• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Phil Schneider

A

Anonymous

Guest
There used to be an article about the late geologist Phil Schneider . He claimed he was witness a gun battle between US soldiers and ET's. He said he survived a radiation blast from one of the ET's weapons. His wife posted stuff about him on that Wikipedia article. So the question is why has the article disappeared? Does anyone know anything about this deletion?

See subsequent post below for the Wayback Machine archived version of the last (pre-deletion) Wikipedia article.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
How's your Spanish?
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Schneider
LInk is dead (webpage removed). No archived version found.



There's this on a wiki-clone
tinwiki.org/wiki/Deep_Undergroun ... _Schneider
Link is dead. The MIA webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2007101...wiki/Deep_Underground_Bases_by_Phil_Schneider

NOTE: This is a transcription of a lecture Schneider gave in May 1995.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Looks like it was deleted under the 'notability' clause.
Schneider was telling tales about things that didn't happen, at places that don't exist, like Dulce Underground base, which appears to be an urban legend.

Or, it would be an urban legend if it were remotely urban round there.

Quite a few people's biographies have been deleted recently; they are trying to make Wiki a bit more authorative, and unfortunately it appears fantasists aren't notable enough.
 
Well by that logic you may as well delete the entire UFO/Alien section from Wikipedia since no CE3 case can be conclusively proved to have happened as reported. Ufology is not a history of events - it is a history of claims - some of which may seem to be wackier than others, but none of which have been 'proved'.
 
What's the point of going to Wikipedia to find out about something, if the Wikipedia Authorities decide that you don't need to know about it, because it's beneath their high standards? Even if Schneider was a fantasist, then the entry would still be relevant, Urban Myths have their own place in the great scheme of things. A refutation would be in order. Then visitors to the mighty Wikipedia could make up their own minds.

The jumped up, anal retentive, geeks, who seem to have taken control of the Wikipedia, probably need the bandwith to detail more about the exact time and nature of Jack Bauer's bowel movements on '24,' or exactly how many cups of coffee the cast of 'Friends' drank in the Central Perk. :roll:
 
There's a version of the Wikipedia entry, still up, at Answers.com:

answers.com/topic/philip-schneider
Linked webpage contains no info on Phil Schneider. No Wikipedia material found.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
this guy is laughable.what it is with this case and so many cases of the 60's,70's 80's is not deceit by governments but just simple lazy story telling with not a single proof to back up his claim .but yet these people take to the stage and pour out rubbish from there mouths.
you can see how these tale's end up as chinese whispers,aliens are spiritual have been for thousands of years.
if anyone thinks they are walking our caves with ray guns then people need to start too look at themselves.
bad journalism is the cause for most of ufology over the past 40yrs.i wish people would move on from this rubbish.feed cospiracy by governments and the muppet public will follow.
what next the roswell crash was alien,i think not.
 
There does seem to have been a purge of sorts, deleting articles which were deemed not to be notable. I don't know what criteria they used, but perhaps the fact that this guy was apparently telling stories about a fantasy location might have helped.
 
Maybe it got removed because it was considered original research - or pure garbage - Having looked at the copy at answers.com frankly Wiki has enough crap bloated articles without more of this stuff.



-
 
But then you get lies posted on Wiki pages that get reported as fact by the press. And because it's quoted as fact by the press it becomes a legitimate reason to be 'real' and be on Wiki!

re: Ronnie Hazlehurst and "Reach".

Link
 
From my understanding of Wikipedia policy they are not interested in the truth of an article or its references. Only that the points and references are verifiable and in print somewhere. So in that context Wikipedia is not concerned with the honesty of an article. Only that the articles sources can be verified and correlated.
 
wowsah156, Wikipedia likes articles that can be verified and by that they need sources that can be checked to be real. Wikipedia to me does seem to be bothered about if an article is true or not. Wikipedia is aiming to be as authoritative as it can be and I can't think of another way it can show that articles contain factual evidence or reasonable points of argument. The guy was spouting fantasy land stuff which couldn't possibly be backed up. If you can include garbage like that why not have articles like the moon is made of cheese or days of the week not discovered yet. You have to have some standards or it just gets rather pointless and/or chaotic. I personally don't find anything wrong with wikipedia and use it as a base from which to spring when looking into new subjects. Any way the ' truth ' and Ufology doesn't mix, you should know that by now :) :)
 
mothman8 you need to read the wikipedia page on Verifiability then. I quote: "the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability not truth." This is Wikipedia's own guide lines. This means material already published by a "reliable" source. What constitutes "reliable" in Wikipedias editors eyes can be greatly variable. So in that context the deletion of Schneiders article suggests big problems in the years to come for the Wiki community.
 
No it doesn't. It just means the crap is filtered out. As the story is unverifiable it doesn't get in. I'm not sure Id read an online Encyclopedia if all of its articles were unverifiable, think about that for a moment. I suspect the real problem is your belief in a loony like Schneider and you see his removal as, once again, the great keepers of the ' real ' UFO knowledge doing their dirty work and covering up the ' truth ' by deleting the page from Wiki:) Continuing the quote game I found this in Wiki's About page:- ' For example, if you add information to an article, be sure to include your references, as unreferenced facts are subject to removal. ' and also from the page about verifiability ' "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed. ' This may explain why a Jackanory reject has been removed. I can understand why they have chosen to have verifiability over the truth as a policy, I can imagine they would have a lot of problems by stating that its contents are true when often they aren't as a contributor has overlooked or purposefully left out an important counter argument to an article.
As for your point about what wiki constitutes as reliable:- ' Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. ' and ' In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers. As a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny involved in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the evidence and arguments of a particular work, the more reliable it is. ' I don't see much ambiguity in that. The more I read Wiki's guidelines the more I realise why the page was removed. I think a lot of the UFO stuff could be under threat.
 
graylien said:
As the story is unverifiable it doesn't get in

Name me one UFO/ghost/Bigfoot/Lake monster/BVM sighting that is verifiable!
Or, one episode of '24,' or 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'? They're fiction, yet they too have become part of the cultural fabric. No doubt, TV addicts and nerds pour over every detail of their copious Wikipedia entries. looking for information, or flaws and errors.

Removing articles, apparently on the grounds that they may be fantasy, without leaving even a trace, or a log entry, not allowing debate, or refutation, that's just plain censorship. Far more harmful than leaving the entries up for Public scrutiny, however erroneous they may be.

Apparently, such complete and unannounced deletions, in the Wikipedia, are happening with increasing frequency.

http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Main_Page
 
Just to pick up on the issue of references used in Wikipedia. Half the time references used in Wiki articles are taken out of context to fit the editor's stance. So saying wikipedia is "reliable" is hilarious. The criteria for the deletion of the Schneider article is very dubious even under Wiki criteria. Even if Schneider was a fantasist ( which i dont think he was) he was still entitled to a Wiki page under Ufology history. And his claims were published in other peoples books. In that context those books were legitimate references under Wiki criteria. And i agree that this deletion looks like censorship. ( Wikipedia censorship in itself would make a very good thread in the Conspiracy section.)
 
I'm preparing a quiz on local topics, and tonight I've been disappointed by both Google and Wikipedia.

Google couldn't find any info on an alley in Falmouth named after (IIRC) a sea captain and former mayor.

And Wiki placed a famous local shipwreck as being near the wrong beach.

It was surprising how little these internet organs could contribute.

(My first query is actually answered on one of my own photos, but I have so many I can't be bothered to look through them all!

And the second one involved a heroic helicopter rescue, which seems strangely neglected by the net...)
 
I can't believe what people are reading into the deletion of a page that 99.9999% of the population would find a pile of crap. Wiki got rid probably because lord knows whoever at Wiki read the page and thought ' with this junk we will never catch up Encyclopedia Britannica et all ' and thus got rid of it.
People wonder why Ufology is going down the pan, as long as folk like Schneider and his silly tales are around it has no chance what so ever. I like to read a blog called The Pelican which sums up what my views are of Ufology in general, particularly the following:-

magonia.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/pelican19.htm
Link is dead (and currently leads to a toxic site). No archived version found.


I agree, make Ufology history.
I suppose as a piece of Science Fiction it could be rather good, I mean it has everything certain people want to hear, under ground bases, fire fights, injured heroes, government cover ups etc, its all good fun really.
One final quote which I find very funny but appropriate, I got it off the linked article in Pietro_Mercurios earlier post:-
' As with any conspiracy theorist, there are a large number of people who would object to the validity of Schneider's claims. Many of the things he says would seem outrageous and entirely unbelievable to most people. In response to this, some believers have said that most people have built in "slides" that short circuit the mind's critical examination process when it comes to certain sensitive topics.[5] "Slides" is reported to be a CIA term for a conditioned type of response which dead ends a person's thinking and terminates debate or examination of the topic at hand.[6] In other words, a believer might say to a skeptic that he or she should have a more "open mind." '
Wowsa156 I think your ' slides ' are working perfectly. :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
mothman8 said:
I can't believe what people are reading into the deletion of a page that 99.9999% of the population would find a pile of crap. Wiki got rid probably because lord knows whoever at Wiki read the page and thought ' with this junk we will never catch up Encyclopedia Britannica et all ' and thus got rid of it.
People wonder why Ufology is going down the pan, as long as folk like Schneider and his silly tales are around it has no chance what so ever. I like to read a blog called The Pelican which sums up what my views are of Ufology in general, particularly the following:-
http://magonia.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/pelican19.htm
I agree, make Ufology history.
I suppose as a piece of Science Fiction it could be rather good, I mean it has everything certain people want to hear, under ground bases, fire fights, injured heroes, government cover ups etc, its all good fun really.

...
So, you don't like UFO-ology, then? Okay. So, why get your knickers in a twist abut it?

I'm not really worried about whether UFO-ology is going down the pan, or true, or not, being more interested in the folklore aspect. It doesn't matter whether Schneider's tales are true, or fantasy, it's how they're generated, perpetuated and absorbed into the sub-culture, that interests me. Like it says in the 'Pelican 19 Blog,' apparently written by another with their knicker elastic twisted, over UFO-lore:
http://magonia.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/pelican19.htm

...

Readers are invited to join The Pelican to put ufological studies into their rightful place as a branch of modern folklore and Make Ufology History.

...
I'm all for that. The whole point of history is that it gets written down somewhere. There's not much chance of that. if articles on a subject, any subject, of interest, get disappeared, without trace. No more effective way, of 'bringing down the shutters.'

However, I'm sure the Schneider story will continue to circulate on the internet, its absence from the Wikipedia will probably just serve as proof of 'The Conspiracy.' for its believers and proof of the Wikipedia's increasing unreliability and failure, as a repository for publicly generated, open source, information, for cynics and others.
 
mothman8 said:
...People wonder why Ufology is going down the pan, as long as folk like Schneider and his silly tales are around it has no chance what so ever. ...
I would contend it's not going down the pan, it's merely lying fallow for a bit - you can say that Forteana as a whole is like a Ferris Wheel, and that UFOlogy just happens to be in one of the downward seats at the moment. Give it time and it'll ascend once more as ghosts or crypto or something else goes downwards.

And while is all quiet on the Western front, that's when we tend to notice the more.. shall we say, outré proponents. Or absence thereof.
 
If Wikipedia simply wanted to emulate the Encyclopedia Britannica, then their entire UFO content would consist of a single entry under 'UFO'. Which would be fine by me. But instead, they've elected to have entries for individual cases, for Ufological theories, and for individual Ufologists. Which changes things considerably.

Wikipedia's job isn't to tell us whether or not Phil Schneider or Betty Hill or George Adamski or whoever are talking nonsense. Wikipedia's job is tell us who these people are, what they claimed, and what the reaction to those claims was. It's up to the reader to decide whether or not they think the claims are credible.

Imagine if Wikipedia deleted the entry for Lamarck on the grounds that his theory of acquired characteristics was actually bollocks. Or if they deleted the entry for Charles Manson on the grounds that he was a mad bastard. Deleting a entry about a conspiracy theorist / Ufologist/ UFO witness on the grounds that they're probably talking nonsense is just as inappropriate.
 
' So, you don't like UFO-ology, then? Okay. So, why get your knickers in a twist abut it? ', All I can say is pot,kettle and black. I don't hate Ufology I just think its getting clogged up with folk coming out with ever more outlandish claims equally giving out less and less evidence for said claims, and I feel it is just ensuring Ufology doesn't get the attention it deserves. As for The Pelican I reckon he has also become fed up with what was once an exciting fringe subject to its now embittered, highly polarized battle ground of attention seekers and money makers. I agree with stuneville that Ufology is just going through a big trough and who knows ten, twenty years from now it could well turn out to be a branch of science as respected as any other. With regards to Wiki, I don't think it is trying to emulate Britanica et all, it seems to be wanting to be the great granddaddy of all online information depositories. They are too successful for their own good though. every subject covered is just ballooning out of all proportion and thats why all these deletions are happening, they are trying to pin down subjects a little. Remember the said Schneider article will have been removed by non UFO fans who will have had little understanding of its merits or importance ( if it had any ) with regards to the subject of Ufology. Wiki can be edited and contributed to by anyone. If anyone out there really thinks it should be back then by all means resubmit the article with improved and/or more references and from more varied sources. If Wiki were to try and remove it again then interested parties should get together and email those who have the power to delete articles and state a good case for its inclusion.
I find it most interesting that people are bothered that it has been deleted from Wiki in the first place. Wiki is no more a legitimate voice of reason than any other web site. Schneider's tale is on the web enough times so why should its removal from Wiki have any significance at all? For those who wish to seek it out there are plenty of web sites serving it up.
 
mothman8 said:
I can't believe what people are reading into the deletion of a page that 99.9999% of the population would find a pile of crap.

I submit that that number is much more likely to be 51 - 60 percent than "99.9999 %."

With both "thee and me" on the majority side, of course.

But 40 percent of the population believing something, anything, even erroneously, is far too high to unceremoniously drop into the ashcan.
 
graylien said:
...

Imagine if Wikipedia deleted the entry for Lamarck on the grounds that his theory of acquired characteristics was actually bollocks. ...
Which isn't actually true, since some of the mechanisms for the transgenerational transference of acquired characteristics are finally being discovered and understood, in the form of 'epigenetics.'

forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=583919#583919
Link is obsolete. The current link is:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/epigenetics-ooh-la-la-lamarck.24019/#post-583919
 
Last edited by a moderator:
mothman8 said:
...
I find it most interesting that people are bothered that it has been deleted from Wiki in the first place. Wiki is no more a legitimate voice of reason than any other web site. Schneider's tale is on the web enough times so why should its removal from Wiki have any significance at all? For those who wish to seek it out there are plenty of web sites serving it up.
My point is, that an apparently perfectly legitimate article has been removed from the Wikipedia (whatever the truth of the article, or its background), without leaving a trace, not even a 'changes log' entry. It doesn't really matter, at all, what the article was about.

It does seem to suggest that the Wikipedia is becoming unreliable. Mistakes, or vandalism, can be checked, noted and corrected, but this vanishing trick seems more insidious.

If the Wikipedia wishes to set itself up as a reliable source for knowledge and information, online, this seems a funny way of going about it.
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
My point is, that an apparently perfectly legitimate article has been removed from the Wikipedia (whatever the truth of the article, or its background), without leaving a trace, not even a 'changes log' entry. It doesn't really matter, at all, what the article was about.

That's my view also. This sudden "vanishing" from the Wikipedia knowledge base reminds me far too much of all those old Soviet photographs of governmental bigwigs reviewing the troops from the top of Lenin's tomb, where Comrade So-and-So is suddenly "disappeared" from the print one year and Comrade Such-and-Such the next.

Human knowledge sure as heck doesn't progress that way.
 
graylien said:
If Wikipedia simply wanted to emulate the Encyclopedia Britannica, then their entire UFO content would consist of a single entry under 'UFO'. Which would be fine by me. But instead, they've elected to have entries for individual cases, for Ufological theories, and for individual Ufologists. Which changes things considerably.
Wikipedia's job isn't to tell us whether or not Phil Schneider or Betty Hill or George Adamski or whoever are talking nonsense. Wikipedia's job is tell us who these people are, what they claimed, and what the reaction to those claims was. It's up to the reader to decide whether or not they think the claims are credible.

Imagine if Wikipedia deleted the entry for Lamarck on the grounds that his theory of acquired characteristics was actually bollocks. Or if they deleted the entry for Charles Manson on the grounds that he was a mad bastard. Deleting a entry about a conspiracy theorist / Ufologist/ UFO witness on the grounds that they're probably talking nonsense is just as inappropriate.

Equally though, an article which stated that Charles Manson is the messiah and told things entirely from his delusional point of view without any context should indeed be deleted as misleading as best. And I think that's basically what we're talking about here - not an entry that just describes the claims, but one that presents them as true.

Otherwise you're opening the way to every nutter who wants to give their particular craziness a platform.
 
wembley8 said:
Equally though, an article which stated that Charles Manson is the messiah and told things entirely from his delusional point of view without any context should indeed be deleted as misleading as best.

But there was nothing so "delusional" about Charles Manson's ravings that he wasn't able to convince several hundred reasonably-intelligent younger citizens of their validity, to the point where some of them willingly killed at his command. The number of people who today regard Manson as the (or at least a) "messiah" may well be in the thousands.

The nutter sitting in the corner babbling to the water heater is one thing, but the nutter able to heat hundreds or thousands of individual minds is quite another. So I very much do want to read things from their point of view, because that's the only way I can effectively mount an effective defense against them.
 
Back
Top