Talk:Landmark Worldwide/Archive 30

To move forward?

Now that the Arbitration case is closed, any suggestions for the best way to move forward in improving the article? Or for encouraging uninvolved editors to contribute here as the Arbitrators suggested? DaveApter (talk) 18:33, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm a previously uninvolved editor now watching the page as a result of the Arbitration. My real life involvement with Landmark has been limited to attending one meeting some years ago they held in a home. After that I did a little reading on them. The article needs a cleanup. Legacypac (talk) 18:39, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks - would you like to say a little more about the sort of things that the "needed cleanup" would involve? DaveApter (talk) 20:48, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps avoiding 'bundled' edits in light of "Parties to the case are reminded to base their arguments in reliable, independent sources and to discuss changes rather than revert on sight."[1] 'Bundled' being multiple changes under one edit. If changes are made individually it makes them easier to discuss and agree on as opposed to a contentious edit in amongst a group of otherwise generally agreed ones. Make exactly the same edits you feel are fair but make them one by one. Just a courtesy suggestion 'to move forward'. AnonNep (talk) 21:07, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

That's a really good suggestion. The battling over this article in September and October kicked off with this bundled edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Landmark_Worldwide&diff=624044865&oldid=624040771 , and was aggravated by this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Landmark_Worldwide&diff=627007814&oldid=626534795 . I think further cleanup is required on the remnants of both of these. DaveApter (talk) 16:13, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

While, I see only content stating it is not a cult, yet there are longstanding allegations that Landmark is a cult. Where is the balance in those opinions? See Cult Awareness Network for example. What is its connection to Scientology? No discussion of that. For a group that is so controversial the article seems to contain mainly positive and defensive info. I'll need to do some additional research befor proposing any specific changes. Legacypac (talk) 09:10, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

• While it is true that there have indeed, been allegations that Landmark is a cult, there is currently no mention in the article because - despite the best efforts of those who have repeatedly inserted such claims, no reliable references have been produced for identifiable authoritative individuals who are on record as having made such judgements. As has been discussed ad nauseam on the 29 archives of this talk page, the suggestion is ridiculous and Landmark exhibits none of the characteristics of being a cult. Attempts to trace back these allegations usually arrive sooner or later at anonymous postings on chatrooms, blogs and unmoderated anti-cult websites etc. Mostly by people who have no direct personal experience of the organisation.
• Re the "connection to Scientology" - that's easy: there is none whatsoever. What had you think there might be one? DaveApter (talk) 16:13, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

• There are certain definite similarities between Scientology and Landmark, in that both have been counted as for-profit entities in the broad field of NRMs, and the fact that they both had some sort of prominence in the early days of the anti-cult movement as "cults" of a sort, but there is no direct linkage between the two entities or ideas other than perhaps being in somewhat the same area of "self-improvement" through involvement in for-profit groups. John Carter (talk) 16:24, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I would suggest we maybe try to do what I indicated in the arb, specifically, get some people who have perhaps some good, proven, experience with wikipedia policies and guidelines and, possibly, some basic familiarity with topics of this nature involved. I also think it would be a very good idea if we discussed merging this article into the articles on the other iterations of est, although the major problem there would be determining which title to merge the content into. I've had some computer problems for the past week, and have also, honestly, been taking some time off in general, but have a basic idea as to at least some good editors who might be capable and with luck willing to spend some time with the content here. Give me a few days to finish thinking it through, and contacting those individuals to see if they really are interested. Of course, I want it understood that anyone else, not just those I have been thinking of, who has some interest in helping to develop the content, is more than welcome, including Legacypac above. I'm also going to over the next few days try to find any recent reference sources which deal with the topic of Landmark and its predecessors in any sort of specific way, and indicate what they say. John Carter (talk) 15:43, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

My observation is that Landmark and Scientology are often discussed together and seem to steam from the same technology. I'l look through the archives. The article currently contains a few sentences saying they are not a cult but no sentences quoting anyone to say they are a cult. That is just weird. Obviously there have been accusations of cult status or there would would not be the denials, but the article only presents the denials. It would be equally inappropriate to only list the accusations without the denials. Legacypac (talk) 16:42, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Agreed that it is weird to include the denials but not the accusations; this is a side-effect of the battling over the balance of the article. I think that both should come out. Part of the problem is that clearly both the accusation and the denial are in the realm of opinion rather than fact, and it has seemed virtually impossible to estimate numbers of either persuasion. DaveApter (talk) 17:20, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Part of the problem is based on the existing group of articles about the group Werner Erhard formed. I know of several books which called Erhard Seminars Training a NRM/cult, but Landmark has seemingly gone out of its way to try to distance itself from that prior group. The fact of there being at least three separate articles relating to the group Erhard founded, and the content relating to those closely similar topics broken up into those three articles, is I think one of the most problematic aspects here. It's one of the reasons I suggested a merge discussion earlier. I still intend to start such a discussion, but am not sure at this point whether it would be best to start activity with that, or to maybe first try to involve other previously uninvolved editors first, and then later have them all involved in a potential merge discussion. John Carter (talk) 16:50, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy provides guidance on dealing with controversial subjects. Yes it is all Opinions so the article should reflect the Fact that many people have the Opinion that the group is a cult and the Fact that the group (and supporters) denies it is a cult. WP:NPOV Appropriate weight needs to be given to both sides. The article is always going to give most of its space to describing the group as they describe themselves, so that tips the balance toward Landmark already. It is not remarkable at all that Landmark denies being a religion or a cult, its fully expected, so that just needs a short mention and some refs. What is significant is that many people call Landmark a cult, but no one calls businesses like University of Phoenix (to name just one private provider of education) a cult. So there needs to be a Criticism section detailing this. Using quotes helps maintain Wikipedia's NPOV. Rather than saying "Landmark is a cult.[1][2] we say "John Smith, the author of Cults Today wrote "blah blah blah"[1] while Mary Jones, a professor of religious studies at Harvard wrote ...." see WP:YESPOV Sound ok? Legacypac (talk) 18:08, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Despite claims to the contrary, there are extremely reliable sources that use the term 'cult' (however useless that term may be) in referring to Landmark, as well as its connections to Scientology. I have noted some of those previously (in the to-do list in the header at the top of this page and during the arbcom case). Make use of them if you wish:

• "Although est and the Forum are frequently characterized as NRMs or 'cults' (q.v.), leaders and participants have typically denied that undergoing the seminars involves following a religion" —George D. Chryssides (2006). The A to Z of New Religious Movements. Scarecrow Press. p. 121. ISBN 0810855887.
• "There has been an enormous growth of the phenomenon known as Large Group Awareness Training represented by such companies as Landmark Forum. Its former iteration was EST, begun by the famous and infamous Werner Erhard. He retired it in 1985 and started The Forum. One of several cults categorized as examples of the human potential movement that started in the 1970s, it focused on exploring and actualizing the self. It has gained great traction in recent decades with professionals working within highly demanding occupations—entrepreneurs, business managers, the fields of acting, advertising, and marketing. EST and The Landmark Forum have had over a million customers." —Atkin, Douglas (2004). "What Is Required of a Belief System?". The Culting of Brands: Turn Your Customers Into True Believers. New York: Penguin/Portfolio. p. 101. ISBN 9781591840275.
• "In the Landmark Forum, the essential aspects of est live on in a modified form. It no longer makes such a virtue of aggressive confrontation. With the founding 'genius' out of the picture, Landmark is less open to the charge of being a cult, though it continues to attract criticism along these lines." —Wildflower, Leni (2013). The Hidden History of Coaching. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill/Open University Press. p. 34. ISBN 9780335245406.
• "Erhard's early involvement with Scientology profoundly influenced the development of est and years later, the Landmark Forum."
  "Its standard introductory course is known today as The Landmark Forum (Pressman 1993). By the mid 1990s Landmark was among 200 groups listed in France as having cult-like features and having been accused of brainwashing. In 2004 reporters hiding secret cameras infiltrated the Landmark, following a scathing expose on France's Channel 3 TV, after which the government put it on a list of dangerous sects (ABC NEWS 2008). Landmark Education apparently left France permanently."
  "Years ago recruitment for cultic groups was far more obvious than today because extreme religious groups were easy to identify. They lived isolated from the general population, and the public had become aware of their deceptive recruiting techniques. Today many are attracted to organizations that are less overtly cultic, not overtly religious, and are often linked with the human potential movement, while others operate as businesses, with their tactics focused around financial success. Landmark Forum, for example, is a human potential/business hybrid." —Farber, Sharon Klayman (2012). Hungry for Ecstasy: Trauma, the Brain, and the Influence of the Sixties. Lanham, Maryland: Jason Aronson/Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 131, 134, 139. ISBN 9780765708588.
• "Schneider (1995:189–190) lists organizations, such as Landmark Education, Verein zur Förderung der Psychologischen Menschenkenntnis (VPM), Scientology/Dianetics, Ontologische Einweihungsschule (Hannes Scholl), EAP and Die Bewegung (Silo) as examples of 'therapy cults'. These groups do not immediately suggest a religious worldview, but reveal ideological and religious elements on closer inspection. Their slogans are 'We have the saving principle' or 'We enable those who are able' and they offer Lebenshilfe (advice on how to live). Such advice is a commodity which is sold in very expensive seminars. The ideologies involved often lie in the grey areas between the humanities, psychotherapies, Lebenshilfe, 'mental hygiene' (Psychohygiene), and religion." —Arweck, Elisabeth (2004). Researching New Religious Movements: Responses and Redefinitions. Leiden: Brill. pp. 145–146. ISBN 0203642376.

As you said, it's a very odd circumstance that denials are included while there are reliable sources that note the other side of the coin. • Astynax ^talk 23:52, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Astynax: there are reliably sources that categorize Landmark as a cult. Above and beyond: some European administrations have categorized Landmark as such: France and Austria. I also want to refer to 'Religiosity Rejected: Exploring the Religio-Spiritual Dimensions of Landmark Education', International Journal For the Study of New Religions 2.2 (2011) p.225–254. The conclusions in this peer-reviewed article, published in a "standard international publication with a good reputation among researchers of the field in different countries" are that Landmark exhibits traits that mark it as an indicator for the religious changes that take place right under our nose. FYI: I did some edits to Landmark Worldwide at the Dutch Wikipedia and I have done some contributions to its talkpage as well, but I have no COI: I never had any involvement whatsoever - pro or contra - with Landmark or its activities. Theobald Tiger (talk) 10:19, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merger with Werner Erhard and Associates and Erhard Seminars Training

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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These three articles are all, so far as I can tell, different legal entities which have all had as their primary business interest "selling" the same services. I can see no reason for them not to all be combined into the same article. On that basis, I propose that they all be merged into one article, and, although I suppose there is some grounds for discussion as to whether Erhard Seminars Training or Landmark Worldwide is the best title, I would suggest using the Landmark Worldwide title, as the current name of the entity, as the at least temporary home for the merged article. John Carter (talk) 13:57, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

There is certainly a problem here. Werner Erhard and Associates is a company name, as is Landmark Worldwide. The product of Werner Erhard and Associates (from 1971-1981 called Erhard Seminars Training Inc) was from 1971 to 1984/1985 Erhard Seminars Training (est). Since 1985 est has been renamed to Landmark Forum, the main product of Werner Erhard and Associates. In 1991 Werner Erhard transfered his intellectual property to Landmark Education, which changed its name in 2013 to Landmark Worldwide. The basic training program of Landmark Worldwide is still Landmark Forum (or The Forum). So there are different company names and different, but closely related, training programs. Erhard himself, the originator (i.e. compilator) of the training methodology (the origins are to be found in Scientology and the works of José Silva), has also an irresistable leaning to change names as soon as publicity is not exactly what he wants it to be: John Paul Rosenberg, Jack Rosenberg, Werner Erhard, Jack Frost, Werner Spits and Curt Wilhelm VonSavage. Theobald Tiger (talk) 16:06, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Support this merge and any other articles in the history. Do redirects for each name here. Use the current name as the primary title. Changing your name does not get a fresh start. ISIL has a similar love of renaming themselves and we dealt with it by putting subsections in their history section. We also need a Key persons list in the article with a mini bio and link out to their own article. Legacypac (talk) 16:53, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

I am inclined to support the proposed merger, but there are some difficulties of which the editor who carries out the merger must be aware. The Landmark Forum (the basic course of Landmark Worldwide), has always definitely been the successor of est, although Landmark Education, the predecessor of Landmark Worldwide, has denied it for quite some time. See: Rennee Lockwood, 'Religiosity Rejected: Exploring the Religio-Spiritual Dimensions of Landmark Education', International Journal For the Study of New Religions 2.2 (2011) p.225–254, p.227: "Landmark Education today insists that the Landmark Forum is entirely distinct from est, claiming that it is not based on or a derivation of Werner Erhard’s original program." Nowadays Landmark Worldwide acknowledges its history more or less, that is to say partially: the history from 1971-1991, including the est-controversies, is left out. The paragraph on the Landmark website called "The Early Days. A small company with a bold idea" begins twenty years after what really were the early days. Theobald Tiger (talk) 21:08, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

I believe @Astynax: found sourcing indicating that Landmark had licensed the method for some time from Erhard, which, presumably, might have included having Erhard retain some sort of control over the "product" as it was used. Having said that, there is reason to think that when Erhard died they weren't bound by the licensing at all and could have made serious changes, although I have yet to see any really well sourced indications of what those changes might have been. John Carter (talk) 21:26, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Erhard is still alive, as far as I know (link). Yes, the 'methodology' is reported to have been licensed (in some form unknown to me) from Erhard. There are differences between est and The Forum. The program has been modified, extended, changed, smoothed a bit. The company is blurring the historical facts. Reporters and scholars are sometimes treating both phenomena as one thing, and more often as two different appearances of the same historical Self Help-development. Erhard is not only alive, but also both omnipresent and not seldom seemingly absent. Cheers! Theobald Tiger (talk) 22:15, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Support. Yes, Erhard is still alive and acts, at a minimum, as a consultant to Landmark. Erhard (not Landmark) had already developed and begun marketing the less coercive version of est (which he named "the Forum") in the mid 1980s. According to the findings in the Ney case, this was the "technology" licensed to (not purchased by, as the article and Landmark have claimed) Landmark in 1991 when Erhard folded Werner Erhard and Associates. Only the hard assets (property, contracts, equipment, etc.) were sold to Landmark. According to the decision, there was "little change" in the courses, and Landmark (consisting of Erhard's brother and most of the directors of Werner Erhard and Associates) began running the renamed "Landmark Forum" immediately upon concluding the deal. Erhard retained control of the programs in certain markets, and continued to receive royalty income from the seminars. Landmark is supposed to have eventually acquired ownership of the Forum prior to the expiry of their license in 2009 (though the only source I've seen for the claimed acquisition hang on vague statements from Landmark's marketing department). According to the court finding, Erhard thus retained a quite significant degree of involvement in Landmark, despite repeated denials from Landmark itself that he had any involvement. Nor did the Forum seminars change upon Landmark assuming the running of the Forum (other than the official name change to "Landmark Forum"), as the court decision also notes. The same offices, same client contact lists, the same staff, the same volunteers, the same methods, the same people in charge (though Erhard's name disappeared from the list of officers). That the program has developed since is not surprising, as indeed the seminars had previously also evolved under Erhard himself. It has also branched out more in the direction of marketing the seminars to institutions (a shift in emphasis which had also been initiated by Erhard prior to his departure). It has only been recently that Landmark has admitted that Erhard has continued to act as a consultant to the company, though the depth of that involvement and compensation have not yet been detailed either by reportage or publicly by Landmark. Thus, Landmark was not a clean break from est/WE&A, but a further iteration of the company. Reliable sources do depict est/WE&A as directly related to, and an integral part of the history of, Landmark. A fuller "History" section into which the Erhard Seminars Training and Werner Erhard and Associates articles are merged (including mentions of some of the other iterations) is warranted. • Astynax ^talk 08:50, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Here is a searchable version of the Ney Case. The Werdegang of this specific Large Group Awareness Training-program really discloses, as any literature survey will quickly display, the chameleontic nature of the enterprise - the metamorphoses being apparently driven by considerations of marketing, self-promotion, escape from bad publicity. Theobald Tiger (talk) 09:32, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

My thanks for the correction on Erhard's status - I was assuming his death led to the end of the "licensing", but apparently should have checked to confirm. It would certainly be possible to create a "history" section of the article under whatever name, and, maybe, a History of Landmark Education (if that is the final name chosen for the topic as a whole), which could discuss the previous iterations in one article. John Carter (talk) 19:43, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

There are a number of factual errors with Theobald's statement above. First, there were at least three separate entities (Erhard Seminars Training, Werner Erhard and Associates, and Landmark Education (now Landmark Worldwide)), not two. Second, the est training ended in 1985 - it was not renamed into anything. Third, a program named "The Forum" was provided by WE&A until 1990 - this program was not est and it was not The Landmark Forum (which was/is a product of Landmark Worldwide). Fourth, Landmark Education (Worldwide) purchased some assets from WE & A and licensed some of WE & A's intellectual property, but it does not appear to have even been an exclusive license (see some examples at Werner_Erhard#Related_organizations). Fifth, there are a number of actual mainstream reliable sources who have clearly said that the Landmark Forum is not est and that they are completely distinct from one another. Sixth, the statement that "the origins are to be found in Scientology and the works of José Silva" had better come with a significant reliable source - I haven't seen anything even resembling a source for that statement in the year+ now that I've been following and researching this article. Given this loose interpretation of sources, Theobald's indefinite block from the Dutch Wikipedia, including their behaviour on the Landmark article at that site, is unsurprising. --Tgeairn (talk) 23:38, 9 January 2015 (UTC) updated to strike unrelated comments --Tgeairn (talk) 19:12, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Oppose The suggestion to merge the est article with the Landmark Worldwide article does not lead to improving wikipedia and the availability of information for readers. The entities are categorically different and should remain separate. Landmark is a seminar company currently at work and est was an historical entity that had an enormous impact the culture and times of the 1970s. The est training merits its own article so that it's particular impact and unique place in history can be chronicled and available. The est training had its own processes, history and impact separate from the work of Landmark. There are many publications and studies written solely about est that do not have anything to do with the current work of Landmark. The concepts that came out of the est training are now widespread in the culture and can be seen in a number of fields and many bodies of work including the current broad field of coaching. The est training also inspired the genesis of a great number of organizations that continue to impact people's lives, such as Youth at Risk, The Breakthrough Foundation, The Holiday Project, etc. that used its ideas and created new methods of disseminating its concepts. Many of these organizations that got created through the work of est have also had a large impact on a broad spectrum of society. These organizations have nothing to do with Landmark Worldwide. One can look at this site to see some of the diverse and wide ranging work that came through the culture and times of the est training that had a large historical impact. http://wernererhardfoundation.org MLKLewis (talk) 19:32, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

"The concepts that came out of the est training are now widespread in the culture and can be seen in a number of fields and many bodies of work including the current broad field of coaching. The est training also inspired the genesis of a great number of organizations that continue to impact people's lives, such as Youth at Risk, The Breakthrough Foundation, The Holiday Project, etc." In which case we may need a new central overarching article that represents the overview of all of the divergent strands as we do for Catholicism, Scientology etc. Or it all goes into one article. I'm open to either but at present we seem to have neither. AnonNep (talk) 19:49, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. The creation of one central article is pretty much the intended purpose of the proposed merge, with whichever article the content is merged into being the central article. I proposed, for simplicity, Landmark be the merger target in the short run, but if consensus opts for some other title, I'm more than willing to see a change. It will also make it easier to develop any real and possible child articles if a good and strong central article is developed. John Carter (talk) 19:55, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

A mere change of name or ownership is not a change of entity. As the court case states, there was almost no difference between WE&A and Landmark, even if Landmark could not be held as successor to liabilities on a technicality. As has been stated, reliable sources do treat them as iterations of the same entity in a continuum. No reliable sources of which I am aware jump to the conclusion that est and Landmark are unique and unrelated entities. WE&A, est and the other iterations are a central and innate part of Landmark's history and offerings. Corporate history is littered with buyouts of companies by their directors, none of which makes them viewed as different entities in any normal sense, clever legal technicalities notwithstanding. Due to the length of the General Motors article, we have a brief article on the technically separate old General Motors, but the history of the former General Motors and the current General Motors are treated as a single subject. Landmark is not General Motors, and at this point the est, WE&A, Landmark litigation and Landmark Worldwide articles, dealing with aspects of the same history, are not nearly long enough, by a long shot, to warrant separate articles even if merged. Even if these articles were merged without removing all the duplicate information, the article would be a mere 17.7kB in length and far short of the 50kB where creating sub-articles is even contemplated. As the previous iterations are part of Landmark's history, the natural place for the former manifestations would be an expanded history section in the Landmark article, which is how it is often presented in references. Some references do present est as the main article with Landmark mentioned toward the end, so that is also possible, though those works tend to focus on the content of the seminars and not deal with the corporation per se. • Astynax ^talk 20:41, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

The source you provide above (the Ney court case) clearly found that est, the Forum, and Landmark are all three different entities. The Court of Appeals upheld (affirmed) that finding. At this page, and across a variety of others, a large number of sources have been shown to treat these entities as separate and distinct from one another. Courts and government agencies have consistently found that they are separate. Given all of this, what exactly is the goal here? You are completely misstating what the sources are saying, and you are disregarding mainstream sources that actually deal directly with the subject. I intend to provide a more complete oppose statement, but this is bordering on ridiculous. --Tgeairn (talk) 23:04, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Where do you see that the court found The Forum to be a separate entity in any way? The court merely upheld that because of the way the transaction was conducted (an acquisition of assets of a single-proprietorship, rather than an outright sale of the company) that Landmark was not technically a successor-company for the purposes of the plaintiff's liability claim. The court went to some length to note that in this instance the business continued operating with almost no break, in the same way, with the same product and the same people. Nor have I misstated or misrepresented what sources say:

• Grigoriadis, Vanessa (9 July 2001). "Pay Money, Be Happy". New York Magazine. New York, New York. Retrieved 10 October 2014. These days, Landmark says Erhard has no role in its business, although their courses are based on his "technology"—the structure, style, and system of beliefs he used in est and later in the Forum, which he created in 1985 when est enrollment started to dip. Landmark's Forum is shorter than est and has fewer rules (in est, attendees weren't just warned they might miss something if they went to the bathroom – they weren't allowed to go at all), but it retains some similar exercises and the same tortured relationship to grammar.
• McClure, Laura (July–August 2009). "The Landmark Forum: 42 Hours, $500, 65 Breakdowns; My lost weekend with the trademark happy, bathroom-break hating, slightly spooky inheritors of est". Mother Jones. San Francisco, California. Retrieved 8 December 2014. Part of it is the in-your-face, hard-sell ethos embedded in the corporate DNA it inherited from est.
  "Another man is called to the mic. He wants to know how Landmark is different from est. David sighs. 'If I had to sum it up, here's what I'd say: They're both about Transformation, but est was very experiential. It was the '70s, okay? Your access was an experience. Your access this weekend is going to be just through conversation. We realized we could do it just through conversation.' And that's the last we hear of that.
• Beam, Alex (6 November 1998). "A Harvard Forum For Self-Promotion?". Boston Globe. Boston Massachussets. The San Francisco-based Forum came into being when Werner Erhard (John Paul Rosenberg to his parents) sold the "technology" for Erhard Seminars Training – est – to his brother Harry. The Forum, formally known as the Landmark Education Corp., has enjoyed considerable success with the self-actualization crowd, and with the Cambridge intelligentsia.
• Rupert, Glenn A. (1992). "Employing the New Age: Training Seminars". In Lewis, James R.; Melton, J. Gordon (eds.). Perspectives on the New Age. Albany, New York: SUNY Press. p. 130. ISBN 079141213X. After Erhard dissolved est in 1984, he created two new organizations: the Forum, again targeting individuals, and Transformational Technologies Inc., created specifically to train corporate managers.
• Boulware, Jack (2000). San Francisco Bizarro. New York: Macmillan/St. Martins. p. 38. ISBN 0312206712. His [Erhard's] original company, Erhard Seminars Training (est), ended in 1984, but another incarnation of his philosophies is still based here in the city, the Landmark Education Corporation. [...]In the 1980s, est techniques were repackaged for corporate clients, and the name changed to The Forum.
• Paris, Joel (2013). Psychotherapy in an Age of Narcissism: Modernity, Science, and Society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 21. ISBN 9780230336964. The EST fad passed out of the public view following revelations of Erhard's history of tax evasion, as well as his incestuous abuse of his daughters–leading the founder to move to Europe and leave the movement he founded (later called 'The Forum') to disciples.
• Koocher, Gerald P.; Keith-Spiegel, Patricia (2008). Ethics in Psychology and the Mental Health Professions: Standards and Cases. New York: Oxford University Presss. p. 151. ISBN 978-0195149111. Werner Erhard, the developer of est, was a skilled salesman with no professional training as a psychotherapist. His programs evolved to become the 'Forum' seminars and exist currently as the Landmark Education or the Forum, a genre of so-called large-group awareness programs. [...] The ability of skilled salesmen, such as Erhard, to promote and morph their programs in the face of criticism by behavioral scientists is quite impressive.
• Conway, Flo; Siegelman, Jim (1995). Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change. New York: Stillpoint. p. 17. ISBN 0964765004. In 1985, riding the waves of the eighties, Erhard changed est's name to the more businesslike handle 'The Forum' and raised the price to $525. He replaced est's boot-camp encounters and harsh training rules with more accommodating 'dialogues' and training 'requests.' But according to many customers, the new package contained essentially the same product.
• Walker, James K. (2007). The Concise Guide to Today's Religions and Spirituality. Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House. pp. 137–138. ISBN 9780736920117. Est was discontinued and replaced with The Forum, and in 1991, Werner Erhard and Associates (WE&A) was dissolved. In its place, Landmark Education was incorporated, with Erhard's brother, serving as CEO and overseeing the current seminar, which is called Landmark Forum.
• Barker, Eileen (1996). "New Religions and Mental Health". In Bhugra, Dinesh (ed.). Psychiatry and Religion: Context, Consensus and Controversies. London and New York: Routledge. p. 126. ISBN 0415089557. est (erhard Seminar Training, now known as the Landmark Forum) {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• Lockwood, Renee (2011). "Religiosity Rejected: Exploring the Religio-Spiritual Dimensions of Landmark Education". International Journal for the Study of New Religions. 2 (2). Sheffield, England: Equinox: 227–229. ISSN 2041-9511. Landmark Education today insists that the Landmark Forum is entirely distinct from est, claiming that it is not based on or a derivation of Werner Erhard's original program. Certainly there are profound differences between the methodologies, pedagogies and praxes of the est training and those of the contemporary Landmark Forum. However, it is argued here that there are also significant similarities, particularly in regard to the ultimate aim of the training.
• Gastil, John (2010). The Group in Society. Los Angeles: SAGE. pp. 228–229. ISBN 9781412924689. The Landmark Forum, with its roots tracing back to est, complements testimonials like these with its own statistical evidence.
• Beckford, James A. (2004). "New Religious Movements and Globalization". In Lucas, Phillip Charles; Robbins, Thomas (eds.). New Religious Movements in the 21st Century. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. p. 208. ISBN 0-415-96576-4. Werner Erhard, the founder of est (now largely reconfigured as the Landmark Trust)...
• Siegler, Elijah (2004). "Marketing Lazaris". In Lewis, James R. (ed.). The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of New Age Religions. Amherst, New York: Prometheus. p. 187. ISBN 1591020409. Exemplars of new religious movements with a gradual CDS are Scientology and Erhard Seminar Training in its various manifestations.
• Aupers, Stef (2005). "'We Are All Gods': New Age in the Netherlands 1960-2000". In Sengers, Erik (ed.). The Dutch and Their Gods: Secularization and Transformation of Religion in the Netherlands. Studies in Dutch Religious History. Vol. 3. Hilversum: Verloren. p. 193. ISBN 9065508678. In 1984 EST became known as Forum and nowadays it operates under the name Landmark.
• Ramstedt, Martin (2007). "New Age and Business: Corporations as Cultic Milieus?". In Kemp, Daren; Lewis, James R. (eds.). Handbook of the New Age. Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion. Vol. 1. Leiden: BRILL. pp. 196–197. ISBN 9789004153554. A well-known example is Landmark Education International, Inc., a management-oriented derivate of Werner Erhard's famous seminars called est (an acronym for Erhard Seminars Training) developed in the 1970s.
• Ankerberg, John; Weldon, John, eds. (1999). Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions. Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House. p. 122. ISBN 9780736900744. The change from est to The Landmark Forum had more to do with public relations and marketability than with any fundamental change in philosophy. The duplicity in how est was packaged and the many legal, financial and ethical allegations against Werner Erhard were causing a significant problem for public perception of est, not to mention its profitability.
• Kyle, Richard (1993). Religious Fringe: A History of Alternative Religions in America. Downer's Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity. p. 319. ISBN 0830817662. In 1985, Erhard changed the name of est to 'the Forum.' The Forum is not substantially different from est. Ruth Tucker says that the changes made by Erhard are largely cosmetic, for the philosophy of the Forum is essentially that of est. The seminars have been repackaged to improve their appeal to large businesses and corporations.
• Atkin, Douglas (2004). "What Is Required of a Belief System?". The Culting of Brands: Turn Your Customers Into True Believers. New York: Penguin/Portfolio. p. 101. ISBN 9781591840275. There has been an enormous growth of the phenomenon known as Large Group Awareness Training represented by such companies as Landmark Forum. Its former iteration was EST, begun by the famous and infamous Werner Erhard. He retired it in 1985 and started The Forum.
• Wildflower, Leni (2013). The Hidden History of Coaching. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill/Open University Press. p. 33. ISBN 9780335245406. Landmark and the rebranding of est: In the Landmark Forum, the essential aspects of est live on in a modified form.
• Salerno, Steve (5 March 2010). "Landmark Forum. In (largely) its own words. Part 2". Shamblog. Salerno. Retrieved 9 January 2015. Landmark would like to control the debate on the precise nature of its relationship with Werner Erhard and est—on the one hand crediting Erhard for his groundbreaking theories about consciousness-raising while at the same time disowning the inconvenient and troubling connotations of the est course itself.
• Farber, Sharon Klayman (2012). Hungry for Ecstasy: Trauma, the Brain, and the Influence of the Sixties. Lanham, Maryland: Jason Aronson/Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 131, 134. ISBN 9780765708588. Erhard's early involvement with Scientology profoundly influenced the development of est and years later, the Landmark Forum. [...] To understand the history of est, you need to know that Erhard changed est's name to The Forum in 1985, raised the price of the introductory groups to $525, and replaced est's tough rules and procedures to more accommodating "dialogues" and training "requests" (Pressman 1993). But according to many trainees, this was nothing more than old wine in new bottles. [...] Landmark Education LLC, a personal training and development company founded in 1991, bought Erhard's intellectual property and began offering educational programs worldwide in approximately 115 locations (Pressman 1993). Its standard introductory course is known today as The Landmark Forum (Pressman 1993).
• Eisner, Donald A. (2000). The Death of Psychotherapy: From Freud to Alien Abductions. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. p. 60. ISBN 0275964132. There are a number of est clones including Life Spring, Actualizations and Forum, which is a successor to est.
• Jaffe, Eric (15 November 2010). "A look at four psychology fads: The basics of est, primal therapy, Transcendental Meditation and lucid dreaming". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, California. Retrieved 9 September 2014. In 1991, Erhard left the country and sold his intellectual property to Landmark Education, run by his brother Harry Rosenberg. Today Landmark offers a variety of programs, chiefly the Landmark Forum, based largely on Erhard's ideas. The training has evolved — gone is the est-era combativeness of instructors — but it remains wildly popular: Tuition varies by location and costs $495 in California.
• Kaminer, Wendy (1993). I'm Disfunctional, You're Disfunctional. New York: Vintage Books/Random House. pp. 108, 109. ISBN 0-679-74585-8. If you want to experience or 'process' New Age's heady combination of pseudo-science, religion, and money, visit a session or two of The Forum, the new incarnation of est. [...] The philosophy of The Forum is essentially the philosophy of est: no excuses.
• Beckford, James A. (2003). Social Theory and Religion. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 156. ISBN 0521774314. Meanwhile, other commentators such as Tipton (1984) and Foss and Larkin (1976, 1979) detected a tendency for post-countercultural religious movements such as Erhard Seminars Training (now the Landmark Forum) to re-combine instrumentalism and expressivism in ways that could help their participants to fit into the routines of mainstream social life.
• Lewis, James R. (2002). The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books. p. 306. ISBN 1573928887. In 1985, est was discontinued and replaced by a program called The Forum, which is very similar to est.
• Partridge, Christopher Hugh (2005). Introduction to World Religions. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress. p. 445. ISBN 9780800699703. Werner Erhard, founder of Erhard Seminar Training (est – now Landmark Forum) previously studied Scientology, but other groups have no such influence: for example Silva Method, PSI Mind Development and the School of Economic Science (SES), the last of which is influenced by TM.
• Colman, Andrew M. (2009). A Dictionary of Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 260, 412. ISBN 9780199534067. In 1984 the name [est] was changed to Landmark Forum, but it continued to be called est by many people. [...] Landmark Forum n. The official name, since 1984, for est.
• Clarke, Peter, ed. (2006). Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. p. 287. ISBN 0415267072. Some founders of self-development groups are from a sales background, and their groups have become involved in business consultancy and management training, such as Landmark Forum (formerly est), Scientology's subsidiaries WISE and Sterling Management Programmes Ltd, MSIA's Insight Seminars, Lifespring, and Silva.
• Ries, Al (2005). Focus: The Future of Your Company Depends on It. New York: HarperCollins. p. 164. ISBN 9780060799908. One might have thought that Werner Erhard, the company, was beyond saving. Not true. The name was destroyed, but not the company. Before the CBS program ran, but with knowledge of what it would likely say, Erhard sold the assets of Werner Erhard & Associates to his former employees and moved to Costa Rica.
  "The new name: Landmark Education Corporation. Today Landmark is a thriving company with forty offices around the world and some $40 million in annual revenues. Each year sixty thousand people participate in its programs. Landmark is bigger than Erhard ever was. You can change a name successfully. In fact, a name change may be the only practical solution to a serious public relations problem.
• Anderson, Kurt (2007). "Son of EST: The Terminator of Self-Doubt". In Ross, Lillian (ed.). The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town; The New Yorker. New York: Vintage Books/Random House. p. 413. ISBN 0375756493. But once again Erhardism, like disco and marijuana, is ascendant. Erhard's former associates, reconstituted as the Landmark Education Corporation, have morphed est into something called the Landmark Forum.
• Roth, Matthew (2011). "Coming Together: The Communal Option". In Carlsson, Chris; Elliott, Lisa Ruth (eds.). Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968–1978. San Francisco, California: City Lights Books. p. 202. ISBN 9781931404129. Erhard sold his intellectual property in est to his brother and left the country in self-imposed exile. Erhard's legacy is in the business and professional self-help classes offered to this day at the Landmark Forum, a direct descendent of his teaching style.

How many more does one need to grasp the point that scholars and journalists treat these subjects together, often interchangeably? Other than Landmark, hardly anyone else holds out the confusing line that these entities are unrelated, yet somehow vaguely related. Erhard's Forum flowed directly into Landmark Forum with no big changes other than the name printed on the materials (just as it did when Landmark Education changed the nameplate to Landmark Worldwide). Have there been changes over the years? It would be shocking if there have not been. Is Landmark Forum a continuation of est? Certainly (if there was no relationship, why was there a licensing agreement, why did Landmark purchase rights from Erhard to operate in certain countries instead of starting its "unrelated" Landmark Forum programs in those locations, why does Landmark retain Erhard as consultant, and why else buy out Erhard's intellectual rights in 2002?). Claiming that these are separate subjects is indeed "bordering on ridiculous". • Astynax ^talk 05:28, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Even this list of cherry-picked sources and quotations does not support the argument that est=the Forum=Landmark's Forum.

• "Pay Money, Be Happy" - the quotation distinguishes between est, the Forum, and Landmark's Forum. It also repeats the old (completely refuted) noise about not being able to use a restroom during est courses... This editorial piece is clearly not "scholarship".
• "The Landmark Forum: 42 Hours..." - the quote is about how completely distinct the companies and products are from one another.
• "A Harvard Forum For Self-Promotion?" - the quote gets basic facts wrong (combining the Forum (a WE & A product) with Landmark Education (a company formed in 1991). Again, an editorial with little or no fact-checking. The quote still does not treat them as the same, it actually (again) distinguishes between them.
• "Employing the New Age..." - the selected quote (in a book compiled in 1992 from material that predates Landmark Education) is about the Forum (a WE&A product), not about Landmark Education or the Landmark Forum. The quote also shows that the pieces of Erhard's est were already getting broken up at that time (1984).
• San Francisco Bizarro - the quote is clearly not even about Landmark or its products. It is about Erhard and WE&A's products (est and the Forum).
• Psychotherapy in an Age of Narcissism - the quote (which for a 2013 publication is scarily wrong with the facts given that everything said there was later completely disproven and recanted) is not about Landmark or its products at all.
• Ethics in Psychology and the Mental Health Professions - the quote is a passing reference which combines product names, company names, and entire genres into a single misinformed sentence.
• Snapping... does at least attempt to say that est and WE&A's "the Forum" "contained essentially the same product" according to "many customers". Weak at best, and still not about Landmark or its products at all.
• The Concise Guide to Today's Religions and Spirituality is the closest to linking them, but let's read the next sentence from the source: "In addition, a number of other est-like transformational/encounter seminars are currently conducted by organizations not connected with Erhard but using some of his basic ideologies and methodologies." Again, post-est we have this whole new genre. Landmark does not appear to dispute that it is a post-est company and they are obvious about being based on Erhard's work. None of this in any way means that est=Forum=Landmark Forum, in fact the existence of "a number of other... seminars" supports that there's no linear equality.
• "New Religions and Mental Health" - A perfect example of the lack of quality sources. "New Religions and Mental Health" was written by Barker in the early 80s and heavily quoted in Bhugra's 1996 work. It is unclear who added the "now known as the Landmark Forum" to the 1996 work, but it is not in the exact same line in 1980 or 1983's version of "New Religions and Mental Health". The "now known as the Landmark Forum" is also not in the "New Religious Movements in the West : Proceedings of the 1981 Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association, Sociology of Religion Study Group" from which most of the rest of the quotations about est are taken verbatim.
• "Religiosity Rejected" - this student paper begins by saying there are profound differences, and then sets out to find similarities. Similarities do not make something the same (VW and Porsche are not the same company, but there are certainly similarities and even MANY links).
• The Group in Society - roots? Okay... again, not saying that these are in any way the same products or companies.
• "New Religious Movements and Globalization" - another editorial modification of the original which predates Landmark's existence.
• The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of New Age Religions - this source doesn't even try to equate the companies or their products.

I could keep going, but it is obvious that saying that est=the Forum=The Landmark Forum is misstating what the sources say and synthesizing an argument from fragments of poorly assembled and cherry-picked quotes. --Tgeairn (talk) 18:30, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Oppose I see reliable sources indicating that Landmark is different from est in ownership, course design and methodology – note this Time Magazine article discussing differences in tuition, course length, approach, etc. Also, because the lead of the Landmark article directly states that its programs evolved out of the est training, I have no concerns that readers won't see the connection. Regarding that Ney case, I have some reluctance to make arguments based on it, since it’s a primary source, but I see it as making the case for the separateness of the organizations – for instance when the est CEO failed in his bid to buy the rights to the programs and Landmark got them instead, it’s clear that it’s not just a renaming going on (as contrasted by the shift in name of Landmark Education to Landmark Worldwide, which looks like a simple renaming). Nwlaw63 (talk) 23:28, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Ah, you mean the Time Magazine article that says, "Unlike Erhard, est is still around--sort of. In 1991, before he left the U.S., Erhard sold the 'technology' behind his seminars to his employees, who formed a new company called the Landmark Education Corp., with Erhard's brother Harry Rosenberg at the helm."? Sounds like a relationship to me, and the article doesn't at all deny that a continuum exists. When a quarterback is pulled out of a game and a new quarterback comes in and moves the same ball with the same team in direction of the same goal, it is a fantasy to claim it is new team or a new game. • Astynax ^talk 04:45, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Oppose As someone said, when this question came up about a year ago, "Naturally Landmark Education bears resemblances to est. Christianity bears resemblances to Judaism, but that's not a reason to merge Christianity with Judaism. Erhard Seminars Training (est) should continue to stand alone as a topic. "In my opinion, merging the article about Erhard Seminars Training with Landmark Worldwide and Werner Erhard and Associates is a bad idea because it lumps together several entities, that may have some common roots, but were separate organizations. Erhard Seminars Training, est, was created by Werner Erhard, existed for a time, had an impact and then ceased to exist. It should have its own article, like a person who had a life, then died.

Also, I think Werner Erhard and Associates and Landmark Worldwide are very separate and different organizations and should not be lumped together. Landmark Worldwide makes a departure from the leadership of Werner Erhard. It would confuse the interested Wikipedia reader if these organizations were all together in one article, as if they are or were one. They definitely are not. RecoveringAddict (talk) 00:13, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Support Just to make it formal (as per comments above) either a merge or an overarching article that explains development of theory/history/links between the various groups in multiple sub-articles. AnonNep (talk) 01:48, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

• To add: I spend a lot of my time on history articles. If this : "Those who are in a position to comment are people who had participated in both, and they all report that the two courses are entirely distinct in structure and methodology." we wouldn't have any history articles on Wikipedia prior to the rise of newspapers in the late 18th and early 19th century because every account previous to that could be 'survivour/victim/'biased (even after that date many have been challenged which is why we go to broader sources). No history before 1750s.... think about it. AnonNep (talk) 21:50, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Oppose All three of these articles clearly state the connections between the three organisations and their product offerings, and they are all wikilinked to each other so I cannot see the rational for suggestions that anyone is trying to obscure matters by maintaining the existence of three articles. The est article contains a substantial amount of material which is of historical interest, but which would be completely disproportionate if incorporated here in full. On the other hand, if it were condensed and summarised for inclusion in the Landmark article, this would result in a loss of useful information. As for the strident assertion made above that est and the Landmark Forum are essentially one and the same, I have no personal knowledge because I only heard of Landmark in 2002, and all I have is vague recollections of est and Erhard being ridiculed in some sections of the press in the seventies. Those who are in a position to comment are people who had participated in both, and they all report that the two courses are entirely distinct in structure and methodology. So far as I can see the "scholarly sources" who assert that they are the same make no claim to have directly observed either one, much less both. So their assertions amount to no more than either hearsay or speculation. DaveApter (talk) 12:00, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

• Comment I was brought here by a notice at the Extant Organizations Noticeboard. From what I can tell the primary overlap between all three articles is Est Training; providing this training seems to be the primary basis of all three organizations and (from what I can tell looking at the articles at a glance) the focus of the source material. I think a single article on Est Training with a corporate history-type section outlining its transition in ownership sounds appropriate. CorporateM (Talk) 16:38, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

• Landmark Forum or similar might in fact be the best title for the core article on this topic. John Carter (talk) 16:49, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Exactly - Great Suggestion - Landmark Forum is what Landmark Worldwide calls their main product all over their homepage, is a NPOV title, and it is the same product as previous corporate incarnations offered (updates to the technology excepted). The corporate name and ownership changes are secondary to the core product. They deserve discussion, and might be good sub-headings for a history section, but not much more. Landmark Forum is currently a redirect - I've requested deletion to make way for the page move. I think we can safely ignore all objections by DaveApter now that he has tried to have all other interested editors tossed off the article by ArbComm. Clearly WP:NOTHERE Legacypac (talk) 17:06, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand the logic of moving an article from the company name to a product name. As far as "it is the same product as previous corporate incarnations offered", again this would need some very good sources. The sources Astynax provided above, and numerous others over the years, have been pretty consistent in saying that this is a different product from a different company (est is not the Forum or the Landmark Forum, and the Forum is not the Landmark Forum). --Tgeairn (talk) 17:38, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

A 1970 Chevrolet Corvette is not the same as a 2015 Corvette but we discuss the evolution of the product in one article. Please disclose your connection to Landmark Tgeairn so we can understand your POV. Legacypac (talk) 17:44, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

A Porsche 959 is not the same as a Bugatti Veyron, even though they have closely related roots - and we do not combine them into one article. We do have an article on Sports Car though. Unsurprisingly, that article is little more than a stub. We are about precision and disambiguation here.

As far as your comments directed at me, I have clearly stated my interest and POV regarding Landmark and the cluster of NRM related articles here, on other NRM related talk pages, and in the recent Arbcom case. Feel free to search for my statements in those places. --Tgeairn (talk) 18:59, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

The spin you put on quotations from reliable sources in an attempt to show that they "do not" say what they clearly "do say" is breathtaking. Of my 33 direct quotes, you purported to address less than half. And even in those, you are either gravely mistaken or interpreting everything in puzzling adherence to Landmark's marketing advocacy:

• "Pay Money, Be Happy": The quotation says "their courses are based on his 'technology'—the structure, style, and system of beliefs he used in est and later in the Forum". That is not making a distinction between unrelated entities. Nor is the point about restroom breaks during est courses something that has been refuted.
• "The Landmark Forum: 42 Hours..." Your spin that the article regards the current Landmark and its offerings as "completely distinct" is ridiculous. The article says no such thing anywhere. The quote is ""Part of it [Landmark Forum] is the in-your-face, hard-sell ethos embedded in the corporate DNA it inherited from est."
• "A Harvard Forum For Self-Promotion?" No the quote didn't get "basic facts wrong". The Forum was the program started by Erhard, which was simply continued under Landmark. Nitpicking that it is now officially "Landmark Forum" when it still is widely referred to as "the Forum" is bizzare. Nor does the article "actually (again) distinguishes between them" as you purport. Nowhere.
• "Employing the New Age..." Whether or not it relies upon an observation predating Landmark, it does show that Erhard created the Forum (Landmark's most notable product). The book was published well after Landmark took over the Forum.
• San Francisco Bizarro - The quote is not "clearly" only about WE&A: "Another incarnation of his philosophies [Erhard's est] is still based here in the city, the Landmark Education Corporation."
• Psychotherapy in an Age of Narcissism - actually not as "scarily wrong" as your statement that "everything said there was later completely disproven and recanted". As to your contention that it is not about Landmark, it clearly refers to the Forum after Erhard's departure (by which time it was the "Landmark Forum").
• Ethics in Psychology and the Mental Health Professions - The quote is hardly "a passing reference" and the section of the chapter on pseudoscientific therapies clearly indicates that the current iteration run by Landmark has its roots in Erhard's program.
• Snapping... - Your contention that the quote is "still not about Landmark or its products at all" rests entirely upon your uncited belief that the products are completely separate. Not so.
• The Concise Guide to Today's Religions and Spirituality - isn't just "closest to linking them", despite your interpretation of the following sentence, it actually does link them: "Est was discontinued and replaced with The Forum, and in 1991, Werner Erhard and Associates (WE&A) was dissolved. In its place, Landmark Education was incorporated, with Erhard's brother, serving as CEO and overseeing the current seminar, which is called Landmark Forum." Landmark did not invent the Forum, it licensed it directly from Erhard.
• "New Religions and Mental Health" - Scholars update and republish material all the time. That is no excuse to presume to invalidate their (usually more accurate) updated work on the speculative OR basis that it is not the same as a previous version.
• "Religiosity Rejected" - Wrong. While this may have been based in part upon graduate work, Lockwood is a PhD and the article has been published in more than one respected, peer-reviewed journal. Your strawman that anyone contends that there are no differences in the program and/or company is as invalid as your fallacious contention that existence of differences make something not closely related. And, actually, Porche and VW are owned by the same holding company, and have a shared history, which is prominently noted in their articles. No one tries to make out that this is not the case.
• The Group in Society - Yes, "roots". That is a deep relationship. That something grew out of something else means that there is a continuum.
• "New Religious Movements and Globalization" - Again, it is invalid OR to speculate upon what went into a scholar's statement. Again, the quote is "est (now largely reconfigured as the Landmark Trust)."
• The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of New Age Religions - Yes, the cited quote does "equate the companies or their products". It mentions est's "various manifestations" which by 2004 would include the Forum under Landmark.

Many of these are available online in some form, so other editors can readily read for themselves. It is obvious to me that no matter how clear the statement from no matter how eminent the source, advocates will never accept referenced statements that disagree with original research based in Landmark's position. • Astynax ^talk 02:33, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

@Astynax: Well, obviously we disagree on basic pillars then. I am hopeful that other editors here will review the sources themselves. As for Landmark's position, what exactly is this position that I supposedly am adhering to? You are the one continuously defending (and advocating for) the position that this company should get the benefits and protections of a religion. How is it that you keep accusing me of advocating for Landmark when it is clearly you that are doing so? Let me be perfectly clear: I do not see sources that indicate that Landmark should be related to as a religion, and I do not think that we should use Wikipedia's voice to advance that propaganda. Is that clear enough for you? Will you continue to accuse me of advocacy when you are very obviously the one advocating? --Tgeairn (talk) 03:57, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Your edit comment Tgeairn is very much a personal attack. If there is a competency issue here it is your absolute refusal to accept any source that does not fit with your POV. Legacypac (talk) 04:05, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I accept that, for whatever reason, you do not "see sources" – even when presented with such – for claims that almost no one outside of the Landmark universe denies (i.e., that scholars study est/the Forum/Landmark as an NRM and/or parareligion, that psychiatry and psychology view Landmark as making therapeutic claims, that scholars state that Landmark was developed with influences from Scientology and other sources, that Landmark Forum is classified as an LGAT, that the effectiveness of Landmark's offerings has been seriously questioned, that Landmark and its products are themselves described as "controversial", that Landmark and its offerings are deeply rooted in Erhard's est and Forum, etc). Instead, you evidently think it is OK to second-guess explicit published statements by scholars and journalists to characterize them as mistakes or "propaganda" that need to be excluded – something that indeed does violate Wikipedia's pillars and purpose – and which you have repeatedly gone at some length to show through nothing more than WP:OR. Repeated excision of such items, explicitly discussed in reliable sources, brings the article in line with the image Landmark itself prefers to project, and that is advocacy and in direct opposition to the policy that articles report all significant viewpoints presented in reliable sources. • Astynax ^talk 18:24, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Fine. You're going to continue to be an advocate for Landmark and all of the benefits that they will get from being a religion. I disagree (as above), and I am hopeful that other editors will read the sources. I am not "second-guess"ing sources, rather I am pointing out what they are saying. You are the one providing an interpretation of what the sources are saying, and you are interpreting what they are saying inside of your view that Landmark should get the benefits of being a religion. I am hopeful that others will actually read the sources and see that your advocacy for the company should be disregarded. --Tgeairn (talk) 06:18, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm confused about the benefits a minor category change on Wikipedia will bring Landmark. I doubt the IRS will care much about that. Could you be more specific about what these benefits are? AndroidCat (talk) 07:09, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I have no idea what an IRS will do with Wikipedia moves. It seems likely that it would be nothing. The IRS has very little to do with perception, and Astynax is pushing for Landmark to get the same PR campaign that Scientology pushed to get their exemptions. --Tgeairn (talk) 07:39, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your point, or game, is in introducing this new disinformation, as my comments here clearly show that I have never remotely edited, let alone hinted at, any such thing as proposing changing Landmark's tax status. Landmark's publicity machine has long advocated that, despite how scholars view and describe it, it has nothing to do with religion, is not an LGAT, is not therapy, has little or nothing to do with est or Erhard or Scientology, etc. Nor have I remotely been a party to impugning reliable sources, mischaracterizing what they say or arguing that reporting information based in reliable sources be excluded. • Astynax ^talk 08:00, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

ANI discussion

There is a discussion relevant to this topic taking place at WP:ANI. Input is welcome. John Carter (talk) 16:58, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

• Let me just park this here: editors, please see Talk:Landmark_Education_litigation#Proposed_merge_with_Landmark_Worldwide. Drmies (talk) 18:42, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I performed the basic merge, but the material dropped in needs work. Legacypac (talk) 19:41, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

"Comment" committee

When I was proposing what I called the "comment" committee in the ArbCom case, I was basically envisioning the following as being the primary activities of it:

• 1) which separate articles and sections of articles would reasonably be required to cover the history of est/Landmark in a comprehensive way, and which have sufficient notability and content for possible separate articles;
• 2) which should be the "primary" article on the topic, if there is to be one;
• 3) which if any extant separate topics exist out there which might serve as indicators of how to do the above two points;
• 4) what articles on closely related topics, such as Large group awareness training, exist, and what content would most reasonably be included in those articles;
• 5) probably the hardest point, and the one which I tend to myself think would probably be most important in the possible RfC at the end, if there is one, is the thorniest issue regarding the topic in general, to what extent the various articles should discuss and describe the philosophical/religious underpinnings which have been attributed to the original est program, and to what extent that should be covered and where.

The intention was for that group of editors as a group to review the material available and offer one or more questions for one or more RfC from the greater community on how to deal with those concerns.

I guess one fundamental question would be where to have this conversation, on this page or perhaps an article space subpage, as well.

In any event, pretty much by definition, all input is welcome, including those who are already discussed this matter with in a preliminary way, who I am pinging below: @Blueboar: @Casliber: @Dr. Blofeld: @Drmies: @Jayen466: @Keithbob: @Liz: @Maunus: @Newyorkbrad: @Piotrus: If anyone can think of any other basically uninvolved editors who might have useful knowledge about how wikipedia deals with such things, please feel free to contact them as you see fit.

John Carter (talk) 22:16, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I guess the first point of primary concern might be which article, under what title, should be the primary article on this topic. What suggestions are there, and what evidence and reasoning supports them? I do not think that this issue will necessarily be decided immediately by the editors already active here, or any newcomers, but it would probably be the most reasonable topic for the first RfC. Depending on how quickly the material on this topic is gathered, the following discussions, which are probably more or less dependent on that first one, will probably follow. John Carter (talk) 01:17, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Without intending to be argumentative here, what is the problem with the current naming of the articles? This looks like a solution in search of a problem. This article clearly gives the connection to the est training in the lead of the article, and links to that article, which gives detailed history there. This article is based on the company name now and also covers the main product - we could certainly have a section that went into The Landmark Forum in more detail. In fact, there was a bunch more information about the details of that course itself that was recently removed, if I recall correctly. Nwlaw63 (talk) 03:38, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that ARBCOM has, basically, said there are obvious problems with these articles, and that there seems to be good reason to believe that the individuals who have been most closely involved in creating those problems in the recent edit history of the articles do not perceive those problems, which is why the arbitrators called for additional uninvolved eyes to review the content. Presumably, they might be able to see the obvious problems with the articles that apparently even the arbitrators perceived but perhaps that certain editors who have recently been heavily involved in the articles cannot. John Carter (talk) 21:42, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

A working group of some kind is an intriguing idea, however limiting the work of the group to Landmark, EST, and WE&A would tend to produce a pretty myopic view. It would be interesting to take on the entirety of these "Human Potential" articles. As we have all seen, there is a lot of confusion and "FUD" around "religion or not", "cult or not", "movement or not", etc. A Wikiproject? --Tgeairn (talk) 05:04, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

One more encyclopedic source

User:NQ, who has my sincere thanks for this, found the following article in the encyclopedia Contemporary American Religions: [2]. John Carter (talk) 02:10, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Interesting. This is a good example of why WP:WPNOTRS says "Wikipedia articles should be based mainly on reliable secondary sources". Tertiary sources like this are especially difficult. We can't see what sources the authors based their writing on, and the materials listed in the bibliography they provide predates the events they discuss by a decade or more. --Tgeairn (talk) 04:54, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Neither is it always, or even frequently, possible to discern exactly which sources an author of reliable secondary works (academic or otherwise) has based his/her statement(s). Few secondary works are as rigorously cited as a doctoral thesis. It is blatant WP:OR for editors to concoct objections to reliable sources based on speculation as to the reliable source's sourcing in any case. • Astynax ^talk 09:53, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Actually, speaking as someone who has, I think, maybe a bit broader experience than a lot of others here, the page Tgeairn refers only to the specific type of sources which are preferred as sources in wikipedia. That is a very limited statement referring almost exclusively to citation and reference. In general, the five pillars at WP:PILLARS indicate that we are basically an encyclopedia. Considering that in general there really isn't in most cases that much of a difference between any encyclopedias of the same type on the same topic, it is and I think has always been taken as being perhaps one of our best goals to just, basically, find what other encyclopedic or other reference sources say on a subject and make sure we say that. WP:WEIGHT and other pages more or less implicitly follow that as well. So, while I agree that we don't cite tertiary sources that often, and shouldn't, it is extremely questionable to say that our content should not basically mirror or reflect that of other high-quality reference sources, barring changes since they were written or published. Unless we have obvious reasons, like very negative reviews, that a given purported reference source isn't very useful as a reference source, we are more or less implicitly bound by guidelines to reflect what they say, more or less, in our own content. John Carter (talk) 15:17, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Good points. When mainstream scholarly reviews point out issues with a claim, even a claim in an otherwise reliable source, we present the mainstream view (although we still note dissenting viewpoints held by a significant faction of reputable scholars). Moreover, and although they are not frequently used, primary and tertiary sources may indeed be cited. Discounting primary and secondary sources, not to mention summarily blanking material on the basis that a statement(s) cites primary (or tertiary) sources, is a misreading and misapplication of policy. • Astynax ^talk 18:37, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Using primary or tertiary sources without having reliable secondary sources to establish context is generally limited to only the most basic of factual statements, and even then is discouraged. No one in this conversation is discussing (and certainly not discounting) reliable secondary sources, so I do not understand the point raised here. --Tgeairn (talk) 22:23, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

That is wrong. Use of tertiary and primary sources is nowhere "discouraged" by policy. The only thing the guideline encourages is that articles "mainly" employ secondary sources. Other than the restriction on citing Wikipedia itself, there is no restriction on using tertiary sources—certainly nothing that limits "to only the most basic of factual statements". Policy does say that primary sources must be used carefully to avoid synthesis. • Astynax ^talk 00:19, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

WP:PRIMARY is policy. It says "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources." That sounds like a preference for secondary sources. It goes on to say "Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources.", which is to say that we need context beyond the PRIMARY source. The policy goes on to clarify this, saying "All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than to an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors." This certainly appears to me to be policy saying that we need reliable secondary sources (which, again, no one in this thread is disputing) to provide the interpretation. PRIMARY also says "A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge." Again, this is policy. Some editors here are continually pushing primary and tertiary sources without regard for context or quality, and without regard for what the reliable secondary sources say. --Tgeairn (talk) 07:40, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

The policy from which you are quoting is explicitly talking about the balance of source types used over entire articles, no more and no less. It absolutely does not forbid or discourage use of primary, let alone tertiary, sources to cite portions of articles. It does also go on to explain the few limitations on 1) primary sources (i.e., no editor synthesis as is the case with any source, or personal experiences), and 2) a single limit on tertiary sources (i.e., it is almost always against policy to cite Wikipedia in Wikipedia articles). If there is a reliable secondary or tertiary source, those would normally be used instead of a primary source, though even so, a primary source can still be useful in many situations (one does not need to cite a secondary or tertiary source to support: "the Declaration of Independence states 'We hold these truths to be self-evident...'"). • Astynax ^talk 10:08, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, WP:WPNOTRS is about sourcing on Wikipedia. Given that this section was created entitled "One more encyclopedic source", and that we are in fact on Wikipedia, I didn't see the need to explicitly say that my comment is specifically about the use of sources on Wikipedia. Of course, the quoted passage does say exactly that. Ultimately, you agree that "...we don't cite tertiary sources that often, and shouldn't...". While it is not our place to attempt to mirror reference sources (Wikipedia is more than a simple compilation of other references), I agree that the result is often that a Wikipedia article contains similar information to other related works. --Tgeairn (talk) 22:23, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

No one is talking about secondary sources here. Encyclopedias, and specifically the one provided here, are tertiary sources. --Tgeairn (talk) 22:23, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

The type of source does not affect its reliability. A reliable tertiary source is just as fit for citation as a reliable secondary source. As policy indicates, tertiary sources can also be a good guide as to the relative weight given to varying scholarly opinions in an article. • Astynax ^talk 00:23, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

That is not exactly accurate. While any type of source may or may not be reliable, the type of source does affect its cite-ability. Reliable secondary sources are far more "fit for citation" than primary or tertiary ones. WP:PSTS is policy and it deals with this clearly. WP:WPNOTRS is a guideline, and it also is clear about this. --Tgeairn (talk) 07:49, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Again, no, all three may be cited. As stated, the caveats include 1) for primary sources, that editors should not synthesize (which is also the case for all sources) or base entire articles/long passages on primary sources, and 2) for tertiary sources, only that Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source for citations. Neither policy or guidelines "discourage" or affect fitness for citation of any of these 3 types. I would suggest rereading those links. • Astynax ^talk 10:08, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Brard Repetition

I noticed that with the merge of the litigation article, the article mentions the Brard lawsuit in the public reception section and the litigation section. This seems like a lot of coverage about a lawsuit that looks like it went nowhere (it seems like it was dropped or dismissed, but I don't see a resolution here - does anyone else have a source that mentions the outcome?). I notice there's no resolution to the Been material either (it literally ends with a comma). I think this was dismissed, but again, I don't have the source in front of me - we'd actually want to give the resolution. The larger issue is how much space we give to lawsuits that were dismissed or dropped (if indeed they were). There's an undue weight issue with giving a ton of airtime to lawsuits with little discernible impact, given that most companies have some of these. Nwlaw63 (talk) 03:51, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I have merged the Brard material into the reception section where the context for the case was already discussed, eliminating the duplication. I don't know the final outcome of the Been v Weed case, but our own materials at commons show that Landmark was removed from the case as a defendant. Since our only sources are either PRIMARY or pre-trial, and I did not find any actual WP:RS later discussing the trial or outcome, I removed the Been v Weed case from the article. Lastly, I merged the remaining material into the relevant sections and removed the WP:OR. --Tgeairn (talk) 04:58, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with using Primary sources. How about you restore the information again. Legacypac (talk) 20:35, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

We need a reliable secondary source to establish the relevance of this. We can't have a whole item with only a primary source. See WP:WPNOTRS and WP:PSTS for more. Any company that has been around for 23 years is going to have lawsuits, especially one that claims to have had millions of customers in its offices. Without secondary sources commenting on the lawsuit and its outcome, there's no way it deserves weight in an article about the company. --Tgeairn (talk) 21:04, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Werner Erhard Navbox

I removed the {{Werner Erhard}} navigation box from the footer of the page, as Erhard's association with this company is described in the article and he is linked there. The relevant other links from the navigation box are also already listed in the body of the article. Including the navigation box is WP:UNDUE as it adds disproportionate weight to the creator of the company that Landmark purchased intellectual property from. Erhard appears to only be involved as a consultant to Landmark, and this big bright template leaves readers with a misleading perception.

Legacypac reverted the removal of the template, so I am bringing this here for discussion.

The question is, does inclusion of the Werner Erhard navigation template unbalance the article? --Tgeairn (talk) 18:38, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Persistent attempts to structure the article along the narrative preferred by Landmark is unbalancing the article. The CEO of the company is his brother, and I read that his sister is on the board. He says he created the technology and "consults" for the current company. We don't know the actual shareholdings of this business, but pretty clear Erhard remains either a key or the key figure. Separating Erhard from Landmark is like separating Santa Claus or Jesus from Christmas. Legacypac (talk) 18:46, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

What is the "narrative preferred by Landmark"? I have now seen this (or similar) statement from four different editors (Lithistman, Zambelo, Astynax, and now Legacypac), and I have not seen a single source or reference for it. As for Erhard's relationship, we have what the RS are telling us (Landmark purchased intellectual property rights from a company he founded, he consults with Landmark). --Tgeairn (talk) 18:56, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

The CLNT guidelines list as disadvantage #4 "Inclusion of article links or subdivisions in a template may inadvertently push a point of view. It may also incorrectly suggest that one aspect of a topic or a linked example is of more, less, or equal importance to others; be used to advertise obscure topics in prominent places; or assert project proprietorship." Including this navbox here appears to run afoul of this disadvantage. --Tgeairn (talk) 18:56, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I can see nothing in the comments above which seems to me to justify the removal of the template. The template was evidently created at a time when it was thought that the main article for this topic was Werner Erhard. It is and always has been reasonable to link related articles, and a company which is based on the thinking of an individual, as Landmark admits, is clearly related. Now, it might be possible that the time has come to consider whether Werner Erhard really is the main article on this topic. If it isn't, then it would certainly be reasonable to adjust the template in such a way as to place the main article of the topic as the main listing in the template. That would actually be reasonable. But there should first be discussion and consensus regarding how to structure the related content, and then adjust the navbox template based on the outcome of that discussion. John Carter (talk) 19:43, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

That makes sense as a narrative explanation for how we ended up with the template here. I don't think that narrative supports continuing to keep it, but you raise a possible alternative to keep/remove. Thanks. --Tgeairn (talk) 19:54, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Which is one of the reasons why I think the first and primary purpose right now is to determine, at least on a tentative basis, what the main article on this topic is, and what other articles should exist, and if possible which subarticles/subsections should exist in which of the various articles. Or, in short, the things which I have proposed in the comment committee section. John Carter (talk) 20:04, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

After a little digging in histories, the navigation box was created by a now topic-banned editor. That editor was topic-banned (and de-sysopped) for intentionally placing "undue negative weight in topics on new religious movements". That same editor added the navbox to this article. Given that this behaviour is exactly what the concern is here, and is exactly what the editor was topic-banned for, I believe that this alone justifies the immediate removal of the navbox. --Tgeairn (talk) 20:36, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

This is an interesting allegation "Landmark's ongoing censorship and propaganda efforts include a campaign against Wikipedia, where Landmark is removing critical information and replacing it with propaganda." coupled with the substance of the document which says Landmark uses unpaid volunteers. [3] Legacypac (talk) 19:50, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, an interesting allegation. Did you read the whole statement (specifically "Wikipedia editors are meeting to consider the Landmark Education entry, and we need this document published so we can cite and refer to it in our efforts to restore the truth about Landmark to Wikipedia.")? Given the obvious heavy-handed POV of the anonymously written summary, the idea that the same author says they are working with others to restore the truth is frightening. I am going to examine to edit history of the article around the publication timeframe. --Tgeairn (talk) 20:01, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

That is an interesting response. Legacypac (talk) 20:13, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It is unsurprising that many of the active editors in the months surrounding the publication date of that document (which is in itself innocuous and has been discussed here relatively recently) are now topic-banned/de-sysopped/indefinitely blocked/site-banned. I do see that there are a few familiar names as well. The "Description (as provided by our source)" gives an interesting perspective into the mind (POV) of at least one of the contributors here at that time (and it explicitly says "we", indicating more than one). --Tgeairn (talk) 20:17, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Realizing that some of the recent editors here are inclined to paranoia about the motivations of others, as is evidenced by recent commentary, yes, including my own regarding what is to my eyes one of the two or three most long-term POV pushers I know of in wikipedia, I sincerely urge all editors involved to refrain from speculating unduly about who was or was not involved in uploading of documents unless they have real sources to support that. Also, honestly, the number of websites I've seen that regularly use the royal "we" to indicate to those who read it is really remarkable. This is particularly true of minor religious or philosophical groups which are not necessarily notable, but which use their websites to give a false impression of numerous followers by having one or two people write under dozens or hundreds of names. "We are not amused", despite being apocryphal, is maybe the best instance and example of the use of the royal "we". Also, there really isn't much along the lines of WP:TPG which speculation about the origins of documents offsite is. Having said that, I do see the same document over at archive.org, which I've downloaded several encyclopedias from, and the fed hasn't apparently objected to it or considered it a fake, so it might be accurate, although, admittedly, I don't know that, having no other examples of potentially dubious documents uploaded to archive.org to compare it to or use to determine numbers. John Carter (talk) 20:46, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't think anyone disputes the legitimacy of the document. My commentary is directed at the editorial "Description (as provided by our source)" that accompanies the file. I join you in urging "all editors involved to refrain from speculating unduly" (period). Thanks. (Royal we... made me laugh, thanks for that too) --Tgeairn (talk) 20:57, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

So what is your relationship to Landmark User:Tgeairn? Have you ever been or are you currently an employee, a volunteer or otherwise connected to the company? Legacypac (talk) 20:32, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

That question is completely irrelevant to the topic under discussion. We are here to discuss content, not contributors.

Having said that, I will not be hounded over the course of weeks or months as DaveApter has been, so I am clearly stating that there is not and has never been a WP:COI of any kind, nature, shape, or type. --Tgeairn (talk) 20:50, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Your editing contributions and talk page contributions, including in this thread, suggest otherwise. You raised the issue a few posts up. Now you evaded my question which makes you sound like a WP:DUCK.Legacypac (talk) 21:05, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Call me what you like. Do not raise this issue again here, take it to the appropriate noticeboard (WP:COIN). You did not answer my question. You said above that there is a "narrative preferred by Landmark" and I asked what that narrative is, and what your source is. --Tgeairn (talk) 21:12, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

(e-c) There is a difference between being maybe an SPA and having a COI. also, honestly, depending on definitions of terms, I might have a COI because I am, according to the way that the Church of Scientology defines the term, I am a Scientologist. I bought a book in the 1980s in college once, because I was, basically, pursuing a cute female whose job was, apparently, according to some academic sources published then, to lure idiots like me in that way. Anyway, according to the way they determine "membership," that makes me a Scientologist, although I don't think that anyone else would consider me such, particularly me. There is a regrettable tendency, which seems to be documented in at least some material on Landmark and its various iterations, for those associated with Landmark to parse language in ways that most lawyers might consider extreme, but the above statement doesn't seem to be doing such parsing. If we assume he has read WP:COI and understands everything it says, I have to take that statement as accurate. However, there is also a bit of a tendency, which I share, on the net for some people to try to defend things or people which they see as being under unreasonable attack. I don't fault people like that, being one of them, but the fact that I know that I myself qualify as one such leads me to think that getting more people without prior POV's of any kind involved is and was a good idea. I note that the ARCA page has Seraphimblade proposing some sort of discretionary sanctions in the future, and think that, if the lack of such is one of the reasons others have chosen to not be involved, that change might help. Also, maybe, after the new school term settles in, we might find a few other editors perhaps interested in taking part. I hope so, anyway.

Also, I would assume the narrative preferred by Landmark is the one in which they are a true blue pure harmless helpless group which brings out the best in people, just like the narrative preferred by the Catholic Church, of which I am a member, is that it is the direct voice of God on earth, and that all the disgusting and sometimes just straight weird things that have been done by its members and leaders are aberrations. Honestly, regarding most older religions, I think that the latter part is also true of most any religious group which has stood the test of several hundred or more years, but I think it is reasonable for us to assume that most groups want to see themselves portrayed in the best possible light, which includes both maximizing the things they can play up in their support and minimizing the things which don't make them look so good. John Carter (talk) 21:21, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I'll admit to a bit of an indignant perspective from time-to-time. It is, after all, how I ended up working on this set of articles (as I've described elsewhere). I saw the recent comment on the ARCA page as well, so hopefully we will get a vote on a DS motion soon. I'd propose an amendment to the Landmark Worldwide case, but it is much less work for an Arb to make a motion.

Also, I understand what John Carter is saying about preferred narrative, but it appears that some (notably the list I provided earlier) believe that there is some story that Landmark is telling or pushing. I honestly do not see that in their materials (many of the materials on their own website are not exactly all peaches and cream, for instance) or anywhere else. If there is some narrative "out there" somewhere, I'd like to see it. If there isn't, I'd like to stop hearing about it and get back to working on articles or at least recent changes patrol. --Tgeairn (talk) 21:35, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

@John Carter:Seraphimblade has moved for the application of DS to Landmark Worldwide as a topic. Let's hope that you and I are correct that DS will pass and bring some new editor eyes to the mix. --Tgeairn (talk) 23:25, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I frankly don't know much about Landmark until I started looking at this article and doing some reading, but it seems clear so far that there are dedicated defenders here who will remove anything that does not match the company narrative, and try to force off any editors that don't tow the company line. If this is going to be a puff piece, let's just delete the whole thing. Legacypac (talk) 23:35, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Again, what is "the company narrative"? I agree that there appear to be differing entrenched perspectives. What I don't actually know is what the supposed narrative is. We have editors arguing that the company is religious, others arguing that the program is religious, others arguing that the program is essentially one continuum from the early 70s, others arguing that there's no religion there, others saying it's a cult, others saying it isn't, others saying it's great, others saying stay away. On top of all of that, we have editors slinging accusations around. Then we have walls of text arguing over sources. Then we have editors saying black is white and red is up. Then we have a near-constant stream of editors appearing, making mass changes, then disappearing. Of course, we also have editors who change accounts every few months. I could probably go on and on, but maybe you can understand why John Carter (and I, and others) are asking you to assume a little good faith here. And, maybe you can understand why I am legitimately asking, what is the "company narrative" that you are speaking of? Thanks, Tgeairn (talk) 23:50, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Citation format

Is there any problem with changing to the [[Template:sfn|sfn short footnote citation format}}? This keeps <ref name=> citations from being orphaned when material is deletd or moved, makes the footnotes tidier and is simpler to use (no looking around the text for where you might have repeated the same reference) when citing the same reference in multiple locations. The <ref></ref> format can continue to be used by editors unfamiliar with the short footnote format. If no objection, I'll switch over the existing cites. • Astynax ^talk 23:21, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Fine by me. John Carter (talk) 23:34, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I finished the conversion last night. I'll note that no sources were added or removed, though I did update expired links, fleshed out some that had incomplete bibliographic info and flagged a couple that need better sources. The short footnote citation format is easy to use (see Template:Sfn) and keeps much of the spaghetti code out of the text, making it easier to edit. • Astynax ^talk 19:40, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for all of that work. It couldn't have been simple to unthread that tangle. Hopefully removing the duplication will assist everyone. --Tgeairn (talk) 22:00, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Tekniko Licensing Corporation

There appears to be some confusion or conflicting sources regarding the ownership of Tekniko Licensing Corporation, shown in the infobox and the Corporation section of the article. The secinfo source shows a statement that Terry Giles owns Tekniko Licensing Corporation. Our article says that Landmark owns that company as a subsidiary. We could use some better sourcing here to sort this out, as Tekniko appears to possibly be the actual holder of the Erhard-era intellectual property. --Tgeairn (talk) 03:44, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Recent addition of sources

Astynax (re)added a number of sources with this edit. Of these, only one source appears to be a reliable source, with the rest being inaccurate, suspect, or at least raising questions.

• A&K staff (8 June 2004). "Irrationalism, mysticism och ockultism: Landmark Education lägger ned verksamheten". Tidskriften Analys & Kritik (in German). University of Zurich and University of Düsseldorf. ISSN 0171-5860. Retrieved 23 January 2015.

This is listed as being published by "University of Zurich and University of Düsseldorf" in the citation. The linked article is published in the "Journal of Analysis & Criticism", which was published by "Steve Hall". There is no indication of editorial oversight or of reliability of this source.

• Case Financial (2000b). "Pacific Biometrics, Filings Form SB-2". Scribd. Retrieved 23 October 2008.

This is appears to be a scribd duplicate of a document and is not verifiable or reliable.

• DIKE staff (2000). "Landmark Education renamed". Digitales Informationssystem in der Evangelischen Kirche in Hessen und Nassau. Mühlheim am Main. Archived from the original on 8 February 2007. Retrieved 22 October 2008. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

This is an anonymous passage from an anti-cult editorial website, which states "The personal opinions of the individual authors do not represent the opinion of SINUS" it is not a reliable source.

• Kronberg, Robert; Lindebjerg, Kristina (2002). "Psychogroups and Cults in Denmark". Cultic Studies Review. 1 (1). International Cultic Studies Association.

This claims to be published by the International Cultic Studies Association, which did not exist at the time of publication. The actual document shows that it was published by the AFF (a predecessor to the ICSA). The Cultic Studies Review did not have (and did not claim) an editorial review, and the TOC of the issue clearly shows which articles were peer-reviewed (this one was not). A copy of the article is found here, and does not support the cited passage in any way. The passage says "Other observers have noted relationships between the training programs and religion or a spiritual experience", the source says "we have also had many inquiries about the American psychogroup, Landmark, which is associated with cults because of the high level of one-sided sales pressure that many people report." The source is calling Landmark a psychogroup (not religion or spiritual) and then says "Tvind is another [emphasis added] non-religious organization...", effectively saying the opposite of that the passage in the article claims. And again, there was no peer-review or editorial review. Simply a statement by a self-trained "Exit Counselor".

• Tessier, Odine (20 May 2004). "Voyage au pays des nouveaux gourous". Le Point (in French). Retrieved 21 September 2014.

This looks like a generally reliable source (a mainstream French newspaper), and the cited article (a "blurb" about the upcoming episode of Pièces à Conviction) supports the claim that the episode was "highly critical of its subject".

I recommend that the first four citations above be removed and reliable sources be found. In some cases we already have other sources for the passages, so there should be no problem simply removing these unreliable ones. --Tgeairn (talk) 19:01, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

I merely restored references that had been blanked on 25 January. Those citations were already in the article, I added no new sources. As to the objections you raise: 1) Analys & Kritik is today published as footnoted. The Swedish edition in the archived link was edited by Göran Hallén (not sure where you found a "Steve Hall"). 2) There are 2 filings referenced, not duplicates. 3) Go ahead and provide a better source, but no need to remove this one, as it is not used to reference anything controversial or exceptional. Nor can I find the disclaimer you've quoted, but rather that they are "responsible for the Sinus webpages including the editorial section by chairman Otto Lomb." (in the archived version) and "Despite careful control we assume no liability for the content of external links. We are solely responsible for the content of these linked pages." (in the current version). 4) ...And yet the publication is listed at ICSA in CSR Vol. 1, No. 1 (2002). 5) Again, I did not add this, but simply restored a citation that had been summarily blanked earlier. • Astynax ^talk 23:54, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

I apologize, I thought I was clear in saying that you (re)added the sources. I acknowledge that you did not newly add these, but rather that you added them without explanation after another editor removed them.

As Arbcom said, "Parties to the case are reminded to base their arguments in reliable, independent sources and to discuss changes rather than revert on sight." In that spirit, your blanket reversion of the IP's removals is unfortunate. That aside, I am interested in our getting the best sourcing we can here. I can take each of these (the first four, at least) to WP:RSN if you like, but I find it hard to believe that you would (for example) argue for scribd.com as a RS.

To address your statements about my objections:

1) The actual published issues (see here for an example show "Steve Hall" as publisher, and do not mention Zurich or Düsseldorf at all as you claim.

2) There may be more than one filing, this purports to be a duplicate of one of those filings and someone has placed it on scribd.com (a user-content-generated website with no oversight on content).

3) I don't need to produce a better source, you (re)added it (BTW, the disclaimer is on https://web.archive.org/web/20070225061941/http://www.dike.de/SINUSsekteninfo/lec/, as the IP indicated in their edit summary).

4) I linked to the actual document, which does not show ICSA anywhere on it (which it couldn't, since ICSA did not exist at the time).

5) I agreed that the release about the upcoming show (I think, my French is only as good at Google's) should be left in. I do find it disingenuous to say that the IP "summarily blanked" it. They provided an edit summary indicating it is a duplicate, and simply looking at the references section I can see that there are two references (Lemonniera19_May_2005 and Tessier20_May_2004) that have the same URL. The IP removed a duplicate, as they said.

My concerns with these sources (which mostly came from the IP's concerns shown in the edit summaries when they removed them) are valid. Please stop simply pasting chunks of copy into the article without addressing the concerns of other editors. --Tgeairn (talk) 20:10, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Note: I have corrected the duplicate URL in the Lemonniera19_May_2005 reference. --Tgeairn (talk) 20:24, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

And Astynax reverted my correction. Please, let's read what we're putting into articles before blindly reverting. Astynax has now twice reintroduced an error into the reference, after having it politely pointed out three times. This is near-textbook WP:TENDENTIOUS editing. --Tgeairn (talk) 20:42, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Blanking referenced information, as the IP did, is reverting. The references were not challenged, merely blanked. As I said, Analys & Kritik is currently hosted by those universities (see the website). Scribd is quoting a corporate filing, which is a primary source, but perfectly acceptable to support the limited statement it is being used to reference. Have a better source, then go ahead and cite it. The "disclaimer" at dike.de refers to the "following" links, none of which go to the page being cited. Again, the ICSA website lists the paper as being among its articles, and the website also claims that it was founded in 1979. That there has been a corporate name change is irrelevant. The article is still available through the cited entity. As for the IP blanking "a duplicate", s/he removed a citation pointing to a unique reference. Finally, the url "correction" was a dead link that did not go to the original page, but redirected to another site that required a flash player (which even then did not show the article when I attempted to verify). • Astynax ^talk 21:22, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Fine, if you want to call the IP's removals reverting then what there was to do was to follow WP:BRD and discuss - not just go and revert again yourself. They provided explanations in their edit summaries, so I don't see how you can say they "merely blanked" things.

It does not matter who hosts an archive now. The actual pdf or other copies of the actual printed materials are what matter. That applies to analyskritik, sekteninfo, and icsa. In all three cases, we have the electronic representations of actual documents. In the case of scribd, it is not a reliable source for anything at all. Why fight for its inclusion?

Lastly, in the case of the duplicate citation - you are wrong. You have blindly reverted and reintroduced an error into the article at least twice now.

This url: "https://web.archive.org/web/20090121000653/http://hebdo.nouvelobs.com/hebdo/parution/p2115/dossier/a268827-chez_les_gourous_en_cravate.html" is the archive of this url: "http://hebdo.nouvelobs.com/hebdo/parution/p2115/dossier/a268827-chez_les_gourous_en_cravate.html" on 21 January 2009.

That is simply how archive.org functions.

You have changed this to say that "https://web.archive.org/web/20090121000653/http://hebdo.nouvelobs.com/hebdo/parution/p2115/dossier/a268827-chez_les_gourous_en_cravate.html" is an archive of "http://www.lepoint.fr/culture/2007-01-17/voyage-au-pays-des-nouveaux-gourous/249/0/28932".

This is patently false and is not how archive.org functions. After being told about the error once, I thought you had made an accidental error. After being told twice, it looked like you were being belligerent but still in error. Now, it looks like you have intentionally inserted a misrepresentation into the article and are arguing to keep that lie in place. Please stop the blind reverts and start actually reading what the sources and other editors are saying. --Tgeairn (talk) 21:43, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

The link you inserted is a redirect to another site which does not display the article. It fixed nothing. • Astynax ^talk 21:55, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

The url I put in the URL field is the original URL that the archive url is an archive of. That is how archive.org urls work. This is no different than any other archive urls. Look, for example, at the citation for "DIKE staff (2000)". --Tgeairn (talk) 22:16, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

This discussion does not appear to be getting anywhere. Although I believe that the references should be left out until consensus finds them reliable, I am not going to revert Astynax's reverts. I have taken the four sources under discussion to WP:RSN here: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Multiple_Landmark_Worldwide_sources. I encourage editors to participate at that noticeboard. --Tgeairn (talk) 04:08, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Erhard's lawyer

The article currently states "Terry Giles is Chairman of the Board and Erhard's lawyer." and is sourced to a piece about Giles that says "Werner Erhard, the creator of EST, is a client." It may be a stretch to say Giles is Erhard's lawyer based on that source. Air France is one of my clients, but I am certainly not Air France's solicitor. I recommend a better source or a reword. --Tgeairn (talk) 17:00, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

It does show a continuing business relationship (and since you pointed it out, it is/was the same attorney-client relationship between Erhard and Art Schrieber), particularly given the past corporate history, plus the marketing spin putting at arm's length of any relationship between Erhard and Landmark. If you are an attorney who represents Air France, and are appointed to the board of an Air France spin-off, it is wrong to posit that there is no relationship. There may be other reliable sources that explain this more fully, at which point it could be expanded upon. • Astynax ^talk 17:55, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

You are again speaking of the "marketing spin putting at arm's length of any relationship between Erhard and Landmark". Editors continue to make this (and similar) statement, but I have not seen this in the sources. I am genuinely interested, as I have not found this. Do you have a reliable source saying that Landmark is doing this? --Tgeairn (talk) 18:55, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm surprised you don't recall, as there are several statements to this effect in sources that have already been discussed. Perhaps this needs to be explained in the article as part of the narrative you seem to think is needed. It is an interesting point. • Astynax ^talk 00:01, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I only recall asking repeatedly (such as at #Werner Erhard Navbox above), without ever receiving an answer. Again, what sources do we have for this company narrative/marketing spin/company line? --Tgeairn (talk) 20:49, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I am not saying that there is no relationship. The NYT article clearly says there is. I am asking if it is reasonable for us to say something beyond what the source is saying. Why not just have the article say what the source says? Why must we twist the language? --Tgeairn (talk) 18:58, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Here Boingboing has published a letter, signed by Terry M. Giles, received September 24, 2009, following a blog-post titled "Wikileaks re-publishes 60 Minutes piece on est/Landmark cult leader Werner Erhard". In this letter you'll find the assertion: "I am a lawyer and have represented Werner Erhard since 1990 so am familiar with the true facts about the matters discussed in your blog post at http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/31/suppressed-60-minute.html." 81.206.112.118 (talk) 11:39, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that link. We obviously cannot use what our own article calls a "group blog" as a source, but this seems to support the idea that Giles is (or at least was five years ago) Erhard's personal attorney. I'm not sure how to reconcile that with other statements that say that Schreiber is Erhard's attorney, but I guess a guy can have more than one. I have no idea how any of it is relevant in this article anyway. --Tgeairn (talk) 20:14, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Well of kind of debunks the idea that Erhard is not involved when his attorney since 1990 and his bother are the organization leaders. If we remove everything that does not exactly match the company line why not just redirect the article to the company website? Legacypac (talk) 03:14, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

And again, what is "the company line"? Show me. Do you have a source for it? You, and others, keep using that phrase (company line, corporate spin, etc) without anything whatsoever to back it up. Please say what the "company line" is, with sources. --Tgeairn (talk) 04:43, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it is clearly impossible to draw a straight company line regarding Landmark's acknowledgement of the facts and the strategies with respect to its public image, but who is to blame? The company has changed time and again its publicity policies and name. The company line as it is now, you can find on the website. Nowadays Landmark Worldwide acknowledges more or less that it owes a great deal to Erhard, but only partially (the est-episode is either left out or put at the greatest possible distance), and not in a straightforward and unambiguous manner. What is more: this was not always so. Landmark Education has firmly denied that Landmark Forum had anything to do with est and the Forum (see for example Lockwood), it has denied that Landmark Forum could reasonably be categorized as a Large Group Awareness Training (a denial which was plainly absurd), it denies up till now that it has (had) anything to do with (alternative) religious movements, which is, to say the least, in strong contrast with the picture presented in scholarly literature.

Every scholar worth the name considers est, the Forum and Landmark Forum as three appearances of the same phenomenon, a phenomenon that belongs to the Human Potential Movement, is a Large Group Awareness Training, and most of them also assume that the phenomenon has religious charactistics, including for example a sacralized Self as the bearer of divine truth, rituals, enlightenment, salvation, even a kind of transcendence.

Since 1982, when Steven M. Tipton published his sociological study Getting Saved from the Sixties: Moral Meaning in Conversion and Cultural Change (University of California Press), est and its descendants are considered frequently as constituting an alternative religious movement. Quotations from Tipton's Preface:

"Religious movements arise and people join them for a mumber of reasons. Sixties youth have joined alternative religious movements basically, I will argue, to make moral sense of their lives." (Opening sentences)

(...)

"I describe the transformation of moral meaning for sixties youth who have joined a millenarian Pentecostal sect (The Living Word Fellowship), a Zen Buddhist meditation center (Pacific Zen Center), and a human potential training organization (Erhard Seminars Training, est)." (p.xv)

(...)

"As representatives of the three major types of alternative religious movements that have flourished in our society since the 1960s (conservative Christian, neo-Oriental, and psychotherapeutic), these three cases can be identified as evaluative outlooks adopted by the young in response to their experience of discontinuous cultural change in America during the 1960s." (p.xv)

Times have changed, publicity was not always favourable, the company was rebaptized (with the same leading officials still in charge), and the training program has been adapted accordingly (a little).

All this has been pointed out to you before at great length by Astynax who knows a lot, writes in a clear and unambiguous way, without resorting to ad-hominems and without quarreling with reliable sources. See also this bibliography/list of quotations compiled by Astynax. Based upon my reading of scholarly literature, I happen to share nearly all of Astynax' conclusions. I did not know Astynax before I joined the discussion, and I have never contacted him/her. The IP that provided the BoingBoing quotation, was me. Theobald Tiger (talk) 11:34, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Categorization of Landmark as 'religious in nature' does not belong in article lead

In reviewing the forest of material that's recently been added to the talk page, I notice that none of it seems to addressing the question that Arbcom called the locus of the dispute on this article - the characterization of Landmark as a new religious movement. I am proposing that we remove the text that refers to Landmark as religious or quasi-religious in the article lead, which for the reasons I give below is both misleading and violates undue weight, and instead allow the reader to decide for his or her self about this issue based on the copy that follows.

Here is why this claim doesn't belong in the article lead:

1) No contemporary news account that I can find – we have dozens of reliable media sources - refer to Landmark as religious in nature, at all (in fact, some explicitly refute this). If Landmark had religious components, it seems impossible that these dozens of sources, such as New York Times and Time Magazine, would completely fail to mention this.

2) Some writers in the field of new religious movements have listed Landmark as belonging in their field, and in usually just that way – as one sentence as a name on a list, and not a detailed argument for any claims of religiosity. This is very relevant, because the most cited writers in the field don’t actually require explicit religiosity as part of their definition of a new religious movement – any group they wish to study can be considered.

3) The one writer (Lockwood) who makes a detailed, substantial case for Landmark having some clear religious elements (Lockwood herself notes the "stark void of academic discourse in the group") is someone who was a graduate student when writing this paper, is not a professor or other recognized expert, has no cites of their work that I can find, and uses as the crux of their argument an attack on the opinion of Chryssides, one of the most cited writers in the field, who she acknowledges has "doubts as to the religious nature of the group". In other words, to accept her novel theory of modern religion that includes overtly secular human potential movements such as Landmark, we have to accept her view over that of a much more highly regarded source.

4) The aforementioned sources that put Landmark on a list, tend to all be primary and tertiary sources, tend to source circularly, or source to previous comments on a different version of the company (est) which may or may not be accurate today.

5) Thus to put assertions of Landmark as religious or quasi-religious in the lead of the article is to give undue weight to a minority (Lockwood) view. Again, it's worth repeating the point: a brief sentence mentioning Landmark on a list of new religious movements is NOT the same as claiming Landmark is overtly religious, as Astynax has acknowledged, since the definition of 'new religious movement' used by these writers doesn't actually require overt religious characteristics, or any clear religious characteristics at all, for that matter. Thus, a claim of being religious or quasi-religious in the lead is misleading to the reader, who would be likely to naturally assume that something 'religious' actually has been said to have clear religious characteristics.

6) As a modern pop culture phenomena, Landmark is covered in much greater detail in media sources than in academic sources (Arbcom noted the lack of detailed scholarly sourcing in its case discussion about Landmark, and Lockwood herself mentioned the same), and thus my first point - the fact there are no claims that Landmark is religious in these sources - should carry a good deal of weight.

7) A previous RFC was closed by an admin with the conclusion that Landmark does not belong on the List of New Religious Movements.

8) All of this adds up to the conclusion that Landmark in the context of new religious movements deserves a passing mention in the article, but not its own section or a place in the lead. Nwlaw63 (talk) 15:05, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

This has been discussed ad nauseum, and nothing has changed, including the rationalization you have used above. Scholarly sources cited, including recent sources, do discuss the religious and quasi/parareligious aspects, and as you no doubt recall from the recent arb case, there are far more sources for this this than are currently used in the article. Your arguments seem to rely on your personal WP:OR. I am mystified as to why anyone would so insistently argue for dismissing scholarly sources (including a rather contorted dismissal of Lockwood's paper, which has been published in at least 2 RS journals and which is hardly the only scholarly source for this aspect of Landmark) in favor of "lifestyle" type newspaper accounts. Even so, the religious/cult aspect also has garnered mentions in the news accounts, and such could certainly be added, though I personally think the scholarly sources are better. Indeed, the premise that the religious aspects are not in news stories is also false. The legitimate mention in the lead has, yet again, been summarily blanked, and I will restore it, as even the latest attempt did not garner any support. Destructively blanking referenced material based on OR is no more legitimate than inserting OR material. • Astynax ^talk 20:28, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Please stop using reverts to force your preferred content. You boldly added that content to the lede,[4] then you and others edit-warred to keep it in place.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Nwlaw63 has reverted your addition. How about a discussion before reverting again? As cautioned above, this pattern of blind reverts is something that Arbcom specifically reminded editors not to do. --Tgeairn (talk) 21:13, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I resent your characterizing as "edit warring" the inserting and defending of well-referenced material against summary blanking. As Begoon, in my link above, and others have repeatedly stated in previous attempts to purge this and similar material from the lead: "The lead summarises the article, so it needs to be there. Some readers only view the lead when visiting a page, and to remove it would do them a disservice, and contravene WP:LEDE." Nwlaw32 was fully aware, based upon previous blanking of this and similar information, that there would be serious objections to summarily reverting/blanking the lead section material, as well as to dismissing referenced sources and their citations based upon OR argumentation. • Astynax ^talk 22:05, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Please read WP:EDITWAR. It is policy, and it clearly describes the only situations where repeatedly reverting is not edit warring. --Tgeairn (talk) 22:23, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

• Support mentioning religious/quasi-religious overtones of the organization in the lead. It is an important facet of what makes the organization notable and controversial. Leaving it out would be a whitewashing that deprives the reader of information. It's not necessarily even negative, depending upon how you look at it. Considering that the text has apparently been in there for months, it is a stretch to say that keeping it is WP:BOLD. Manul ~ talk 22:35, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

The statement itself is certainly controversial. It is not what reliable sources that speak about Landmark say (other than occasionally to refute the idea itself). No one is saying to leave something out of the article entirely, but there is a strong argument for leaving it out of the lede. The text has been there for months following a lengthy string of reverts to force it there, and Arbcom itself found that this is a focus point of contention and dispute.

WP:ONUS is very clear that "The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." This is a policy, and it is being disregarded here. --Tgeairn (talk) 02:55, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

As the text reads now, it is a very weak suggestion, or rather an attack on the idea that LM is a NRM. It would be very POV to totally remove it. Legacypac (talk) 03:19, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Tgeairn, that's a misuse of WP:ONUS. The material has already been included in the article [edit: that is, in the body of the article]. From here, we follow WP:LEAD and related policies/guidelines saying that the lead should summarize the article. WP:ONUS doesn't fit as a reason to remove something from the lead. WP:WEIGHT would be the thing to cite for that, however there is in fact a strong weight of reliable sources saying there are religious/quasi-religious overtones. It's just not true that "It is not what reliable sources that speak about Landmark say". The paragraph in question balances opposing views; it's a properly written NPOV paragraph and should be included per WP:NPOV. I see no convincing argument for its removal; indeed its removal looks like a violation of NPOV. Manul ~ talk 04:00, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

So you're effectively saying that reverting that text into the lede over a dozen times in the past 4 months means that now it's "already been included", and the burden is on others to get it removed? So edit-warring is the correct way to get disputed content into an article? You misunderstand ONUS and BURDEN. --Tgeairn (talk) 04:39, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

It is Tgeairn that keeps trying to remove anything that hints at any controversy around Landmark. Coming to my talk page trying to get me to bow to this POV pushing is off side. Perhaps the Landmark connected editors who keep removing this are the edit warriers. Legacypac (talk) 04:45, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

I came to your talk page to give you an opportunity to explain why you reverted my edit. That's standard AGF. Your statement above is not. Further, who are the "Landmark connected editors" you are speaking of? Show evidence. Lastly, the edit warring I referred to is what I provided diffs of above in this very conversation. There's no need to say "perhaps..." anything. The diffs are there. --Tgeairn (talk) 04:49, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Tgeairn, you have misunderstood: "The material has already been included in the article" was referring to the body of the article. The material is already in the article; that's a fact. Hence the next sentence: "From here, we follow WP:LEAD...", meaning, "Now that's in the body of the article, we follow WP:LEAD..." Manul ~ talk 04:57, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

In all of this talk, there's not much discussion of my actual arguments, which I encourage editors to read. As I noted there, among the countless media sources on Landmark, I have never encountered a media source that claims Landmark is religious in nature - I invite editors to check this out for themselves and reach their own conclusions about what these sources are saying. Again, this is important because media sources discuss Landmark in great detail, whereas academic sources don't (Arbcom noted the lack of in-depth scholarly sources). And again, despite the seemingly large number of sources Astynax presents, a deeper look shows that they are mostly not saying what is claimed, and are relying on a definition of a new religious movements that doesn't require actual overt religiosity, so that these writers may include in their field of study whatever they wish.

As a side note, I'm confused by the claim that Landmark's supposed religiosity is an important part of what has it be notable. What reliable source says that? Nwlaw63 (talk) 15:56, 28 January 2015 (UTC) Nwlaw63 (talk) 15:56, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Looking back in the article history, I found many media sources calling the Forum "cult-like". The "never encountered a media source" doesn't make sense; the touting of WP:ONUS doesn't make sense, as explained above; now there is a demand for a source that says something to the effect of "Landmark is notable for..." These arguments for removing the paragraph from the lead simply aren't compelling.

Again, there no question of WP:WEIGHT here. The lead doesn't even mention that some governments have labeled the group as dangerous, as was done in past revisions. Removing the current paragraph from the lead amounts to removing prominent and significant points of view -- in other words, an WP:NPOV violation. I move to close the conversation now, with further deletions of this lead paragraph being treated as straightforward violations of NPOV. Manul ~ talk 17:27, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Extensive merged information added to article in violation of recent discussion

There was a recent thread on this page [[13]] proposing that this article be merged with the est and WEA articles, and this thread was closed with no consensus to merge.

Yesterday's massive edit by Astynax seems to violate that decision by introducing a large block of text which (if it deserves inclusion in Wikipedia at all, which is doubtful) clearly would belong in the est article, or possibly the Werner Erhard article but not here.

This is a repetition of the behaviour by Astynax whereby he initiated an RfC a year ago, did not like the outcome, and unilaterally introduced a massive block edit in contradiction to it [[14]]

The material is highly suspect in any case, derived mostly from Pressman's book Outrageous Betrayal which is a heavily biased attack piece which contains many anecdotal accounts from individuals antagonistic to Erhard, and which provides no references to identifiable sources for its assertions. DaveApter (talk) 19:24, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Astynax has expanded the history section with information that, by and large, seems to me both relevant and factual. For the first time the story is told as a whole, in agreement with scholarly literature. The complexity of the subject matter - and hence, the elaborateness of the historical paragraph - is not entirely Astynax's fault: the lack of transparency, the fear of bad publicity, the company intricacies, the aggressiveness towards critics are inextricably part of the est/Landmark story, as even a quick glance at reliable literature amply testifies. Of course, the story is displeasing for Landmark adherents, but that is simply a corollory of Landmark's persistent lying about its past, and we cannot blame Astynax for that. The conjecture that the story is derived mostly from Pressman's book is mistaken: there are many references to publications that have appeared in the years after Pressman's book was published. Pressman's book is biased, no doubt, but it is only one of many sources, and, moreover, the book is not without critical merit. Bartley (1978) for example, also one of the sources, is an extremely biased source as well, an hagiography in fact, portraying Erhard passim as a hero and a genius. But, of course, it contains interesting facts as well. The historical paragraph is not a "violation of a closed discussion" - it demonstrates that those who were opposed to an article that would provide an overview, were wrong.

A last critical remark: the exposé regarding the financial transactions and the account of all those companies and the manoeuvres of Erhard to evade taxes, might better be transferred to another article. It can easily be left out, and it will take away the (false) impression that the historical account is compiled to accuse. Theobald Tiger (talk) 22:04, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the last remark above. The statements regarding various companies and relationships would best serve the reader if they were included in the articles for those entities. Of course, that is probably unsurprising as it is my opinion that almost none of this belongs in this article about this company, and that it is confusing to the reader to have this wall of text that is not even about the term they searched for. --Tgeairn (talk) 23:34, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

It is a little difficult to accept that this was intended to be a neutral addition to the article. Phrases like "Erhard had no formal training in psychology or psychiatry..." So? He probably didn't have training in neurosurgery or astronomy either, he didn't claim to have any of those. There is no reason for this statement except to attack, and it certainly doesn't add to the reader's understanding of Landmark or its history. Or "...and had previously been an encyclopedia salesman", again So? What does that tell us about the history of Landmark? Suddenly having over half of the article be about Erhard certainly looks like a merge attempt to me, despite the merge request being closed as no consensus. --Tgeairn (talk) 22:30, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

As Landmark Forum/est is frequently described as a self help movement with both a religious and a psychotherapeutic tendency, it is not so strange to tell something about the (lack of) education of its founder. Erhard is in large part an autodidact and a dreamer. Theobald Tiger (talk) 23:04, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I am removing the newly added history section from this article. Aside from it not being info about Landmark, and against the spirit of consensus to not merge this article with the est, WE&A articles, the writing is most certainly not neutral in it's handling of a living person and clearly violates WP:BLP Biographies of Living Persons policy .MLKLewis (talk) 23:30, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I will seek sanctions against anyone that does a one sided removal of info from this article. Rolling out BLP is absolute hogwash - I read the insertions and they appear well sourced. Legacypac (talk) 00:45, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

• I agree that claiming BLP violation for this edit is not very valid (I won't call it "absolute hogwash")--but that does not mean there cannot be other, more valid reasons for that edit/that kind of edit. MLKLewis, I don't know if you were warned about the ArbCom case/sanctions; if you weren't, you should be. Drmies (talk) 02:05, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

The section as added was completely inappropriate:

1. For the most part it is not about Landmark at all, and deals with events many years before the corporation was even formed.
2. It is ridiculously lengthy , out of all proportion - about the same size as the whole of the rest of the article put together.
3. The earlier version was concise, accurate and appropriate; and it clearly stated the historical continuity from est to the (WEA) Forum to the Landmark Forum, so I don't understand what all this beefing about "trying to cover up the connection" is about.
4. With due respect to the opinions expressed above, several points are in clear violation of WP:BLP - to take the two most obvious examples, implying that Erhard was a tax evader and that he diverted $95m of charitable donations for his own purposes without adequate evidence is totally unacceptable. DaveApter (talk) 14:42, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

The years before the current iteration of the company are part of its history, as the several references I provided in the first sentence of the body demonstrate. Nor did you leave unchallenged previous material that linked Landmark to the former corporate entities. Indeed, that Landmark had anything to do with previous iterations of the company has been repeatedly challenged and a narrative of that was demanded. Nowhere is Erhard accused of being a tax evader. The IRS ruling on deductions for the circular load is noted, and it is also noted that charges of tax fraud were dropped and both are reported in reliable sources. • Astynax ^talk 18:50, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

BLP issues aside (and still relevant, as this whole passage reads like a hatchet piece), that still leaves the other points that DaveApter raised. I suggest editing this thing down significantly, and addressing the issues with the sources. --Tgeairn (talk) 18:59, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't see where Dave Apter's points are based in independent sources, and I'm completely uninterested in constantly responding to arguments based in original research. If you think a piece of text reads like a "hatchet piece", then suggest ways to make the language more NPoV rather than repeatedly blanking and incrementally reverting well-sourced information that should be reported. That the section is long (but I suggest not overly long, given the complexity) can be addressed by fleshing out the section that follows (The Landmark Forum) it; for which there is also much discussion in reliable sources and considerably more information that should be added. The legal section also needs to be reconstituted after the over-drastic pruning following the material from that article's merger into this. • Astynax ^talk 19:52, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

I do think I have a valid point in raising BLP issues regarding the material added. The language is heavily biased against Erhard and very subjective. It ascribes motives as if the writer is inside his head, (which is how the Pressman book is written despite the fact that Pressman never interviewed Erhard - how would he know what "Erhard decided" etc.) Actually this whole entry read as if someone pulled Pressman's incendiary tone straight from his book. A major objection re:BLP is the part about tax fraud. ("Werner Erhard and Associates was faced with lawsuits, tax fraud investigations (later dropped), a flood of bad press and declining enrollments....") This is a damaging accusation to make and it is completely untrue. The IRS never accused Erhard (or WE&A) of tax fraud. What the IRS did was to irresponsibly make false statements to the press, whereupon Erhard sued them, and won. See: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/LEADER+OF+EST+MOVEMENT+WINS+$200,000+FROM+IRS.-a083966944 MLKLewis (talk) 20:14, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)MLKLewis certainly has valid point points here. As for not seeing where DaveApter's points are based in independent sources, we have a large number of sources in the article that say that Landmark started in 1991. How is DaveApter's point that "not about Landmark at all, and deals with events many years before the corporation was even formed" not in those sources? --Tgeairn (talk) 20:43, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Again, if the language used in describing referenced facts is the problem, then suggest ways to make the text more neutral. Blanking entire swathes of text is not how to accomplish that. I suggest you re-read the sources, which directly support what I wrote. WE&A was indeed the subject of disallowed deductions based on an intricate circular-loan scheme set up by Margolis (this was later upheld) and similar actions. The tax fraud investigation was later dropped, as the article noted (Erhard won a judgment based on IRS leaking information, and that might also be included, though it involved him and not the company). While Pressman does get more than a bit touchy concerning certain subjects, he is an experienced legal journalist who one imagines was both keenly aware of the potential for libel accusations careful with his facts. Pressman is widely cited. Morevover, I provided multiple backup citations, including Pressman, for anything I thought would be particularly vulnerable to being challenged. Nothing you have raised justifies the blanking. • Astynax ^talk 20:33, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

I have copyedited and abbreviated the section retaining most of the salient points. If Astynax or anyone is more familiar with the sources referencing transactions by Erhard which are by him or by overseas companies and trusts acting on his behalf so as to better distinguish between the 2 types as a corporation is a seperate legal entity.Cathar66 (talk) 21:15, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Are you aware that you've left the section a complete mess? Typos, duplicated pieces of copy, unclosed templates, etc? In your rush to attack, you've left a complete disaster for others to clean up. You have "created" half of the article, and this is the first time you have ever commented on the talk page of an article that has volumes of discussion here and in 29 pages of archives. --Tgeairn (talk) 21:22, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

you exaggerate somewhat. I think the section is now written in NPOV language. Not violating WP:BLP. It also ends a ridiculous edit war. You do not own this article despite your obvious affection for the subject mater. Your tagging is pernicious.Cathar66 (talk) 22:04, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

So you're saying that even though you have never edited this talk page, and even though you had not until the past couple days ever edited this article, that you are somehow completely familiar with all of the thousands of lines of history of the article and this talk page and archives? Those of the other articles related (WEA, est, Erhard, etc)? You have somehow already read the dozen or so sources you used for your edit? You're completely familiar with the history of multiple people and several companies over the course of 45 years? Impressive. --Tgeairn (talk) 22:11, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

As Oscar Wilde said sarcasm is the lowest form of wit- get a a life.Cathar66 (talk) 22:24, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

You can be as nasty as you like, but you do realize that you just placed references to a 1993 book and a 2003 web page on a statement that something happened in 2013 - right? --Tgeairn (talk) 22:31, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Less time to fix than to comment on it. Is that it??Cathar66 (talk) 22:40, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

NPOV

I restored some text describing Landmark as "cult-like", which was backed by a good number sources. It is somewhat amazing to me that such prominent and public criticism would be deleted. Also, as I wrote above, the lead used to mention that some governments have called the Forum dangerous. When governments condemn something, that has significant WP:WEIGHT and should merit (re-)inclusion in the lead.

We aim to cover all significant points of view, and the removal of some views amounts to a less balanced, less NPOV article. I expect there is more material to restore. Any suggestions? Manul ~ talk 18:13, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Welcome to the Landmark article. I wanted to explain why I am reverting your edits and why I see them as completely inappropriate in this article. First off, you restored material that had been discussed extensively in the past and removed for reasons I'll get into below.

Regarding what you added newly, let me start with the Stephen Kent quote. This quote embodies a distinct minority view of the anti-cult community, of which Kent is a leading advocate, namely that 'coercive persuasion', the newfangled term for brainwashing, can be done in a relatively short period of time, such as during a personal development course. That this view is rejected by the academic community is shown both in the intense criticism Kent has received from his colleagues for promoting this minority view, and the fact that when psychologist Margaret Singer tried to make the case for common 'coercive persuasion' in these kinds of circumstances, she was actually reprimanded by the American Psychological Association and couldn't find work as an expert witness after that. You can look it up - you will find that the case for coercive persuasion and harm in a short time period is scoffed at in the psychological community and the academic community as a whole - it is a distinct minority view that would violate undue weight in having as a main academic quote for the article, any more than giving an advocate of cold fusion the main quote in an article on that topic.

You also added more to the mention of the Swedish news piece. Quoting an anti-cult organization is another undue weight violation, in the same way it would be promotional to put glowing testimonial quotes about Landmark made by individuals quoted in the media. There's a ton of quotes, positive and negative, that people have made in the media regarding Landmark - if we really want an NPOV article, like you discuss, we shouldn't be using partisan quotes.

One thing you re-inserted from the past was a claim that media sources called Landmark cult-like. Aside from the fact that 'cult-like' is a weaselly term, and one that's mostly not used by the referenced sources, it's a fundamentally false claim, in that the media sources are NOT saying Landmark is cult-like - they are mentioning that certain other people think they are. This is a critical distinction - if the New York Times quotes somebody about an allegation, you can't say that the New York Times is making that allegation. It's completely deceptive and untrue. And, in fact, even the people quoted in the sources you give are mostly not saying Landmark is a cult. For instance, the most critical of your sources that I looked at, the Phoenix New Times article, quotes Landmark hater and anti-cult movement leader Rick Ross as saying that as much as he dislikes Landmark, he does not consider them a cult, at all. So if Rick Ross isn't even saying this, why have an edit saying newspapers are saying it?

Finally, there's your line about 'governments', which seems to be your source for adding claims about 'danger' to the article lead. The real danger here seems to be the misuse here of primary sources. All of the sources seem to come back to one thing: the French Commission list from the 90s, which was repeated in Belgium (their report having the same author) and was later briefly picked up by Austria, as far as I understand it. The French list, largely a work of two people who did not consult with any scholars or academics in the field, and which received intense criticism around the world, and was not renewed for that reason. A good source on this list is The New Heretics of France, which when I read it a couple of years ago helped cement my interest in this subject - I strongly recommend reading it. (By the way, even if we bought the validity of these lists, no list in the last 10 years has listed Landmark - the French Commission was disbanded over 15 years ago after intense criticism of it).

This is a textbook example of relying heavily on primary sources - there's no one giving detailed interpretation here, providing context (such as the problems I mentioned above). Before we make incendiary claims in the article, we need secondary sources for these claims that weigh any issues with the primary source, which is clearly not happening here - reliable secondary sources in the academic world basically say the French list is full of it. By the logic of this edit, we should discuss the cultic nature of the Quakers in the lead of the article, since they are on the same list. And for you to say that you are 'restoring prior consensus' by putting this lead, you are promoting a complete fiction - there was no prior consensus for that, at least as long as I've been following the article.

Some on Wikipedia have promoted such claims of the anti-cult movement, around the project and on this article in particular - in fact an editor and former administrator who I believe originally put in some of the material you re-inserted was topic banned from this area for POV pushing. But our articles should reflect the consensus of the academic community wherever possible, and the academic community and scholars of new religious movements holds the dubious creations of the anti-cult movement - fast 'coercive persuasion', government 'cult' lists, etc. - in extremely low regard.

Instead of putting these dubious claims in the article, there is actually well-sourced criticism of Landmark regarding their marketing practices that should be in the article - I think we had a line about the overzealousness of their marketing or some such that got removed somewhere along the way. That would be worth recovering. Nwlaw63 (talk) 02:54, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

• You make a good point of "cult-like" not being properly attributed. The text should say something to the effect of: "A number of critical newspaper articles have reported complaints that the Forum is 'cult-like'".

• You begin by arguing that the perspective offered by Stephen A. Kent, an expert in this area, should be removed from the article wholesale. You assert that Kent's view is "rejected by the academic community". The link you gave doesn't even mention Kent. Because all this seemed odd to me, I decided to investigate, and the first hit of my first google search led me to religiousfreedomwatch.org, a Scientology website. It contains an dead link] anti-Kent rant making much of the same points you make -- Margaret Singer and all. (I am not suggesting anyone here is connected to Scientology, only that the line of argumentation bears some resemblance.)

I am less than impressed with your characterization of Kent. It is not even clear that Kent represents a minority view, but even if that is true, it is still significant and thus should be included per WP:NPOV. WP:WEIGHT may be invoked to remove singular/negligible views, such as a claim that Landmark is run by reptilians, but not established views in scholarly literature.

• You called the Swedish group FRI an "anti-cult organization", which is your own labeling. Even if a source is deemed biased, it may still be included if properly attributed. Opposition to Landmark as represented by FRI should be included per WP:NPOV. We wish to include all significant views, and lots of people oppose Landmark. This is not a singular/negligible view and therefore cannot be excluded per WP:WEIGHT.

• There is at least one secondary source, Wright, for the text about governments. That governments have condemned the organization is very significant -- enough for the lead.

• On Wikipedia we don't "promote" claims of any movement or organization. We simply report all significant points of view. Removing significant points of view is violation of NPOV, and for that reason your deletions are a violation of NPOV.

Manul ~ talk 06:02, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I am less then impressed with User:Nwlaw63's "welcome" to this article, the (WP:OWN dissertation on which views deserve zero weight, and lecture on what has been discussed here before. This topic went to ArbComm and one of the recommendations was encouraging uninvolved editors. This type of WP:OWN behavior does the opposite. I will pursue the new Discretionary Sanctions against editors who act in such inappropriate manners. It is clear that a group of editors here will use all tactics to bully out any editor that is not part of Team Landmark (being dragged to ArbComm after only two minor edits showed me that). Legacypac (talk) 07:06, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Please strikeout that remark which is a clear violation of the policies to assume good faith and to avoid personal attacks, and regarding which you have recently been warned on this page by @Drmies:. Thanks DaveApter (talk) 18:58, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

The editor that dragged me to ArbComm trying to stop me from editing here as soon as I started - is the LAST person entitled to lecture me on AGF User:DaveApter. Legacypac (talk) 00:32, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Please refrain from personal attacks and discuss the edits at hand - discuss the edits, not the editor. Nwlaw63 (talk) 17:58, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Given that NPOV is under discussion (again), I have tagged the article (again). --Tgeairn (talk) 18:08, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

A few things:

Wright simply repeats the France list - there is no interpretation of the primary source. All Wright's doing is confirming the existence of the original source, which we already knew existed. The reason for a secondary source goes way beyond confirming the existence of the primary source, it's about putting it in context, which this fails completely to do. If you look at Wright's list, you will also see the notation of the Quakers, of all things, as a dangerous group, the absurdity of which gives a clue as to why the list was so heavily criticized by everyone from academics to the U.S. government. Of course it would be absurd to make mention of this in the lead of the Quakers article, yet you are arguing for using it for making a controversial claim in the lead of the Landmark article.

Regarding Kent, you don't have to go to any blogs - simply read the work of leading scholars such as Dawson ("Raising Lazarus: A Methodological Critique of Stephen Kent's Revival of the Brainwashing Model", 2001), Melton, and Lewis to see the disdain Kent's contemporaries have for his work. And regarding the theory of coercive persuasion he's pushing in the quote, we only have to read our own article on the APA task force looking into the topic to see the rejection of this theory by mainstream sources.

I'm also scratching my head as to why you're question my characterization of the Swedish group, since that's pretty much how you characterize it in your edit to the article. Nwlaw63 (talk) 18:26, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

There is no prohibition against careful use of primary sources. The material cited was not used to support anything beyond what the source said, and insisting on its removal is unwarranted. Regarding Kent, who seems to be a noted academic on the [faculty of a major university], it is equally unwarranted to characterize him as fringe using your own original research, which frankly seems to require huge leaps of logic to follow. He is a reliable source, period. Your argument here appears to be that the article ignore all coverage which conflicts with the reportage that you deem more significant and/or that conflicts with a narrative you prefer to present. If there is alternative coverage in reliable sources, then it is perfectly fine to also present that, but it is not OK to blank well-sourced material under various pretexts. • Astynax ^talk 19:25, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Remarkable degradation of this page

I have been gone for a while and just came back and am amazed by what a mess this page is right now. It has been totally trolled. I helped arbitrate getting this page back into policy and into a reasonable shape a few years ago and it does look like it has been torn apart. The above conversation by Spacefarer is RIGHT on the mark and any interested editor should carefully review that! Alex Jackl (talk) 03:11, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Page Integrity

I have re-looked at the pages here and there is a clear attack on this page. It has degraded in the accuracy of the facts on the page, the gutting of any actual relevant content, and an obvious non-adherence to Wikipedia's policies on POV, Fringe theory advocacy, notability of facts, and the complete elimination of content that does not support the recent editors' POV.

It may be so bad that the logical next step is to restore the page to a point in time before the fringe trollers started hitting it and then carefully managing it from that point on for balance and relevance, etc. I am not sure that I want to do that too quickly and I will check with some Admins I know to make sure I don't do anything too abrupt.

I would love to hear some commentary on that idea- especially from experienced Wikipedians who have seen this kind of trolling behavior before- and ways to move forward to pull this page out of the mess it is in.

Thank you, Alex Jackl (talk) 21:31, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Could you please be a bit more specific? "The accuracy of the facts"? "Fringe theory advocacy"? "The complete elimination of content that does not support the recent editors' POV"? I have read that it is (or was) your opinion that Landmark "is certainly not a 'new religious movement'". Is that still your opinion on this topic? What kind of 'mess' do you refer to? Personally I am suspicious of Wikipedia articles afflicted by more than five footnotes (those articles are nearly always the product of OR, unbalanced all the way through, and ludicrously twisted by POV-pushing from both sides). In my view, encyclopedic articles should not be equipped with a critical apparatus - that belongs to the realm of (original) research, and rightly so. In an encyclopedia I prefer a good selection of widely acknowledged notable sources - the best that can be found - which provide the facts and the framework.(I know my opinion is a minority viewpoint.) Anyway, could we agree upon the sources that have the notability and the quality to provide the article's facts and framework? I think, that would be the best way to move forward. Theobald Tiger (talk) 09:04, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Response to Tiger and Reversion

Yes- I am looking at the content of the article prior to the surge of what I would consider to be vandalism over the last six months. I generally agree with your view point, Theobold. One of the things I struggle with over all of Wikipedia is how do you manage the distortion that gets created by multiple-POVs "wrangling " over a page. It is hard to sort through unless you are an expert on the subject matter and then if you state any conclusive statements you are then attacked for being POV. Very challenging.

Just in the last day an anonymous user went into the page and then added a series of clearly negative POV comments designed to press the POV they are advocating. I have reverted it to the pre-vandalism copy form yesterday but that is not a long term solution to do that back and forthing. This is not about this page in specific but about any Wikipedia article where there is either trolling or extreme advocacy.

Thanks for the comments Alex Jackl (talk) 13:49, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 10 January 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. There seems to be a good-faith disagreement on what this article should be about, the company or the products. If any resolution is found on that, a new move request might be submitted. One editor mentioned concern about COI, but it's unclear how that would affect a move discussion one way or the other. Their web site doesn't make their real name easy to discern. The URL is http://landmarkworldwide.com but the contact information wants you to write to 'Landmark'. The copyright notice says that the owner is 'Landmark Worldwide'. EdJohnston (talk) 02:48, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

---

Landmark Worldwide → Landmark Forum – The current official product name and the most recognized COMMONNAME for this topic. Ties into previous incarnations of the seminar product as well. This article was subject to an ArbComm case and suffers from COI POV pushing issues. Legacypac (talk) 19:06, 10 January 2015 (UTC) Legacypac (talk) 19:06, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

• Support pursuant to the discussion in the above section about merging content into a single article, and the comment made from one of our more knowledgable editors dealing with matters of corporate content in that discussion that maybe this would be the best name for an article on the primary product of the legal entities involved. John Carter (talk) 19:09, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
• Support not my idea, just listed the move request. Note the proposed title is currently a redirect to the current title. We would reverse that so Landmark Worldwide would redirect to Landmark Forum. Also since there are many Landmark subsidiaries and branches worldwide, a change of title to the official name of the primary product of these organizations makes a lot of sense. Legacypac (talk) 19:15, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - The majority of the article content is about the company, not the product. WP:TITLE is clear that the article title "indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles". If there is sufficient content to have an article about the product (Landmark Forum) then that article should be created. At this point, it appears that most sources (and the majority of the content here) are about the company. --Tgeairn (talk) 19:28, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

According to the page history, your primary role here is removing anything negative about the company or the product. Therefore your opinion is quite expected. Some new non-Landmark related editors without a clear bias POOV are trying to have a discussion here. Legacypac (talk) 19:36, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

How does opposing a move that is against policy (specifically WP:TITLE) equate to removing something negative? Yes, I have edited this article somewhat frequently recently. Have you actually looked at the edits made? What do you base your statement on? The Arbitration Committee reviewed my edits as a part of the recent case and did not see any issues. The majority of edits were to incorporate the results of RfCs, merges, etc., and were fully supported by (and frequently reinstated by) admins and other editors. So, where is your clear AGF? Who has the bias here? What is the POV? Please check your facts and support your accusations in the future. This is not the venue to make attacks. --Tgeairn (talk) 19:45, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

I came here because the ArbComm requested more input from uninvolved editors. Now your buddy has dragged a bunch of us to ArbComm seeking to eject us from the article. I hope the move and merge requests pull in more uninvolved editors to comment. Pretty clear ArbComm felt there were COI editors here, and you are one of them evidently. You dodged my question about your connection to Landmark, pretty much confirming you are bias. Hence my comments. Legacypac (talk) 20:03, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

• Tentatively support If anyone can provide an in-depth profile story about one of these organizations, where the source suggests the company is substantially involved or known for matters not related to Landmark Forum, this would demonstrate that there is a substantial amount of material from secondary sources that would not fit on the product page. In that case I would change my mind. However, my limited knowledge of the subject matter from glancing at the articles suggests this is the right path to go. The new article should probably say "previously known as EST training" and the exact best structure may be difficult to figure out. CorporateM (Talk) 21:01, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
• Support. As the companies have always been closely held, with little information available in independent references for the corporate governance, structure, etc. (not so regarding the programs offered based in est), this seems a reasonable course. The company does have a multitude of follow-up courses and services based on the Forum, directed at different markets, but those would barely flesh out a stub. • Astynax ^talk 00:39, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

This also seems to be a reasonable application of WP:COMMONNAME. • Astynax ^talk 21:43, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Based on google searches, COMMONNAME would indicate "Landmark Education" - which makes sense, as that was the name before the company recently changed to "Landmark Worldwide". I opposed the rapid change of the article name from LE to LW at that time, but now "Landmark Worldwide" appears to be consistently used (again, just based on COMMONNAME criteria). --Tgeairn (talk) 05:39, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose I'm confused as to why we would want to change the name of a company article to that of one of its products. It seems about as sensible as changing the name of the Apple article to iPhone. This article seems to be mostly about the company, not the Landmark Forum course, which would make the name doubly strange. Nwlaw63 (talk) 14:32, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

@Nwlaw63 Is the Landmark Forum "just another product" or is it the primary product they are known for? When I go to their website, it seems heavily focused on the Landmark Forum. I'm guessing they are private though, because I cannot find an annual report, which would be helpful as it would offer a revenue breakdown that might establish the significance of its other training programs. The New York Times says "The Forum is the cornerstone workshop of Landmark Education". The source seems to be about the Landmark training and covers its prior corporate owners in that context. CorporateM (Talk) 21:54, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure about "main" - it's their first, introductory course, so the one talked about most often, but I don't think it's the dominant or "main" thing about the company. Maybe there should be a section about their other courses. Nwlaw63 (talk) 03:43, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose The article is clearly about the organisation. 'Landmark Forum' is the name of one of the several dozen courses it offers. In any case, Landmark Forum redirects to here. DaveApter (talk) 17:26, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Landmark, as a corporation, may not like it but Wikipedia works on the basis of what reliable secondary sources say as we don't do original research. If enough reliable secondary sources say that Landmark has clear links to other corporate bodies then we write and structure things as per those sources. AnonNep (talk) 21:34, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

The redirect will be reversed, so Landmark Worldwide redirects to Landmark Forum. Considering the company website barely mentions its name while heavily emphasizing Landmark Forum, DaveApter's superiors should like this move as it promotes the groups major product, from which all other products are derived. You want to check on that and get back to us Dave?Legacypac (talk) 04:06, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Referring to "my superiors" is a deliberate and unwarranted smear. Please retract it and apologise. DaveApter (talk) 10:43, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Interesting you did not say "I'm not employed or a volunteer with Landmark." Thank-you. Legacypac (talk) 10:53, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Actually I've already said on numerous occasions that my sole relationship with the company is as a customer who did several of their courses some years ago. Since no-one has produced any evidence to the contrary there's nothing to respond to. Naturally if the Arbitrators had any questions for me I would have answered them. DaveApter (talk) 15:13, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

You have also, repeatedly, pointedly refused to address the issues of whether you are related to individuals who are or have been employees. It is also, of course, possible that, given your habit of rigorous definition, you might be a contracter assigned to Landmark, but not employed by them directly, or perhaps in some way some sort of shareholder, particularly if you were an employee under an early version of the organization. Given the tendency to very deliberately parse words which you have displayed, including in the recent arbitration, I think it is reasonable that your words be taken to say only what they absolutely literally must mean, and that's all. John Carter (talk) 15:35, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Another carefully parsed answer only adds to the impression of COI. Everyone here should be aware by now that WP:COI guidelines encompass a host of interests apart from employment. As I recall, arbs suggested that the matter of COI be brought to WP:COIN, rather than them indicating that there was no COI. After this matter being raised repeatedly by different editors over the years, that is likely the place further discussion should occur. • Astynax ^talk 18:55, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• OK y'all--DaveApter's possible COI need not be elaborated here. The only thing that the closer of this move request should care about is the strength of his argument; the rest is neither here nor there. To all: please be mindful of WP:NPA--play the ball, not the man. Thank you. Drmies (talk) 16:51, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose Reading through the article as-is it is more about the company than about the product, and it feels more natural in this case to have an article about a company that also mentions a specific product than it does to have an article about a product with information about the company in it. Specifically the Corporation and Litigation are far more relevant to the company than to the product, and the History and Religious Characteristics sections are somewhat more relevant to the company. The Course content and Public reception are product specific, but on the balance I still think the article has the appropriate title already.

I think a separate question is whether we should have an article about the company at all or only about the product. I don't currently have an opinion about that, but I'm basing my opinion on what the article is now. Chuy1530 (talk) 21:46, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

@Chuy1530: The reason for the proposed move is to allow for the merger of the content in the three extant articles which, in one form or another, deal with what has been called the "Landmark Forum" among other things in a single article, as that seems to be the primary topic to which the individual companies which have separate articles are more or less subtopics. That merger is proposed separately above. I acknowledge that there might be some basis for keeping est as a separate article, maybe, if there is sufficient difference in content between it and the later incarnations, but according to the sources produced above there doesn't seem to be much difference between the various forms that have been clearly documented in independent reliable sources, and several sources which seem to indicate that the various companies and forms are basically continuations, to some degree, of the original. John Carter (talk) 22:00, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I've stricken my !vote, because reading into it what you say makes sense and an article focused on the forum (haven't read enough to have an opinion on est) is probably the best outcome. I think it'll need worked on once it is moved because the current article doesn't make much sense at what would be the new title but in the grand scheme of things we'll get to the right place. Chuy1530 (talk) 23:37, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose: This article is about the company, this company (Landmark). Per the Search results section below, COMMONNAME might indicate moving to "Landmark Education", but that is the old name of the company. The discussion above is confusing as some editors are talking about companies and some are talking about products. --23.25.38.121 (talk) 19:02, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Search results

"Landmark forum" = 161,000 results while "Landmark Worldwide" = 46,200 results. At 750% 350% greater search results, WP:COMMONNAME is "Landmark Forum" Legacypac (talk) 22:20, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

The current article seems stuck in "its about THIS company" loop that has prevented a proper presentation on the product. The product, not the assorted versions of the company is what most readers are interested in. As in, "I got invited to attend Landmark Forum - what is it about?" If this does not pass, how about we develop a separate article about the Landmark Forum at what is now a redirect only. Legacypac (talk) 22:14, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

There is certainly actual (if not for the purposes of legal liability) continuity between both the various product{s} over the years, and between the various iterations of the organization. Reliable sources report that there was/is continuity, the convoluted method of the buyout between WE&A and Transnational Education (aka, Landmark) notwithstanding. • Astynax ^talk 09:25, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

There is also continuity of people. The founder continues to be involved (in some ways anyway) and his brother is the CEO of Landmark today, not withstanding the corporate name changes. Legacypac (talk) 03:07, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

And "Landmark Education" yields 394,000 results. I have no idea what calculator you're using that says that 161k is 750% greater than 46k, but I can certainly see that 394k > 161k. So apply COMMONNAME, and then change it to reflect the name change of the company. --Tgeairn (talk) 04:48, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Obviously the wrong key. The company still uses metatags that say Landmark Education on its website. Legacypac (talk) 05:50, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

My comment looks a little snarky from here, I apologize for that. I only meant to point out that it was not 7.5x. On the meta tags, are you talking about the Landmark Worldwide website? I randomly checked a few pages and did not find "Landmark Education" in the source other that a link to their twitter feed. Can you provide a link? It shouldn't matter much though, we're still left with a significant majority for "Landmark Education" in search results. Thanks --Tgeairn (talk) 06:18, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Before you edit further on this article you should read this

I used to edit on this article and other related articles and much of what is happening right now is why I lost interest.

I am breaking a long silence because I think it is important for current editors to be aware of the following.

Much of the material that editors are attempting to add to the article in the name of balance has a significant problem. These items have been removed by the community in the past for poor and inaccurate sourcing as well as undue weight. These were originally added by a now notoriously de-sysoped and topic banned editor named CIRT/Smee/Smeelgova and a second sanctioned and now inactive editor Pedant17. The two single biggest contributors to the article by a wide margin. You can see some of their history:

here. Arbcom said:

“Cirt, According to statements in Evidence, and by his own admission, Cirt has, against policy, placed "undue negative weight in topics on new religious movements and political BLPs" and followed poor sourcing practices.

And Cirt admitted the following:

“I agree that my sourcing practices were inadequate, and that I’ve unwisely included undue negative weight in topics on new religious movements and political BLPs.”

The second biggest contributor[15] to the article was also sanctioned for endentious and disruptive editing.[16][17] Both Cirt/Smee/Smeelgova and Pedant17 had a similar level of involvment on the Werner Erhard article[18] The Est Article[19] The Werner Erhard and Associates Article[20]

Please Note: I am not making any accusations about anyone currently editing the article. I do believe that the history I have provided is relevant to current discussions on the article. Spacefarer (talk) 00:29, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the timely and convenient link to what I assume is the case that some editors have been hinting at to users who disagree with their PoV. Yes, there are some things that can be taken from reading through the accusations on that case, although I am not sure which items the arbs thought compelling and which they dismissed. The problems identified where that case touches on Landmark seem to rest on things like mischaracterization of both sources and what sources say, blanking referenced edits under various pretexts, and intransigent resistance to reflecting the weight found in reliable references. Blanking sourced statements that do not fit with one's PoV is not "restoring balance", but rather, pushing an unbalanced version. If there is reliably sourced (even from the same reliable source) information that depicts another significant point of view, then as I have said before the solution is to add that material; not to blank referenced information. Not all viewpoints, however, have significant, reliably sourced counterpoints, and it is not legitimate to demand that alternative viewpoints not based in significant reliable sources be included. Using WP:OR to advocate one's PoV is equally invalid.

In the history section, for example, either significant reliable sources say something happened, did not happen or disagree. The article can and should include the information, no matter what editors' viewpoints may be. There is frankly, little disagreement among sources regarding the history. It does get more complex when approaching the product ("Forum"), as there are widely differing views that need to be included when that topic is reworked to address its current sorry state. The same principles, however, should apply.

Despite repeated statements here, there are many reliable sources for the subject of this article, both explored and cited in academic literature. Some sources portray the subject in what appears to be an over-rosy light, some in darker tones. Regardless, the point is to factually report all significant points of view resting in reliable sources, not to ignore them. It is invalid to second-guess reliable sources, critique them based on personal editorial criteria, or twist what they say or dismiss them because of what they report. What we are not to do is use the encyclopedia's voice to present a skewed picture that does not reflect all significant viewpoints as reported by reliable sources. Repeatedly and incrementally blanking, information that does not sit well with a particular point of view can leave encyclopedia users with a biased article, such as existed last July. Expunging wide swaths of significant reportage does readers who come to the encyclopedia no favor. • Astynax ^talk 04:21, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Looking through the history of this article and related articles I agree that there seems to be cycles where it approached a NPOV and then any balance was worn out by a continuous process of attrition. It is probable that this will happen again but it is our duty to ensure that the article can be improved to where it is reasonably balanced.Cathar66 (talk) 22:49, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

This is not a new problem with this article and suggest interested editors should read this | Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal 2007-05-21Cathar66 (talk) 04:44, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

I can't figure out whether Astynax and Cathar66 have completely missed the point of Spacefarer's comments, or whether they are deliberately "playing dumb". The editors who were blocked, de-sysopped, and/or topic banned (eg Cirt/Smee, Pedant17 and Jeffrire) were the ones who were POV-pushing the anti-Landmark line similar to the one favoured by Astynax and his collaborators now, not the ones who were trying to establish a factual and fairly-balanced account. DaveApter (talk) 11:50, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

...and I'm unsure why DaveApter continually and uncivilly brings up sanctioned editors here. Having read the decision provided, it doesn't appear that their bans were at all prompted by content edits here. Nor are past editors relevant to current discussions. Repeatedly bringing up these lists of sanctioned editors to suggest that other editors may be banned due to including material that runs counter to Landmark's PoV is itself highly offensive, as is your current impugning the motives of editors. • Astynax ^talk 19:00, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

I just stated the facts; the assumptions of what is "suggested" are just that: assumptions. For the record, Cirt's topic ban and de-sysop was explicitly for NPOV editing and source misrepresentation in relation to, inter alia, Landmark, est, WEA, numerous related articles, and may other items relating broadly to the Human potential movement. DaveApter (talk) 13:08, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Re-read the case. There was no such finding with regard to Landmark, est, WEA, related articles or the Human potential movement. Unless you have evidence that these editors have been making edits here, your continued and irrelevant harping on these users is WP:HARASSMENT and an explicit violation of civility policy. Moreover, the perceived implication that editors here will be topic-banned because of the unsubstantiated linkage between adding material which runs counter to your PoV and other editors' behaviors is equally unwarranted and irrelevant to discussions here. Please stop it. • Astynax ^talk 19:02, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Sent to WP:AN/I from WP:COIN

The problems here were referred to WP:COIN, as a conflict of interest issue. This article has been a long-term headache and a subject of ArbComm sanctions. That's more than we can handle at WP:COIN. So I passed the buck to the administrators' noticeboard, at WP:AN/I#Landmark Worldwide heating up, again. They have the big hammers that will probably be needed to resolve this. Thanks. John Nagle (talk) 20:48, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Article Review

I have been reviewing this article since I came back across it last week and going through some of the history. It is clearly contentious (as it has been since back a few years ago when I last was involved). It seemed like it had reached a fairly tolerable level of balance- not perfect but not over representing any particular POV until the last six months or so when it began to be targeted by what appear to me to be POV warriors.

Below is what I think the current issues with the article are from a Wikipedia policy standpoint. I believe these need to be handled fairly quickly to even get the article to a place where it can be worked on by people together.

I will make some of these changes - not with new material but material from the page when it was stable and prior to these radical changes. Before I did that though I wanted to get some responses and comments before I did anything.

Here are my thoughts as to some of the issues:

Wikipedia: Relevance and Wikipedia: Coatrack

Much of the material on Werner Erhard and est predates the actual creation of Landmark Education. A good clue that content is not relevant if a majority of the content in the article is dated BEFORE the creation of the subject of the article. :-)

In fact that leads me to think that in fact most of these recent edits have been "coatrack" edits. They are ostensibly about Landmark Education but seem primarily a venue for them to grind an axe about one of the founders of previous organizations to this one. (speaking of course about Werner Erhard and est).

Wikipedia: Reliable sources and undue weight

In the page on reliable sources and undue weight it says:

If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it is true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not.

As an example, the entire section on the religious aspects of Landmark's programs does not even belong in this article at all- it is given far too much weight. Even the references that mention it often end with qualifications like "well it clearly is not religious but it has some attributes of it" or it turns out that that organization had to remove it from its sites. Many of the sources are websites from people who make their living by generating fear and worry in order to do their business. The fact that most of the references are from the last century and pre-date the formation of the organization that the article is about put the final coffin nail on this in my opinion.

Wikipedia: Synth

The leads me to the whole question of original research and the synthesis of that. These edits - as past ones have been- appear to be driven by fringe thinking that somehow these three organizations are the same organizations and that Werner Erhard is somehow still involved lurking behind the scenes like a sinister puppet master. There is no question that the organizations are related or that there is a common thread and evolution of content, product and people linking them but the record is also clear that Werner Erhard dissolved Werner Erhard and Associates and that some of the employees created a new company. This seems to be classic Synth thing. There are no reputable or majority sources supporting these theories and indeed there are considerable counter facts to it.

Wikipedia: Biographies of Living Persons

On top of the above Werner Erhard is a living person not currently in the public eye and not formally associated with Landmark Worldwide in any way except a historical and familial one (his brother and sister hold senior leadership roles in the company). Much of the added content tends to focus on the issues like accusations made against Werner Erhard (that were later recanted) and tax issues (which the IRS later publically acknowledged involved no wrong doing by Mr. Erhard, and indeed settled with Werner Erhard) . It will often include paragraphs on the accusations and then one small sentence saying "and oh yes it turns out that none of that was true" after going on about it for paragraphs.

This seems to be a direct smear against a living person who is not really directly relevant to the article in the first place. None of that stuff belongs here, and I wonder if it belongs on Wikipedia at all!

All of these combined lead me to believe that this article needs to be returned to the stable state it was in and had been arrived at by long fought for consensus.

Comments welcome.

Respectfully, Alex Jackl (talk) 03:18, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree with most of the points you're making here, particularly regarding the undue weight of the 'religious' material - as I've already said at great length here, the argument for Landmark as 'religious' doesn't hold up to close scrutiny of all the available sources - it's more an issue of how new religious movements are classified by writers than any serious claims that Landmark fits any reasonable definition of religion or religious.

Regarding your other points, the one that stands out to me is relevance. There's now a history section that seems twice as long as any other part of the article that devotes itself entirely to complex tax structures that predated Landmark's existence. It's of no relevance to Landmark and turns the article into an unreadable mess. I assume it's been put there to grind some kind of POV axe, but all it does is put the reader to sleep. Nwlaw63 (talk) 14:51, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Can you identify a date on which you consider the article to have been "stable"? As to the other points in your review:

• The history of an entity is relevant, both things that led up to its formation, its formation and subsequent development. It is not undue weight for an entity's history to occupy a large portion of an article, especially where this is the coverage in sources. That does not mean that coverage of other aspects should not be reported for expanding other sections. Even Landmark, in its early days, explicitly acknowledged itself as the continuation of WE&A (regardless of whether it later denied inheriting the legal responsibilities incurred by WE&A). No one is "grinding an axe" by reporting what reliable sources state.
• The suggestion that the references regarding the treatment of Landmark as a NRM are insignificant or predate the formation of Landmark is false. Take another look.
• You say that it is obvious that Erhard and Landmark are related, yet are somehow opposed to detailing the relationship. Again, the references used are not fringe, and you have not pointed to any instance of synthesis. If there is material that you believe to be synthesis, question it or ask that a direct quote be footnoted.
• In fact, Erhard has a continuing association with Landmark (as a paid consultant, licensor, speaker at company functions, etc.). The situation regarding his relationship with Landmark Worldwide is similar to his previous association with EST Inc. and EST, An Educational Corporation, where Erhard seemingly had no ownership participation or control. Regarding the tax issues: there were multiple investigations, and WE&A was required to pay back deductions based upon circular loans and other invalid deductions. The article already reports that Erhard was cleared of personal responsibility in a later tax fraud investigation. The latter is noted in several sources as one of the reasons for his transferring WE&A assets to TEC/Landmark and leaving the United States, and is thus a significant part of the narrative. It is not a slur against Erhard.

None of the items in the review support indiscriminate blanking of cited material. • Astynax ^talk 19:38, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

• The last paragraph particularly is simply wild speculation. It is well known and undisputed that Erhard owned the various EST and WEA businesses, led the management of them, and led many of their training programs, and trained the other program leaders. It is well established (and nowhere contested) that he consults from time to time with Landmark's development team and that he licensed certain intellectual property to the company, and has no involvement with the ownership and management of it. The rest of what is stated above is pure speculation, whether on the part of Astynax, or on the part of others who could not conceivably be party to relevant information. What RS supports these assertions? As for the farrago of confused comments about taxation matters, what is the relevance of any of that to the subject of this article, and what could be the motivation in dwelling on it, if not to leave a misleading impression of wrongdoing and sleaziness? DaveApter (talk) 13:08, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

• No, it is not speculation at all. As the article describes, Erhard never directly owned the EST entities. As he later did when Landmark was formed, he only retained ownership of the est/Forum product "technology" through overseas shell companies, and thus reaped the profits through a licensing arrangement, but had no direct ownership of EST, Inc. or EST, An Educational Corporation. At first, he only acted as a consultant to EST (again, as at Landmark), and later became a mere employee when his employment contract was transferred from Presentaciones Musicales S.A. to EST. He also controlled substantial loans to both EST and Landmark, so of course, he exercised considerable influence over EST, but it is completely fictitious to claim that he exercised direct ownership of EST, Inc. or EST, An Educational Corporation. He only took direct ownership when WE&A was formed to buy out EST using a circular loan to EST to fund the transfer. The material was cited in the article. As you appear to agree that he has indeed continued to have considerable involvement with the company, it is also disingenuous to claim that he has had no involvement. The relevance of the 2 separate tax investigations is that the first regarded the means of financing his buyout of EST (using a circular loan to reap tax benefits in the process of buying out a company he only controlled indirectly up to that point), and the second regards the widely acknowledged reasons for selling up and leaving the US. You are the person suggesting painting this as wrongdoing and sleaziness, not the article. • Astynax ^talk 18:48, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

In Response to non-RS assertions

I have not seen any RS that establishes as fact that Erhard is paid as a consultant or has ever spoken at a company function. And to state that Erhard was not involved in est has no basis in reality at all. In anything I've ever read it says Erhard was very hands on with est, he created it, led all the initial courses, trained others to lead the course and no one to my knowledge has ever said otherwise. But what really stands out in your statement the most is that you allege that Erhard was investigated for tax fraud and this is simply untrue. Erhard was never accused of nor investigated for tax fraud. That there was false reporting in the media about tax problems was actually the crux of the lawsuit that he filed and won against the IRS.

"...several IRS spokesmen were widely reported as saying that Erhard owed millions of dollars in back taxes, that he was transferring assets out of the country, and that the agency was suing Erhard. The implication was that Erhard was a tax cheat who refused to pay his taxes that were lawfully due. In fact, Erhard, 61, contended that he never refused to pay a lawfully due tax and has not refused to pay millions in back taxes. He alleged that not only did the IRS spokesmen illegally disclose confidential tax return information, but that their statements were false. The founder and head of San Francisco-based Erhard Seminars Training Inc., popularly called est, filed a wrongful disclosure suit against the IRS in 1993. IRS spokesmen subsequently admitted that statements attributed to them about Erhard's supposed tax liability were false, but that they did not ask the media to correct the statements." (http://www.thefreelibrary.com/LEADER+OF+EST+MOVEMENT+WINS+$200,000+FROM+IRS.-a083966944)

In other words, the IRS agents admitted that their statements about Erhard's supposed tax liabilities were false and they also admitted that they didn't go back to the press to ask them to correct their false statements. Their false statements are the same ones you are now trying to cite. We can't now cite those old media reports of tax misdeeds that the IRS has since admitted were false.

This is also all talking about a living person in a negative manner and has little relevance to the article about Landmark Education. Thanks, Alex Jackl (talk) 05:49, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

In light of all of this I will make some modifications that are consistent with what we have been speaking about.

That you have not looked at the references is no reason to blank cited information. You have also twisted what I said in my previous response. I never said anything faintly suggesting that Erhard was not involved with EST, but only that he was not the owner of EST, Inc. or EST, An Educational Corporation. I urge you to re-read my posts, as you are tilting at non-existent issues. Nor, as I previously explained, did the article state that Erhard was convicted of tax fraud, and in fact, explicitly stated that he was cleared of personal responsibility in the matter you mentioned. • Astynax ^talk 10:43, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

If your version of the article "explicitly stated that he was cleared of personal responsibility", what was the point of mentioning tax issues in the first place, if not in an attempt to smear Erhard by implication? And what is the relevance of all that to the subject of Landmark Worldwide? And what is the relevance of whether he did or did not technically "own" the est companies ten years or more before the formation of Landmark? And - while the various feature articles in free newspapers and satirical magazines may be reliable as sources for the opinions and impressions of their authors - they cannot possibly be reliable as sources for supposedly factual assertions about offshore companies, asset transfers, recruitment numbers and other details which few outside the company would know? DaveApter (talk) 11:13, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Yet again, the tax investigation was a significant factor in triggering Erhard to look to dissolve WE&A. It is relevant because it directly contributed to the formation of the current iteration of the company. Nor is your mischaracterization of the sources either accurate or appropriate. Much information in reliable sources is based upon interviews with those directly involved and upon documentation that is part litigation involving Landmark. Using original research again to dismiss and raise doubts about reliable sources is not a function of editors, nor a justification for re-inserting blatant puffery. • Astynax ^talk 19:38, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

In particular, to assist with the establishment of a consensus, could you please indicate what are the reliable secondary sources for the following statements in your controversial edits, and what are the primary sources on which they draw? Also could you indicate how these sources establish the relevance of these assertions to the subject of this article?

• ”Erhard was employed at a very modest salary while and license fees were made to offshore companies”
• ”At the same time his intellectual property was transferred from the Panamanian company to, a new company in the Netherlands named, Welbehagen. which licensed the foundation to present the seminars.”
• ”A Jersey Charitable Settlement to own the foundation with a Swiss entity, the Werner Erhard Foundation for est, was set up to control it.”
• ”Werner Erhard and Associates (WE&A)was established,... which purchased the assets of the various corporations and charities. This was arranged through a series of loans”
• ”In its first 18 months, Transformational Technologies licensed over 50 franchises at a $25,000 licensing fee with revenue based royalties”
• ”Erhard replaced the est seminars with a slightly modified and less authoritarian program which he "rebranded" as The Forum.”

Pending clarification of these points, I think it best that the article be reverted to the version of Alex Jackl, which I will now do. Please address these issues before re-reverting. Thanks. DaveApter (talk) 16:20, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

The citations were in the article before you again blanked the fully-referenced material. Reverting to what is represents the same PoV status that existed prior to the article being tagged for puffery by Lithistman last July. In the process, you and AJackl have blanked significant and fully sourced material and other interim edits. • Astynax ^talk 19:38, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Updates to Page

I made some updates to restore the page based on the breaches of Wikipedia policies that the page seemed to be full of. See the above statements. If you want to tlak about any of those please discuss here . Thank you! Alex Jackl (talk) 06:13, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

I have reverted most of the material you blanked. No "breaches of Wikipedia policies" have been shown, and the material blanked was fully-cited. I retained some of the material you pasted from older versions, though this has removed by several editors in the past for various rationales. Again, if you have reliably referenced material to insert, do not use this as a pretext to blank cited material. • Astynax ^talk 10:59, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

After reading the discussion here on the talk page, it is increasingly clear that claims that all this newly added history material regarding taxes and corporate structures is somehow relevant to Landmark ride on the extraordinary and dubious assertion that Erhard plays the same role with Landmark as he did with est. In fact, we have overwhelming reliable sourcing that says that for al intents and purposes, Erhard ran est and its later iterations until he sold it in 1991, and after that, he left the country and has had no control over Landmark's operations since that time. Therefore, I have removed this material that would only have relevance under this clearly false assertion. I have also removed a couple of sources that were either blogs, newsletters or primary sources, which are wholly inadequate for making factual claims. Nwlaw63 (talk) 14:59, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

It is increasingly clear that you are mistaken. Theobald Tiger (talk) 15:10, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, you are mistaken. The sources say what the sources say, and the article reported it. Please stop using speculative OR as a pretext for blanking cited material yet again. • Astynax ^talk 18:53, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Nwlaw63 is indeed mistaken, and should not be blanking sourced material that does not fit with his version of reliable or important. Erhard is obviously very involved in Landmark, despite the corporate reorgs. It is the same business through various incarnations. Legacypac (talk) 05:51, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Erhard ran est - he doesn't run Landmark. This is what the reliable sources say. There is no denying it - black is black and white is white. Even the cursory look for sources I made makes this abundantly clear:

From Cosmopolitan, June 1975, quotes Erhard's most senior employee as saying: “If Werner disappeared tomorrow, we’d disappear the day after. Pressmen, who is being relied on for the majority of the history section, makes it abundantly clear that, in his words “everything revolved around Werner”. He goes out of his way to make the point that whatever the tax structuring is, Erhard is the one running everything.

Contrast this with Erhard's dealings with Landmark Landmark, where there is zero reliable sourcing saying anything similar. According to the sources, Erhard sold the property to Landmark, left the country, and “went into exile”. The Skeptic’s Dictionary says “Apparently, however, Erhard is not involved in the operation of LEC.”

All we do know from reliable sources regarding Erhard’s current involvement with Landmark is that (according to Landmark) he consults with them from time to time. That he is somehow in charge or "very involved" is an idea that appears to be pure speculation on the part of a couple of editors on this talk page.

This speculation is just a weak attempt to justify the relevance of Erhard’s taxes to the Landmark article. Specifically, the comments by Astynax that “The situation regarding his relationship with Landmark Worldwide is similar to his previous association with EST Inc. and EST, An Educational Corporation” and the one by Legacypac that “Erhard is obviously very involved in Landmark, despite the corporate reorgs” appear to have no basis in reality. If you have reliable sources saying Erhard is somehow pulling the strings at Landmark, now would be the time to produce them, or else stop asserting your opinions as fact. Nwlaw63 (talk) 03:46, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Again, you have twisted what the article and sources indicate, which is simply that he did not have any direct ownership of EST, Inc. or EST, An Educational Corporation. What he did own (through a foreign entity) was the "technology" that EST licensed, and the same relationship was again employed when WE&A was dissolved, with Erhard again licensing his "technology" to TEC/Landmark. The straw man assertion that the article says that Erhard is "pulling the strings" is irrelevant, as is mischaracterizing what the article says about the tax case, which is an important part of the history in establishing the combination of factors that led to the transition from WE&A to TEC/Landmark. • Astynax ^talk 06:27, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Additions deleted?

Hello, all! I had added some additional references to this page the other day, and it seems they were deleted? I'm not sure why? Thanks for your attention! Captkeating (talk) 20:56, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

See the edit summary here. This material had been previously deleted. You may want to ping the editor who removed for further information. • Astynax ^talk 01:44, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Well the fact that something was previously deleted begs the question of whether or not the original deletion was justified or not (something Astynax should be the first to acknowledge, given the frequency with which he re-inserts deleted material!). In this case the original deletion [21] was not justified (it was claimed that the Irish Daily Mail was not a reliable source, wheras it was agreed at a recent Reliable sources noticeboard thread [22] that it was entirely adequate for establishing the opinion of the writer, which is what is being asserted.

The other deletion made at the same time was even more wide of the mark: the deleting editor jumped to the conclusion that the source was the 'Mayfair' porn mag, wheras actually it was The Mayfair Magazine, the upmarket London Lifestyle journal [23]! DaveApter (talk) 15:45, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Minor changes to incorporation and history section

I made some minor factual cleanups and weasel word removal from the incorporation and history section of the article. There is a lot more unreliable and POV stuff in there but I removed the most egregious just to make it more factual and accurate. Also - I don't know what some of these editor's fascinations are with Werner Erhard but they should go to the Werner Erhard or some other page about that guy to air their grievances or keep it off Wikipedia entirely given WP:COATRACK and WP:BLP.

Thanks, Alex Jackl (talk) 21:27, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Also removed a small paragraph that was talking about some history about the EST and Werner Erhard that was at least a decade before Landmark was even formed. I agree there needs to be some historical context in this article- but this article is very little about Landmark itself and mostly about things that happened before it even existed, Undue weight, relevance, etc. I am trying to make only absolutely obvious no-brainer edits. Any issues- please comment. Thank you Alex Jackl (talk) 04:32, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

• In the same section, I have removed three citations (a blog and two self-styled "investigative" websites). In two of the three cases, the article already had another source cited for the passage. Thank you, Tgeairn (talk) 17:47, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Apart from the doubtful relevance of almost all of the material in this section, it contains a good deal of editorialising and blunt statements of supposed facts which are not adequately established by the sources referenced. I will make a start on tidying this up. DaveApter (talk) 11:48, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Could you please discuss your "tidying up" on this talk page first? Theobald Tiger (talk) 14:30, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

The entire section, as I said, is basically irrelevant to the topic of this article, dealing with alleged events which supposedly happened years before the formation of this company. I actually think that the whole paragraph should be removed, but I left a factual account of the sequence of events, shorn of editorialising and spin. Not only that, but the items included have clearly been cherry-picked to cast a certain impression, and at. Furthermore, on several points, the sources quoted could not have access to the alleged facts which they are supposed to substantiate, and - since they themselves cite no references - they can only be regarded as hearsay or speculation. In other respects, I simply tidied up clumsy and ungainly constructions. In detail:

1. "The predecessors to The Landmark Forum - the Forum and est (Erhard Seminars Training) had been presented by a succession of companies beginning with Erhard Seminars Training, Inc. in the early 1970s" What's your objection to that - a simple straightforward factual sentence replacing a convoluted one? What is the justification for "direct" to qualify "predecessors"? Or for "continuum" rather than "succession"? And what are these "other, related, iterations"?
2. "Erhard had no formal training in psychology or psychiatry and had previously been a successful salesman" So what? He never said he did.,
3. "became involved with Zen Buddhism, Scientology and Mind Dynamics." Why pick out these from the vast range of disciplines and philosophies that he studied during that period? And what's the relevance to Landmark?
4. "He considered setting up est as a church, but instead chose a for-profit model," My version gives a more accurate summary of what the source actually said.
5. "with a complex web of onshore and offshore companies." How could Pressman of Hukil know these things? This is just speculation or hearsay. These are assertions made by Pressman for which he provides no evidence or references.
6. "These were set up by the "controversial" corporate attorney Harry Margolis." So what? Who cares? Adn what's the relevance to Landmark?
7. "In 1979, EST Inc. was dissolved and replaced by a charitable foundation named "est, An Educational Corporation". At the same time his intellectual property was transferred from the Panamanian company to, a new company in the Netherlands named, Welbehagen. which licensed the foundation to present the seminars. to "est, An Educational Corporation". A Jersey Charitable Settlement to own the foundation with a Swiss entity, the Werner Erhard Foundation for est, set up to control it." Speculation again, and irrelevant. These are assertions made by Pressman for which he provides no evidence or references.
8. "By 1981 Erhard decided to simplify the complicated structure of est-related entities. ... This was arranged through a series of loans." ditto - how could Pressman know what Erhard's thought processed were?
9. "In its first 18 months, TT licensed over 50 franchises at a $25,000 licensing fee with revenue based royalties." How would this be known, and what's the relevance? These are assertions made by Pressman for which he provides no evidence or references. DaveApter (talk) 10:00, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
10. "Erhard had experimented with a modified version of est as early as 1983. By 1985, faced with increasing controversy and drastically falling recruitment numbers,... " Speculation.
11. "Erhard replaced the est seminars with a slightly modified and less authoritarian program which he "rebranded" as The Forum." What's the justification for the "slightly", or for the weasily "rebranded" in scare-quotes over the neutral "named"?
12. "Later, managers realized that there was significant revenue generated from signing up participants for follow-up courses." More spculation.
13. " With the same staff WE&A was able to reduce the cost and increased the throughput of recruits, which also increased the number of the acquaintances to whom participants marketed The Forum. period. More recruits resulted in increased enrollment for the higher-priced follow-up courses." Synthesis or supposition. DaveApter (talk) 17:07, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

First: to call a historical paragraph "irrelevant", is a sure sign of a non-encyclopedic attitude. This is not a webpage to promote the products of Landmark Worldwide, but an article that should provide encyclopedic information about the subject, including a historical paragraph that (in a sense) rectifies the promotional talk of the Landmarkians (of course many kinds of advertising and branding are wholly legitimate activities for a commercial enterprise): there is and always has been an uninterrupted succession of enterprises, delivering basically the same products.

Second: It is no use quarrelling with reliable sources. What you call 'speculation' or 'hearsay' or 'synthesis' or 'supposition' is well-documented in books and articles published by reputable publishers. The expression 'tidying up' is an ominous euphemism for eliminating information that you obviously think repelling or disconcerting. In some respects you are right: the historical paragraph is not particularly flattering in all its details, but by and large the writer of that paragraph is not to blame for his unflattering accuracy.

Third: I will address your criticisms point by point:

1. Convolutedness is not the issue here. Your sentence mistakenly excludes Landmark Forum from the list. Since 1971 and up to the current date there has been an uninterrupted (or barely interrupted) succession of companies, delivering basically the same products, inluding the latest product manifestation (Landmark Forum) proffered by the latest company occurence (Landmark Worldwide).
2. Of course, his lack of formal education is relevant. It provides the context for the incoherence of many of Erhard's utterances, the hotchpotch philosophy behind his seminars training, the tricks of the keen salesman (which he undoubtedly was).
3. This set of origins could possibly be extended, but it is as such frequently mentioned in scholarly literature. Erhard acknowledged Zen as an essential inspiration. His indebtedness to Scientology and Mind Dynamics is - it is true - sometimes denied or belittled by Landmarkians, but it is not controversial at all in whatever reliable source you consult. Even the books that describe Erhard as an infallible genius mention those three sources of inspiration. See for example the paragraph Self Education in the article Werner Erhard (a blatant hagiography throughout, by the way). To mention an example of scholarly literature: Steven M. Tipton, Getting Saved from the Sixties: Moral Meaning in Conversion and Cultural Change, University of California Press, 1982, p.176, p.329(n.3).
4. Yes, but the consideration to set up est as a church, is left out. As the religious aspects of est are frequently disputed by Landmarkians, this is a regrettable omission.
5. See Tipton (1982), p.328-329 (n.2)
6. I agree that this statement could better be crossed out.
7. Well-sourced and relevant: it sheds light on the way Erhard has set up the business.
8. Well-sourced and relevant.
9. Well-sourced and relevant: it sheds light on Erhard's commercial instincts, the tax controversies, and the decline of the popularity of est in the eighties.
10. Well-sourced and relevant: why call this 'speculation'? This is wellknown to everyone vaguely familiar with the subject.
11. Well-sourced and relevant: you might contest 'slightly' - the seminar training was adapted to the whirligig of time, but remained essentially the same - but "rebranding" is exactly what happened.
12. I have no objection to leave this out.
13. Well-sourced and relevant.

Thank you for your attention. Theobald Tiger (talk) 12:15, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I stand by my assessment that this is substantially irrelevant to the subject of this particular article, and appreciate that your opinion differs. I also think that depending so heavily on Pressman is problematic; firstly for the obvious reason that he is clearly biased and the simplistic caricature he paints of Erhard is absurd, but more importantly because he gives no references or citations and thus can hardly be regarded as a secondary source. He is merely repeating what some anonymous person told him. The essence of a secondary source is that its claims can be traced back to primary sources which have been evaluated. Your point about my first sentence is mistaken; I did not "exclude Landmark Forum from the list" - I clearly stated that its predecessors were The Forum and est. Your remarks above about "the incoherence of many of Erhard's utterances" and "hotchpotch philosophy" clearly demonstrate a degree of partiality in your own view of the subject. DaveApter (talk) 14:41, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Astynax' section not only dealt with "the predecessors" but also with Landmark Forum, the current incarnation of the seminars training. In your edit Landmark Forum had disappeared. The history section has many sources apart from Pressman. But Pressman (who is not an unqualified admirer of WE) is frequently used as a source for the richness of its factual information, as is W.W. Bartley, III (who not seldom exhibits enthusiasm for WE's achievements). With both of them we should be invariably careful to separate facts from opinion. My remarks do not "demonstrate clearly a degree of partiality on my part". Erhard's incoherence and the idiosyncracy of his utterances have been described (and mocked) in extenso. The same applies to his 'eclectic' and 'pragmatic' compilation of notions with an appearance of profundity and the ability to impress, which underly and constitute his intellectual inheritance. Theobald Tiger (talk) 15:09, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Please stop deleting while we are discussing the relevance of the section. Theobald Tiger (talk) 15:54, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Why do you keep saying editors are "deleting while discussing" You show in your above section that you clearly have a personal POV against Werner Erhard. That is fine but your beef against this guy does not belong in Wikipedia.

1. I don't know if some of the things you opine about him are true and, frankly, I personally don't care.

2. You keep adding content that focuses on events that happened before Landmark was even started AND

3. You keep adding in content that is about a man who sold the rights to some IP that Landmark bought 24 years ago

4. You keep perpetuating some urban myth that Werner Erhard is behind the scenes at Landmark when in fact (and by all the evidence) he sold his IP and disbanded Werner Erhard and Associates and moved on.

I believe you to be sincere in your dislike of the man and I believe you actually believe the fringe theory you have about it- but what is happening is you are now using the Landmark article as a WP:COATRACK to push your point of view. Please stop edit warring on this. Perhaps there is a better article for you to discuss Werner Erhard on.... ?

Sincerely, Alex Jackl (talk) 16:06, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Point by point. I follow your numbering:

Ad 1. Your displayed ignorance, disinterest, indifference and contempt for the facts do no prevent you from drawing false conclusions about my supposed POV and my position in encyclopedic matters. You had better devote yourself to the study of the subject.

Ad 2. Landmark is a rebranding of est as everyone who is vaguely familiar with the subject knows.

Ad 3. Erhard has never sold anything of the kind; he has licensed his intellectual property.

Ad 4. How do you know that it is an urban myth? All reliable sources agree that Erhard has been and still is a real presence behind the scenes.

Greetings, Theobald Tiger (talk) 18:51, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Dear Tgeairn (& others): Reply, individual edits, etc

Given that this page is under Arbcom oversight I'm adding my response to your post on my user page here: There's a content dispute, anyone, regardless of who they are, making multiple edits that could have been explained as individual edits (as I earlier suggested on the talk page) is pushing good faith. Talk FIRST, later add individual CONSENSUS edits. And I'm yet to see bulk edits agreed by consensus on the Talk page. I won't defend every edit but the way this started and continued needs to be highlighted. (P.S. Don't sidetrack to a user page - it is arguable bullying & intimidation by singling contributors out when talk page discussion is continuing. Please don't. Article issues should be discussed on the article page). AnonNep (talk) 20:19, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

@AnonNep: I apologize for the sidetrack. You haven't edited here on the talk page in over a month and you just made a large revert on the article that included material without consensus for its inclusion. Yes, individual edits are preferred (although other editors here have called making multiple small edits problematic as well). As you said, the idea here is at least BRD and given the contentious nature should probably just start with D. Thanks, Tgeairn (talk) 20:40, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Aside from possible WP:BLP I completely disagree on 'delete first'. Any obvious BLP issues can be removed by anyone without discussion. What we're dealing with is content. Even worse than that, editors doing 'reverse original research' - i.e. deciding WP:RS doesn't suit their POV and suggesting we should debate that WP:RS or remove it. We don't have that right. We can argue on the phrasing of that WP:RS, we can add alternative WP:RS for weight/balance to add to it, but short of it being defamatory (and this isn't a BLP), we can't remove it because some don't like it. IMHO, that's where this page is getting bogged down - on what editors don't 'like'. It isn't policy. AnonNep (talk) 21:14, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

My attempt at humour didn't land. I meant to start with "D - Discuss", rather than "B - Bold". Otherwise, I agree with everything you said. However, there is also no policy that says just because something exists then it needs to be included. That's why we have content policies to deal with weight and fringe and such, and why we ultimately depend on consensus. What you have here are editors forcing material into the article without consensus to do so. Thanks, Tgeairn (talk) 22:14, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Consider a BLP. General rule is, if in doubt delete but, equally, no matter how much the subject & their fans may dislike it, if it is an RS statement, it remains. Additional RS can always be added but never enough to make it 'disappear' entirely. ('Due Weight' can take a section, to a paragraph to a RS sentence with RS rebuttal but not complete removal. The 'due weight' policy doesn't allow that.) That's why every addition and deletion should be done one at a time and discussed on the Talk page, first, for a contentious article. Especially one under Arbcom oversight. AnonNep (talk) 22:41, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

And there is similarly no policy or guideline which says it shouldn't be. And consensus, unfortunately, can and sometimes is hard to determine, as consensus is more or less determined on the basis of possible conduct which might run contrary to WP:GAME, WP:TAGTEAM, and any number of other standards of behavior. Particularly if there might exist evidence of a flawed consensus, other steps can and should reasonably be taken. John Carter (talk) 23:06, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

The chilling demand to get consensus prior to posting an edit was not a remedy applied in the arbcom decision. The only remedies passed were to invite additional editors to input, and that all edits (including reversions) be based in sources.[24] Editing through deletions/reversions of cited material, based upon nothing more than uncited personal research, personal views and/or say-so (aka, WP:OR) is as much a direct violation of arbcom's injunction as would be inserting uncited statements into the article. There have been repeated episodes of blanking and reverting cited material going on here, and these have continued since the arbcom decision. If you cannot produce better sources to show why a statement cannot be retained, do not blank. If you have reliable sources expressing alternative viewpoints, then add that material without blanking material already there and referenced. • Astynax ^talk 19:22, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Full protection

I have fully protected this article for a month as an arbitration enforcement action in accordance with the Landmark Worldwide discretionary sanctions. I strongly suggest that all parties take this as an opportunity to resolve the recent disputes on this article as best they can. Casting aspersions or other misconduct, including edit-warring after the protection expires, is unacceptable and may well result in sanctions. Editors may wish to consider an RfC or some other form of formal or semi-formal dispute resolution. Any queries about this action or the standards of conduct can be directed to my talk page, it can also be formally appealed to AE. Note that this action cannot be reversed without my consent or consensus at a noticeboard. Any admins watching should remember that they are expected to respect the full protection and should only edit when doing so is entirely uncontroversial or supported by a clear consensus. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Let's stick to the facts

During the recent Arbitration case, one of the Arbitrators suggested that the article would be served best by concentrating on facts rather than opinions. In recent days there has been a flurry of intense activity in the opposite direction. Perhaps it would be helpful in creating a neutral informative encyclopedia item if we trimmed it back to matters of fact, and then discussed how much in the way of opinions should be added and in what balance?

It seems to me that key factual statements might include the following:

• Landmark is a business founded in 1991 which offers personal development training courses.
• It offers courses in 115 locations in 24 countries around the world.
• It has had over 2.2 million customers since its foundation.
• Some of its customers are satisfied with the results they got from the courses, and others are not.
• Independent surveys demonstrate that over 90% of the customers report being “highly satisfied”.

Perhaps other editors can suggest other firm facts that they feel should be included? DaveApter (talk) 19:04, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Facts include that Landmark is a direct continuation of the business founded in the 1970s with the brother and the lawyer of the founder now at the head. All the name changes and reorgs don't change that fact. Another fact is that there have been many critical things said and written about this organization, it's product and founder/management. We need balance and I fear that connected editors here are unwilling to allow either the history or the balance. Legacypac (talk) 00:40, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

It has been pointed out to you (repeatedly) that making unfounded accusations such as "connected editors" is a personal attack. Please cease. --Tgeairn (talk) 00:48, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

There has never been any secrecy about the sequence of companies and courses, this article has always stated it clearly and explicitly. Of course there have been "many critical things said and written", (although much of this is uninformed, and a good deal of it deliberately malicious) and it is entirely correct to report that with due weight - alongside reporting the many positive things that have been said and written (which there seems to have been a concerted drive to remove lately). DaveApter (talk) 15:14, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

If there is a lot of negative stuff published about a topic we report it accurately, especially when written by academics, journalists and experts. We don't whitewash the topic because you think it is uninformed or deliberately malicious. I have yet to see anything positive deleted here. Legacypac (talk) 09:30, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Why has all of the source-full material at http://www.cultnews.com/category/landmarkeducation/ not included here? Mr. Ross has compiled a lengthy list of wrongdoing by this group. The page won't allow edits right now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JoltAsResearch (talk • contribs) 02:58, 6 March 2015 (UTC)