This user loathes vanity pages with pretty badges and awards, and especially hates cutesy signatures that include multiple colours, fonts, graphics and sometimes even hides the actual user name. (What's next, signature theme music?)
Currently having fun with TiddlyWiki for amassing references of Scientology in the media, complete with Wikipedia cite templates.
Courtesy copy of my RFAR workshop reply[edit]
The Requests for arbitration/Scientology/Workshop page has been blanked for courtesy to some users, however, for those unfamiliar with Wikipedia article history logs, who are here to read the still visible decision page, my workshop reply has now been hidden from view so I have reproduced it here.
Comment by AndroidCat:
- 4 years of editing one of the the most contentious, polarized and heated topics on Wikipedia.
- Current Score: 0 warnings, 0 blocks.
- Crotalus horridus and edit warring
- Cool Hand Luke and Crotalus horridus call it WP:SYNTH and WP:OR, but ignore that almost no one else did. The WP:NOR/Noticeboard came to no such decision (some there were of the opinion that at least part of the disputed text should be allowable. For: Jack-A-Roe, Will Beback; Against: Jayjg) and eventually passed it back to the article Talk page. I made a Good-faith attempt to try to find an accommodation because I didn't believe that all of it was WP:SYNTH, WP:OR, or "investigative reporting". I am curious about to Crotalus horridus singling out that bit only since the rest is so poor that one editor (Blueboar) on the board said he would later nominate it for AfD if there was no improvement.
- Also, if Crotalus horridus is a neutral editor, why was there an obvious sweep through Scientology related articles starting on 12-8-2008? (Is that a POINT attempt to shift the very benchmark of non-notability? Something's up there. ;)
- BLP in David Miscaviage article
- ref with cite: Jesse Prince affidavit, United States District Court for the District of Colorado, Bridge Publications Inc v. Factnet Inc; Lawrence Wollersheim; Robert Penny, Civil Action No. 95-K-2143, 1998
- At that time, court documents were generally believed to be verifiable published documents and secondary sources. Later that was cleared up, and a large number of similar references, pro and critical, were removed from the articles. (Although I still see affidavits dropped into articles as if they were secondary sources.)
- When it went to mediation months later, Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-08-31 David Miscavige, it was concluded after much back and forth that it wasn't a secondary source and therefore Jesse Prince's statement wasn't notable and couldn't be used. Yes, with two years hindsight, considerable clarification of the policy and guideline articles, and retro-moderation, it was a BLP violation, but at the time it was a Good Faith attempt to prevent a verifiable reference from being removed.
- Tag-Team edit
- I don't use any real time communications with other editors, and respond slowly and sporadically even to email.
- I prefer not to communicate with other editors via hidden off-Wiki channels precisely to avoid being seen as a member of a team.
- If there was a team, it would have been a lot better coordinated, and we would have had uniforms and a strategy playbook.
- Reference improvement project
- It was obvious that the articles suffered massively from a large number of extremely poor references: non-RS personal opinion pages, copyvio "convenience copies" of news articles on POV sites, primary sources, or especially no sources at all.
- Not only was this bad for the quality of the articles, they were flashpoints for conflict, which would only get worse with the growing strictness of applying WP:RS.
- In 2007, while digging up enough references to clean up and fix the Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network article (Successfully), I noticed that there were a growing number of news articles available at free access newspaper archive sites, however most of these didn't show up in Google searches, but only in a search at the archive. Meanwhile, Google searches on any Scientology-related topic usually returned with the first few pages of results full of the same poor non-RS, copyvio references already in use.
- I decided to gather all available news stories with links to newspaper sites. I started with the ones already in use in Wikipedia articles, added some from Google searches, and archive searches directly at a number of newspaper sites. (TIME Magazine, New York Times, The Times, The Guardian, St. Petersburg Times, Seattle Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Denver WestWord, Los Angeles Times...)
- Once I had the links, I extracted the information from the stories needed to fill Wikipedia cite templates: title, author, publishing date, publisher, etc, as well as a short summary, if the article was an opinion or editorial piece and various keyword tags to help find articles. (The last is ongoing.) There are currently 18 secondary copy links in the list, of various types (not all copyvio), but those are clearly tagged.
- I have made this list available to all editors in flat HTML, TiddlyWiki format with copy/paste cite templates (works best in FF3 on a good machine), and raw DB format on request. The list currently has 1978 articles, with a few hundred in the backlog.
- From this list, I have replaced a number of "convenience copies" throughout the articles with links to the actual stories, added quite of number of cites, supplied lists of cites for problem articles which needed references (usually to the Talk page to reduce disruption and messy reading lists). For example RTC Cult Awareness Network, no time to dig up others...
- I have no usage tracking, so I don't know how many other editors are using it or how often. As one side effect, many news articles have been raised in Google rank (even from archives not otherwise listed in Google), making it more likely that the article will be found before the "convenience copies". (Yes, there are still a number of these "convenience copies" of news articles, and they do tend to creep back in. *shrug* Note: there is publication permission for most of the books.)
- I doubt I can take credit for the period of relative peace until the end of last year, but I do think that the availability of RS references has made it easier to remove dubious cites without a fight over it and less likely for fights over IDONTLIKEIT attempts to remove solid references.
- I'm sure the complaint will be made that the list is biased towards critical articles, and that may be valid—however, if this is true, it is not my bias, but an inherent bias of the available news stories—I've gathered what I could.
- As time permits, I've also been attempting to gather academic articles for addition to broaden the views represented.
- Notable critics
- Cool Hand Luke has said that he received several emails about off-Wiki activity by myself and others, but has said nothing about the contents. (Perhaps in some secret channel?) He has also darkly alluded to a list of hidden notable critics editing on Wikipedia, but while few names have been named, I feel I should address this tarring with broad brushstrokes.
- I do not run a critical web site.
- I have been involved in no legal actions involving Scientology.
- I do post (as AndroidCat) to alt.religion.scientology, as have a number of editors, pro and critical. It is a Usenet newsgroup (an Alt group, technically), it is not an "Internet organization". There is no membership, no central committee, no approval of joining. As Usenet continues to fade away, I don't think anyone would describe it as important or influential in any way.
- I have used the same user name to edit on Wikipedia for 4 years for candor, transparency, and honesty about that.
- I don't consider myself a notable critic, or a WP:NOTABLE one either.
- I have not contributed or posted to Operation Clambake, am not a career anti-Scientologist, and never got the t-shirt.
- Cool Hand Luke has said that he received several emails about off-Wiki activity by myself and others, but has said nothing about the contents. (Perhaps in some secret channel?) He has also darkly alluded to a list of hidden notable critics editing on Wikipedia, but while few names have been named, I feel I should address this tarring with broad brushstrokes.
Current Wikipedia state: Extremely High Insult![edit]
Since the voting Arbcom (User:Roger Davies, User:Rlevse, User:Cool Hand Luke, User:Casliber, User:Wizardman, User:Risker, User:FloNight, User:Kirill Lokshin, User:Coren, User:Jayvdb) (with absention of User:Newyorkbrad) labeled all my edits prior to 2009-05-28 as single purpose account, I see absolutely no reason to contribute to article space except as suits my whims. I would certainly have agreed with "tends to edit Scientology topics too much", "the cabal has decided that he needs to take a year off", or the otherwise used "primarily focused on Scientology-related articles" would have been acceptable to me. But no, the Arbcom at that time completely stomped all over the Five Pillars, and specifically labeled me as "AndroidCat is a Scientology-focused single purpose account". Here's the rub: I'm far more proud of the references that I added to Motorcycle safety than anything involving Scientology. So as a labeled SPA, what are those non-scientology edits? Are they some kind of deception, a ruse, they don't count? What?
Until I receive a retraction or an apology, I will tend to be a mite prickly on the subject.
By the way, if anyone has a copy of the back-channel Arbcom deliberations (if any) on that arbitration, Wikileaks might be your friend.