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User:Will Beback/TM-Littleolive oil

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Littleolive oil (Olive)

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Olive has practiced TM for over 33 years.[3][4]

Complaints about Olive's editing of TM articles date back to 2007:[5]

Olive's complaints about harassment, triggered when her COI is mentioned, also go back to 2007.[6]

POV editing

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Olive has deleted sourced, negative material: [7][8] (She replaced material from secondary source with material from movement-related primary source) [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]

Olive has removed material about fees, a controversial issue.[23]

Olive has complained about disclosing the affiliations of TM researchers: [24][25][26][27]

Olive has argued that the point of view of Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Pope) is less significant than that of a missionary priest:[28][29]

Olive has removed significant, uncontentious material from Deepak Chopra, formerly a leading member of the TMM but now said to be persona non grata within the movement. [30][31][32][33][34]

Olive has edited articles to bring them into conformity with the movement's internal manual of style: [35][36][37][38]

Olive has added fringe material and argued that fringe material should be kept: [39][40]

Olive has deleted material from a scholarly source, concerning MUM, calling it "fringe":[41]

Editing behavior

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Olive has engaged in edit warring over the deleted of negative, sourced material: [42][43]

Olive has engaged in edit warring (with TimidGuy) over adding contentious material sourced to a blog: [44][45]

Olive has engaged in edit warring over text that I suggested should be split between articles, but which she wanted duplicated in both places:[46][47][48][49]/[[50][51]

Olive has argued there must be a consensus before well-sourced negative material may be added: [52]

Olive has added or argued in favor of adding poorly sourced or unsourced material: [53][54][55]

Also, the theory that studies can be used as examples without using them as sources:[56][57]

Olive has argued that including well-sourced material on the Beatles and "Sexy Sadie" violates WP:FRINGE: [58]

Olive has ignored or opposed input from noticeboards or uninvolved editors. [59]

Olive has made contradictory statements about best editing practices. Sometimes she says that material should be kept in an article pending consensus to remove it, or correction of the sources: [60][61] Other times she removes material "for discussion" or for minor errors:[62]

Personal interactions

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Olive has made new and veteran users unwelcome: [63][64]

Olive often charges harassment and frequently claims mischaracterization. [65][66][67]

Olive has refused to substantiate or explain charges when asked: [68]

Olive has repeatedly asserted that she is a neutral editor: [69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77]

Olive has also said that TG is a neutral editor.[78]

Olive has accused other editors of being biased, of having agendas, or of being non-neutral: [79][80]

Olive has failed to assume good faith:[81][82]

Olive has seemingly used her off-Wiki harassment as an excuse for deleting material on Wikipedia ([83]):[84]

Olive has taken offense over minor issues: [85]

Technique vs movement

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Olive repeatedly stated that a consensus had already been established where editors agreed to limit the TM article to the technique only and excluding material on the organization, although she never pointed to the origin of this purported consensus.[86][87][88][89][90][91]

Olive deleted sourced material on the basis of it being about the TM movement rather than the TM technique: [92][93]

Olive has argued against creating an article on the TM movement which could hold the deleted text: [94][95][96][97]

Statistics

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As of February 20, 2010:

TM-related edits All edits Percentage
article 1918 3891 49%
talk 3034 3271 93%
total 4952 7162 69%

Olive ranks among the most prolific editors ot TM-related articles:

Olive has been a prolific contributor to talk pages:

Olive's ten most edited articles (five are TM-related):

  • 594 - Transcendental_Meditation
  • 296 - Maharishi_Mahesh_Yogi
  • 217 - Odd_Nerdrum
  • 184 - TM-Sidhi_program
  • 162 - Maharishi_University_of_Management
  • 134 - Gymnastics
  • 124 - John_Hagelin
  • 103 - Robert_Rauschenberg
  • 92 - Yoani_Sánchez
  • 86 - Tutankhamun

Olive has made a remarkable number of talk page edits, (eight are TM-related):

  • 1551 - Transcendental_Meditation
  • 431 - TM-Sidhi_program
  • 246 - What_the_Bleep_Do_We_Know!?
  • 225 - John_Hagelin
  • 151 - Maharishi_Mahesh_Yogi
  • 136 - Maharishi_Vedic_Approach_to_Health
  • 96 - Maharishi_University_of_Management
  • 86 - Transcendental_Meditation_movement
  • 47 - Remote_viewing
  • 29 - Tutankhamun


Rebuttal

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Olive presents several diffs to show how neutral she is. In the first case, she simply explains to Hickorybark the concept of WP:OR.[98] In the second, she links to a sandbox draft that she apparently never posted. Her third example shows her adding a whole section of poorly sourced laudatory material.[99] In the fourth example, she appears to support a merger to get rid of an article that covered the movement in general, which Olive regularly opposed.[100] She had previously PRODed it.[101] The fifth example shows her removing promotional material from the MUM article two years ago, but she doesn't show the diffs of her removing well-sourced negative material five months ago,[102][103] and adding positive material.[104] She describes the sixth example as adding "critical content to lead", but overlooks the fact that her edit came as a result of a thread on the article talk page.[105] Her edit actually removed material from the lead sentence and was controversial.[106] And so on. On closer inspection, most of her claimed neutral edits are not neutral at all.

Olive complains that I wrote, in my initial statement in this case, "The Transcendental Meditation movement is often considered a new religious movement, has been called a cult, and has been accused of promoting fringe theories and pseudoscience, including dubious medical treatments. It is an international movement with real estate valued at over $3.5 billion." Those are factual assertions easily supported by numerous sources and presented as opinions. These are terms used about the movement by notable, reliable sources. In the context of this arbitration request and due to the allegations of team editing by movement members, I think it is appropriate to point out verifiable characterizations and facts about the movement that may be relevant to our understanding of the dynamics of the dispute.

Olive mentions that I asked her about Bill Viola. I took a quick look at her contribution list following a COIN posting concerning her editing in February 2009. I noticed that she made a POV-ish edit to the Viola article, and so I Googled the name. I quickly found a page on the MUM site which included his name that, at first glance, made it appear he was a guest artist there.[107] I asked Olive about it and she was indignant. I dropped it but apparently she still resents the question.

Olive claims that the TM article has "decayed" in the past two months. Part of that purported "decay" is the inclusion of significant points of view that had been deleted by the TM editors, such as the views of noted individuals like Carl Sagan and James Randi.

For simplicity, I'll address issues about the "Sexy Sadie" song in a separate page, /Saga of Sexy Sadie.

Olive says she does not remember making any edits which contradicted a noticeboard.[108] She complained about some material here: [109]. The next day none of the uninvolved editors at WP:NORN agreed with Olive's position. thread Nonetheless, she deleted the material again.[110] That's just one example.

Olive says that I have harassed her because I said deleting mention of her involvement with MUM did not make her COI go away.[111][112] An undisclosed COI is more troublesome than a declared one, per WP:COI: "Editors with COIs are strongly encouraged to declare their interests, both on their user pages and on the talk page of any article they edit, particularly if those edits may be contested."

Olive says I harassed her because I asked how she knew her off-wiki harassment was related to her Wikipedia editing. When she first mentioned the harassment to me she said it happened when the editing on the TM article grew tense. "I assume you didn't know about the anonymous phone calls I get whenever things get a little tense on this article, like the one I just got."[113] She went on to imply that I should avoid making the articles tense so that she wouldn't receive the phone calls. It's still not clear to me how she knew the anonymous calls were related to Wikipedia editing. I deplore any harassment, on- or off- Wiki, and told her that she should contact the police. She never said whether she did so, but that would be the logical action.[114]

Olive has made frequent mention of the off-Wiki harassment, especially whenever her COI is questioned. As I wrote to her, they are separate issues so far as editing on-Wiki goes. If she believes that editing the TM articles leads to her receiving anonymous phone calls, then I don't see what deleting reference to her connection to MUM will do to change the situation since her harasser already knows about it. If there is a cause and effect then the logical thing to do would be to remove the cause, which she says is tension on the TM article, not to demand secrecy over her previously disclosed and discussed connection to the institution that she's writing about.

Olive says I insulted her "integrity and honesty" when I wrote that Kbob had agreed to the deletion of the "Sexy Sadie" song and that she later said she would support its restoration if it was agreed to by editors. In fact, Kbob did endorse the draft that Bwb wrote wich excluded it.[115] In the later discussion of the deletion, Olive wrote, " I will agree to having BWB add back in a short sentence on "Sexie Sadie" if there is agreement among editors." So I fail to see where I misquoted her or "mischaracterized" her so much that she would have cause to claim that I insulted her. And I do consider false accusations like that to be a form of personal attack, per WP:CIVIL: "ill-considered accusations of impropriety."

Olive quotes from the Prem Rawat matter, taking the word of a user who was eventually topic banned, as evidence that I've misrepresented other users. She fails to look at the underlying edit in which the user deleted material sourced to a signed article distributed by the Associated Press with material in a memoir, with the edit summary, "Eye witness trumps all".[116] In other words, the passages of the Sophia Collier memoir in which she relates first-hand events is more reliable than even the most reliable journalist's account. This contradicted other assertions, in which the same editor said the memoir was not a reliable source for things she had witnessed. Hence the conflict between his views of the same source.

General point about the claims of harassment: it is not my intention to harass anyone. I have not followed Olive or other editors to non-TM articles (though we have some overlapping interests and she's come to some articles I've previously edited), I have not pestered them on their talk pages (I did ask some editors about their potential COIs on their talk pages but didn't belabor the point), I have not made personal or legal threats, nor engaged in any other harassing activity. I have continued to press editors about their known and unresolved COIs, which is why I became involved in this topic to begin with, because it's an unsolved problem that's been noticed by dozens of uninvolved editors over the last three years.[117]

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