Wikipedia bans known Scientologists from editing articles
By Dave Parrack
Wikipedia is built on openness and impartiality. Scientology is built on secrecy and self-importance. Put the two together and you have one almighty ruckus. With the decision by Wikipedia to block known Scientologists from editing articles on the site, the Church of Scientology is bound to fight back.
Scientology has existed since 1952 when the science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard took his self-help program of Dianetics and turned it into a religion. And the Church of Scientology is considered a religion although many people would characterize it as a cult instead. Whatever the truth, it’s hardly Judaism, Islam, or Christianity now is it.
Scientology is a religion that requires a lot of money to be a part of and there are strange practices surrounding it. The people on the inside, including many celebrities (Tom Cruise being the most high-profile) who have more money than sense, seek to protect and defend it, while many on the outside aren’t too keen on the church’s beliefs.
This has led a group calling itself Anonymous to seek to destroy or at least embarrass the Church of Scientology in recent years. Even before Anonymous and the Web as we know it today, Scientologists sought to control its public image, but the Internet has made that a lot harder to do.
Anyone is free to edit articles on Wikipedia, meaning the groups being discussed can hide or twist the truth. Which is exactly what Wikipedia claims the Church of Scientology has been doing – editing entries to make the Church look better and its enemies look bad.
According to The Register, Wikipedia, by way of a 10-0 vote by its Arbitration Committee, has now banned all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church and its associates. The ban has already come into effect and is intended to stop these so-called “Wikifiddlers” from damaging the site’s reputation for impartiality.
This is an unprecedented move, with Wikipedia never having banned an entire group, let alone religion, from editing articles before. This despite there having been many examples of gaming the system in the past, from the Republican party, FOX News, and Diebold, the supplier of the voting machines at the center of the notorious “hanging chad” controversy of the 2000 U.S. Presidential election.
The Church of Scientology has yet to respond to the decision but I suspect it will in time.
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May 30th, 2009
The notoriously criminal Scientology corporation is at core organized crime, the claims that the company continues to make are always without exception fraud, designed to try to rook and swindle rubes, marks, and suckers in to handing the criminals money.
Cudos to WikiPedia for halting the crime syndicate’s attempts to deny their company’s history of racketeering, blackmail, extortion, fraud, kidnapping, murder, human rights and civil rights abuses, all of which are demonstrable in the extant criminal and civil case records for the criminal enterprise.
I bet the Gambino Mafia would also be banned if they tried to pull the same stunts on WikiPedia as their Scientology colleagues routinely did.
May 31st, 2009
Diebold was NOT at the center of the “hanging chad” controversy in Florida. Electronic voting machines do not have “hanging chads” — only paper ballots do. The paper ballots at the center of that controversy were produced by Sequoia Voting Systems. Google Dan Rather and Sequoia to find out how Sequoia’s management knowingly produced bad ballots that year. Diebold had nothing to do with that one.
May 31st, 2009
That’s ok Jack, this author is prone to producing innacurate and inflammatory opinion pieces here. And whatever editorial staff there is or isn’t at Blorge diesnt care.
June 3rd, 2009
No one in Australia does any editing of Wikipedia from the Church of Scientology, but we welcome the actions to make Wikipedia more factual as some of the entries on Scientology have been very hateful and erroneous. What is really important is that Wikipedia has also stopped those involved in biased editing for the purpose of antagonism instead of information. It is good from our perspective. We hope that this will result in more accurate and useful articles on Wikipedia.
There is a problem of truth and balance. For example, the media regarding Wikipedia’s ruling failed to mention that a group of people antagonistic to Scientology were also banned from making edits. That is a huge omission. For Scientologists, one of the other biggest omissions from reporting has also been how much charity and social work we all do. When you dedicate your time and efforts to literacy, drug rehabilitation and criminal reform, and then these media stories or Wikipedia entries don’t reflect it, then this is unbalanced. We have a huge store of information on our programs bettering lives and contributing in the community and society at large. All community groups know what it is like to work hard and selflessly and not get acknowledged for it. Bad, not good new seems to rule the headlines. We, like them, keep going whether or not it is reported on in the media or whether we are criticised or praised. When you help people, you see the changes in them and their life. That’s enough for us.