 with a byte-count of 7,318 bytes.

Tagging it for lack of sources would have been appropriate. Deleting it piecemeal, over the course of several months, was not.

At some point, hrafn actually deleted the entire page, prompting this dialogue over the loss of the page between an IP editor and Madman.

Hrafn incrementally shrank this bio to less than 2,000 bytes (removed approx. 75%):

# 17:17, March    23, 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)   (1,833 bytes) 
# 17:15, March    23, 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)   (2,038 bytes)
# 17:03, March     4, 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)   (5,645 bytes) 
# 14:28, February 19, 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs) m (7,316 bytes)
# 14:27, February 19, 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)   (7,302 bytes) 
# 01:50, February 15, 2008 71.247.78.33 (Talk)       (7,318 bytes)

It has since rebounded to 2,981 bytes, but the material that hrafn removed has never been restored.

Example

Florence Scovel Shinn

Editor Julia Rossi asked editor Madman's help in defending the Shinn article against hrafn.

Hrafn worked for the article's deletion on grounds of non-notability, but failed.

Example

Wallace Wattles

An example of hrafn's massive cuts on the bio of a New Thought writer and the restoration of the material by the editor Madman.

05:12, 17 August 2008 Madman2001 (Talk | contribs)       (5,300 bytes) 
05:00, 17 August 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)            (1,631 bytes) 
21:44, 16 August 2008 IceUnshattered (Talk | contribs) m (5,300 bytes)

Hfrafn later tried to delete the page for a variety of reasons, including non-notability.

Talk about the cutting of the Wattles page is here.

Example

The Science of Getting Rich

This is a book by Wallace Wattles. It was a nice, short piece, but hrafn decided to redirect it out of existence several times. Note that his redirects (to Wallace Wattles, which he was simultaneously cutting and trying to delete as non-notable) involve complete loss of the text; not a merge and rediect, rather a blanking of the page and redirecting. The following edit-pairs show him blanking and redirecting the page within 24 hours of the page being worked on; there was no discussion with other editors; he acted alone.

# 05:14,  9 July 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)          (29 bytes) redir.; trashed into
# 23:51, 31 August 2008 64.142.90.33 (Talk)            (3,204 bytes) new start by new ed.
 
# 05:14,  9 July 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)          (29 bytes) redir.; trashed info
# 22:29,  8 July 2008 Friarpuckrory (Talk | contribs)  (568 bytes) new start by new ed.

#  0:54,  4 March 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)         (32 bytes)  redir.; trashed info
# 08:48, 22 February 2008 SmackBot (Talk | contribs) m (725 bytes)  

Further details on hrafn's campaign to redirect this page out of existance and its repeated restoration can be found on The Science of Getting Rich talk page.

Example

Phineas Quimby

Quimby is accounted as one of the founding thinkers of New Thought religion. Again, it is best to view this history of deletion in terms of editing pairs. Four editors have added varying amounts of text; hrafn has made large cuts each time:

06:00,  8 July     2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)      (8,899 bytes) 
22:41,  7 July     2008 79.97.246.219 (Talk)         (10,171 bytes) 

11:48,  2 May      2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)      (7,874 bytes)
23:55, 17 April    2008 Lindsay658 (Talk | contribs) (8,266 bytes)

07:31, 17 April    2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)      (8,266 bytes)
22:02, 16 April    2008 149.171.241.39 (Talk)        (9,610 bytes)

03:29, 25 February 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)      (7,564 bytes) 
20:50, 30 December 2007 Triwbe (Talk | contribs) m   (25,456 bytes)

Phineas

Example

Thomas Troward

Thomas Troward was an early New Thought writer. Here we see that hrafn uses his watchlist to delete material within an hour or two of each addition, no matter how many different editors try to add material, or what they are adding. I have placed the additions and deletions in pairs, for ease of viewing the byte-counts:

17:48, 3 September 2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)      (2,699 bytes)
17:19, 3 September 2008 64.142.90.33 (Talk)          (3,352 bytes)

17:21, 21 August   2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)      (2,699 bytes)
16:59, 21 August   2008 87.127.18.198 (Talk)         (3,120 bytes)

02:19,  5 June     2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)      (2,676 bytes)
01:39,  5 June     2008 66.108.106.248 (Talk)        (3,042 bytes)

04:40, 19 May      2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)      (2,676 bytes)
03:28, 19 May      2008 Madman2001 (Talk | contribs) (3,929 bytes)

14:21, 17 May      2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)      (2,639 bytes)
13:56, 17 May      2008 66.108.106.248 (Talk)        (3,929 bytes)

11:40,  2 May      2008 Hrafn (Talk | contribs)      (2,639 bytes)
21:26,  9 April    2008 69.22.232.176 (Talk)         (3,963 bytes)

Hoped-for outcome

As can be seen from the various talk pages cited, a number of editors have tried to reason with hrafn. Some have been inexperienced editors and merely asked why he deleted their edits -- and then left Wikipedia. Others have quietly restored material he deleted, only slowly concluding that he was actually waging a war against religion pages. Some, including myself, have directly confronted him, and have been treated with incivility (i admit that i eventually responded a bit uncivilly as well, for which i apologize). However, until this page was created, there was no one place where all the affected pages were logged and all the affected editors could post examples of what hrafn has been doing.

Now that the data is assembled, i think it is time to act.

I would like to see hrafn blocked from editing any pages that fall in the New Thought category, and possibly other religion versus sceince categories as well, due to obvious bias, tendentious editing, disruptive editing, POV-pushing, incivility, and repeated violation of Wiki guidelines concerning the need for consensus before making deletions and redircts. He is apparently wreaking the same kind of havoc in the Christianity/Evolution/Creationism pages, but i do not have time to log examples of that.

cat yronwode Catherineyronwode Catherineyronwode (talk) 05:31, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Catherineyronwode's off-topic and inaccurate tirade from Hrafn

As I stated in response to Catherineyronwode's accusations on AN/I here:

They are based upon

Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 08:26, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment to hrafn

There is no way that you can convince me that deleting pages on entire religious denominations, with no consensus sought from other editors, is a matter of "enforcing verifiability." Tagging the pages as in need of sourcing is the appropriate response; thousands of pages are thus tagged at Wikipedia (and thousands more ought to be). Mass deletions of content is not appropriate, and when a pattern of such editing is shown to center on religious topics, it paints a picture of a disruptive, biased editor. When that editor has three friends, and all four of them leave tracks around my unpublished sandbox dealing with the problem of disruptive editing by one of the our, it paints a picture of a tag-team of editors. cat yronwode Catherineyronwode (talk) 09:16, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment to Catherineyronwode

You really don't seem to have the hang of Wikipedia:Verifiability – The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true.

Just picking at random one example you complain about above, Charles Fillmore (Unity Church), in your preferred state,[3], waffles on including effective advertising "Unity House has been able to offer them in hardcover at trade paperback prices", and directly contradicts the much more concise biographical information in the Charles Fillmore Home Page linked under External links. The sole reference is a publication by Southern Methodist University Press, cited for a brief statement. Hrafn tagged the article as needing sources, and only edited out the cruft after no reliable sources were forthcoming.

What's all this guff about leaving tracks around your "unpublished sandbox? Have you forgotten that you've published it on Wikipedia, and provided links to it in user talk space? The actions under your name and your IP number together with those of

Affirmative prayer:

• In September and October 2007, Catherineyronwode edited this article 9 times, but failed to add even a single source to this wholly unsourced article (as can be seen from its state as of her last edit here).
• Two days after her last edit another editor tagged it as unsourced.
• Four months later, I prune this unsourced article back to a stub.
• On the same day another editor speedy-templates this article.
• Also on the same day another editor first merge tags and then a day later redirects it.

Hardly unilateral or precipitous action.

Affirmations was never anything other than a redirect -- so I couldn't possibly have "deleted" an article there. Catherineyronwode simply didn't bother checking Madman2001's inaccurate accusations before repeating them.

These are the most ludicrous examples of Catherineyronwode's ill-considered rant. What her examples all have in common, is that the editors who created these articles, like Catherineyronwode herself, couldn't be bothered complying with core wikipedia policy by providing adequate (or in most cases any) sources. Now a few of them, again like Catherineyronwode herself, are howling like an infernal host that, because of their own inattention to