Misplaced Pages

Latest revision as of 04:50, 3 March 2023

Create your own section to provide evidence in, and do not edit anyone else's section. Keep your evidence to a maximum of 1000 words and 100 diffs. Evidence longer than this will be refactored or removed entirely.

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your main evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs and keep responses to other evidence as short as possible. A short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

It is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those will have changed by the time people click on your links), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent. See simple diff and link guide.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to re-factor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move.

Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.

Evidence presented by User:Jossi

Backround on my involvement

• Jossi (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• I declared my affiliation: on September 1, 2004, a few months after my first edit to Misplaced Pages.
• I made a further disclosure, User:Jossi/Disclosure, on October 2006.
• As of March 16 2008, I have performed a total of 61,987 contributions to Misplaced Pages, of which 22,721 in article namespace, and 11,563 in article talk namespace.
• In the course of my participation in this aticle over the years I have provided the vast majority of scholarly sources for the article (with the exception of scholarly sources in other languages than English and a few others), including works by Gordon J. Melton, John Bowker, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, E. Fahlbusch, J. M. Lochman, Charles Lippy, Ron Geaves, Rosemary Goring, Jeffrey K. Hadden, Stephen J. Hunt, Raymond Lee, Keneth Lee, James R. Lewis, Meredith McGuire, Tim Miller, Spencer Palmer, William Pryor, Lucy Dupertius, and other non-scholarly authors such as David V. Barrett, Sophia Collier, Andrea Cagan, and others, providing full cites for other editors to evaluate at Talk:Prem_Rawat/scholars. I have also contributed a number of WP:SELFPUB sources for editors' evaluation.
• In the last year (since March 16, 2007) I made a total of 64 edits to the Prem Rawat article, of which 47 edits where minor edits, such as correcting cite formatting, or adding refs; 6 edits where removal of obvious vandalism; and two of the remaining 11 edits performed in these 12 months were adding well-sourced criticism found in scholarly sources: diff, and diff, in response to a GA review performed by User:Vassyana circa March 2007.
• Despite these minimal edits over the last 12 months, after receiving community feedback, I declared my intent to limit myself to talk page discussions only - (February 10, 2008.)
• During the same time I engaged in vigorous debates in talk page, providing sources when requested, and assisted editors on ways to improve the article, while encouraging them to be respectful to each other and avoid misusing the talk page for off-topic comments, soapboxing and other obvious disruption.
• On February 18, 2008 I proposed mediation as next step of dispute resolution, which was supported by User:Will Beback, but there were no takers.
• On March 4, 2008, upon a proposal made by User:Will Beback and myself, the article was placed on community-enforced 1RR and disruption probation. This helped for a while, only to be later ignored (See AN/I reports: 1,2, 3).
• During 2007, I worked alongside other editors on the article Lord of the Universe (documentary) (a satirical documentary highly critical of Prem Rawat), which attained GA status on December 1, 2007.
• I have informed all editors, when needed, to respect Misplaced Pages's behavioral policies, such as WP:CIVILITY, to avoid soapboxing or using talk pages as a discussion forum, as well as encouraging editors to avoid edit-warring and to look for ways to find common ground and workable compromises. I issued warnings to editors, regardless of affiliation or declared or undeclared POVs, for example asking Momento to re-consider his editing behavior, warning PatW for making personal attacks, as I would have done in any other article I have come across in which such disruption was made evident.
• Despite unsubstantiated claims, I have never used or misused my admin privileges or exerted "administrator influence" (whatever that means) in this or any other related or unrelated articles. My contributions to talk page have been exclusively within my privileges as an editor amongst other editors on equal terms.
• My comments in the different noticeboards which I actively monitor and participate, such as WP:V/N, WP:BLP/N, WP:AN, WP:AN/I, WP:WQA, and WP:AN/3RR have been consistent, regardless if these comments were related to the subject of this arbitration, or not, or to involved editors or not.

Having said all this, I know I am not without fault, and acknowledge that I may have erred from time to time. I would hope that these faults would be assessed in the context of some intense personal attacks and misleading claims made against me and the subject of the article, on and off-wiki.

I consider myself a private person, and as such, I am unwilling to disclose any personal information besides what I have already disclosed. Given the speculation on and off-wiki about my involvement with the subject of this case, I will be willing to consider disclosing, in chambers, additional information to the ArbCom, if the ArbCom sees this as necessary and upon their request only.

Requesting community input

Requests for community input include several WP:RFCs and reviews:

• First peer review (Oct 25 2006) Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Biography/Peer_review/Prem_Rawat/Review_1. Initiated by Jossi
• Second peer review (Oct 31 2006) Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Prem Rawat. Initiated by Jossi
• GA Review (March 11 2007) . Initiated by Jossi. GA Review performed by User:Vassyana
  • Comments after the peer review:
  • Comment by GA reviewer (March 23 2007), commending editors on the good progress made:

User:PatW has misused talk pages, user pages, and engaged in personal attacks

PatW (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been warned numerous times for personal attacks, and talk page disruption.

• Despite the warnings, PatW continues misusing talk page discussions with long diatribes, baiting editors, expressing personal opinions about the subject of the article and its editors, etc.
• PatW has made a total of 1,084 edits to Misplaced Pages since his first edit on April 2006, of which only 22 edits are in article namespace. All other edits are to talk pages and exclusively about the subject of this case.

Some examples of recent personal attacks

Per Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive383#User:PatW

• User_talk:PatW#No_personal_attacks_3 Feb 9, 2008, for this attack (Feb 9, 2008): You horrible, HORRIBLE bunch of liars are all going to hopefully be revealed as the shameless dishonest, immoral brain-washed creeps you clearly are
• User_talk:PatW#Warning on soapbox, arguing, and personal attacks- for this comment (Feb 24, 2008), and previous comments during that period.
• User was warned about article probation. (March 4, 2008).
• Describing editors as "shameless servants". Diff (March 9, 2008)

Some examples of WP:NOT#SOAP and WP:NOT#FORUM violations

• Diff
• Diff
• Diff
• See also his talk page in which previous warnings where placed, and his user page (both blanked on March 10 after this good advise by non-involved User:Nsk92)

User:Francis Schonken has injected himself in the dispute, disrupted editing, and sabotaged the community enforced article probation

Francis Schonken (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has tried to cast himself as a "neutral editor", but has failed to assist editors in the content dispute. Rather than offer help he seems to have decided to take it upon himself to "fix" the article. Being bold is a good thing sometimes, but dismissing other editors as "POV pushers" is unhelpful, as it is edit-warring with them. Evidence follows.

Background

• Francis Schonken re-started editing the article after more than a year of not editing, reverting to his last edit at the time. His last edit January 19, 2007 - his February 8, 2008 reversion. Despite the obvious disruption, I welcomed his participation, and encouraged him to work alongside others: , and .
• Several editors, (involved editors and others as well) alerted him of the mistake he was making in deleting hundreds of contributions and losing many sources and material. He reverted back to to the old version twice first revert - Feb 8, 0:52, second revert - Feb 8 12:32, desisting after other non-involved editors convinced him to stop. The article was protected on Feb 9 due to the edit-warring.
• On Feb 12, Francis again reverted to the same old version diff, only to be reverted by User:Sarcasticidealist, and uninvolved editor, with a edit summary of reverting a very unhelpful step in the consensus process diff
• Since returning to edit the article (Feb 8, 2008), Francis made 128 edits to Prem Rawat, 22 marked as minor edits. From the remaining 106 edits, 19 were reversions of other editors' contributions. diff. He reverted edits by Momento (7 reverts), Janice Rowe (2 reverts), Rainer P. (1 revert), and Louise.Po (1 revert)

Francis Schonken sabotaged the community-enforced 1RR probation

• Francis Schonken objected to the 1RR probation proposal , on the grounds that it it bends good guidance in all sort of directions in order to give POV-pushers an unjustifiable advantage.
• Diff of 1RR probation notice
• After the probation was implemented, he dismissed the probation on grounds of "wikilawyering" and "confusing wording"

1. First 1RR parole violation AN/I Report
   • 15:37, March 13, 2008 1st revert
   • 15:49, March 13, 2008 2nd revert
2. Second 1RR parole violation AN/I report, which he dismissed with claims that the ANI report was "belligerent filibustering", and calls to impose restrictions on me']:
   • 23:18, March 15, 2008 ((Undid revision 198499325 by Momento (talk) this is not what Hunt says)
   • 23:04, March 15, 2008 (Undid revision 198509229 by Momento (talk) not covered by the sources here; is covered in the section with other sources)

• The 1RR probation wording was unambiguous (my highlight): Editors violating 1RR (one revert per editor per day), or that engage in disruptive editing may incur escalating blocks performed by uninvolved admins, or have other reasonable restrictions placed on them in relation to these topics.
• Francis as en experienced contributor should known by now the meaining of page probation, and what 1RR probation, means: If someone reverts your change, don't re-revert it, but discuss it with them (per Misplaced Pages:1RR).

Francis Schonken takes a surprising lenient attitude towards WP:NPA

Witnessing a vicious personal attack by User:PatW , this is what Francis had to say to him "Pat, Jossi interprets your comment above (and other comments on this page) as a personal attack." diff, instead of refactoring, or at minimum placing a warning in his talk page or at WP:WQA as customary.

Francis Schonken does nothing when asked to intervene in a BLP violation

When a BLP violation was posted by an anon user,on Feb 29, 2008) I asked Francis as a "non-involved" editor to take action and refactor the offending comment. He did not respond, and did nothing. After no one did anything I refactored it myself,.

Summary

Francis Schonken came to help with the article upon the publishing of the The Register article, and despite his claims that he came as a neutral editor, he has injected himself in the dispute, and has shown very poor judgment in his interactions with editors he openly describe as "POV pushers", by applying the mistaken behavior that it is OK to revert their contributions because of his negative assessment of them. Most, if not all, reverts and ANI complains have been exclusively about editors that he has assessed as having a pro bias, while being overtly lenient about others. It seems that for Francis, dispute resolution does not apply to him. He objected to the attempts to dispute resolution, such as the negotiated community-enforced 1RR probation, and when the proposal passed it was not too soon that he sabotaged the probation on the basis of poor wording and by violating it, showing again a disregard for WP's dispute resolution process.

User:Momento applies a narrow interpretation of WP:BLP

Momento (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), edits almost exclusively on Prem Rawat and related articles

• Momento has a tendency to apply a narrow interpretation of WP:BLP which got him into trouble despite warnings.
• Since Feb 8 (date of the The Register article), Momento performed approximately 148 edits to Prem Rawat
• Momento has been recently blocked twice for WP:3RR, based on his narrow interpretation of WP:BLP upon AN/3RR notices placed since that date, about which he argued he was acting in applying BLP policy.

Replies to other evidence presented

@User:Matthew Stannard

1. Multiple "press releases" have been posted under my name, but have not been posted by me or by the Prem Rawat Foundation. Evidence of this is the email addresses used in these postings: Example 1 posted October 2007 using an email address associated with a critical site (drek.org) drek.maharaji@gmail.com. Example 2: with an email address of a free email service maharajitprf@gmail.com. With the exception of one link, all these "press release" sites are free services that anyone can post to under any name.

   As far as I can see the Foundation's press releases are made through PRWeb and linked from their press releases on their website. Example which links to PR Web . The email address featured in these press releases are from the tprg.org TLD.

   I can only speculate why someone would want to associate my name with these press releases.

2. Regarding this redirect, check the diff. I was just correcting a mistake. The previous version contained a redirect and the text of an old version of that article.
3. Regarding user Prem Rawat (talk · contribs), he was not "banned" as Matthew Stannard alleges, but softblocked and encouraged to register with a different name , due to obvious impersonation and other shenanigans which can be read on his talk page. See User_talk:Prem_Rawat#Register_with_a_new_name.

@User:Francis Schonken

1. PatW's behavior: PatW has been warned numerous times, and has been unable to stop the recurring personal attacks and abuse of talk pages, despite previous claims that he will stop, or that he will stop participating.
2. Kim Bruning's advice: Kim's advice and interaction with PatW was very useful, although it was not a symmetrical issue and should not be framed as such. WP:CIVILITY is not optional, but a requirement.
3. Have a well-written article on Prem Rawat — Finally something we agree on. I would only add "and stable."
4. Do what I can to keep Misplaced Pages out of negative press. — Negative press from the likes of The Register's Cade Metz , where there before this and will continue after this despite any thing you or I could do.
5. there were more personal attacks by Jossi, for the convenience of this case, and unless compelled, I will limit myself to a single example) I hereby challenge and compel Francis to present such evidence.
6. History of editing restrictions: Misplaced Pages works by the building of consensus through talk page discussions. If these fail, there is dispute resolution. People have the right to decide not to edit or not to participate in discussions, but that does not give them the right to complain that the article is not of quality if they chose not tpo participate. Yes, we know it is sometimes a hard and tedious process, but that is the way it works in Misplaced Pages and until a better way is found, that is the way it is.
7. Jossi's conduct during Momento's third WP:AN3 listing - Francis forgets to mention Luna Santin's comment on that discussion, and forgets to include the evidence that he and others were also engaged in edit wars during that time. I proposed that a uninvolved admin consider page protection as a temporary measure to encourage editors to discuss and seek consensus. The diffs that demonstrate the edit-warring by several editors, are available here.

@User:John Brauns

1. Please see Conduct on Arbitration pages. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:22, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
2. Jossi now claims to be a wide-ranging Wikipedian, but his beginnings on Misplaced Pages tell a very different story. Aye! I will neither be the first nor the last person, to start editing Misplaced Pages narrowly, only to get bitten by the bug! I took the test, and I'd better not share the results :) ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 01:15, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

@User:Maelefique‎

1. My response to the question about the reliability of sources has been consistent with other cases. Namely, I have always asserted that editorial judgment about suitability of material, in the context of all other existing policies needs to be exercised, in particular in BLPs. See the lead of WP:NPOV for a good formulation about this. You can also read an essay I worked on with others; Misplaced Pages:Evaluating_sources, which derives some of its text from Misplaced Pages:Neutral_point_of_view#Neutrality and verifiability
2. I have nominated several editors for adminship. And yes, you are more "verbose" when you nominate a user, than when you are expressing your supporting for a user.
3. Thanks for the clarification regarding your use of a sockpuppet account to participate in this case, but please see Misplaced Pages:SOCK#Alternative_account_notification. Please note that neither me or ArbCom would have known this unless you disclosed it. My comments regarding your evidence stand, regardless. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:58, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

@User:PatW

1. Unfortunately most of your evidence is to archive pages and not to diffs so it is difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate your comments against the evidence.
2. I will respond only to this one: Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_24#Jossi.27s_Conflict_of_Interest posted by User:Sylviecyn. You can see there the comments by Jayjg: , Vassyana, and JPGordon (by some reason some diffs from May 17 are not obtainable, so I have anchored these comments, for easy access.) ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
3. RE: Ex-premie "Hate Group" Allegations. What is the point of bringing diffs from November 2004? Should we bring also as evidence the disruption created by the many SPAs of that time. I don't think so. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 14:46, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

@User:Cla68

I do not know what is the relevance of Citizendium in this arbitration, but in any case, see the the whole thread - The initial post was by a "Nik w", who signs as "A. C." ("Andrew Carpenter", maybe?) ; the reply was given by Dr. Robert H. Stockman, Religious Studies, DePaul University,, followed by my reply .

@User:Msalt

1. Thank you for the diffs at Actions of User:Jossi Have Encouraged This Tendentious Editing (I know it is a lot of work). I thank you for that evidence , as anyone looking into the diffs (rather than just your commentary on these diffs) will see that I have acted appropriately. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:21, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
2. Furthermore, anybody reviewing the 190 or so diffs presented as evidence, would easily note the massive gap between what these diffs show and the assertions made about them.

@User:Will Beback

The table of edits can be improved for a better representation:

1. to weight the percentages over the years that editors have contributed to the article
2. or to display last 12 month edits

Evidence presented by User:John Brauns

Backround to Jossi's role on Misplaced Pages

I am the webmaster of websites ex-premie.org and prem-rawat-talk.org where former followers of Prem Rawat give testimony on their time as followers of Rawat and discuss the topic. I also front other websites where the true owners are unwilling to risk the inevitable harrassment by current followers of Rawat by publishing their names.

It is my assertion that Jossi has no ‘conflict’ of interest in posting on Misplaced Pages because a conflict implies two or more interests. Jossi’s sole reason for being on Misplaced Pages is to present his Master, Prem Rawat, in as positive a light as possible, and he has done what is necessary to reach admin status to help do this. I’ll try to explain why I make this assertion. It is impossible to understand Jossi's role here without understanding more about the Rawat cult in a wider context than Misplaced Pages. From the early 80s to the late 90s, Rawat deliberately and pretty much successfully avoided all publicity. Until ex-followers started posting on usenet in 1996, an internet search for Rawat under any of his names would have yielded no results. I heard Rawat himself diss the internet as of no value. Then the ex-followers presence became one that the cult could not ignore, so in 1999 Rawat changed his mind, and put up his first website, and followers followed suit. Around this time the cult embarked on what is called the 'legitimacy' campaign to change Rawat’s image from the rich child guru from the 70s. I can give evidence of this campaign if the committee require it. Part of this campaign has been to denigrate Rawat's former followers that post on the internet. Again, I can give evidence of this if required.

I mention all this because Jossi has been at the heart of the attempt to establish legitimacy for Rawat on the internet from the start. He was the webmaster of Rawat's first website in 1999, as well as the webmaster of related websites such as Rawat's A/V company, Dunrite, and a followers' music website, Eversound. Again, if Jossi denies this (I doubt he would), I can provide evidence.

Jossi now claims to be a wide-ranging Wikipedian, but his beginnings on Misplaced Pages tell a very different story. His first 500 Misplaced Pages contributions, over 7 months, were almost exclusively on Rawat related articles:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:Contributions&dir=prev&limit=500&contribs=user&target=Jossi&namespace=0

The only exceptions were a handful of edits to articles related to graphics design, and, tellingly, an edit to the WP:Hate Group article establishing that apostates of new religious movements could be viewed as hate groups. It is clear that during that time his was a prime example of a single purpose account that he repeatedly criticises others for. It is only later that Jossi widens his editing to other articles, although a check of the articles he authored will show that many are close to stubs. See Some of the Articles I have Created, -

One of the three important tenets of the Rawat belief system is service to Prem Rawat. Jossi is a dedicated follower, and is willing to do what it takes to please his Master.

Regarding Jossi's evidence above, I am sure it is largely accurate. What is missing is that when he acknowledged in 2004 that he is a 'proud student' of Rawat's, he declined to mention his involvement in Rawat's websites, which was a clear breach of WP:COI. Also, in all his edits, I have never seen him revert a pro-Rawat edit, regardless of the quality of the source. I have asked him to show me such a revert and he was unable or unwilling to do so. I have been asked to produce diffs to support this allegation. It is difficult to prove a negative, but here are two recent minor examples of poorly sourced pro-Rawat statements that had been in place some time before I edited them:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Prem_Rawat&diff=prev&oldid=149642855

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Prem_Rawat&diff=prev&oldid=181822308

It would be much easier for Jossi to produce, from his thousands of edits to Rawat related articles, a few examples where he has reverted, without being prompted, pro-Rawat edits. If he does so I will withdraw this allegation.

I appreciate that my evidence is not the kind that is expected here, and some of the committee may dismiss it as anecdotal or simply untrue, but I believe it is important that you understand the context of Jossi's involvement here. If Jossi really does believe in the Wiki project, he should be happy to avoid any possibility of further tarnishing Misplaced Pages's reputation by absenting himself from all Rawat related articles. This should apply to other long-time Rawat followers such as Momento and Rumiton. Myself, and, I believe, other former followers, would be happy to do the same and allow the article to be edited by neutral editors. The problem is that until the Register article, no else was interested in the subject.

A final word about my own contributions to talk pages. I have occasionally made comments to other editors about publishing information on them outside Misplaced Pages, and I have made other comments not related to the articles in question, that I have apologised for, and do so here again. --John Brauns (talk) 01:14, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Missing Sources from the Rawat article

Someone asked me which sources are not represented in the Rawat article, so here is my answer.

1. Press Articles. Genuine press articles about Rawat have usually been fair, and have usually been critical. Because of the publicity blackout that Rawat instituted from the mid 80s to the late 90s there have been very few recent press articles, but there are many from the 70s. The articles on Rawat's foundation's website (http://www.tprf.org/press-room/magazines.htm) are all paid advertorials in obscure magazines, but there is a good collection on my website, http://ex-premie.org/pages/press_room.htm and http://www.ex-premie.org/gallery/news/index.html - none of which are listed on Rawat's site. There were links to a couple of these articles in the Misplaced Pages Rawat article but these have been removed.

2. The book 'Who is Guru Maharaj Ji'.

This book by follwer Charles Cameron published by Bantam in 1973, includes the text on the front cover 'The authentic authorised story of the 15-year-old Guru...'. Copyright was owned by Shri hans Productions which was one of the trading names of Divine Light Mission (now Elan Vital). The back of the book includes the text 'Why do more than six million people around the world claim he is the greatest incarnation of God that ever trod on the face of this planet?'. Rennie Davis writes in the intro 'Guru maharaj Ji is the Lord of the Universe...'. This book should be the basic source for how Rawat presented himself in 1973.

3. Elan Vital/Divine Light Mission Publications from the 70s.

These include transcripts of Rawat's speeches and those of his followers, including his wife. Whenever discussion of using these publications as sources has been discussed on the Rawat talk pages, the argument against is that everyone can pick out quotes supporting their point of view. Some of the quotes, however, leave the reader in no doubt that former followers' version of Rawat's history is the correct one.

4. The website, ex-premie.org.

The basic problem with Rawat as a notable person is that his notability stems from his claim in the early 70s that he could show people God face to face. Without that claim few would have come to him, and we would not be here having this discussion. Unfortunately there have been few press articles and no academic studies of Rawat in recent years. I have no doubt that were a reputable academic to research a paper on Rawat now, and were to examine dispassionately the claims made by former and current followers, using Rawat's speeches from the above mentioned publications, the resulting paper would pretty much support the version of Rawat's history that former followers put forward. Unfortunately, no such academic has found Rawat interesting enough to write such a paper, so the best information we have is the over 100 first hand testimonies of former followers on ex-premie.org, including his former right hand men. This site is currently excluded as a source because of WP:BLP, and I understand why those rules are in place. But my site has been in existence for over 10 years, and the most damaging allegations against Rawat have been published for over 7 years. This is not a transient blog, but a well documented account of Rawat's history, including named, corroborated eye-witness accounts of Rawat's behaviour. Elan Vital claimed copyright on the text of Rawat's speeches and other historical documents, but failed in their legal attempt to get them removed. This adds provenance to the content. I believe WP:BLP should be amended to cater for situations such as Rawat, where clear evidence of his life is available, but he is not sufficiently notable for an independent study to have been taken. --John Brauns (talk) 00:38, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

5. The website, mikefinch.com

Mike Finch was one of Rawat's earliest western followers, and was the person who organised Rawat's first trip to the UK, and helped organise his first trip to the USA. He was an instructor authorised by Rawat to reveal the 'secret' meditation techniques, and was a loyal followers for over 30 year. He has a PhD, and his website should be considered a reliable source for the Rawat article.

Replies to other evidence presented

@User:Jossi

Jossi suggests that I summarise this evidence. As I explained, it is impossible to understand Jossi's role on Misplaced Pages without understanding the background. This is already a summary, and I will not further summarise. Of course if the clerk deletes this then there is nothing I can do, but this arbitration will be the poorer for that. --John Brauns (talk) 21:23, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I thank Jossi for recommending yet another link to Misplaced Pages policies/guidlines/rules, etc, but I have read that particular link and my evidence does not transgress it one iota. --John Brauns (talk) 00:40, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

@User:Isabella

Refering to my discussion forum Isabella states:- "Although they (the forum administrators) now moderate postings and edit comments by its members that may bring a criminal liability upon this forum or cross the line into hate speech". For the record, in the over two years the forum has been in existence we have never had to edit or delete posts for the reasons Isabella claims. --John Brauns (talk) 23:51, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

@User:Jayen466

I have looked at the diffs Jayen posted that supposedly show Jossi reverting poorly sources pro-Rawat edits, and frankly for some of them I can't see much difference between the two versions in terms of which is more pro-Rawat. Other edits appear to be part of edit wars where Jossi, to maintain his admin status, had to intervene. I am refering to poorly sourced pro-Rawat edits such as those I linked to above, where no neutral or anti-Rawat editors were active, where Jossi, unprompted, recognised that the edit did not meet WP:BLP and reverted the edit. --John Brauns (talk) 01:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

@User:Momento

Momento falsely claims that I will do what ever I can to denigrate Rawat. This is untrue - I will not lie, unlike Rawat's supporters. The critical information on my website is true. Momento also claims; 'As an editor he usually confines himself to the "Talk" page. He never removes any vandalism or obvious BLP violations.' I have made very few edits (about 100) in the four years since I first contributed to Misplaced Pages, so it is not my place to police the articles. However, I did support the removal of the picture of Rawat's house on copyright grounds, and in the early days of the article I supported not including Rawat's protection of his paedophile lieutenant, Jagdeo, in the article. For the record, given the grossly distorted picture of Rawat's life in his Misplaced Pages article, I have little faith in the accuracy of any other Misplaced Pages article. My only purpose here is to do what I can to make the Rawat articles a little more reflective of the truth than they are, but I do not think that even this aim is worth much of my time. --John Brauns (talk) 01:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by user:Andries

Brief history of the article

Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_28#Brief_history_of_editing_principles_used_for_this_article

After user:Vassyana's failed Good article review a complete condensed re-write had been made by user:Momento and user:Rumiton, supported by Jossi that replaced a longer version that had a degree of consensus. They rejected all my and User:Sylviecyn's objections to their version, both in the draft period and afterwards. 12:51, 13 May 2007 Diff comment by Andries on Momento's and Rumiton's complete rewrite Numerous other re-writes had been made and proposed by other contributors but the version by Rumiton and Momento remained unreverted in spite of my many criticisms. Then I decided that mediation was necessary. When the mediation between Momento and I was rejected. See Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_mediation/Rejected/28#Prem_Rawat_3, I became powerless to prevent the article becoming one-sided. Then the article received well-deserved bad publicity from the register. (I had no prior knowledge of the register article until it appeared.).

This register article brought in some new people in among others Francis Schonken who had little prior involvement in the article. Andries (talk) 09:46, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Momento's behavior

Momento repeatedly removed undisputed sourced facts 29 November 2007, 29 November 2007 Andries (talk) 19:03, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Andries' behavior

Andries has occasionally made mistake in paraphrasing sources, both in Rawat related articles and in unrelated articles. He attributes these mistakes to his habit of quick but not very accurately reading of sources. Andries (talk) 09:24, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Andries hereby denies that he is a (former) follower of Rawat. Andries (talk) 08:25, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Jossi's attitude towards Andries

Jossi has repeatedly been unwilling or unable to assume Andries' good faith regarding his contributions related to Rawat. 14 October 2007 "You have zero credibility in this project as it pertains to any assumptions of good faith, Andries."

Andries thinks that Jossi's attitute towards him is partially due to his occasional mistakes in paraphrasing sources in combination with the hypersensitivity of the subject and opposing POVs of Jossi and Andries. Andries hereby admits that he has sometimes focused on providing sources for statements that can be intended as critical, but this grew partially out of the habit of Momento to challenge anything critical. Andries hereby vehemently denies that Jossi's opinion that Andries is a bad faith editor has any basis in reality and hereby states that the fraction and seriousness of the mistakes that he made in Rawat related articles is lower and less serious than the mistakes that he made in in unrelated articles. Andries (talk) 09:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by User:Maelefique

Opening Statement and Observations

I have no doubt, that on unrelated topics, Jossi is, as described, a great Wikipedian, however, we are talking about one topic, and one topic only, and that would be the sphere of articles that reflect on Prem Rawat. Other unassociated articles should not be included in this discussion here, they have no bearing whatsoever on the claims made against him here. I have no grudge against Jossi personally and was completely unaware of his and Prem Rawat's existence until earlier this year. Unlike other editors who seem to have left out some pertinent information, I do not have a conflict of interest that I am aware of. I have never been a premie, am not a premie now, and have never knowingly worked for any organization that is run for, by, or in association with, Prem Rawat. Nor do I have any prior affiliation of any kind with any of the other editors I have interacted with on this topic.

COI and Common Sense (arguably the least common of the senses...)

On a common sense basis, if I work for a company, and I also do some freelance journalism, and I spend some of my time criticizing my employer, is it not somewhat obvious that the vast majority of companies would frown on this practice, possibly leading to career problems? On the other hand, if I was to only write glowing reviews of my employer, I'm sure they would be fine with it. I have never seen Jossi write anything critical of Prem Rawat, this is basically what the term "Conflict of Interest" refers to, whether he admits it or not.

Administrator Influence

Whether Jimbo thinks so or not, there is a certain prestige that comes along with being a WP admin/janitor, especially for editors familiar with the system. So when Jossi makes a suggestion that editors should change certain things it should be in no way surprising to see other pro-Rawat editors jump in to help out minutes later, 3 minutes later in this case. As well as a similar effect here, leading, again, to another Pro-Rawat editor doing Jossi's bidding here 2 hours later. As an analogy, it's like having the cool guy from your high school in the car with you, egging you on. And conversely, when he admonishes someone else, it naturally has a momentary chilling effect. Rightly or wrongly, these things happen. Ironicly Jossi says above that he has never exerted "administrator influence" (quotes are his), and then immediately says "(whatever that means)"... well if you don't know what it means, a) you should find out, and b) you can't really claim you haven't done it, can you?!

Another example of his attempt at influencing the process is here, where he is defending a pro-Rawat editor who was nominated for admin status, nothing wrong with that, except there is a lot of criticism for someone who Jossi seems so enthusiastic about. In fact, Jossi uses 163 words here in support of this pro-Rawat editor, who apparently engages in this exact same POV pushing issue with Rawat. Attempting to marshall his forces? (for reference,In terms of words typed, it takes his next 21 votes in support for admins, combined, for him to equal the verbosity he shows for this single pro-Prem Rawat editor.

Jossi attempts to subvert the "Lord of the Universe" article as well

Jossi indicates he worked on the Lord of the Universe (documentary), reading the talk page shows more of the same POV pushing that we are discussing here.

• Jossi tries to change the context of the article .
  • Jossi's attempt fails.
• Jossi tries to have the film removed from the "Documentary Film" category,,and placed in a less prestigious category.
  • Jossi's attempt fails.
• Jossi, having successfully removed a director's name, without providing a source, attempts to have a quote removed from the cover of the video.
  • Jossi's attempt fails.
• Jossi wants a statement about levitation removed, distorts the issue, with facts not in evidence.
  • Jossi's attempt fails.
    • Jossi attempts to belabor the point, still without references and even in spite of references.
      • And then another pro-Rawat editor tries to chime in without sources, yet again, and again, (refuted), and again, (and again refuted).

Jossi is not helpful unless it suits his POV

Above, Jossi says "During the same time I engaged in vigorous debates in talk page, providing sources when requested,".

• I asked for a source for some claimed award, was pointed by Jossi to an entire article in portuguese.
  • When I pointed out the article didn't say what he claimed, he re-quoted me back a single semi-relevant sentence from the article.
    • When I again pointed out that the single sentence did not support his claim he simply stopped replying to me.
• On another occasion, when I asked him to help with a reference, I was pointed to the entire list of sources for the Prem Rawat Article.I think my reply sums it up nicely.
• Jossi refuses to correct a pro-Rawat editor who claims the LA Times is not a credible source, even when asked directly, again and again, (the LA Times, was of course found to be a credible source by another panel, later).

Not Even-Handed When Dealing With Advocates and Critics of Prem Rawat

Jossi is no stranger to making threats of censure, or of pointing out WP policy violations on the talk page to people who seem critical of Rawat, or opposed to his POV,as shown by other editors on this page. And yet, the only time I can find any reference to any pro-Prem Rowat editor being reprimanded in any way, is somewhat privately, on that user's talk page, not the in the article's talk page, in public as it were, where all the dissenting voices are challenged by Jossi.

Behaviour Regarding the Ex-Premie Disambiguation Page

was posted on the Prem Rawat talk page, I think it speaks strongly towards jossi's bias, and pretty much speaks for itself when you look at the diffs for the disambiguation page, specifically, ]]] Edit summary is "this is the correct meaning". So if I beome a premie, and then quit, unless I complain about it, I'm not an ex-premie? And if I do, I become a member of a "small group" (ambiguous term at best)? How is that the "correct meaning"?

Closing observations

Jossi says he has attemped to enforce civility and WP's behavioral/editing policies. I would say he is engaging in WP's version of Vexatious Litigation in an attempt to slow down the altering of the article, and to grind down the other authors, to "wait them out". Sooner or later, as is evidenced by the amount of editors that come and go on this article, many editors who do not have a "personal" connection to the subject get tired of bashing their head against the wall, and leave the article, Jossi however remains ever-vigilant.

My apologies, I am also a little over my 1000 words.

Replies to Jossi's rebuttal of my evidence

(I checked with the clerk, this is allowed, and kept as brief as possible)

1. You were obviously evasive on the LA Times issue, you were quite aware of the context, and specifically asked about it for a specific piece of information. Assuming you hadn't lost your "common sense and good editorial judgment", you should have been able to easily say "Yes, in this context, the LA Times should be a credible source", or less believably, "No I don't believe the LA Times is a credible source for this". Either way probably would have ended the discussion and avoided taking the issue to another forum for a ruling. Which of course found it to be credible (diff links to all this supplied previously, above). However, you would have had to disagree with a pro-Rawat editor to accept the legitimacy of the LA Times.
2. Interesting, that of the first 22 (more, but I only counted that far), only 1 was nominated, and he/she happens to be someone who supports your views and had the very same claims made during his review, as those claimed against you here.
3. Completely false. Jossi and I have had this conversation before on his talk page. There is no purpose to discussing my other edits on WP, I have stated above that this account is my sole interaction with Prem Rawat's sphere of articles, I will go one step further and say I have never edited any article that I am aware of who's subject was any religion/religious figure with any user account (or anonymously). I have read the link Jossi is referring to, and I am not in violation. An observation, Jossi sure has a penchant for pulling out WP policy when it suits his needs, goes further to my point about vexatious litigation above.

Reply to Jayen466

Re the ex-premie disambiguation, you fail to mention in your reply that while other topics are covered in those searches, under the book search, in the top 10, Rawat's ex-premies appear twice, at 6, and 7, and under your scholar search, they appear at number 2 on the list. Certainly prominent enough to warrant a disambiguation page. Interestingly, you neglected to include a standard google search where the entire first page (1-10) are all Rawat's ex-premies.

Evidence presented by user:Francis Schonken

My motivation:

1. Have a well-written article on Prem Rawat;
2. Do what I can to keep Misplaced Pages out of negative press.

Jimbo Wales' comment

Jimbo Wales' single known edit on the issue (diff) was divisive while it contained straw man argumentation (see discussion at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 33#break 0). As such the edit was gefundenes fressen for yet another Cade Metz article (see link included in 4th paragraph of 'That's some catch, that catch-22' section at Why you should care that Jimmy Wales ignores reality: 'A great Wikipedian'). I don't like my name to be linked from some bad journalism, when this is the result of someone else's superficial comment (even if the 'someone else' is Jimbo Wales in this case). --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Kim Bruning's role

Kim Bruning (talk · contribs) carefully negotiated with PatW to see his behaviour improved. It's quite possible to stand your ground in a civil fashion, after all. Would you be able to manage that? - PatW's reply: "Absolutely yes of course ... I am coming to realise that I have violated a number of rules here - eg 'soapboxing' which I only recently even heard of, and of course being occasionally horribly rude to Jossi and Momento. ..." 11:06, 11 March 2008

Misplaced Pages is not a vindicative system. I don't see any necessity to "prove" errors recognised by PatW, and for which he promised to improve. Was there uncorrected or incorrectible behaviour by PatW after this recognition (11:06, 11 March 2008)? --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:35, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

A personal attack by Jossi

(note: there were more personal attacks by Jossi, for the convenience of this case, and unless compelled, I will limit myself to a single example)(update: challenged by Jossi above in #@User:Francis Schonken, point 6, I sent additional evidence regarding my points below to the ArbCom mailing list):

• 23:48, 25 February 2008 Jossi wrote: "do not give me any BS about good intentions, , Francis";
• I've requested Jossi several times to remove that personal attack, and do so here again (see Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 31#Biographies of Living Persons where it is still included).
• My approach to PA's (well in line with relevant policies like WP:NPA) was discussed with Jossi at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 33#Importing an outside conflict. My approach hasn't changed since.
• Re. Jossi's "I have informed all editors, when needed, to respect Misplaced Pages's behavioral policies, such as WP:CIVILITY " - my contention is that Jossi warns others, but doesn't feel himself addressed by the same. In other words, Jossi's declaration on the point is unduly self-serving and tarnished by his own behaviour. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:35, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

The merging of Criticism of Prem Rawat

At Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat/Workshop#General discussion Merzbow wrote: "Why and how the article was turned into a redirect, but the material not actually merged (or merged and deleted), should be a key question here." Trying to clarify some things (I have done before, but some of it seems to have gone lost in the discourse):

1. 19 January 2007 I merged Criticism of Prem Rawat into Prem Rawat#Reception:
   • Content of "Criticism" article added to Prem Rawat article
   • "Criticism" article turned into a redirect
2. Later Cade Metz would write: "Working in tandem with others, eventually had deleted".
3. From 19 to 26 January 2007 I continued with several edits to the article, participation in talk page discussion, translation of Dutch sources, etc so that by my last 2007 edit to the article the "Reception" section looked like this: (more or less in good health, although I never found it a good idea to treat the criticism "by critic" - I thought it would've been better to treat it e.g. by topic ). Anyway, at the time I was rather confident I could back out, not keeping the article on my watchlist, leaving it to among others an editor with broad experience, Jossi.
4. Early February 2008 I realised (like many others) that the criticism had virtually vanished from the article. For an analysis of how and when the criticism disappeared from the Prem Rawat article, I refer to bainer's synopsis here: Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat/Evidence/History. The removal of the "Reception" section containing the criticism apparently happened in May 2007. For the "why" of this removal there are several other comments, e.g. the (failed) GA review (see e.g. Vassyana's evidence below at #My participation and the editing atmosphere), "walled garden" allegations (e.g. User talk:Francis Schonken#I think that you start to understand why I could no keep Prem Rawat balanced), etc. I had no part in these discussions throughout 2007, anyhow I re-introduced the Reception section, basically how I had left it in January 2007, on 8 February 2008 (including a re-redirect of the "Criticism" article ). Whatever the intermediate actions and discussions, they could not in my view justify the removal of the criticism from the Prem Rawat article, producing an unbalanced article (see my edit summaries of the merge diffs).
5. Jossi's only interference with the Criticism of Prem Rawat page a few weeks later (since more than a year), after some unmerging/re-redirecting by others was a trivial clean-up not influencing the nature of the redirect (which it was at the time of that edit). Note that Matthew Stannard below uses this diff in #Criticism of Prem Rawat to demonstrate that Jossi was "involved in turning this into a redirect": he wasn't as far as that edit shows: the page was a redirect before and after Jossi's edit. Also, that was a 27 February 2008 edit, postdating the Cade Metz article, so this part of the story couldn't have been told in the 6 February 2008 Register article (as Matthew erroneously contends - notwithstanding Metz' prophesising style there was no language to that effect in his article).
6. Although Jossi participated in the revert warring in the two days from the publication of the Cade Metz article to 8 February 2008 (e.g. ) he stopped editing the Prem Rawat article later that day. This is his last edit thus far: 23:43, 8 February 2008. So if Jossi had influence over the presentation of criticism in the Prem Rawat article, that influence could only have been indirect from that time on. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:03, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Jossi's conduct during Momento's third WP:AN3 listing

Jossi's conduct during Momento's third WP:AN3 listing in February 2008 was experienced as inappropriate by the blocking admin:

• "absurd that this was delayed by an involved admin."
• "I consider the interference by an involved admin on that report to be inexcusable"

I felt offended too: "As far as I'm concerned you'd better remove the list of 5 edits in 3 days you composed on me above, it is offensive, "

I'd like arbitrators to look in to this and see whether the uninvolved admin's assessment needs reviewing. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:14, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

General evidence and analysis

Prior discussions at various noticeboards

Moved to Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat/Workshop#Prior discussions at various noticeboards ("Analysis of evidence" subsection)

History of editing restrictions

Moved to Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat/Workshop#History of editing restrictions ("Analysis of evidence" subsection)

Analysis of history of editing restrictions

Moved to Misplaced Pages talk:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat/Workshop#Analysis of history of editing restrictions

Discussion of other evidence presented on this page

Jossi's evidence on me

• "has injected himself in the dispute" - injected? Empty term, no evidence presented by Jossi.
• "disrupted editing" - What does Jossi mean? No clue, no evidence presented.
• "sabotaged the community enforced article probation" - No sign of me sabotaging anything. No evidence presented.
• "Francis Schonken (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has tried to cast himself as a "neutral editor"" - I never did. You may find a diff that I state myself "relatively uninvolved" (while not really interested in the subject of the article), or that I think Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view of highest importance: casting myself as neutral - never, I don't even believe in that sort of stuff. Note that Jossi presents no evidence to support this point.
• "has failed to assist editors in the content dispute" - empty phrase. I took part in the content dispute, like anybody else. Apart from that, I assisted many editors, e.g. "Thank you so much, that is very helpful" (thx to Francis)
• "Rather than offer help he seems to have decided to take it upon himself to "fix" the article" - what sort of an allegation is that? No evidence presented. I edit the article. My talk page involvement more than doubles my mainspace edits for this article . No "wrong" is demonstrated.
• "Being bold is a good thing sometimes, but dismissing other editors as "POV pushers" is unhelpful, as it is edit-warring with them" - What kind of a conflation is this? Yes, I was bold, and am prepared to defend, if must on WP:IAR grounds, that I called POV pushers what they are. But why the incorrect conflation "... as it is edit-warring with them"? No evidence presented.
• "Evidence follows" - well, in fact it doesn't.
• "reverting to his last edit at the time" - Incorrect, and I already told Jossi so: "note that I used your version of the article of 31 January 2007 as the basis for my revert: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Prem_Rawat&oldid=104600180 " ()
• "Several editors, (involved editors and others as well) alerted him of the mistake he was making in deleting hundreds of contributions and losing many sources and material" - I've only seen Jossi giving that interpretation as far as I can recall, so diffs please (note: I checked my e-mails, and found nobody else that gives that interpretation).
• "The article was protected on Feb 9 due to the edit-warring" - I was not involved in the edit-warring that led to the Feb 9 protection, argument founded on guilt by association. Please provide the diffs that led to Feb 9 protection.
• "reverting a very unhelpful step in the consensus process" - with hindsight it wasn't all that unhelpful, but that's my interpretation. Anyway, the "uninvolved editor" did, as far as I can remember, not participate in the "consensus process". It was a drive-by revert. The qualification "Rather than offer help he seems to have decided to take it upon himself to "fix" the article" might apply.
• "Since returning to edit the article (Feb 8, 2008), Francis made 128 edits to Prem Rawat, 22 marked as minor edits. From the remaining 106 edits, 20 were reversions of other editors' contributions. diff" - What Jossi calls a "" is in no way what is described in Help:Diff.
• Re. #Francis Schonken sabotaged the community-enforced 1RR probation:
  • "Francis Schonken objected to the 1RR probation proposal , on the grounds that it it bends good guidance in all sort of directions in order to give POV-pushers an unjustifiable advantage." - I gave more reasons than that one.
  • "After the probation was implemented, he dismissed the probation on grounds of "wikilawyering" and "confusing wording"" - no diff given by Jossi. I don't think I implied that. As far as I can remember I commented on those who were spreading confusing wording and were embarking on wikilawyering. I may even have been commenting on those who built confusing wording into the probation formulation, that doesn't mean I "dismissed the probation" on whatever grounds.
  • Re. "First 1RR parole violation AN/I Report" - "restoring a fix (such as the ISBN numbers) will not be considered a revert in any case" "I would be very surprised if an editor here will go to ANI to report 1RR probation violation on such edits" (according to Jossi ). I was restoring a fix to the footnotes which had become severed from the sentences they were meant to be attached to.
  • Re. "Second 1RR parole violation AN/I report" - not more than one revert: "Consecutive reverts by one editor are generally treated as one revert for the purposes of this rule" (WP:3RR#What is a revert?)
  • Re. "The 1RR probation wording was unambiguous", no: "one revert per editor per day" is not the same as "If someone reverts your change, don't re-revert it" (which is "ZeroRR" on your own changes), see WP:1RR. Jossi exploited that ambiguity in the discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive385#1RR on Prem Rawat, in order to obfuscate Momento's real breach of the 1RR probation with something that simply wasn't.
  • Re. "Francis as en experienced contributor should known by now the meaining of page probation, and what 1RR probation, means: If someone reverts your change, don't re-revert it, but discuss it with them (per Misplaced Pages:1RR)" - no, this was a scam based on a description of voluntary actions in an essay, that were in no way implied by the probation rules ("one revert per editor per day"). I exposed the scam: "So, no, this is not how 1RR is going to be used: allowing POV-pushers to perform an indefinite number of edits, and allowing other editors to revert only "one". This is a POV-pusher's scheme of unseen breadth."
• Re. #Francis Schonken takes a surprising lenient attitude towards WP:NPA - "There is no official policy regarding when or whether most personal attacks should be removed" (WP:RPA). My comment to PatW was entirely appropriate. See also discussion about removing PA's at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 33#Importing an outside conflict.
• Re. #Francis Schonken does nothing when asked to intervene in a BLP violation - A question was asked on the talk page. I answered it ("this has no place in the article on Prem Rawat") after Rumiton, PatW and Cirt , before Jossi's talk page refactoring . I didn't share Jossi's feelings about a need to refactor. Neither did any other editors apparently. There's no ArbCom issue about an interpretation made only by Jossi. And under no circumstances should Jossi attempt to commandeer me into performing a refactoring: I can think for myself. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:16, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Re. Momento's #User:FrancisSchonken

• Re. "Francis Schonken has tried to dominate the article since his first Rawat edit of 2008 on Feb 8." - I don't think so, none of this is demonstrated by Momento either. If Jossi's numbers are correct Momento had 148 edits from 2/8 to 3/25 (see above #User:Momento applies a narrow interpretation of WP:BLP). Still according to Jossi, I had 128 edits in the same period (anyway I had 144 in total). I don't think that supports the notion that I would've been trying to dominate anything since Feb 8.
• Re. "Without one word of discussion he inserted 30,000 bytes of undiscussed material into the article" - note that the material had been discussed before, but true, not on Talk:Prem Rawat immediately leading up to the re-introduction of this material by me. This is what I wrote in the edit summary: "Sorry about this. emergency measure. I *merged* the criticism at the time, and don't know why and when it got removed. Reverting to a much older version, but with current top templates and cats/IW lin" - Note that there were sound references for the criticism.
• Re. " reverted it , onefinalstep reverted back and was reverted by DavidD and he was in turn reverted by Francis Schonken , all without one word of explanation from Francis Schonken" - well, the without one word of explanation is completely untrue: my explanatory edits in between of my two reverts:
  • to Talk:Prem Rawat:
  • to Misplaced Pages:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#User:Jossi and Prem Rawat (notifying about the revert, seeing that it was in line with the recommendations there):
  • to User talk:Jossi
  • to User talk:David D. (also discussing the revert): m
  • to User talk:Jimbo Wales (about the same):
• Re. "On Feb 12, Francis Schonken again inserted 26,000 bytes of material without discussion" - again, completely untrue regarding the "without discussion": I counted 80-odd edits by me to various talk venues (most of them to Talk:Prem Rawat) discussing the article between my previous revert and the Feb 12 one.
• Re. "On Feb 13, after discussion WillBeback removed all links except for one where upon Francis Schonken kept reinserting the links to anti-Rawat sites whenever they were removed ,," - after discussion, of course. Most of my part of the discussion can be found here: Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 30#External links section... and some of it here: Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive370#Francis Schonken (complaint filed against me by Momento), but there are more, e.g. Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 31#Biographies of Living Persons.
• Re. "At the same time he has filed numerous complaints against me from "slightly disruptive editing" ] to 3RR to 1RR without a negative result against me.":
  • The 3RR one is the oldest one (13 February); the other two were not "at the same time", (19 February and 14 March respectively, by then I hadn't touched the "External links" section for weeks).
  • Also "without a negative result against " is incorrect: the WP:AN3 listing led to a 24h block for Momento, see WP:AN3#User:Momento reported by User:Francis Schonken (Result: 24 hours ).
• General notes about my participation in discussion: I think I'm fine there: about 2.5 talk page edits per main space edit for the Prem Rawat article (reference, see above the link I gave for my 144 edits to the Prem Rawat article, and/or Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat/Workshop#Numeric analysis of contributions table 3, which indicates a 3 : 1 ratio if minor edits aren't counted). I usually edit with a much lower talk to mainspace ratio, even for contentious articles, e.g. Republic, approx 1 : 7 (see 144 edits reference). --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:39, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by User:Matthew Stannard

Criticism of Prem Rawat

There was a well-produced page with a good set of citations providing criticism of Prem Rawat and his business model at http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Criticism_of_Prem_Rawat&direction=prev&oldid=195507682. This page was originally set up by User:jossi in order to prevent criticism appearing on the Prem Rawat page itself. User:jossi was then involved in turning this into a redirect to the Prem Rawat page, without placing the criticism back on that page. This effectively resulted in the criticisms becoming hidden and lost to the type of reader who might be a likely prospect for Rawat's business. This story is told in some detail in the Register Article, which is well-researched, contains useful links to wikipedia diffs and should be read, I think, by anyone involved in this arb, particularly since that article has the propensity to bring wikipedia into considerable disrepute unless wikipedia arbitrators are seen to do something about the blatent POV-ineering that has so far been allowed to take place.

Removal of links to perfectly good and useful material

A much better story, in my opinion, of the pioneering phase of Prem Rawat's business than has ever appeared in wikipedia is provided at http://www.rickross.com/reference/vital/vital15.html, an article with a reference Sociological Review, 27, Page 279-296/1979, which I haven't checked but I've no reason to doubt its veracity, particularly since it gets an unlinked mention as Note 1 on the Prem Rawat page itself. A link to a page on the Rick Ross website, listing that Sociological Review Article was put on the Prem Rawat page but then removed, after User:jossi had made a contribution on the Prem Rawat talk page. The difficulty here is that the subscribers to Prem Rawat's services hold that any site that contains material that they don't like means that any link to anywhere on that site should be removed from wikipedia, regardless of whether a particular link is to something useful and informative (lovely bit of double-think) (more double-think, and confusing the concept of 'reliable' with the concept of 'appropriate').

Hence User:jossi argues against Rick Ross in what is effectively an ad hominem attack, without taking account of the fact that the page linked to contains the material given in another reference on the Prem Rawat page (as I already mentioned).

The circularity of the discussion

Such circularity (repeated arguments) as is indicated on the Prem Rawat talk page between what I would suggest as representing, on the one side, secular, reasonable wikipedia contributors and, on the other side, those who overtly and covertly represent a POV in favour of Prem Rawat (in all cases, I would hazard, by being subscribers to Prem Rawat's services), is itself evidence that the neutral point of view sacred to the wikipedia project is being systematiclly abused by the latter group. This has been going on for years. My personal stance, if such be relevant, is that I am neither a subscriber nor an ex-subscriber to Prem Rawat's services, but I am conscious of the warning given by Richard Feynman that mind control is the most serious threat facing mankind, and when I see the victims of mind control desecrating the fine institution of wikipedia, which action is plain for all to see in the Prem Rawat article, I really feel that something should be done.

That subscribers to Prem Rawat's services wish to use wikipedia as part of their marketing campaign

This link shows that Jossi Fresco, aka User:jossi, acts as a press contact for Prem Rawat's marketing machine. To allow such a person to be a wikipedia admin and involved in the shameful controversy surrounding the the Prem Rawat page, and other pages in the category of the same name gives rise to a very bad smell. The fact that he may do good works at the same time should not distract you from analysing what he is really up to, and it doesn't stack up to acting in good faith, in my opinion. Just a small point on whether we can accept User:jossi's word. He says here that he has never used his admin privilege to ban anyone anywhere. This link shows that he did. Matt Stan (talk) 22:16, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by User:Jayen466

Deletion of the rickross.com external link

The rickross.com link referred to above by Matthew_Stannard (talk · contribs) was deleted by myself from the Prem Rawat and DLM articles – not because of Jossi's comment, but because I realised, after having linked to the site myself in another article, that it is in violation of WP:EL#Restrictions_on_linking. I discussed my concerns on the talk page, and Msalt (talk · contribs), considered neutral by all contributors to this article (I believe), concurred. Jayen466 22:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The revert in the lede

Just because this has been a point of discussion between Momento and MSalt, here a description of that bit of edit history: The first edit was an attempt to arrive at a compromise version to address the various concerns people had expressed on the talk page

• http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_33#The_Lede

• http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_33#Intellectual_content

• http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_33#Lead_section_.28continued.29

• http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_34#.22Lack_of_intellectual_content.22

This edit had three components:

1. Changing the wording from
   Rawat has been criticized for a lack of intellectual content in his public discourse
   to
   Rawat's public discourses have been described as lacking intellectual content ...
   (Sourcing remained unchanged, to Schnabel, though neither wording was actually particularly representative of the source.)
2. Inserting
   and as emphasizing the superiority of direct experience over intellect.
   sourced to Barrett
3. Changing
   and for leading a sumptuous lifestyle.
   to
   He has been criticised for leading an opulent and materialistic lifestyle.

The compromise version still didn't address all concerns; Francis was unhappy with the insertion of Barrett, because he felt Barrett was characterising Rawat's DLM movement rather than his teaching, and Momento felt the lede did not give enough room to add the context within which the Schnabel had made his statement.

I agreed with Momento's view here that Schnabel had made his comment in the specific context of contrasting Rawat's style to that of another charismatic teacher and that the statement in the lede was not a good use of that source. In addition, various editors had made the point that Rawat does not seek to present an intellectual teaching; his teaching is, rather, that the meditative experience happens outside of the intellect.

I then shortened the passage to Rawat has been criticised for leading an opulent and materialistic lifestyle. with the edit summary (self-revert as per talk, let's leave the analysis of his teaching out of the lede then).

This deleted the sentence Rawat has been criticized for a lack of intellectual content in his public discourse that had previously been present and reverted my own insertion of and as emphasizing the superiority of direct experience over intellect. sourced to Barrett.

I announced the edit on the talk page in my response to Momento, saying OK; I have self-reverted now and taken the critique of his teaching out of the lede.

This description was inadequate. I did self-revert to the extent that I took out again the phrase sourced to Barrett that I had inserted and to which Francis had objected. Taking the critique of the teaching out of the lede was not a self-revert however, because it removed the sentence Rawat has been criticized for a lack of intellectual content in his public discourse that had been present before. On the other hand, both the edit summary and the talk page comment made it clear that I had done so. I also retained the revised wording opulent and materialistic compared to the earlier version by Lawrence which had sumptuous.

Francis pointed out to me on my talk page that my edit description was misleading. I agreed, apologised and crossed out "self-" on the talk page. Jayen466 12:31, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Reply to User:Nik_Wright2

Bryan R. Wilson's Times obituary is interesting. He is described as an "influential sociologist who offered new and enduring insights into sects and religions ... one of the most brilliant and influential sociologists of religion of the past century". This is not a fringe figure, he is as mainstream in sociology of religion as you can get. To describe Massimo Introvigne as an obscure self-published author is likewise off the mark. His representation on Google Scholar is respectable for an author who writes much of his material in Italian, and he was one of the experts consulted by the German government's Enquete Commission on NRMs a few years back. J. Gordon Melton is I believe among the top five most prolific contributors to Encyclopedia Britannica and very widely published. Again, these are mainstream scholars, though it is true that they are a source of irritation to many self-appointed anti-cult campaigners. Jayen466 17:12, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Replies to User:Msalt

Re the section "one edit war", the first diff you cite and comment on is this: - Momento deletes criticism of Rawat (with scholarly source) under edit summary “(As per talk "Lede")” .

What Momento removed was this: "Rawat has been criticized for a lack of intellectual content in his public discourse." You say, he deleted criticism of Rawat based on a scholarly source. But if we look at the source quoted, we find it says something totally different than what our article said there. Schnabel said,

"The purest examples of charismatic leadership are at this moment, still, Bhagwan and Maharaj Ji. This shows immediately that personal qualities alone are insufficient for the recognition of the charismatic leadership. The intelligent, ever-changing Bhagwan who gives daily performances is not more a charismatic leader than the pampered materialistic and intellectually quite unremarkable Maharaj Ji. As charismatic leaders, they, by the way, both have their own audience and their own function."

Now, where here does Schnabel criticise Rawat for a lack of intellectual content in his public discourse? In my view, this was not appropriately sourced, and Momento was absolutely correct to remove it. It needed revising, sourcing to another source, or whatever. As it stood it was at best an example of WP:SYN. Jayen466 01:27, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Re the scholars page: What I supported here was the edit you made to the article, rather than the edit to the scholars page, which I had not been aware of. Having said that, I find your comment fair that Jossi seems to have been concerned about the copyright implications of reproducing a negative article in full, but appears to have been less concerned about any such implications of reproducing positive articles in full. Perhaps he is human after all ;-) Jayen466 01:11, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Jossi reverting pro-Rawat edits

It has been claimed (, ) that Jossi has never reverted a pro-Rawat edit and would never do so. Trying to get a sense of SylvieCyn's and Jossi's interaction in the editing history of Prem Rawat just now, I happened to come across a series of edits in which Momento removed the section with links to various critics' sites (justifiably so, in my view, as they fall short of the requirements outlined in WP:BLP and WP:EL), and in the next edit Jossi reverted, restoring three of the four critics' sites (the fourth being dropped for copyright reasons). I was not making an effort to look for such an edit ... Jayen466 15:09, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I was sufficiently intrigued to waste an hour making such an effort. Here are five more reverts by Jossi of "pro-Rawat" edits:

• IP deletes criticism section, Pjacobi restores , another IP deletes it again (by mistake, judging by the edit summary), Jossi restores it again
• (restoring criticism section blanked by Errol Vieth)
• (partial revert of a deletion by Momento, restoring the "embarrassing" kissing of Rawat's lotus feet)
• (revert of "illegal" polemics by Momento)
• (reverting Momento who sought to emphasise the Christian affiliation of critics) Jayen466 00:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Replies to User:Maelefique

Re the ex-premie disambiguation, note that according to books.google.com and scholar.google.com, by far the most common meaning of the word, as used in published literature, appears to be the one Jossi indicated: Jayen466 20:13, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

It was my specific intent to illustrate the distribution of the word in published literature. (I actually thought, wrongly, that what your diff presented was the google result.) Internet usage is not always an accurate reflection of general language usage, especially where a term is used in the name of a website. Jayen466 12:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by User:Momento

My editing

I see this issue as a battle between editors who think BLP policy should apply to the Rawat article and those that don't. Since The Register article, the Rawat article has been inundated with "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons" that " should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion". I have done that. Likewise, Jimmy Wales writes on the WP:VER policy page -"I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons". I will always remove "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living people" as frequently as editors put it in. And that includes links that violate WP:BLP and WP:EL and including "conjectural interpretations of a source" ? Some editors characterize this as "edit warring" it is not, it is following BLP policy :Examples -

1. Conjectural interpretations of a source - that is forming "an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information". In this case, making a summary of an article using only that portion of the information that suits your POV. WillBeBack summarized an article in the LA Times with this edit in the Rawat article . I wrote this entirely different summary in the talk page using the same article (last paragraph in green section but note Jayen466's opinion above mine),

2. Unsourced material. I remove unsourced material from the Lede and Francis reverts. I remove it again and Lawrence Cohen puts it back . Francis reports me to ANI but Random832 disagrees with his claim Jayen466 then steps in with a compromise version and then removes it entirely. Jayen agrees with me here My reply to ANI and Francis's final words .

3. POV choosing of a source. Two articles about Rawat visiting UC Berkeley were written on successive days. Wowest simply picked the one that suited his POV. He used this article from the Daily Californian to make this edit ]. The following day's article in the Daily Califronian presented an entirely different POV . I removed it.

Virtually every criticism of my editing involves me "aggressively removing unsourced or poorly sourced" material. I am not so much pro- Rawat as fiercely pro BLP policy . And here I am reverting an undiscussed pro-Rawat edit .

My blocks

Blocked for 24 hours by Nakon after report by Cirt for repeatedly deleting photo of house and links to anti-Rawat sites ]. Reviewing admin B agrees that photo should be removed and is exempt from 3RR but links should not be removed. I stated my case and repeat it here - BLP policy - "Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Misplaced Pages:Verifiability. The three-revert rule does not apply to such removals". The anti-Rawat sites are self published blogs full of slander, OR and unverified material, all violations of BLP policy. I should not have been blocked.

Blocked for 24 hours by Vsmith after report by Francis for removing "Rawat also turned away from asceticism, and no longer denounced material possessions" 3 times in 24 hours. As I explained in talk , the Hunt summary is completely distorted. It violates BLP -Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that is a conjectural interpretation of a source. The three-revert rule does not apply to such removals". I should not have been blocked.

User:Jossi

Jossi has done an excellent job as an admin on Rawat articles, he calms the waters and insists on Wiki policy. The level of criticism that he has been subjected to is appalling. Never the less, I don't believe my interpretation of BLP policy is "narrow", I believe it is "conservative". And that is in perfect accord with BLP policy which says "Biographies of living persons (BLPs) must be written conservatively". Every person is entitled to a "presumption of innocence" and "an important rule of thumb when writing biographical material about living persons is 'do no harm'". Misplaced Pages isn't going to be damaged by being conservative, it is going to be damaged by BLP's that slander and misrepresent their subjects. My involvement in Rawat articles is almost entirely dependent on the amount of BLP violating vandalism that occurs . When things are quiet I am happy to involve myself in other articles where the subject is not being treated fairly.

User:John Brauns

John, the webmaster of two anti-Rawat sites, is clear about his POV. He will do what ever he can to denigrate Rawat. As an editor he usually confines himself to the "Talk" page . He never removes any vandalism or obvious BLP violations.

User:Andries

Andries has always been upfront about Rawat, he thinks he’s a fraud. This is somewhat colored by the fact that Andries was a devotee of Sai Baba. He was indefinitely banned from that article for his behaviour. Like Johns Brauns, Nik Wright, Wowest and SylvieCyn, Andries is a poster on the anti-Rawat forum. As an editor, his poor English creates real problems. I’ve had too many conversations and disputes with Andries about his incorrect paraphrasing; coincidently, always on the wacky side. To his credit, he once removed an obvious BLP violation which deserves mention.

User:FrancisSchonken

When it comes to "disruptive editing" Francis Schonken takes the prize. He has tried to dominate the article since his first Rawat edit of 2008 on Feb 8. Without one word of discussion he inserted 30,000 bytes of undiscussed material into the article, I reverted it , onefinalstep reverted back and was reverted by DavidD and he was in turn reverted by Francis Schonken , all without one word of explanation from Francis Schonken. On Feb 12, Francis Schonken again inserted 26,000 bytes of material without discussion which was promptly reverted by Sarcasticidealist with the summary "reverting a very unhelpful step in the consensus process". On Feb 13, after discussion WillBeback removed all links except for one where upon Francis Schonken kept reinserting defamatory links to anti-Rawat sites whenever they were removed ,,. At the same time he has filed numerous complaints against me from "slightly disruptive editing" ] to 3RR to 1RR with only one negative result against me (see above).

User:Jayen466

Jayen is a great editor. His editing is intelligent and neutral. He is clear in the talk page, he has a real passion for the underlying issues and he knows what "eschews" means. One of my two suggestions for remedy is that only Jayen466 be allowed to edit the article, he would do an excellent job.

User:Msalt

One Edit War Msalt has made three false assertions in this section that fundamentally distort what occurred.

1. I didn't delete Francis's paraphrase because it contained "mild criticism of Rawat with a scholarly source" .
I deleted Francis's paraphrase because, one, the lede is supposed to be a summary of the article not a place to give one side of the story. And two, Schnabel doesn't actually refer to Rawat's "public teachings" and Kent says only that one talk was "banal". Therefore Francis's paraphrase is inaccurate as well, which I explained in talk . Jayen466 also disagreed with Francis's one sided paraphrase and replaced it with a compromise version that gave important context .

2. Msalt claims Jayen466 "accidently re-installs Momento's version" when his summary "let's leave the analysis of his teaching out of the lede then" shows his removal of the analysis was deliberate.

3. Msalt claims I "reverted Francis" and gave a "misleading summary 'added context'”. In fact, I did not remove one word of Francis's one sided paraphrase and I did add reliably sourced context.

Simply put, Msalt is prepared to make things up to attack discredit me. Here he is stating that "Momento, you delete and add material 10 times every single day, usually with no discussion" . In fact, I made less than 20 edits in the week previous to that comment and 21 in the week before that . In the same period I made more than 150 posts to "Talk" and that's a 4 to 1, "talk" to "edit" ratio. No apology from Msalt.

One Talk Page Thrash

The photo failed on Copyright/not fair use grounds but I would still argue that inclusion in a BLP violates invasion of privacy, OR, verifiability, contact information and other grounds. For example, would giving the address of the house next door constitute giving "contact information", I would say so. Anything that provides a means to contact the subject of a BLP should be avoided, particularly when stuff like this appears on John Brauns anti-Rawat forum .

Sock puppeteer?

In Feb 2007, I was accused of being a sock puppeteer by Mael-Num, is that a relative of Maelefique , and blocked by Betacommand. Here's the argument but where is the evidence,not even a user check. Decide for your self .

User:PatW

I endorse everything Jossi said. PatW's sole contribution to Rawat articles is to abuse those he sees as pro-Rawat.Momento (talk) 03:09, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Nik Wright2

Nik Wright2's sole edit this year was his undiscussed insertion of 10,000 bytes of badly written OR. It was reverted by Janice and immediately reverted by Nik and the article protected by Nandesuka. NikWright2 maintains below that his edit was "adequately discussed", but here is the tally of his talk comments which prove otherwise . I totally reject the idea that students of Rawat have a COI in editing the article, whilst people who run and post on the anti-Rawat forum have none.

User:Rumiton

Here's Rumiton deleting some pro-Rawat puff

User:WillBeback

Admin WillBeback came to the Rawat article with one purpose in mind, to add more criticism. In doing so he has abandoned NPOV and compromised his admin role. And since then he continues to complain about me including his latest that I don't show "good faith" towards him.

WillBeBack supported disruptive editing

The most extraordinary disruption to the Rawat article and the beginning of its current turmoil was created by Francis Schonken's undiscussed insertion of 30,000 bytes of badly written BLP violating OR . This extraordinary action was condemned in the talk page and reverted by three different editors ,,. WillBeBack did and said nothing. And then without one word on the talk page he reverted back to Francis's "massive insertion" with the edit summary "no explanation for massive deletion" . He now gives his reason that Francis Schonken is "a longtime and respected WP editor".

WillBeBack began making edits with "conjectural interpretations

A "conjectural interpretations of a source" is forming "an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information". In this case, making a summary of an article using only that portion of the information that suits your POV. WillBeBack summarized an article in the LA Times with this POV edit in the Rawat article . I wrote this entirely different summary in the talk page using the same article (last paragraph in green section but note Jayen466's opinion above mine).

Recent example of WillBeBack's improper editing

On April 6 Will added this summary to the DLM article - "A 1980 article in The Washington Post reported that a Congressional Panel had singled out, among other controversial groups: "Guru Maharaj Ji's Divine Light Mission...as cults that employ manipulative techniques and turn children against their parents."" . In fact, Will's summary has four major errors. First, it wasn't a "Congressional" Committee. Second, the Committee didn't "single out" DLM. Third, the Committee didn't describe DLM as a "cult that employs manipulative techniques and turn children against their parents". And fourth, the Committee didn't describe DLM as a "controversial" group . I pointed this out talk, removed the flawed summary and provided an accurate one in talk to discuss. Will restored the flawed version having corrected the "Congressional" error and swapped "singled out" to "listed", even though the the Committee hadn't "listed", "singled" or "uttered" one syllable on the matter.. The summary now falsely claims that "The Maryland House of Delegates committee listed, among other controversial groups: "Guru Maharaj Ji's Divine Light Mission ... as cults that employ manipulative techniques and turn children against their parents.". I pointed this out once again and finally WillBeBack removes "controversial" and his false claim that the "Committee listed" anything. But only to be replaced by new weasel words which still claim DLM was "listed" at the hearing.

Claims I opposed adding criticism to the Rawat article

WillBeBack started this talk page discussion by rudely and incorrectly claiming that I was opposed to adding criticism before he even asked me . Within 24 hours of WillBeback's false assertion that I didn't want to add criticism, I was asking him what materiaI he wanted to include since some of the material is clearly in breach of BLP policy. I have continued to discuss the issue, commenting five times on the subject before he made this recent claim, including this clear and unambiguous agreement to include criticism "There shouldn't be a "Criticism of..." article about Rawat or any other BLP. In order to not give undue weight, criticism should be included in the article ".,

Accusing me a making a Point

My widely discussed and long held POV is that "Criticism of (Name)" articles are inappropriate and a blight on Misplaced Pages. However, since WillBeBack was supporting a "Criticism of Rawat" article, I put aside my POV and wrote for the enemy. If "Criticism of (Name)" articles are the way of the future for Misplaced Pages then a good place to start would be with Jimbo Wales, so I created a "Criticism of Jimbo Wales" article in Good Faith. I created the page once and once only , objected to the "speedy deletion" as per the notice (which apparently counts as another creation) and made one comment on the talk page before Jossi cautioned me and I took no further action. I have made no other comment to the talk page or any other Jimbo page. Fortunately the tide is turning and some people who supported "Criticism of (Name)" articles are having a rethink, so I applaud WillBeBack's request to merge "Criticism of Prem Rawat" with the main article.

Alan Watts

Contrary to Will BeBack's claim, I haven't said Watts is "an unacceptable, disreputable source". What has been said is that Watts quote as reported in the NYTimes is confusing and needs context. This quote was discussed over a month ago by half a dozen editors and the consensus was to leave it out. Will insists it should go in a different Rawat article and if you don't agree, you're being "ridiculous" (see below).

Assumption of bad faith

Will BeBack gives an example of my bad faith, and he's right and I removed it. However during the discussion about Watts, Will BeBack is happy to say my opinion is "one of the most ridiculous arguments I've heard" and tells another editor my argument is "plain ridiculous" .

Evidence presented by User:Nik Wright2

Article ownership

Prior to publication of The Register article the WP Rawat articles were in a state of sustained ‘ownership’ WP:OWN. Ownership by its very nature is rarely demonstrable by quoting sets of diffs and Arbitrators are therefore referred to the volume of edits and talk page contributions specific to the Rawat articles, most notably by User:Jossi, User:Momento and User:Rumiton. User:Jossi has quoted above, his total contributions to Misplaced Pages, however the statistics relevant to this Arbitration are those related to the Rawat articles only. The issue is not simply the sheer volume of Jossi’s edits and talk page contributions from April 2004 ( Momento’s from 2006 and Rumiton’s from 2007) but the percentage of the totals made by these editors singly and collectively, compared to all other contributors. The ratios are even more stark when editors who have predominantly agreed with User:Jossi and who had/have little or no WP involvement other than with the Rawat articles, are removed from the calculation.

Prior to February 2006 the ‘agreeing editors list’ comprised the now inactive users 64.81.88.140, 24.21.194.205, and User:Zappaz, the first two were Rawat article ‘specialists’ while User:Zappaz did have some other WP interests. In addition three other editors who are still active, share the “Jossi consensus” User:Janice Rowe, User:Rainer P. and User:Armeisen; again their User contribution logs show that they are predominantly only interested in the Rawat articles. In January 2006 User:Jossi was joined in active WP:OWN by User:Errol Vieth and in February 2006 by User:Momento; User:Errol Vieth became inactive in December 2006; User:Jossi and User:Momento were joined by User:Rumiton in March 2007. Following publication of The Register article other editors arrived at the judgement that the Rawat articles were in urgent need of improvement. The difficulties related to the Rawat articles since the beginning of February 2008 can properly be characterised as a clash between those editors who are seeking to protect their ‘product’ of WP:OWN and those who are intent upon achieving a balanced and encyclopaedic article.

COI of editors

There have been frequent charges and counter charges by various editors for several years over the position of either current ‘students’ (followers) and of former followers of Rawat as editors of WP. The relevant part of WP:COI would seem to be: Examples/Close relationships ] Both current and former followers/students of Prem Rawat must be considered to be ‘caught’ by the “close relationship” provision of WP:COI, the only question is to what degree is the individual editor inhibited from working to NPOV. In this respect as ‘students’ of Prem Rawat both user:Rumiton and User:Momento are wrong to claim in their ArbCom statements that they have no WP:COI; User:Rumiton gives a clear statement of his COI on his User page ]

COI of Jossi

User:Jossi clearly is affected by WP:COI Examples/Close relationships, in addition he has a very specific COI related to his personal financial and career interests. When combined with culpability under WP:OWN, Jossi’s financial COI together with his COI Examples/Close relationships clearly brings WP:DUCK into play.

Religious affiliation of Sources and COI

A source of contention, which has been used in a manner of sustained disruption by pro Rawat editors, has been the issue of the religious affiliation (or claimed affiliation) of academic commentators upon Prem Rawat .See ]. This issue arose because in response to the use of reference to the the work of Ron Geaves it was pointed out that Geaves was not only a long term follower of Prem Rawat but was instrumental in Rawat becoming exposed to a western audience. In a ‘tit for tat’ response pro Rawat editors kept demanding that the religious affiliation of other academics must be made explicit or their work be excluded on the grounds of COI .

Geaves continues to assist in the public promotion of Rawat as per Film of Prem Rawat + Prof Ron Geaves of Liverpool Hope U & St Ethelburga’s and as such his work is a compromised source. Additionally Geaves is a source for other encyclopaedists such as Hunt, Barret and Chryssides, the latter of these has co-authored with Geaves while Barret is strongly associated with a Sociological perspective on New Religious Movements closely aligned to Geaves’ own. Geaves, Hunt, Barret and Chryssides have all been preferred in the WP:OWN editing of the Rawat articles over other references. See: ]

The combination of WP:OWN, and WP:COI together with the use of a compromised academic source aligned with a particular academic perspective raises very particular WP:NPOV issues. It would be expected that ] would resolve this, however the WP:OWN problems have involved consistent citing of ] as a basis for excluding references to research authorship.

Partial Administration

User:Jossi has chosen to be both editor and administrator to the Rawat articles, as an editor and talk page contributor he may be entitled to work from a partial perspective but as an administrator he must be expected to act impartially at all times; this he has not done. As evidence of a wider problem, Jossi’s respective treatment of User:Momento and User:PatW is useful to consider. User:Momento has a long history of uncooperative editing, only recently being properly sanctioned ] however User:Jossi, other than some rather mild ‘scolding’ has never threatened User:Momento with any sanction, and most tellingly given Jossi’s very active administration of the Rawat articles he makes no mention in his evidence here regarding Momento’s attrocious behaviour. In comparison User:Jossi singles out User:PatW for a full listing of his crimes. --Nik Wright2 (talk) 10:54, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Response to Other Users

IsabellaW

User:IsabellaW’s evidence has the appearance of web stalking rather than the ‘research’ that is claimed, and had he/she actually looked at Misplaced Pages rather than sources extraneous to this case, would have found my authorship of an article critical of Ron Geaves, to be acknowledge, on my WP talk page ] on Jossi’s talk page ] and both acknowledgements linked from the Prem Rawat article talk page]. Being critical of a ‘source’ is surely part of the necessary process of producing a sound article and I am puzzled that User:IsabellaW considers http://www.prem-rawat-critique.org/geaves.htm to be problematic in the context of the Rawat articles. The WP article on Geaves is not currently at issue here but, I have never edited there, unlike Jossi who as a co-religionsist of Geaves might be consider to have a COI. It is notable that Geaves is critical of the authors Foss & Larkin and that Jossi has been resistant to including Foss & Larkin as a source in the Rawat articles ]. As User:IsabellaW has introduced criticism of Geaves as an “ideals balance, fairness and NPOV” issue into this case, the Arbitrators may wish to consider whether the WP article Ron Geaves should now become part of their material consideration. --Nik Wright2 (talk) 12:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Sylviecyn has asked for the material posted by User:IsabellaW to be removed, and as it stands the User:IsabellaW material barely counts as more than an ‘attack’. If the arbitrators do deciced that the User:IsabellaW material should remain as part of this case, then the following issues come into play.

Narrow Field of Academic Reference serving a particular POV

] refers to Brian Wilson, presumably meaning Bryan R. Wilson. Wilson advocated an approach to apostasy that was not universally accepted by sociologists (anti = Benjamin Zablocki) but which was enthusiastically adopted by a small group of ‘sociologists of religion’. The ‘Wilson’ position was vigorously promoted on the Prem Rawat talk page by User:Zappaz in terms that seem designed to create a ‘rule’ that notable Rawat apostates – Mishler, Hand, Finch etc, can under no circumstances be referenced or even refered to. In rebuttal of the postion advocated by User:Zappaz. User:Andries quotes a personal email from David G. Bromley, an academic who may be considered sympathetic to Bryan R. Wilson, in which Bromley effectively dispels the basis of User:Zappaz’s argument ]. It should be noted that Jossi was active in consistent argument with User:Andries and at no time contradicted User:Zappaz. Despite Bromley’s letter, the editorial direction of the Prem Rawat article remained firmly linked to references favouring academics sympathetic to Bryan R. Wilson, including those academics who have a connection to CESNUR and Massimo Introvigne, that latter is not as User:IsabellaW claims a “Professor” and his own work is all self published. Ron Geaves (see ] is a regular contributor to CESNUR conferences, his submitted papers include From Divine Light Mission to Elan Vital: An Exploration of Change and Adaptation also connected to CESNUR are J. Gordon Melton and George D. Chryssides. User:Jossi has been an active editor on the WP Geaves, Melton and Chryssides articles, in itself that may not be an issue but it is problematic if an enthusiasm toward certain academics translates into over reliance upon those academics as sources in a given article.

Reference to an Attack Site

The affidavit that User:IsabellaW was previously linked from the Prem Rawat article, the link was removed by admin User:Vassyana as being to an “attack site” ] The affidavit was the basis of complaint which I sought to have resolved in a number of ways – ] which includes the following salient points regarding the affidavit: Authenticity: The linked .pdf document has no proof of authenticity. There is no identifiable named Notary, neither is there any identification of a legal case in which this document has been tested, nor any evidence that the claimed respondent has even received case papers, let alone lodged a response. There is no means for a Misplaced Pages reader to verify the existence of the document, other than as an item published by Elan Vital. It is acknowledged by the publisher of the .pdf document – Elan Vital, that at the time this affidavit is claimed to have been taken Elan Vital was seeking substantial costs from the claimed author of the affidavit, raising serious questions about the freedom of expression available to the claimed author. Subsequent to writing the above, a copy of the affidavit was added to a list of documents at bizzarely the submission date is 18 months ! after the case was closed, the affidavit is item 59 while item 58 is 25/07/2005 Notice of Discontinuance (Whole Proceeding); the affidavit remains untested in the Australian Courts. Further the respondent’s name does not even accord with case number. User:Jossi’s attitude in relation to the use of the affidavit can be judge by ] ] ]

Jossi’s introduction of Attack site material

User:Jossi’s resistance to a challenge to the validity of the affidafit is not surprising as it was Jossi who included it in the article text ] as well as adding the web site that was subsequently described as an attack site ] Although not tested in Australian courts the affidavit was submitted by the defendant in a US case ] in which User:Jossi was a named party, this case was current at the time User:Jossi was including the affidavit into the Prem Rawat article text. The case concerned defamation of one of the individuals named in the affidavit by the webmaster and owner of the website quoted by User:IsabellaW. The judge in the US case rejected the affidavit as having no validity; the website owner was required to publish an apology. --Nik Wright2 (talk) 15:32, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Strike through

User:Jossi has objected to the use of the term 'party' ], in the absence of any documentation readily available to the arbitrators I have struck through the term "party" in case its use should have any misleading implications. --Nik Wright2 (talk) 09:06, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Momento

Re:User: Momento evidence = ] My edit, which I believed had been adequately discussed, caused significant annoyance to the majority of active editors and User: Momento’s consistent failure to adopt WP:Assume good faith is evidenced by his casting all those who do not agree with his position as “the anti-Rawat crew”. The assertion that followers/students do not have a COI is plainly wrong. It is not my evidence that former followers/students have no COI, and I specifically acknowledged my own in my RfA statement. That Rawat’s current followers are so unwilling to acknowledge a COI is in itself a ‘good faith’ problem.--Nik Wright2 (talk) 11:47, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Rumiton

Re:User: Rumiton evidence = ]User:Rumiton begins by claiming that the ‘article’ (Prem Rawat) is “difficult to work on”. This attempted impostion of a paradigm is unhelpful in the extreme. The Rawat articles a very easy to work on because in large measure there is ample source material, the only difficulties have been those arising from chronic failures under WP:COI and WP:OWN. Using some highly partial pointsUser:Rumiton goes on to construct a form of apologism for Rawat, while otherwise extraneous to the case in question, it does help reveal the mindset and COI of a committed follower, for example he writes “The 1970s stuff that we have was commissioned by or written from a Christian religious point of view or a sociological standpoint, and neither is very helpful in gaining a fair understanding of his life and work.” To take this as a standard for editing WP would restrict the available sources only to those that are, in a highly POV sense, ‘helpful’. It is not the role of WP editors to assess sources in terms that “help” an “understanding” of a biographical subject’s “work”. It is the role of WP editors to critically assess sources so as to provide an accurate historical presentation of a ‘subject’. --Nik Wright2 (talk) 11:57, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Jayen466

Re:User:Jayen466 evidence = ] usefully demonstrates the problem of ‘preferred’ academics. Bryan R. Wilson may be a useful source but his work is ‘particular’, no matter how glowing his obituaries were. I did not describe as User:Jayen466, states that Massimo Introvigne is “obscure”, but Massimo Introvigne also represents a ‘particular’ view, and whatever his ‘expert’ credentials are, he is not a professor as is claimed.

J. Gordon Melton is yet another academic of a very particular view, and further, is indeed an encyclopaedist. Articles such as those related to Prem Rawat require broad based referencing; reliance upon sources which either represent a narrowly selected academic view, or which rely on mere reconstructions of other encyclopaedias will not provide the necessary broad base to make a good WP article. User:Jayen466's comment that “these are mainstream scholars, though it is true that they are a source of irritation to many self-appointed anti-cult campaigners.” rather suggests that User:Jayen466 may have her/his own WP:COI to acknowledge. Turning this case into a cult versus anticult question seems unlikely to add any elucidation. --Nik Wright2 (talk) 12:12, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Vassyana

Re: User:Vassyana evidence = ]

Jossi's alleged COI

Vassyana contends that: "A long list of diffs was provided during the COI noticeboard discussion in the wake of the Register article. The links intending to demonstrate that Jossi's COI is a recurring issue don't do much to impugn Jossi. This contention is supported by quotation of six diffs which Vassyana contends show “Jossi adding or restoring criticism to the article”."

In both cases Vassyana’s contentions seem partial toward Jossi’s often very clear bias (insertion of references approriate to supporting the Rawat party line) or otherwise unrelated to what actually the diffs are concerned with. Further WP:COI can not be adequately tested on the basis of comparison of limited particular diffs but upon behaviour over time; the diffs given at ] are not well sorted on the basis of relevance but as a collection do contribute to the evidence of Jossi’s own partiality in editing the Rawat articles. The fact that some references may contain some material that is not wholly complimentary to Rawat does not make them ‘critical’ or provide evidence of Jossi 'writing for the enemy' if the overall terms of the specific reference accord with the ‘official’ line promoted by the biographical subject and his advisers and representiatives. See ]

As Vassyana notes, the case refered to was closed as “baseless” however given the volume of evidence now before the Arbitrators the dismisal of the evidence in the earlier case seems to have been overly hasty and deserves to be considered within the context of all the evidene in the present case.

participation and the editing atmosphere

Vassyana refers to: ] This is appropriate to the present case because it deals directly with attempts to achieve clarity over the editing of the Rawat articles under the tag team control of Jossi, Rumiton and Momento. Vassyana’s reply unfortunately did not address my concerns. However I am grateful to Vassyana for an intervention which he has not listed but which is also relevant to the current case: ]

--Nik Wright2 (talk) 13:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Isabella W.

I have been doing research about Prem Rawat and his students, and about his detractors, and I have found valuable substantiated information which may be of interest in these proceedings.

I am not familiar in the rules of evidence of these proceedings, and I would be grateful for some guidance.

While Prem Rawat has been known to have students that were overly passionate about his teachings, his detractors also appear to be, at times, overly determined in their profile and actions. My research indicates that Prem Rawat has had for about 10 years a small group of active opponents/detractors who have repeatedly resorted to unethical and at times illegal methods to prevent him from sharing his message of peace, and to prevent people interested in this message to cultivate their interest.

The members of this fringe group appear to be the same people who are now battling here on WIKI on an effort to inject a negative bias into the Misplaced Pages entries about Prem Rawat.

This group at times, have manipulated the media. One of them from Bristol, UK, posting under the alias Andrew Carpenter, gave an interview to the leading Bristol Evening Post on June 17, 2003 and managed to get a full page cover article with his in silhouette to protect his anonymity (http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-14218076.html). He claimed that he had discovered grave financial irregularities in the accounting of the Elan Vital UK Charity, which promotes Prem Rawats message of peace in the UK and that he had just filed a complaint with the UK Charity commission. He indeed filed a complaint with the charity commission, but the investigation found no wrongdoing by Elan Vital: the complaint was frivolous, the journalist was duped and Elan Vital was found by the Charity Commission to be in good compliance with rules and regulations. Similar fictitious tax complaints have been sent by this small group to regulatory authorities in India, Australia and more. In each and every case, they resulted in the complaint being dismissed by the authorities. This "Andrew Carpenter" also posted several "articles" in IndyMedia websites (http://india.indymedia.org/en/2003/10/8160.shtml). There is evidence that this Andrew Carpenter is one of the active critics participating in this WIKI article with the user name Nik Wright2, (http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-india/2006-March/0322-d4.html) and has also published on anti-Rawat sites critical articles, under his real name. (http://www.prem-rawat-critique.org/geaves.htm)

In 2001-2004, on the forum/chat room on the internet where they gather, they have made threats against Prem Rawat and his family. Some postings incited people to drug and kidnap members of Rawats family, to poison the water of the resort where he holds events, and even to broadcast false alerts that anthrax had been found in the conference hall. One posting even included a picture of a large butchers knife, saying it was intended for Prem Rawat (http://www.one-reality.net/hate_speech1.htm). The small group also published the private phone numbers and floor plans of Prem Rawats house, and more.

The current owner and managers of that forum are the two persons that appeared in The Register article (one is named here as John Brauns). Although they now moderate postings and edit comments by its members that may bring a criminal liability upon this forum or cross the line into hate speech, (they have learned that it does not serve their cause), their destructive obsession with the subject matter is still evident.

In October 2006, this group discussed publicly intentions to conspire against Misplaced Pages. For example, one of them posted: "the way for exes to deal with Wiki should be 'all or nothing. It would make sense if every forum member joined in the editing there, if only to make Jossi Fresco work for a living and discredit Rawat in the process. Just join in, add a phrase here and there, change or remove things that are false, add things that are missing, generally raise hell? I say just either dive in and edit the fu*cker silly, however you see fit, hit-and-run style, or leave well alone. But do it for fun, if you do it at all. Wiki is not as important as its editors would have us believe." This posting provides a sense for the intent of the members of this group. (http://www.prem-rawat-talk.org/forum/posts/10027.html)

My sense, after conducting a lot of research, is that the topic of Prem Rawat attracts not just the mainstream but also people with polarized, extreme views, and threatening behaviors. It is important to not allow operatives of a handful of fringe detractors to take advantage of Misplaced Pages's name equity to lead their own, no-cost, self-serving campaign against Prem Rawat and his students. These people should instead use their own websites for that, where they can air their own grievances and critiques as much as they want, under our fair speech laws.

In light of the above, it is even more incumbent upon the arbitrators to uphold the WIKI standards and ideals and ensure that balance, fairness and NPOV prevails. IsabellaW (talk) 19:25, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

More evidence presented by Isabella W.

Some of persons posting against a fair article on Prem Rawat claim to be apostates and some appear to be apostates. Quite a bit of academic literature has been written about apostates and their reliability and credibility.

Brian Wilson, a professor of Sociology at Oxford University, challenges the reliability of the apostates' testimony: according to him, “apostates are to be seen as one whose personal history predisposes him to bias with respect to both his previous religious commitment and affiliations, the suspicion must arise that he acts from a personal motivation to vindicate himself and to regain his self-esteem, by showing himself to have been first a victim but subsequently to have become a redeemed crusader.”

Prof. Massimo Introvigne from CESNUR (www.cesnur.org) the Center for the Study of New Religions, distinguishes between three level of apostates: level 1, where the person exits the movement without any negotiation and in a manner that minimizes damage for both parties. level 2 is when the departure of the person involves negotiation, but there are no ill feelings left afterthat. Level 3 apostasy, according to Introvigne, is when the ex-member dramatically reverses his loyalties and becomes a permanent enemy of the organization he has left, join a group fighting the movement, and often claims victimization.

In light of the above, it appears that the group opposing Prem Rawat on the internet, and of which members are trying to shape the Misplaced Pages article, is made of Type 3 apostates, with all the related issues of limited credibility and ulterior motives.

For example, Gordon Melton. director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion and is a research specialist with the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said that when investigating groups, hostile ex-members invariably shade the truth and blow out of proportion minor incidents turning them into major incidents (http://www.hightruth.com/experts/melton.html)

In addition to the ones previously mentioned, other persons from this apostates' group include:

1. User:TGubler, from Brisbane, Australia, who admitted to stealing information from a computer belonging to a student of Prem Rawat that contained Elan Vital financial data and other personal data. (http://elanvital.com.au/faq/article.php?id=024) He was also found guilty of contempt of court, and sentenced to two months in prison.

2. User:John Brauns, User:Wowest, User:Sylviecyn aka User:Another Ex-Premie, User:Jim Heller, User:Nik Wright2

Note that an award winning investigative journalist in Australia, himself an interviewer of three Australian Prime Ministers, in an authenticated affidavit with the Queensland Supreme Court in 2005, acknowledged having been duped by this detractors group and stated: “The goal of the group are often obsessive, malicious, and destructive in nature. Through the use of the internet, they interfere with the rights of people to experience their own spiritual discovery and for the purpose of harassing individuals who are students of Rawat. The group’s actions have included contacting of employers of students of Prem Rawat, sending letters to regulatory agencies and the media with unsupported allegations and rabid personal attacks on the character of individuals. … and the internet publication of false and defamatory stories about Rawat designed to cast him in a false light.” (http://www.elanvital.org/faq/JMG_AFFIDAVIT.pdf) The affidavit signed by this reputable investigative journalist includes the names of several of the persons named in this arbitration.

Another core person in this group also from Australia (http://www.ex-premie.org/pages/neville2.htm), tried to disrupt a convention near Brisbane, and was later arrested with $25Million of drugs—the largest seizure in the history of Queensland-- as well as unsecured and unlicensed firearms. (http://www.elanvital.com.au/faq/PDF/ackland_drug_bust.pdf)

I also note that John Brauns removed the posting in which his small internet group was called to action and conspire against Misplaced Pages. Last time I checked this posting was there, but has just been removed. It was posted by a "Nigel" on 08/20/2006, 11:27:13. Maybe Mr. Brauns could check his backup or archives and confirm this.IsabellaW (talk) 03:24, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by 84.9.49.223

Summary and partial analysis of Isabella W's Evidence

With comments in brackets

• http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-14218076.html - Valid link providing independent confirmation that there was a complaint against Rawat in 2003. Contended that this complaint wasn't successful but no evidence presented to support that contention
• http://india.indymedia.org/en/2003/10/8160.shtml - Valid link to interesting and informative article headed The Three Faces of Prem Rawat. Isabella claims that Andrew Carpenter wrote several articles in this vein but only cites one of them. (It would be interesting to see the others too)
• http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-india/2006-March/0322-d4.html - Valid link to a postings site where people argue about who Nik Wright and Andrew Carpenter are. Someone called Nik Wright posts a denial but who can tell whether that is the "real" Nik Wright
• There is the useful contention that John Brauns moderates postings on his ex-premie websites, thereby preventing them being hate forums. (Well done, John!)
• http://www.prem-rawat-talk.org/forum/posts/10027.html - bad link, ostensibly to support notion that there had been exhortations to gang up in wikipedia. Nothing verifiable to support this
• http://www.one-reality.net/hate_speech1.htm - valid link to a discussion between people who really do seem to hate Prem Rawat. (Interesting that there should be such venom posted about someone who only promotes inner peace. Isabella's "researches" don't indicate what went wrong)
• Isabella asserts "It is important to not allow operatives of a handful of fringe detractors to take advantage of Misplaced Pages's name equity to lead their own, no-cost, self-serving campaign against Prem Rawat and his students." (Indeed, but a disinterested researcher might be curious to find out about the existence and rationale of such people. Isabella doesn't throw much light on this.)
• Isabella asserts "My sense, after conducting a lot of research, is that the topic of Prem Rawat attracts not just the mainstream...". No evidence presented that the topic of Prem Rawat attracts the mainstream. (Why would it?)

84.9.49.223 (talk) 13:34, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by User:Msalt

Note: I've flagged later additions (aside from replies) with the word Add:

One edit war

This detailed look at the edit war behind the second revert in Jossi’s 2nd 1RR ANI report on Francis illustrates the dynamic well:

- Momento deletes criticism of Rawat (with scholarly source) under edit summary “(As per talk "Lede")” .
- Francis reverts “Undid revision 198191994 by Momento (talk) misunderstanding: read talk page again”
- Momento reverts, “Deleted according to BLP. See talk ‘The Lede’” ;
- revert by LAWRENCE ;
- compromise by Jayen466 ;
- self-revert by Jayen466 per talk accidentally reinstalls Momento’s version ;
- reverted by Francis to LAWRENCE’S with honest summary ;
- reverted by Momento with misleading summary “added context” ;
- reverted by Francis with other changes (“undid revision by Momento”) ;
- reverted hours later by Janice Rowe with misleading summary (“This is a better, more accurate revision”).

One talk page thrash

Pro-Rawat editors wanted to remove a picture of Rawat's home for POV reasons (its extravagance emphasized his wealth). Their arguments and policies change as they fail (in 5 separate talk threads mercifully refactored by Francis) but the goal remains the same. Overall thread . Momento and others were edit-warring throughout despite ongoing dispute resolution -- warned defiant :

1) Invasion of privacy (Momento)
2) Verifiability (Jossi)
3) Self-published (Jossi)
4) Wrong house (Momento , Armeisen )
5) Public record that includes personal details (Momento)
6) Unsourced (Momento)
7) L.A. Times not a reputable source (Armeisen)
8) Copyright / not fair use. This argument, raised elsewhere, finally stuck after dispute resolution (and I supported that deletion )

Tendentious editing by User:Momento, User:Rumiton and User:Janice Rowe

Overview

3 pro-Rawat, single purpose account editors who aggressively move to block any changes away from a pro-Rawat POV on these pages acknowledge strong ties to the subject -- long-time devotees Momento ( in answer to ) and Rumiton ("as a practicing premie" , plus ), and recently Janice Rowe, (“I know several followers of Prem Rawat”  ; coy about herself.)

At least one of these -- usually Momento -- is involved in essentially every edit war on this page, with Talk page support from Jossi and the other two. They are supported by less frequent editors such as User:Rainer P. ("when I joined the ashram") and User:Armeisen ("I've practised knowledge since I was 22.")

Tag-teaming

Momento openly brags about "editing while blocked” soon after 12 Janice Rowe article edits in 45 minutes -- her first edits since October 6, 2005 .

Disrespectful replies by Momento to warnings, blocks and refused unblocks from admins

To Vassyana to Vassyana to Lawrence to B to Sandstein to Will Beback

Add: Wikilawyering

Momento et. al. aggressively use Misplaced Pages policies such as Biographies of Living Persons, Exceptional Claims and Sockpuppets of Zoe Croydon ) to justify edit-warring with exemption from the 3-Revert rule. They stretch logic severely to reach these havens e.g. "It is clear that in reducing two articles in the LA Times to two sentences Will Beback has made 'a conjectural interpretation of a source'."

They reject consensus and collaboration

Out of many examples:

Momento:
1) repeatedly deleted an image during its Image For Deletion process without comment against consensus even after a neutral editor warned that BLP does not justify removal ].
2) After very picky complaints including "Hunt doesn't say 'critics alleged', Hunt says 'critics have focused on'" Momento says "I am not going to spend my time repairing other editors distorted and inappropriate edits. I'm going to delete them.” and s/he did , line 68.
Add: 3) "There aren't two sides to the truth. It's either true or it isn't. So a compromise isn't a compromise, it's a failure."