Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scientology

Old version of Main Page Old list of articles Tasks (2005), archived subsection History Article Project

The Miscavige coup : Power takeover after Hubbard's death

Has anyone noticed that Wikipedia has very little content related to David Miscavige's takeover of power and control of the Church of Scientology after L. Ron Hubbard's death? I also mentioned it at Talk:Pat Broeker § Broeker's role and the power struggle. There is quite a bit of material in several books about the power struggle, including Atack, Lamont, Miller, Reitman and Wright (four of which are available online) and possibly Rinder and Urban. Grorp (talk) 04:51, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Also called "the corporate sort-out" (CSO). Here is another source giving tips of this period of corporate reorganization. Grorp (talk) 07:31, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Today I added some of this information (in summary) into Church of Scientology § History... prompted by the auto-archival of this thread.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 08:29, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Still needs doing.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 05:59, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Posting another comment here just so this topic doesn't get archived.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 22:10, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

This is a topic worth covering, but an incredibly difficult one to get right. So far as I'm aware, sourcing is entirely from people with very strong biases one way or the other. It's not at all clear whether the "coup" was really a coup or whether a promotion order was forged. Jesse Prince's book argues stronly for the latter option. I'd love there to be an article on this topic, but I don't know how to write it at present. Feoffer (talk) 10:52, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Still needs doing; posting here to keep this thread from archiving.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 21:17, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

References

ANI: Cambial Yellowing on Scientology

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding the derailing of content discussions. The thread is Cambial Yellowing on Scientology. The discussion is about the topic Scientology.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 21:42, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Discussion was archived into ANI archive 1209. (Pre-archive link)   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 00:31, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Invitation and open discussion on Scientology-topic

I invite editors of all experience levels to share ideas, proposals, suggestions, and concerns below. Please let us know which areas or specific articles you think need attention in the Scientology topic area. Whether it's expanding, shrinking or reorganizing content, improving sourcing, or identifying gaps or problem areas, your input will help guide the project's focus toward the goal of balanced, high-quality content.

History: In 2009, an ARBCOM decision topic-banned many editors, and in 2014 this WikiProject status was changed to 'inactive' causing a discouraging banner to be displayed on this project. Both events no doubt were the death knell to this WikiProject, and any collaborating and coordinating activities across the scientology-topic. Though the discretionary sanctions were removed in 2022, and I resurrected the WikiProject in 2023 (almost three years ago now), the WikiProject has not recovered as a central coordination point. The need for more comprehensive collaboration is clear—especially after revelations in the last month—and I think it's time for a boost.

Help bring new energy to this WikiProject. Watchlist this project page and post your suggestions below.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 22:32, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

Discussion

(Post under this section)

• Having some sort of centralized effort for this is probably good, I agree. PARAKANYAA (talk) 23:22, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

• Several of the articles contain instances of WP:Citation overkill. Examples:
  • Narconon has 34 citations in just the lead section, each one of which contains a lengthy quotation. Cite 28 is a bundle of 7; cite 21 is a bundle of 10; cite 6 is a bundle of 5.
  • Scientology has 39 citations in the lead; one bundle of 7 (cite 29); one bundle of 10 (cite 11); cite 56 is a bundle of 6
  • Auditing (Scientology) has just 11, but one citation is a bundle of 6 which seems unnecessary
  • David Miscavige cite 22 is a group of 8 citations

Keeping in mind these are in the lead, which means the content should be covered in the body of the article with citations there. None of these articles are short, meaning there is no reason to introduce a lone concept in the lead. If it is important enough to mention, and contentious enough to require multiple citations, then it should be well covered in the body with the citations there—leaving just a summary of it in the lead. In each of these cases, the overcited concept in the lead is correctly summarized in a simply manner. By leaving a series of trailing citations, the editor is leaving it up to the reader to read all the sources in order to figure out why the summary sentence says what it says.

Most of these citations bundles are original research because they are just examples of times when an author wrote something which agrees with the concept, and does not represent a source saying the concept itself. A made-up example of this is a sentence "Scientologists don't like apples," cited to 10 times when various authors quoted a Scientologist saying he doesn't like apples, rather than a source which actually mentions the concept that all, or most, Scientologists don't like apples. By piling up sources when someone agreed with the wikivoice content, the editor collecting these sources into an OVERCITE is actually committing original research. The bundle doesn't verify the wikivoice, it only supports it. Likely not all bundles are like that, but several are. Gitz6666, this might be up your alley since you were doing some of this in the Scientology article a bit ago.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 02:34, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

• I agree that getting rid of some WP:OVERKILLs, as well as old, outdated primary sources, would be a good way to start improving the articles. I will be busy right now and in the coming weeks, but as soon as I have more time, I'd like to continue reviewing the sources cited in Scientology.Gitz (talk) (contribs) 10:55, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

  @Gitz6666 Curious: what sources would you consider to be old and outdated primary sources? PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:52, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

  I haven't reviewed the articles mentioned by Grorp, I'm only familiar with Scientology and Church of Scientology. In the lead section of the latter, parliamentary debates raises clear due weight issues. Three parliamentary debates from the 1960s and 1990s are cited. Are they relevant? AFAIK no secondary source ever singled them out. Parliaments are typically venues where all kinds of opinions are voiced. It would be easy to find hateful parliamentary speeches targeting any religion.

  Also in the lead of that article, dangerous cult and a manipulative profit-making business is a harsh judgment which is supported only by weak, outdated and/or primary sources. Namely:

  • Re "government inquiries", a 1965 government report from Australia, Victoria (old, primary) and a misrepresented book by Edge on Law and Religion (doesn't mention government reports).
  • Re "media investigative reports", a 1991 TIME magazine investigative article.
  • Re "superior court judgments", two English cases from the 1970s and 1980s.

  All this could easily be replaced with a good quality academic source mentioning frequent criticism of the Church of Scientology. For example, Lewis 2015: arguably the most persistently controversial new religious movement, which is criticised as a money-making business exploiting a religious guise to avoid taxation [and] protecting its pseudoscientific therapy.

  As to Scientology, the citation bundles/WP:OVERKILL following It is variously defined as a religion, a cult, a business, or a scam and both a dangerous cult and a manipulative profit-making business have largely the same issues (and to a great extent the same sources). The first statement is false, as none of the sources strictly "define" Scientology as a scam. We'd better have a dedicated section "Criticism of Scientology" in the article body and a paragraph in the lead summarising the main criticisms. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 22:25, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

SUMMARYSTYLE

As many of you already know, I'm working on using WP:SUMMARYSTYLE and {{Excerpt}} (selective transclusion) to reduce content in Scientology and Scientology beliefs and practices by pushing the detailed content to the subtopic standalone articles (when they exist). (See discussion at Talk:Scientology § Summary style.) As an example, you can go see how I did it with the "Thetan" topic.

I am planning on doing this similarly with the articles Scientology status by country and Scientology and law, which have so much overlap, mainly because of the extensive litigation by the Church of Scientology in their efforts to be recognized globally as a religion with tax-exempt privileges. We have about a dozen articles for individual countries (see Category:Scientology by country), and I am planning on creating a somewhat standardized subsection for each with level 2 headers of "Legal status" and "Litigation" (or other titles) with their own summary lead paragraph (without citations, because those should be in the body of the section and do not transcribe well with {{excerpt}}). In this way, the first-paragraphs of those sections can be {{excerpt}}ed into the 'status' and 'law' articles.

This will eliminate duplication of content, reduce content volume in the 'status' and 'law' articles, make maintenance of details & citations easier, introduce a consistency across the articles that doesn't currently exist, and better link together the various articles. (If this works well enough, then maybe in the future we'll be able to combine the overlapping 'status' and 'law' articles into a new article Scientology by country. But that's a question for the future, not now.)

If anyone has suggestions or concerns, feel free to comment.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 20:01, 6 February 2026 (UTC)