Talk:Reachout Trust

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[edit] Thank You

This is at present (14.05.2007) factual.

Reachouttrust 06:00, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome!

Regards Bksimonb 13:48, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Expansion

I am going to attempt to expand the article with material and citations from reputable secondary sources. Smee 04:48, 9 May 2007 (UTC).

Thanks, Smee, for bringing some real references to this article. Regards Bksimonb 06:53, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you kindly for acknowledging my work. Where there were previously Zero citations, I have added information in the article such that it is backed up by (14) citations to reputable secondary sourced material. Smee 11:55, 9 May 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Response from Doug Harris of Reachout Trust

Not sure if this is the way this should be done but have received this email:

I have unblocked your account. I'm not sure why it was blocked - it may be that an administrator thought it was an impersonator of your organisation - or being used for promotional purposes.

What I'd encourage you to do is to make suggestions for changes to the article

on the discussion page of the article. Click the 'discussion' tab at the top - and be willing to work with our users to generate a neutral article, containing only information verifiable for reliable sources.

We generally discourage people from editing articles they are immediately concerned with, because many subjects find neutrality difficult and essentially wish an advert/promotion with all critical material removed. However, if you are willing to work with other editors, it should help them to make a good article, that is fair and neutral.

Yours sincerely, Scott MacDonald

-- Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org

I would like to do this and the email came in response from my complint that the page as it stands now contains some clear inaccuracies that have been picked up from web articles but have not been checked with us.

The two main ones I would ask you to change are:

1. Maureen Davies is not a key person for Reachout Trust – she was an Area Director at one time but she left the organisation over 10 years ago. When they quoted Maureen as a reliable source it was for information she produced not us.

2. We did not publish the booklet Doorways to Danger and had nothing to do with its producing – that was the Evangelical Alliance.

I did not start this page but am very happy to have information about us here but please can it be correct. Thank you. You can contact me via rt@reachouttrust.org should you need to.

--Reachouttrust 13:12, 10 May 2007 (UTC)Doug Harris

Hi Doug,

I have made the changes you requested. I have confirmed that "Doorways to Danger" was indeed produced by the Evangelical Alliance [1]. I didn't delete Maureen Davies altogether since I don't have access to the references but have attributed Maureen as being the "reliable source". Let me know if it reads OK.

I hope you accept my reasoning below for pulling the article etc. It is done according to Wikipedia's policy and not out of self interest, as one other editor suggested. Apologies for any upset caused. At the end of the day we now have a much better sourced article so it wasn't all in vein :-)

Regards Bksimonb 19:05, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

What is going on here? I see a lot of comments being deleted, and it doesn't appear to be by the editor who made the comments. They're listed as "Personal attack" on the history, which is controversial enough, but reading the most recent entry deleted I don't see anything that would constitute a personal attack. Perhaps it would be more helpful if the editor who feels personally attacked were to respond civilly and concisely? We can remove the whole discussion afterwards, but it is important to bring the discussion out in the open--we don't want personal attacks on Wikipedia, nor do we want "personal attack" to be used in an overly broad way so let's clarify and discuss. Gruber76 12:44, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi Gruber76. Let me explain how the text is a personal attack.

• "the BKWSU follower reported you" - Using affiliation to discredit and editor. Why is it relavent that I am a BKWSU follower?
• "we have had problems with them doing so as a way to control articles". Who is "we"? Who is "them"? Trying to control articles? False allegation and assuming bad faith.
• "there is a rule on the wiki that says you should be nice and helpful to newcomers not slap them down". There is also a rule about usernames that are names or organisations or websites. The user is offered a chance to change that username when blocked. Again this statement assumes bad faith.
• "especially when you have a conflict of interest". This has never been a secret.
• "Bksimonb is a Brahma Kumaris follower and part of their IT team" - Yes. and...
• "they monitor, try to control or remove information about the Bkwsu from the internet". Utterly false and unproven allegation and again puts forward the notion that I am acting in bad faith.
• "as the Bks have done for many years in the press in india". Another allegation and also guilt by association and affiliation.
• "you registered a user called Reachouttrust and simon immediately put in a complaint to have them banned on the usual sorts of accusations". I made no accusations other than that it violated Wikipedia's username and article policy regarding self promotion.
• "it happened so quick i did not think you even did anything , the wiki logs dont show it". That's because it is an admin op. An admin must have seen that it was a valid report.
• "i am not surprise to discover a Bk acting in this way as i am also being targetted by them". Negative generalisation. How does "...not (sic) surprise to discover a jew acting in this way..." sound?
• "already Bk simon is attempting to use this as a 'personal attack'". Well it is!
• "and i dare say he will use it against me further". Because I have a right not to be intimidated here.
• "its funny how of all the thousands of articles he chose yours". It was on my watchlist for historical reasons. If you check the history you will see my activity on this article. Judge for yourself.
• "...hammered down by wiklawyering...". Wikilawyering is twisting the meaning of policies. Not applying or following them and applying and following them was what I was doing.
• "...it is not hard to see have a conflict of interest". Pot calling the kettle black. Green108 has a known affiliation with an anti BKWSU activist web site. I don't hold that against him.
• "welcome onboard". Indeed.

I keep deleting this because it is one of many attacking posts. I no longer see engaging in them as a constructive use of time or energy. Please see mine and Green108's contribs for a broader picture.

I am curious as to why you don't consider Green108's post to be attacking. It clearly violates the following from WP:NPA,

• "Racial, sexual, homophobic, ageist, religious, political, ethnic, or other epithets (such as against disabled people) directed against another contributor. Disagreement over what constitutes a religion, race, sexual preference, or ethnicity is not a legitimate excuse."
• "Using someone's affiliations as a means of dismissing or discrediting their views -- regardless of whether said affiliations are mainstream or extreme."

Also the following from WP:CIVIL,

• "Judgmental tone in edit summaries" - an example being ,"BKWSU follower reports Reachout Trust cult informant" [2],
• "Ill-considered accusations of impropriety of one kind or another",
• "Taunting"

Thanks & regards Bksimonb 13:26, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Bksimonb,

Thank you for a little bit of the background. What you'll see in my comment is simply (to paraphrase myself) that I see a lot of reversion and the most recent reversion was marked as "personal attack" when the specific text doesn't appear to support that statement.

To be clear, the revision I am referring to is this one. I can understand your frustration, and now believe that I see that you are objecting to the link to the perceived attack (I'm not trying to judge it one way or another by saying "perceived," I'm just trying to be civil to all parties at this point.) Here's a mild joke: Please don't revert this posting for linking to an update that links to an update you believe to be a personal attack. :)

So, Bksimonb, I hope that I'm illustrating something here for you by my fumbling around. By removing the edits you felt as personal attacks you're making it difficult for someone outside of the disagreement to determine what's going on. Trying to decipher what has and hasn't been removed, who said what, etc, etc, becomes very difficult and each atomic edit can't easily be viewed as part of the whole.

I know it rankles to leave text up that you find hurtful. Please trust the process, and know that the Wikipedia crowd is composed primarily of intelligent people with a calm perspective. They (we) will generally see the fallacy in an ad hominem attack and such a statement will reflect more on the editor making the statement than on the subject of the statement.

If possible, I'd love to hear Green108's response, here, to your statements. As I've mentioned it's very difficult for me to comprehend what Green108 has been saying with the edits and reversions that have gone around.

Gruber76 16:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi Gruber76. Thank you so much for your understanding and useful advice. I agree that is the best thing to do now. I would really appreciate it if you could check back and comment on this thread just so I know it's not just me. Thanks and regards Bksimonb 16:47, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Response to Green108 from BKWSU talk page regarding this article

In response to [3].

You are right it is no co-incidence regarding the Reachout Trust article. I had the article on my watchlist because it used to give undue weighting to the BKWSU (something 244 added) when they do, in fact, focus on the LDS and Jehovah's Witnesses primarily. There is only one testimony on their website about BKWSU and testimonies are not even valid citations for Wikipeda. I have no real beef with Reachout Trust. They are really just doing what they were set up to do.

If I notice vandalism on any page I am watching I aim to correct it.

If you check the history you will see that I actually removed some blatant bias against the Reachout Trust [4]. I also reported the vandalism and the user concerned was blocked since he already had a final warning [5].

It was unfortunate that someone then decided to turn the whole article into an advert for Reachout Trust in violation of Wikipedia's policies on self-promotion and using a spam username. I couldn't find any references about Reachout Trust on the internet so I decided to flag the page for what it was, a promotional advert.

Since then Smee has kindly recreated the article with proper references, which is how it should be.

Thanks & regards. Bksimonb 07:09, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

• You are most welcome. And a clarification, I requested the page be recreated, but it was not I who recreated it. (I'm not an Admin...) Smee 12:08, 9 May 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Inadvertant grouping

Smee , I realize that the assoication was un intential but in describing the groups both Christian and non-christian that Reachout Trust seeks to minister to, the article seems to be associating Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons with the occult and New Age. Is there a better way to phrase that introductory sentence? I realize that some religious groups choose to categorize Mormons and JW's as "Non-Christian" but that's a separate issue entirely. The way it is worded now, it does seem to imply that they are NOT Christian. I'll see if I can come up with a better wording. In the meantime, perhaps you can do the same. How would you feel about this:

Reachout Trust deals with many different groups including nontrinitarian Christian groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Christadelphians as well as the many new religious movements that have risen out of the New Age Movement, Neopaganism, Wicca and the Occult.

That way you are categorizing the Christian sects by their difference in theology while showing they are different in origin from the New Age and Neo-Pagan movements. Strictly speaking, you could say "Christian sects arising from the 19th century Adventist movement" but that would also include Seventh Day Adventists and Christian Science and I don't know if Reachout Trust specifically targets those groups for evangelizing. I wouldn't want to imply that if they don't.LiPollis 15:08, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

While it's a bit of a wishy-washy wiggle word, judicious application of the word "many" can keep such a phrase accurate yet informative. Be bold! Gruber76 20:16, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I notice that the word "pseudo" which I presume has the meaning of false. You may not agree with what we do or some of what we say but I take exception to being called pseudo evangelical Christians. We ARE evangelical Christians and I request that the word psudo is taken out.

Thank you.

217.64.121.180 15:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reverted Back

I notice that the word 'pseudo', which was removed earlier, has been put back in to the article.

I object strongly to this as it is not true. We are not a 'pseudo' evenagelacal group; we are Evangelical Christians.

I request that this incorrect word be removed.

Thank you.

Reachouttrust 15:13, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Doug. The word was inserted by an anonymous IP account a few days ago. Apologies for not spotting it straight away. I've just undone the damage. Regards Bksimonb 15:17, 4 October 2007 (UTC)