Yeah, Jimbo, I guess we need a staff meeting on this one - JHK said she'll bring the donuts.
 
OK - I'm not a Baha'i and my reasons for my editorial stance are fairly straightforward:
 
1 - The Orthodox Baha'is are a TINY fringe group (sub-2000 members) of a religion with 6 Million members. Hence any article should give fair balance to that proportionality.
2 - I have maintained since the beginning that the main Baha'i article should contain the principles of the faith (common to all divisions) and any other pages on divisions should focus on the nature and manner of the distinction.
3 - The main Baha'i article IS weak on outlining the principles. Not feeling adequately informed, I approached the newsgroup to summon other "experts" to enhance the main Baha'i article.. If any 'mainstream" Baha'is were then to attempt to eliminate the OB article, the same rules of NPOV would apply and I would defend the OB page.
4 - By "us" I was making the assumption that the majority of the community would support my editorial stance on this - something I'm still fairly confident of. So far this person has had three 'pedians give them the same story (SJK, BV and myself), although none of us have communicated amongst ourselves AFAIK.
 
Sorry to have you dragged into this, Jimbo. I hope I'm still allowed to come to the company social.
 
Cheers
Manning
 
PS - Rabo Karabekian is a character from Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions", I've been using is as a handle on NGs for years.


Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] FYI, Baha'i
From: "Brion L. VIBBER" <brion@pobox.com>
To: wikipedia-l <wikipedia-l@nupedia.com>
Date: 10 Apr 2002 15:08:11 -0700
Reply-To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com

See also duplicate of the complaint post and further discussion,
including Manning's response, on the wiki at:
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Talk%3AOrthodox%20Bahai%20Faith

While I do get the general impression that the mainstream Baha'is don't
seem to like the Orthodox Baha'is very much, I've seen no evidence of
misbehavior in the case of the wikipedia articles except on the part of
66.219.221.xxx him/herself, which he/she has yet to explain.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)