Talk:Orthodox Baháʼí Faith/Archive 1

Blimey, I wish there were a few more dates and section headings on this talk page. It's quite hard to follow, but appears to be mostly archival now. PaulHammond 00:11, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

This needs to be more NPOV. A lot of this could be condensed into a more readable format. Also, since other than succession issue, the Orthodox Bahá'í and mainstream Bahá'í are pretty similar in beliefs, maybe we should move most of this to the Bahá'í article, and keep here only the beliefs which sets Orthodox Bahá'í apart from mainstream Bahá'í -- SJK

The article refered to above under another site is not neutral either, nor are several of the sites under Chrsitianity. nor does this site feel any need for it to be neutral, but rather to present the salient features of the Orthodox Bahá'í Faith. Since the members of the other site mentioned above practice shunning of the Orthodox Bahá'ís and their point of view, any mention or comparisons or contrasts made on their page of the Orthodox point of view would likely be erased in short order. Additionally there is a Talk site that would better serve the needs of the above poster. Any further posts of this nature will be edited out of the site.

You are obviously new here, and don't know how Wikipedia works. For one thing, we call them pages or articles, not sites. Wikipedia is supposed to be an encylopedia. We try to be neutral (see neutral point of view for an explanation). We often fail, but we try. If you think there is something biased about the Bahá'í article, fix it. I don't think the people editing Bahá'í are going to erase everything you add on the Orthodox Bahá'í, but if they do, bring it up on talk:Bahá'í. As to this not fiting on this page, it probably does belong in talk:Orthodox Bahá'í Faith instead, and feel free to move it there if you must (I'm lazy.) -- SJK

I have since moved this to the talk page and have attempted to make the article itself more neutral.

April 6: I conducted the editing SJK recommended - remove the duplicate content and focus on the cause for division. - User:MMGB

I have since reinstated th4e original page, the removal of what we believe in is important to the definition of who we are, plus most of the Bahá'í articole is not on what we believe but on how many archetectural structures they have built. IR

Then a more accurate representation would be to incorporate what Bahá'ís believe into the article on Bahá'í, and then in this article express where the OB division differs. It makes no editorial sense to have main principles of a religion expressed on a page for a stunningly small minority (which, no offence intended, you are). The Bahá'í page should summarise the main principles of the faith which are common to both streams, and the OB page should then focus solely on the distinctions between this and the mainstream branch. From what I have read you do not differ on any points of significance other than the "Guardianship continuity" principle, which should thus be the main focus of the OB page. - User:MMGB

The real reason is best summarrized from an article written on soc. religon. Bahá'í where the writer urged Bahá'ís to rerwrite the article in order to reduce the influence of the Orhtodox group. I have there fore writtten the people in charge of wikipediea today to express my concerns that what is being done is really for the purpose of non-nuetrality on the larger groups part yuour professions of not being a Bahá'í notwithstadning. copy of exceprtps from article follow:

Article snipped- you can view original posting at [1]

I also have written a reply put on the other two Bahá'í newsgroups since as you know censorship rpevails on the group this artricle appeared in and orhtodox are shunned.

Hello All

An article appeared on alt.soc.Bahá'í which called for the larger Bahá'í group to martial its forces to put the Orhtodox Artciles om a particular website "in its proper persecptive" meaning reduce its size and influence.

The writer did admit however that::

The antagonist (that's the Orhtodox Bahá'í) in the dispute has one extremely valid point however - the article on the Orthodox Bahá'ís does cover the Bahá'í principles in great depth, and frankly the Bahá'í article tends to focus solely on history and buildings. We (the editors) feel that the principles of the Faith should be encapsulated in the main Bahá'í article and we should limit the OB article to the point of distinction (ie. the dispute about succession of the Guardianship). But none of us feel suitably qualified to redress this imbalance.

Hence the call for others to come in and try by all means to reduce the Orhtodox article to non influence while admitting the better article ont he Faith's principles was doen by the Orhtodox!

Ummmmm... yeah, that's definitely what I said. What's your point?

Needless to say I have sent a copy fo this letter to the heads of the particular website with the point that what ever the main group does there is for the obvious purpose of reducing the Orhtodox arrticle and is intself an obvious attempt at non-neutrality which the particular site in question requires.

Again so that people will know what our priicples are and wehter they differ from the alrger group i Have again rededited and will contiually reedit the Orhtodox article until i hear from the staff of wekepedia on this.

If you HAD actually done this we would all be very pleased! We WANT you to distinguish how the OB principles are different from the mainstream group. But you have NOT done this. - MB

The post you quote above sounds very fair, reasonable, and even-handed to me: he thinks that the article on the Bahá'í faith should cover the whole Bahá'í faith -- and needs to be expanded a great deal in that respect -- and that differences between subgroups thereof should be noted in separate pages.

You, on the other hand, have edited articles to delete links to the general Bahá'í Faith while leaving links to your favored subgroup Orthodox Bahá'í Faith intact -- removing evenhandedness from articles that were trying to be fair by linking everyone. (See for instance [2], [3]) You have no right to complain here. Brion VIBBER

Far from unveiling a "conspiracy" - you have revealed a fairly well-known fact: I regularly post to a variety of newsgroups - this is mentioned on my homepage. I use the name Rabo Karabekian (a fictional character) and I have posted to dozens of NGs on all sorts of topics.

I happily claim to have written the article on the soc.Bahá'í newsgroup, and I stand by every word of it. I won't repeat the points Brion raised above, as he is entirely correct. And as far as the "Staff of the Wikipedia" - if there even IS any such thing, then I and Brion/SJK above are surely members of it. (The only true "staff" member is Jimmy Wales). I am fairly confident that the "staff" will simply say - "We agree with Manning". (But I'll let them communicate that themselves.)

I also stand by my position - I believe you are attempting to distort the representation of the Bahá'í Faith to the benefit of your marginal group. So far three independent members of the Wikipedia community have said the same thing - Put the common principles on the main page, and use the OB page to put the distinctions. I WANT to see the distinctions, but a listing of principles which even in my non-expert state I can tell are no different from the mainstream Bahá'í principles is not the correct approach.

I COMPLETELY AGREE that the better summation of principles was on the OB page - well done. They just don't belong there. And my opening sentence that describes the OB is completely objective: You are a breakaway group (true) of at most a few thousand members (my research indicates barely a few hundred, but I felt I would allow for a margin of error). You are an extreme minority in the grand scheme of things, if you wish to try and change this, go find a way to get a few million new members - but DO IT ELSEWHERE. If the Orthodox Bahá'ís become the dominant group, then I personally will rewrite the article to reflect that. I actually don't care one way or the other, I just want the closest to a genuine portrayal that we can get within our enyclopedia project.

And would you please learn to spell? Your semi-illiterate comments hardly help to portray your religious group in the best light. - Manning Bartlett

and one more thing - the emailyou sent to Jimbo Wales has since been forwarded to me. The comment "There are a lot more of us than there are of you" was a reference to the editors of the Wikipedia who are committed to the integrity of the project. It did NOT mean "there are more of us Bahá'ís than there are of you" - I am not a Bahá'í. To be fair, I can see how you made this misinterpretation, so I am not criticising, just making a clarification. - Manning Bartlett

I have had some time to consider your position, and while I think you will agree that the articles themselves which I have written are fairly educated and spelled correctly :-), when it comes to quick written messages, this is sometimes not the case.

For this I apologize. Secondly, I accept your statement that you are not a Bahá'í. Please accept my justification or if you like rationalization as to why I felt the way I did. 1. I have known many within the Orhtodox family who have lost loved ones, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, and children, who will no longer talk to them and who acitively shun them. The best analogy is perhaps that of the Orhtodox Jewish rabbi who held a funeral for his son who had become a Christian. 2. The desire not to see what I have often seen, major attempts by the main group to actually and otherwise remove references to our very existence.

However, not withstanding that, I can with a minor modification live with your opening paragraph and your modiifcation of the article. While you may view the group as a "small breakaway branch", and indeed we are not as large in numbers, the idea of the Orhtodox being a branch of the larger group, and I am certain from there perspective as well we are not a branch of them. Indeed, most of the larger group would not even view us as Bahá'ís of any sort. Further in a sense it would be like saying Protestantism is a branch of Catholicism. Or Shiites are a branch of Sunni's. While Protestant and Catholics are Christian, and Sunni's and Shiites are Islamic, because of the handling of the name itself, members of the Bahá'í Faith and Orhtodox Bahá'ís are believers in Bahá'u'llah, neither is a branch of the other. Both are independent administrative organizations. Hence the modification I propose eliminates what most Orthodox and I suppose many of the larger group also would find somewhat offensive, i.e., that we are a branch of them. Hence the modication to a "movement" historically started in the Bahá'í Faith larger group, but which very quickly was forced into independence from it seems more accurate and PC at the same time. I have eliminated the word small as the numbers given in the article themselves by you in the first paragraph and by locality by me toeward the end of the article already show that it is a smaller group.

Finally, I apoplogize for what may have and probably was an over-reaction on my part.

As to the statement that our principles and beliefs are nearly identical with those of the larger group. I have no problem with that, only that those principles and beliefs are not clearly set forth, indeed not in many cases set forth at all. I had at one time made a minor adjustment to their article listing the date 1957 as the date of the split that occured and referencing it. However such a large modification as needs to be made to show what the similar principles are is one which I would not undertake to their article, as I do not believe the Bahá'ís of the larger pursation would appreciate it.

Finally, I had placed the references to the larger group in some, though not all the articles I have written. If they have been removed by me, it was because the articles were re-edited from notepad to the edit board on wekipedia, and I had gone through and re-edited each article. I will certainly go back through and correct that.

I hope this will in some way explain why you got the reaction from me that you did. I also hope the modification to your first paragraph will be accepted in the spirit that I have inteded to give it.

That sounds fair; I'm glad we've all come to an understanding on this! Thanks as well for the explanation of the mysterious disappearing links, 66. Brion VIBBER

I've made a few spelling/grammatical changes, but have otherwise left the article as is. You'll notice LDC obliterated your separate article on "Orthodox Bahá'ís" - don't take offence as that is standard policy here. We made a conscious decision to not distinguish between a religious/philosophical/social system and the members/adherents thereof. For example, there is an article on Capitalism but not one for Capitalists. (The page heading stays of course, but now it redirects to the main OB article)

Now I still have a few editorial issues - there are some things which are vague. The second paragraph says that "OB's believe that Remey was appointed head of the 1st Council" - is this appointment disputed by mainstream Bahá'ís? I don't like the paragraph that begins "In 1960 he announced that Shoghi Effendi had appointed him Second Guardian of the Bahá'í World Faith..." This sentence sort of makes Remey sound like a crackpot who cooked this idea up on his own. While I realise that the Guardian did not actually write him a letter saying "Hey, Mason, you're the next Guardian", some elaboration of his reasoning for this claim would be good. - User:MMGB

No offence taken. I wondered why it had been written the way it was and just went to the question mark and made the article, so the question mark would not remain on the original article.

I have taken the second paragraph and combined it with the "In 1960" paragraph to give a better explanation fo the reasoning and the conflict with the main group.

I also have made a minor adjustment as prior to 1960 Mason had no followers, his announcement fell like a bombshell, it was only after this time that he found a group of Bahá'ís that understood his reasoning, as outside of the conclave of the Hands in the Holy Land he had made no annoucement of his understanding. So where it states Mason and a gourp of his followers, I have put only Mason.

I like the changes you have made - the article is quite readable now. Regards User:MMGB

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After all the fuss, I'm glad to see this article has settled down. One comment about the article is that there seems to be a lot of words that are capitalised (Like This). For instance, in the title "Second Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith", does the word "Second" really need to be capitalised? Similarly, does "Writings of the Faith" have any special signficance? If so, it needs to be explained somewhere, if not why is it capitalised? --Robert Merkel

I do not know what happened on the article but when I went to the article on religion it had been changed back to an earlier article, so had the one on the Bahá'í and the orthtodox Bahá'í but I can find no verification on who changed it, went to talk here and it also had been brought back to an earlier edition so I am trying to restore it to all the comments made as I have with the Orthodox Article. It is really weird, hope the changes stay up as I feel everyone agreed in the end that they were the best at the time.

Had to delete a section concerning Donald Harvey as the small paragraph was historically inaccurate.. Had Donald appointed Head of the Second embryonic Universal House of Justice, labels Donald appointed in 1967 as its head making him Guardian and yet has the organization he headed activated to make him Guardian in 1966 a year earlier than his supposed appointement as its head, though Joel B. Marangella was clearly appointed in 1966 as its head; also from all records of members appointed by Mason Remey to be on the Second International Bahá'í Council Donald Harvey was not appointed to even be a member that I can find on the list of membership.

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I just added several links and descriptions regarding the further splits of the Remeyites and a paper describing their history. This seems only fair, if they want a link from the main Bahá'í page, then the other groups that split off from the Remeyites should get links too... Rick Boatright 19:53, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree and as with teh major site where the links take one to a seperate page discussing that particualr issue I have also linked your links to a seperate article called other divisions which contains all your links and comments aboujt those divisions. Since, the main article here realates to the biggest of those divisions. Hope these meets with your approval.

I also have further clarified the addition in the article made by you on Masons signing the Hands unanimous document. I think the additons further clarify the reasons for the divisions and the Orthodox understanding of what he signed as opposed to the sans-Guardian understanding, and how both groups agree and disagree on it, as well as how both sides admit freely that he continued to press the Hands to look for a living Guardian after signing the document. -- SOME ANONYMOUS USER

It would be real nice if you logged in and signed your posts. That said, I have no problem with that idea, but we need a back link to the OBF page from the other. Rick Boatright 23:17, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, I made a small correction to incorporate the dispute over the appointment of Joel as Guardian, to show that it was disputed by the smaller groups and referencing it to them to correct any impression that the Orthodox Bahá'í Faith disputes his apointment, messed up on a couple of spelligns and corrected them, I am not sure how to get it to say my sign in name when I make the corrections but I am as always - multiman

TO get it to sign your changes, LOG IN to the wikipedia. ALL it asks for is a name and password, it doesn't ask you for a real name, or address or anything, just LOG IN... simple enough. Rick Boatright 02:56, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Multiman - 31Dec03 Revised to a previous revision as what was occuring ont he page began to simply be a poltmeic not on how the two differ but on hwo the two differ and how the majority postion is the correct one.

It appears Bretz9 wishes to explain in the OBF artcle why we are in error in our understanding of an interpretation of events. This is fine if he wants the same thign to happen ont he larger Bahá'í Faith website with OBF documents and links inserted to show where their uderstanding of the UHJ is false according to OBF written sources. If that is what Bretz9 wants I certainly can go to their article and make the necessary changes and continually add them in again every day for ever. Multiman

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if you do the stats, and you know it's more than 70, why not put in the accurate number? -- Rick (PS, try to remember to login to wikipedia before editing so that your edits get signed as by you rather than as by an IP address.....