Talk:Werner Erhard

Four million people

An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. Not a badly-written autobiography by an unknown. I asked THP if it is true that "more than four million people have participated with the goal of establishing "the end of hunger as an idea whose time has come" and they do not make that claim and have no idea where it came from. Polygnotus (talk) 11:22, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

The new reference you added to the article in this section (The New York Times, HUNGER PROJECT AIMING AT GLOBAL COMMITMENT, Oct. 6, 1985), actually says explicitly that four million people had participated. Quoting from the New York Times, "Last month, a woman in Mexico became the four millionth person to sign a pledge declaring that the end of hunger is an idea whose time has come." MLKLewis (talk) 01:30, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

@MLKLewis: You cannot use sources this way. The source says:

"Last month, a woman in Mexico became the four millionth person to sign a pledge declaring that the end of hunger "is an idea whose time has come."" and you use that as a reference for the statement

"In 1977, Erhard co-founded The Hunger Project, an NGO in which more than four million people have participated with the goal of establishing "the end of hunger as an idea whose time has come".

Someone signing a pledge is not the same as participating in an NGO. I can sign this pledge but that does not mean I have participated in that NGO... Do you not see the difference? Polygnotus (talk) 01:45, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Actually, yes, signing the pledge was how people participated with the goal of establishing "the end of hunger as an idea whose time has come". It says so in the article you found. Quoting from the New York Times, "the Hunger Project's most widespread activity is the circulation of ''enrollment cards,'' whereby an individual promises to make the Hunger Project ''mine completely,'' and to make ''the end of the persistence of hunger and starvation an idea whose time has come.''

The article goes on to say, "The Hunger Project is praised for its educational efforts by others active in the field. For example, Representative Benjamin A. Gilman, Republican of New York and a member of the House Select Committee on Hunger, said the group had ''done some good work in helping raise the public's consciousness on the need to end hunger.'' MLKLewis (talk) 02:10, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

They didn't participate in the NGO. They signed a pledge. Those 2 things are not the same. Misrepresented sources is a giant problem in this article. It is easy to convince people to sign a pledge because it is noncommittal, easy and makes them feel good. It is hard to get them to actually show up to a meeting at the NGO headquarters and do the actual work. Polygnotus (talk) 02:13, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

You obviously have great intentions and we are desperate for people who are willing to help with Women in Red stuff and as a feminist I really encourage you to keep going... but please be a lot stricter with sources. If you can't find a source that says what you want to say you are writing WP:BACKWARDS. And including a source that doesn't really 100% support the claim made in the article is one of the worst things you can do because it takes people like me ages to find/buy/download all the sources and carefully compare them with the claims made in the article. And in this article, many of the claims were not actually supported by the sources. Polygnotus (talk) 01:58, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Made up quotes

The article says:

"The Financial Times management editor Andrew Hill wrote that the course contributes to the field of business education and furthers academic research.<ref name="ft-lunch">{{cite journal|last1=Kellaway|first1=Lucy|last2=Hill|first2=Andrew|title=Lunch with The FT: Werner Erhard|journal=Financial Times|date=April 27, 2012}}</ref>"

Let's compare that with the source:

• The source says: "Werner Erhard and Michael Jensen look an unlikely pairing but their leadership teaching fits into a broad stream of business education and research about ethics and integrity."

• The source says: "Together they are writing academic articles and touring the world’s best universities telling audiences that everything they thought they knew about integrity was wrong."

Nothing about them furthering academic research or contributing to the field of business education. Polygnotus (talk) 22:52, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

OK. Let's rewrite the phrase in the article (and to be clear the phrase you removed was not formatted as a direct quote as your heading title here suggests). We can rewrite it to say, "The Financial Times management editor Andrew Hill wrote that the course fits into the field of business education and academic research" or make it a direct quote and say, "The Financial Times management editor Andrew Hill wrote that the 'leadership teaching fits into a broad stream of business education and research about ethics and integrity.'" Which do you prefer? MLKLewis (talk) 02:42, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

It originally said that he wrote something (a quote) he didn't write (made up). That is a made up quote. And in response to those proposals: neither makes sense. If you produce a car and you name it Example and I say "Example fits in a broad stream of car models built post-2020" its not really a quote worth including in the article. Andrew didn't say anything meaningful or worth repeating in an encyclopedia article (or if he did, not in those 2 sentences).

And I really need you to acknowledge that you can't use sources like that. It is very important that you understand that we have zero creative license and that we need to write exactly what the source said (without infringing on copyright). We can't just make stuff up that perhaps sounds a bit similar. Polygnotus (talk) 02:47, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

POV edits by MLKLewis

@MLKLewis: We talked about this. And instead of acknowledging and fixing the problems you are trying to re-introduce them into the article? Like I said above: "I really need you to acknowledge that you can't use sources like that. It is very important that you understand that we have zero creative license and that we need to write exactly what the source said (without infringing on copyright). We can't just make stuff up that perhaps sounds a bit similar.". Can you please respond to that? Polygnotus (talk) 08:40, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@Polygnotus: Your wholesale reversion of my edits indicate that you did not read through the edits I made. I did not fully revert the changes you made, instead I incorporated some of those edits in good faith. Your arguments for removing reliably sourced material above are specious and your choices reveal a bias against the subject. In regard to writing exactly what the source said, we aim to summarize what sources say in a neutral unbiased manner, which is exactly what I did in the matter what the Financial Times management editor Andrew Hill wrote. MLKLewis (talk) 18:51, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I did read it. And no, what you did is not WP:NPOV. You re-introduced WP:SYNTH errors, WP:NPOV problems, WP:PROMO problems and factual errors. This is an encyclopedia; we do not promote people here. Look at the article of someone almost universally regarded as a good person. Mother Teresa got a criticism section. MLK jr got a criticism section. You can probably write a criticism section for Ghandi. Do you have a COI to disclose? Have you ever done an est/Landmark course? Polygnotus (talk) 19:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@MLKLewis: Please stop it. You can't misrepresent sources like that. What you are doing is basically vandalism. I received the book from Amazon. Please don't make me waste more time here. Polygnotus (talk) 00:35, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

About those sources: I was about to remove the first part but Polygnotus beat me to it. Here's my edit summary, however, because it's worth assessing those sources: "/* Soviet Union and Northern Ireland */ the hilton reference lacks a title and page numbers. committee and the institute seems to be some kind of think-thanky organization at best, possibly a quaker outfit, with odd issue numbers, weird title, missing page numbers, missing author. FT article--who is the "me" in "Erhard tells me"--what is this?" Those sources, in short, are just incredibly problematic, and I hadn't yet gotten to the second part, which is also very iffy. Drmies (talk) 02:52, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

@Drmies: Should we just request a block for MLKLewis from all pages related to Landmark? How? They keep editwarring and they are not here to write a neutral encyclopedia based on reliable sources. They think that despite their COI they should be allowed to make POV edits. Landmark sock- and meatpuppets have wasted an insane amount of time of Wikipedians. Polygnotus (talk) 03:20, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

@Drmies: Predictably, this happened. Polygnotus (talk) 03:25, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

About that edit... I recognize one of the sources that was restored from a previous discussion, back in 2019:

• Oran, Suzan; Conard, Scott (2014). The Art of Medical Leadership. Wheatmark, Inc. pp. 7, 8. ISBN 978-1627871778.

As I said at the time, the cited pages are a passing mention of a specific course. Even if the book is broadly reliable (which is debatable), it provides nothing of value to this particular article. To edit war to restore this source (from 2014) to support claims about "A major part of Erhard's current work" is frankly bizarre. Grayfell (talk) 03:29, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Oran is also not a neutral independent 3rd party who just happens to mention him in a reliable source, but someone who works for Erhard. Quote: "I (Suzan Oran) honor Werner Erhard for his influence on my work and in my life. I had the privilege of working with and being trained to lead seminars by the staff at Werner Erhard and Associates.". Polygnotus (talk) 03:48, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Polygnotus, Grayfell, please take it to AIV and ask for an indef block--I gotta run and get this day started. The user is NOTHERE to improve our beautiful project. Drmies (talk) 13:04, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

• Never mind! Drmies (talk) 13:07, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

"Author" in lead.

While reviewing the above, back in 2018 at Talk:Werner Erhard/Archive 3#Erhard's later work I said:

An author is generally going to be understood as someone who has written books or plays. The article currently does a poor job of supporting this. To make sure this isn't an oversight, I looked at WorldCat. I had a very hard time finding good examples of works by. There is a lot of search noise, but I found very, very few books which list him as the sole author. All of those appear obscure and short. OCLC 186984316 for example, is only held by a single library, in Sweden. (Most of the rest of the results are for a different person with the same name) From this, I am not confident that Werner Erhard should be described in the lead of the article as an "author". We shouldn't take this kind of thing for granted.

Since there was no response, I have removed "author" from the lead. It isn't clear that reliable, independent sources describe him as an author. It would be misleading to imply otherwise. Even with sources the current article fails to support this in the body, so it is premature in the lead. For context, every single one of the listed works is short and co-written with one or more additional writers. I would be somewhat surprised if the OCLC link above wasn't also coauthored, based on this history. Grayfell (talk) 05:21, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. We need to follow what reliable sources say. Polygnotus (talk) 05:48, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

@Grayfell: Does he fail WP:NAUTHOR? Is the subject actually notable for anything. If not I plan to send it to Afd. scope_creep^Talk 07:30, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think AfD is the way to go yet, but I guess I could be convinced otherwise if you wanted to make the (very difficult) case for WP:TNT. I believe Erhard has been substantially discussed by multiple independent works, so he meets WP:GNG, but the current article is such a mish-mash that it's hard to identify what is useful and what isn't. Grayfell (talk) 07:42, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

That settles that. I wasn't sure and don't plan to make a case for TNT, for sure. I agree its rather too large for what's covered. It could be half that size, be much more succint, more accurate and be better for it. scope_creep^Talk 07:47, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Subsequent work

Respectfully Polygnotus, I would like to know your justification for reverting this edit that was based on representing reliably sourced material. The edit (which is not the same text as any prior versions of the Subsequent work section) is based on highly credible reliable sources including The New York Times, The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. I find it difficult to understand what is objectionable about this edit. Please explicitly say what your objection is so we can work towards a resolution. MLKLewis (talk) 02:04, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

A very similar edit has been discussed and rejected already by multiple editors (not to mention the editwarring). There are many reasons that I could explain in detail and that we could bicker over for years but I am here in my spare time, as a volunteer.

You clearly have a conflict of interest in relation to Landmark-related articles.

COI editors should follow WP:COI and not edit the affected articles (exceptions listed here). COI editors can propose changes on the associated talkpages using the {{edit COI}} template.

The Landmarkians have done considerable damage to Wikipedia over the years. I've read the archives stretching back literal decades. The best thing that can happen now is that anyone who has done a Landmark course/volunteer(s/ed) for Landmark or has an "interest" in it stops editing articles related to Landmark and lets uninvolved people handle it.

The Landmarkians, as a group, got very significant problems with WP:IDHT, WP:STICK and WP:NPOV making collaboration with Wikipedians basically impossible.

Therefore, my advice is to move on. There are quite a few articles on Wikipedia that are fun to improve, and people will be grateful if you do. Those other articles don't have this long terrible history the Landmark-related articles have.

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/Redlist_index is a huge list of redlinks that should be turned into articles. Polygnotus (talk) 02:29, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

You did not respond to my request regarding the specific edit to the article, which is what this talk page is for. I did the edit following closely to Wikipedia’s policies on editing. As it says in WP:NOR: ”The best practice is to research the most reliable sources on the topic and summarize what they say in your own words, with each statement in the article being verifiable in a source that makes that statement explicitly. Source material should be carefully summarized or rephrased without changing its meaning or implication. Take care not to go beyond what the sources express or to use them in ways inconsistent with the intention of the source, such as using material out of context. In short, stick to the sources.”

The following is, line by line, the content (written in my own words while retaining the substance of the original publication) followed by the inline references used and the quotes from those references to verify the content.

During the 1990’s Erhard lectured and led programs at various international locations, such as Russia, Japan and Ireland. He had a three year contract to give courses to Soviet managers that would allow Soviet officials to study his teaching methods.

Reference: “East meets Est: The Soviets discover Werner Erhard”, (3 December 1986), The Wall Street Journal, by Robert S. Greenberger. “Mr. Erhard gave a five-day course to about 60 Soviet managers in the workers' state, his first seminar under a three-year contract that also will allow Soviet officials to study his teaching methods in the U.S."

He consulted for both businesses and government agencies in Russia.

Reference: “The Return of Werner Erhard, Father of Self-Help”, The New York Times, (November 28, 2015) by Peter Haldeman. “For several years before his latest professional reincarnation, Mr. Erhard consulted for businesses and government agencies like the Russian adult-education program the Znaniye Society and a nonprofit organization supporting clergy in Ireland.”

Reference: “Lunch with the FT”, Financial Times, "Erhard tells me that paramilitaries in Northern Ireland had a bit of trouble too, but when they did get it they disarmed as a result. He also worked with members of the first Russian parliament in 1993.”

In the early 1990’s he conducted seminars in Japan for professionals coping with their financial crisis.

Reference: “The Return of Werner Erhard, Father of Self-Help”, The New York Times, (November 28, 2015) by Peter Haldeman. “for several years, under the rubric of “mastery,” he conducted seminars for professionals coping with Japan’s financial crisis of the early 1990s.”

In 1999, Erhard and Peter Block worked with a non-profit organization for clergy and grassroots leaders to come up with new ways of thinking to deal with the peace process in Ireland.

Reference: “The Return of Werner Erhard, Father of Self-Help”, The New York Times, (November 28, 2015) by Peter Haldeman. “For several years before his latest professional reincarnation, Mr. Erhard consulted for businesses and government agencies like the Russian adult-education program the Znaniye Society and a nonprofit organization supporting clergy in Ireland.”

Reference: “Lunch with the FT”, Financial Times, "Erhard tells me that paramilitaries in Northern Ireland had a bit of trouble too, but when they did get it they disarmed as a result. He also worked with members of the first Russian parliament in 1993.”

Reference: “A Conversation with Peter Block”, Kolbe Times, (January 31, 2018), by Bill Locke. “Peter Block has also been recognized for his efforts to effect peace and reconciliation in the Northern Ireland Peace Process. In 1999, he and Werner Erhard developed The Ireland Initiative, working with clergy and grassroots leaders to develop new thinking and new conversations.”

Erhard and Michael C. Jensen, Professor of Business Administration Emeritus led seminars and training sessions at Harvard.

Reference: Leeson, Robert (2013). Hayek, A Collaborative Biography. Palgrave Macmillan. “Erhard organized and led Harvard seminars and training sessions in association with Michael Jensen, Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard Business School”

They also explored the relationship between integrity and performance in a paper published at Harvard Business School.

Reference: Kerr, James (2013). Legacy. Constable & Robinson. “In a paper published at Harvard Business School, Michael C. Jensen, Werner Erhard, and Steve Zaffron explore the relationship between integrity and performance.”

Erhard and Jensen developed and led a course on leadership that took an experience-based, rather than knowledge-based, approach to leadership. Students are asked to master integrity and authenticity, among other principles, so that they can leave the class being leaders rather than merely learning about leadership.

Reference: “The Return of Werner Erhard, Father of Self-Help”, The New York Times, (November 28, 2015) by Peter Haldeman. “In 2004, with the help of a Landmark official, Dr. Jensen developed an experiential course on integrity in leadership at the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester. The class was offered there for five years, with Mr. Erhard signing on as an instructor during its third year. It has since been taught at several universities around the world as well as at the United States Air Force Academy.”

Reference: “The Return of Werner Erhard, Father of Self-Help”, The New York Times, (November 28, 2015) by Peter Haldeman. “Briefly, the course, which owes ideological debts to the Forum and to the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, takes an experience-based, rather than knowledge-based, approach to its subject. Students master principles like integrity and authenticity in order to leave the class acting as leaders instead of merely knowing about leadership.”

The course has since been taught at several universities around the world as well as at the United States Air Force Academy.

Reference: “In 2004, with the help of a Landmark official, Dr. Jensen developed an experiential course on integrity in leadership at the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester. The class was offered there for five years, with Mr. Erhard signing on as an instructor during its third year. It has since been taught at several universities around the world as well as at the United States Air Force Academy.”

I welcome constructive discussion on the edit itself.MLKLewis (talk) 20:15, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Should I just repeat my previous comments since you seem to have ignored them? Drop the WP:STICK. Polygnotus (talk) 20:19, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that by your refusal to discuss the actual content of the article, instead reverting edits I make without reasonable explanation or interaction, that you are the one who is edit warring, and unwilling to drop the stick. Your previous comments are about me and my character, or some assumptions you have made about me personally, and are not contributions to the article or Wikipedia, and I am not willing to engage with you in that manner. Why are you refusing to practice good faith and have a meaningful discussion of the content?MLKLewis (talk) 22:52, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

So you invented your own definition of the word editwarring after nearly getting blocked for editwarring? My time on this planet is limited, and as a consultant people pay me for it. I am not interested in having endless pointless discussions with people other than my wife. Polygnotus (talk) 23:13, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

There is nothing that Polygnotus or anyone else has said now or in the past which justifies the blanking of this entirely factual and well-sourced paragraph. The suggestion has been made that the material is 'promotional', a clearly spurious claim since nothing is being promoted. If this individual is notable enough to have an article at all, it is obviously relevant to include factual information about what he has been doing for the past couple of decades. MLKLewis has been scrupulously patient and courteous in providing the detailed explanation above, and merits an equally civil response rather than the insults and insinuations which have no place here. I am reinstating the edit. DaveApter (talk) 14:10, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

You can use the {{Edit COI}} template but you should not edit the article directly because of your conflict of interest. Polygnotus (talk) 14:18, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

You still haven't provided an explanation for your edit warring, and I don't know why you have the idea that you are qualified to be the arbiter of whether or not I have a conflict of interest regarding this page. DaveApter (talk) 15:06, 20 August 2024 (UTC)