Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Athaenara (talk | contribs) at 06:38, 14 April 2007 (Two February 2007 sections - "What's going on here?" (Mega Society lawsuit) and "MF v. MS section" (Mega Foundation v. Mega Society) - to Archive 2.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Request for Relief

I have received the following complaint Fred Bauder 13:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello again, Fred. As you may or may not have noticed, Misplaced Pages administrator FeloniousMonk has now carried out his threat to insert into the article Christopher Michael Langan certain defamatory falsehoods provided by certain self-identified involved parties. As you'll recall, I apprised you of this threat long ago - see the article's talk page - and requested that the article be locked (for reasons not yet clear to me, you declined to do so). Unsurprisingly, almost every sentence of the section "Mega Society Lawsuit" contains at least one false and/or defamatory allegation.

Rather than going through the falsehoods one by one, I'll simply point out that (1) this entire insertion is highly inaccurate on numerous counts, thus violating WP:V; (2) the sources are mainly self-published by non-notable involved parties and therefore not reliable, thus violating WP:RS (the "decision" and "judgment" are relevant to none of Langan's works, beliefs, major activities, affiliations, or accomplishments, but only to three URL's legitimately owned and employed by a nonprofit Foundation which receives only a passing mention in the body of the article, and which bears no substantive resemblance to the group allegedly "owned" by the litigants); and (3) the insertion is biographically irrelevant, openly defamatory (even containing what appears to be a libelous charge of plagiarism despite the absence of that term from the personal self-published web page being passed off as its source), and thoroughly violates WP:BLP, a very important policy here at Misplaced Pages which helps keep it on the right side of the ethical fence. Obviously, this situation is something that no conscientious, well-meaning Misplaced Pages arbitrator or administrator, hopefully including you, would allow.

Obviously, the misinformation in question needs to be removed. Since, in your capacity as a member of the ArbCom, you inexplicably tied the hands of the only two people with the will and the knowledge to insure the article's accuracy, the responsibility to protect this article from administrative miscreants would seem to fall to you and your fellow ArbCom members. In other words, the article should be reverted to an acceptable form and locked against the vandals and wayward administrators who have periodically attacked it over the last six and a half months. (Of course, if you would prefer to reverse your restrictions on DrL and me so that we can set things right ourselves - after all, I edited the article only two or three times in very benign and innocuous ways over the course of many months, and DrL's edits were a model of accuracy, neutrality, and reliable sourcing - then that would be acceptable to us as well, barring further abuses of administrative authority tending to neutralize corrections and further corrupt the article. This would offer the further ethical advantage of tending to mitigate any damage that might occur to our reputations and nonprofit endeavors from future defamatory attacks of the kind to which we have been recurrently subjected here.)

Thank you for your prompt attention to this urgent matter. Asmodeus 19:27, 23 January 2007 (UTC) (copied from my talk page Fred Bauder 13:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC))

Does he have any valid complaints? Fred Bauder 13:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't know enough about this issue to comment on that. However, if as this person says there are `only two people with the will and the knowledge to insure the article's accuracy', then does Misplaced Pages need an article about this guy? Since the personal testimony of two people cannot be considered a reliable source, nor verifiable, and probably not even neutral, if they are the only ones who know about these things. Should this article not just be removed? Rosenkreuz 16:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The only person who is making that claim is Asmodeus who is Langan and the second person he is referring to is his wife. The claim does not need to be taken seriously. JoshuaZ 17:22, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

That both are banned from editing this article per an RFAR ruling seems relevant to note here. FeloniousMonk 17:50, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, he's now trying to make the claim at Fred's talk page that since the Superior Court of California ruling against him was a default judgement, in other words - he didn't appear to defend himself and so lost, that it and the National Arbitration Forum decision are flawed sources. Incredible. FeloniousMonk 00:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

He makes a good point, a default judgement, by definition, is ex parte, that is only the evidence of one side is considered. A sharp contrast to a peer reviewed source. However, one must look at the point being demonstrated, that they went to court and there was an injunction entered against use of the name. It ought not be used to try to show that they did not have a right (before the injunction) to use the name. Fred Bauder 02:25, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

He would make a good point if the article actually tried to show that they did not have a right before the injuction to use the name. The article merely states (correctly) that the injuction ruled they had to cease using the name and that the opposing party disputed their right to use the name. Looks pretty much verifiable, neutral, and reliable to me. --ScienceApologist 02:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree, Fred. The article has never said they never had that right, only the plaintiff's allegation and that they were enjoinded from using it moving forward. FeloniousMonk 03:19, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Since I wrote the content I suppose I should respond here. No, he doesn't have a valid complaint. The sources relied upon, the decision of the National Arbitration Forum on claim number FA0312000215404 and the ruling of the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego on case number GIC 787630, are accurate. The National Arbitration Forum decision is linked from the National Arbitration Forum's own site, and the ruling of the Superior Court of California is easily verified, as you know. And neither source supports his contention; but they do indeed support the article's content. Reading the two rulings, the two Langans come off as shameless self-promoters not above spinning facts to suit their causes, something that aligns well with our experience here. Of course they're going to want any mention of adverse rulings removed; but the rulings are notable and properly sourced per our policies and necessary for a complete article on the subject. Whether Lagan is notable enough for an article at Misplaced Pages is another matter, as is whether it's worth the hassle, which speaks to the matter of self promotion again. FeloniousMonk 16:57, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The only valid complaint he has is that Fred didn't lock the article and Langan doesn't know why. Elsewise, everything is appropriately sourced and meets WP:V, WP:RS and WP:NPOV.

BTW, Rosenkreuz has a point. Langan is essentially a nobody, and whether he deserves an article (one that he hoped to turn into a self-aggrandizing publicity page) is highly debatable. •Jim62sch• 20:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

He does meet WP:BIO. Apparently, a lot of magazines and newspapers find him notable. Not entirely sure why, but that's not our concern as much. JoshuaZ 20:52, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, and he was on Walker, Texas Ranger once too. FeloniousMonk 21:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

New version

Hello, everyone. I recently introduced a new version of this article which:

• Adds details of Langan's life, covering where he was born, his father and mother, his history of poverty and abuse, his educational history, his "double-life strategy", and the Mega Foundation.

• Adds a section on the CTMU. The CTMU, which has received coverage in Popular Science, The Times, Esquire, Newsday, on 20/20, and elsewhere, is a major part of Langan's notability, and needs inclusion here: not, of course, to be asserted as truth, but to be described, factually and neutrally.

• Expands the intelligent design section, overviewing what the CTMU says about ID, summarizing Langan's Uncommon Dissent chapter, clarifying his views on evolution, and quoting his stance on religion.

• Reworks the Mega Society and Goddard material for factuality and neutrality. As Asmodeus said, the current presentation is filled with inaccuracies, claiming, for example, that Langan left the Mega Society in 1997 (he was still a member in 2001), that the 2002 suit was filed against Langan and his wife (it was filed only against Langan), that the Langans renamed "their organization" the Mega Foundation after the 2004 decision (the Mega Foundation had existed since 1999), and more. The presentation is also non-neutral, relaying the Complainant's contention from the Forum decision but not the Respondent's, and omitting to mention that the Complainant was found not to be entitled to three of the five domain names that it sought.

I tried to present the material accurately and neutrally, with frequent qualifiers (e.g. "According to Langan", "claims Langan") and footnoted citations. The new version is much more informative than the old, and I'll be glad to address any claims in need of citation or qualification. I hope we can work together to incorporate this material into the article. Tim Smith 22:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Your "new version" was highly biased and continues a troubling pattern you've established of treating the project as a vehicle for promoting Langan's views. This is presently being discussed at your ongoing user conduct RFC, Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Tim_Smith#Continuing_POV_promotion, so I suggest you reconsider your pushing of such biased content here. FeloniousMonk 04:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Per WP:NPOV, Langan's work should not be asserted as being the truth, but neutrally presented. That's what I've tried to do, taking care to use frequent qualifiers (e.g. "According to Langan", "claims Langan") and footnoted citations. As I said, I'll be glad to look at any claims in need of citation or qualification, and would welcome constructive feedback. The new version adds much sourced, relevant information (not just about Langan's work, but about his life), so again, I hope we can work together to incorporate it. Tim Smith 08:51, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The previous version implies that Langan started out calling his group Mega Society-East, but in fact he initially called it the Mega Society and declared it to be the official Mega Society. I added a link substantiating that. His argument for doing so was that the Mega Society had been abandoned and so he was stepping in to resurrect a defunct organization. I added a link to that argument he made. I removed the extraneous bit about a dispute between Langan's wife Gina and a contributor to their disputed "Noesis" journal. The charge raised by that author claims that Gina changed his article without his permission, making it attribute his thesis to Langan. While it appears that the article was in fact changed (see reference 2 in the original version and then in the altered version) and that LoSasso admitted making the change, importing disputes related to a family member of a subject seems, to be fair to the subject, rather unwarranted. CaveBat 02:00, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Request for removal of false and defamatory material

For the last seven months, DrL and I have watched this originally accurate and well-sourced article periodically degenerate to character assassination. Two of its current sections are false or misleading, and one of those sections ("Mega Society Lawsuit") is blatantly defamatory of the subject, his wife, and the nonprofit foundation on whose board they serve. According to the powers-that-be here at Misplaced Pages, all that one needs to do in order to protect oneself from defamation is register one's objections on the talk page of one's biography and explain why corrections are necessary (in this case, that was done a long time ago). Once this has been done, so the theory goes, the abundant "good faith" of Misplaced Pages's editors, and the integrity of its administrators, will take over and save the day. (Actually, since the inclusion of this material in the biography of a living subject violates every applicable Misplaced Pages policy, it should have been removed immediately "in good faith" without placing any burden at all on the libel victims. But since it has been jealously protected by the Misplaced Pages administrator who inserted it, and since this administrator has in turn been empowered and his activities tacitly sanctioned by higher levels of the Misplaced Pages bureaucracy, it has already survived and done its damage for an unacceptable length of time.) Therefore, just to ensure that no stone is left unturned in our good-faith efforts to obtain relief, here is the actual chain of events that has been maliciously misrepresented in the article.

Christopher Michael Langan was at one time a member of a super high-IQ society called the "Titan Society". After several name changes, the people now claiming to be the "owners" of that group (who had formerly claimed that it was democratic, and that they alone possessed a democratic mandate to run it) suddenly claimed to have "merged" it, admittedly without the permission of the majority of the members of either group, with a prior and arguably defunct high IQ society, the Mega Society. (Later, they would claim that this maneuver entitled them to own the name and "trademark" of the prior group under common law in the State of California. However, this claim is almost certainly invalid. A group cannot be founded twice, and an allegedly democratic group which is merged with a prior group without the permission of their respective members is not the same as the group with which it is purportedly merged, particularly when the groups began with different members and different qualification standards.) The Titan Society's hardcopy newsletter, ultimately dubbed "Noesis", was published at different times by different members of the group, including Mr. Langan.

Ultimately, owing to the profitable but unlicensed testing activities of its founder and one of his associates, the group's qualification procedures came under fire from the Medical Board of California and the analogous medical authority in New York, specifically regarding the illegal practice of psychology (i.e., psychological testing without a license). Immediately prior to the official MBC warning, one of those who now claim to be the group's "owners" had been producing the monthly newsletter; after the warning was issued, he and his associates inexplicably fell incommunicado and failed to produce the newsletter for seven consecutive months. Mr. Langan (as a past editor), recognizing that the group needed to do something other than merely play dead, revived the newsletter, explicitly advocating compliance with the law as outlined in the MBC warning. Outraged, the former publisher suddenly and unexpectedly resurrected his own version of the journal and advocated defiance of the warning despite the fact that he and his associates were residents of California, claiming that only they represented "the real Mega Society" and printing negative remarks about Mr. Langan. When Mr. Langan pointed out that the former publisher and his associates had no right to force other members of the group to share complicity in violations of California law and the laws of other states with similar licensing requirements (including New York, where Mr. Langan himself resided at that time), they summarily demanded that he stop publishing his alternative edition of the newsletter, asserting that only they were entitled to to publish a newsletter in the society's name. That is, they demanded exclusive control of the only means of communication among the group's members (whose contact information they claimed to possess, but kept secret from other members).

Unintimidated, Mr. Langan responded by continuing to publish an alternative edition of the newsletter, which he qualified as representing only the "East Coast Faction" of the group, for the explicit purpose of protecting the society as a whole from any criminal liability for acts which might be committed by the group's self-styled proprietors in defiance of the MBC warning (i.e., by the California litigants, to whom Mr. Langan referred as the "West Coast Faction"). These self-styled "owners" of the "Mega Society" then began threatening Mr. Langan with legal action, ultimately prompting him to turn his back on them in disgust. Meanwhile, Mr. Langan and several others, including the future Mrs. Langan (Dr. Langan), had founded a completely separate organization, the Mega Foundation, whose nonprofit corporate structure, composition, and charitable purposes - as clearly stated in its Articles of Incorporation, which are dated considerably in advance of the California litigation and its ensuing judgment - in no way resemble those of the "Mega Society", an elite "social club" designed to provide its founder, an amateur psychometrician, with test subjects for his high-ceiling intelligence tests. For a time, the Mega Foundation ran a charitable project in which they hosted websites for the benefit of the members of various high IQ clubs that wished to participate, acquiring appropriate domain names for that purpose (not just for the "Mega Society", but for several distinct super-high IQ societies). However, this only further enraged the "owners" of the "Mega Society", who responded by scheming to make a litigious grab for the "megasociety" domain names, in which they had never shown the slightest interest prior to their good-faith acquisition by Dr. Langan. The false allegations contained in the ex parte San Diego judgment were concocted for that purpose, and for the additional purpose of vengefully seizing (i.e., "reverse-hijacking") the Mega Foundation's domain names as well. Although ICANN later improperly recognized the litigants' claim on the "megasociety.***" domain names based on the San Diego judgment, it rejected all of their other claims.

Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated matter, the Langans printed an essay voluntarily submitted to Mr. Langan's alternative law-and-order edition of the "Mega Society" newsletter by one Ian Goddard, an amateur Internet conspiracy theorist (and nonmember of the "Mega Society"). Some time afterward, Goddard suddenly appeared on an independent Internet bulletin board, and after seeming to innocently involve himself in the ongoing discussion, burst out with the claim that Mr. Langan had failed to give him credit for a concept that Langan had long ago introduced as an original component of his CTMU theory, "syndiffeonesis". The Langans publicly but gently corrected Goddard, reminding him that Mr. Langan had invented the term and the underlying concept, and explained why Goddard's vague and inconsequential "holistic identity" notion, which he introduced circa 1997 and claims to have gotten from some part of Asian philosophy, is not strictly identical to "syndiffeonesis". But Goddard merely became more adamant, persisting in his spurious accusations. Finally, Dr. Langan posted for general examination a 1992 paper by Mr. Langan in which the term and concept "syndiffeonesis" were used and clearly defined on a level far more advanced than the concept described and named by Goddard, in principle laying the matter to rest.

Unfortunately, Goddard nevertheless persisted in his accusations. Therefore, as a warning to those who might be taken in by Goddard's injurious allegations, Dr. Langan went back to Goddard's paper and inserted a footnote consistent with the evidence earlier presented, essentially observing that if Goddard's "holistic identity" were really synonymous with "syndiffeonesis" as Goddard claimed, then since Mr. Langan had invented "syndiffeonesis" long before Goddard came up with "holistic identity", Mr. Langan would also own credit for "holistic identity". In other words, Dr. Langan merely drew a valid conclusion from Goddard's own claim in conjunction with known facts, and then published it on a cautionary basis in what seemed the most appropriate place. After some unknown period of time, Goddard then created a personal, self-published, utterly uncorroborated web page complaining about Dr. Langan's cautionary footnote, repeating his original claim, rejecting the Langans' proof that his claim is invalid, and asserting that the Langans had taken the "holistic identity" concept from his paper and applied it to "syndiffeonesis", thus transmuting "syndiffeonesis" into an entirely new concept for which Goddard himself owns the credit. (Anyone familiar with Mr. Langan's work would know immediately that this accusation is absurd. Goddard's explanation for why he continues to make his claim despite the graphic evidence brought to bear against it is easily recognized as nonsense by any reasonably intelligent person who bothers to look closely at the two concepts.)

At some point, Goddard succeeded in aligning himself with the self-styled "owners" - or as he has sycophantically called them, the "true leaders" - of the "Mega Society". As described above on this talk page, some of these people and/or their associates then fed some or all of their combined false and defamatory claims to certain WP administrators, who promptly announced their intention to insert them into the CML biography in contempt of crucial Misplaced Pages policies designed to protect the encyclopedic integrity of Misplaced Pages and the feelings and reputations of its biography subjects. Mr. Langan registered his objections to these threats and drew the attention of the ArbCom to them, requesting protection for the article. This request was acknowledged but then ignored. A month or so later, Misplaced Pages administrator and resident Intelligent Design critic FeloniousMonk, backed up by other members and sympathizers of "WikiProject ID" and evidently determined to root out and publish as much derogatory material on the Langans as he could for his own malicious purposes, then carried out this threat, inserting various unfounded and defamatory allegations into the article while citing and linking to several self-published and/or ex parte sources allegedly supporting them. Pointing out that the allegations are false and defamatory and the referenced sources unsound, and that their inclusion in the article violates every applicable WP policy, Mr. Langan requested that they be removed. However, in clear violation of all of those policies, they were not removed as requested. In fact, FeloniousMonk - the WP administrator who maliciously inserted these allegations and references into the article - has speciously cited WP policy as a justification for leaving them, thus implicitly asserting that his actions fall under the control of Misplaced Pages's "encyclopedic" policies rather than his own expressive freedom as an ISP user. (I've ignored the most recent omissions and additions to the article, since they preserve false, defamatory, and biographically irrelevant allegations and sources which should also have been removed.)

The correct version of events has now been clearly presented. However, some editors may still linger under certain dangerous misapprehensions about the nature of defamation and the responsibilities of this site and its users. Accordingly, I provide the following information not as part of any legal threat or intimidating exercise in "wikilawyering" (complaints about which would seem to have been rendered pointless and hypocritical by the legalistic nature of the defamation), but merely to help Misplaced Pages users behave responsibly and make their own informed editorial decisions with respect to this article and others like it.

The first thing to understand as a Misplaced Pages editor is that if you defame some person and/or organization or place them in a bad light, and you are duly informed you that what you've said or written about them is false and defamatory (whether or not somebody else said it first, and you are merely "quoting your source"), then you are obliged to retract it. If, on the other hand, you instead insist that it is "accurate" and "neutral" and therefore decline to retract it, and your victims call you on it under the law, then the burden of proof regarding its veracity is all yours. That is, if and when you are called into court on account of it, you will need to prove that what you've said or written, including any part of it originating with or imparted to you by other sources, is true. (Note that an ordinary Misplaced Pages editor is not an ISP, and his/her sources are not the "users" of his/her "Internet services"; thus, although the sources cited by an editor may be liable for speaking or publishing the defamation, so is the editor for actively scavenging and repeating it.) On the other hand, if you cannot prove that your allegations are true, then depending on a reasonable evaluation of your intent and the negative impact of the material on your victim(s), you may be judged guilty of defamation, in which event the court will impose on you a burdensome but appropriate penalty. (In the course of this process, the court will demand that your real name and/or IP address and any other available contact information be provided, if necessary by Misplaced Pages itself, and Misplaced Pages will have no choice but to hand you over in order to protect itself.)

Secondly, some Misplaced Pages editors and administrators may be under the mistaken impression that despite the existence of enforceable antidefamation laws, they can write whatever they please, true or false, benign or malicious, and remain safely under the protective umbrella of Misplaced Pages, whose highest authorities are reputed to believe that it bears absolutely no responsibility or liability for "objectionable" information provided by its users and/or administrators. This belief appears to stem from a highly questionable legal opinion to the effect that under the Good Samaritan clause of Section 203 of the Communications Decency Act, Misplaced Pages enjoys complete immunity from prosecution for defamation published under its auspices. But despite such opinions, it is very important for Misplaced Pages and all of its editors to understand that none of this is necessarily true. In particular, users/editors who produce or relay defamatory misinformation are liable for doing so regardless of whether Misplaced Pages itself is immune; indeed, Misplaced Pages would need to explicitly divorce itself from such a user as a condition of its own immunity, thereby hanging that user out to dry (although perhaps not as easily as expected, particularly if the offending user also happens to be a Misplaced Pages administrator). Moreover, there exist strong legal arguments to the effect that Misplaced Pages is not immune under the provisions of Section 203, particularly under certain aggravating circumstances that happen to be present in this case.

I have previously observed that it is extremely unwise for individual editors, and for Misplaced Pages as a whole, to insert themselves into the middle of potentially ongoing legal disputes, particularly by taking the side of the litigious aggressors who originally provided the defamatory misinformation recently shamefully contaminating the CML biography. Obviously, this is not a legitimate function of any "encyclopedia" purporting to operate in good faith as a tax-exempt public service, or of individuals claiming to act in furtherance of its encyclopedic purposes, or in conformance with or administrative enforcement of its explicitly encyclopedic policies. Accordingly, I urge that the entire "Mega Society lawsuit" section of this biography be removed immediately and permanently, as it should in fact have been removed upon its first appearance.

I sincerely hope that these comments and corrections prove helpful in that regard, and thank you all for your attention. Asmodeus 16:17, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it's especially funny that the Mega Society was categorically deemed "non-notable" by the Misplaced Pages admins. How is it the case then, that an entire sub-section of Langan's article is based on such "vanity" (once again, using Wikipedian terminology)? I am unaware of the nuances of the legal suit, but by virtue of the Mega Society’s lack of notability, this section should be duly removed.

It also violates the single rationale for which justifies the Langan entry: the rarity of his intelligence. This article should contain passing remarks on the CTMU, his feats and different anecdotes relating to his stratospheric abilities. The trivial lawsuit has no bearing on any such matters. Furthermore, it does not indicate anything about Langan's character. As it stands, we have a fragmented event, which is void of any context. CDiPoce 19:55, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

The "facts" which Asmodeus claims as contradicting the claims of the lawsuit, are, in fact, contradicted by the judge's decision in that lawsuit. Perhaps the article should be deleted, after all, as the facts listed and sourced in the article are claimed to be defamatory, and the non-defamatory "facts" are not sourced. It should not be editing to remove facts agreed to in the lawsuit. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 14:30, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Attention, please. You, Arthur Rubin, are a Misplaced Pages administrator (sysop). It is therefore very important that you not make a mockery of your responsibilities by trying to confuse Misplaced Pages editors, including yourself, about the important distinction between actual verifiable "facts", and ex parte "agreements" between the plaintiffs in a lawsuit and the single judge who heard their one-sided case. Even when an ex parte judgment is enforceable (as it sometimes is, at least in the short run), it does virtually nothing to substantiate the claims of the litigants. Only all of the available evidence can do that, and in a case like this one, the words "ex parte" clearly imply that not all of the evidence was presented.

Mere common sense should be enough to tell you that when a legal dispute arises, and only one side shows its evidence and pleads its case, the probability that its claims are all factual, and that a fair and neutral decision will be rendered, is considerably under 50%. It doesn't take a genius to understand why: the litigants are powerfully motivated to omit or downplay any evidence that might weaken or destroy their case. In fact, if they expected their claims to be unopposed (e.g., due to improper service of the defendants), they might even have lied to the court. That's why an ex parte judgment is virtually worthless for the purpose of verifying or proving the factuality of its related allegations, and thus for defending against an associated charge of defamation. It is also why the judgment in question is not a neutral or reliable source by Misplaced Pages standards.

Since this has now been repeatedly explained to you, you have no excuse to further disrupt, or encourage the further disruption, of this article. Please also bear in mind that you have no excuse for presenting the ex parte judgment in question, or any subsequent decision based on it, as a legitimate source for the verification of claims made by the litigants. (Incidentally, contrary to your absurd claim that the original nondefamatory version of this article - some of which remains in the first section of the current article - was "unsourced", it was in fact one of the best-sourced articles of its kind on this site. You should know that, because your own complaints helped make it that way. Granted, you are on record as disputing the validity of one or more of its sources, but you have not discredited a single one of them (nor will you succeed in so doing). Furthermore, as someone whose own Misplaced Pages biography seems to be a gratuitous exercise in personal horn-tooting, and who is on record as comparing his own IQ to that of Marilyn vos Savant, you have no rightful business complaining about Mr. Langan's biography, or for that matter anyone else's.) Asmodeus 17:39, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Nice to see you haven't lost your spunk (or your zeal for a hagiography). 20:07, 8 February 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jim62sch (talk • contribs).

As usual, you (Asmodeus) are absolutely wrong. The context of the legal dispute as written was verified by court documents, while your "truth" is not verified by those documents, and it appears inconsistent with them. (And, as I've pointed out, I've only edited my article to include my birth year, with all other comentary on the talk page.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:04, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

First sentence issues - "versed"

I don't like the first sentence here. There are no independent, reliable sources that support Langan being "versed in mathematics, physics, cosmology and the cognitive sciences." In fact, even the ISCID source that is given only asserts that "Without benefit of formal higher education, he has engaged for over two decades in research on mathematics, physics, cosmology and the cognitive sciences"—very different from being knowledgeable in the subjects. I'm going to change this to "doing research in", since from a strictly definitional standpoint this is correct, but I'm not happy about the connotations involved. Does anyone have a better idea of something which would be closer to NPOV from a connotation standpoint while having sources to support it? --Philosophus 19:39, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

No, it looks fine to me. "Doing research" in no way implies any great knowledge of a subject. •Jim62sch• 20:08, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

What's going on here?

The "Mega Society lawsuit" section is inconsistent with known facts about the Mega Foundation. Worse, it's completely derogatory and totally slanted toward one side of the dispute, that is, totally non-neutral. The comments of Asmodeus above - I guess he must be Langan, since he's obviously an insider and has been banned from editing the article - explain why the sources used for that section are unreliable, and also how it fails to line up with the facts and the chronology. So what it looks like is, the people behind the lawsuit filed it behind Langan's back and then lied to the judge (either that, or feloniousmonk etc. simply inserted their own negative claims and then deceptively cited the litigation as a "source" even though it doesn't support them). I looked for legitimate news coverage of this lawsuit; there isn't any, probably because it and the people who filed it were considered insignificant and its claims were seen as unverifiable. So given that it was completely non-newsworthy and probably fraudulent to boot, what the hell is it doing in an encyclopedia article, taking up a big percentage of the print space? No matter how you slice it, this section is non-neutral and largely counterfactual, and needs to go.

I invite your comments. If I don't hear any that make sense (in something other than a personal animosity sort of way), I'll do my duty and get rid of this crap. Sheerfirepower 16:24, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The content is completely consistent with the sources provided per Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, and those sources meet the bar established at Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources. Describing all relevant issues on a topic, such as the Mega Society lawsuits, not only falls within the bounds of our core policy governing content, Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view, but is required by it for an accurate and complete article. So, simply deleting it and acting as if it never happened is simply never going to fly. FeloniousMonk 17:20, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that you're not just reporting that there was a lawsuit. That could be done in one neutrally worded sentence, and it could be reasonably argued that not even that would be appropriate. Instead, you're trying to work specific claims in that lawsuit into an encyclopedia article which purports to contain only facts, even after being told that the claims are false, and even after I and others, apparently including the subject of the biography, have pointed out that they're inconsistent with known facts about the Mega Foundation (it was founded in 1999, not by the "renaming" of some high IQ club in alleged competition with some other high IQ club after this bogus judgment was issued). That claim alone has "slime" written all over it. You've even gone out of your way to work the phrase "bad faith" into the article...man, if there was ever a way to damage a nonprofit charitable foundation, that's got to be it! It looks 100% intentional on your part. So who do you think you're kidding? As I say, either explain why this crap belongs in the article, or take it the hell out. What "won't fly" is trying to maintain that it is consistent with policy...after looking at some of the main policies here, I can already see several that it violates...verifiability, neutrality, no original research, and the need for extra care and sensitivity in the bios of living subjects. What it looks like is, a handful of the subject's enemies have decided to use wikipedia as a weapon against him and his charitable endeavors. Asmodeus up there sounds like he might be getting ready to sue your asses off. If I were you, I'd ask myself whether any court would be stupid enough to believe that you people are just trying to write a fair and accurate encyclopedia article. Why don't you be smart about this, and just reduce your section to a single sentence reporting the existence of the lawsuit without transmitting its damaging claims and inflating it to nearly 50% of the article? (If you don't, then I'll probably just remove the whole freaking mess as promised.) Sheerfirepower 18:05, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, that's called wikilawyering, and it didn't get Asmodeus and DrL too far. Reading your words above, you're choosing a method that likely will not end well for you. For starters, legal threats, implied or overt, violate policy, WP:NLT, and when repeated usually end in the one making the threats losing their editing privleges. Removing neutral, properly-sourced content also violates policy. Repeatedly doing it often results in the guilty party usually ending up in dispute resolution. You can ask Asmodeus about that one. Removing content more than 3 times in one day violates WP:3RR, and usually results in the one doing it temporarily losing their editing privileges. Lastly, Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/ScienceApologist#DrL_2 says "All remedies which apply to Asmodeus also apply to DrL and, after warning accompanied by a link to this matter, to any other user with a similar editing pattern." The method for moving forward you insist on above is exactly the same editing pattern as Asmodeus and DrL combined, so by following it you run the risk of being considered acting on their behalf and suffering the same ban from this article. I suggest rethinking your method here if your goal is to contribute meaningfully to Misplaced Pages and not to just bowdlerize the Langan article. If your goal is the latter, then by all means please carry, and the community can be done with the unpleasantness business sooner rather than later. FeloniousMonk 01:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Hold on a second. Are you claiming that in some bizarre amateur-hour parody of a kangaroo court, wikipedia has decreed that anyone saying anything that might be considered favorable to the subject of this biography, or even correcting false statements in it, can simply be warned and then banned at your discretion? I hate to indulge in "wikilawyering", whatever that strange little piece of insider jargon is supposed to mean, but wouldn't that be just an attempt on the part of wikipedia and its administrators to issue themselves a libel license stapled to a get-out-of-jail-free card? Doesn't that kind of self-serving, heavy-handed grease job make it altogether too obvious what's happening here? It's obviously not right, and that almost certainly means that it's not legal either. As I look around the internet, I get the impression that a lot of people are asking the same question these days: is it really very bright of jimbo and his sysop wiki-army to be barging and bumbling into all these gray areas of jurisprudence and trying to replace real-world laws and ethics with their own fashionably emergent "wiki-laws" and "wiki-ethics", all sharply slanted to the advantage of a "wikielite" with a penchant for defamation? History offers many lessons about that sort of bureaucratic arrogance - push too hard against the status quo, and the public will eventually get fed up and feed wikipedia face-first to the garbage disposal of really bad ideas. I mean, it seems clear that you can only take this brave-new-world, follow-the-Internet-guru manure so far without inciting a killer backlash. Anyway, is that what you really mean to say? Is that really the situation here...that anyone correcting falsehoods in the article or removing badly sourced, unbiographical trash is "acting on behalf of" the subjects and liable to peremptory restriction? Because that very much seems to be what you're saying. Sheerfirepower 17:36, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

The "Mega Society lawsuit" section is inconsistent with known facts about the Mega Foundation - feel free to supply these "known facts", so that we can incorporated them into the article. Guettarda 19:02, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Does Sheerfirepower remind you of anyone? FeloniousMonk 01:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, this "I guess he must be Langan, since he's obviously an insider and has been banned from editing the article" certainly cracked me up. Reminds me of The Fugs' "It Crawled into My Hand, Honest".

BTW, Sheerbullshit, feel free to wedge this threat "(If you don't, then I'll probably just remove the whole freaking mess as promised.)". •Jim62sch• 01:27, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

"Sheerbullshit", •Jim60douche•? Please mind your civility. Sheerfirepower 14:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, you are simply too clever for me. ROFL. Might want to work on your pronunciation, though: touché would be closer. •Jim62sch• 00:08, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

MF v. MS section

There were a lot of mistakes in this section so I pared it down to what could be verified by reliable sources. The Mega Foundation apparently predates the legal dispute by a number of years so posting that this was created as an afterthought/response to the litigation is incorrect. I removed unreliable source Kevin Langdon, who is well-known in the high IQ world as being rather a nut who is obsessed with Langan and generally viewed as an unreliable source in that community. The ICANN issue was not filed against Langan, so probably shouldn't appear in his bio. The domains in question seemed to belong to his wife or girlfriend, not Langan himself. This mention is probably about as far as Misplaced Pages should go into this topic without more objective sourcing, IMO. DennB —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 204.73.177.254 (talk) 05:56, 11 February 2007 (UTC).

The version you wrote directly contradicts the sources that were there before, and really requires discussion here first. The largest difference is that your version claims that Langan started the Mega Foundation and some other group named the Mega Society sued him over this, whereas the sources seem to support that Langan was running or at least presenting himself as running the Society. In addition, the detail of the domains belonging to Dr. G. Langan (C. Langan's wife) rather than C. Langan does not put them outside of the purview of this article. –Philosophus 06:22, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Read like another attempt to whitewash the article to me as well, and clearly misrepresented the information present in the sources provided. To the aggressive new editors here, please be aware that this article falls within a recent arbitration committee ruling that reads: "All remedies which apply to Asmodeus also apply to DrL and, after warning accompanied by a link to this matter, to any other user with a similar editing pattern." Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/ScienceApologist#DrL_2 I suggest a less aggressive and more constructive approach to editing in order to avoid being viewed as acting on the behalf of the Langans and thus sharing their ban from this article. FeloniousMonk 06:36, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I am not acting on behalf of anybody. I am following the instructions on the top of this page: "Controversial material of any kind that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard." I think the editing here has been irresponsible. Denn

Please note any other user with a similar editing pattern - which would apply regardless of any connection you may or may not have with the Langans. You have now been warned and provided with a link to the case, cease your disruptive whitewashing unless you wish to be categorized with the Langans and share in their ban. KillerChihuahua 08:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Cease, what? Correcting errors in Misplaced Pages articles in a neutral manner? This is not the only bio article that I've noticed being "blackwashed" on wikipedia over the years. It seems to be getting worse instead of better. You people really need to get your acts together. Denn

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