Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Terryeo/Evidence

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[edit] personal attacks

Looks like tyeo called one guy a "beanbrain", referred to others as a "gang", and told someone to "suck your....thumb" (there was more but these were the easiest to understand). Not civil but I'd think a simple retraction by or apology from terryeo should be good enough for these infractions. These aren't mortal insults but they don't help editing either. Justforasecond 18:06, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

That's true enough, true enough. I was pretty hot under the collar when I did the "beanbrain" thing. Feldspar and I (he's the guy I posted that one to) have continued to talk on a number of pages. The "suck your .... thumb" guy, Science Apologist, and I seem to be in communication, he's corrected me and I've accepted it about the Dianetics introduction. I'm not sure that "gang" quite describes but there is an element of difficulty of two sides which has driven off other persons who know the Dianetics and Scientology subjects. I'm not sure "gang" is the word for that. For example, I get really pointed personal attacks sometimes. Other times, I get on and find one person has gone along behind me, reverting every edit I made. There are other instances, but generally we mostly all get along together (but that's my opinion and people are sooo ready to list 100 links to bad conduct!) Terryeo 14:27, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Questionable Citations

There is a single issue which I would like to take the opportunity to present to the arbitrators. It is the issue of questionable citations which ChrisO and I have been stronly on opposite sides of for some while. The Church of Scientology has a few documents, perhaps as much as a books worth altogether in a stack of books higher than a ceiling. The quantity of them is unknown but it is not a great many. They are held by the Church as "confidential" and not published to the public. They are carefully controlled. An example of ChrisO's citing them is the last citation on this list: Space_opera_in_Scientology_doctrine#Lectures_by_Hubbard. That and a few other documents won't be published by the Church, the church makes no comment on them except to say they are "confidential." Apparently ChrisO has a copy of at least one of them in his possession, from his discussion page talk. They are on the internet at Xenu.net which servers are located in a scandinavian country. A person in that country (I think it was Sweden) apparently stole the documents and sent a copy to every member of the legistlature which, in that country, makes them published. So ChrisO uses that arguement to present links to them on Wikipedia servers. However, they are full of specialized Scientology Jargon. They contribute little to the articles which cite them. The Church of Scientology is well known for its protection of copyright and especially has brought a number of court cases, previously, about these documents. I would appreciate the arbitrators commenting whether Confidential, Church of Scientology documents may be cited in these articles. Thank you. Terryeo 12:35, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

For the record, the guy was Zenon Panoussis, and it was indeed the Swedish legislature who received the documents. The guy who runs Xenu.net (Andreas Heldal-Lund), however, is from Norway. —Gabbe 16:50, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's interesting. But what information is available says he did not publish all of the information of the confidential stuff, but only some of it. (what percentage?). How can we know he published the real thing, what would have prevented him from doctoring the documents, so to speak, to suit his point of view which admitedly was to embarress Scientology. Then too, such documentation is full of "hubbardspeak" or "Scientology Jargon" or whatever it should be called, and some of those terms (body theatan as one example) are not defined anywhere in Scientology published documents, dictionarys, bulletins, etc. Terryeo 18:11, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

How, indeed, do we know anything, if we don't bother to find out? For an easy first step, go to the xenu.net forums and ask people there to verify the documents. But then again, most of them are probably not in good standing with the Church of Scientology, and therefore what they say is meaningless, right? Then you could actually go out and obtain a copy of those documents yourself, as a second step. But to criticize these documents as being inaccurate without a single shred of proof is just...wrong. Tenebrous 22:13, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Neither you, nor I could "obtain a copy of those documents." I state and you know, the purpose of the guy stealing the documents and publishing them as he did was not to be helpful to Scientology. I raised the obvious question, "How reliable is such a theif?" which is a reasonable question to raise. Many of you criticize Scientology with much less foundation. He might have doctored the documents, or he might not have. There is only one person who knows and his purpose is to bring criticizm to Scientology so he might have done a little creation of documentation. There is no verification at present and certainly I am not willing to misrepresent myself and then steal documents to prove the guy is innocent of doctoring his stolen goods. It is appropriate to question a thief's actions, after all, many other avenues were available to him, he could have quit the Church at any time, no one forced him to pay as much as he did, nor to lie and steal as he did. He swore not to reveal those documents in order to have access to them. Why shouldn't anyone suspect such a person? Terryeo 03:52, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I purchased a copy of the documents from the Swedish Ministry of Justice several years ago (they quaintly called it the "Scientology Bible"). The documents certainly looked completely authentic, and when the CoS protested and litigated the issue in Sweden, as far as I know it didn't once make the claim that the documents had been falsified. If it had, it probably would have sunk its own case. So you're right, Tenebrous - Terryeo is just blowing smoke when he suggests that the documents might not be authentic. -- ChrisO 00:15, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

So you are saying that the Swedish Ministry of Justice was selling those documents to the public several years ago and called them the "Scientology Bible?" I'll just let you evaluation, "blowing smoke" go, though you could have stated it more diplomatic terms. Terryeo 05:02, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and not just the Ministry of Justice; the Swedish Parliament and several other ministries were selling them too. An official at the Ministry of Justice told me that they had already sold over 2,000 copies despite organised efforts to block them - it was impossible to access the publicly viewable copies of the documents because Scientologists were taking turns to blockade the reading room. This, of course, means that the documents have clearly been "published" - just not by the CoS! -- ChrisO 21:43, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for informing me, I was not aware of that situation that happened several years ago. I guess it wasn't big enough to make much in USA papers and I didn't see it made much of in Church publications. I didn't realize they were actually sold by Swedish government organizations. Is that still the case today, could I or anyone, purchase a copy from an organization consituting part of the Swedish Government? Are they on sale as they once were? Terryeo 03:06, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not surprised that Church publications didn't mention it! The documents were actually sold under the terms of the Swedish Freedom of Information laws ("offenlighetsprincip"). The laws were eventually changed - not least because of the Church's complaints - and the documents are no longer availale from Sweden. However, by that time the documents had been on sale for probably a year or more and tens of thousands of copies had probably been sold by then. -- ChrisO 16:15, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

We can cite copyrighted works and in fact, nearly everything on Wikipedia is copyrighted. There is something called "fair use" which makes this acceptable from a legal standpoint. We shouldn't publish things that are protected by "trade secret", but whether or not any parts of OT3 or the lecture series of Hubbard's remain a "trade secret" has not been determined recently. In order to find out if these are protected by trade secret,e.g. the parts of OT3 that discuss the "trade secreted" confidential steps of dealing with the aftermath of Xenu's holocaust, the CoS would have to file suit and prove to a judge that the materials are still a trade secret. I'm guessing CoS won't do this, because they realize that they are likely to lose any lawsuit in this regard, since it is the CoS's own negligence in protecting its trade secrets that has allowed them to become widely dissemenated throughout the world. You can't tell every Tom, Dick, and Harry that walks in the door your secret and then shout "Trade Secret" 5 years after Tom, Dick, and Harry have written a book describing the details of the "secret". But speaking strictly from a copyright point of view, you can't stop someone from publishing excerpts of a copyrighted work, nor stop others from republishing those exerpts as "fair use". Vivaldi 06:45, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

The CoS has already litigated this issue and it lost in the courts, so decisively that it's become a frequently quoted case in US copyright law. See http://www.publaw.com/fairuse.html . -- ChrisO 00:15, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

That is not the point which I brought up, nor the point which you and I have disagreed on so much that you attempted to modify WP:CITE. I am not addressing "how much material constitutes fair use." I am asking the arbitrators which would read this page about a specific set of cites. I am asking because of two reasons. One, they are contested, legally contested by the Church of Scientology and have been contested in a number of court cases. The Church has clearly made the issue that they do not wish them broadly issued. And they made that case a number of times and they stated their reasons for wishing it to be that way. You are completely, totally not duplicating what I am saying at all. I am speaking of constested documentation and not of "how much constitutes fair use." The documents contain specialized jargon, it requires education to undertand them and they contain special use words which are not defined outside of the Church, nor are church documents publicized which define thier use of some words in those documents. Additionally, they contribute very little to articles such as Space Opera, or anywhere else they are used at this time as cites. They reference in obscure ways, reference specific events of long ago. They might or might not be presented as "these are valid facts" but whether anyone chooses to accept them as valid or not, they bring little of use to the encylopedic table. Except of course, to incite editors who wish to create controversy. I would ask the arbitrators because ChrisO and other editors have spoken their piece about the documents many times in many discussion pages. Terryeo 08:29, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Terryeo, it's one or the other: either the CoS has copyright to the document sections or they're not real. The parts of the documents Wikipedia cites cannot be both copyrighted by the CoS and fake. If they're fake, we either need to see counter-evidence or a reason to believe that the evidence submitted to the court wasn't reliable. Attacking the credibility of the person who submitted the documents does nothing (directly) to discredit the documents. If they're real, it doesn't matter what claims Scientology has on them; we can cite them. --Davidstrauss 21:09, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The CoS (my understanding) copyrighted the documents in every country they could (along with the rest of Hubbard's works). The statements within them would read to me much as my reading about an atom smasher because I simply don't have any information about it and frankly, can't myself find, perceive or know any part of any of it. I can not tell you if they are genuine or not because I do not know. But, supposing just for a millisecond you met someone who had god-like powers and could tell you, "yep, all that really happened" or could alternatively tell you, "nope, that's all a lie". What difference would it make to the articles? Very little, really. The subjects themselves and the publications which we cite would still be extant and so on. Do the OT documents, Class VIII lectures contribute to a common person understanding the subjects so far? Well, if they do please point out how they do, the commonly published stuff does contribute though. Terryeo 03:35, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I think Terryeo's POV is clearly coming out here: the reference supposedly "incite[s] editors who wish to create controversy". I just wish Terryeo was honest enough to admit that he doesn't want the citation because it offends his beliefs. Not only is there no credible legal issue about citing the documents in question, Terryeo has absolutely no standing to make accusations of illegality against other editors. He has no business setting himself up as the CoS' copyright cop on Wikipedia. -- ChrisO 21:43, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

This is about the 100th time I have replied to another editor about a statement like, "offends beliefs" or implications of that nature. Modemac was great for that too, anything that implied I was offended because people don't do what the Church of Scientology would prefer. HEH. You go right ahead and read those things until your eyeballs fall out if that is what pleases you and you feel is right. heh. I don't care what you do, what you read, what you consider to be real or otherwise. But I would like the subjects presented as the creator of the subjects intended to communicate those subjects. For my nickle, the OT documents, Class VIII lectures, etc. contribute very little because First, they are full of jargon that requires a fair amount of education to understand. Then Second, they apply to a small piece (generally) of time, long, long past. Anyone here have good memory of what was going on 75 million years ago? I'll tell you right away, I don't. Heh. One more thing. "My beliefs" There is no part of any OT document that has the least thing to do with beliefs. Not the least jot, not the least twiddle to do with beliefs. Here, let me aquaint you with the Scientology point of view which is "knowing how to know" The last paragraph of this page addresses the issue of "belief" but not at great length because it doesn't deserve great length. [1] "there is nothing in them that requires faith" it says, and that is my position, too. I'm saying, you're not going to offend my "beliefs" because that isn't what Scientology is about, friend. And I realize my statement here is so unreal to you that you simply won't believe it, but it is the straight truth. Terryeo 03:20, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Beliefs, principles, whatever. It's apparent that you have some kind of Scientology-related moral objection to mentioning the documents and you've tried (and failed) to find some kind of legal grounds to justify your objection. The rest of us aren't Scientologists though, so we're under no obligation at all to share or even respect your objection, any more than in the case of the various Muslims who tried to delete the Muhammad cartoons from the Wikipedia article on that topic. That's really one of the key issues in this arbitration - your repeated attempts to impose your own POV even when a consensus of editors is against you. -- ChrisO 16:15, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, ChrisO, I have stated to you that if you had communicated with me via talk pages or my personal page about how these Confidential documents were published, produced and sold to the public in Sweden, that it would have saved a great deal of difficulty. I posted to you on your talk page, my response to having learned what you have stated here on this talk page. Had you talked with me earlier it would have saved the problem of your modifying with a dagger, WP:CITE because my objects would not have existed in the manner they did at that earlier date. It would have saved a good deal of discussion by people who have better things to do. It might have saved the difficulties that led to the Rfc which you got a couple of other editors to go along with you about, and it might have saved the arbitrators time too. They work pretty hard to keep happy editors editing. A little communication would have helped. While I appriciate your effort to evaluate my morals, I don't agree that my morals meet your evaluation. A little communication would have been quite helpful, ChrisO. Helpful to me personally because after all, I can't know all of what goes on in every country, and helpful to the Wikipedian community too, because it would have reduced the amount of time we spend discussing and left us more free for producing articles.Terryeo 20:21, 15 April 2006 (UTC)