Here we go again (wikipedia)

[yossarian]

I opened a ticket today in Wikipedia's version of a help desk, posing the question of how to determine whether a published book is a candidate for having its own Wikipedia article. I was led into some circular reasoning, the user helping me using two pages of criteria, each attempting to reference the other, but what I determined ultimately is that Wikipedia is a proper fustercluck when it comes to determining what is a proper article or not. It is clear that in the case of a book such as the Ra material, it is a "majority rules" kind of situation, where a mob of users can jump into a discussion of whether an article's sources are reliable and sway the discussion one way or another based upon their own personal biases, ideals, and beliefs.

This creates a natural sort of mob mentality, group think environment, where the culture of Wikipedia is overwhelmingly material reductionist and so that will be reflected in what can be considered a "reliable source," despite the source meeting the (confusing and unclear) criteria provided.

So the overriding authority for Wikipedia isn't necessarily the reliability of the sources, not the clarity or effort put into the article, and hardly even the individual opinions of the users who discuss whether to delete or keep an article; it is the overwhelming ideal of material objectivism/reductionism within the Wikipedia culture. It's not surprising to me that any sort of article discussing the Law of One would have a difficult time persisting within such an environment. You can get a sense of the idealism of the culture in the deletion review discussion, where many of the users voting to delete use very charged and emotional language, revealing their passion for the ideals they are set to uphold.

So I guess my main question is why do those who wish to see the Law of One article upheld within this environment feel that way? What is the driving force behind the desire for there to be a Law of One wikipedia article at all? Especially if it is an uphill struggle against an idealistic culture.

It's a bit more complicated than you make it out to be. Wikipedia is a battlefield and the ground is always shifting. Policy debates do matter, and the mob rule is just one component of the power dynamic.

Think of wikipedia as a constant struggle between various factions to have their ideology at the top of Google Searches and Authoritated by the WIKIPEDIA brand--which people equate with accuracy.

Scientific materialists are powerful but by no means the most powerful group on wikipedia. The most powerful groups are actually paid professional teams who advance corporate, political, and religious interests. Wikipedia is actually dominated by massive corporations whose PR firms have a huge web of sub-contractors to ensure that wikipedia doesn't say stuff that might damage one of the paying corporations.

They also have a lot of professional religious editors--usually editing on behalf of the Templeton foundation or other American fundamentalist fascist movements.

The Church of Scientology pays their members to defend it on wikipedia.

You also have political interests--republicans and democrats hire wikipedia editing PR firms to make sure that their politicians aren't smeared and so on.

There are Israeli groups who are paid to advance the interests of Israel, especially over the israel-palestine conflict.

Then you have ideologues who work for free but are motivated by their cause: Atheists and Muslims in particular. The fights between Atheists and Muslims are basically epic.

There are weaker parties of New Agers who want to promote various New Age things. But New Agers are notorious for being bad at fighting and are not very organized and certainly have no money.

Our article--The Law of One--comes into conflict with the ideologues--the Atheists. None of the other groups care at all about us and don't mind if we exist. It's just the atheists who want to snuff out all coverage of spiritual topics, and since they can't beat the well-paid and well-organized Christians, and can't beat the fervor and intelligence and organization of Jews and Muslims, they attack mostly New Age stuff. They just want to make it all go away and will use any argument that has a chance of working.

There is an idea out there that atheists are smart. NOthing could be further from the truth. The atheists on wikipedia are the dumbest of all editors. The smartest of them all are the Israelis by far. But the Muslims, Christians, and Scientologists are all very smart too--way smarter than atheists who don't even read wikipedia policy.

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So I guess my main question is why do those who wish to see the Law of One article upheld within this environment feel that way? What is the driving force behind the desire for there to be a Law of One wikipedia article at all? Especially if it is an uphill struggle against an idealistic culture.

I wrote the original article--which was very very simple--just for fun. I thought it would be fun. I wanted to contribute to wikipedia on a topic that I was knowledgeable about.

I don't try there anymore. Since getting acquainted with how editing works on wikipedia I no longer even read it--I bought a subscription to Britannica. Editing wikipedia taught me that professors are paid for a reason.

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Oh yeah--the most important part of wikipedia warring is to have admins that you collaborate with. The wars between Christians and Atheists or Jews and Muslims are largely determined by how many admin troops each side can muster. In addition to having foot soldiers.

It's not just a simple mob rule... there is more to it than that. There are a lot of complicated power plays that can be made. One person can have a lot of power on a low-traffic page like ours if that person watches it like a hawk and constantly reverts any new edits made by anyone. This keeps the article quality and scares away deletionists. It would have prevented Adonai from doing what he did--vandalizing and then deleting.

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Also... on a more crazy note... I wrote the article because Ra told me that a lot of people google The Law of One and wish there was a wikipedia page giving a short summary of all the details from a neutral, mainstream perspective. My original article was not very long.. maybe 1200 words.. and it just gave a super short summary of how the books were written and what the basic claims were.

Many months later it's been severely f***** up. This is because I didn't "babysit" it and make sure to revert each person's new edit. So people added in hundreds of terrible little edits that introduced everything from grammar errors to factual errors to poor wording that misunderstand policy.

Some people like Adonai One want to add "REPUTEDLY" and "ALLEGEDLY" all over the place. This is because they don't know wikipedia policy. Putting these scare words in is NOT required because the source of the claim is clearly stated.

So for instance my original article said something like "In her trance state, Carla would speak the words of Ra into a microphone."

People who don't know the rules then want to add "REPORTEDLY' and "CLAIMED" and "ALLEGED" all over the place. This is not needed because it has already been established that Ra's speaking through Carla is a claim made by the book. No one is being forced to accept the claim.

When I wrote the original article I actually read dozens and dozens of pages on wikipedia policy, editing style, etc. How to be neutral for a series of books, what counts as neutral, what should be covered. I put a lot of work into it.

Then Adonai One just comes along and thinks he is SO SPECIAL that he should just delete all that work I did. I have Adonai on ignore mode now so I don't have to read whatever crap he is saying above there.