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Removal of Denison research details

At 1653 hours on May 7, 2008, a Wikipedian removed material relating to the impact of the Landmark Forum without adequately characterizing this aspect of the edit in the edit-summary, which stated "Placing conclusion of the study- previous quote misrepresented the findings of the Study". I propose re-incorporating this interesting and valuable material as:

Denison stated:

The observation and interview data suggest that these curricula have a varied impact on participants; some report a certain distinction as having personal impact, while other participants scarcely recall the concept. The structure and curriculum of The Forum, on their own, do not provide all the data that are relevant to understanding the phenomenon of the training.

The research specifically encouraged participants to speak about the "euphoria" in their experiences with The Forum, as "a feeling of being 'high' or extremely 'energized'-is a common emotion in The Forum experience. The feeling tends to arise at some point during the training, and continue for a short time afterward. Because the experience is so common in the training, most interviewees were specifically asked to comment on it." Fifteen of the twenty participants spoke about it, with twelve articulating having the feeling of euphoria. Denison explains further:

The euphoria. when it was experienced by the participants, was positive but did not last long, in most cases. Some interpreted that feeling as empowerment or confidence. Others described it more in terms of being on a 'high,' similar to that produced by drugs or chemicals. Others reported a lack of euphoria. or only a very minimal sense of excitement.

[Denison, Charles Wayne (1994). "The children of EST a study of the experience and perceived effects of a large group awareness training (The Forum)". PhD Thesis. University of Denver. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help)]

-- Pedant17 (talk) 02:56, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

OPPOSE What you are proposing is including a 15 year old collegiate PHD thesis study, of 20 people? I do not think this is notable or relevant Mvemkr (talk) 16:02, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Would that we had a 16-year-old study of 25 people! Or a 4-year-old study of 10 people! -- We take the most relevant material available and winnow it for notability. This portion of Denison's work relates to systematic study of the effects of the Landmark Forum on individuals' memory and experience. Since we do not (yet) have a separate article on the "Landmark Forum" and since the article on Landmark Education lacks detailed third-party evaluation of effects (perceived or otherwise), the relevance of Dennison's conclusions and summaries further enrich our article. -- Pedant17 (talk) 04:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Relevance and balance

There is an important point to be made here about the Denison thesis that has nothing to do with whether it is relevant. The Denison thesis is 98% positive about Landmark Education and 2% negative about it. For a long time, the 2% negative piece was in the article and none of the positive was. This was edited to be more balanced, even leaving in some of the negative, and the negative editors responded by questioning the relevance of the piece.

For my part I doubt whether it is at all appropriate to use a student paper as a source in an encyclopedia, but if it were it should obviously be summarised to give an accurate balanced account of its content, not cherry-picked to promote a particular viewpoint.

I have grave reservations about a recurrent pattern on this talk page, whereby Pedant17 dredges up some section that was removed (invariably one representing an negative POV on the subject matter), and then Cirt chimes in like a broken record with his note that the editor who removed it was blocked as a sock-puppet. Even assuming that the blocking was justified and proportionate (something about which I have serious doubts), this is a completely irrelevant observation unless one is proposing that every single edit made by those individuals is invalid.

This article was originally created as an attack piece, and subjected to a relentless barrage of edits to further that end over a considerable period of time. Much of the removal of material was entirely justified. As it stands at the moment the article is much less offensive than it has been at some times in the past, but it is still very poor quality and gives very little real information about its subject, and is still heavily biased in the direction of giving undue weight to negative unsubstantiated opinions. DaveApter (talk) 15:35, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Note: Pointing out actions of WP:SPA accounts that have subsequently been blocked for abusing multiple accounts is appropriate, and supported by this comment from the checkuser that carried out most of the blocks on these disruptive accounts [1]. Cirt (talk) 15:39, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Maybe people who live in glasshouses (or even who previously did) shouldn't throw stones? More to the point, could we just keep the discussion to the merits of the edits in question? Maybe dubious editors might have made some worthwhile contributions to this project, and perhaps some generally sound editors may have sometimes made poor ones. DaveApter (talk) 19:25, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Many accounts were indefinitely blocked as a result of the investigation into Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Eastbayway. It is worth noting. Especially when individual(s)/organization(s) may have been using multiple accounts to manipulate articles and discussions. Cirt (talk) 19:28, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Here is a sampling of the block logs of some of the indefinitely blocked accounts: See [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]. Cirt (talk) 19:35, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
So your point is? DaveApter (talk) 20:32, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Simply pointing out the sheer number of disruptive accounts that have all been indefinitely blocked that had caused problems for years across multiple articles on this topic. Cirt (talk) 00:32, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
DaveApter, if your percentages (98 vs. 2) are correct (I haven't read the piece in question) then I would agree that the proposed restoration is problematic. But the fact that you refer to a dissertation as a "student paper" shows a lack of understanding regarding academic sources. When someone gets a PhD, they are no longer a student -- the completion of the PhD qualifies them as a scholar and the dissertation itself can be presumed to be among the best types of reliable source available. Note that I concluded precisely the opposite regarding the paper produced for class by a student, discussed a few months ago (can't remember the student's name). The difference turns in large part on peer review. I'm withholding judgment on the proposed restoration -- for now I'll note that an edit might have been useful even if performed by someone that worked out to have been a sockpuppet, and the fact of having been a sockpuppet doesn't by itself mean the edit should be reversed. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 15:51, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
I'll withdraw the comment about it being a student paper - however, I'm not sure what factual conclusions can be drawn from any study with such a small sample as 20 respondents. And I stand by my comment that the summary was misrepresentative of the overall thrust of the thesis. DaveApter (talk) 19:25, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
It would be a violation of WP:NOR for us to make such presumptive analysis of sources and read into them like this. Either a source satisfies WP:RS and WP:V, or it does not. Cirt (talk) 00:33, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
If unsure about what factual conclusions one might draw from a sample of 20, read and assess Denison critically in that light. But we do not confine ourselves to factual opinions in discussing pop-culture on Wikipedia: qualitative research gets a look-in too. Compare the sample of 20, consistently handled under academic guidelines and oversight, with the persistent samples of one so often trotted out to comment on Landmark Education. Some of those still lurk in the current sanitized version of the article. While making such comparisons, test whether the current quote from sample-of-one Karin Badt mis-represents her overall article in a balanced manner following the edit made by User:DaveApter on 2009-04-23 at 1212 hours . -- Pedant17 (talk) 04:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
I endorse and applaud the call for balance in our article. But precise opinions about the precise percentages of blackness and of whiteness (no perceived grayness!) in Denison's work belong if anywhere in a different article -- perhaps one on Charles Wayne Denison himself. Here and now we have the task of covering the gamut of views on Landmark Education in a balanced fashion. This involves including Denison's findings on the outcomes of Landmark Education attendance -- concepts ("distinctions"), effectiveness of the structure, the experience of euphoria -- all balanced against whatever other reliable sources address the same sort of issues with similar or better rigor. Wikipedia has to cherry-pick in the vast gardens of human culture and scholarship (compare WP:INDISCRIMINATE). Balance comes from picking more and different cherries, not from keeping selective bunches of cherries out of sight.-- If, on the other hand, one becomes concerned about quoting a heavily biased author on any particular topic, Denison shows a degree of academic subtlety/finesse in this very non-black and non-white quote: "The structure and curriculum of The Forum, on their own, do not provide all the data that are relevant to understanding the phenomenon of the training." (I have proposed including that quote.) We could also add to this summary of Denison a tag along the lines: "Despite what some[who?] see as a 98% authorial bias[citation needed] in favor of Landmark Education, Denison notes that ...". Once again, don't hide the cherries. But if the Koran states somewhere that Christians have some fundamentally good ideas yet thunders elsewhere that they deserve to die, do we tag every citation of the Koran with a countervailing disclaimer? -- Furthermore, if Denison has made other findings perceived as "positive" or "negative' -- include them too as part of a balanced coverage of the overall importance of Landmark Education -- not as if we need to force Denison into a pre-conceived mold in this particular article. -- If one "gets" a particular recurrent pattern relating to removed material, does one then undertake as the next step an investigation as to how/why the removed material disappeared in the first place? (That could throw up some interesting hypotheses...) I do not pre-suppose the invalidity of every edit made by Wikipedians who subsequently suffered blocking. I do not even single them out by name for examination. But wherever blocking indicates a hint of sock-puppetry, one can indeed question the the individual edits anyway (like any other edit), examine them and re-assess the validity of the shaping that those editors gradually contributed to our article. -- The contention that the Landmark Education article originated and continued as an attack piece holds little water. The original text reads like a model of restrained balance, for example. In any event, this un-substantiated disparagement of the past does not serve to help us in refining and expanding the article in the future, but rather simply prolongs a series of unjustified rants (widespread in many discussions of Landmarkism) about perceived negativity. Far better to revisit the archives with an open mind and pluck out and refurbish the better pieces of material available there. -- Pedant17 (talk) 04:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


At 1835 hours on June 14, 2008, a Wikipedian removed a link to material on the France 3/Pièces à Conviction 2004 documentary broadcast on the topic of Landmark Education, adding the edit-summary "Criticism: removed anonymous POV link spam". Since Wikipedia has included a whole non-spam article on this non-anonymous broadcast since 2006, we should at least provide a meaningful and informative in-context link from Landmark Education to this material at "Voyage au pays des nouveaux gourous" (also known as "Inside the Landmark Forum". If we must persist with a "criticism" [sub]section, one of the more trenchant, influential, and widely distributed critical analyses of Landmark Education deserves a mention there. I suggest text such as the following: "The French broadcast television documentary "Voyage au pays des nouveaux gourous" ("Voyage to the land of the new gurus") documents, analyzes and discusses some of the operations and attitudes of Landmark Education, including footage of responses from a Landmark Education representative." -- Pedant17 (talk) 02:09, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Note: The account referred to above that removed this information from the article is Gilbertine goldmark (talk · contribs), this account was subsequently indefinitely blocked for abusing multiple accounts. You can read more about that as well as many other disruptive sockpuppets on the topic of Werner Erhard, Erhard Seminars Training, and Landmark Education, at Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Eastbayway. Cheers, Cirt (talk) 03:13, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
I don't know anything about the removal, but wasn't there something criminal about the broadcast? Did not the crew fraudulently enroll someone in the Forum and then have that person smuggle a camera into the room in violation of the confidentiality contract they had signed and then invade the privacy of participants by filming their presumably confidential interactions with the Forum Leader? Is that something we should be promoting? Wowest (talk) 02:50, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
@Wowest (talk · contribs) - WP:RS sources to back up your claims? Cirt (talk) 03:12, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
We heard some "gossip" about how investigative journalists do their job, which may have diverted some readers/viewers away from the documentary analysis: see Voyage au pays des nouveaux gourous and its talk-page and the associated "history" sub-pages. Do you have sources of the laying of criminal charges or the handing down of criminal convictions? -- if so an edit of Voyage au pays des nouveaux gourous to add suggestions of something "criminal" or "fraudulent" would seem very appropriate. -- But no-one proposes "promoting" anything. Wikipedia simply has a separate page on a specific broadcast which took as its topic Landmark Education: Voyage au pays des nouveaux gourous. The Wikipedia article on Landmark Education should link (per WP:LINK) to that relevant article in a transparent way. If not, why not? -- Pedant17 (talk) 02:39, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Addition of revision claims

At 1445 hours on June 20, 2008, a Wikipedian added a sentence to the discussion of the origins of the "Landmark Forum": thus: 'Since then, the name of the presentation has been changed to "The Landmark Forum" and the content has been revised some.' This claim in this form lacks any verifiable citations and its structure glosses over who allegedly made any changes and over when such changes occurred. Furthermore, the formulation repeats the idea of a "presentation", implying a static one-sided quality at odds with the claimed idea of the Landmark Forum as a "forum", implying multi-faceted participation, openness, or even interactive engagement. I propose we alter and wikify the sentence to address some of its deficiencies -- it might read something like:

'(Landmark Education has subsequently claimed{{fact}} that the interactive seminar<ref> For the use of the word "seminar" (rather than (say) "presentation"), see for example {{cite web | first = Robert T. | last = Carroll | author = | authorlink = Robert Todd Carroll | coauthors = | title = Landmark Forum | url = http://www.skepdic.com/landmark.html | archiveurl = | work = The Skeptic's Dictionary | publisher = | location = | page = | pages = | language = | format = | doi = | date = 2009-02-23 | year = | month = | archivedate = | accessdate = 2009-05-31 | quote = Landmark Forum is a large group awareness training program in which up to 150 people take a seminar together ... }} </ref> course<ref> For the use of the word "course" (rather than (say) "presentation"), see for example {{cite web | first = | last = | author = | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = Landmark Education: Formerly "est" (Erhard Seminars Training), The Forum | url = http://web.archive.org/web/20031009073425/religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/est.html | archiveurl = | work = Religious Movements Homepage | publisher = University of Virginia | location = | page = | pages = | doi = | date = 2003-08-02 | year = | month = | archivedate = | accessdate = 2009-05-31 | quote = The Formation of Landmark Forum In January, 1991 Werner Erhard offered to license the course content to his former employees in order to provide an opportunity for the ongoing availability of the work of transformation, unimpeded by the attack on his personal reputation. }}. Landmark Education itself describes the Landmark Forum as "a course of instruction" involving "open discussions ... voluntary sharing ... and short exercises" -- see:{{cite web | title = The Landmark Forum | url = www.ravelandmarkeducation.com/LandmarkForum05IF.pdf | archiveurl = | work = [Enrolment form] | publisher = Landmark Education | location = | page = | pages = | language = | format = | doi = | date = | year = | month = | archivedate = | accessdate = 2009-05-31 | quote = The Landmark Forum is a unique course of instruction designed to support people in being more effective in realizing their personal and societal goals. Through a series of philosophically rigorous and open discussions, voluntary sharing of one’s own experiences, and short exercises, }} </ref>, which it [Landmark Education] has started marketing{{when?}} as "The Landmark Forum", "evolve[d]' in some unspecified manner over the 16 years from 1991 onwards.<ref> {{cite web | title = Company History | url = http://www.landmarkeducation.com/landmark_education_company_history_media.jsp | archiveurl = | work = www.landmarkeducation.com | publisher = Landmark Education | location = | doi = | date = | year = | month = | archivedate = | accessdate = 2009-05-31 | quote = In January of 1991, Landmark Education was formed [...] Landmark began with [...] a body of intellectual properties originally developed by Werner Erhard. Landmark set out [...] taking numerous initiatives including the formation of a top-notch Research and Design Team, and created what would become Landmark Education's core programs. These programs would continue to evolve over the next 16 years. }} </ref> -- Pedant17 (talk) 23:12, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

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