Talk:School of Philosophy and Economic Science/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Recent additions

@Millandhouse33: you have been adding content to the article. I had warned you that as an involved person you should propose additions first at the talk page, and these additions are an example of why. You added this: In 1961 SES organised the World Congress at the Royal Albert Hall, where Maharishi Mahesh Yogi introduced the then novel practice of Transcendental Meditation, 5,000 people attended.[90][91] That information is not adequately sourced and I have removed it. In the first place, that 1961 event was not where he "introduced" the idea of TM; he had been doing world tours on the subject for several years at that point. In the second place, I could find no evidence that SES organized the congress or had anything to do with it. Both of your links, Wish4me and sites.google, are actually copies or mirrors of our Wikipedia article about the Maharishi. Wikipedia articles are not considered a reliable source. Still, I looked at our article for evidence. It mentions the 1961 event but not SES, saying While in England, he appeared on BBC television and gave a lecture to 5,000 people at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Neither of the sources at that article are visible online, so there is no source for SES organizing it.

As for the “list of publications”, I don’t think that adds value to the article - especially since it lacks any publication date or other details, it’s just a list of titles. What do others think on that subject? -- MelanieN (talk) 22:34, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

I noticed the publications list and was unimpressed: without dates, sources, isbns, anything to make it a worthwhile section. If they are purely internal documents for members/students they shouldn't be here. If they are "external" they need more, sourced, info. PamD 00:49, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

WP:ADVOCACY, WP:SOAP, WP:DE. -Roberthall7 (talk) 05:41, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Hello MelanieN, Thanks for your help and for all your hard work editing the page and trying to get consensus. I have provided an outline of proposed edits above. Thanks for your help checking the sources too, it is that level of scrutiny, universally applied, that will improve this page. I notice that the statements that don't match citation, re financials reserved pointed about above, I trust your happy for them to be removed now?

MelanieN & PamD Publications are external publications available online, (example). I have followed the same format as used here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayananda_Saraswati_(Arsha_Vidya)) and many other pages listing publications, which seems to be the standard for such lists. Happy to the extra data, however as ass other lists of publications I've seen on wikipedia don't include, I don't want to add them just to remove them. This is an organisation that publishes several books every year, an encyclopedia entry about it would include that information. Millandhouse33 (talk) 14:47, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

We're going to need more information on the publications. Publisher, year, etc. If there are links for readers to gain more information, these need to be included. I know that some of them are available online; I've just bought volumes 3&4 of the hardbound Conversations with HH series, and I no longer attend the School. And some are available through School bookshops, which aren't generally open to the public like (say) Waterstones or Barnes & Noble, but aren't closed off entirely, being open for the frequent public lectures or introductory sessions etc. --Pete (talk) 16:26, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

@Millandhouse33: I am fine with removing the financial details from the article, or with keeping only the basic well-sourced general numbers. I have already moved that information out of the lead and into Administration. -- MelanieN (talk) 17:16, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

(i) As a minimum, some indicative numbers about resources and revenue, etc are called for in any such article. (ii) It's a very serious POV shift for Hodgkinson (published by Shepheard-Walwyn) to be added to this article while the content on Salaman is removed around the same period of editing; User:Keithbob, User:KD Tries Again, User:Fiddlersmouth and User:NebY have previously commented on the former, and so for years consensus has been to keep it out of this article per Wikipedia policies and guidelines. (iii) The addition of the SES receiving the 2013 Second Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative (GCGI) Award, sourced to the GCGI's own website, takes it to a whole new level of PPOV: in 2012, the GCGI had just held its annual conference in association with SES, and has used an SES mansion as the conference venue, as we can see here: [1] (iv) The seriousness of the addition of this disruptive material is exacerbated by no consultation on the Talk page; note MelanieN's I had warned you that as an involved person you should propose additions first at the talk page. -Roberthall7 (talk) 17:52, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

@Roberthall7: Hodgkinson has been in the article all along, although I see his comments were just briefly summarized before our many-user-named friend arrived. They added big block-quotes, which I reduced to summaries and clearly identified him as a member. I think that is appropriate coverage but I would be willing to trim it if required. I deleted Salaman myself, as part of my reorganization of the Reactions section; her book is a novel and she admits that parts of it are invented so I didn't think she was a valid source of information. It's true that the items about the GCGI award and the UN appointment were recently added by Millandhouse, buried down in the Reactions section. I moved them to history; they are minor but I think they can be kept, subject to the consensus here. -- MelanieN (talk) 18:20, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, MelanieN: Yes you're right, I recall now that Hodgkinson has been in the article for ages and its the big block quotes that I'm talking about. I don't object to the inclusion of the source outright, I am saying we need to be aware of previous consensus; namely it has been described as a self-published work, etc., and its use (especially in the Reception section) appears to have been restricted as such. By exactly the same token, the Salaman novel has never been one of our sources and we have never quoted it. Rather, its publication is an aspect of this article's subject and secondary quotable sources talk about it as such; in some form, that content needs to go back in. And Clara Salaman's comments to the media are no less notable than Hugh Jackman's, which I added in order to balance hers a long time ago. For what its worth, Wikipedia would want us to find a secondary source mentioning the GCGI as notable, and the award itself as notable; I guess you'd agree that relatively small, very close organizations giving each other their own awards in their own literature would be seen in WP content fora as pretty dubious material for an encyclopedia, right? -Roberthall7 (talk) 19:19, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

As for Salaman, OK, we could include her under "former students" and report what she tells the press were her experiences; the wording we had made it sound like she was just someone who wrote a novel. (She's not really a writer anyhow, she's an actress, so yes, we could give her the same coverage as Jackman). I'll work on some wording for that. As for Hodgkinson, yes, it is a self-published book, but we can use it to report what he says, making it clear he is speaking as a member of the organization. As for the GCGI thing, I agree it is minor. I see no harm in keeping it but I am open to removing it if that develops as the consensus here. -- MelanieN (talk) 19:44, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, MelanieN. While you're working on that Salaman content, let's remember for our consistency's sake, Salaman et al are not former students but former members, so the section heading needs to be adjusted accordingly. Use of Hodgkinson needs to be restricted and flagged very carefully as representative of the organization; WP:SELFPUB is our handy guidance for that. Content on GCGI has a citation self-published by the GCGI, it is pure advocacy again without secondary sourcing. Even the award itself has a conflict of interest given the recipient and the awarding body had a prior material relationship; afaia Wikipedia wants this sort of material removed immediately. I haven't yet seen the SES mentioned in the citation for the United Nations 'Harmony with Nature initiate' content; if you can, please point it out. -Roberthall7 (talk) 17:19, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

I am having trouble with the Clara Salaman material. What she wrote is a novel, about a schoolgirl trapped in a terrifying “Organization”.[2] There were three sources in our article’s paragraph about her. One link is to the Jules Evans book, a bibliographic blurb which says nothing about her or SES; irrelevant. The second is just bibliographic information; irrelevant. The third is a link to a Radio New Zealand interview, 26 minutes long, which I can’t play or hear so I can’t verify any of the comments attributed to it. Those comments do not say that she is talking about her own experiences, only “real events”. I did find some sources that confirm she is describing her own experiences (up to age 14, never as a “member”). Here’s a piece she wrote for The Guardian, [3], in which she says the novel is based on her own childhood, but she does not name the “Organisation” she is talking about: “For legal reasons I am not allowed to go into any detail about the organisation that our parents were members of.” Same problem with an interview she gave to the Daily Mail;[4] the upbringing she describes has many similarities to SES, and the interviewer drops strong hints - “Commuters will recognise their posters on public transport advertising courses” - but that isn’t a solid enough connection for us; that would be Original Research. There is discussion about the book at the SES Forum, in which the discussants seem to recognize SES in the novel, but the forum is not a Reliable Source. The bottom line is, we have no Reliable Source linking this novel to SES and thus no justification for putting it in our article. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:14, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

MelanieN, thank you, really great research and much appreciated. As far as I recall a connection had been made by the Guardian, but that has now gone. So I concur with your rationale. Unless a verifiable connection is found, let's keep that content out. -Roberthall7 (talk) 14:45, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

MelanieN, thanks to your prompting, we now have University of Sydney Professor Carole M. Cusack [5] making the connection in a 2015 academic paper [6] about to be published as a chapter in the forthcoming George D. Chryssides and Stephen E. Gregg (eds), Beyond Insider Outsider Binaries: New Approaches in the Study of Religion, Equinox, 2018: “One prominent former member, the English actress Clara Salaman, who was raised in the SES, published a novel, Shame on You (2009), in which the SES is called “The Organization,” and her experiences of SES schooling, religious teaching, diet, and discipline of the group, are presented in harrowing detail.”[7] This paper is unusually comprehensive on SES and (helpfully for our purposes) how it is perceived. Cusack also says: “There is little academic research on the SES, with publications being mostly short entries in encyclopedias or compendia of spiritual groups and NRMs.” Yet her paper has plenty of additional material for this article and also points to extra sources that we haven’t used yet, namely Rawlinson (1997) and Barrett (2001). - Roberthall7 (talk) 16:30, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

OK, with that new source linking her novel with SES, I have re-added the material. I have also moved the Laura Wilson material from Journalists to Former members, and I substantially rewrote it to be more about the experiences of SES members - instead of one rather minor attitude of theirs. -- MelanieN (talk) 19:47, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Salaman should probably be in the "Allegations against St James's" section with Emiliy Watson. She is talking about things that happened at the High School rather than the adult School (St Augustine's is based on the St James according to this article).Millandhouse33 (talk) 21:50, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Review of primary source use in this article

Yes, a review of the way WP:PRIMARY sources used in this article is required. I concur that the wording of the content around the citation of the primary-source Charity Commission statements can be improved, especially with support from secondary sources. At the same time, this organization's own literature is a self-published primary source that is heavily quoted in this article, and in places comes across as promotional or advocacy. Our guidance is that "self-published media, or user generated sources, such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs (as distinguished from newsblogs, above), content farms, Internet forum postings, and social media postings,are largely not acceptable as sources." This also covers our use of Hodgkinson, a member of the SES, whose self-published work now gets over 200 words of content and afaics eight citations, including two in the lede, while the secondary source Washington currently gets zero. We also have primary-source personal blog content: what's the rationale for the current inclusion of this [8] but not say this [9] ? -Roberthall7 (talk) 08:41, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi Robert, Didn't realize indiemedia was a blog, will address. Hogdkinson is published by Shepeard Walyn, an independent publisher. However, I do agree that one source shouldn't dominate the page, I can replace most of the citations with other sources. The issue with the 3 points above are different:"SES has a large real estate portfolio including several mansions" is not supported by any of the sources. Similarly "it gets most of its money from inherited real estate...." is your own research not from a source. "It charges as little as possible in order to boost attendance numbers" again you're implying there is something wrong with this. Others have explained these problems in more detail above. Millandhouse33 (talk) 11:08, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Several issues here, all of which will be addressed with time. Firstly, to repeat what I said above, I concur that the wording of the content around finances can be improved. To start, Washington writes: "Its funds now run into millions, and the school owns substantial properties in England and abroad, bought with a continuing stream of donations, bequests and convenants. The subscriptions of ordinary members play a relatively small role in the organisation’s finances, and fees are kept low to encourage recruitment." There is more from the secondary sources on this.

But more urgently, there is yet another direct allegation of bad faith here: "again you're implying there is something wrong with this." I made no such implication.

This is reminiscent of the allegation that I seem to have a desire to hide the fact that the SES has a registered as a UK Charity. Evidently I don’t, and I wasn’t acting in bad faith on that point either.

This fresh charge is a repetition of the new IP's complaint above, in connection with three lines of content, two of which are as follows:

• The SES financial statement to the UK Charity Commission shows that by its own account it charges as little as possible in order to boost attendance numbers; ....

• it gets most of its money from inherited real estate....

Neither of these two lines is in this article. I've checked several times and have been patiently waiting for someone to take this forward, but time's up.

What's going on? Why the immediate deference to the credibility of the new IP, who has had plenty of time to retract their personal attack on request per Wikipedia policy, only to repeat it?

It appears that a habit of breaching our code of conduct is being learned at the outset by one new user from another. Without something being done about it, it's only going to be encouraged. To start, I am hereby flagging the administrator who protected this article, User:TonyBallioni.

To recap, page protection began in response to a concern from User:MelanieN about meat puppetry which resulted in a discovery of sock puppetry. I had hoped that episode could be put down to inexperience. But we now have civility policy issues, and there really has been enough time to learn. In any case, Wikipedia is not a democracy; it's not going to serve anyone well by rushing to invoke a new IP who is at odds with the ethos of Wikipedia by indulging in personal attacks.

Of course, based on evidence known as 'diffs', one has have every right to cease assuming my good faith and anyone else's. If that has become a grievance then per policy, raise it in the right place. That is not here but with uninvolved editors at WP:ANI.

Note that for a few days I have chosen to step away from editing this article, per guidelines.

-Roberthall7 (talk) 10:42, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

rewrite of Shaw

I've rewritten the paragraph on Shaw in the comments by journalists section. Like many other sections on this page the text didn't summarise the position of the author, rather it was selectively quoted to give a completely different position. I would recommend reading p199 to p142 as well as the intro.

Previous text:

Journalist William Shaw wrote a 1994 book Spying in Guru Land: Inside Britain's Cults, for which his research included attending the course and interviewing former members. He also described it as a cult but suggested that members might be "in the cult simply because they shared the elitist upper-middle-class professional values that the school espoused". Characterising Leon MacLaren as authoritarian, he described a "regime of holy servitude - part Gurdjieffian discipline, part oriental mysticism, part Christian mysticism, part social snobbery"

Millandhouse33 (talk) 14:56, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

Since I don't have the book I will have to Assume Good Faith that you are quoting it correctly. I tidied up your entry a little. BTW I assume you are writing these additions offline, in Word or something, and then pasting them in? That is perfectly OK - I do it too - but it introduces one thing that you need to fix. Word uses “curly quotes” like this, whereas Wikipedia uses "straight quotes" like this. After you paste into WP, but before you publish, you should manually change the curly quotes to regular ones - as I just did for your new paragraph. Same problem with apostrophes: Word’s apostrophes are curly like this, while Wikipedia's are straight like this.

IMO the paragraph about what J. Petsche said in that section is way too long and includes far too long and too detailed a quote. IMO it should be shrunk to a sentence or two like the other comments/reactions to Secret Cult. -- MelanieN (talk) 15:55, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Melanie, I agree on Petche. It's on my list of things to do. Do feel free to improve it. Millandhouse33 (talk) 18:06, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

I don't have access to Shaw either. A word of caution. I double-checked one of the recent additions of content and it appears not to represent the citation, which I invite further opinions on as it is available online through the link: Colin Slee, Provost of Southwark Cathedral, who had collaborated in the Secret Cult and was then happy to "see SES as a cult", in 1999 reported a shift in his attitude to SES later considering it to be a New Religious Movement instead. Additionally, some of the recently added lines of content look like they have been directly lifted from the sources, but with quotation marks omitted. To check a first one, is any of our following content verbatum from the source?: Unlike philosophy schools that offer a variety of philosophies to be considered, without any real commitment being expected from the pupils, SES is closer to the ancients’ conception in which pupils are taught one particular philosophy or ethical way of life, which they commit to in an effort to completely transform themselves. Many thanks, -Roberthall7 (talk) 10:52, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Sources

Hi Rob, thanks for spotting the missing "", will add the or rephrase. The book by Cresswell has multiple contributors the only one who writes about ses is Slee, the only biographical information provided in the book is "Colin Slee is Provost of Southwark Cathedral, London." The rest of the passage is "interest. I recall Richard Harries, then Dean of King’s College, London, calling it a ‘crusade’ against the SES. I have to say that I was not amused, and also that I believe that reluctance to be involved is consistent with expediency ethics with regard to everything from the nuclear bomb to private wealth or the National Lottery. Nevertheless there was just a smidgeon of truth in Richard’s remark in so far as I had a particular axe to grind. My own movement in attitude was from a willingness to see the SES as a ‘cult’ – an expression I was quite happy to see used in a book with which I collaborated11– to New Religious Movement;" Cresswell, Jamie. New Religious Movements (p. 170). This page is in the online preview, chapter *. Millandhouse33 (talk) 11:00, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Here is that last sentence is in full: "My own movement in attitude was from a willingness to see the SES as a ‘cult’ – an expression I was quite happy to see used in a book with which I collaborated – to New Religious Movement; from in one sense, 'the enemy', to some sense of 'strangely misguided and potentially harmful, but not always necesserily so'; from the classically imperial view of a confirmed liberal theologan to a more genuine examination of why people join." In response to a query about the representation of a source in our content, Millandhouse33 chose to transcribe the source for us here. In doing so, they did not give us the last sentence in full, but cut it at the semi-colon. This comes immediately after a complaint about the selective use of quotes. -Roberthall7 (talk) 12:46, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

I think it's reasonable to include the rest of the passage on the page if you choose, that final section represents his view on all NRM, as you might expect from someone from the CofE. Millandhouse33 (talk) 14:07, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

The full sentence I just added the whole quote for is not about other NRMs, it's specifically about the SES. Again, the source is not being faithfully represented. Also, "…as you might expect from someone from the CofE." To be clear, editors are not meant to expect anything from anyone based on their identity, whether they're representatives of the Church of England or anything else. -Roberthall7 (talk) 18:12, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Robert, you do need to read the whole book, a snippet won't do. The interpretation you have given is not correct. The book is guidance to the CofE on how to address NRMs. Millandhouse33 (talk) 19:36, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Controversial reputation revisited ..

I'd like to revisit this line:

"The organization has a controversial reputation[citation needed] and is seen by some commentators as a cult or new religious movement.[12]"

There are three parts to it, none of which I believe should be in the lede. For the following reasons:

1. "The organization has a controversial reputation" - The sources simply don't say this.
2. "seen by some commentators as a cult" - This was based on the secret cult, that has been widely discredited by the other secondary sources, especially the academics. Until recently the political motivation of the original piece or other multiple errors pointed out by multiple secondary sources was not on this page, so it is easy to understand why editors have chosen to keep it in. Even the authors of the secret cult limit that accusation to a small minority of members, not the entire organization. It is not correct for us to brand the organization a cult when the claims have been so widely discredited, and original accusers take great care in limiting that accusation.
3. "or a new religious moment" - There are sources calling it this, the earliest being the Church of England, there are also sources describing it as non-religious and a variety of other things. This term should be reserved for other sections of the page where we discuss the reception.

I'm in favor of removing the whole sentence. If new sources emerge, editors obviously have the prerogative to revisit this. Currently, the line doesn't reflect the organization or the page and is potentially liable.

Millandhouse33 (talk) 11:32, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

I agree that the sentence should be removed It’s a legacy of earlier, incorrect submissions. There’s a need to refresh. ~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elgato97 (talk • contribs) 20:28, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Also in favour of losing it. There is no source for the "controversial reputation", and the religious movement or cult label comes from a very few, who don't back up their claims. It's just opinion. We need to be aware of WP:WEIGHT, and giving undue prominence to fringe views. --Pete (talk) 21:12, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

While personally I would not use the c-word to describe this organization, we are obliged here to reflect the sources and summmarize article content. New users such as Elgato97 (talk • contribs) need to understand Wikipedia guidelines; WP:LEDE states: "The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents. ... It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies." As the SES appears in several books and papers about New Religious Movements, and is said by several sources to be thought of by some people to be a cult (as per Channel Four News, The Observer, Washington and others), the current wording accomodates the sources. By not saying in the lede what the controversies actually are, we're currently being generous to the organization; if anything, there's a case for adding them to the lede. If the lede were to be improved for greater fidelity to the sources, it would say in Wikipedia's voice that this organization does a whole lot more than offer courses - which the sources say most people drop out of after one or two. -Roberthall7 (talk) 21:26, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Well, what are the controversies? A school run by SES was tough on the pupils, but no illegal behaviour was found. I think that deserves a mention. Anything else?

What on earth does SES do besides offer courses? I got to know the school quite well over several years, and I'm scratching my head trying to think of anything else. There are voluntary activities such as gardening or maintenance or administration; those old mansions need a fair bit of upkeep. But those are voluntary, undertaken by a few, and about as controversial as raking leaves in autumn. There are occasional public lectures on things like Plato or mindfulness, and sometime school branches will dramatise a Plato dialogue or hold a Mozart recital or put on an art show. Real cult-ish stuff, this. So what are these astonishing things the School does that are so out of the ordinary that we have to hint at them in an encyclopaedia article? --Pete (talk) 23:57, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Two seperate things: (A) non-controversial activitivies in addition to courses, and (B) controversies as described by sources. Aside from 'courses' in what Wikipedia calls the generally understood sense of the word, the sources speak of the activities of a spiriual group which totally transforms people through persuit of enlightenment in a spiritual sense. This includes (i) residential retreats with specific Gurdjieffian practices to break down the ego, (ii) lifestyle guidance from 'personal tutors' covering everything from diet to dress code to sexual behavior, (iii) devotion through service such as donation of professional services, (iv) taking on increasing responsibility in the group to conduct meetings and pass on the belief system, (v) by conducting oneself according to a version of Advaita Vedanta philosophy, by reading related Sanskrit scriptures, etc. They are given a mantra and initiated into meditation with a ritual, after which they are referred to as members and meditate twice a day, outside of courses. This is a lot more than a standard course-providing body, and none of it is controversial. (B) Cusack, now linked online, writes of violence in the Australian branch of SES. There are also controversies around the Gurdjieffian system of devotion to the leader, sleep deprevation, repetative tasks, nutrition control and focused, physical work in persuit of spiritual enlightenemnt. Several sources speak of controversial attitudes toward women, their designated role as subordinate to men, as symbolized by a requirement for them to wear ankle-length skirts or dresses. Others speak of intolerance of homosexuality, and a notion that disabled people are receiving a punishment for what they did in a previous incarnation. Washington writes: "At the heart of the row is the argument over Measure, the central feature of all SES teaching for children and adults alike. Measure is adapted from Ouspensky's systematic interpretation of Gurdjieff's doctrine, and consists of a complex rigid and demanding set of rules governing every aspect of an SES member's life, from his diet and musical taste to his sexual behaviour. ...in practice they are fiercely repressive and at the same time conservative and eccentric, stressing the traditional roles of the sexes down to the wearing of long skirts for women, insisting on the central role of Sanskrit chanting in education and rejecting contemporary culture in tow (especially Television, dancing and ‘modern’, i.e. post-Shakespearian literature. ... The rules are administered by 'personal tutors’ to whom members report and owe absolute obedience. The tutors are in turn organised by group leaders who have the authority to demand more or less anything from their charges." This may have changed in recent years as members here talk about new leaders and geographical differences - if so, let's incorporate that with a citation. -Roberthall7 (talk) 04:30, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Let's talk about one issue at a time. The description of what the organization does was handled by Meilanie and others above. A clear consensus is forming here, as well as in the other sections where this was discussed above. There are no arguments to why the words "controversial", "Cult", "new religion", deserve prominence over any description of the organization. Sources make clear that Gurdjieffian practices were phased out following the death of Maclaren. The violence in Australia is cited to the discredited Hougman and Hoff in 84. Cusak is a study of the attitudes of those on SES forums and how their attitude to the org has changed over time. We can't simply ignore the point that the original claims of cult were so widely discredited, a discredited claim is not a controversy. Petche covers it. The outstanding issue from the previous discussions of this (above) was Melianies point that the reception section should be mentioned in the lede. The current text definitely does not represent that section or any other on the page. In lieu of something better we should stick to the wikipedia principle that “lack of content is better than misleading or false content”. The current sentence is definitely misleading and false. The points about undue weight are also highly relevant “avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects.”. The current text is definitely guilty of this. Millandhouse33 (talk) 06:41, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Roberthall7's list of weird elements above is interesting but bears very little relation to the current organisation. I especially chuckled over this: "The rules are administered by 'personal tutors’ to whom members report and owe absolute obedience. The tutors are in turn organised by group leaders who have the authority to demand more or less anything from their charges."

This is rubbish. One of the principles of the School is embodied in the instruction, "No criticism of self or others." Useful and productive advice, I may suggest. Criticism does nothing but raise stress. Nevertheless, the notion of any member of the School dictating what another can or cannot do in their personal life is hilarious and wildly out of touch.

Gurdjieff and Ouspensky may have held some sway fifty years ago, but they have little currency now. Apart from being mentioned in discussions about the origins of the School, whatever their teachings were are no longer mentioned or pursued. Leon MacLaren - who remains a respected figure - turned the School towards meditation and Advaita decades ago.

Some points mentioned above are closer to the truth: "devotion through service such as donation of professional services," I don't know about devotion, but service is certainly a big part of School life. Members perform voluntary labour such as serving refreshments, cleaning the premises, or taking on tutoring responsibilities. Nobody gets paid for their time, but there is no compulsion. If someone doesn't want to do the sort of things they would do around their own home, such as vacuuming or washing the dishes, that's fine, there will be no criticism. As for "donation of professional services", I wouldn't read too much into that. There is no compulsion to donate time or services. If someone is handy with a computer, they might set up the wifi or maintain a website, Presumably members who are lawyers and such would help with property matters if they felt like it, but if they submitted a bill, that would be perfectly all right.

"taking on increasing responsibility in the group to conduct meetings and pass on the belief system". Senior students are encouraged to take on tutoring roles, at first by being an assistant to an experienced tutor, and later as a tutor themselves. This was my role. I wouldn't characterise it as "passing on the belief system", though. Each session has some material to cover, usually revolving around quotes from philosophers, and the idea is to discuss the ideas. This is where Plato and dialectic come in. The idea that students passively have the wisdom of the ancients poured into their ears is quite false. There is no dogma or belief system. Students are encouraged to question ideas presented, and they can take on as much or as little as they please. Quite frankly, the best sessions were those where students disagreed with the discussion material. The tutor's role is more that of facilitator than didactor. Belief systems belong in churches; I certainly didn't swallow everything being presented, and as noted above, there is no criticism. Not of people, anyway. Students are encouraged to tear into ideas and concepts if they wish. If someone said, "that's a load of old bollocks" and we spent an hour discussing why then that was time well spent. Not only did it get the students talking and thinking in an analytical fashion, but it also livened up proceedings no end. Just quietly, but philosophy can be dry and difficult on occasion, and if a tutor simply read the material and had the students nodding in agreement as they took notes, that wouldn't be doing the job.

"by conducting oneself according to a version of Advaita Vedanta philosophy, by reading related Sanskrit scriptures, etc.". It's practical philosophy. Name of the game. Every member of the school has to operate in the real world, and there's no room for wacky practices that detract from enjoying life, doing one's actual paying job, or being a productive member of the community. If students don't want to do something, they don't, and there will be no criticism. Calling the stuff the School teaches "Advaita Vedanta philosophy" might make it sound exotic and mystical, but realistically it's just mindfulness and meditation and treating others with consideration. There's a fair amount of Sanskrit, but nobody is forced to learn it, and it's more about exploring concepts using words that may have no easy English equivalents than chanting mantras. Latin and Ancient Greek are the basis of much of Western philosophy, and Sanskrit is the equivalent in the East. Having a few words helps with understanding. If the School had more emphasis on the Tao te Ching - a text well worth the attention of anyone interested in philosophy - then they would encourage students to learn some Chinese, simply because it makes understanding the text easier.

I know that my own personal experiences are of limited use, but I raise them because this article seems to be giving way too much WP:WEIGHT to material which at best is decades out of date, and in some cases is pure hokum.

The SES/SPP isn't a cult and it isn't a new religion. It's a bunch of middle-class people with an interest in philosophy and self-improvement. About as weird and wacky as yoga or tai chi or flower arranging. Possibly the real purpose of the School, based on what I have seen around the world, is that it is an excuse to buy up old mansions and enjoy them. I must say that dissecting Plato or puzzling out Sanskrit grammar or untangling Plotinus is a lot more pleasant if one is sitting in a millionaire's music room and contemplating a good glass or two of red at the end of the day. Cheers! --Pete (talk) 17:23, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Pete, thank you for the personal anecdotes about SES/SPP. As I have said, I don't use the c-word either. The secondary sources use it, and that is the only reason why it would be used by Wikipedia. If you can get hold of secondary sources verifying how things have changed at the organization, I will support you to the hilt in adding them to this article.

• Hounam & Hogg has been contested by an SES member, and we have gone as far as to include that contest. This does not in itself enable us to use words such as "discredited" about a secondary source, or that in Wikipedia's voice it made "pejorative" comments about SES. This is known as pushing POV.
• In Wikipedia terms Hounam & Hogg remains a secondary source; nothing in the guidelines tell us to throw out a secondary source on the basis that it has been contested, nor does that contest eliminate everything that the source says.
• It's certainly not in keeping with Wikipedia guidelines for us to throw out parts of another secondary source, Cusack, on the grounds that she cites Hounam & Hogg.
• We're not going to misrepresent the sources, which would be a serious matter at WP:ANI. Cusack's paper is about "New Religions and Spiritualities" and what she actually says is: "Hounam and Hogg’s negative account is supplemented by William Shaw’s more neutral chapter in Spying in Guru Land, an entertaining and informative book detailing a year in which he participated in a range of Britain’s “cults,” including the Emin, the Jesus Army, and the SES (Shaw 1995 [1994])."
• The ferretbrain.com review of Shaw is quite different to our new content summarizing Shaw; it says: "One of the important points Shaw makes is that of all the people who start to get involved in a sect, most people tend to leave in the early stages. Shaw presents us with all sorts of recruitment methods - from the Jesus Army's "Come and live with us! We'll talk about Jesus and sing songs!" approach to the Emin's theatre activities to the evening classes of the misleadingly-named School of Economic Science (think a night school run by Victorians teaching an idiosyncratic interpretation of Gurdijeff) - and shows how while many people might come along to a few meetings, only a few have the dedication (or the gullibility) to maintain their involvement. ... Another idea Shaw draws on is the idea of cult as a retreat into childhood. The School of Economic Science is structured like a school."
• Washington says: "Economic Science now has all the features of a cult."
• Stangroom, in the Philosophy Magazine article "Course or cult?", says: "One told me that he had been so puzzled by the content of the first lesson that he had mentioned the SES to a friend, and had been shocked to discover that the school had the reputation of being 'some kind of religious cult.'"
• The Observer says: "That conspicuously unnamed school is the controversial School of Economic Science, or S.E.S., which has long had a reputation in England as a highly secretive cult."
• The Outline review says: "Your generic ultra-rich person is unsettling enough, but there was something even worse about a philosophy maybe-cult with access to vast sums of capital."
• The Times Educational Supplement refers to "the School of Economic Science, a little-known sect".
• Channel Four News refers to "the School of Economic Science, thought by some to be an educational charity and by others to be a cult."
• Slee says: "My own movement in attitude was from a willingness to see the SES as a ‘cult’ – an expression I was quite happy to see used in a book with which I collaborated – to New Religious Movement; from in one sense, 'the enemy', to some sense of 'strangely misguided and potentially harmful, but not always necesserily so'; from the classically imperial view of a confirmed liberal theologan to a more genuine examination of why people join."
• It was me, in the interst of balance who selected the Evans quote saying he doesn't think the SES is a 'secret cult'; he also says: "The philosophical communities created by Plato and Pythagoras are close to what we would think of today as religious cults: the members of the community committed to a particular way of life with the aim of completely transforming their personalities. Some contemporary philosophical communities are close to this religious model: the School of Economic Science, for example, which offers courses in practical philosophy, is a neo-platonic sect which tries to bring its members closer to divine union."
• This list goes on.

All of these sources could be added as citations in the intro, although afaia we're not required to in summary ledes. As I have said before, personally I do not use the c-word to describe this organization. The secondary sources use it, and so Wikipedia requires us to. If we can find secondary sources showing how much has changed, they go in by the same token. -Roberthall7 (talk) 19:56, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

I mentioned WP:WEIGHT above, and I've mentioned it several times previously. You have yet to comment. I also draw your attention to WP:RSUW. I'm seeing nearly 200 lines of text on my screen devoted to "Reception", and ony three devoted to "Sanskrit". May I suggest that just because we can find a source for something doesn't mean it should be included. Pretending that a novel is a reliable source strains the definition a little, at least to my way of thinking, but we can always take this to RSN.

The reason I mentioned my personal experiences in the School is because so much of the Reception section is bunkum. It may be published, and it may seem credible to someone who doesn't know anything about SES/SPP, but it is still bunkum. We are in the business of presenting useful information, and if someone is looking for information about the School here and thinks that they might have people prying into their personal lives and telling them what to eat and who to marry and what they should believe is bunkum. Wikipedia is not in the business of selling bunkum to the ignorant. We need to follow WP:WEIGHT and instead of trying to present both sides of every published criticism, we need to focus on what is relevant and important. --Pete (talk) 21:23, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Pete, you say that it is bunkum because it does not describe your own experiences with the school. Might you consider that other people, in other locations, in other times, might have had different experiences? Are you rejecting some sourced material based on your own experiences, which is basically WP:Original research? Note that some of the material is actually verified by leaders of the organisation - such as the one who admitted that marrying former school students, as he himself had done, was "a little weird". -- MelanieN (talk) 23:51, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

I can't use my own experiences as a source, so WP:NOR doesn't come into it. But the things I mention explicitly, such as personal tutors and guided marriages, have no bearing on the current School. I have met with members from all over the world - it's not that big a global organisation, and the largely middle-class members have means to travel - and I'm quite confident that there's a broad uniformity in the way things are done. I am not rejecting past behaviour outside my experience, and I'm inclined to lend a certain amount of credence to some of the tales under Leon MacLaren's leadership a quarter of a century back. My point is that Wikipedia is an almost ubiquitous source, and if someone were seeking to join the School, they might naturally come here seeking information, and go away with the idea that there are all sorts of wacky practices going on, especially as such a large proportion of the article is devoted to criticism. It's just not the case with the current organisation, and I think we need to be very careful that we don't give a false impression. I'm not seeing any response to my concerns about WP:WEIGHT and WP:RSUW so I'm not sure that Wikipolicy is being observed. Are other editors just trying to make Wikipedia as entertaining and salacious as possible? --Pete (talk) 03:40, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Millandhouse33, for well over 24 hours, during which you have been active, you have ignored my query higher up the article about your repeated allegations in connection with two lines of content. As far as I can see they aren't even in the article, and the allegations were parroted from the IP who has failed to retract their allegation of bad faith, which you echoed. This is not going to vanish if you ignore it. You did have time to remove a third line that was in the article, but you did so after I provided a supporting quote above. This is increasingly troubling. Your past form of edit warring and your reply to my Slee query above only exacerbates the situation. You invoked consensus, and I think you might be conflating it with democracy. To be clear, Wikipedia tells us that working towards consensus requires collegiality. Repeating a false allegation, failing to retract a false allegation, telling a colleague that what they raise has already been handled, and then going ahead and doing what you want anyway is not consensus editing. The issue actually hasn't already been handled, because we are still discussing the sources - and it's the secondary sources, rather than any number of editors' notion of truth, which is our highest authority. I am on the verge of handing this over to uninvolved editors. For the time being I have reverted two of your edits [10][11] because the discussion was still ongoing here. -Roberthall7 (talk) 20:11, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Roberthall7, you wrote In a nutshell, a reasonable summary would be a line saying: "The SES financial statement to the UK Charity Commission shows that by its own account it charges as little as possible in order to boost attendance numbers; it gets most of its money from real estate inherited from recruits who also give their free labor in running properties and meetings.".[12] I responded, in a nutshell, that it was not a reasonable summary at all. If Millandhouse33 thought you'd inserted your summary into the article, that's regrettable. It's even more regrettable that you didn't acknowledge your own draft text when Millandhouse33 quoted it. You could have mentioned you'd refrained from inserting it, rather than escalating your objections to "allegations" which were founded in your own text. 79.73.244.91 (talk) 23:56, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi Robert, To summarize what has happened here. Firstly a change was proposed by myself, clear reasons were set out. Other editors agreed, some adding other points to support the initial position. You responded, not addressing the points I or the others raised, so it is reasonable to assume you did not object. You will note I waited till you returned to propose and make the change specifically to give you a chance to weigh in. As a courtesy, I responded to the other points you made, and proceed with full consensus. If you do have an objection to these please do go ahead and state them for the others to consider. I’ll address all the points you just made in the order you made them:

• Houghman & Hogg has been contested a great many times by secondary sources. These are on the page. As you say nothing in the guidelines tell us to throw out these sources.
• Houghman and Hogg is a secondary source that has been discredited by every other secondary source that has followed. Houghman and Hogg is from 1984 based on research from earlier so can not give us a picture of SES today. Several secondary sources point out it is inaccurate, out of date, and politically motivated.
• No one has proposed throwing out Cusack, it has been represented in its relevant context. You will note Cusack makes no judgement on whether SES is a cult.
• Cusack explicitly says the organization has been accused of being a cult (whether rightly or wrongly). She does not make a judgment on this, the paper is based on people who experienced one of the schools in the 70’s and 80’s. The Gurjeff practices are no longer there, as already stated.(which you have ignored)
• To understand Shaws perspective you need to read the book, especially the parts where he explains his use of the word cult etc and his objective. Second-hand copies of the book are widely available, I invite you to read it and I’ll happily discuss with you any disagreement in meaning.
• My copy of washington is yet to arrive. However it wont shift the balance of the argument given there are so many secondary sources referring this. Again you should tell us why you have ignored the vast majority of secondary sources.
• Philosophy Magazine - Please link me to this article, I’m happy to purchase it. I can't accept your assertion without seeing it.
• The observer article also quotes people who say it isn't, and all the substantive points in there have been challenged. As Peteche explains “ For many years, Secret Cult was the only major "outsider" source on the SES, leading to a consistently one-sided and misinformed picture of the group”
• The Outline review says, again challenged in the other literature and see point by petech, baret, partrige etc.
• Times: The word sect is not the same as cult. Again there are lots of different adjectives used if you are favoring one over the others you do need to provide a reason for others to consider.
• C4 - again see peteche, barratt etc.
• Again Slee - NWR is a view from a minority of secondary sources, again no reason given for choosing to give it prominence.
• Evans took great care to make clear he was not using the word cult in a pejorative sense. The usage you are proposing is.

That is all your points directly addressed, do feel free to disagree and I will happily respond. Your point only works if the majority of secondary sources are ignored, to quote you “nothing in the guidelines tell us to throw out a secondary source”. Those secondary sources you are ignoring have not been disputed or discredited, and are more recent and largely academic rather than tabloid.

As you are putting so much emphasis on Houghman and Hog, we should remember that they make very clear that they only considered a minority of members in the UK to be cult members, so it would be wrong to use them to call the entire global organization a cult. If you dispute this you do need to provide your reasoning for others to consider.

You’ve not addressed the original points made by myself or others. The point about weight has yet again not addressed.

To sum up, the sources you state could not have been added the intro. The reasons have been stated.

I do invite you to address these issues, I am more than willing to discuss this with you. Others have already shown willing. If you are not going to the consensus will remain, you are being given fair opportunity to challenge the points raised but, despite writing extensively, you are choosing not to. My original posting explains why long term consensus is not relevant. If you wish to challenge that for everyone else's consideration again, please, do. Millandhouse33 (talk) 23:38, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Hard revert, administrator intervention required

This [13] is a hard revert and a return to warring, despite ample warnings not to do so. Since this page was protected by User:TonyBallioni, the editor has been given a lot of time by User:MelanieN and myself to explain Wikipedia to them, particularly with regard to all editors' deference to secondary sources. But this Talk page has become an exercise in talking at cross-purposes. Administrators will have the last word on all forms of misconduct. For these reasons I am drawing down my engagement with this Talk page for a few days. -Roberthall7 (talk) 06:33, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I haven't been following this page, and my involvement here was mainly as regards to the socking. If there are other behavioural issues, I would suggest WP:ANI. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:41, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

As this has been written I'm obliged to respond. The accusations made by the complainant are of course false, a simple reading of this talk page will support that.

To provide an explanation of what has been happening I reference to Graham's Hierarchy of disagreement. When a difference of views exists between editors on this page the majority take the approach of refutation followed by counter argument and so on until a position is reached. The complainant takes the position of "contradiction", stating the opposite case with little or no supporting evidence, usually not addressing the points made. This stance is repeated over and over again. If other editors are not cowed by this the complainant resorts to ad hominem attacks such as accusing those that don't agree of misconduct (as has been done here) or stating he will put something on the page that they do not like etc. Such attacks are again without substance and an attempt to manuplate rather than reach consensus.

The essence of the problem, which I believe a reading of this talk page will illustrate, are the complainants deeply held views about this organization and what it is. While it is clear that this is the complainants' heartfelt position, unfortunately, the sources do not support his view. The complainant repeatedly insisting upon them having prominance, has resulted in him frequently being at odds with most, if not all, active editors, while all other address differences through debate and discussion. Again this is visible above.

The specific accusations of lack of deference to secondary sources and talking cross purposes, the dialog above will show only the complainant to be guilty of that. Another editor has been mentioned in a context that implies their support, I make clear that no position has been stated by them so it would not be correct to attribute one.

The complainant has been invited to discuss the specific points but has repeatedly failed to. On his return, he will be once more welcome to do so.

Millandhouse33 (talk) 10:42, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Unreliable sources

I've removed two sections from the "Reception" section. One is based on a novel, which is by definition a work of fiction. Maybe it is based upon the experiences of the author, but in a dressed-up and sensationalised form. Much like Hollywood movies are "based on a true story", and they take all sorts of liberties with the truth.

The second is a blatant WP:BLP violation as being poorly sourced. --Pete (talk) 21:46, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

OK, I hear you about the Daily Mail (although I can't imagine who you are talking about when you call it a BLP violation). But in regard to the novel: we did not quote or cite anything to the novel itself. All the information we had was from interviews with the author by two reliable sources: Radio New Zealand and The Guardian. To that extent it seems as reliable as any other description by a former member of the cult. I see that I forgot to say "In an interview with The Guardian in attributing one of the sentences, but otherwise I think it could be restored. -- MelanieN (talk) 23:43, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Listening to the RNZ interview I hear, "I can't name the organisation for legal reasons". Are we to guess whether she means SES or The Study Society or some other group? Likewise The Guardian says, "For legal reasons I am not allowed to go into any detail about the organisation that our parents were members of." In neither case does she say what organisation she is describing. We can guess, and we might even be able to join the dots, but we can't do that here because of WP:SYNTH: we need a reliable source to make an explicit statement. --Pete (talk) 01:39, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

This is a far more sensitive topic to cover than anything else on this page. There is a natural conflict between wanting to give a serious issue due coverage and not overstating the extent of it within what is now a page about a very large global organisation. There are interviews with Salaman where she states most students were fine, her particular relationship with her tutor caused the problem. Essentially the page should reflect the full details of what happened to that minority, the struggle to get the issue addressed, the conclusion of that struggle, and that it was a minority of students that were affected by this, the majority reporting positive or neutral. A better approach to using individual accounts, as this page does, maybe to summarise in prose the situation as an encyclopedia might? This would require some work but it would avoid disagreements like this one? Millandhouse33 (talk) 23:59, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

I've removed some of the Emily Watson material, retaining that from a reliable source, as we can't use tabloids to support BLP text. We can't really summarise accounts; that would be synthesis, but we can quote from RS reports. --Pete (talk) 11:22, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

First, WP:BLP doesn't bar reporting criticism made by a living person; it is not a licence to silence living people. Second, the Daily Telegraph is not a tabloid but the Radio Times arguably is - it's a listings magazine padded out with features. 79.73.244.91 (talk) 11:47, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Quoting from WP:BLP:

We must get the article right. Be very firm about the use of high-quality sources. All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by an inline citation to a reliable, published source. Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion.

1. The quotation was not supported by a RS.
2. The material has been challenged, in the past and again in recent discussion.
3. I removed it, referencing wikipolicy, and if it is added again, I will escalate this to the appropriate noticeboard.
4. I retained the quotation that could be traced to a RS.

Open to discussion. --Pete (talk) 11:52, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

I've reverted myself, as per IP comments above. I had imagined that the DT was a tabloid - certainly the Australian versions are pretty rubbishy. On checking I find I was mistaken. --Pete (talk) 11:57, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. It's very easy to get caught out by superficial similarities between London and Sydney; personal experience in one can be so misleading in the other. 79.73.244.91 (talk) 21:06, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

The Telegraph in Australia is a fine example of a Murdoch tabloid. I assumed the same applied in the UK - a place not quite so fresh in my memory nowadays. I assumed wrong. Not to worry. Nothing ever gets lost on Wikipedia. Misplaced maybe... --Pete (talk) 03:05, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Text not per Daily Mail source, other citations problematic

Currently the "Allegations regarding St. James Schools" section begins

In 2004, an internet message board was set up to discuss the SES, where former members could give testimonials of experiences.

The Daily Mail article actually has "‘A few years ago I came across an internet forum in which ex-members shared their experiences’" with no mention of 2004 and no direct statement that the internet forum was set up specifically to discuss the SES rather than being a more general forum. Moreover, per WP:DAILYMAIL the Daily Mail is "generally unreliable" for Wikipedia.
The following two sentences have no references and are not even supported by the Daily Mail article.

Some former St. James pupils shared reminiscences about how as children they were mistreated, unreasonably punished and assaulted. Many others shared positive testimonies.

The two citations for the fourth sentence need improving.

The schools were subject to a critical series of articles focusing on ....

Preferably, they would name the authors (Hounam and Hogg; Hounam, Hogg and Adamson) and would link to independent archives rather than to scans held at "a reference site for information about the School of Economic Science and its satellite schools around the world". That way, we would also see whether Wikipedia's current citation of both articles as being published in the Evening Standard on the same day is correct; the scan of the second article is headed "St JAMES - School with no ICT (Education Guardian) 6-1-2004" though it does look more like an Evening Standard follow-up article.
Now, that archive is a subdomain of "SES Forums: Forums for discussion of the School of Economic Science and its satellite schools around the world" which might have been set up in 2004, might be the internet forum that the Daily Mail reports the interviewee as having come across, and might be as described in the next two sentences but at present, the three opening sentences are original research and synthesis without reliable sources and the next two citations want improvement. 79.73.244.91 (talk) 09:22, 26 February 2019 (UTC) For now, I've replaced the Daily Mail citation with a citation-needed tag, rather than use a failed-verification tag which would have been confusing without the citation. 79.73.244.91 (talk) 09:36, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

I've found the original reference in the article history (in RobertHall7's original insertion) and restored it, copy-editing two sentences into one to make it clear that the reference states everything summarised in the combined sentence rather than the first sentence only. That's no longer WP:OR or WP:SYNTH. The following sentence might still be; it does not appear to be directly supported by the reference. I've marked it citation-needed. 79.73.244.91 (talk) 10:57, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

I've looked at the noticeboard - since closed - and it's quite illuminating. I've met some of the people mentioned, very likely I've met some of those posting on the board under pseudonyms, and I've heard accounts of the early years in Sydney under the leadership of the Mavros. I don't think we can use any of the material on the forum, but it could be linked as a "See also" site. The forum cuts out in 2013, so there's a little overlap with my own experience of the School. I should note that I ceased to attend classes with the School last year, but remain on cordial terms with the members. The current school bears very little resemblance to the regime described by some of the forum posters, and even the criticism expressed there is ultimately derived from a handful of ex-members. I don't doubt that they are expressing their feelings honestly, but again, how much of it can we use? WP:WEIGHT is relevant.

Any organisation, from the Boy Sprouts to the Women's Institute will have ex-members who feel that they have escaped from the pits of hell, and current members who are more than happy with their patch of paradise. I'm not comfortable with using the accounts of individual members, often reported in unreliable sources, but a few good third party sources do exist, and if we can include rebuttals from officers of the School, then we have some sort of balance. It must also be stressed that we are talking about events of the past age; I'm not seeing any serious criticism of the current School.--Pete (talk) 11:43, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

It would be an extraordinary breach of WP:RS to take material directly from discussions on www.ses-forums.org and I didn't mean to even hint at it. FYI, Townend says the 2004 message board was called "Forum.whyaretheydead.net". As for "include rebuttals from officers of the School, then we have some sort of balance", Wikipedia is not a public service broadcaster, required always to have spokesman from both sides be they opposed political parties or rocky-moon/green-cheese-moon proponents. That's not how WP:NPOV works - see for example the WP:BALANCE part of it. 79.73.244.91 (talk) 22:22, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Something from Townsend on exaggerated claims: "I accept Debenham’s Punishment Book as a careful and accurate record. It has all the appearances of a genuine rather than a dishonestly fabricated record and is clearly more reliable than the victim’s recollection back over 20 to 30 years. One boy said he had been beaten by Debenham on hundreds of occasions. The book gave the lie to this gross exaggeration. He had in fact been beaten on 3 occasions, a total of 8 strokes. It is worth noting that in the 1984 Report of the Inspectors, who would have seen the Punishment Book, caning is referred to as “infrequent”. " Townsend says earlier" There is quite naturally a great difficulty when trying to investigate the facts of something which occurred 20 to 30 years ago. Memory is fallible, especially where the witness is trying to remember back to his/her youth. Moreover in some cases, the event in question may have taken on the mantle of an oral tradition, giving wide range to exaggeration or to unwitting fabrication" . May be worth adding to give some perspective. Millandhouse33 (talk) 12:24, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

That's a very dangerous path to go down. Juxtaposing that quotation with WP:RS reports would look like an attempt to discredit them and would have that effect. Remember too that Townend came to his conclusions after a strict weighing of evidence; his careful description of that must not be used to cast doubt on his conclusions.

Townend subtitled his section on the future "Has Anything Changed?" He found "a real change in the ethos and conduct of the schools". Shaw's chapter on the SES frames a history of the SES in an account of a present-day (1994) course and finds a significant contrast. Miss Crammond's rather amusing, MacLaren's "regime of holy servitude - part Gurdjieffian discipline, part oriental mysticism, part Christian mysticism, part social snobbery" not so much. If we only take Miss Crammond from Shaw's chapter and excise his description of MacLaren's regime, if we treat our other sources similarly and line them up in opposition, we do our readers a disservice, we abuse our sources and we even do the SES a disservice by presenting it as uniform, unchanging and unresponsive, either perpetually and uniformly benign or as malign from the begining, the only change being that it was progressively exposed as such. Our article now does both at great length; that's not WP:BALANCE, that's failure. 79.73.244.91 (talk) 22:22, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Not sure that I take well to being lectured on WP:NPOV and WP:BALANCE from an apparently recent IP editor who may not have read WP:INDENT.

BTAIM, I'm not arguing for a presentation of the School as uniform and unchanging. Quite obviously the School has seen three distinct phases:

1. Founding and emphasis on economics and justice. Land Rent and so on. Gurdjieff and Ouspensky taken as sources for a new direction, leading to MacLaren's turning to HH as a guru.
2. MacLaren's leadership of the school as a strongly controlled, strongly Easternised organisation. If we are to use the c-word at all, it is to describe these days, where Sanskrit and meditation were promoted as a discipline. The Sydney School in Australia became an extreme example of this.
3. Post-MacLaren leading to the current more or less benevolent state.

My concerns about WP:WEIGHT remain, and remain unaddressed in discussion. The School is about more than the reports of ex-members and we don't really need such a long section.

NPOV requires us to consider RS material to give all sides of debate according to weight. We don't take a stand on a particular question, but we make sure that we report views fairly. The usual example is that we don't dedicate half the Earth article to the view that it is flat. --Pete (talk) 03:37, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Agree that Juxtaposing is not a good idea and is currently done far too much on the page my concern is balance and weight as both of yours seem to be. Perhaps someone could propose some text to move the discussion forward? Millandhouse33 (talk) 09:12, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

I strongly suspect that if current editors stepped away and a couple of experienced Wikipedians with no previous interest in the SES (or in NRMs) were left alone to work on this article for a week or a month, off and on, it would pass through some curious stages and end up much leaner, much more readable and informative, and much less alienating. Its only current virtue is that it practices equal-opportunity alienation. There's excessive and somewhat inaccessible promotional detail on course content, teachings, methods and activities, countered by excessive coverage of every critical book, chapter and article, countered by excessive coverage of exaggerated claims that criticism was discredited, and it's saturated with primary or otherwise non-WP:RS sources, especially books published by SES and their associated publisher Shepheard-Walwyn (see Talk:School of Economic Science/Archive 1#Shepheard-Walwyn: Reliable Source?). Too much of the current prose has been written by editors with an established view as to whether the SES is benign or malign and intentionally or not is heavy with connotations, implications and associations. Broadly speaking, editing by disinterested Wikipedians would probably go through a few cycles of prune and rewrite, with rare rewritten reinsertions, and would be a collaborative effort that didn't spend much time on paragraph-by-paragraph, sentence-by-sentence, source-by-source discussions.

I've no idea how that could happen. 92.19.24.204 (talk) 18:13, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

I agree that the page does need a complete re-write. At the moment it looks very little like an encyclopedia entry. The page does need to be more stable before that can happen. I have a few more sources to add, anyone rewriting should have all the information first. I do think it is possible to go step-by-step on this and rewrite one section at a time. Millandhouse33 (talk) 11:19, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

References

Madame Blavatsky's Baboon by Peter Washington

There are quite a few pages on the SES in Madame Blavatsky's Baboon, a 1996 book by the University of Middlesex's Peter Washington published by Schocken / Random House. For years I have held off from citing this source, in favour of Evans, precisely because the latter is friendlier to the organization (as well as being 2013), thereby contributing to article stability. Given recent editing and discussion, I’m now referring to Washington to show how the long-term consensus version of this article was a compromise, which relative newcomers might not be aware of. There's nothing in Wikipedia policy or guidelines that says we should not use this source. I invite all here to look it up for discussion now. -Roberthall7 (talk) 17:03, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

This book is out of print so it will take a while for my copy to arrive. As it was published in 1993, even if deemed valid the best it can do is describe events in the organization's history, rather than anything current which is where the big gap in this page is. Millandhouse33 (talk) 12:03, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I’ve now got this. The pages that refer to SES contain 8 citations. 6 of them refer directly to houghman and hogg, 1 to SES tube advertising, one (covering 6 paragraphs) based on original interviews but again refers to Human and Hogg for more info. This is essentially a rehashing of Houghman and Hogg, which the author himself describes as “over-sensational”. Millandhouse33 (talk) 11:24, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Proposed changes to lines in the lede

To better reflect the page as one about a global organization rather than a UK one I propose replacing the following line:

The UK operation also operates the fee-paying, general education St James Independent Schools for children

with

SES organizations have founded schools for children's education in various countries

Additionally, propose now deleting the final line about property portfolio. The only source cited that says this is Washington, who gets his information from the discredited secret cult. This has been discussed in on this page before but no reason credible has been provided as to why this warrants a place in the lede.

Millandhouse33 (talk) 20:33, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Addressing recent tags

I'm starting this section to build some consensus around the recent tags added to this page.

My initial response was to collapse the template at the top of the page but leave it there as additional experienced, and unbiased, editors would be welcome and beneficial to the page. However, regardless of the intention behind it, having it there does discredit the page and I am now in favor of removing it.

I'm hoping users Kashmiri , Elgato97, Boneohimself, and others will join the discussion.

Here are my thoughts on the different tags:

• COI- This has been a problem on the page for a very long time. See discussions involving user roberthall here and here, which he did not respond to. His contributions go back to 2008 and are of the same vein throughout. The only way to correct this has been for other editors to contribute to the page and add additional sources, check quoted sources were quoted correctly and to ensure the contributions of this user are given correct weight. Several editors have contributed to this over the past months and while the problem still exists the page is now far more balanced than at any point in the past 10 years. It seems to me, the only way to address the COI issue is for several editors to remain involved. I don't see what the tag can do here. The fact that Roberthall is one of the people that placed this tag demonstrates it is not legitimate but a continuation of a long campaign to use this page to attack an organization he does not like. For a conflicted editor to accuse others of COI is simply Psychological projection. With COI, I don't believe the key protagonist, whose actions have caused everybody else to join this page, will ever leave the page, however, the diversity of editors now present prevents any disregard of the guidelines as the chat has shown.

• This article contains wording that promotes the subject in a subjective manner without imparting real information - Where this occurs is not clear to me. The individual sections should be pointed out so someone can address them.

• too long I wholeheartedly agree with this one. The reception section should be replaced or summarised. It has grown so large because it was the only way I could find to give the original comments their correct weight.

I'm in favor of replacing the maintenance tag at the top of the page with inline cleanup tags identifying the areas that need looking at. This achieves the objective of drawing editors attention to the issues without acting like a badge of shame on the page.

As always I'll get stuck into this as time allows, Millandhouse33 (talk) 10:06, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Adding maintenance tags to the page without any reason or explanation is just vandalism. I invited both editors responsible to explain why they have added them, they choose to edit war instead. One of them has a track record here already. Boneohimself (talk) 15:02, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

No. Millandhouse33 and Boneohimself, I restored User:Kashmiri's maintenance tag a single time because they were a newcomer to the page and they have a right to their opinion. You were given the same courtesy when you both arrived in February. In my experience, people tend to add tags before engaging in the Talk page, not the other way round. Kashmiri may still do so, if they haven't been put off. Kashmiri's tag was neutral and applied to all involved editors equally, including myself. Therefore, it cannot have been an "accusation" by me. Nor did I participate in an edit war, as we use the term. Most importantly, Wikipedia rules say that conduct complaints are for WP:ANI, not Talk pages. Here you are asked to assume good faith and avoid personal attacks. If it's helpful, there is a policy known as WP:DISENGAGE: I stated earlier that I am stepping away from the Talk page, and days became weeks. -Roberthall7 (talk) 23:23, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi Robert, I was not given "the same courtesy" as you put it, you did all you could to prevent changes to the page. I'm sure you will disagree with that view however I'm obligated to leave a response so other editors know to look back through the discussions on talk pages and make up their own minds. After using the talk page to address behavioral issues yourself , albeit false ones, as was done here, it is not reasonable to try and stop others doing the same. Millandhouse33 (talk) 15:32, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Commons files used on this page have been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page have been nominated for deletion:

• Andrew MacLaren MP.jpg (discussion)
• Leon MacLaren.jpg (discussion)

Participate in the deletion discussions at the nomination pages linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 23:01, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Responding to tags placed by Dreamy Jazz and Kashmiri

@Dreamy Jazz:@Kashmiri: You've both placed WP:TOOLONG tags at this article. In response, I'm going to have a go at cutting it down. Please bear in mind the relatively recent expansion of the article content to about 300% of its 2018 stability state was combined with the cutting of certain sourced content, some of which I am going to restore and attempt to improve. I invite you to watch the page to ensure you see the changes I'll make and the responses to them, and to step in whenever you want. -Roberthall7 (talk) 08:08, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Roberthall7, ok thanks for helping to deal with this. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 ^{talk to me | my contributions} 20:25, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

RS/N

Requesting review of sources [14] --Roberthall7 (talk) 16:50, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

You're more likely to receive responses there if you follow the instructions at Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, which appear at the top of the noticeboard and when you edit there. 79.73.240.227 (talk) 08:49, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Republished chapter of Shaw's Spying in Guru Land entitled The Pinstripe Guru

The relevant chapter in our RS William Shaw's Spying in Guru Land entitled The Pinstripe Guru was republished online over 10 years ago at the dialogueireland.wordpress.com website, where it can still be be found. If anyone knows whether this link can be added to the reference, please go ahead and do so or let me know how. Maybe User:Dreamy Jazz or User:Kashmiri? -Roberthall7 (talk) 14:48, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

That's a link to a copyright violation and cannot be added. If included in an article, it would be tagged with Template:Copyvio link to trigger revdel, just as links to song lyrics are. I believe that is also the case with talk pages and as a late revdel has to remove a lot of page history, I'm being cautious and tagging it now. My apologies to you and the reviewing admin if I'm wrong and the link can remain. 92.19.31.86 (talk) 20:31, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, the relevant policy is WP:COPYLINK. I have edited the link as a precaution. Please also be aware of WP:TALKO. Thank you also for folding out the list over at RS/N, and for your research there. Copyright specialists are much needed at WP - any reason why you haven't signed up with a username yet? I'd be interested to know how we can be certain that website violated copyright; is it that they are not presenting evidence of the author's permission? All best, -Roberthall7 (talk) 10:27, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

You ask "how we can be certain that the website violated copyright". Instead what matters is how can we have any confidence that it does not breach copyright, and the answer is that we cannot. WP:ELNEVER expresses the principle well: "External links to websites that display copyrighted works are acceptable as long as the website is manifestly run, maintained or owned by the copyright owner; the website has licensed the work from the owner; or it uses the work in a way compliant with fair use."

You write "Please also be aware of WP:TALKO". In case you wish to suggest that I should not have tagged your link to a breach of copyright, I will also recommend WP:TALKO to you: "Cautiously editing or removing another editor's comments is sometimes allowed, but normally you should stop if there is any objection. If you make anything more than minor changes it is good practice to leave a short explanatory note such as "[possible libel removed by 79.73.240.227 (talk) 16:01, 13 July 2019 (UTC)]". Some examples of appropriately editing others' comments: ... Removing prohibited material such as comments by banned users, libel, legal threats, personal details, or violations of copyright, living persons, or anti-promotional policies."

As you've removed the tag along with the link, I'll ask at WP:ELN whether revdel is required or your deletion is enough.

Yes, there are reasons why I don't edit with a username. I am not evading any bans, blocks or clouds, or socking, or engaging in meat-puppetry, or otherwise in breach of Wikipedia's principles and policies. 79.73.240.227 (talk) 16:01, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm restoring the tag as a precaution. -Roberthall7 (talk) 15:08, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Happy to report MelanieN's done what needed doing and left what doesn't need doing.[15] 80.41.134.48 (talk) 23:06, 24 August 2019 (UTC)