Talk:Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

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This article was nominated for deletion on December 18, 2005. The result of the discussion was keep. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.

Contents 1 Questionability of the site 2 Validity of the site 3 700+ religioustolerance dot org links in Wikipedia 4 On Rick Ross

[edit] Questionability of the site

It appears some people call OCRT biased: http://www.apologeticsindex.org/o00.html#ocrt

If someone wishes to use OCRT as a source, this would be wise to take note of. --olya 01:17, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Verifiability/Religioustolerance.org. If there is quotable criticism of the OCRT, it should be added to the article. dab (ᛏ) 11:10, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

On the subject of Scientology, OCRT is biased since most, if not all, the articles are authored or co-authored by Al Buttnor who is the Director of Special Affairs (sometimes called Public Affairs) of the Toronto Org (which is the "continental" office for all of Canada)[1]. There seems to be no fact checking, and where a reference is given, it's either to a Church of Scientology site, a Scientology front like the "New CAN" or misleading. For example: [2] where the reference is to an academic neutral site religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu, but the page actually pointed at is nothing but a reprint of a press release from the Church of Scientology.[3] AndroidCat 21:53, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

There's no doubt that the Scientology pages were indeed authored by Scientologists. That's fine, no proof is required because you've stated your point. But I'm confused about something. What exactly is the issue? Is there an exact error that needs addressing? Were the articles inaccurate in any way? So what if it points to Scientology pages, or is authored by a Scientologist? In the Islam and Christian pages, the author references Islamic and Christian sites. At [4], a Pagan page, the author is a Pagan. Are you going to say he's being biased about Islam and Christianity and Paganism too, because he references sites devoted to those faiths and features pages authored by adherents? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DelanoC (talk contribs) .

The real problem is that the Scientology pages are being updated by Scientology. That's a massive conflict of interest. If the Microsoft page was written by Head of Marketing at Microsoft, and the Wikipolicies of citing sources and OR were not in use, you'd have a problem with the accuracy and bias of the Microsoft page. That's EXACTLY what OCRT are allowing to happen with their Scientology information. As I said - massive conflict of interest. Dave420 15:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

It's also being retro-edited. A claimed 2005 reference[5] was added to point to a Scientology front-site that didn't exist until 2006-09-20.[6] Here's that page in 2004 before the make-over started [7] and it seems quite different from the new viewpoint. (The Religioustolerance.org site blocks Wayback, but they left the Religioustolerance.com backdoor open.) They're also citing Wiki, and I had to drop two circular references recently. AndroidCat 02:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The link to a pagan page referenced above is a dead link. After going through about 50 pages that reference Pagan I find that they are all written by the owner of the site B.A. Robinson. He is the author of all the informational pages on the different religions as far as I can tell and I have gone through hundreds of articles. Concerning the explanation of paganism he has written the vast majority by himself but there a few that he credits B.A. Robinson and others. No way to tell if they are Pagan. The 2 articles concerning paganism that I found written by others are An essay for school teachers about Paganism It is instructions for teachers on how to deal with Pagan students. It was not written for religioustolerance.org but reprinted with permission. The other is A Pledge to Pagan Spirituality by Selena Fox. It was written in 1960 and is not informational but what it says, a Pledge. At the bottom Mr. Robinsion names himself editor of this page.--Robbow123 22:09, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I can't speak to the accuracy of the non-Scientology material on the site, but the Scientology pages contain a large number of errors of fact, and .. unlikely .. claims by the Church of Scientology. Note that Al Buttnor isn't just a Scientologist, but an official of the church and a lot of the text is cribbed straight from their sites. AndroidCat 03:44, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Fine. Can you list any specific errors? Anything that the site says about Scientology which is an untruth or inaccurate? They will be included in the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DelanoC (talk • contribs) .

On [8], Hubbard was never a "captain of corvettes", never did "the first mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico". The ever-expanding claim of 10,000,000 members isn't credible, and 4,200 Scientology groups, missions and churches mainly exist on paper. On [9], the court case list is suspect since XS4ALL finally won after Church of Spiritual Technology and Religious Technology Center appealed to the highest court in the Netherlands. Those are just the things that pop out in a short scan. Going through the pages line by line, citing my references, would take a while and eventually duplicate much of the material on the wiki Scientology pages here on this Talk page. In the end, I wouldn't be rebuting any kind of neutral personal web site, but the Church of Scientology who wrote the material. AndroidCat 10:45, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

The suspicion about the Scientology material is that while all the informational articles about every other religion were written by the sites founder B.A. Robinson (except fr the aforementioned and others) The information articles about Scientology are either written by Al Buttnor and Robinson or solely written by Al Buttnor. There is no precendent that I can find for letting a member of a religion write the article themselves. Their statement of beliefs state We will attempt to overcome our biases on each topic that we describe, by explaining each point of view carefully, respectfully and objectively. Having a official representative of the Scientologists negates any pretence of objectivity. Since Mr. Robinson has such close ties to Mr. Buttnor he could have interviewed him and contrasted his statements with other references. It's like having Cardinal Law of Boston write about pedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church.--Robbow123 22:09, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Validity of the site

A lot of people seem a little bit confused on this issue, so I will address it.

• This article is merely reporting on OCRT, which is an Internet phenomenon.
• Thus, it is not the purpose of this article to determine the site's validity. That is non-Encyclopedic.
• I have already tried to address the more common issues about the site, such as objections by groups and bannings by countries, the apologetics link and censorship services.
• The site has raised a LOT of objections by people, which I did not include in the article, such as the use of the B.C.E/C.E. dating system. The reason for this is because there are simply too many objections raised. Listing each and every single one would make this article as long as a book.

In future, feel free to discuss any problem you might have with the site here. But please keep it out of the article. Also see the archive of the discussion for deletion on the top of this page. It is lengthy, but contains a lot of good arguments, on both sides, as to the validity of the site. Thank you. Delano 00:16, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The only thing this paean to the site doesn't say is that it is the best thing since slice bread! I thought wikipedia was meant to be unbiased!

Tell that to everyone who keeps trying to discredit the article by calling it "pro-cult" or by implying the authors are incompetent. That's not unbiased. The article mentions common objections and praises and includes notable references by the mainstream media. And also included are links to two sites, one with a positive and one with a negative opinion. I fail to see how it's a "paean", but it seems that a lot of people have an axe to grind with the site for some odd reason.

I have a bias toward the site because the site is in many ways biased. While it references negative things about something it makes excuses for it or mentions the "religion" is the victim of persecution. The site sometimes acts as an apologist in subtle ways for some organizations. The only line that can be crossed is if a fringe religion is convicted of a violent crime or deals in suicide. An organization doesn't have to get into gunfights to be a danger to it's adherents or society at large.

Here's my question. Can one expand on the article using in context excerpts from the site and comparing them to other in context excerpts that contradict? all references to be be backed up with links back to the original of course. I think juxtoposing information from the same source is objective, even if the end result makes the subject look bad. That's what good journalism does.

I would also include the positive elements of the site like it's unmoderated message board where all opinions and discussions are tolerated as long as they remain civil. Thanks--Robbow123 22:54, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

We are not journalists. We do not conduct original research here. We report what other reliable sources have already said about an organization. FCYTravis 21:26, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 700+ religioustolerance dot org links in Wikipedia

I came across over 700 links to this organization, Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. The site has a ton of ads but on the other hand, it has content (and a Wikipedia article).

Normally, such an ad-intensive site with so many links gets attention at WikiProject Spam for further investigation. Even if it's not spam, many links may often get deleted as not meeting the external links guideline. I've left a note at WikiProject Spam asking others to look at some of these and see what they think.

Even some non-profit organizations will add dozens of links to Wikipedia since links in Wikipedia are heavily weighted in Google's page ranking systems. (If interested, see the article on Spamdexing for more on this).

You can see all the links by going to this this "Search web links" page. I encourage you to look at Wikipedia's external links guideline then look at the links in the articles you normally watch. Also, if you don't mind, please also weigh in at WikiProject Spam with your opinions. If you see links to pages that you don't think add additional value beyond the content already in an article, feel free to delete them, but please don't go mindlessly deleting dozens of links. (Per WP:EL, links that don't add additional value should be deleted but that doesn't necessarily mean they're "spam").

My concern here is purely with external linking, not the pros and cons of this organization.

Thanks for your help and for providing some second opinions. --A. B. 17:04, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On Rick Ross

The link to Rick Ross has appeared before numerous times and has been deleted, but it terds to reappear. The link should not be included, for the following reasons.

1) Rick Ross's site claims OCRT calls itself "scholarly", which is untrue. 2) The article's only source for OCRT's questionability is the fact that www.countercog.com links to it. 3) The article quotes OCRT's founder as saying that none of them are theologists, which is already mentioned (and quoted verbatim) in this Wikipedia article.

In short, the link to Rick Ross offers nothing new to the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DelanoC (talk • contribs) 07:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC).