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![]() | A fact from Noah Lottick appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 20 March 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:
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This article is about as fair and balanced as a Fox News report.
1. It starts out by stressing that Lottick was mentioned in a TIME expose on Scientology (and that article now disturbingly has a Wikipedia article of its own, the first and only Wikipedia article devoted to a magazine article), and then goes on to needlessly mention that said article won some award (what does that have to do with Lottick?).
2. The section called "Scientology courses" actually only devotes one sentence to Scientology courses. Everything else in the section is tawdry gossip about how weird Lottick acted after he became a Scientologist. It's sourced gossip, of course, but it's still gossip nonetheless, and serves no real encyclopedic purpose.
3. Then we have the "Suicide" section, which manages to drag Scientology's name into it more than once even though no actual evidence of Scientology's involvement is given. Not unless you count quotes from the boy's grieving father, calling Scientology psychopathic.
4. Scientology's side is given a mere three sentences, seemingly tacked on as a "I guess we better do this to look fair" sort of afterthought, at the end of a long article filled with baseless intimations and hints that Scientology was somehow responsible for Lottick's suicide.
Why am I defending Scientology, you may ask? I'm not. I'm trying to keep overzealous anti-Scientologist editors from turning Wikipedia into tabloid journalism. Scientology is sufficiently weird and off-putting just by itself - you don't have to contrive these conspiratorial "Scientology murder mysteries" to make your case against them. You don't have to create a separate article for every Scientologist who ever died. You're hurting your case when you go to such extremes.
And why is this article deemed important enough to be in Wikipedia's Scientology template? As scandals go, Lottick is no Lisa McPherson. wikipediatrix 03:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Smee's way: [1]
My way: [2]
1. My way properly separates the family's accusations and hearsay from fact. When you arrange the info properly, as I have, the reader can see that virtually all the negative (and unproven) claims come from the baseless lashing-out of the grieving parents, and the ensuing media regurgitation thereof.
2. My way doesn't drag Scientology's name in at every chance, like with the section pointlessly titled "Scientology courses" nor does my way deliberately juxtapose them against reports of Noah's behavior with the foregone conclusion that they're connected. That is tabloid 'journalism' at its worst.
3. My way makes it clear that no wrongdoing by Scientology was ever determined. Why would anyone remove the sentence "No connection between the Church of Scientology and Lottick's suicide was ever determined in any way, medically or legally"?
4. My way mentions Lottick's parents later involvement in the Behar case but doesn't see a need to expand this tangential matter into its own section.
5. Smee reverted my renaming of "Response from Scientology" to "Response from the Church", even though my way is technically more accurate. The philosophy itself didn't respond, the Church did.
6. I admit that a couple sources get lost or disused in my version, and that could probably use some tweaking and improvement. But not at the expense of fairness. wikipediatrix 17:58, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not trying to support one side or the other, I just deleted the ((WikiProject ScientologySeries)) infobox because the article is, in my opinion, too small to need two Scientology infoboxes. I noticed some artifacts in the image, so I reduced the size to make them less visible. Lastly one of the references went nowhere, since it was called time I assumed it was supposed to be the Time article I replaced the empty reference with. Anynobody 06:41, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi guys. You will find this rather surprising but, though I’ve never been a scientologist I have worked with them, while, at the same time, I abhor their cult.
I must totally side on this one with Wikipediatrix. One of the stupidest things I have encountered with scientologists is their mania of blaming any suicide attempt or mass murder on psychiatry, for instance the school shootings. Ironically, like psychiatrists scientologists are willfully ignorant about the family dynamics that causes psychoses. It doesn’t matter that not every school shooter was on Ritalin, Luvox or other stimulant or antidepressive, scientologists always want to blame suicide on psychiatric drugs —even if the guy wasn’t taking drugs!
Similarly, the journalistic articles which blame the cult for Noah’s suicide are journalism at it worst. It reminds me the stupid wiki people that are pushing their conspiracy pov in the 9/11 conspiracy article. I don’t like political conservatism at all. I hate it. But it isn’t good for anyone seeking to educate the public about the real problems with America to promote this conspiratorial nonsense.
Exactly the same can be said about Scientology. We are supposed to be serious encyclopedists, not poor journalists.
—Tito58 17:16, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Noah Lottick/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
*6 citations, one image. Could use another image and more expansion/biographical info from different citations. Smee 09:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC). |
Last edited at 09:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 01:22, 30 April 2016 (UTC)