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Wikipedia Bans Church of Scientology
El Reg writes "Showing a new-found resolve to crack down on self-serving edits, Wikipedia has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology. According to Wikipedia administrators, this marks the first time such a high-profile organization has been banished for allegedly pushing its own agenda on the 'free encyclopedia anyone can edit.'"
but better watch out for those Thetans
The Church of Scientology has a long history of censorship and general Internet fuckery.
http://www.factnet.org/Scientology/censorware.html
Two things:
1. Wikipedia should never lift the ban.
2. Jimbo should watch his back; Scientology *DOES NOT* play nice when it doesn't get what it wants.
What home?
Did they block a username or ip adress range?
http://projectleader.wordpress.com
TOR exit nodes are already notoriously difficult to edit from:
*You can't edit anonymously.
*If you have a new-ish account that is barely old enough to let you edit semi-protected articles, your account is treated as if it was new when you are connected via TOR.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
OH YEAH! I forgot about them :)
OK, my PARISH doesn't go around preaching to non-Catholics and trying to convert people.
Carrie -The Christmas Angel
For more really really fun and interesting info, go to Operation Clambake. Before you freak about the URL, the URL is real, and so is the guy (Andreas Heldal-Lund, who runs this out of Norway, which is why Scientology has not gotten any legal traction against him yet). I recommend a read, for what little that's worth.
http://www.xenu.net/
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Neither you nor your parent actually get the joke. Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology
Did they block a username or ip adress range?
Heh, god damn. I know it's unrealistic to expect you to read the fine article, but c'mon man. The answer to your question is in the fuckin' SUMMARY. In case you missed it, it's at the TOP of the SAME PAGE you posted this from. Sheesh.
From very first sentence of the fine summary -
"We all know that xenu's followers will simply do their edits from home, from now on."
I thought Xenu was the bad guy, not the good guy.
As much as I despise Scientology, I don't see why their cult should be singled out for direct criticisms in the opening paragraphs of the article, (e.g "cult that financially defrauds and abuses its members"). While this may be true, other cults (oh ok "religions", whats the difference) that do the same thing are being described in completely different way, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints This is supposed to be an encyclopedia article, not a newspaper editorial so I think the tone and content of the opening 4 paragraphs I think do need some changes. I am afraid to make them though cause I might get banned from the site.
The reason they are singled out for that type of description is there is an enormous amount of evidence to support the description. Church leaders have lied cheated and stolen to support their agenda. The organization has a longstanding harrassment policy against it's detractors. They are extremely good at abusing the legal system to their ends and mostly getting away with it. Other groups most certainly do not come anywhere near the level of abuse that the COS does. Besides that, I don't see the description you refer to in an article right now.
I don't know why this would "mark the end" for wikipedia? The main goal of wikipedia as I understand it is not to be "free and open" but to *use* the notion of "free and openness" to present information as thoroughly and accurately as possible.
Therefore, this is necessary. Specifically, an entity who is abusing "The Commons" is getting blocked. Of course there will always be a "way in" to the Commons. This is just taking the next logical step of having a "Commons" while attempting to prevent "The Tragedy of the Commons" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Garrett_Hardin.27s_essay).
And it takes several rounds from a shotgun, three to the chest, one to the head. Take a look at the death of Mary Florence Barnett, the mother of David Miscavige, the current head of Scientology. (http://www.badcult.info/watd/flo_barnett/coroner.html) Suicide? With multiple shotgun rounds? And _two_ suicide notes? While the suicide of a cancer patient can be understandable, this does seem.... beyond the usual efforts of a cancer ridden person, threatening their church with lawsuits.
The home-school Christians took their football and went to play at Conservapedia, which is JUST AS FUN and as important as Wikipedia.
Scientology isn't a religion OR a cult, it's a criminal racket. Their "beliefs" may be "nutty", but you know that nobody in positions of power within the "Church" actually believe them. You'd be a pretty poor scammer if you believed your own lies!
It's one of the cult's own tactics.
In any public discussion about the cult's abuse, there exists at least one Scilon troll making the obligatory "What, it's no less a religion than Christianity" or "I suppose you'd ban Christianity too", or "What, you're ignoring the Roman Catholic abuse scandals!" comment. Rather than discussing the abuses of the cult, the debate devolves into a flamewar of Christians vs. Atheists, and the Scilon, its mission accomplished, can just sits back and watches the two groups fight each other.
Tu Quoque is a logical fallacy. It's not about whether Christianity, Atheism, or Pastafarianism is weirder than the OT III story with Xenu and the nuclear volcanoes. The fact that the Roman Catholic church has covered up abuses has no bearing whatsoever on the ongoing abuses in the Cult of Scientology.
It's a Scilon misdirectional tactic, designed to get religious believers and rational atheists fighting each other, rather than debating the Cult's abuses. And good on you for seeing through it.
There is actually a fairly well-defined formal boundary between "cult" in the technical sense and "religions". Some cults are religious, some aren't.
But bluntly, none of the others can really compete on Scientology's home turf of criminal action. I have griped at some length to Catholic friends about things the Catholic church does that I don't approve of. They have not poisoned my pets, and I haven't died under mysterious circumstances that a Scientologist-linked police force decided were "natural causes". (Such as a self-inflicted gunshot wound with no powder burns.) So that's a pretty big difference.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
There have been a number of violent acts perpetuated by the CoS. http://www.scientology-kills.org/dead/dead.htm
Well, Scientology (and other cults) do things I've never heard of religions doing (since the Middle Ages):
Also, Scientology seems to ignore many things real religions do: organize food drives and other charitable events, provide aid to members in need (emotional or economic), and other beneficent acts.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Revolving door growth. People come in, people go.
Many of these run on prosperity gospel. Basically attending the church and giving to it is an investment in time and money that people expect to have repaid on this earth.
meh
DC-8s
Fire up Tor and connect to your own site, ban whichever IPs are recorded as hitting your site.
D'oh! Tor publishes the list of all nodes in a regular interval. You obviously never used it, so maybe you shouldn't comment on it, lest you make an ass out yourself!
Yes, they're using the extension TorBlock to do this.
Freedom of speech means you can say what you want without the government penalizing you. It does not mean that you have "rights" to insert your speech into private forums, nor does it mean that non-governmental organizations must tolerate your rants.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain. --Friederich Schiller
The home-school Christians took their football and went to play at Conservapedia, which is JUST AS FUN and as important as Wikipedia.
I seriously think that Conervapedia is just satire. Some of the bullshit on there is just too unreal to be serious...
You don't hang out with too many conservatives, do you?
Seriously, I think you fooled the mods here too. Tor exit nodes are just computers running Tor that have been set up to also be an exit node. There are hundreds of nodes and they are run by volunteers, not by the Tor project. You can get a list of the exit nodes (here, for example), but Tor Hyams has nothing to do with them.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
In effect, Scientology is a corporation. They employ countless people, and assign them various missions. COS assigns x number of people to make sure the Wiki only has favorable entries about the COS. Wikipedia's goal is to accumulate knowledge, and make it available to people - knowledge that is as accurate and unbiased as possible. Keywords, being "as possible". No one expects the knowledge to be totally accurate and/or totally unbiased.
Can you, or can you not, see a conflict arising between these two goals?
In the event of a conflict, the question is, does the Wiki have the right to determine how thier property is used, or does the COS have that right?
I am quite certain that other individuals and groups try to pull similar stunts. Various people have been banned from the Wiki in the past, for flagrant acts of misconduct. Assorted causes are probably getting away with similar violations simply because they haven't been caught. But, in the end, Wiki owns those pages, and they have the right to control the manner in which they are used. If/when the Wikipedians uncover concerted efforts to undermine thier work, I expect that similar actions will be taken.
I probably spent 2 1/2 hours last night following link after link, trying to understand what was going on in this and similar cases. The events leading up to this little drama really are a flagrant abuse of the TOS, not to mention an abuse of power on the part of COS. (Note - abuse of POWER, not authority - COS has no authority on the Wiki)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Why? The vast majority of the media regarding the Titanic indicates it sunk.
I'm not sure that is true at all. There was a lot of opposition to Hitler in the 1930s. But even assuming it were, so what. This is 2009 and in 2009 the overwhelming majority of reliable sources don't have a pro-Nazi position.
I'm a pretty regular reader of Al-Ahram, and I have to tell you that just ain't so. The vast majority of Arab media considers protocols to be a fake and believes that tying Arab "legitimate" issues with Israel to racism is a mistake.
It is moving but so far it seems well defined.
They can. Their are tons of articles on those topics like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Brahminism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Hinduism
etc...
The very first line of the verifiability policy is "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
NPOV asserts that no view is "the truth", "If your viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, then â" whether it's true or not, whether you can prove it or not â" it doesn't belong in Wikipedia,"