Will Beback has made the observation that "closing admins should consider the validity of certain !votes", and particularly references a !voter (and we'll make the presumption here that he was only really looking at 'Delete' voters) who, from chronology, appears like it can only be me.

Apparently, such factors that Will encourages the closing admin to consider are my "rare" participation in Wikipedia (my apologies, I didn't realize my fulltime day job in Healthcare IT Management, and my training and working as an EMT in my community interfered so much with my involvement in WP, and I could only get 614 edits in over 3 1/2 years), and the fact that I recently voted in Dennis King's AfD (never mind contributions to the subjects of emergency medicine, technology, pop culture, Australia, Scotland, photographic contributions, and many others) means that I may have been susceptible to canvassing, or maybe even meatpuppeting!

The swastika vandalism that Kato keeps bringing up and that you keep saying LaRouche had nothing to do with.

There does seem to be a bias against editors who, unlike Will Beback and SlimVirgin, are unable to devote 16-18 hours a day to playing the Wikipedia game.

You want my opinion on that? Blaming LaRouche for that is juvenile, Chip Berlet-style innuendo-slinging, the last resort of persons too chicken to debate LaRouche on his opinions, so they must set up some other fellow's opinion as a straw man and debate the straw man.

Now the Duggan article is (presto!) called "Death of Jeremiah Duggan".
Thank you, Mr. Mcwhiney!

Yes, because that's so much better.

Why not change it to Alleged "death" of Jeremiah Duggan to be even more idiotic?

I see that the request for arbcom clarification has been shelved without any comment from NewYorkBrad or CoolHandLuke. C'mon, guys, I know you're reading this; were you afraid to say anything because you might be attacked, for being guilty of association with the Wikipedia Review?

Closed as Keep by Juliancolton...

...however, the controversy has spilled over into yet another page, Template talk:LaRouche movement.

SlimVirgin is not amused.

Not that Slim would ever refactor a page (and Leatherstocking did explain in that diff - perhaps that tactic bemused Slim who would never ever explain herself).

And that's just the kind of work an uninvolved neutral admin-editor is willing to do. And the COI tag-- well, she hates to use it, but really has no choice.

You see, people who really like LaRouche are messing this article up bigtime, vs. the other side which really has no particular opinion at all, and is only trying to get the "mainstream" view of the world about LaRouche fairly represented. Yes, they are.

I think that Slim 'n' Will are pursuing a tactic of psychological warfare here, doing senselessly annoying things in hopes of provoking Leatherstocking as per WP:9STEPS. Take a look at the Beback/Leatherstocking mediation, and you'll see Will doing his patented "I don't understand what you're saying - could you please restate it as an entirely different idea?" routine to deflect any discussion of his skullduggery.

Leatherstocking makes an effort to highlight the irony here, but I think he's wasting his breath, because the only other editors that participate on that page are SV, WB, and -- wait for it -- Dennis King.

What was that someone was saying about COI?

Could someone who undertstands the Arbcom explain to me what happened with the request for arbcom clarification ? Leatherstocking's questions were never answered, and eventually the request just went away. Is this normal arbcom behavior?

Ummm, do you really need an answer to this? If so, the answer is "Yes, yes it is. Awkward questions are to be pointedly ignored."

SV is now engaged in a systematic purge of all Russian and Chinese sources at Lyndon LaRouche (T-H-L-K-D)].

Well, how can she verify them if she can't read them.

Hopefully it will take her a long time to discover the math articles.

Leatherstocking is providing raggedy translations via Google Translate. However, you don't need no stinkin' translations to know that the POV is incorrect.

And, Leatherstocking was just indefinitely blocked by Georgewilliamherbert. Oddly enough, GWH is not claiming that he is me. It appears to be case of living on the West Coast in a very similar way.

Isn't it "editing from a LaRouche organization controlled IP" ???? That's the allegation being made.

If there was any chance of LaRouche getting a fair shake on Wikipedia, I'd say that's now up in smoke. I normally would not be sympathetic to a LaRouche employee, if true, being blocked from editing LaRouche topics on Wikipedia, but SV and WillBeBack are not, in my opinion, making an honest effort to treat the LaRouche articles in a neutral manner.

I think the only reason they haven't been taken to task about it is because no one active in Wikipedia's administration cares enough about it do anything. The thing is, Wikipedia's credibility is judged by how it treats all topics, including LaRouche. So, if the LaRouche articles are being used to discredit the guy, especially by two long-time administrators, then it helps make Wikipedia look even more bush league.

Yes, I believe that is one of the allegations, but I looked in vain for anything in the ArbCom decision that prohibits that. Basically, GWH is interpreting the ArbCom decision to be ban on what may be construed as a pro-LaRouche POV.

And it turns out that the guiding hand behind the block was SV. She accuses Leatherstocking of "making or restoring material that Herschelkrustofsky favored."

Good grief, now I understand why Will and SV suddenly put me at arm's distance a couple of days ago, it's because they were planning to make their move on Leatherstocking and didn't want me getting in the way. Well, in that post SV promised to do something about DKing, so when is she going to ask GWH to ban that account also?

I'm surprised Leatherstocking lasted as long as he did. He should have known that he was swimming in piranha-infested waters. The only really surprising thing is the gullibility of User:Atama.

"Any account that appears to be a single-purpose account, or anyone with a close real-life connection to the LaRouche movement, whether in favor or in opposition (or whose edits suggest such a connection), may be banned by any uninvolved administrator from editing articles about the movement." Slim and Beback should be first in line for banning.

Apparently, GWH's claim is that the LaRouche organization uses a residential Roadrunner cable connection??

Natty Bumppo would have recognized them all long ago by their spoor, and seen it coming far off!

Tough luck, Hawkeye.

Well, the next time DKing edits a LaRouche topic, in article or talk page space, I'm going to ask GWH to block him under that ArbCom ruling you quote above. It seems fairly clear to me, since the guy has written a book about LaRouche that is extremely critical, links to his personal anti-LaRouche website on his userpage, and in recent edits to the talk page of the main LaRouche article has made it clear that he is unashamedly non-neutral when it comes to LaRouche. I expect SV and WillBeBack to back me up when I make the request.

It's a business account.

From whois for 64.183.125.210

network:Organization;I:AMERICAN-SYSTEM-PUB

American System Publications is mentioned in this FEC document as a vendor that entered into a contractual agreement with LaRouche's Committee for a New Bretton Woods.

Wups. Guess it is a COI account. And you know how Slim and GWH are sworn to prevent any and all COI editing on WP.

Umm, I thought the approved remedy was to run such things though arbcom and topic-ban the malefactors, as with the Scientology and CAMERA cases. Simply banniating the editor for good is way out of proportion. For one thing, WP doesn't always do that for CLEAR vandals. And they certainly don't do it for any and all people who show evidence of COI.

Cla, you were strongly supportive of efforts to defend the Prem Rawat articles from cultist editing, but you take the opposite view on the LaRouche articles. Perhaps you could explain what the difference is.

The fact is that Leatherstocking repeatedly said he had no connection with the LaRouche movement, and had only "vaguely heard of them" when he joined WP, but was yesterday found to have been editing all along from an IP address assigned to a company that's owned by the movement. Some examples here of his claim not to be involved. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=322476322

Will and I want to produce accurate, well-written articles about LaRouche, but there's barely been a day since 2004 when the articles weren't under attack from member(s) of the LaRouche movement. The problem with these editors, assuming it's more than one person, is that they appear incapable of thinking independently about LaRouche. No matter the issue, no matter how terrible the sources they have to fall back on, they uniformly edit in a way that they think makes LaRouche look good. They remove material about the movement's violence that's sourced to The New York Times, but add material about how an associate of LaRouche's once said he was a wonderful economist, according to a Russian-language newspaper that no one can read. No one should be defending that kind of editing.

As for King, he has also been asked not to edit these articles anymore.

There is a thread at ANI now. So far, not much of a victory dance -- Will 'n' Slim are being cautious, and GWH was careful not to name the anonymous tipster.

Well, for one thing, why have you and Will been so eager to ban pro-LaRouche editors, but so reluctant to ban Chip Berlet and Dennis King, who are just as entrenched in their POV as the pro-LaRouche editors? If you and Will really were trying to produce "fair" articles, how did you overlook what those two editors were doing? I give Chip and Dennis credit for being open about their POV and agenda, but they apparently could be open about it because they feared no sanction for doing so.

The ArbCom ruling appears to allow editors to be banned if they are associated with LaRouche. Thus, someone like Leatherstocking would have no choice but to lie about their affiliation. To do otherwise would have meant an instant ban. Now, if these bans were being handed out fairly, to both sides, then there wouldn't be a problem. But, that's not the case, is it?

By the way, how was Dennis King notified that he shouldn't edit the LaRouche topics anymore? I checked his user talk page, expecting to see a comment from you under my comment, but I don't see anything. From what I've been taught and have seen, formal corrective action is really only enforceable if it is written and documented, such as by a post on an editor's user talk page.

You didn't really answer the question. Why are you strongly opposed to cultist editing on Prem Rawat, but not strongly opposed to it on the LaRouche articles?

The LaRouche accounts have been banned because they're believed to be controlled by one person, Herschelkrustofksy, who is a staff member of this website. I don't know whether Leatherstocking was also HK. I do know that his IP address was owned by American System Publications, the LaRouche company in Los Angeles that HK said he worked for, under the name he gave for himself, which has been discussed here before. I won't repeat the name in case he'd prefer it wasn't posted, and I'm not even sure it really is him, but that person does work for American System Publications in Los Angeles. So if HK didn't operate the Leatherstocking account himself, he surely knows who did.

As for King and Berlet, both are published experts on LaRouche. This website normally deplores when published experts are run off Wikipedia, yet here you are supporting it. A lot of your strongly entrenched positions seem to be overturned when it comes to LaRouche, presumably in part because a LaRouche movement member runs this site, and in part because it's a way of taking a dig at me. But I hope you'll do your best to stand back and look at the situation clearly, ignoring who you like and don't like.

Berlet hasn't edited [[Lyndon LaRouche]] since 2007, and is barely used as a source, if at all. In three years, he only made 192 edits to it, and I doubt many have survived. King has edited it more recently, but his edits aren't sticking, and he's been asked by e-mail more than once to stop editing it, in his own interests as much as for any other reason. He is also barely used as a source in the article. It's disgraceful that two experts on LaRouche, people the high-quality mainstream media use as sources, have been so discouraged or prevented from editing those articles, assisted by personal attacks posted against them here by the movement -- including BLP attack pages created by Herschelkrustofksy -- but that's Wikipedia for you.

In total, the accounts known to be associated with LaRouche have made around 1200 edits to the article, more than anyone else. If you want to complain about inappropriate editing, please address your complaints in the first instance to the man who controlled all or most of these accounts, Herschelkrustofsky.

SlimVirgin: I think that "you didn't really answer the question" was for rhetorical effect, wasn't it?

You have a list of unanswered questions here going back months... it's as long as my arm. Did you plan to go back and start answering some of the far more important questions you've been asked, now that you've returned here? Or just take pot shots and hope that people forget all the unanswered ones?

That's not exactly right, is it?

Your very own Arbcom has said that any pro-LaRouche editors can be shot on sight. Which is basically what happened to Leatherstocking and anyone else stupid enough to edit the articles in a positive light to LaRouche.

In the interests of fairness and neutrality -- core political goals of this enterprise -- why can't the anti-LaRouche ones? You, BeBack, DKing, and Berlet are clearly in this category. Indeed, reading the Arbcom ruling, one gets the very strong impression the entire project is now anti-LaRouche.

No doubt there are good reasons for this.

It would just be far, far, more honest on your part -- personally and collectively -- to simply admit the now built-in bias against the man and his followers. The existence and implications of the Arbcom decision against pro-LaRouche editors should be in-your-face on the talk page for the benefit of any editor foolish enough to try, but far more importantly, this same information should be provided to readers in order they better assess the neutrality and accuracy of the article(s).

I wasn't opposed to cultists in general editing Rawat if they did so neutrally, but a few them, mainly Jossi, didn't. Same thing with LaRouche. When you give the numbers of edits supposedly made by Berlet and King, are you counting the edits they made to the talk pages? If not, then you're being disingenuous. The talk pages are where collaboration happens. If someone is attacking the article's subject and other editors on the talk pages, which Berlet and King did, then that inhibits or prevents effective collaboration from happening. You know this. Or you should know it.

If editors make neutral edits to both the article and talk page, then there isn't a problem. One of Hersh's alleged socks, Marvin (or Martin?) Diode, as far as I'm aware, was very careful to make neutral edits. He was blocked anyway. At the same time, however, King and Berlet continued on their merry way disparaging LaRouche in Wikipedia and you did nothing about it. Why? I think I know why, judging from some of the diffs I saw of edits of yours that were presented as evidence in the original LaRouche Arbcom cases. So are we to believe that even though you were evidently anti-LaRouche then, you aren't now?

You didn't answer my question. Where is it documented in Wikipedia that DKing is now voluntarily topic-banned from the LaRouche articles? Will this be annotated on the LaRouche arbcom enforcement page, just below the new entry on Leatherstocking's block? If I go add a note about it there, will you support me?

Oh, how lame. I think you'll find, m'dear, that sympathy for LaRouche on Wikipedia Review starts and ends with HK. There is no "party line" here in favor of LaRouche, no matter how much you want to believe there is.

That said, I don't think you'll find much objection here at WR to the notion that ideological zealots posing as experts should be run off Wikipedia at the first opportunity.

I sort of expected you to talk about House POV here. It's a very good explanation for what's being asked, isn't it?

Oh, it's very obvious that Wikipedia's house point of view incorporates a very strong antipathy toward LaRouche. This is so frankly obvious that I don't know of a way to say it that isn't insulting to the reader; it's sorta like going up to someone and saying, "You did know that the sky is blue, didn't you?"

I would say that the way this is being handled on Wikipedia makes a mockery of "the neutral point of view" except that it's my considered belief that there is no such thing as "the neutral point of view", and it's impossible to make a mockery of something which does not exist. I suppose you can mock those who persist in believing in things that don't exist, but that's generally considered rude.

This sentence lacks an actor - believed by whom?



There's another one.

the weasel knows
what weevil grows
in the ♥s of men …

— but that's just men …

Ja Ja

I've never said anything like that.


Neither King nor Berlet are "experts" in any conventional sense. They are propagandists and conspiracy theorists of the sort that Wikipedia should be extremely cautious about using as sources.


Well, that's a load of crap. You manage to disguise the degree to which King is used as a source, by "laundering" King's conspiracy theories through Antony Lerman, a British academic who simply wrote a synopsis of King's book which was then published in an anthology.


You presume incorrectly. My political views here have about as much influence as they do at [[WP:ANI]]. However, your second presumption may be more correct. People here may be inclined to be skeptical of what you say, because your tactics at WP are so consistently odious.


That's a brilliant idea, and there is of course no chance in Hell that it will be implemented. Anyone want to start a pool about how long it will take Slim 'n' Will to remove the neutrality dispute tag from Lyndon LaRouche (T-H-L-K-D), now that they have taken Leatherstocking's scalp?

The real name that has been posted for you on this site, and the name that was embedded into a file you posted on Wikipedia -- that person works for American System Publications, a LaRouche outfit, in Los Angeles. Leatherstocking's IP address resolves to American System Publications in Los Angeles. Perhaps you could address that point.



They are very precisely experts in the "conventional sense." They've been studying LaRouche for decades. They've been published by conventional publishing houses and encyclopedias. When the BBC wants to know about LaRouche, they interview Berlet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpSx8K0U21A...related&search=

Berlet and King know about the violence, the threats, the insane beliefs, the defamation of critics, and the extensive propaganda published by outfits such as .... American System Publications. That's why you detest them, it's why you and your socks have spent years on Wikipedia undermining them, and it's why you created their BLPs to attack them, and used this website for the same purpose.

And you succeeded. Berlet was too disgusted to continue. King has agreed not to edit those pages anymore.

What do you mean "same thing with LaRouche"? None of the LaRouche accounts has ever edited in a disinterested fashion. They wouldn't be allowed to! Perhaps HK can tell us what would happen to a LaRouchie who started editing neutrally about LaRouche on Wikipedia.



There is no topic ban. A couple of people emailed him, myself included (though in my case it was quite some time ago), and told him it wasn't a good idea for him to edit those articles. So far as I know, he has agreed not to, so the issue is dealt with. If he edits them again, we can look at posting on AN/I or AE, though it would have to be a topic ban on anyone with real-life involvement with LaRouche (for or against), not just King. It would clearly be absurd to topic ban the only published expert, but allow the LaRouche movement accounts to continue.

You seem to prefer the passive voice. Who posted a real name for me on this site?


My guess is that he would be banned by Georgewilliamherbert, at your request.

You wish to insinuate that the LaRouche organization cares what Wikipedia writes about it. As far as I can tell, it does not, at least not enough to do anything about it. They did publish this article in a mass-distribution pamphlet, but that's it, to my knowledge.

The definition that you and Will use for "LaRouche movement accounts" is simply anyone who contests your edits. I've seen it more than once -- it often takes only one or two contested edits at a LaRouche article, from a new editor, and the accusations begin. You have consistently used this as a tactic in POV-pushing. With the exception of myself, a professed LaRouchian, and Leatherstocking, if the allegations you make are correct, I don't know of any editor who was banned due to your machinations who was provably a "LaRouche movement account."

I do stand corrected, humbly I didn't continue scrolling on my whois lookup. Saw RoadRunner - after you mentioned this then saw RR Commercial and then American System.

He might be at least on the edge of making this claim:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=...18366&diff=prev

♫♪ E-I-E-I-O ♫♪

It appears we have a situation where people are utilizing tunnel vision because of their feelings about SlimVirgin. I don't see why anyone here should view the arugments around Larouche articles any differently than arguments around Scientology related articles, Prem Rewat or the Unification Church. In all these cases (and others) there will be a tendency for the organization itself or its most ardent supporters to edit aggressively in order to protect their organization or leader from criticism and, as much as possible, promote the entities own world view or at least its view on itself. Small, highly committed organizations such as these are actually far more likely to engage in aggressive editing campaigns than large companies that feel less threatened.

It would be more productive if WRers disregarded personalities in this sort of matter and tried to think how they would view the same situation if it were Scientology vs User:X.

What's your take on editing by the Animal Rights cultists?