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Notable Participants

Proper citations that actually mention the noted living persons, need to be added or corrected.SteveJEsposito (talk) 00:11, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Human potential movement and large group awareness training

@MLKLewis: recently removed large-group awareness training from the lead without leaving a summary. LGAT isn't mentioned in the body of the article, so it doesn't clearly belong in the lead, but its removal underscores that the lead is vague enough to be kind of useless. EST and The Forum in popular culture mentions both LGAT and the larger Human Potential Movement, supported by solid offline sources:

  • Fisher, Jeffrey D.; Cohen Silver, Roxane; Chinsky, Jack M.; Goff, Barry; Klar, Yechiel (1990). Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training. New York: Springer-Verlag. p. 142. ISBN 0-387-97320-6.
  • Denison, Charles Wayne (June 1995). "The children of EST: A study of the experience and perceived effects of a large group awareness training". Dissertation Abstracts International. 55 (12–B). Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International: 5564.
  • McGurk, William S. (June 1977). "Was Ist est?". Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books. 22 (6): pp. 459–460. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)

Since I don't have access to those sources, I'm not willing to use them, but is there a general agreement that est is part of LGAT and the Human Potential movement? A quick search shows that sources seem to support this. Adding one or both of these to the lead would go a long way towards making it clearer, or at least give it a bit of context. The quote in the lead also needs clear attribution, since it's followed by two different refs. Is this Erhardt's description? If not, who's saying this? Grayfell (talk) 02:40, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Death

I don't believe that the death of one participant, found by a court not to have been caused by est, warrants mention, much less mention in the timeline. Avocats (talk) 03:52, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

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Dubious edits?

Is this edit justified: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Erhard_Seminars_Training&diff=prev&oldid=729181825 ?

It seems to me to fail on grounds of relevance, due weight and neutrality. While it is undoubtedly tragic that this individual died, the only reason for including it in the article is to convey the impression that est was in some degree responsible. Not only did a court rule that this was not the case, but it is clearly counter to common sense, as it is a statistically insignificant proportion of the several hundred thousands of individuals who participated and did not die during the training. DaveApter (talk) 09:07, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

This one is even less defensible: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Erhard_Seminars_Training&diff=729180319&oldid=727481557

The source is a flippant article in a lowbrow magazine. The quote is unencyclopedic in tone and factually inaccurate. Erhard was not 'down on his luck'; he was a senior executive at Grolier. There is no evidence that the cigarette he was smoking was 'his last Lucky Strike'. DaveApter (talk) 09:18, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I was also somewhat uncomfortable with those sections in the article, but right now I don't have time to really dig into it. --Slashme (talk) 11:07, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Possible Elucidation?

Many participants experienced powerful results through their participation in the est training, including dramatic transformations in their relationships with families, their work and personal vision as well as recognizing who they were in the core of their beings. says the article

participants experienced powerful results Yes. And what were those results? including dramatic transformations in their relationships with families Um. Yes. But what were the results? And the transformation ones, they were transformations from what to what?

But wait. There's more. as well as recognizing who they were in the core of their beings. Not merely recognizing who they were, but doing so at the core of their beings.

Somehow I don't think this qualifies as an encyclopedia entry. Yet. Could we at minimum have some indication of what the concept "recognizing who they were" is all abaht? This core of their beings thingie looks portentous enough to be worth a little elucidation, too.

David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 05:29, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

To put it more succinctly, this article needs to describe precisely what happened at the seminars. What was the training method? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.249.117.83 (talk) 21:59, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

The article's been written by people who consider Erhardt, and his seminars, worshipful. Life changing, glorious, etc. Full stop. The examples they cite are all Hollywood celebrities, as is par for the course for cultish programs such as Scientology. It has no value as an encyclopedic article. It's a push-piece. I put this article high on my list of articles that need a thorough purging by WP:NPOV and WP:COI wonks. Sadly, that is not me. Vintovka Dragunova (talk) 01:53, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Agreed. I came here because of the negative comments made about the influence of Est on the development of The Wiz. All I found was the psychobabble those comments complained about. Tysto (talk) 13:07, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Added POV tag. Sales brochure tone.

Added POV tag. This article reeks of "everything positive and nothing negative" sales brochure tone. 108.20.176.139 (talk) 21:29, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

One example of many:
"...Emmy-winning actress Valerie Harper reported, 'Est was a wonderfully empowering experience for me...'." Importance of participants is hyped up, lending importance and/or legitimacy on the enterprise. The whole "Notable Participants" section serves as a kind of testimonial advertising. 108.20.176.139 (talk) 21:43, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

MARKETING as bad as it comes. Please add the POV tag again

This article reads like typical PR. It offer no significant outside perspective or criticism.

I have not read as obvious marketing on Wikipedia for ages. It is a disgrace for our project. 213.152.162.154 (talk) 06:57, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Dear god yes. This needs a POV review. Landmark worldwide needs one as well. It's a descendant program. Hurtstotouchfire (talk) 23:36, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

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"Not to be confused with Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)"?

In the top, there is a hatnote saying "Not to be confused with Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)". As the template says: "This template renders a hatnote intended to inform the reader of the existence of one or more articles whose title(s) bears a strong resemblance to the current article." But how could anyone confuse "Erhard Seminars Training" with "Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)"? If NLP should be mentioned for some reason, I believe it should be in the text or in the "See also" section. And if it's unrelated, why link to it at all? Even if we suppose that they are two different instances of a concept class, and that they could therefore be confused with eachother, it's still like saying "Not to be confused with Ford" in an article about Volvo. --Jhertel (talk) 17:00, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Criticism Section Missing

The majority of articles on wikipedia of this type have a "Criticisms" section. This is a glaring void here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.183.234.242 (talk) 21:33, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I think you'll find that "Criticism" and "Reception" sections are generally deprecated in preference to including a balancing of pro and con views integrated into the body of the article as has been done with this one. For instance, search for the word "cult" and you'll find it once in the intro and mentioned several times later in the article. If you don't think the balancing has been done properly, you are free to bring new sources on board for whichever side you think is under-represented. It may be best to bring your suggested changes here to the talk page for discussion rather than applying them directly to the article without discussion, but you may do it however you prefer and other editors will respond. — jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 00:13, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
I personally find "Criticism" sections very useful, especially in articles about something that is being marketed. They give me a quick overview of things that the marketing doesn't mention, as the marketing exclusively mentions the positive things. --Jhertel (talk) 17:05, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, not NPOV but ..

...at least it's a change from the slagging that anything without the official blessing of the scientific commmunity gets in these pages. If there is going to be an effort to fix this, can it at least be a balanced one?

I didn't "do" est: sounded a bit like potty-training to me. But I know many people who did get a great deal out of the training. And yes Werner Erhard was a wierdo, but so was Einstein...viewed from a certain perspective.

While the scientific community is in the room, let's consider its performance over the last century (on my way to commenting further on Erhard). It has done a so-so job for those who fit the bill of "patient", but its results, after billions of dollars of research funding and a century or more of effort, can scarcely be compared with what the same funding has achieved in other sciences. And the real issue is that it has done almost nothing at all in arriving at a model that the general population can use to "help themselves". Their apparent solution is that anyone with any problem should seek therapy...apparently economics is not a strong suit among therapists. The vacuum that that has created almost begs others--like Erhard--to step in and they have. What they have done is often flawed, but often interesting AND actually works. But in their clamour to point out those flaws, science has conveniently omitted mention of their own failures, which are often very similar to those in the self-help genre: groupies, who move from one fad to another (compare patients, who therapist-shop); addicts (do I need to explain this growing problem in the realm of professional therapy?).

Yes, please correct this article but please (a) don't imply that anyone who went to or got anything out of est must be a bit loopy (b) by all means mention the wierd stuff about Erhard but please don't dismiss everything that he did because of that. Many of our heroes elsewhere were damaged goods but they still had redeeming features (c) buy into the idea that anything not approved by science or scholasticism is fatally flawed. I'm a scientist and I can't believe some of the non-science that some prominent scientists offer to the media. (Especially the weasel idea that because there is no evidence for something it must be suspect or untrue. Much of the stuff discovered in this century couldn't be detected or suspected a century before because the instruments or reasoning tools were not there.

Sorry about the rant.--50.68.140.76 (talk) 00:45, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Stream of positive testimonials

I removed the majority of one section. Everything removed was a stream of positive testimonial anecdotes. Nothing in the testimonials added to the readers understanding of what EST was or did. That functions as advertising, like you would see on a late night infomercial, not as encyclopedic knowledge. If you object to that being removed, let's talk about it. SchmuckyTheCat (talk) 21:11, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Notable participants

There was an unqualified list of participants (mostly Hollywood celebs) towards the bottom of the article. Unqualified lists don't belong here. Personal enrichment seminars like this happen all over every city in the United States every weekend and famous people with money show up. Without qualification, such as celebs who got personally involved in the training, delivery, or corporation, it's not a useful list. SchmuckyTheCat (talk) 21:18, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

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