The Church of Scientology has been banned from making edits on wikipedia, because they were pushing their agenda too much:
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 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.
They’re not a cult, really! And they’ll edit their wikipedia article to prove it!
Well, not anymore.
Can they do the same for the Catholic church now, please?
do we like scientologists?
They probably don’t need to ban other religions/cults because they are not as tech savvy and/or litigious as the CoS. I mean they’ve banned individuals before for their biased editing of various articles. But I really think the CoS might have been the first organization to justify such a ban.
That’s how they got away with tax-free status in the US. It’s not that they deserved it – it’s that they were costing the IRS so much money to fight repeated cases and appeals. Their final bill was supposed to have been in the hundreds of billions of dollars, which they were clearly never going to pay. So the IRS gave up and wrote it all off.
Haha, good picture. I wonder if the person in that outfit is serious about it or not. If so, that’s just embarrassing.
This is two days in a row that you point out a wikipedia article that should be make more neutral. Is there a specific way to become an editor? It seems like it would be easy for the church to encourage new editors (of which their IP addresses have never been used) to continue the same work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Contributing_to_Wikipedia
Xenu is the bad guy of Scientology. It’s the equivalent of someone dressing up as the devil.
If I remember correctly, that was an anti-Scientology guy who used to go to Scientology rallies and dress as XENU to disrupt their gatherings. The Church of Scientology likes to downplay the ‘scary alien’ portion of the dogma when discussing it in public, for obvious reasons. They don’t reveal the alien part of it until long after you’ve been indoctrinated and paid lots of money.
Ok- I’m not one to readily admit this, but there is such a thing as taking science fiction too far!
:(
Scientology=science fiction abuse
Scientology is really virulent. Last week I search for the religion section in my local library. It happend to be in a special room of the library. And to add insult to the surprise: there was a complete collection of scientology texts, translated to spanish, hard cover, a very attractive object. Nice lure for the unaware. When asked for the origin of the collection, the chief librarian told me that it was a donation (from the church itself), and they don’t filter contents.
Sadly (but not oddly) there wasn’t any book about atheism (newer than 1920). No sign of Richard Dawkins or other. They don’t even know the name.
I always thought scientology that is after the rich only.
I would really hope you wouldnt find anything about athiesm in the religion section. Should be in the philosophy section.
Somehow, I don’t think this is going to deter them very much.
I agree.
Even though almost no one takes the Church of Scientology seriously, they [i]do[/i] take themselves seriously. People grow up in the church thinking the way L. Ron Hubbard wanted them to. I’ve read stories about people having so much trouble breaking off the CoS after growing up with it their whole life(It’s really sinister how the CoS keeps everyone shielded from the outside world) because their only friends/family are in it.
I haven’t checked out this link personally, but it looks to be exactly what I want to link, Stories about people’s experience in the CoS: http://www.factnet.org/Scientology/dianetics_abuse.html
One of my favorite cult websites has a section on Scientology.
http://www.rickross.com/groups/scientology.html
Thank you for reminding me of FACTnet. I took a five-day Lifespring class. It’s one of many est spinoffs, in which egos found an LGAT empire, other egos rise high in the hierarchy, then leave to form their very own empires. I got my money back; the condition was that I never attend another Lifespring course. Hey, no problem!
It began my interest in cult studies. Someday mainstream christianity will be considered a cult. “I have a dream…..”
Thomas Jefferson said it himself, and I quote: “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”
One can only hope.
Source.
apparently thats how it happened
also we don’t like scientology, they killed people and took the money
kind of like the regular church really
Personally, I see the whole thing starting with L. Ron Hubbard making a bet with someone after knocking back a few.
It’s long been suggested that Hubbard dreamt the whole thing up as a bit of a joke, but got used to the money.
I tend to believe he got caught in a situation where he couldn’t actually tell the truth about it–Too many people had bought in. And as he aged, perhaps he believed it himself.
i’m all for freedom of speech, but i agree with wikipedia’s administration for revoking it as it pertains to a specific group if that group abuses the freedom.
or maybe that’s my “church of scientology is batshit insane” bias talking.
The Fundies have their own alternative site, Conservapedia. maybe Scientology will start their own alternative as well, Scientolopedia or something.
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Way to go Wiki! Yayyyyyy! Now if only the governments of the world would round up all the Scientologists and send them on a big space ship to Mars, I’d be really super duper happy!
To me, this raises the bigger issue of censorship… I’m kinda surprised Wiki would do this, although I confess my ignorance of the history of the case. To me, it would seem like a dangerous precedent — but again, maybe there’s egregious abuse that I’m unaware of.
Brgulker: CoS deserves this censorship because what they were doing was aggressively falsifying input to Wikipedia concerning Scientology. Let’s put it this way. If you had a Wikipedia page and people were posting blatant lies about you on it (to the point of erasing anyone that attempted to set the record straight) don’t you think you would have a right to complain? Do you think it would be censorship to ban such people from posting lies? I doubt it. Scientologists have zero qualm about saying the most completely, blatantly false things about anyone who offers an unbiased view of Scientology. Part of their M.O. is to destroy Scientology’s detractors by any means possible. They are vicious and litigious. Their kind of input is more classified as ‘libel’ than anything else, and we have laws against libel.
Fail.