Wikiscanner: Scientology

After much deliberating, I chose to look into the Church of Scientology for my Wikiscanner report.

Employees working for the Church of Scientology have made about 170 edits to various Wikipedia pages from 2004 to 2007.  For the most part, these employees, probably made up of mostly Sea Orgs, have added Scientology-related links to these articles.  Scientologists are anti-psychiatry and have edited many Wikipedia articles for psychiatric disorders commonly treated with drugs such as: bipolar disorder, depression, generalized anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, ADHD, and dyslexia to name a few.  They edit these articles to include a link to the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) website to provide alternatives to using medication and standard psychiatric procedures.  The CCHR “investigates and exposes psychiatric violations of human rights” and was co-founded in part by the Church of Scientology itself.  Scientologists are anti-psychiatry, but those who are anti-psychiatry are not necessarily Scientologists.

The Sea Orgs also make a point to insert major Scientology-related events in Wikipedia year articles.  For example, in 1954, L. Ron Hubbard issued the Creed of the Church of Scientology.  In 1993, the IRS granted full tax exemption and religious recognition in the U.S. to all Church of Scientology Churches and affiliated organizations.  Hm. Is this wise?

The most interesting edit I found occurred in the Wikipedia article for Church of Scientology.  The edit claims to have “removed hearsay” and “added some links.”  However, I think it was more so a NPOV issue, or even, in their best interest to make themselves sound better.  Within this article, the edit was made to the Scientology Volunteer Ministers section.  Originally stating that:

Over the past several years, it has become a common practice for the organization to send ‘teams’ of ‘Volunteer Ministers’ to the scenes of major, headline-grabbing disasters in order to provide assistance with relief efforts. According to critics, most of these relief efforts consist of passing out copies of a pamphlet authored by L. Ron Hubbard entitled “The Way To Happiness,” and by engaging in a method of calming panicked or injured individuals known in Scientology as a touch assist.

The words in red were deleted and the words in green were replaced with the much kinder, “Though they provide a number of different services, critics suggest…”

Additionally, the edit goes on to a paragraph about Scientology Volunteer Minister roles in the aftermath of September 11.  The article orginially states:

An E-mail confirmed to be from a Sea Org ‘Lieutenant’ brags of a deliberate plan to prevent the grief-stricken from receiving counseling from non-Scientology sources. “Due to some brilliant maneuvering by some simply genius Sea Org Members we tied up the majority of the psychs who were attempting to get to families yesterday in Q&A, bullbait and wrangling. … The survivors don’t know it but they need the Scientologists with LRH’s tech to be here right now.” http://www.xenu.net/archive/events/20010911-tragedy/

Although this is not the most articulate article written, it provides a website and quotes.  Both of which were taken out, and re-worked by Scientology workers.  The new text they provided was, “An E-mail reportedly from a Sea Org ‘Lieutenant’ brags of a deliberate plan to prevent the grief-stricken from receiving counseling from non-Scientology sources.”  This has all since been taken down and reformatted on the page now – but, it seems to me that the writer may have an agenda of his/her own.

One final note:  The Sea Orgs also added their Volunteer Ministers program link to articles for major disasters like Hurricane Katrina, 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake, Cyclone Larry, and September 11 to name a few.  Does this follow the Wikipedia guidelines of what Wikipedia is not?

UPDATE…

As I was reading individual blogs from our Social Media class on the Wikiscanner report, I noticed that Alicia also examined Scientology on her blog.  She caught something quite interesting on Wikiscanner that I had overlooked.  Alicia found that the workers at the Church of Scientology edited the Wikipedia article on Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (the Columbine High School shooters) to include a report of a “therapeutic amount” of Luvox (an anti-depressant) found in Eric Harris during an autopsy.  I agree with Alicia that “this was clearly edited to support their belief that anti-depressants cause suicidal thoughts and violence amongst its users.”

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For the first portion of my Wikipedia report, we were asked to write a new page or substantially edit an existing page.  The majority of my work was on creating a page on Town Class (sailboat) with the username bostonsro.  Growing up near the ocean in Massachusetts, I was around boats all the time.  My dad has a Town Class sailboat and I thought it would be beneficial for his Town Class organization to have a Wikipedia page about the boat.  I did run into problems attaching an image to my article.  I would love to include this line drawing of a Town Class sailboat. Can anyone help me out?

Additionally, I made Wikipedia edits to:  One-design, and Indoor Cycling.

Wikipedia – What did we do before it?

I love Wikipedia.  Though it is not perfect, it is a truly brilliant way of sharing, collaborating on, and discovering information.

In Here Comes the Everybody, Clay Shirky describes this “unmanaged division of labor” as “spontaneous” and continues to write that “Wikipedia is able to aggregate individual and often tiny contributions, hundreds of millions of them annually, made by millions of contributors all performing different functions.”  Despite this “spontaneous division of labor,” I believe that we can trust Wikipedia as an beginning research tool.  By no means should we end there.  The amount of information that is available to us today through search (Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc.) is so large that we are able to look even further than Wikipedia.  Additionally, when compared to Britannica, Wikipedia is truly able to measure up.  And with costs of time and money factored in, Wikipedia wins hands down.

Part of the beauty of Wikipedia is that it is open to everyone — and I believe it should stay that way.  With the exception of a few articles that could be under heated debate, articles should be open to everyone and very rarely ‘locked.’  The entries in Wikipedia follow a power log distribution curve (where few people contribute a lot, and a lot of people contribute a little) which is similar logic to Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail. I believe that if Wikipedia closed itself down to the masses and allowed only verified ‘experts’ to create/edit articles, its popularity would quickly decline leading to an inevitable destruction of the site.  Prime example is Nupedia — the original intent of Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, until they stumbled upon what we now call Wikipedia.

I’m not sure how Wikipedia could be better set-up to better provide further accuracy.  Already, if an article is vandalized Wikipedians are quick to fix it, Wikipedia staff can put the subject matter on lock down or block a particular user, for repeat offenders, for a little over 1 day, which, they say, seems to work.

Lions, and Tigers, and GOOGLE, oh my!

What comes to mind when you hear the word Google?

Search, discovery, answers, questions, or even the colorful letters that makeup “Google” above the search box (which usually change daily according to the season/holiday, how cute!) — whatever may come to mind, it seems to be positive and beneficial.

So, you think, Google is great.  It allows the world to search its database about anything their heart desires, just one click, and we get it!  And their email is cool too – wow, it’s up to 6844 megabytes already?!  Thanks, Google, you’re the best.

Not so fast.  Remember when Mom told you if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is?  Well, it is.  All of this comes with a price: privacy.

“Don’t be Evil” is the corporate motto of Google.  John Battelle sums it up nicely in his book The Search by saying, “Don’t be Evil is a wonderful sentiment for describing the ethical boundaries of internal company dealings, but when your business is understood to be a global arbiter of human knowledge and commerce, sticking to such a principled stand can become extremely…tricky.”

What does “Don’t be Evil” really mean?  Play fair? Have morals? Google fails on both accounts.

1. Play fair.

Google currently controls about 59.3% of the search market, and about half of all online advertising revenue online.  It’s biggest competitor, Yahoo, owns only a measly 16.9% of the market.  According to The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch,

Microsoft made an ultimately unsuccessful bid to acquire Yahoo earlier this year in an effort to build a formidable opponent for Google in the online search market. Yahoo opted instead to sign a search advertising partnership with Google.

If you think that this sounds fishy, you’re not alone.  Some are calling their practices anti-competitive.

The New York Times published an article called Relax, Bill Gates; It’s Google’s Turn as the Villain.  In this article, Brian Lent, the president of Medio Systems, is quoted,

Google is the new evil empire, because they’re in such a powerful position in terms of control. They have potential monopolistic control over access to information…I like and respect the Google guys, but let’s just say that their ultimate aim seems to me to be, ‘One Google under Google, for which it stands.’

Reid Hoffman, the founder of two Internet ventures, including LinkedIn, agrees,

Google is doing more damage to innovation in the Valley right now than Microsoft ever did….It’s largely that they’re hiring up so many talented people, and the fact they’re working on so many different things. It’s harder for start-ups to do interesting stuff right now.

According to Wikipeida, anti-competitive practices are practices that prevent and/or reduce competition in a market. These practices can lead to a monopoly.  Google seems pretty darn close to me.

2.  Have morals.

Think your emails are private?  What about your searches, or clickstreams?  Do you believe Google provides us with a comprehensive, unbiased, and free access search?  Think again.

Did you know that Google can review your personal information whenever it wants to?  John Battelle reiterates Google’s company policy:

We may share [private] information…[if] we conclude that we are required by law or have a good faith belief that access, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public.

REASONABLY NECESSARY?  Who determines this?  Mr. Lent had certainly had it right, “One Google under Google, for which it stands.”  How far will Google take this?  Who do they think they are?  And, why are we so trusting of them?

A portion of Google’s mission statement states:

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”  And proudly boasts that after using Google you will understand “why others say, ‘Google is the closest thing the Web has to an ultimate answer machine.’

China would not agree with this.

In fall 2002, due to strict government regulations, the Chinese government filtered out Google among other search engines.  After two weeks, Google was restored back to Chinese citizens – but, when one would click on a link that posed problems with Chinese government, they were redirected to a government approved site.  Soon after, Google announced,”…in order to create the best possible search experience for our mainland China users we will not include site whose content is not accessible.”  I agree with John Battelle when he points out that,

Clearly Google was taking out all evidence of the banned site because that’s what the Chinese government wanted it to do…by working with China to omit certain sites, Google had seemingly become an accessory to evil.

Exactly.  This was a precedent set by Google.  Who else will be given the authority to tell Google what should and should not be on their search?  Who else will be blocked?  How far will this go?

Google is [currently the major] one of many ways to search the database of intentions that John Battelle talks about in his book, The Search.  The Database of Intentions is the aggregate results of every search, and paths taken from there.  It represents “a placeholder for the intentions of humankind – a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes” for all to know, or discover.  Pretty intense.  This has already had a huge impact on today’s society, and there is still more to come.