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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." '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) "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." —
 * 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" —
 * "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." —
 * "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." —
 * "Erhard's early involvement with Scientology profoundly influenced the development of est and years later, the Landmark Forum."
 * "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." —
 * 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
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 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). 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:
 * 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)
 * 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)
 * 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)

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)

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. 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:          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:. 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.

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 (,, , and now ), 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. 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)
 * 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 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 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)
 * 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 (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 sfn short footnote citation format}}? This keeps 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 format can continue to be used by editors unfamiliar with the short footnote format. If no objection, I'll switch over the existing cites. [[User:Astynax| • 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
(re)added a number of sources with. Of these, only one source appears to be a reliable source, with the rest being inaccurate, suspect, or at least raising questions.
 * 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.
 * 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.

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

 * 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.
 * 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.

 * 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".
 * 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".

 * 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".
 * 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  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: Reliable_sources/Noticeboard. 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 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." <IP_ADDRESS> (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)
 * 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, then you and others edit-warred to keep it in place.   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, 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 [] 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 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 whereby he initiated an RfC a year ago, did not like the outcome, and unilaterally introduced a massive block edit in contradiction to it []

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)

 * certainly has valid point points here. As for not seeing where '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

title: Talk:Landmark Worldwide/Archive 30