Talk:Hugh O. Pentecost

Stolen My Research?

Dear Wikipedia Readers and Editors,

This person who presents himself as someone who knows about Hugh O. Pentecost seems to be a plagiarist. I have researched Pentecost thoroughly over these past eight years. On October 11, 2007, my article on the subject was released in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. On November 5, 2007, a biographical article by me and a few old sermons by Pentecost appeared on my website entitled Dead Anarchists. Also on November 5, 2007, The page on Pentecost appeared on Wikipedia, containing no new information. This is obviously a rip-off of my work. I deserve an answer here, and I will need a remedy. BobHelms (talk) 23:29, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I have deleted the article entirely, and I await a response. BobHelms (talk) 20:06, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The user who created this page, Radgeek, will probably notice your edit when next logged on, but that may be a while away. It is possible to email him (look for the email link in the toolbox on his user page) or if you prefer to talk to people who can talk for wikipedia as a whole then see Wikipedia:Request_for_immediate_removal_of_copyright_violation. Also note though what it says there about the applicability of copyright to facts vs words - if this is a copyright violation then it would help make your case if you provided a link to or quote of your work that shows a clear overlap with the words Radgeek entered here. On the other hand if this is purely about facts rather than words then there is still an issue but is about citations rather than copyright. -- Pm67nz (talk) 00:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Sir or Madam, for your response. I researched Pentecost for years, and my articles in New Encyclopedia of Unbelief page 597 (Prometheus Press 2007) and my own website http://www.deadanarchists.org/Pentecost/Pentecostindex.html, along with several newly transcribed texts on the site by Pentecost himself (annotated by me), should easily illustrate why I have every right to be angry with Radgeek, who simply browsed the NY Times archives and a few other items on the web, while missing tons of online material and avoiding library stacks and any mention of my work. As far as the quality of Wikipedia is concerned, several years of very thorough research at university archives, cemeteries, and the papers of other deceased people, while communicating with the subject's living descendants, produces genuine historical research. One night of web surfing produces an freshman class assignment. Radgeek's article gets a very lousy grade from me. I happen to know more about Hugh Owen Pentecost than any other living person. I will take the time as soon as possible to write to Wikipedia as you suggested, and I will consider leaving a short note with the offending party. I wish you well. BobHelms (talk) 00:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Bob Helms has made several serious allegations for which he has provided no evidence. I am not surprised that he has provided no evidence, since his claims are in fact completely false. The article was an original composition with multiple sources carefully cited and produced in the hopes that others would add their own contributions. None of these sources included anything written by Bob Helms, either on his website or in the Prometheus New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. As can be readily seen from record preserved in the article history, I spent the better part of a day preparing a well-documented initial article on Hugh Pentecost which I hoped that others with greater knowledge would add to and improve. Instead Mr. Helms has made serious accusations against my intellectual honesty which he has made no attempt to substantiate, and childishly blanked out the information contained in the article rather than demonstrating any kind of plagiarism whatsoever, or using the superior knowledge he professes to make some kind of productive contribution to the article. This is, frankly, despicable behavior, and objectively indistinguishable from vandalism. Bob Helms owes both me, and the readers of WikiPedia, an apology.

In light of his complete failure, thus far, to substantiate any claim of plagiarism, I have reverted his destructive edits. There is no reason for any Wikipedian to tolerate, much less indulge, this kind of behavior. Radgeek (talk) 07:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Dear Wiki Users, Mr. Radgeek accuses me of libeling him, but first of all, how can I libel a guy who uses a codename? I had to go through a few layers of search just to get a message to him. But more importantly, he’s trying to manipulate this discussion in the following ways. He directs the readers’ attention to the history page of the Pentecost article, and then when we click over to it, we keep clicking and clicking, but it seems as though history begins on December 17th! I wonder where all the earlier history went? The article went up on November 5th, but those five weeks just disappeared like some ancient civilization. 11/5 is important because it’s the same day as my pages went up on deadanarchists.org. Is there a virus in Wiki that eats people’s History homework like the family dog? Hugh Pentecost died a hundred years ago (over 36,500 days), and then Lo and Behold! He comes out from deep obscurity with TWO websites on the same day! You’d think he had a better chance of rising from the dead. Radgeek calls my deletions childish, and yet those are the reasons why he suddenly pays any attention again after a month of silence. He’s very offended at my remarks after he scoured the NY Times on line for “the better part of a day.” Can you imagine how pissed off he’d be if he’d scoured dozens of newspapers (mostly in archives, a few on line), corresponded at length with Pentecost’s family genealogist, called some of Pentecost’s former churches on the phone, scoured the country for his college records, cemetery records, family photographs, records of his home towns, Law documents –and then did the same thing again for BOTH his wives (surprise, Radgeek: he was married twice), and his brother and his father in law? I think that Radgeek would be fit to be tied after those hundreds of days of careful work, only to see that some guy out of the blue sky has scooped him on day one of his work on Pentecost. I sure am pissed off, because that what Radgeek has done to me. And now he demands an apology and that I not be tolerated by Wikipedia. I have a responsibility to others here. Two friends have spent a lot of time typing in Pentecost’s lectures and loading them on my website. I also have a responsibility to Hugh Pentecost, who deserves far more than a quick stick-figure drawing of his life by the amateur of the week. I urge anyone interested in Pentecost, who was an intellectually honest man in all but one instance, to read about him and his ideas at http://www.deadanarchists.org/Pentecost/Pentecostindex.html. And if you would like to know more, do what Radgeek somehow neglected to do: just send me a note through the site. Oh and by the way, I scoured the Times for Pentecost on my first day too, about eight years ago. It was hard work! BobHelms (talk) 02:08, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Bob, there is nothing wrong with WikiPedia's history page for this article. You may have clicked on the wrong link (for example, if you click on the "History" tab from this discussion page, that will give you the revision history of the discussion page, not of the main article). You may find the history page for the main article here if you are still having trouble: [1].

I'm glad that you have devoted a great deal of work to putting together the details or Rev. Pentecost's life. I certainly cannot claim to have done extended research on Pentecost. On the other hand, I never said that I had done so; I merely said that I spent the time necessary to put up a well-documented initial article for others to improve on. Again, I will suggest that you should use your knowledge of the subject to contribute to the article, with appropriate citations to the work you have published online or in print. What you should not do is waste everyone's time by flinging around accusations against the intellectual honesty of others without providing any evidence whatsoever. Plagiarism is a serious charge and one you have made repeatedly while repeatedly refusing to back it up. I expect the reason that you have not backed it up is that you cannot. That is because your charge is false. My sources are cited in the article, and your work is not among them because I did not find it at the time. If I had, there is no reason at all why I would not have cited it as a source in the course of editing the article. (Why wouldn't I? I cited everything else.) This should not be surprising, since I had no particular reason to be scanning through the contents of deadanarchists.org for new submissions, and no way of knowing that you had just put a new page up there. (In case you are unfamiliar with how search engines like Google work, it is rare for new material to show up in search results for several days after it first goes online.) If you think I did nick your work, then it would in fact be quite surprising that you cannot produce any significant overlap in wording or that I never referred to the sources that you repeatedly inform us you used, or that my article would lack details (such as Pentecost's first marriage) that your short biographical sketch [2] does include, but that other sources cited in the article (such as Pentecost's New York Times obit) do not include. That would tend to indicate that the source was in fact what was cited in the article, not something else. In fact I have trouble finding much of anything that you might think the article has in common with your work as available online, except for the fact that they are both about Hugh O. Pentecost.

Another thing that you should not do is to vandalize the main article page in order to get others' attention. If you can actually demonstrate plagiarism, there are procedures for speedy removal. If you cannot, then you need to actually take steps like contacting the author directly--your e-mail message is what informed me of what is going on, not any changes you made to the main article, which I do not regularly monitor--rather than disrupting WikiPedia to illustrate a point.

Again, your behavior thus far is disruptive and unacceptable. If you have any evidence of actual plagiarism of any kind, then make it available. Otherwise, please find another means for advertising the extent of your research on Hugh O. Pentecost, rather than disrupting WikiPedia and making baseless charges against the intellectual honesty of innocent people. Radgeek (talk) 14:21, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Radgeek, I and my friends that I referred to earlier are happy to read your very constructive note, and we all agree that it's best for me to add to the Pentecost article rather than to quarrel. I'll do that soon, probably bit by bit, as time allows. Happy New Year! BobHelms (talk) 16:52, 30 December 2007 (UTC)