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Agent Provocateur?

Hmmm. Just curious. Why do you keep targeting pagan articles?

I am not a racist Odinist like McVan, but his movement does exist so it should not be ignored by "editing."--Tsmollet 00:00, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Hropt

If you are hropt, please blank that user page. It is filled with errors (your citations from the book are not citations at all).

I would not object to the your mistakes if they stayed within wikipedia (studies show that one out of every "facts" in wikipedia is false), but GOOLGE dumps them into the universe. You see, a search of "Odin Brotherhood" on google pops up your page.

So, please erase it. Thanks! --Tsmollet 00:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Paranoid much? Apparently, unlike you, I have real world experience and documentation in the subject matter. I own this book as well as the Odin Brotherhood. Ron McVan is inactive and is merely a blip on the screen of history compared to others. The Temple of Wotan and Wotansvolk are both defunct groups - I think their (brief) temporal history can best be preserved in their respective entries like Wotanism. Furthermore, McVan freely admits he plagiarized most of his content from the Book of Blotar. I have seen documentation with my own eyes affirming this. If there was enough meritorius and verifiable material, I would not assume the stance I am taking about it. Furthermore, the page you keep tampering with is a snapshot of the article as it existed when it was deleted, and not a starry-eyed advertisement or fankruft. I did not write it, I merely attempted to save the entry before it was deleted. I also did the same with Mark Mirabello. I'm sorry you don't feel the need to put forth genuine effort in this matter, but instead want to slander me or create conspiracies where none exist. - WeniWidiWiki 00:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, you are right. I did come across too severely.

Regarding the McVan book, I just think wikis should be as comprehensive as possible. I also become frustrated when "pagans" fight each other. Reminds me how the catholics insisted on quartering the body of Zwingli and burning it on a pile of feces--even though he also was a Christian.

Regarding that entry on the hropt page, I am still puzzeled. Is there a reason you want to preserv it? I actually like the bottom part, and I have thought about uasing it elsewhere.... (not wikipedia)--Tsmollet 00:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I am not advocating the purging of Ron McVan and the Temple of Wotan - but right now there is not enough material to warrant an entry. Ideally, they would both redirect to Wotanism - which needs reworking as well to encompass Weimar era use of the term (for which I have no reliable sources) as well as the variant promulgated by Lane & McVan. If down the road, the parent articles become strong enough to stand on their own merit, then and only then would expansion of the section be appropriate.

As far as "pagan unity", I can see you must be rather new to this. There isn't a common goal and therefore there can be no unity. Some neopagans are syncretic and eclectic and some are reconstructionist or traditionalist. Their goals and motives seldom intersect, and there are editors on wikipedia representing many streams of thought and pushing their own agendas. Articles and books with far more notoriety than any of these have been deleted by eager deletionists. In case you haven't noticed, it is mob rule at wikipedia. Merit and expertise count for nothing. A published expert on a subject holding a PhD holds just as much sway as a toothless crack-head with access to the internet at the library.

As for the preservation of the Odin Brotherhood snapshot - you'd have no way of knowing this, but Mr.Mirabello himself added the portion you are contesting. Look through the deletion discussions - it was used against him, resulting in the Mark Mirabello entry being deleted as well. I added the criticism section with a slightly different goal in mind: the Odin Brotherhood has been deleted 4+ times. Every time it is because zealous new editors come along and change the direction of the entry from Odin Brotherhood (Book) to Odin Brotherhood (Secret society). An entry on the book itself could stand on it's own merits. However, an entry on the Brotherhood itself cannot because Mirabello is the only source and it is thus unverifiable. Look through my edit history. Read through the previous deletion discussions. Get some context. Lurk a bit, and take note of the currents which are occuring. Don't just jump in the fray expecting everyone to conform to your superficial and immediate perceptions of events. Things are not always what they seem. - WeniWidiWiki 04:58, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I intially jumped in because of the way the Odinist Fellowship article was being handled. The whole thing seemed inappropriate....see my discussions on the talk page there.

I have read the Odin Brotherhood debates. The article has been deleted TWICE--the first time while it was being written!

I think your most valid point regards "mob rule." When wikipedia started, it was probably an exciting place--filled with pioneer solidarity. But it has indeed become mob rule....--Tsmollet 20:54, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Odin Brotherhood had been deleted twice by prod, which didn't require an AfD discussion. There was also a deletion review. I don't even know if records are kept for prod deletions. I am aware of a certain deletionist admin who seems to have a hard-on for Mr. Mirabello, and has instigated the purging both times. (Of which I can find absolutely no record of the last purging - proving that there is indeed a memory hole at wikipedia.) The OF thing did get ridiculous, and I'm not involved either way - people were definitely grinding axes, but the problem comes when both parties are pretty much telling the truth. This just isn't the place to argue over such petty BS. Man up and call one another on the phone or meet in person - but don't snipe each other on wikipedia. If you want to win deletion debates: work on the article in your own namespace. Make it rock solid. Cite as many sources as you can. Use logic and critical thinking rather than emotion and hyperbole. Stick to the letter of the law. I have brought several articles back from deletion and un-merged a few. It is possible - but being melodramatic and using sock puppets isn't going to accomplish anything. - WeniWidiWiki 22:08, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

For the record, I have no intention of personally restarting the article. I think the deletionist guy would simply "crash and burn it again."

On the original Hropt article, however, I should not the following objection. The article reads"

The terminology and thematic content is similar to New Age and early Wiccan writings. The Anglicized term Odin and Odinist are very recent neologisms which are unattested for until recently, when they have been used by groups like the Odinist Fellowship and the Odinic Rite for their particular denomination of Germanic neopaganism.

Just to clarify: finding "neologisms" to expose frauds is a reliable technique (Lorenzo Valla used it to discredit the so-called Donation of Constantine), but it in NO WAY applies here. If Mirabello claimed to be publishing a text from the 16th century, the presence of "Odinist" would discredit the alleged text. But he states clearly in the introduction that HE wrote the book--and that he used HIS words to express THEIR beliefs. So the appearance of the term proves nothing--except that a twentieth-century man wrote the book he claimed he wrote!

Also, I can find nothing New Age or Wiccan in the text. Neobarbarian, yes!

Anyway, thanks for your time and insight....--Tsmollet 00:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Spam, not-so-wonderful spam

I caught your comment over on Kathryn NicDhàna's talk page and thought I'd give you a few other tidbits to think about. Because of my concern over what I perceive as an overwhelming blanket of linkspam on this matter, I have the majority of these pages with Starwood/Winterstar/ACE et al. links on my watchlist so I'm fairly familiar with these articles. When going through Rosencomet's user contributions, I find only five pages out of his approx. 850 total edits since August 2006 not connected to these links. Of course, not every edit included inserting these links; he did do other edits on these articles. But his edit universe remains very focused on the ACE/Starwood, et al. performers. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a specific group of pages you are particularly interested in; many Wikipedians have pages or groups of pages they keep an eye on. Not proprietary exactly, just interested in what happens on them. Since he used the phrase "as executive director of ACE", his conflict of interest seems blindingly obvious to me. This means he is either Jeff Rosenbaum ("Jeff Rosenbaum is the executive director and a founder of the Association for Consciousness Exploration (ACE).") or possibly Joseph Rothenberg, who is co-director of ACE. My vote is mainly on Jeff Rosenbaum, mostly because, after Starwood Festival, that was the second article Rosencomet worked on (he started it actually). Take a look at his early edit history.

Sorry to rant on your talk page. My frustration with the mediation process is making me rather testy with the whole thing. I've put some of this into the Starwood mediation but people either don't agree that this is a very serious problem or are not actually following the links I put in. You're my only hope, Obi Wan. Wait, wrong speech, wrong sentiment, wrong person. Sorry, got lost in my head for a moment. I'm a little unsure whether this is something to stress in the mediation anyway. I want to but then it becomes a personality conflict rather than the spam and conflict of interest issues which I think are at the heart of the matter. I don't have a link for it but Rosencomet even asked once about how to protect "his" pages from being changed by other editors. He's even called other people's edits he disagrees with "vandalism" in his reverting edit summary. That says so much to me. --Pigman (talk • contribs) 00:42, 16 December 2006 (UTC)