Talk:Jung Myung Seok

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/Archive 1 /Archive 2 /Archive 3

REGARDING EDITS OF 17FEB08

After reviewing the BLP policy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons) I have removed all content that was either a) unsourced, b) poorly sourced (note: message boards and non-professional media are not regarded by Wikipedia policy as proper sources) or c) conjecture.

Editors will notice that a large portion of the article has been deleted. However, I'm certain that after reviewing the BLP policy yourself, you will see that the content was deleted legitimately.

Specifically I draw your attention to BLP policy stating:

"We must get the article right.[1] Be very firm about the use of high quality references. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material — whether negative, positive, or just questionable — about living persons should be removed immediately and without discussion from Wikipedia articles,[2] talk pages, user pages, and project space."

AND

"Material about living persons available solely in questionable sources or sources of dubious value should not be used, either as a source or as an external link (see above). Self-published books, zines, websites, and blogs should never be used as a source for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article (see below). Editors should avoid repeating gossip. Ask yourself whether the source is reliable; whether the material is being presented as true; and whether, even if true, it is relevant to an encyclopedia article about the subject."

AND

"Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that is unsourced, relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Verifiability, or is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see Wikipedia:No original research)."

Editors: please do consider BLP policy in regards to this article. This is not the first time I have removed these edits.

Uptional (talk) 16:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DISPUTED: Reliable Sources for Biography of Living Persons

Editors are in disagreement as to what constitutes reliable sources —Preceding unsigned comment added by RB972 (talk • contribs) 11:56, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

This subject/headline has been created to provide a space for discussing reliable sources. According to Wikipedia policy concerning BLPs these sources are not credible and have therefore been removed (immediately, as the policy states) from the article. If you would like to reinstate them, please discuss it here beforehand as outlined in Wikipedia policy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uptional (talk • contribs) 10:10, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you serious? The first source is from the Korean Police's English homepage! The ones following from reliable news sources. The Australian newspaper and various others. You're really clutching at straws here Uptional. And what exactly do you think is wrong about the information? You don't seriously think he's not in jail, do you? Hilarious! ````Peter Daley —Preceding unsigned comment added by CaptPorridge (talk • contribs) 11:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Peter, thanks for your input, but I'm not sure what your comment about him being in jail has to do with us editing this article. In any case, I have made edits with your comments in mind. As such, here are the sources that should be left out of the article because they are not considered reliable by Wikipedia policy:

all www.religionnewsblog.com content (this is a user generated blog site); 7 days news documentary (this is not a proper citation); http://nuri.donga.com/nurinews/view.php?k_id=200801110239&m=2 (this site is not in english, nor is an english translation provided) ; all www.jungmyungseok.com/falsemessiah.proboards23.com material ( this is a blog/message board site); all www.rickross.com content (this is also a user-generated blog site according to this link http://www.rickross.com/aboutus.html); http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200608190106.html (this site not in english, nor is an english translation provided)

To any editors that would like to include these sources, please give explanation here before reposting them, as this is the BLP policy.

Thanks, Uptional (talk) 11:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I would, it it wasn't that for the last year all you've done on Wikipedia is try to find reasons - any reasons - to delete information about Jung. I'm tired of it. I've seen whatever has been cited with RNB or rickross before it was there, and the news articles that are cited (no, not blog posts) are the same as the ones originally published. It doesn't matter if the source is not English. The falsemessiah ones are sourced to the 30 lessons, not the message board, just you can access a copy of it there. And I'm pretty sure at some time someone gave you a link to the 7 news documentary even with an English translation. I've explained all this to you many times before. RB972 11:21, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I try to find reasons to keep this article conservative, neutral and factual. The rule of thumb is to do no harm, instead of sourcing dubious websites. I campaign against edits that betray the BLP policy. Please do read the policy before making further edits.

Uptional (talk) 11:41, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Editors, in an effort to resolve this amicably, I have initiated a RFC. Let's encourage Wikipedians to review the citations and sources themselves, as it appears we are at an impasse. Because this is a Biography of Living Persons article, I trust that you will respect Wikipedia policy and refrain from re-posting the sources and citations in question until this process has been completed. After all this is a living person and our goal is to provide a clear and accurate article presenting reliably sourced facts.

As well, because this article involves religion, which can arouse passions in us, let's refrain from directing comments to individuals. I think from the way we write it will be understandable what one's opinion is. Let's stick to the article and not start picking fights with each other in a he said/she said sort of way. Agreed?

Best regards, Uptional (talk) 11:50, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

• First RfC response: Sources do not have to be in English. They are of course preferable, but there are not required. See WP:CITE. If this article were about Britney Spears, then we should be using english sources. However, this is about Jung Myung Seok. Obviously there are going to be a ton of useful resources (probably better ones) that aren't in English. The uiser blogs have to go. The non-English ones can stay.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 12:55, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

A note: there's no blogs. The cites are to news articles reproduced by rickross.com and religiousnewsblog.com. They're just not on the original publisher's website anymore. RB972 12:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, unless you mean providencetrial and providencecultwatch. RB972 14:08, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Here's a source for you http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/20/asia/AS-GEN-SKorea-Cult-Leader.php

I'm starting to wonder if the watering down of this article is related to the above news? ````Peter Daley www.jmscult.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by CaptPorridge (talk • contribs) 13:49, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I added it. I've found these as well [1], [2]. It's an AP article so they'll probably be more articles soon. RB972 14:08, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Dear Editors, please note that the dispute over the sources in this article have not been resolved. Currently the article contains blog sites, which violates the BLP policy. To that end, leave the stamp in place. Uptional (talk) 17:58, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

As the owner of www.jungmyungseok.com/falsemessiah.proboards23.com, I personally stand by everything posted there, and you have yet to explain which sources and materials you believe inacurate. And the material referenced was material produced by Jeong's "religion" specifically photocopies of his 30 lesson Bible course which announces Jung as the messiah, so I can't comprehend how that could in any way be inacurate. And I'd be interested to know why you removed the material referenced by the Korean Police and several newspapers.

The goal of wiki is to provide information, you are here to remove information. Here's a rule I like. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules CaptPorridge (talk) 22:08, 20 February 2008 (UTC)Peter Daley

Ironically if the jungmyungseok.com sources are removed, the article is just going to echo the sensationalism of journalism even more than it does now. Why Uptional wants this is beyond me. Maybe the hyperlinks should be removed and it just cited as an offline source. Or maybe someone can watch the "I want to know about it" Korean documentary again and see what it says. RB972 23:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Comment

No need really to provide links if they are in contention. Just give the full cite to the actual original news source itself, without an external link. You could even use one of the cite templates from WP:CIT. And as an aid to other editors active in the article, just give a "convenience link", either after the cite, or on the talk page. Cirt (talk) 04:50, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. I'll do that for all the Rick Ross and Religion News Blog articles. Since I saw all of them on the original publishers as far as I can remember, this is appropriate. Re:Esprit15d on blogs, I've also removed providencetrial and providencecultwatch as sources (although they were only being used as sources for their own opinion). I really only had them because I wanted Providence's main argument included (that the allegations were by or paid for by bitter former members) and the new AP article has it (more or less) so that can be used instead. RB972 09:27, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I removed all primary sources as well. The article is now entirely sourced by reliable secondary sources, except for his birthday and that he was born in WMD. Not that I think the article is better like this, I've just got better things to do than play wikicop. The article is an accurate representation of reliable sources so if it's negative, it's not my fault. I invite all editors to comment on the article and if they think it's perfectly sourced now or not. I also expect Uptional to promptly remove the tag and leave the article alone from now on. RB972 11:32, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for cooperating editors, I find the article improved because now the information being presented is at least verifiable and reliable. I do share your opinion that the journalism upon which the article is sourced is overly sensational, unfortunately so. Thanks to those editors who made themselves available to us for help. Note: citation 16 is a dead-link and needs to be repaired. The Disputed tag will remain until the dispute is resolved, when the remaining sources are discussed, specifically those termed "Rick Ross" and "Religion News Blog". Uptional (talk) 16:32, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Query

So as it currently stands, what is still disputed? Cirt (talk) 17:55, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

It no longer cites Rick Ross and Religious News Blog and that was Uptional's concern. And since Uptional's contribs show all he's ever done on Wikipedia is try to delete or discredit this article, I removed the tag for him. RB972 02:28, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

By the way Uptional, if you really do have real concerns over bits in the article, don't label the entire article as disputed. That would be akin to when you labelled the article POV and posted a long opinionated defence of Jung on the talk page, without actually giving a reason why the article was POV [3] - and when a third party investigated, he did not share your concern [4]. I'm tired of such games. RB972 04:43, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

The dispute is not resolved. Sources 1, 11, 12, 20, 24, 27 and 31 are not citations at all, but merely links to... nothing--literally in some cases. Imagine writing a research paper and sourcing articles and books that cannot be located...this is wrong, especially so because this is a biography of someone living, who is also the focus of the media. Consider Wikipedia policy of Verifiability: "Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source." Is this material likely to be challenged? Yes, not only in Wikipedia, but also in a court of law. Is the material published? Perhaps, but we have no way of knowing because there is no link to it. The information Wikipedia provides must be verifiable.

Again, the Wikipedia policy: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that readers should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed." So, if a reader cannot verify a source, there is no use in citing that source.

Finally another bit of policy which applies directly to this context: "Exceptional claims in Wikipedia require high-quality reliable sources; if such sources are not available, the material should not be included. Also be sure to adhere to other policies, such as the policy for biographies of living persons and the undue weight provision of WP:NPOV." Editors of this article must not use the article as a tool of manipulation. As such, since they SHOULD be working with that which is verifiable, the prompt removal of these sources is also in their best interest. Please remove those sources immediately. Uptional (talk) 09:18, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Your concerns about lack of verifiable sources in this article appear to be invalid. Is this quote, "Is this material likely to be challenged? Yes, not only in Wikipedia, but also in a court of law." supposed to scare people who may disagree with your point-of-view regarding the subject of this article? There is also no evidence that this article's editors are using the article "as a tool of manipulation" I would advise you to be more concise with specific concerns; your current responses indicate that you disagree with the neutral use of information in the article and could paint you as a POV warrior. Bumm13 (talk) 10:46, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

The above comment is unhelpful. Please re-read my post, which concerns invalid sources (there are no sources if there are no links!). That's the issue being disputed--the sources--that's what needs comment on. Follow the links and see... can you verify them? If not, then should unverifiable sources be included? According to BLP policy, the answer is No.

My quotation was mis-read because you are unfamiliar with the subject matter: "court of law" regards the legal on-goings of the subject matter, with which the sources speak of. No, it was not a scare-tactic. It is pointing to the fact that this article serves as a public record of an on-going investigation and therefore the sources should all be verifiable. That's nothing to speak of Wikipedia policy.

There is evidence of manipulation. Go back and look at the history. For the past year this article contained sources from one article editor's blog-site on which contained copyrighted material. That is not only against Wikipedia policy, but also illegal. Yet, despite the other editors being aware of this, I remain the only editor at the moment who is challenging it. Uptional (talk) 14:49, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Here's another link to a summary of source No1, http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-30801576_ITM You need to register, but I can't be bothered. Anyway I RB andI already saved that on our forums here: http://jmscult.com/forum/index.php?topic=246.15 The above link is at least evidence the article existed.

11 is on my old site, and I'll say again I stand by that completely: http://www.jungmyungseok.com/falsemessiah.proboards23.com/index127f.html?board=japan&action=display&thread=1154863682

No 12, I remember reading it and I was the one who submitted it to Rick Ross, but I may have neglected to keep a copy on my old site. Anyway it is online at Rick Ross's site.

20, 24, and 27 are also on my site, I can't be bothered with individual links. http://www.jungmyungseok.com/falsemessiah.proboards23.com/index49f9.html?board=japan

At least you can read them if you were curious.

It's a pity you weren't so critical when Jeong was telling you he read the Bible 4 thouand times and meet Jesus in a cave.

Uhm Evidence of manipulation? Not on my site there isn't. I've collected factual information about a man who was at the time a wanted fugitive, and in case you have forgotten, he was a fugitive you aided. And speaking of manipulation, have you also forgotten that you erased numerous sourced material? Ande what a laugh it is your cult complaining about copyrights, you don't blink an eyelid at the rapes, the suicide of former members, and Jeong's fugitive status, but I post some of your "secret" materials Jeong stole from the Moonies, and suddenly you start caring about "laws." And if those sermons are really the word of God, why is my site the only place where they are freely available? Why aren't you posting all those speeches and Bible study lessons?

````CaptPorridge / Peter Daley —Preceding unsigned comment added by CaptPorridge (talk • contribs) 14:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC) ````CaptPorridge

And I would argue that I haven't infringed the cult's copyright. No court has deemded that I have, and my sites are all still online.So your beef with my site as a reference in that respect is baseless. Your allegation is just that. If you want to prove it, go ahead and sue me. If not, then I object to your statement just as you would if I wrote in the article that Jeong is a crazed serial raping pedophile. I'm sure if I wrote that you would say, "wait for the trial" and fair enough too. So let's treat your copyright allegations the same way. ````Peter Daley —Preceding unsigned comment added by CaptPorridge (talk • contribs) 16:08, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Comment

You don't have to have online links visible on the Internet in order to satisfy Verifiability for this project. Just enough information in the citation to verify it so that others could go and check it from news archives, and to make sure that it satisfies WP:RS. In my opinion, Sources 1, 11, 12, 20, 24, 27 and 31 appear to satisfy WP:V to that regard, and the sources themselves seem to satisfy WP:RS. Not sure what the problem is here... Cirt (talk) 17:22, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I will repeat what Cirt said - there is absolutely NO requirement that a source be online in order to be used. Some of the best information available is found in books. And thousands of Wikipedia articles cite newspaper articles that were at one time online but now can only be found in a library. And many magazines articles aren't online either, not even in paid form.

Also, I disagree with removing a link to a blog or other site that would be (in and of itself) considered unreliable IF the link is simply to content that is in fact from a reliable source. I realize that it's possible to put up a fraudulent copy of an article on a website, but if the website is reputable in and of itself, there seems - to me - to be no reason to keep information from readers by not providing the online link. Of course, when you do so, you should not mention the website. Here's an example:

• Tom Beyerlein, "Questions raised about branding contract for U.S. Rep. Mike Turner's wife", Dayton Daily News, February 10, 2008

The link isn't to the Daily News website, but to a copy of the newspaper article on the citizensforethics.org website. That website isn't mentioned in the citation because it's irrelvant - the source is the newspaper. And, of course, the source is perfectly good even if there was no link.

I will note that this approach isn't universally accepted, partly because of copyright concerns and partly because of concerns that what is being shown isn't accurate; that's why it's ideal if you can find a copy of a page at archive.org. But if no one objects to a link to a site with a copy of source material on it - and hopefully objections are limited to cases where someone believes that the website owners are in fact not reputable - then (again) it's a service to readers to show them where an on-line copy of a source does in fact exist. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:29, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Disagree with removals by Hux

3 sources were removed by Hux as being unreliable or not stating what the quote said. As the author of the Keimyung article, I would obviously disagree. And as someone who has researched this group for 5 years and who hosts the major critical sites in English, I think I have established my credentials as someone who knows this cult well. The sources I checked all said exactly what the quote stated, so the stated reason for the deletion is misleading

Another article deleted was a copy of a printed article hosted at rickross.com I submitted most of the article to Rick. I'm not sure what the problem is there. The quote was directly from a published news source.

The testimony from www.freedomofmind.com. I again fail to see how the testimony of a former member is unreliable, especially when it is consistant with all the articles and the Korean court's rulings, which all came much later. And the specific quote concerning when members' are eligible to be married is also exactly what I heard from other former and current members.

````CaptPorridge / Peter Daley

Hi. Just to make clear at the outset: I know next to nothing about the subject of this article - I'm not "for" or "against" him or whatever he stands for. My edits are solely from the perspective of making the article more encyclopedic, in accordance with the policy at WP:BLP. If I come across as fairly rigid in my views then that's because the BLP policy is a very serious one: articles that don't conform to it open Wikipedia up to serious legal liability - it only takes one hefty libel case from a plaintiff with deep pockets to bring this whole project down. I don't think any of us wants that.

So, that said, this is an issue of using sources to back up claims made in the article and some of those sources just don't hold up to scrutiny. For example, self-published sources should never be used in BLP articles (unless written by the subject of the article to back up what that person has said, obviously). They're just not reliable enough to hold up to scrutiny. This applies to an apparent reprint of a news article on some random site (e.g. the rickross stuff): we don't know whether it really is a word-for-word reprint or whether the publisher is passing off a fake and banking on "originally posted in [major news outlet]" to convince people it's real. But whether fake or real, it's effectively a non-issue: if a site claims to be republishing a news stories from a major outlet then we can simply go and find the original source and link to that. If that's not possible then we'll just have to do without it. This won't be a major disaster. This is the internet: if something is significant enough we will be able to reliably source it somewhere, if not now then eventually.

Re testimony from former members: again, where is that testimony published? If it's in a major news outlet or a serious, peer-reviewed journal then great, put it in there. If it's from a self-published web site or a little known advocacy group then sorry but that just doesn't meet the standard of reliability that we need to shield Wikipedia from legal action.

Re the "Keimyung" article that you said you wrote, Peter, I'll refer to you to WP:NOR. Sorry but we can't use original research here. You should also take a look at WP:COI, since you're obviously heavily invested in a particular viewpoint on this subject. This is not to say you can't make edits here, obviously, you just need to be very careful and, in particular, you shouldn't in general be citing yourself to back up something in the article.

Hopefully people can now see where I'm coming from. This has the potential to be a decent article, but it needs a lot more work, especially in the reliability area. -- Hux (talk) 21:14, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Hux for your responces. And yes, I'm definately not as up to speed on wikiguidelines as I'd like to be.. busy busy busy! But I just read them, albeit briefly and I still feel the references are valid.

A few comments, first the Keimyung article is a published article. Keimyung University is a large university with 30,000 students and three campuses. They produce a Korean newspaper and the above English Gazette in which my article was published. The article was published both online and in the Gazette's printed edition. I have scans and copies of that edition, if that'd help, but the article online at the kmu website should suffice. Here's the university's homepage in Korean: www.kmu.ac.kr

RickRoss's site. There's just no reason to doubt those links. Some of those article are no longer online where they were originally published, but I personally saw them and Rick did as well, as he does all the articles on his site. This did come up last week and another editor felt those articles met the standards.

The testimnony is from Steven Hassan's site and he's recognised as one of the world's leading experts on cults. If a testimony is on his website, then again I can't see any reason to doubt it. I understand the need for verifiable sources, but again, I fail to see why those sites are in any doubt. We are hardly talking obscure advocacy groups here. Especially since the contents are completely consistant with the articles referenced and the Korean court's ruling. If they contradicted everything else published about Jeong Myeong-seok, then yes I could understand scepticism, but they don't.

I understand your edits were designed to improve the article, so apologies for sounding otherwise.

Thanks, CaptPorridge (talk) 23:35, 29 February 2008 (UTC)CaptPorridge

Hux, thanks for discussing and helping with the article, but I really feel that you've just disregarded all the discussion above in the RFC. The articles are not sourced to rickross (besides the point that rickross is not some random site, he testifies in court as a cult expert and he'd get sued in a millisecond if a word of his articles were wrong - there's a lot of people who don't like him). Have a look at this diff [5]. I absolutely cannot agree that sources should be removed just because they are removed from the original publishers, and it was previously established that the article doesn't need to be online to be cited. Yeah the article looks pretty much the same with them, but it sets an absurd precedent. Are we to remove the Korea Times articles when they get removed? It's not impossible to find the articles now removed in other ways. RB972 23:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I think I'm going to be WP:BOLD and add the offline cites back. It's been established they don't need to be online to be cited, and both myself and CaptPorridge have seen and/or have the original articles. If you're curious what they look like, they look the same as the ones on the Internet. Most of the cites were originally cited to the original publishers, so WP:DEADREF applies. Note that, for example, the "2,000 Japanese join cult led by suspected sex offender on the run from Interpol" is hosted identically by 6 independent sites that all get their articles directly from the media: [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]. And that's only the English ones. Also note that most of these articles are Japanese from late July to early August 2006 - a time where Jung Myung Seok was the 3rd most aired story on Japanese TV. So if CaptPorridge and I are lying, we're picking a pretty bloody stupid thing to lie about, and a pretty implausible lie too. WP:AGF. RB972 02:58, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Please note that at no point did I ever imply that you or CaptPorridge were lying or attempting to mislead anyone. Otherwise, I strongly disagree with both of you about relying on sites that reprint news articles. Why can we not simply locate the original source? If it doesn't exist then surely we can find a separate, more reliable source to back up the specific claim, can't we? -- Hux (talk) 09:36, 1 March 2008 (UTC)