User talk:FreeThoughts

February 2008

To all reading this page please clearly read the definition of a cult "any system for treating human sickness that originated by a person usually claiming to have sole insight into the nature of disease, and that employs methods regarded as unorthodox or unscientific." Scientology meets the definition of a cult and should be labeled as such, or at least not labeled as a recognized religion.

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did to Danny Masterson. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. Equazcion •✗/C • 09:44, 11 Feb 2008 (UTC) 09:44, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FreeThoughts (talk)They do not constitute vandalizing of the pages. Check your sources.

Your edits violate WP:NPOV. Equazcion •✗/C • 09:46, 11 Feb 2008 (UTC)

~~Show me a neutral source that does not say it is a cult.

Show me a neutral reliable source that says it is a cult. Equazcion •✗/C • 09:49, 11 Feb 2008 (UTC)

All sources refer to it as a cult. xenu.net is more than reliable, watch any number of videos regarding it.

Try this. A reliable source that doesn't use the word cult once, just talks about religion. And there's a conversation at WP:ANI involving you. —alεx•mullεr 09:51, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Xenu.net is not a neutral or reliable source. See WP:RS. Equazcion •✗/C • 09:52, 11 Feb 2008 (UTC)

The guardian is not a neutral source on the matter, seeing as the UK does not view it as a religion.

Oh, and me notifying you that there was a conversation at ANI wasn't an invitation for you to remove it - please don't do that. It was simply a polite notification —alεx•mullεr 10:07, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

3RR

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Katie Holmes. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions in a content dispute within a 24 hour period. Additionally, users who perform a large number of reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring, even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Please do not repeatedly revert edits, but use the talk page to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. If necessary, pursue dispute resolution. EconomicsGuy (talk) 10:08, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked

I have blocked you from editing for 24 hours. You have violated our policy by edit warring and by consistently violating the requirement that articles maintain a neutral point of view. This edit in particular is clearly disruptive to the process of Wikipedia. Please take this time away from editing to reconsider your approach. Wikipedia is a collaborative enterprise and requires you to work with other editors to resolve disputes. Continual edit wars on articles is not the right approach to solving disputes. You might also like to refamiliarize yourself with WP:NPOV and WP:V, our core content policies.

If you believe this block is inappropriate, you can ask for it to be reviewed by adding {{unblock|reason}} to this talk page, replacing reason with your reason for requesting to be unblocked. Thanks, Gwernol 10:12, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

FreeThoughts (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

I am being blocked simply because of the point of view that the deliberate misinformation spread by these people that scientology is a religion. While I admit that my points on marking that the Church of Scientology is a cult on pages was to to help avoid confusion that it is not necessarily a religious church by the definition of religion. I see how that could be taken as not neutral POV, but editing a page saying that it should not be called a religion because that is also not neutral is hypocritical

Decline reason:

You have provided no reason to believe you would refrain from further edit wars regarding Scientology's status as a cult or a religion if you were unblocked. Indeed, your comments here indicate you have every intention of continuing, which will definitely result in an extended block. — Yamla (talk) 15:20, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

A religion is an organized system of faith. Check a dictionary; scientology qualifies. Equazcion •✗/C • 10:22, 11 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Check the definition of a cult:

8. any system for treating human sickness that originated by a person usually claiming to have sole insight into the nature of disease, and that employs methods regarded as unorthodox or unscientific.:!-FreeThought

Religion covers cults too, though. Whether or not it's a cult is a matter of opinion. Whether it's a religion is a matter of fact. Since we only state facts in Wikipedia articles, religion stays and cult does not. Equazcion •✗/C • 10:26, 11 Feb 2008 (UTC)

it is hardly a matter of opinion, you are just in a brain lock:::

Cult or not your approach to this is not how we do things here. I suggest you spend the next 24 hours getting more familar with the policies quoted in the warnings above. 24 hours is fairly cheap because you are new. If you make this a habit your next block will be consideribly longer. EconomicsGuy (talk) 10:35, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree, at least to a point; it's very important that we work collaboratively, which means cooperating and discussing with others in good faith when our edits prove to be controversial. The particular area you were getting into is highly controversial at the best of times. Equazcion's comment is also quite important, and very relevant to Wikipedia's general style of operation in particular. Points of opinion are usually best left for readers to decide. – Luna Santin (talk) 10:57, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the basis for the dispute as presented here misses the point. As is enshrined in our verifiability policy, "Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." Thus, we don't care what Scientology meets the definition of, as it's not our job to assign terms (that would be the very much prohibited practice of original research). We only care what reliable sources label it as. You may be interested in reading those links, and learning what sources qualify. You may also be interested in consensus and dispute resolution; when an editor disagrees with an edit you make, proper procedure is to discuss it out. Someguy1221 (talk) 11:36, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Let me bring this a bit back down to earth. The article on Scientology itself already deals well with the notion that Scientology is a cult. There's a section on it (Scientology#Hypnosis and Scientology as a cult) and there's also Scientology controversies. In any article where scientology's status as a religion or cult is part of the main topic, it's appropriate to present an all-around picture of the situation. In articles like Katie Holmes, though, this is not part of the topic and using that article to bash Scientology is inappropriate. If you continue this kind of editing when you return you will quickly be shown the door permanently. Contentious editing about Scientology has disrupted Wikipedia to such an extent that all articles related to Scientology are on Wikipedia:Article probation. As an uninvolved administrator, I am placing you on notice under the terms of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/COFS - any further disruption from you related to Scientology will result in a 1-year topic ban. Mango juice^talk 15:25, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Recent edits

Would you care to explain this edit? Equazcion •✗/C • 02:57, 14 Feb 2008 (UTC)

I added tones to the pinyin. Since the defacto rominization of mandarin chinese (where the word tujia comes from ), I listed its pinyin with tones on this page next to it. It is the same style as is done in many different chinese pages such as Shanghai. Can i ask why you are curious?--FreeThoughts (talk) 04:32, 14 February 2008 (UTC),[reply]

Here's how your edited version of the word shows up on my screen: "Tu3jia1zu2". It's the original word with some numbers mixed in. Is it showing up some other way on your computer? Equazcion •✗/C • 04:39, 14 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Okay nevermind, this appears to just be a problem in the diff screen. My apologies. Equazcion •✗/C • 04:41, 14 Feb 2008

No you were correct, I modified the tones after you commented on them. The change is actually tone markers for chinese, the numbers represent the same thing and are both valid under pinyin convention see section 5.1 of the pinyin article. I am going to be working on this article a lot, as well as stuff about Enshi, and Southwestern Mandarin since there is very few english speakers that have knowledge on this subject matter. --FreeThoughts (talk) 04:43, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good change -- I have a feeling I wasn't the only one who would've been confused by those numbers :) Equazcion •✗/C • 04:56, 14 Feb 2008 (UTC)