User talk:Ridintherails
Nonsense, that link isn't broken. You have an excuse for everything.
Missing from your "annual report"...
- financial statements - notes to financial statements - auditors report
Every legitimate annual report included these items, your propaganda piece does not.
Simply google "annual report investopedia" to find the "broken link".....HAHAHAHA!
- Dude, you've got hate to spare. Link didn't work for me, got an "Oops" page, but i will google it. And quit calling it "your." Eventhewise (talk) 06:25, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
- Ha! This is incredible! I googled the document and found it, read the definition yourself, emphasis mine:
- Definition of 'Annual Report'
- 1. An annual publication that public corporations must provide to shareholders to describe their operations and financial conditions. The front part of the report often contains an impressive combination of graphics, photos and an accompanying narrative, all of which chronicle the company's activities over the past year. The back part of the report contains detailed financial and operational information.
- 2. In the case of mutual funds, an annual report is a required document that is made available to fund shareholders on a fiscal year basis. It discloses certain aspects of a fund's operations and financial condition. In contrast to corporate annual reports, mutual fund annual reports are best described as "plain vanilla" in terms of their presentation.
- Please present me with a link that shows what a church annual report is expected to have. If you expect a church to produce documentation on the level of publicly traded companies and mutual funds, well then, my friend, you will be disappointed with all of them. Publicly traded companies and mutual funds deal with hundreds of millions of dollars, far more than any church I know of. A church does not have the legal requirement to produce what investopedia says is an annual report, and neither do most churches, including, I suspect, Elevation church, have the staff that would be required to produce such a document. I reiterate, I've seen things called annual reports that don't fit that narrow definition, but if they also don't fit that narrow subset it applies to, why hold it to that same standard? Eventhewise (talk) 06:36, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
The reason is use quotes around "annual report" is because the "annual report" on the Elevation webpage in no way resembles a real annual report, it is a propaganda piece.
Here's the definition of an annual report: http://onswipe.investopedia.com/investopedia/#!/entry/,5228d01fda27f5d9d017b380
- That link was broken, so I was unable to view it, but here's the wikipedia definition:
- An annual report is a comprehensive report on a company's activities throughout the preceding year. Annual reports are intended to give shareholders and other interested people information about the company's activities and financial performance. Most jurisdictions require companies to prepare and disclose annual reports, and many require the annual report to be filed at the company's registry. Companies listed on a stock exchange are also required to report at more frequent intervals (depending upon the rules of the stock exchange involved).
- I absolutely cannot see how Elevation's does not qualify by that determination, and more importantly, the law does not require non-profits to release anything, so I don't know how you would define an annual report, since whatever Elevation or any other church put out, it would be more than what is required. I'm trying to understand why you are upset. I can tell you are, and I don't want to be a part of causing that. You were clearly upset when you added the info to the page, because you went to the trouble to do math because it did not make sense to you. I get that. But why the vitriol against this particular issue. There's a bishop in Germany who got caught building a $42 million home for himself with church funds, and as far as the reporters can tell, Furtick bought his house with money from his book sales. No one is questioning whether he made a bunch of money with that or not, hell, he's a New York Times Bestseller, that's not nothing, he made money on his books, the question is if he was totally on the level with the house or if he did spend tax free money to buy it. That would be a big freaking deal and deserve a huge portion of the wikipedia article, but as best we can tell that isn't the case. It's just a question that has been asked by a reporter. If news breaks that the money has been traced and he did use tax free money to pay for it, then you cover that on the page, but it is conjecture at this point, conjecture does not belong on wikipedia. That's the way we work here. Eventhewise (talk) 17:31, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
Sure... Talk:Steven Furtick#"Church paying for much of the advertising". StAnselm (talk) 22:05, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Hi Ridintherails, we seem to have a bit of a dispute going on, but I think we're on the same side. The side of truth and transparency. The reason I have removed much of what you have added is that for the most part, you have used very biased phrasing including placing "quotes" around things like annual report, which is not something normally surrounded by quotes. That makes it seem like you, the editor, have a bias against a church calling something an annual report and it casts doubt on your dedication to clarity rather than harm to the subject. On Elevation Church's article, for example, you cited the stat on the wikipedia article itself as a reason the church may be lying, but that data was almost three years old and the article you cited had a new number in it. Then when I edited it, you suggested the annual report had been updated, when, if you had looked at my edit, you would have seen I only added a reference to the wcnc article citing the new figure. What that means is that the news report, which was very critical, pointed out that the church had given $10MM, making your paragraph questioning which figure is correct a moot point, since the article itself verified that the church was not lying about how much they give.
Additionally, on the page for Steven Furtick, your edits attempted to connect dots that the original author did not connect. The author included a refutation of the co-mingling of money describing how the publisher paid the church for the marketing work, which actually benefits the church because of Furtick's status as an author, rather than the other way around. Be careful citing places like Huffington Post as well, which often (and in this case, definitely) contain no new reporting and are mostly paraphrase of the original author. Going back to the original source of I-Team reporter Stuart Watson, you find that while Watson finds plenty of problems with the church's reluctance to release financial information, all he can do is report on what they aren't saying, there is no damning information in his article, or reporting that proves any wrongdoing. He simply asks questions and poses potential answers. That does not belong on wikipedia. What belongs on wikipedia is the report of the house, it's value, the fact that it is controversial, and the fact that, at this point the church has still not released financial information to prove what it asserts. Otherwise we cannot and should not report as encyclopedic what has not been shown to be true, but rather just shown to be unclear.
Appreciate you and your desire to help improve the article, can we move forward trying to do that together, following NPOV, BLP, and Assuming Good Faith in each other? I'd love to work with you to ensure the article is completely true, more complete, covers both sides of the issue, and stays within the guidelines of wikipedia.Eventhewise (talk) 03:33, 28 October 2013 (UTC)