User talk:Scientia est opulentia

Brevity

Hi there, can you please review the guidelines at WP:TALK, particularly the section Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Good practices. It's recommended posts on talk pages be no more than 100 words. Your edits at Talk:Jehovah's Witnesses have included huge amounts of text lifted from the Watch Tower CD-ROMS that simply clutter the page. You can make a point without pasting such large amounts of published material there. Thanks. LTSally (talk) 00:52, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Point of view

I'll address each of your points at the Jehovah's Witnesses talk page.

1. You say “The concept is not explicitly defined in Watch Tower literature”. This is POV. And it is POV because the WT explains it, as you can see below.

• As I explained, this line is taken from Penton (p.165). Yes, it is his considered opinion and yes, it can be included. He is a reputable source under Wikipedia policy. I can find no opposing view. If I could find a source, Watch Tower Society or otherwise, that explicitly defined the concept of "progressive revelation" – in other words, revealed by whom, to whom and by what method, I'd include it. If you can find one, please do so.

2. “Official statements" from Brooklyn have no priority in this article at all.” Are you sure that you understand the wiki-policy? Do not confuse facts with opinions on facts.

• The wiki-policy on what? WP:RS is the primary policy on sourcing statements. You know, I can't find anything there that suggests that a Wikipedia article on Jehovah's Witnesses should give priority to the views of Jehovah's Witnesses about themselves. If anything, WP:SELFPUB cautions against sources that comment on themselves, particularly when they are self-serving, as almost all Watch Tower material is.

3. “It doesn't need your defense of the GB or claims that they pray for divine guidance.” This is an official statement about the procedure. It is a fact; it is not a comment or an opinion on a fact.

• No, the statement that the Governing Body prays for divine guidance and does not hesitate to correct former views is not a fact, it is a claim. Part of it made by you, I suspect, and part of it published by the organisation that is the subject of the article. It is a straw man argument that the WTS, or previously its presidents, did not claim divine inspiration. Can I refer you to the dogmatic, vainglorious claim in the Watchtower of June 15, 1922, that the last-days chronology was "absolutely and unqualifiedly correct", and backed by the measurements within the Great Pyramid of Giza, or the claim in the November 1922 Watchtower that "shows beyond a doubt that he (Christ) did appear in 1874 .... These facts are indisuptable." The Watch Tower Society has claimed repeatedly that God uses it as a prophet organization, and it punishes anyone who takes a contrary view, expelling them and in its eyes, condemns them to Gehenna. The inference for Witnesses reading such claims is clear: God doesn't lie to prophets, so anything his prophet says is correct and dependable. To turn around later and say, "shucks, we never said we were infallible" is pure deception.

4. “As I've explained, Penton is doing his best to explain what the WTS chooses not to do. That's a challenge for us as well, and Penton happens to be an excellent source, along with the WTS itself, whose words I've drawn on for the final sentence.” What you admit proves that you have a totally wrong attitude in editing. And if you continue like that, I won’t hesitate to report that to the administrators, because your editing tends to be destructive. Penton is a respectable source in academic bibliography, but it is not Wikipedia’s business to take the role of anti-JWs, as you put it. Do you understand that when you speak about a “challenge” to prove the Watchtower false, you admit that you have an agenda?

• What I admit? What do I admit? My agenda is to find statements from reliable sources -- Witness or non-Witness -- and present the facts in a neutral, balanced form so people reading the Wikipedia article can be fully informed about Jehovah's Witnesses. I explain this on my user page. The subject under discussion here is how Witnesses arrive at their doctrines, and because the WTS chooses to be so cagey about how it gains its "revealed truths" it creates a challenge for anyone -- me, you, Penton -- to explain it in a Wikipedia article.

Finally, I'm curious what you'd find in my edits that you'd report to the administrators, and what you term "destructive" editing. Part of my role here as part of the Wikipedia community is to moderate the influence of people such as yourself who search no further than your own religion's publications to determine the truth; people who think that dumping a dozen long extracts from the WT CD-ROM on a talk page adds value to a discussion. I don't care whether you have read Penton's book, or Rogerson's, or Holden's, or Wills', or Franz's, or Gruss's, or Stroup's. They are all diligently researched and provide an external, though not always favorable, view of your religion. You research, and parrot, only one source, because your religion tells you it is the only reliable, truthful source. That's your business, but don't lecture me on bias. LTSally (talk) 13:50, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Your repeated personal attacks on me

You know, I take great offence at your claim, made twice now, that I am making destructive edits on Wikipedia. You made this accusation here and here. By the use of such language you are accusing me of vandalism, which is a violation of Wikipedia policies and behavior that can result in an editor being blocked. I have already explained, on your talk page, that my contributions to this encyclopedia are all diligently researched and supported by verifiable, reliable sources. I take pride in that fact. The edit that sparked your latest accusation was made in good faith and I have given a full explanation of why I believe the material should be included in the Jehovah's Witnesses and congregational discipline article.

I will now invite you to either support your claim that I am making destructive edits, or apologise. If you fail to apologise and stop making such defamatory remarks about me I will take this further. LTSally (talk) 11:33, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I am still awaiting a response from you. I'll remind you of your comment here in which you expressed the hope "that in future things will become better" between you and I. In fact you are doing exactly the opposite and exacerbating the situation by repeating your allegation that implies I am vandalizing articles. It was that unwarranted, baseless and offensive claim that sparked my comments on your talk page to which you took offence. Please either support your claim that I am making destructive edits on Wikipedia, or retract the comment and apologise. LTSally (talk) 01:01, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Whether things will go better or not doesn’t depend only on me, but on you too. So, what do we have now? We have a constant effort from you to introduce to Wikipedia something you should understand—and I believe you do understand—that is totally unacceptable for multiple reasons. And instead of admitting that you are the only person against many that is persisting in using a link to an illegal recording contained in a self-published source, you falsely claimed that you cannot do what you want to do just because you are “outnumbered by Jehovah's Witnesses.” [1]

Recently you made a big effort to distort the facts, with implicit allusions that the presidents of the Watchtower have claimed, in one way or another, mystic experiences, even though you surely know that this is totally false. You selected phrases from the Watchtower publications that would give the wrong impression to the Wikipedia readers, since such readers are not acquainted with the textual, doctrinal and biblical context of those terms.

LTSally, you are an intelligent person and you understand what the rules of Wikipedia are. But sadly, you have a personal vendetta with Jehovah’s Witnesses, whom you don’t lose a chance in your words to attack or to offend, starting from your personal page. At the same time, you are looking for loopholes in the Wikipedia policy to do what is contrary to the spirit of the Wikipedia policy. As a result, matters which are obvious and self-evident are made so complicated with your persistent maneuvers in editing and discussing, that it takes thousands of words of discussion to proceed in every single line of the JW articles. This is very discouraging for editors who do not have the time you spend in Wikipedia--Scientia est opulentia (talk) 05:16, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I edit within Wikipedia's policies and within the spirit of the project. I have provided arguments why I believe the link to the audio recording is permissible. To date my proposal has had little support; instead there has been a certain amount of opposition for a range of reasons that drift into the realim of desperation, but your statement that it is "totally unacceptable for multiple reasons" is your opinion only and ultimately whether the link is accepted will depend on a consensus view, which I'll accept. So far there has been some qualified support for the link, so I wonder whether you'll post a comment that those editors are a destructive presence on Wikipedia as well, simply because their opinion differs with yours. Of course I have persisted and made a constant effort. I believe the link has a place: why would I give up when you simply removed the link without discussion? This was the point at which you added the phrase for the benefit of others that it was "further proof of my destructive presence". I believe you used that wording to attempt to prejudice the view of others towards my edits by implying I am vandalizing articles.

Your claim that I distorted facts, presumably about progressive revelation, is quite wrong. I really don't have the time to trawl through my edits to find what it was that upset you, but all my edits were soundly based on statements in Watch Tower Society publications. Establishing such doctrines as "progressive revelation" from the writings of the WTS is a lot like nailing jelly to the floor, but I've done my best. They like to keep it vague. I like to be specific and I think an encyclopedia should be as specific with its facts as possible, uncomfortable as it may make you feel.

I have no vendetta against Jehovah's Witnesses. I was betrayed by the religion because I lacked certain facts about their beliefs and practices, and I lacked the facts because they were deliberately loose with the truth. I see it as a public service to provide the public with facts -- many of them from the pen of the WTS itself -- that will help others to make a fully informed decision on entering the religion, and to provide Witnesses with the inconvenient truths they won't read in the publications of the organization. So I'll say this again: what I write in articles is fully sourced from reliable publications. It is provided in good faith. It complies fully with Wikipedia policies. Your claims that I am indulging in destructive behavior remains an offensive and damaging allegation and I still want a retraction and apology from you. LTSally (talk) 08:01, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Because you have ignored my request and continue to deal with my edits by assuming a lack of good faith on my part, I have posted a complaint at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts seeking intervention in my dispute over your comments about me. LTSally (talk) 06:09, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

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