In an unprecedented effort to crack down on self-serving edits, the Wikipedia supreme court has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates.
Closing out the longest-running court case in Wikiland history, the site’s Arbitration Committee voted 10 to 0 (with one abstention) in favor of the move, which takes effect immediately.
The eighth most popular site on the web, Wikipedia bills itself as “the free encyclopedia anyone can edit.” … But according to multiple administrators speaking with The Reg, the muzzling of Scientology IPs marks the first time Wikipedia has officially barred edits from such a high-profile organization for allegedly pushing its own agenda on the site.
Oh, this is just too funny.
But it will be interesting to see how Scientology gets around these limits.
BTW, I wonder where the “Science” in Scientology comes from. I can’t see very much “Scientific” in thetans and evil alien overlords.
Of course, this could be said of most religions, but at least they don’t have “Science” in their names.
When they die, they should leave their bodies to Science Fiction.
L. Ron Hubbard was a genius. Who else has invented such a successful con out of whole cloth since Joe Smith? He laughed all the way to the bank, rubbish instruments and all.
It’s amazing to me how many people take it seriously, when he didn’t and as much said so throughout his later fiction.
I should have gone into business selling those thetan monitor things.
Straight from the horses mouth:
“Scientology…is not a religion.”
– L. Ron Hubbard
CREATION OF HUMAN ABILITY, 1954, p. 251
“Don’t break your back scrubbing floors. Get yourself a nigger, that’s what they were born for.”
– L. Ron Hubbard, in a letter to his 2nd wife
“`Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous,’ he told the meeting. `If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion.’ ”
“Better than 90 percent of what my father has written about himself is untrue.”
– Ron deWolf, son of L. Ron Hubbard
I want to join.
Well, at least they muzzled a group of utter lunatics worthy of being muzzled.
about time.
Gotta love that the ad left of the article was for, you guessed it, scientology.org!!
Can’t wait to see the scale of the fight this ignites. There’s no way they’re going to take this lying down.
@#3 “L. Ron Hubbard was a genius.”
Despite the con nature of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard’s book Dianetics was sheer genius, even if in places scientifically “wrong”.
This IP address ban will stop them maybe for 5 minutes the way it would stop any truly internet literate person for maybe 5 minutes (proxy services, public dynamic IP connection like DSL, etc.).
Whatever anyone thinks. This seems to be a violation of the principles of the wiki concept.
#11
It sure is, but only in response to likewise violations of the principles of well-behaved participants by Scientology users. Personally i don’t get why they bother anyway.
The very least Wikipedia could do would be to reserve a page of entries for which further editing has been prohibited. IE a list of “Free Speech Zones” on the site. A brief overview of the Recent Changes and Religion and Philosophy sections don’t mention any of this. Anyway the pattern of types of restricted topics would be interesting to see.
@#11
It maybe a violation of the wiki concept, but even Wikipedia doesn’t have unlimited resources and time to dedicate to needless reversions.
The Wikipedia concept is general consensus truth, not some politician, company or organization continually making edits 24/7 to their own entry to portray ONLY their OWN point-of-view because they have the time and resources to do so.
Hahahahahahaaaa! Good! L. Ron Hubbard was quoted as saying he could invent a religion and people would follow it. What a load of crap. People are stupid as hell these days and it’s hard for me to feel sorry for them. Dumbasses rejoice…..your moron savior is banned from Wikipedia…..go find a real religion.
11. “This seems to be a violation of the principles of the wiki concept.”
The principles of the wiki concept do not allow for a group to dominate and push its agenda via a wiki topic. The entire point of a wiki is to get a neutral overview of a topic, which obviously members of the “church” are unable to do.
This is no different from them hypothetically blocking my view that cancer is caused by insufficient masturbation. If I started changing various pages on cancer to reflect my narrow view, I have no doubt they’d eventually block me too. As they should.
#12, haha, “well-behaved” and “Scientology” don’t even belong in the same sentence.
#15–crypto==”these days?” Why the limitation? Religions based on supernatural beings are stoopid regardless of time or place.
What is the wiki principal? Real base line stoopid to think any process should be corrupted in order to be pure.
God I hate Tom Cruise…..
Ideally there should be FOUR internets:
(1) The free and factual internet
(2) Military and Government
(3) Religion and fantasy
(4) PORN
#15 said, “go find a real religion.”
There isn’t one.
#20 – You have them out of order! 🙂
As I understand Scientology:
1. They have an outreach program where they give a “talking therapy” to people to help them with personal issues. “Someone to talk to” is a powerful draw of all religions, therapies, healthy enviornoment.
2. I think a lot of people can hold in abeyance the BS about thetans and all that for the benefit of the therapy and the benefits they see in their own life. I think Tom Cruise and all the other Hollywood stars are in this category.
3. Then there is a group within Scientology who do scam the public for the money.
4. Then assuming this group is hierarchical as most groups are, there is some group getting that money and keeping all the parts operting as they do for the organization to succeed. Tom Cruise gets help in return for good press and maybe his money down the road, the average person gets taken advantage for their tithing just like all sheep do, and someone is living in great wealth and not getting much attention.
I so wonder what exactly the famous/known people in Scientology actually get out of it. Cruise has no need for money. Kinda Interesting. We all fall for something, and if not fall, we make choices about where/how we find meaning and accept the tradeoff’s made to achieve/work towards those goals.
“The principles of the wiki concept do not allow for a group to dominate and push its agenda via a wiki topic.”
This would be nice in theory, but since everyone is biased, the dominant perspective will win out, regardless of truth. Just like Digg.com has been taken over by Huffington Post drones, any user edited content is only as good as the users. If you let someone pick and choose who the users are, there is a chance that it might make the content more balanced, but I would say you have a much greater risk of censoring unpopular viewpoints or beliefs. I understand why Wikipedia did this, but in general this being a “good thing” would imply that the moderators are all-knowing.
#24–cranky==too wishy-washy. Should wiki allow its website to be corrupted by a known biased group or not?
Deal with issues as the rise and don’t think slippery slope analysis provides any insight at all.
Question!
Why don’t they just restrict editing to moderators and regular posters (there’s a better phrase for these people)? I seem to remember them doing this for other pages…..
#23, Bobbo,
Cruise is there because of CoS say they can de-gay people. That and he is an idiot.
Since Wikipedia is generally a volunteer organization, they are faced with trying to do a professional job on no budget. Their solution is not perfect. Freezing the pages might end up being the answer if the contributors can’t stop slanting the results.
…now if only somebody would muzzle all the evangelists, and baptists, and all the other wacko “do gooders”. Include politicians in this muzzling.
Any time you get two or more people together, moderation of some kind begins. Some individuals have to moderate themselves when alone. LOL
I loved when they froze Obama’s page and removed references to the bomber guy, the Reverends racist comments and Obama stating that it was his spiritual mentor.
Wiki has bigger internal problems than any external threat.