Talk:Satanic ritual abuse

Pending changes

I'm thinking of asking for pending changes level 2 to be put in place. Any comments, complaints or suggestions? As before, most edits to the page are either sockpuppeting from researcheditor, or reverts to those edits. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 15:16, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

That would be fantastic. The only reason I even watch this page (and Evil) is to revert the constant vandalism. :P — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:38, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

History

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure how to format exactly. I question the point of the "Historical Context" section in this article. This does not actually apply to the topic at hand. It is very different from the other rumors in that actual victims reported these events. I have gone through very similar carefully coordinated and highly psychological pedophile rings when I was a child, though not in the context of that which would be called on the surface "satanism." Regardless, Blood Libel and the such were not invented by children who were being cooked into Matza Soup. Though there is a great deal of skepticism about this topic, there were actual victims who made these claims, and not a group of church members trying to accuse a specific minority of heinous acts. I really don't think this belongs. 69.228.117.220 (talk) 08:53, 19 January 2011 (UTC)1/19/2011 JRCH

There is no historical context section but the section on history does discuss previous and comparable accusations. Your own experience is not a reliable source to adjust the page, but the references currently used, which explicitly link SRA to blood libel and other historical moral panics, are. They do apply to the topics at hand, as the references discussed the historical accusations in the context of being precursors to SRA in modern times. Accordingly, they very much do belong on the page. We base the pages on what we can verify using reliable sources, not on our own opinions and experiences. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 12:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Improving the article??

If it is really intended to let this article be improved, just delete it and let experts write it -> Which means people that do not suffer the real "False Memory-Syndrome": Rejecting and ignoring the truth!

Wikipedia should have been boycotted for this article and for its censorship and blacklisting sites with credible sources. Ypsilons (talk) 12:07, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Ahem. It is established that methods used by some professionals at the time could implant false memories. It is clearly unethical to determine whether false memories of trauma can be implanted, so no studies will ever be done.

Many of the sources which have been added by a (now) banned editor and his clones are incredible and unreliable.

And your addition of comments to the article would be inappropriate even if you were absolutely correct, and your opinions had not been previously stated and found to be inadequately (if at all) sourced. You should have brought up the matter here, first, anyway. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:08, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh yes, you're right, I am not familiar with the rules within Wikipedia. And I promise, this won't change too much. To obey formal rules doesn't mean you're right while deleting and banning other points of view (which are based upon reliable sources). This has happened often enough. The tone and direction of this article (and many others around this topic) is not neutral but pseudo-scientific crap. And of course, this isn't limited on the topic of "false memories". Have fun spreading these falsifications again and again. Nobody can stop truth (and survivors) from going ahead.Ypsilons (talk) 20:25, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

There is no doubt that child abuse exists and is fairly common; there little doubt that ritual child abuse exists (but not that it's frequent); there are few credible, and no confirmed, claims that "satanic" (or even pseudo-religious) abuse exists at all. Given those facts, the article seems reasonably neutral. I don't seriously doubt that most "survivors" experienced abuse (although, in the McMartin case, it was almost certainly at the hands of the psychologists). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:25, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

It is not the question whether you or others doubt the existence of child abuse. "(...) the article seems reasonably neutral (...)" - Ah, okay, maybe you really do believe that. I'm sorry for that. Anyway, thanks for increasing disillusionment about Wikipedias articles/editors.Ypsilons (talk) 20:25, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Simply put, this is not the place for you to stand on a soapbox and declare your opinions. The fact is, there are no reliable accounts that "satanic" abuse of children ever occurred. If you could present some, we'd be willing to give them a fair shake. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 21:05, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

As I mentioned already, there's obviously a lack of neutrality and no willing to contribute to a sincere discussion and fair article on your side. What other aims besides misinformation you are working at - may the readers make up their opinion. The soapbox by the way had been occupied already. Not only the article itself, all of you super-editors were crowded on it. I'll end this "discussion" at this point.Ypsilons (talk) 21:49, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Facepalm — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:53, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Neutrality is not asserted, it is demonstrated through sources. If you have any recent, reliable sources, they can be presented for review. Please look through the archives first, a lot of sources that seem reliable have been discounted because they are vanity press, or represent the tiny minority that we shouldn't spend time discussing. The mainstream scholarly world seems to have moved on, and we're all sincere about believing this. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 04:04, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

How is it more confusing?

To Mr. Arthur Rubin

1 I'm pretty sure the addition of the period at the end of the image description couldn't be harmful, why did you remove that?

2 I guess your removal of "type of" was correct there, that's my bad :/

3 What is wrong with my edit changing the and in "sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse, organised abuse, sadistic ritual abuse and other variants" to or? "1 is known as one, number 1, or number one" sounds smoother than "1 is known as one, number 1, and number one"

4 I think "affecting" and "to" are pretty much the same, although I might personally prefer "affecting."

5 "the" and "its" are virtually the same, guess that was pointless...

6 the addition of "accusations" had no harm...

"organizations" seem a lil neater than groups, but that is only my opinion...

"and their clients" was another change that you might be right about reverting, but I still think is right...

"to be" makes the sentence easier to understand,

I put "being" there to fix the two "and"s which are too close...

.*yawn* "due to" may be easier to understand than "by" unless I misinterpreted what the "by" meant (then you'd be right on reverting that)

ugh, I see why you didn't want to discuss now, it sure is boring :P

PS: I need sleep, if you don't like each if these changes I wont bother you, but if it was only #2 that was problematic, you didn't have to revert the whole edit :[

173.183.79.81 (talk) 04:34, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

1. 1 is good, #2 is very bad, and the fake links: [[Occult#Religion and the occult|occult]] and [[COINTELPRO|conspiracy]] were also very bad. [[Prostitution#Use of children|prostitution]] is probably OK, but, confusing. "being" is just wrong, although another word might have been better. I don't really don't see it as an improvement, overall. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:07, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

A series of minor incremental changes accompanied by the egregious, and in my understanding totally inaccurate COINTELPRO link, is something worth reverting. I've never seen any indication that SRA is considered an action of the US government (bar possibly the alien-lizard-hybrids-rule-us tinfoil hat crowd). I'm very OK with the revert. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 12:12, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Arthur Rubin, yes I noticed some of the changes weren't very good, but next time try to only change the part you don't like, ok? :)

User:WLU, stop talking about your conspiracy theories on random talk pages, it distracts people from proper discussion.

173.183.79.81 (talk) 15:58, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

The application of COINTELPRO to this article is your conspiracy theory. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:03, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Let me put it in more specific terms. If any editor wishes to include information suggesting satanic ritual abuse was a disinformation campaign by a branch of the United States government (as was implied by the use of a wikilink to COINTELPRO rather than the more general conspiracy theory) they need to substantiate this with a reliable source. Having read a fair bit on the topic, I don't remember seeing someone specifically link to an FBI program of disinformation, only vague claims of conspiracy or the odd batshit insane theory about the former President of the United States and his First Lady raping small children. The former is not specific to COINTELPRO and the latter is a BLP violation.

More generally, some of the minor wordsmithing changes were reasonable, some less so, and overall didn't add a lot to the page in my opinion. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 16:16, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

User WLU, we'll talk on your talk page.

User Arthur Rubin, sorry about all the interference, just list the changes in the edit you agree with, and those we don't, and we'll all leave it at that, because the interference is soon to turn this discussion into a dead horse. 173.183.79.81 (talk) 00:44, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

i think arthur rubin was very justified in reverting the edit, as after even a half decent look it appeared to be made up entirely of needless syntax changes, OR and questionable links, if you feel so strongly that your edit should be in the article then take it up in the talk page and reach a consensus -ross616- (talk) 03:57, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Christian ritual abuse and other types

Why not de-sensationalize this article and just shorten it to "Ritual abuse" and then have a subsection on SRA? That way there could be coverage of other forms of ritual abuse such as Christian Ritual Abuse. For instance, there have been numerous documented cases of children murdered in exorcism rituals. 184.97.147.224 (talk) 09:19, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Here is one such case. More examples of exorcism deaths. Also there is evidence of ritualistic murders in a Satanic setting so this whole article's slant of "it was just a moral panic" is quite demeaning to those who have actually been affected by this. [30] Here are dozens of news stories documenting Satanic Ritual Abuse and also at least one case of Hindu Ritual Abuse.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.97.147.224 (talk • contribs) 04:58, July 21, 2011

This article is specifically about the SRA panic of the 80s & 90s. Your articles about deaths during exorcisms is better fit to Exorcism or one of the various articles on Christianity. Finally, your link about "actual" Satanic abuse is pretty flimsy. It'd take more digging into the actual news sources but, at a glance, the majority seem to be instances of mentally unsound people claiming to be Satanists or accused of being Satanic as an excuse for their acts. It's extremely dubious as the website also lumps a Wiccan group into "Satanic," a common fallacy. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:29, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

According to the first (inaccurate) sentence of this article, it is about "ritual abuse". Frankly, it is not accurate that "Satanic ritual abuse" is also known as "ritual abuse" because as I have shown, there are other forms of ritual abuse (Christian, Hindu, etc.). I do not understand what you are saying here; if someone "claims to be a Satanist" and performs ritual abuse because they are mentally unstable, that does not negate the fact that it was ritual abuse. Exorcism is a form of ritual abuse so it should be included in this article or at least have a reference link to it at the bottom. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.97.147.224 (talk) 23:07, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Evidence that SRA is not a "conspiracy theory"

Satanic cult leader busted in Wales, United Kingdom:

Colin Batley, leader of sex cult preying on children, could spend life in jail

Can the article be fixed to reflect the reality of the matter now? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.97.183.70 (talk) 04:02, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Little evidence it's claimed to be Satanic. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:30, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Stuff like this underscores it might be worth moving the page to satanic ritual abuse moral panic as it clearly marks it as a specific historical moral panic rather than fitting into the more general category of "people who justify rape with religion". WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 13:05, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Brace yourself

<rant mode engaged> OK all you fanatics, brace yourself, because I'm chopping this shitty article up. It's been a blight on the face of wikipedia for FAR too long.

• There are multiple concepts and issues discussed in just about every section that is enmeshed in purpose and presentation. For instance, controversy needs to go under controversy, leave it out of every other section of the artcile where it isn't needed. If you think that it's needed everywhere then it sounds like you are from one of the two extreme camps of editors I'm seeing here and you can go start your own goddam blog. The same goes for any editors who think this article should be about "OMG, this is such a huge problem that the whole world needs to know how bad it is."
• Next, the opening paragraph is a very poor explanation of what it is, followed by it's history of public awareness and/or discussion and panic and a bunch more shit. Again, this goes elsewhere. How people in various regions react emotionally to what they believe is or isn't happening is secondary to an explanation of what SRA actually is. If you're a big follower of FOX news (or any news station I guess), tabloids and such, I guess that's probably pretty important to you. Luckily for the rest of us, you're emotions don't matter here. All of this is secondary to the definition of Satanic Ritual Abuse.
• History should be about the history of the phenomena of SRA it's self (as well as it is known) -- NOT about how people panic or don't panic about, what books have been published or what Oprah said and who she had on her show when she said it. Doesn't belong here!
• Historical precedents -- this section discusses moral panic and the historical precedents of such phenomena it doesn't belong here. The authors of this can put this information in another article that disucsses panic about SRA. Yes this is very important, but it doesn't belong here except in mention with link to main article.
• Next, we have McMartain preschool trail -- again, another "OMG, I can't stop watching the television and reacting to it." Absolutely EVERYTHING related to the public reaction to this goes in another section discussing public option & reaction. In fact, I would love to see some sociologist PhD candidate do a nice study on such phenomena. Everything related to the actual study of the trial, evidence, testimony and other forensics can be discussed under a section for that.
• We also have Michelle Remembers. What the hell is this, a book promotion tour!? Does this belong here? Is this some ground-breaking peer-reviewed examination? Get it out of here!
• Conspiracy accusations -- doesn't belong here. Even if it did, the word "conspiracy" is superfluous and worthless. If we need a new article where the accusations are discussed and their merits debated, great, lets start one. While there is some information in this section on social and policy impact of various accusations, it doesn't belong here. Somebody can move that to another article or reformat in a fashion that is appropriate to the topic. Otherwise, I'm deleting it all.
• Religious roots and secularization -- I don't care if Christianity hates Satanism. I don't care of Satanism hates Christianity. And I damn sure don't care about how much other religions hate each other. If we're trying to "prove" it happened because Rev Fillintheblank says it did or didn't, then it's not contributing to the conversation. This also seems to be the first mention of DID -- which many psychologists are telling us is caused by severe early trauma, like what happens if you're exposed to SRA at a young age -- probably important. And yet it's first mentioned under religion? And if that isn't stupid enough, we start discussing psychological recovery groups under the section of Religion! Get it out of here!
• International spread -- spread of satanism or allegations? Oh, allegations? Doesn't belong here. You can discuss the internal spread of accusations somewhere else. It doesn't contribute significantly to the history -- at least not in the "surely this doesn't happen" POV format it's in now.
• Skepticism, rejection and contemporary existence -- What the hell is this even doing here!? Get this crap out of here!
• Evidence -- Then we have this whole section of Evidence as to discuss rather or not it happens!? Are you seriously trying to tell me that there can be any debate as to rather or not abuse happens as part of the worship of Satan? Now if you tried to challenge the evidence that abuse occurs during the worship of Barney the dinosaur, I would have to say, "yeah, that's pretty far fetched." (hah! but not impossible!) While Satanism isn't nearly as popular as Christianity, Islam and Hindi, there are enough people who claim to be Satanists coupled with books published about Satanism as a religion that the notion that abuse (or murder) of people or animals ever occurs in the name of Satan is so far beyond plausible that the demand for evidence that such a thing can only fall under one of the following categories: uninformed, naive, in-denial, mentally ill or fucking idiot. If you think it is implausible, please get a vasectomy/tubal ligation. Have you ever noticed how much abuse and murder occurs in the name of other religions? Now if we want to discuss how widespread this really occurs to be, I think we might be in business. Is it just a few bored/stoned/mentally-ill teenagers gathering together and killing a kitten while reading from "Satan Worshiping For Dummies" every now and again (btw, which IS undeniably "Satanic Ritual Abuse") or is this a massive, widespread conspiracy/criminal organization that infiltrates government, law enforcement, politics, etc. and wants to take over the world? That's the only part of this that should be discussed here.
• Skepticism -- this section should be kept, but in a dramatically different format (possibly with a summary here and a deeper examination in a main article). What I perceive as important is the sharp polarization between individuals who believe it exists and is a serious problem and those who do not believe it exists, and how much emotion various people have about it. Since there is plenty of good work out there examining this, it is due its proper analysis (which I'm not seeing despite the abundance of editors who "strongly believe" it exists and is a widespread conspiracy and those who "strongly believe" that it's just a huge panic boat that weirdos want to sail to get people riled up (btw, read up on Carl Rove if you want to learn how to do that the right way).
• False memories -- a discussion of these belongs here, but not at great length. I think this belongs more in the SRA controversy section. Keep the deep examination of this elsewhere (put a link to the False Memory Sendrome article in). This just muddies up this article.

Damn, there's so much crap in here, this will take me forever. Daniel Santos (talk) 05:02, 20 October 2011 (UTC) (note: rant mode tag intentionally not closed)

Important Notes:

• (to you SRA skeptics) We do not use the terms "'survivor'" (using either single or double quotes) to describe somebody who claims to be a survivor of said abuse. We use the term "alleged survivor", without quotes, unless significant evidence in the case is revealed that removes doubt. Example, we don't use the term "alleged survivor" to describe a survivor of The Holocaust (unless you are Achmed Ahmadinejad) because there is significant evidence that it really happened and there are (usually) plenty documents to substantiate one's claim that they were a survivor. However, lacking such documentation, they would indeed fall under the "alleged survivor" category -- not because the burden of proof has been presented that that a crime was committed, but that they themselves were a victim.
• (to you SRA believers) Likewise, we do not use the term "survivor (without quotes) to describe someone who claims to have been abused, but has not presented (due to lack of will or ability) a body of evidence. This does not, however, mean that you change the name of organizations with the word "Survivors" in their name or of other common semantics (i.e., "pro-survivor" doesn't become "pro-alleged-survivor").

more to come Daniel Santos (talk) 05:15, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Please justify your removal of sourced, relevant information from the article. Even you say that "Michelle Remembers" and "false memories" should be part of the article, yet you removed all the material about it.

There is considerable dispute if there is (in the 20th century) real worship of Satan, and if worship of Satan involves ritual abuse of people. (There is no question that it may involve animal sacrifice, which is also illegal in the US, but not "abuse".) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:51, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I have personally known numerous people who either claim Satanism as their religion or worshiping Satan as a part of their religious/spiritual beliefs. I have known the significant other of one of these people who claims to have been abused by their Satan worshiping partner as part of their practice. So that fairly well answers the question for me personally. And if my sample is 1/100000th of the world, than it's a fairly easy conclusion for me -- and one not to be so quickly assumed as not possible. Now, moving beyond what we would call "original research", we move into the world of clinical evidence. This is so incredibly plentiful that I think the burden of proof has been clearly established that there is some form of Satan worshiping, religious abuse where alleged survivors are making exceedingly similar claims. This is "clinical evidence", it is a different avenue of deriving information because you aren't performing a scientific study where you invite people who claim to have been abused to come in and participate in something (although I think there have been some of those, I dunno much about that).Daniel Santos (talk) 08:53, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Looking back at your comment, is there a "survivor" of Satanic ritual abuse? I'm sure we haven't identified any. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:21, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, I guess we have to ask what burden of proof you're looking for. Many people have been sent to jail for SRA, but then, of course, others say that's insufficient proof because innocent people go to jail every day. I suppose, after a point, it becomes a question of what you want to see and what you don't want to see. My stuff is finished building so I'm going to have to get back to real work, but you aren't going to get away with bulk reverts on this article anymore. Daniel Santos (talk) 08:53, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I was going to say that you're not going to get away with gutting the article against consensus, where reliable sources are present. I don't see why WP:BRD should not apply; you've been bold, been reverted, and are starting to discuss. It's possible that some of your edits are reasonable, but not for the reasons you've given. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:17, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Having written much of the article and added (and read) the sources, removing them is inappropriate. Sources aren't removed on opinion, they are removed when clearly indicated to be incorrect. These aren't. SRA is considered a archtypal model of a moral panic, there's plenty sources justifying this, and that's where it ends. Being a true believer doesn't give anyone the right to edit the page to suit their POV - you need sources and I don't see a single one in the post above. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 22:56, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Picture caption

I have no intention of getting into the middle of this debate, but it seems to me that the caption for the picture should just say what it is a picture of, and should name it and the artist. No editorializing on what it does or does not mean about the future. That's what the article is for. I'm taking out all but the basic picture related info. We don't know what the artist was thinking beyond the obvious depiction of a black mass, and that's deduced from the title of the painting. We don't know if he was thinking it was a moral panic. I'm taking out all but that, and ask that you discuss here why you think it should also note your own opinion of its meaning. Thank you.--TEHodson 06:54, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I believe it used to be sourced, and if it weren't for that caption, it shouldn't be in the article. If you're so sure it's POV, the proper remedy is to remove the picture. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:41, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

What we don't need is more sensationalism. Daniel Santos (talk) 07:50, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Wait Arthur, did you just say that "if it weren't for that caption, it shouldn't be in the article"!? Are you on drugs? This article is about Satanic Ritual Abuse. Not about "weirdo freaks who believe Satanic Ritual Abuse is real because they fell for a stupid social scare." Please tell me you that you don't believe the purpose of this article is to prevent people from believing the SRA does not exist. In fact, it's not to try to convince people either way, it's to present facts. Daniel Santos (talk) 07:53, 20 October 2011 (UTC) (restored after Arthur Rubin removed my comment)

Thinking about it, you're right about the picture. It does fit, marginally, without the unsourced (at present) caption. The rest of your edits are changing the subject of the article, rather than being correction of POV. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:04, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

You are correct, my edits are targeted towards changing the subject of the article. Very astute, thank you! The subject of the article should be "Satanic Ritual Abuse" it matches the title, which happens to also be "Satanic Ritual Abuse." Currently, the subject of the article is actually "Satanic Ritual Abuse: Why you are an idiot to believe the allegations of so-called survivors." That's not what this article is for. Daniel Santos (talk) 08:11, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

You seem to have avoided looking at the history of the article. This is about primarily about the allegations of ritual abuse, and the panic surrounding them. They have been called Satanic ritual abuse by many of the reliable sources, which is why the article is under that title. That does not mean the sources make allegations related to worship of Satan.

IIRC, I was in favor of moving the article to ritual abuse, but didn't achieve consensus. However, there is consensus as to the subject of the article. Would you please read the talk history, and determine whether you are editing against an established consensus. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:17, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

On reconsideration, perhaps the picture isn't related to the article. That relates to real (or even alleged) worship of Satan, which has very little to do with anything verifiable in this article. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:19, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I would be in favor of removing it. To me, it appears a bit sensationalist. I do not know anything about the artist, but wont be rash on removing it. I'll read up a bit on the talk history & FAQ, but I'm still going to challenge something if I think it's stupid. I mean, if all of the birds want to fly into a window, they may have a consensus, but it's still stupid. I was involved in this article a few years back, but life take precedence for my time. Daniel Santos (talk) 08:43, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

The picture is not related to the article at all, in my opinion, unless a medieval black mass is genuinely relevant to the subject of the modern behavior--these allegations have ranged far and wide in their particulars. But if it stays, it should stay with the current, neutral caption. I think whoever put it there did so because there is usually a picture in that spot and so it seemed, maybe, on point? I have no idea. Again, I have no wish to debate this subject due to its volitility (as amply demonstrated in just the last couple of hours), I just think we shouldn't editorialize on illlustrations that are just sitting there minding their own business.--TEHodson 09:51, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Satanic Panic -- need new article?

Is there already an article that covers the moral panic about Satanic Ritual Abuse anywhere? Some of this info is quite useful and pertinent, just not to the understanding of SRA. I'll be removing it all pretty soon and it needs a home because the info is important. Should we start a new article for this? Daniel Santos (talk) 07:49, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

On the contrary, if it weren't for the panic, there would be very little content to the article. The panic was (and probably still is) much more widespread than the nominal subject of the article. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:54, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

ic, so have you had a vasectomy? Shouldn't there be some type of entrance exam before one is allowed to edit here? The article is about SRA, nothing else. You are POV pushing. Daniel Santos (talk) 07:59, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

You're changing the subject. The article is about the phenomenon of SRA, which is almost entirely the panic. Even those who believe that SRA exists acknowledge the panic was much more prevalent. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:02, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

No it isn't. The panic about allegations of SRA is the panic about allegations of SRA. So let's change the article's title to "Panic about Allegations of SRA". Sound good? Look, I sort out cognitive distortions like this with my clients all damn day, I'm an analyst (software & business, not psych). You are mixing concepts. Are you doing this because you don't have the ability to understand enmeshed concepts or are you intentionally trying to convince the world at large that SRA is all about panic? Daniel Santos (talk) 08:07, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

It's possible to separate the allegations of SRA from the panic, but it would be wrong. (It is not possible to separate actual SRA from allegations of SRA; that would require choosing sides and/or sources.) However, almost all of the allegations of SRA make no sense but for the panic. An article in the form you seem to want would be severely biased, because you would exclude the mainstream view of why the allegations occurred. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm not talking about separating the "allegations of SRA", per-se, from the panic about said. I'm talking about what we know today about actual Satanic Ritual Abuse. Keep the crap out of it (along with speculation). You are making a POV claim that "almost all of the allegations of SRA make no sense but for the panic". C++ template metaprogramming "makes sense" to me, but it would probably make no sense to you. That is because I have deep knowledge on the topic. Also, what "makes sense" to a person often has more to do with socialization than with fact. Many errors have been made claiming that it was "common sense", when it was in fact, error. An example is the Columbia shuttle disaster. Engineers were telling mission managers that the piece of foam that came loose would probably have punctured a hole in the wing. But it didn't seem to "make sense" that a piece of foam could possible do that. It was only when they reproduced it that the layman was able to see, "wow, it really can do that." Either way, from every perspective, you are POV pushing, even if you have a group of editors with the same very strong point of view. Daniel Santos (talk) 08:35, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

As I said above, consensus is that the article is about alleged ritual abuse and the panic surrounding such; but the media calls it Satanic ritual abuse, so we do also. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:23, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not a big TV watcher, but somehow, I just seriously doubt that. Why would you call something "Satanic Ritual Abuse" if it has nothing to do with Satanism? That's just stupid. I've heard the term "ritual abuse" to describe abuse that's similar to SRA, but not part of a religious organization.Daniel Santos (talk) 08:37, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Please read the FAQs above. I thought they were there, but someone closed up the entire section. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:25, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, there is a definite need for a "Satanic Panic" type of article. The claims in the FAQ are actually quite egregious. Indeed, there are a very large number of "scholars" from various disciplines who agree that there has been a moral panic about SRA. However, not all of them believe that SRA is a non-existent. Additionally, there are also an overwhelming number of "scholars" who believe otherwise, so there is definitely some serious POV-pushing going on here and this subject is not being treated in a balanced fashion. (uugh, slow builds, I need a compiler farm :( ) Daniel Santos (talk) 09:50, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

We've gone through this before. If you want to claim that there are an "overwhelming" number of "scholars" who believe otherwise, you'll have to find some evidence of such scholars. Previous claims by a certain banned editor were found to be non-existent. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:41, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Thinking it over, it's possible that the scholarly view has changed between 2008 (when your present opinion was discredited here) and 2011. But you'd need to provide evidence for the change. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:13, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

In regard the history of the name of this article, you were active back then. The article has always (except for a short period of time dominated by now-banned editors) been about the panic. What is your recollection? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

A very interesting choice of words. "The article has always (except for ...) been about the panic." I used to read a lot of Steven Milloy, he's quite a brilliant man. The subtle crafting of words to form propaganda is an amazing art. I find it interesting how, in declaring that the article has always been about panic, you present the subtle implication that those who believe otherwise are victims of panic themselves. Sure, you can revise and say "I meant about a panic phenomena", but I'm just taking note. But back to your question, I'm sorry that I don't recall the exact state of the article back then, but I certainly recall the dispute over it as well as seemingly constant edit wars.

I see it like this. Postulating that there is such a widespread, national or international organization or organizations who engage in this type of behavior, they sound to be a pretty religious lot. I don't know about you, but I've met far too many religious nut jobs in my time. So I can see how people get wound up in their beliefs and use it to justify their actions. From that standpoint alone, the notion of such secretive cults doing such outrageous things makes sense. (ever argued with a momo or one of those other types that like to visit you?) So if they were so dedicated to keeping their religion a secret, they would want to engage in activities that further their cause -- anything to invoke a chilling effect, distort information and paint their defecting members as crazy. And if this were the case, and they weren't out here on wikipedia trying to repress the info about it, well then, they probably aren't smart enough to be of any real harm.

As for more recent clinical work, there actually has been a lot of this for some time. I seem to recall some edit wars on the DID page with this as well. Of course, it's beginning to take shape as time goes on and refinement occurs. Just look what's just happened with the scientific understanding of the speed of light -- it turns out that neutrinos don't care much for speed limits. So I guess I'll get to work on this, but I'm not going to be able to do much until next week, got a lot going on at the moment. Daniel Santos (talk) 02:09, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘It now seems to be generally accepted that both Michelle and Sybil were most probably hoaxes, although possibly unconscious hoaxes. I'm not denying that DID exists, but the the most-researched DID cases seem to be discredited; at least, when involuntary-response tests are done, each "personality" has the knowledge of the experimenter's actions that the others do. As for neutrinos, a long time ago, when physicists were green (sorry, a joke you have no reason to know — see http://lyrics.wikia.com/Jordin_Kare:Unified_Field_Theory ), there had been previous evidence that the electron-neutrino had negative squared rest mass, I believe something like $m_{\nu_\mu}^2=-7\pm 5 \ eV^2.$ , while the new results are within GPS measurement uncertainty of c; we'd need to resurvey that path to be sure. Real papers on the negative squared rest mass include (from a 2000 paper stored in arxiv)

• [30] R. Abela, M. Daum, G.H. Eaton, R. Frosch, B. Jost, P.-R. Kettle, E. Steiner: Phys. Lett. 146B (1984) 431
• [31] K. Assamagan, Ch. Br¨onnimann, M. Daum, H. Forrer, R. Frosch, P. Gheno, R. Horisberger, M. Janousch, P.-R. Kettle, Th. Spirig, C. Wigger: Phys. Rev. D53 (1996) 6065
• [32] E.W. Otten: Nucl. Phys. News 5 (1995) No. 1, p. 11
• [33] J. Ciborowski: Acta Phys. Pol. B29 (1998) 113
• [34] J. Ciborowski, J. Rembieli´nski: Eur. Phys. J. C8 (1999) 157

So, you can see there's nothing new, there. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:35, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Ah, this must be an area of expertise for you then! Well, really I would be surprised if the results were confirmed, but I was trying to make a point. :) As to the books, I've never read them. Once something becomes a media trend, I generally tend to move in the opposite direction. As to the discrediting of DID cases, I would have to say that that sounds like ducks quacking. Not that there aren't wackos out there who figure they can get attention (or whatever) by pretending to be DID, it hear it was a soap opera trend for a while, but that to say in bulk that the the most-researched DID cases were discredited is just absurd. Then again, you may be referring to research done in Hollywood -- that's the only area I think I could even slightly concur.

As to Michelle being related to the McMartin case, I'll take your word on that and leave it as a part of "SRA: The Panic" article. I'm not so certain that "panic" is the very best word to describe it however. While there's panic involved, I think there's some much more primal behavioral mechanism at work here. I suspect it's akin to the urge motorists have to slow down to stare at an accident on the other side of the highway. In this case, rather the nearby tragedy befalling a fellow (tribesman/herd-member in ancient times) is real or perceived, some genetic programming seems to push people to pay attention, perhaps to help us learn from what befell the unfortunate person and avoid it ourselves. In the age of mass media, it seems to work against us. Daniel Santos (talk) 04:08, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot to add that, despite agreeing that this "satanic panic" is a real phenomena worthy of an article, the existing one is still highly POV-pushed towards treating the actual matter of SRA as strictly fictitious -- this will still need to change in the article's new format. This in addition to better exploring it's dynamics. To me, the way the article reads now, it sounds mostly like "if you believe this you are stupid and if you claim this happened to you then you are either a.) a liar, b.) crazy or c.) both." I find that quite unhelpful and I think it can be done much better. I'm hoping there are some good research out there that can be found that explores the dynamics of this type of thing. Daniel Santos (talk) 04:15, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

SRA is considered by scholars to be a moral panic. There are very few who consider it credible, and they publish in third-string journals or vanity press; giving them credit, credibility or large amounts of text is undue weight. The article could be called "satanic ritual abuse moral panic" without any real loss, the only factor is that most people simply refer to it as SRA. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 23:01, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Article title

It appears I was wrong that I proposed moves. Since you had previously edited the article, moves to "SRA moral panic" and "RA" were both considered, and rejected; the latter because the media still refers to the allegations as SRA, even though Satanism has nothing to do with the vast majority of the allegations. So, what do you propose as the name of this article, given that dividing it is against consensus. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:25, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for this work. Next week, I'll see what I can come up with data-wise comparing media treatment of these topics and the use of the term SRA. Perhaps there should be two SRA articles, one for the phenomena studied in clinical and scholastic settings (the later which I understand to be limited), and another in the media. But somehow, the word "media" alone doesn't seem to cover it. There is a conglomeration of media outlets, religious leaders and then the reactions of the mainstream public who react to these. Does this sound like an accurate encapsulation to you? There definitely appears to be two separate phenomena, both I think which are important, notable and worthy of an article.

Do you study media trends much? I have a buddy who's a communications major, but not working in the communications field. Maybe I can hunt around a bit. I remember hearing once that there are only five different news stories. It was something like 1.)David and Goliath (little guy beats the system), 2.) Xyz just won the lottery, and I don't remember what the others are. But somehow, I think this (new article name) should be linked with other articles that examine these media phenomena. Perhaps there can be a disambiguous page to distinguish between the two as well? Going to do a little research. Daniel Santos (talk) 02:18, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

What I mean is along the lines of this article: Sensationalism -- but this one is very generic in so far as covering the media phenomena we're talking about. Daniel Santos (talk) 02:32, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Santos, there is a large section on evidence, and a section on skepticism. Why do you need the article to reflect only evidence? As most of the evidence was subsequently discovered to be unfounded, wouldn't that article have to include all the debunking that went on and the subsequent die-off of allegations, bringing us full circle? If you don't do that, your new article won't be accurate or complete. I don't think I quite get why this article, which shows how the whole thing unfolded through time, needs the overhaul you think it does. Has there been some new discovery of absolutely, positively true evidence of even one case? Or several cases? If so, add those to the evidence section, with appropriate citations, and you're problem is solved.

I have to disagree that this article implies that someone believing SRA is real is "stupid". It seems to show how the conclusion that these allegations were without merit was reached. One last concern: when someone is as wrought up about an article as you appear to be (and if I've misread you, I apologize) it's perhaps not wise to get involved in writing on the subject here, as this is not supposed to be a place to work out one's issues about anything, but rather a place for cool-headed examination of the subject. There is plenty of scholarship on the subject and this article is well-sourced, so please explain what your goal is. Your final goal, I mean. If it is to prove that SRA really went on or goes on, can you start by giving us a source or two so we can see why there should be a whole new project taken on? Thanks. (And I swore I wasn't going to get into this.)--TEHodson 08:05, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Splitting the article into one on "real" SRA and the moral panic is not a good idea. The two are one and the same, pending sources indicating otherwise. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 23:03, 22 October 2011 (UTC)