I’m banned from mentioning the topic of the Buddhist four noble truths on wikipedia talk pages for six months. Don’t want to go into too much detail as this is not a Buddhist question. But basically the people currently editing the article ousted a previous editor who understood the topic well and had been working on the article for over a year in collaboration with the other editors there. They did that just by completely rewriting the article and ignoring his requests to revert the article and discuss the changes.

[UPDATE - BAN HAS EXPIRED] - but I don’t see much point in trying to return to the conversation there. Did a couple of comments but they weren’t warmly received :). Why continue and just upset the editors to no purpose as there is no way they want to hear what I had to say?

This new batch of editors think that the aim of Buddhists is to prevent ourselves from taking rebirth, which, they think, we aim to do by “stopping all karma” (??) so that we can’t take rebirth again. On the talk page the main editor expressed it to me as “the aim of Buddhists is to “get out of here””.

Some of you may think that is indeed the aim of Buddhists. So I’ll just briefly introduce a couple of quotes on the topic

Walpola Rahula - therevadhan scholar from Sri Lanka, perhaps the most famous Pali Scholar, expert in the earliest Buddhist sutras, put it, “TRUTH IS. NIRVĀṆA IS”

“It is incorrect to think that Nirvāṇa is the natural result of the extinction of craving. Nirvāṇa is not the result of anything. If it would be a result, then it would be an effect produced by a cause. It would be saṃkhata ‘produced’ and ‘conditioned’. Nirvāṇa is neither cause nor effect. It is beyond cause and effect. Truth is not a result nor an effect. It is not produced like a mystic, spiritual, mental state, such as dhyāna or samādhi. TRUTH IS. NIRVĀṆA IS. The only thing you can do is to see it, to realize it. There is a path leading to the realization of Nirvāṇa. But Nirvāṇa is not the result of this path. You may get to the mountain along a path, but the mountain is not the result, not an effect of the path. You may see a light, but the light not the result of your eyesight.”
The Third Noble Truth - Walpola Rahula: What the Buddha Taught

Buddhists aren’t teaching a way to achieve some kind of peace after you die and after everyone else dies. As Walpola Rahula put it again:

“In almost all religions the summum bonum can be attained only after death. But Nirvāṇa can be realized in this very life; it is not necessary to wait till you die to ‘attain’ it.”

As you may be able to see from those quotes, or if you have had teachings in the four noble truths from Buddhist teachers, they could hardly be more wrong!

So that’s one of the two main issues with the article.

Also if you go to the Four Noble Truths history section they say that the four noble truths, the central teaching of Buddhism, was missing from the original Pali canon: Four Noble Truths They just present this as the “view of scholars”.

This is actually one extreme in a complex scholarly debate. But they present it as the only view on the matter. If you go to the Pali Canon page you get a proper picture, you learn that there are three main views, of , Pāli Canon

“The views of scholars concerning the attribution of the Pali Canon can be grouped into three categories:

1. Attribution to the Buddha himself
2. Attribution to the period of pre-sectarian Buddhism [this is the period after Buddha and before Buddhism split into several main sects]
3. Agnosticism”

That’s an accurate summary of the scholarly situation. But try to get the current main editors of the Four Noble Truths article to present these other two views in “their” article!

Anyway that will do for now, just to set the scene.

So, I am banned because I wrote too much on the talk page while trying to say to them what is wrong with the current version of the four noble truths article. I never did a single edit except to add one “citations needed” to it. And I wasn’t banned for expressing a point of view on the article, I was banned just for writing too much on the talk page :).

The way the discussion to ban me was carried out was quite extraordinary. It wandered on for pages and pages. They surely spent more pages discussing how to ban me than I spent trying to get them to fix the article. Banning discussions like that normally get sorted out within a week. But theirs went on and on. I logged out of wikipedia for a week and came back and it was still going on as they argued about how exactly they should ban me.

Topics covered were so wide ranging, that amongst other things they wanted to ban me for the heinous crimes of using the name of my very small sole trader software company “robertinventor” as a user name on wikipedia (it’s an internet handle I use everywhere online as it is seldom taken) and daring to use a Christian analogy on a Buddhist talk page. Those were quickly dropped, but gives the idea.

I did this image as a joke to lighten spirits for my facebook page while the ban discussion was in progress

Well it’s all over now. And I was getting nowhere in the conversations with the other editors anyway. So it hardly makes any difference that they have banned me.

But the rather amusing thing is, that after you get banned in this way - you can’t mention the discussion that lead to the ban in wikipedia on any talk page including other editors. I tried asking the editor who banned me questions but had to do it without mentioning the banned topic or the discussion that lead to the ban. It can’t be done :).

So, at present you have this major handicap, as a banned editor, unless you already know wikipedia so well you don’t need help - how can you appeal when you can’t ask for help without discussing your topic area on wikipedia? Not that I see much point in trying an appeal, it’s going to expire anyway in a few months and I don’t see much point in continuing the discussion anyway in the current circumstances. But it was a strange position to find oneself in.

However, as it so happens, then there’s a project on meta wikipedia to combat harrasment right now. I found out about it from a banner on wikipedia

As a result of this experience in wikipedia as well as others, I’ve made several proposals there, which have got some support. I don’t know if any of them will come to anything but it was nice to talk to others there who had been banned from wikipedia too in somewhat similar circumstances. It’s not going to make any difference to my case, which was settled according to the rules on wikipedia as they exist now, what they are. But maybe they will help others in the future.

So these are my various proposals there

• Area for topic banned editors to talk freely about their ban, e.g. to ask questions of experienced wikipedians - this is to deal with that whole issue of how can you ask for help as a banned editor when you can’t even talk about your topic area when you ask for help after you are banned?
• Require notification first to encourage editors to attempt to resolve things amicably before reporting them for a ban discussion - this is to encourage a much more friendly approach which hopefully will prevent the need for a lot of topic banning.
• Add optional Avatar which you don't have to license for modification and commercial use (as a new non free use rationale special case) - Meta - this is to make the discussions pages friendlier with avatars like just about anywhere else online. Apart from the technical issues there’s the issue on wikipedia that if you want to use your own photo, anywhere even in your user space,you first have to license it for commercial re-use,saying anyone can use your photo and modify it as they wish for any commercial purposes - a strong disincentive for adding your photo - I suggest maybe we can make an exception for avatars and detailed suggestions of how that could be done.
• Friendlier "Proposed deletion" (WP PROD) page - and this is to make some of the notices beginner editors see on wikipedia easier to understand - particularly a big red notice you might get saying your page has been proposed for deletion. It just means that another editor has looked at your page and saw that you haven’t given any citations or some such thing - and anyone can remove it and if you remove it nobody can add it back again. But it is all phrased in hard to understand wikipedia jargon that I think hardly any beginner wikipedia editors will understand.

I don’t think there is any realistic chance of fixing that article on Buddhism (and several other related ones on core teachings in Buddhism). But hopefully my experience has lead to some interesting suggestions for making wikipedia a bit more friendly in the future. Will see.

It also shows how some areas of wikipedia can be wildly inaccurate based on the preferences of particular groups of editors who can sometimes take over.

Generally wikipedia is pretty good. I rely on it a lot for astronomy and space science and space missions - though after this and several other experiences, I do go to the original citations if it is something important and do a bit of searching for myself on the topic area.,

BTW for accurate sources on the Four Noble Truths, take a look at my Buddhist sources on the Four Noble Truths. It must be one of the most written about topics in Buddhism, central teaching of the Buddha. But the links there can get you started hopefully. Well at least are a whole lot better than the current Wikipedia article.

For wikipedia editing, see How to edit wikipedia without getting into trouble by Robert Walker on Random things