In my view, reader should be -at least- aware that LEC is considered as something dangerous. Neutrality of this article would benefit from inclusion of analysis and opinions of e.g. 1) skeptics, 2) former members and 3) Kult abuse prevention association.

In its current state, the links section only leads to "pro" information. For the sake of neutrality, i add some URLs to better reflect the different opinions about LEC.

Hi David - I'm dismayed that you did a blanket reversal of the edits I did on the est page on 18th November. All of the additions I did were in an honest attempt to restore a NPOV, which in my opinion is far from the case at present. It seems to me that the article as it has been restored goes out of its way to make negative insinuations without any counterbalancing comments, or much in the way of real factual information about the courses.

I'm tempted to re-insert them, but don't want to just start an edit war especially with a moderator. What was it that you objected to?

In my opinion the qualifying remarks about the Hunter Thompson quote which have also since been reversed were entirely fair comment and enhanced the neutrality of the article. What is the point of quoting from a work of fiction in an encyclopedia article unless the implication is that the quotation is objective and factual? As purported fact, the quote is unsupportable; as an illustration of opinions which est sometimes provoked, it is fair enough - but surely that needs to be made explicit?

What is your viewpoint on the whole est/Landmark issue? Mine is that I did the Landmark Forum almost three years ago and found it a positive and beneficial experience. I don't work for Landmark and I'm not in an Assisting Program, but I'd like to see it represented fairly and honestly. Lots of my friends have done it and almost all of them report varied tangible benefits (and one or two don't). I went to an est introduction in about 1980 and thought it too over the top for my taste, so didn't sign up. Several friends did it and seem to get worthwhile results.

PaulDC 11:36, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I reverted it because it appeared to be an anon IP shilling - hugely positive statements with no referencing or substantiation. It is nice to know that isn't the case.

Fear And Loathing In America is non-fiction political writing, not a work of fiction - you may be thinking of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Though I'm not really sure the quotation adds a lot to the article. Negativity per se is not evidence of NPOV violation.

At present I'm ridiculously busy (see links at top of my user page), but hope to get heavily back into the Wikipedia editing ASAP. In general, though, if you want to put stuff back in, it helps to reference it thoroughly; it's hard to argue with good references in most cases. In this case, your additions would definitely benefit from checkable references, as it would make them much more clearly defensible - David Gerard 17:48, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"One can perhaps best grasp the nature of the est program by reading through some of the many personal narratives available on the web." -- without actually providing any links, this is kind of a cop-out. It reads as "Hey, Wikipedia doesn't have any info about this, go try Google!" Metamatic 21:11, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)