Summary of the Following
[Briefer Wikipedia-vs-DR history is found elsewhere here.]
This posting is made in response to a series of harassments, threats, vandalisms, extortions, and trashings visited by cultists and astronomical amateurs — and a deceitful Wikipedia Administrator who is both — upon the Wikipedia biography of the publisher of DIO: respected, even feared, but definitely pol-unbeloved astronomer Dennis Rawlins (DR), whose decades of very well-known exposures of pseudo-science and fraud — both outside (Cook, Velikovsky) AND INSIDE the science politician-establishment, have left in his wake a number of organized parties who prefer that he be read as little as possible. His resultant shunning by several prominent DIO-skewered forums is well-known to insiders. Which is why the professedly open forum of Wikipedia is of concern to these same forces. Thus, an attempt to close down the DR Wikipedia biography was so easily predictable.
[Question: How much alertness by Wikipedia's inexplicably dominant DRbio-Administrator, “Vsmith” (Versus-Myth: cute) would be needed to notice that the prediction was coming true? (Or, is the more radical question: how much neutrality would be needed for VsMyth to care?)]

Scholarship, Trash, & Priorities:
DR, whose primary enterprise is publication of the US' #1 astronomical-history journal, DIO (the most technically sophisticated such journal in the world), publishes both scientific & historical researches that are respected by top international scholars. DIO is subscribed to by dozens of leading academic libraries around the planet. (US Naval Observatory, Johns Hopkins, Oxford, Cambridge, Royal Astronomical Society, etc.) The publication is entirely non-commercial: subscribers (library & individual) pay nothing, not even postage.

But in addition, DR has published scholarly exposures of more historical science fakes than anyone ever, a distinction which probably relates to why the Rawlins Papers are kept in the US National Archives. He has also revealed several contemporary instances of almost beyond-belief misbehavior by modern popular science institutions (often in connection with defending historical fakes), none of whom have been especially happy about the experience. Since the central facts of his exposés are undeniably nailed down, he has become the subject of attacks that are intended to inhibit public access to and memory of those facts.
[Or, failing that ultimate desideratum, at the least to devalue them through smearing the messenger. After all, the whole purpose of the attacks on the DR bio by several of the latest goofy-science maid-men is to lower DR's cred. Parallel tactic: place enough trash on the DR Wiki bio and its Talk page as to raise doubts as to DR, hoping that no reader will notice that the trashers somehow neglect to overturn any of the bio's facts. Standard smear-strategy diversion.) Thus it was predictable (and has long been effectively predicted in the bio) that such tactics would be the inevitable resort of DR's enemies, to the maddeningly accurate and discovery-dense DR bio posted on Wikipedia in 2007.
Of course, the bio's prescience here required about as much brilliance & risk as predicting that, if you dangle honey, you'll get bees.
[Did establishing the DR bio have a double-purpose, as the Alexandria Lighthouse may've?] Actually, bees&honey is a less apt analogy (to certain pols' eternal-hope attempts to eliminate rubber-duck DR from the scene) than, say, whack-a-mole. Or greyhounds&race-rabbit.]
DIO from early on described itself as an experiment upon academe (DIO 1.3 [1991] ‡10 [p.177]); and, intentionally or no, the DR Wiki bio has proved every bit as fascinating an experiment.

The most blatant attack-ploy so far has been a DR-hating pseudo-vandal's recruitment of Wiki Administrator “Vsmith” to harass the DR bio, by arbitrarily applying alleged priorities, rules, technicalities — when such concerns have nothing to do with either's actual aim — that being the suppression of accurate and important information, info which is being deleted entirely because it is embarrassing to certain figures in their otherwise worthy crusade against irrationalist kooks. (The details of VsMyth's flagrant lack of neutrality in this respect are set forth below.)

This turbid saga faces Wikipedia judges with deciding the question of which is more important for the facts contained in (largely anonymous) Wikipedia,
[a] how accurate, important, public-interest, constructive, pro-integrity, educational, scholarly, & reliable are said facts; or [b] contentions regarding writing style, authorship, and what defines a Reliable Source??

Contra some DR WPTalk page hysterics, Wikipedia does not ban autobio or the like but advises against such out of reasonable fear (based on much experience) that it usually leads to a non-neutral bio. So the underlying fundamental criterion (on which all at issue hangs) is neutrality.
Since one of DR's secrets of intellectual success is self-criticism and self-blame (as anyone will quickly see who consults the journal DIO [e.g., the pages cited in the DR Wiki bio's list of opposition papers] or the VsMyth-scorned DIO website), one of the better arguments in favor of his (hypothetical?) influence on the bio is its detailed citations of and-or links to extensive accounts of all of his career's mistakes and to his critics' contentions and writings. That DR might be connected in some way to the DR Wiki bio and-or to investigating its vandalism, was openly (enticingly?) hinted at, after consultation, in a DIO-suggested test-note to the circle of atheist R.Dawkins, a good friend (see preface to his latest book) of DR-ejector Paul Kurtz of CSICOP's SkInq. Despite that circle's reply to other inquiry on Stall-Wall's vandalisms, there was no response in this case.
The temptation to not only suppress DR but “get something” on him — a desideratum which has hitherto proved so elusive — was just too tempting a grail. Of course, the joyous leaping-upon such only shows:
[a] how dry the reservoir of hoped-for DR sins must be, and [b] how trivial they are in the context of the failings of the missmen's own gangs: threats,fantastic, and deliberate smearing, suppression, fake refereeing, scientific boobery, blackballing, fleeing debate, etc.
(When those who attacked the DR Wiki bio started out, did they not consider these reefs — not to mention the risk of getting exposed as having merely added one more monumentally devious censorial episode to their cults' already-sleazy-enough record?) Note the moat-vs-beam tragi-hilarity that none of THESE academically-hideous scandals cause the slightest outrage in any of the bio's “neutrality”-bellowing attackers. Why? Because it's these very sorts of horrors that The Neutrality Crusade is trying to prevent the public from knowing about — using any shyster-lawyer-level legalism its soldiers can muster into the service of this, their outranking-all-others crusade.]

Vsmiting Apostacy: Free Speech's Proponents & Opponents:
The main subject here will be a Wikipedia Administrator, “Vsmith” — or, henceforth here: VsMyth— who advertises himself as an old ex-Marine with an MS in geology. He has over a long period been allowed enough rope to compile quite a record vis-à-vis the DR bio (and then some), deleting from it virtually all references to DR's publication DIO, calling the journal (3/10-11): non-RS (non-Reliable Source).
Items:
[a] The very DIO website, which VsMyth wishes to damage Wikipedia readers' thorough access to, contains multiple easily-checkable certifications of: the journal's commendations from the most eminent scholars, as well as to its several boards, comprised of the very top world leaders in an impressive variety of fields; plus a sampling of the ultimo class of academic libraries who subscribe to DIO, and scholars who have written for it.
VsMyth scoffs at DIO as if it were a “blog”, without even the sense to ask: how many blog-journals get co-published by the Univ of Cambridge, or taken by request at libraries such as the US Naval Observatory, CalTech, British Museum, etc. Sample list of subscribing libraries on back cover of every issue for the last 7y, so — how could an honest Administrator defy such information?)
[VsMyth has been again & again offered such potential enlightenment, yet stubbornly continues to ignore it in order to persist in his CSICOPesque agenda-programme of impeding Wikipedia readers of the DR bio having ready access to DIO's most important discoveries and revelations of societal misbehavior. I.e., he's doing a terrific imitation of an establishment-plant slipped into WP administratorship (under the false pretense of possessing the ability to neutrally control his passions): a classic saint-worshipping, devil-flaying CSICOP-cult smear-machine missman, in the classic odd-hominem-Philip Klass-“Crybaby” ad-hominem tradition.]
[b] VsMyth has not even claimed that he or his pals (or serious scientists) have found unreliable scientific or scientific-historical scholarship in DIO.
[c] VsMyth can call recognized high scholarship “stuff” (3/10) “junk” (7/23) — and can call mixed, temperate, and tempered praise of it “puffery” (3/10). [d] VsMyth finds it jolly “fun” to excise accurate material, specifically a quote from a 1985/12/5 Nightline appearance by rationalist-saint Carl Sagan, material which may be of interest to non-hagiographic future Sagan biographers who consult Wikipedia for material. Before VsMyth removal, this was quoted (in the Sagan WPbio) from DIO 1.1 [1991] ‡8 §A2 [p.76]. DIO was the first and still the only publication to take note of this revealing interview.
[As to “fun”: incidents of such highly inappropriate, near-sadistic glee are not rare for VsMyth's interactions with Wikipedians — leaving the impression that VsMyth senses that anything he does is OK by Wikipedia.
(See his User-page's archives, which make it clear that no Resolution here will ever be possible with him involved.) Perhaps his own bio's reference to his high-school teaching as “torturing teenagers” is what's sometimes called “kidding on the square”.]
Even if one wishes to argue that the full text of the Sagan-Nightline incident takes up too much space, proportionally to its alleged import, why not at least leave a citation to it? Doesn't VsMyth trust the Wikipedia readership to be able to make up its own mind on whether Sagan did something less than admirable?
(Note that VsMyth cannot here lean upon his [WPillegal] hints of DR doing [WPlegal] autobio, since that won't even apply to the Sagan bio. Nor will questions of Reliability, since he & his fellow censors haven't dared to claim that the quote is inaccurate — even while one of them claims that DIO's allegedly “disreputable” status disallows use of the quote, which would seem to be the same charge.
[One might expect an accusation of inaccuracy if the censors REALLY think DIO is unReliable. Editor “Eleland” reacted frantically that the quote was censorable because it didn't appear in any previous account of Sagan! (I.e., adding knowledge subtracts from its worth??) And because DIO is Disreputable or “potentially” (?!) so. (A slander that gives one a valuable glimpse into how much he and VsMyth know about the level of mathematical expertise uniquely (for this field) found in DIO, not to mention the status of the scholars backing the journal. Either [1] these ignorami are the normal stuff of Wikipedia editorship, or [2] DR is being quite exceptionally targeted, with no concern atop WP.)
Again: we note that Eleland doesn't quite have the nerve to claim that the quote is inaccurate. In which case, why does the source matter? This is classic Reliability-spat-nonsense on Wikipedia, which in fact contains plenty of genuinely nonReliable stuff that is OK by DIO's WP-critics, some of it (e.g., classifying DIO as unReliable!) posted by their very own selves.] Thus, flexibility is required to conjure up justifications for deletion of the Sagan quote, when the obvious actual cause is: protecting a Hero of Rationalism by trying to prevent Sagan biographers from learning of the incident at all. The censorial mind at work.
[e] VsMyth can say “Yup” (hardly a neutral manner in itself) to a partner-in-diversion-to-the-personal, virtual-person “Chris Cooper”).(See also [under Sagan Talk] VsMyth's pleasant relations with fantasizing “Eleland”, who's been repeatedly WP-blocked for over-aggressiveness — though not when baselessly slandering DIO.) But VsMyth then grossly distorts the CC-suggestion he was assenting to. (By professedly non-anonymous [but biography-less on his UserPage] pseudo-person “Chris Cooper”.) This in order to threaten far greater damage (conversion-to-stub, or semi-protection against the horror of something positive being added to the DR bio) than what “Chris Cooper” himself had proposed.
[f] With typical Ready-Fire-Aim carelessness (this, while baselessly calling others “unReliable”!), VsMyth — brilliantly ferreting out sinister motives in his quarry — has publicly suggested (Carl Sagan Wiki Talk) that DR is a supporter of the kook psychoanalyst and astronomer-wannabe Dr.I.Velikovsky — and (as befits The Marine-Lord of the Teens) has never retracted, despite the swiftly-posted inconvenient fact that (while DR has defended — at some cost to himself — the Velikovskians' right to be heard):
[i] DR was the earliest and toughest critic of the most lethal of the previously unplumbed celestial-mechanics difficulties with Velikovsky's central astronomical scenario.
[This 1972-1974 DR paper, circulated privately for years by anti-V expert Leroy Ellenberger, was satirically titled: “Freudian Astronomy, or Do Planetary Orbits, Bristlecone Pines, and Velikovsky's Believers Suffer from Collective Amnesia?”.]
[ii] DR dredged up (for the first time, in the then-two-decade-old debate over Worlds in Collision) V's 1941 paper in the Psychoanalytic Review — a fantastic crock, which made crystal clear to anyone (even to those with no background in astronomy) that V had always been a pseudo-scientist, way before his 1950 Worlds in Collision. (DIO 7.1 [1997] ‡5 §C [pp.30-33] published the history of top Velikovsky-critic Leroy Ellenberger's ban & censorship at the hands of the Velikovsky-cult: “Hysterical Velikovskians Flee Own Frankenstein-Mongoose!”. Look it up.)
Note the striking contagion that gets revealed here, when we find that VsMyth's bud, “Eleland”, made the same pro-Velikovsky charge against Phaedrus7, which turned out to be just as invertedly hilarious — and just as easily checkable [via Velikovsky Wiki Talk] by anyone not of VsMyth-“Eleland”'s shoot-first temperament.
Birdbrains-of-a-feather, or birds-of-a-featherbrain?)
[When in 2008 July (Sagan Wiki Talk) Phaedrus7 pointed out that his quotes of Sagan (from DIO 1.1) had been deleted on the basis of VsMyth's amusingly-invert misevaluation of anti-Velikovsky DR as pro-Velikovsky, VsMyth's typically hair-trigger and macho response regarding accurate but cult-offensive information on the Sagan bio was immediately to re-trash the DR bio. Classic-Heyrichian extortion-tactic to crush rebellion.
To know the truth of DR's view of Velikovsky, VsMyth needed only to take a moment to search for “Velikovsky” (via Control-F) either in the pdf of THE VERY SAME DIO 1.1 [1991] (pp.8-9) which he was suppressing text from (on suspicion of DR's pro-Velikovskianism!), or in the DIO website (which he perversely keeps treating as if it were pro-kook): Contributions.]
Such confused — nay, outlandishly inverted — judgement may assist in explaining how VsMyth got the bonkers notion that DR was an enemy to rationalism, who needed to be hamstrung by the never-erring jackboot of The Marine Guardian of Scientific Truth.
[Such science-PC Vsmite-crusading ought not to be a neutral referee's rôle, anyway. Let the silly irrationalists occasionally have their say, too — and let readers judge who's right. (See, e.g., DIO 1.2 [1991] n.117 [p.123]. Ironically, DIO has taken a less slack view since 1994 in its publisher's statement on submitted papers [each issue's inside back cover]: “spare us the creationist-level junk.” — but then DIO is a professional-level academic journal, not a people's encyclopedia.) It is worth remarking here that those who oppose pseudo-science too often show little faith in public judgement, and accordingly try to curtail general access to dissenters: e.g., the Velikovsky affair, or the Owen Gingerich-Martin Gardner attitude (as told by CSICOP's MG to DR 1978/11/30) that R.Newton's views on Ptolemy constituted the sort of crank literature that publishers should be told to avoid. (Newton's then-proscribed view that Ptolemy faked data and stole the Ancient Star Catalog from Hipparchos is now overwhelmingly accepted, much assisted by DIO vols.1, 2, & 12, as well as Gerd Graßhoff (winner of DIO's RRNewton Award.) Question: Have such CSI (formerly “CSICOP”) clonies penetrated Wikipedia? It would figure that they'd try. (Were they invited? — presumably with good intent — to help in the worthy Augean labor not letting Wiki articles drown in kook chaff?) The attacks on the DR bio are consistent with such penetration, since DR has for decades been CSI's chief hate-object-apostate, due to DR's sTARBABY.]

Question: Is enlarged-head VsMyth seriously supposed to represent Wikipedia?! (Is his boldness evidence that he thinks his vandalism is higher-protected?) The answer to said question is exactly what this posting hopes to elicit (the continuation of VsMyth or his like as DR-bio monitor could definitively answer it) — even if this produces yet more vengeance against the DR Wiki bio.

A detailed discussion of VsMyth (and his curious helpers-in-trashing) follows.

In the pre-censored Dennis Rawlins WPbio, it was long noted that, given academic politicians' fear of public access to exposés (of academic misbehavior & fraud) appearing in DR's journal DIO, their preferred counter-tactic is: suppression.
[In forums ranging from the New York Times (thrice in page 1 stories, 1989-1998) to the University of Cambridge (detailed scientific report, exceptionally co-published with DIO 10 [2000]), DR's detailed researches have exposed more historical science appropriations & hoaxes than anyone, ever (Eratosthenes, Hipparchos, Ptolemy, Tycho, the Neptune affair, E.Kane, I.Hayes, Cagni, Cook, Peary, Byrd) — a superlative that has won him few friends in institutional academe, but fervent support from some of the most respected and creative figures of the international scholarly community.]
That is, those who fear exposure of the lack of free speech in certain arenas, solve the problem by suppressing free speech about its lack.

On 2008/3/10, “VsMyth” (who says he's been a Wiki Administrator since 2005) unself-consciously vindicated the implicit prediction of suppression by deleting virtually all of the bio's citations to DIO, which happens to be the US' top astronomical history journal, and the most technically sophisticated such journal on Earth.

W. C. Wall — In-Own-Mind Dastard of Misguise:
VsMyth's tack is ominously familiar. After all, the DR-loathing pseudo-pseudo-scientist Stall-Wall (who had been vandalizing Wiki articles for some time, leading up to his resort to threats, once he had absorbed enough apparent indicia to convince him that no one knew who he was) did the very same thing, some months earlier, to the Aristarchos of Samos article.
[Are internet threats even legal? Similarly, what are the ethics of anti-mystics pretending to be kooks attacking anti-mystics? — a practice which can only corrupt the record and thereby hurt the long-term prospect of the success of the laudable project of opposing rampant kookery.]
Stall-Wall alleged he was fighting “site-pushing” (a Vsmith ploy, as well): i.e., removing citations to DIO, to DR, and to the work of Aristarchos expert and DR mentor B. L. van der Waerden (the internationally famous mathematician), whose final book's final page heralded the onset of DIO: van der Waerden, Die Astronomie der Griechen Darmstadt 1988 p.307.
[At Wikipedia's North Pole page, DR had added that E.M.Standish, senior CalTech creator of the celestial tables used by explorers had in 2009 refereed the claims of the three pre-Amundsen N.Pole claimants (Cook, Peary, Byrd) and concluded that all were false. On 2012/1/10, Stall-Wall eliminated the reference to Standish's eminence and celestial expertise as irrelevant! (Wall also eliminated a link to a DR page on the subject which cites and links to all sides' cases.) Among other prior (and continuing) abuses, Wall had repeatedly vandalized the Wiki bios of DR and of one of DIO's and the world's greatest astronomers, Charles Kowal, discoverer of Chiron and a host of other celestial bodies, as well as of Galileo's 1612-1613 observations of Neptune.
(Stall-Wall charged that the awarding of DIO's first R. R. Newton Award was corrupt: simply a gang giving medals to each other. Corrupt? For years, the DIO website prize page's concluding statement has been: “anyone in the world is eligible for the (DIO) awards. With one exception: DR.”
DR personally (in the pre-boards era) gave the 1st three awards to Jones, Standish, & Kowal two of whom were not widely known to the public, and one (Jones) who got an award and cover-billing on DIO 11.2 [2003], for overturning a DR error! In truth, all of the DR-appointed DIO prize-boards' awards have been to little-heralded but deserving non-DIO scholars. Like DIO's people, they are achievers, discoverers, advancers of the field — not careerist politicians, who add little to academe beyond cultism, money, and power-operator shunnings. Wall made the same corruption-charge (Wikipedia DR Talk) about an award to E.M.Standish, who is so undeserving that he has been for 1/4 century the world's leading figure in celestial mechanics.
(Projection? Trading favors is certainly what is done by the JHA clique, which [with typical unsubtlety] gave John-Wall of Farnborough [a west suburb of London] his 1st JHA publication immediately after his 2007 Feb-Mar attack on DR in the journal Ancient Egypt.)
Stall-Wall's smear — stating that Kowal received the 1st DIO R.R.Newton Award for corrupt reasons — reflect or feign innocence of the information that Kowal's eternally unique discovery (the cause of the DIO award to Kowal) of Galileo's accidental 1612-1613 observations of Neptune, is now even in astronomy textbooks, since it is one of the most glorious achievements ever in the field of historical astronomical detective-work — which is, after all, DIO's specialty.
Note: Kowal's name has been in numerous astronomy textbooks since well before this find, for his discoveries of, e.g., Chiron and two Jupiter satellites. (Similarly Wall-slandered DR was similarly cited through much of the 1990s in the evergreen-standard physics textbook Halliday, Resnick, & Walker.) The fact that Wikipedia has for years had (Administrator-Vsmith-assisted) crackpot editing affecting coverage of Kowal, DR, DIO's pioneering researches, etc, gives one some idea of why serious scholars regard Wikipedia as unReliable. Ironically so.
Stall-Wall also asked a Wiki editor and Cutler Cleveland to completely eliminate the DR bio — and then (when they didn't comply) threatened the former and vandalized the Wiki bio of the latter, accusing it also of autobio. (Like it mattered, if the bio was accurate.) This is the character whom VsMyth is siding with — and has actively assisted, by carrying out his anti-“site-pushing” program of killing numerous DR-Wiki-biography informative references to DIO (the journal of Wall's self-created enemy), including deleting the linkto DR's restrained letter of reply to the entirely unprovoked 2007 Ancient Egypt attack on DR by latest-JHA-darling-author John-Wall. (The DR letter tried to be amiably concessional in part, but was devastatingly detailed on Wall's hilarious sloppiness & scholarly amateurishness.)
VsMyth appears to be one of the knee-jerk brand of over-proud would-be-rationalists who think that they are rendered Wise merely by perceiving the centrist-obvious. (E.g., that biologists are right and creationists are just dreaming.) And he's so cocky and pushy about it — just the way other Skeptical Inquirer cultists think & behave.]

On the same date (2008/3/10) on which Vsmith carried out Stall-Wall's censorial program, Wall had (just a few hours earlier) lodged the 2nd of two threats against Wiki editors (this time against a young WikiComm Administrator), in revenge for their proper attempts to provide normal protection of the DR Wiki bio.
[The threats are also aimed at DR and his associates. The vandalization of the Wiki bio of DIO's Kowal is simply a carrying-out of that very threat: get near DR and you'll pay. There are academic cults that have been spreading that threat for decades: it's no secret (and DR has been told the fact in so many words by several prominent insiders) that DR's refusal to stay quiet about mis-scholarship and repeated fake refereeing at the insistently-rival Journal for the History of Astronomy has caused the JHA to keep shunning DR and DIO. (The reality of said shunning has even been publicly acknowledged by one of DR's enemies.)]

How often does a Wikipedia Administrator seem to yield to threats — and do a vandal's dirty work for him? (Will this incident encourage future resorts to threat by frustrated vandals?) And this is not the only case (or subject) where VsMyth has associated himself with seething amateur attacks on DR — as we shall see below.

If he were interested in finding out whether DIO is a Reliable Source (RS), it would have taken VsMyth two minutes of searching in the DIO website to learn the quality of scholar that resides on DIO's various boards. Instead, VsMyth spent the better part of two hours late on 3/10 gleefully carving out citations to DIO (badly bungling an excision [another such case cited below] at Aristyllos, creating gibberish there in the process) — demanding RS in each case (twenty such demands in all, each stating: “This claim needs references to reliable sources since March 2008”) — and then boasting (on DR Talk) of his mayhem, repeatedly calling the bio “puffery”, despite its several mentions of and links to those rare instances where DR screwed-up and where enumerations of details of these errors may be found.
[This was vainly noted 2008/9/10 on DR WPTalk, where it is also remarked that the key link to details on DR errors was destroyed (2008/3/10) by VsMyth himself! — who is allied with criticism of the bio's neutrality!
Also removed (clumsily leaving a dangling half-bracket) was the pre-Vsmith bio's (reference n.71) to DR's having lampooned himself (in huge type, for one of his longago errors) on the cover of DIO 11.2 [2003] — a VsMyth excision which is not the most honest tactic one could choose if one wishes to be part of a team-assault that accuses the bio of puffery and DR of self-love.]
It should be noted that all pre-VsMyth Wiki editors had been constructive for the DR bio, and had gone to considerable trouble to check out its accuracy. (One even added a Wiki reference to the unique DIO vol.3 Tycho star catalog, shortly after learning [from the sort of DIO webpage source that VsMyth is trying to bar Wikipedians from direct access to] that it too was being shunned.) Why have all these dedicated editors disappeared since 3/10, in favor of the spectacularly ignorant, amateurish, careless, even wildly paranoid ravings of an Administrator who is obviously scientifically inadequate — as well as being immune to evidence contradicting his non-expert view of DIO's reliability & eminence? Why has all substantial post-2008/3/7 editing of the DR bio been exclusively VsMyth's? (Somewhat similarly for the Wikipedia Sagan bio at that time, where a perfectly accurate DIO-quotation has also been scrubbed by VsMyth&co? And, ahh, how did VsMyth or “Hypocrite” Stall-Wall get involved with DR regarding the Sagan article? [ESP?] (Nothing in the DR Wiki bio would lead one to Sagan or Velikovsky.) The cohesion here reflects the defensiveness of a gang of religious atheists who conspire so much that they project that others must be doing likewise. The common thread is that criticism of Sagan is, for rationalism's (thankfully atypical) organized fanatical cultist-soldiers, akin to criticism of the Virgin Mary for a Catholic. Analogously, anything positive about DR is like praise of Satan.)
[What is the source of VsMyth's dedication to heading off Wikipedia readers' access to those parts of DIO that are embarrassing to science's publicists & politicians, who are always getting into factual trouble because they aren't as able in scholarship as they think they are — a point which in itself could explain VsMyth's enthusiastically loyal bonding with them.]
On 2008/3/10-11, VsMyth boasted (DR Wiki Talk): “Removed citations to [DR's] own website as per WP:RS [Reliable Source] and perhaps WP:COI [Conflict-of-Interest]”
No commentator on DR is neutral (CSICOP-clonie VsMyth himself has a throbbing COI vis-à-vis CSICOP-exposer DR), so the latter charge is irrelevant. JHA-defender Wall has a flagant COI and doesn't even hide his passion to hound DR, who has done more than anyone to reveal the truth behind the JHA's pretensions. These COIs did not ruffle VsMyth at all.
[Check VsMyth's Wiki-archived User pages (in which he treats creationists with uniform contempt), and see if you can imagine him aiding the censorial desires of someone he REALLY BELIEVES is a geocentrism-defending Catholic fanatic (Wall's 2007-8 pose) who is hate-vandalizing the Wiki bio of a scientific atheist. It's such contradictions that inspire the overview smile-question: when cultists find it irresistible to combine to pull off a dirty trick, don't they ever stop&think how transparent it's bound to be? — and how much ultimate damage it will do their cause? (Remember the scene in the Buck Henry cine-comedy To Die for, when the cops tell J.Phoenix just how smart his gang of schemers actually is?)]
So, despite the attacker's sinuous pretense to being a religious nut, VsMyth knew that this vandal was actually a Good Guy — one of his own kind: a scholar-wannabee who seeks academic status by downing kooks even less scientifically equipped than himself — a Custeresque lust, of a sort that, e.g., came to embarrassingly Custeresque grief when John-Wall attacked DR, under the impression that DR was the sort of pushover whom Wall and his CSICOPish kind typically bully for self-aggrandizement.]
Comments:
[a] Contrary to the repeated 2008/3/10 claims of hipshooter VsMyth and his 2008/3/10 inspirer-mentor Stall-Wall, the journal DIO is not on [DR's] “own website”, but rather on the DIO website. DIO is a refereed publication, monitored by an impressive spectrum of top experts — and, as already noted, is the most scientifically competent history-of-astronomy journal on Earth.
Ironically, it is this fact that is ultimately responsible for the confusion of some, because it is the exposures by DIO and by DR (in Publ. Astr. Soc. Pacific, Amer J. Physics, Isis, UnivCambrdidge's Polar Record, DIO, etc) of the inferior science, mathematical foulups, and pathetic refereeing consistently featured in self-styled Reliable journals, that has caused enragedly-embarrassed Reliable-forum archons' very attempts to smear, exile, slander, and damn DIO, slander which has led certain cocksure mediocrities (who don't know any more science than the archons) into thinking or pretending to think that DIO isn't a Reliable journal.
Damning, censoring, smearing, threatening, etc, are inevitably resorted-to because the exposed Reliables are otherwise-weaponless:
NB: While DR & DIO have again&again revealed Reliable forums' sins in math, pretend-comprehension, and sources, there have been no successful parallel exposures of DIO pratfalls, because in 20y of publication, there haven't been any.
[The only two errors of DR's long career were published in Reliable journals. B.Schaefer's attempts (to overturn DIO's support of Hipparchos as author of the Ancient Star Catalog) didn't even claim to have found DIO math errors, and backfired amusingly anyway: see DIO 12 [2002] §§1&2 [pp.3-34]. And BS seems later to have come over to the Hipparchans. Critics have attacked DR for alleged incompetent science (B.Schaefer), editor-harassment (echoing O.Gingerich), kookery (J.Rummel & B.Schaefer both again echoing O.Gingerich), thievery (P.Klass), insanity (O.Gingerich), etc.
(Yes, this is what it's like to be for decades a feared, enragingly-competent & unkillable enemy of establishment cults. Which is exactly why the public knows so little about such non-kook rebels.) Since all of these smears have turned out to be baseless, critics have been reduced to hungering for any crumb of DR sin. Thus: Stall-Wall.]
So, who is calling whom nonReliable? — the very point emphasized in a 45-item sampling of certain arrogant & censorial Reliable forums' goofs, “the Incompetence-Charger's Competence” (DIO 4.1 [1994] ‡4 §A [p.48]).
Among the several Reliable journals whose unreliable science & refereeing have been revealed by DIO are ones whose connexions to attacks on the DR Wiki bio are self-evident. (Aside from the obvious, there is an even starker simple consideration: who else would care to devote so much time to such a curious & specialized project?)

And the list of forums whose misbehavior has been chronicled by DR is extensive. To pick three, not necessarily at random (all three of whom, it should be noted, publish numerous enlightening articles, whatever the integrity of their DR-criticized leadership): CSICOP, Scientific American (and its Letters), as well as the ever-seething Journal for the History of Astronomy, whose Editor-for-Life (though a welcome, dedicated contributor of Herscheliana to the community) is demonstrably a historical fleaweight and a mathematical-astronomy nitweight.]
[b] While VsMyth's deletion of references to the Dennis Rawlins webpage is arguable (though it's still part of the DIO enterprise, and its material should [according to Wikipedia's own principles] be judged on logical merit — not by either “Reliable” forums' censorial fears, or DIO's eminence), VsMyth's many 2008/3/10 eliminations of references to the JOURNAL DIO were obviously unjustified, given its level of scholarship and the extremely high reputation of most of its various board-members. In order not to know this, VsMyth would have had to wilfully ignore a mass of readily-accessible indicia (which he was repeatedly reminded of, anyway, on the DR & Sagan WPTalk pages) showing that DIO is much, MUCH more reliable than many so-called “Reliable Sources” accepted by Wikipedia.
Question: Isn't ignoring evidence, to maintain a pre-set position, the very antithesis of the scientific spirit VsMyth claims to defend?
[c] Equally slack overseeing is evidenced by failure to notice that many of the VsMyth-eliminated citations to the DIO website were to places that listed clusters of citations to what VsMyth would regard as RS. Merely checking a few examples would have made that obvious.
(And would have led to realization that the carefully-constructed and oft-intelligently-Wiki-edited pre-Vsmith-trashed DR WPbio's links to the DIO website constituted a space-saving device, allowing a seeming single reference effectively to provide multiple references. Isn't the aim of an encyclopedia to inform? — and as efficiently as possible?)
[d] During the better part of a year, VsMyth and his oddball companions (in routinely mantra-deeming DIO non-RS) have been embarrassingly incapable of pointing out actual instances of scholarly unreliability in DIO's volumes. Which figures, since not one of these frustrated ciphers (including Wall) has Reliable expertise in the relevant sciences.
[e] Lastly, there is the failure to consider an obvious logical point: if DR has been published in so many RS journals (see bio) for 40 years, it stands to reason that he would probably run a reliable journal himself.]

The Most Hilariously Unjustified Deletions of DIO citations on Wikipedia:
[1] DR is editor of the standard edition of Tycho's thousand-star catalog. VsMyth (3/10) eliminated the link to it.
[2] DR is the ultimate killer of the Byrd North Pole hoax, and the DIO issue (vol.10) is an expansion of his report to Ohio State University, which was the basis for the 1996/5/9 New York Times front-page virtual retraction of its 70y acceptance of the claim. This DIO vol.10 was co-published with the University of Cambridge. VsMyth deleted the bio's link to this DIO.
[3] A protégé of the previous world expert on ancient heliocentrism, DR has published more original findings on heliocentrist Aristarchos' numerical astronomy and cosmology than anyone (living or dead). The culmination of this DR work was delivered at the British Museum, and published both in DIO (vols.11 [2002] &14 [2008]), and in Alter Orient und Altes Testament. VsMyth killed all the DR bio's citations to his work on Aristarchos' vision.
[In 2007, VsMyth's parallel vandal Wall persistently deleted links (in the Aristarchos Wiki article) to these sources AND to the Aristarchan work of the late super-eminent DIO-enthusiast, van der Waerden. Like Wall said, it is Wikipedially-dangerous to get near DR. Even if you're dead.]
[4] The DR bio's citation to the DIO 4.3 [1994] paper by world-class polar expert Robert Headland (of University of Cambridge's Scott Polar Research Institute) was eliminated by VsMyth, WHO DEMANDED A RELIABLE SOURCE. (If Vsmith had a better source than Cambridge in mind, he didn't cite it.) Is Wikipedia taking this farcical “Administator” seriously? Is it not painfully plain that his programme is that of the clique that fears [a] what DIO high competence has revealed of establishmentarians' hilariously fouled up scholarship, and [b] the unsavory practices the bunglers are resorting to, to prevent the public from knowing.

VsMyth's 2008/3/10 deletions of references to DIO left the DR biography rather in tatters, and it remains so — despite repeated alerts (on the bio's Talk in May & Sept, and on Sagan talk in July) to all concerned that DIO is highly admired by major scholars, publishes articles by internationally recognized experts, and is taken at dozens of the world's top academic libraries.
[It ought not to be the responsibility of serious scholars (to whom Wikipedia is indebted for the accurate entries it boasts) constantly to have to undo vandalisms, etc. Some among such creatures have other priorities — and eschew engaging in hourly crud-wrestling-revert-wars with fanatics, amateurs, cultists, censors, goons, authority-freaks, et ilk.]

The indefensibility of VsMyth's bald censorship is obvious to anyone familiar with DIO's boards, which include not merely leading scholars but those at the very pinnacles of their fields: celestial mechanics (Standish, CalTech JPL), astronomical discovery (Kowal, Johns Hopkins APL), Earth-spin and time (Stephenson, Univ Durham), Babylonian cuneiform texts (Walker, British Museum). One gets the impression that neither Wall nor VsMyth even knows who these figures are, though Kowal's Wiki bio might have partially clued them.

DR himself has been published in most of the relevant leading professional journals for decades (see bio's notes), is praised by major figures in astronomy, and was the cited successor to the most mathematically able of the 20th century's ancient astronomy historians, as well as heir to the final work of that century's most respected expert on ancient geographical mss.

As a particularly flagrant example of VsMyth's exercises-in-omniscience, we may examine the case of the sole DR-scholarship section which he particularly and DIO 2.3 [1992] ‡9 §G9 [p.137]; the discovery was later rendered quantitative in DIO 9.1 [1999] ‡1 §E [pp.13-14] footnote 49 & Table 1. Its import is obvious even to Scientific American: 2004 Dec p.98. (DR's once-solitary 40y contention that Leverrier should be recognized as primary discoverer is now widely accepted.) In DIO 4.2 (1994), DR outed the RGO official who stole the Royal Greenwich Observatory's Neptune file; the file was found in the thief's home after his 1998 death. DR wrote the 1999/4/29 fax (co-signed by prominent figures at NY Times science dep't, Science magazine, & CalTech) that successfully resulted in the file's photocopying and transmission to NOAO (Tucson), CalTech (Standish), and DIO (DR). The central, extensive Royal Astronomical Society-funded excderptings from this file are exclusively hosted by the DIO webpage, with valuable technical enhancements by DIO's Keith Pickering, who worked with the most important gleaner ever, N.Kollerstrom (co-author of the 2004 Dec Scientific American article on Neptune's discovery), to render the Neptune-file materials conveniently available. It was world ultimo-expert Standish who deputed DR (1999) to analyse and report on the file's contents & implications, a task accomplished in DIO 9.1 [1999] ‡1 [pp.3-25].

For over a quarter-century, Standish of CalTech JPL has computed the orbits of the Sun, Moon, & planets for the Astronomical Almanac; these are the orbits which are used by NASA when aiming its spacecraft. His use of special perturbations instead of general perturbations so enormously improved the accuracy of the Astronomical Almanac (not to mention NASA's hits on celestial quarry!) that since 1984 his JPL ephemerides have been adopted for it.

And what Reliability does VsMyth bring against this, to qualify as judge DECREEING THE ENTIRE DELETION OF DR'S SCIENTIFIC & HISTORICAL NEPTUNE LABORS, which are among the best known of DR's contributions to academe? Well, VsMyth bills himself as an elder ex-Marine and a high-school teacher. So he obviously knows more about the Discovery of Neptune (an astronomical-orbit-perturbation controversy) than CalTech-JPL. Or Or DR, who (alone among those cited in the Scientific American 2004 Dec article) has published original scientific (not just historical) researches involving perturbations, in several of the leading journals: Nature (twice), AJ (Amer.Astr.Soc), Roy.Astr.Soc (twice).

Given the relative expertise here, what can have caused VsMyth to invite such embarrassment, by excising the Neptune case in particular? Hmmm. Well, we notice that it's the only place in the bio where there was exposure of a popular science magazine's current misbehavior: ScAm's alteration (after text was agreed upon by fax) of a DR letter that appeared in ScAm in 2005 April, where it was followed by an attack upon a statement that was ScAm's not DR's, having been substitutes for a DR statement that was not being answered. DIO has posted a photo of the original of the fax in question. (What can be more “Reliable” than the actual document in question?) ScAm has since just gotten in deeper by attempting to hide its forgery by more of same: it deleted the original (magazine hard copy) 2004 Dec bibliography-citation to DIO 9.1 from its on-line bibliography.
(Gee, isn't that sorta like what VsMyth is doing to the DR Wiki bio…?)
[The web-version later disappeared, so the above link may not work.]

Since the facts cannot be disputed, coverup is the only recourse for the unregenerate: friends of ScAm have attacked (as “garbage”, etc) the DR bio's mere mention of ScAm's rewrite & censorship (Censorship of censorship.) OK, that we expect. But VsMyth poses as a paragon and protector of neutrality, even while he is acting as protector of (virtually an agent for) ScAm, Carl Sagan, and the DIO-rival JHA's author John-Wall, who is obsessed with attacking DR because (given his meagre level of scholarship) it's his only chance for advancement. (Will the DR bio continue to be harassed in revenge for DR's exposure — and his refusal to let ScAm's publishing power intimidate him? Is the bio effectively being held hostage for silence on ScAm? Is this the way Wikipedia is supposed to work?) And if VsMyth thinks the Leverrier-vs-Adams material belongs in Wiki's Discovery-of-Neptune article — though he didn't put it there! — instead of in the DR bio (some obviously belongs in both), then by the same logic: he should place the matter of ScAm's double-coverup in the Wiki Scientific American article instead of the DR bio. Instead his censorship has converted the matter into a TRIPLE-coverup. Certainly potential contributors to ScAm who consult Wikipedia for balanced information should know what that magazine's notoriously sloppy (by the nicest interpretation here) and less-than-expert editing is capable of, and whether it corrects its embarrassing mistakes. (As DIO always does.) After all, Scientific American has enough genuine positive credits (several involving DR: 1979 May & 1990 June) that it will survive revelation of these negatives.

Note in passing that those edits of the DR bio (and other Wiki articles) which openly come out of Baltimore (B) — thus triggering accusations of non-neutrality, since DR & many of his friends, etc, live there — have been entirely constructive and scholarly (the accuracy of not one of them as been contradicted), and have not gone into others' bios to do mischief. (Instead adding citations of attacks on DR to DR WPbio!) Compare that record to Wall's and VsMyth's, which have had the intended net effect of denying accurate and relevant information to Wikipedia readers.
[It is almost funny to watch the phantasmagoric demand of the bio's WP supervisors as they threaten to restrict or kill the bio if they don't know who are the parties writing it, while simultaneously threatening or trashing anyone who associates with DR — a tack which does not exactly encourage non-vandalizing contributors to identify themselves.]

If one wishes to check the numerous B edits of Wiki articles since 2007 one will notice not only the aforesaid refusal to trash the bios of DIO opponents, but also a competent level of scholarship (as regards math, astronomy, and history) — which LEGITIMATE editors would value not resent — as well as a rigorous avoidance of eliminating alternate views, no matter how bizarre some are.
[The B edits are merely factual. They make no judgement or praise of DR (some criticism), though they point out his findings' priorities in an unusual variety of fields, and the understandable reluctance of his scientifically hapless critics to engage him in fair combat. And there are comments upon DIO's history and superiority (in some scholarly areas) to its critics' forums. But these are plain facts, not one of which has been contradicted by any of the bio's harassers since they are plainly true.]
The B approach has obviously been to allow others to have their say, merely adjacently offering a different take if the situation merits it.

One of VsMyth's more curious imbalances was in regard to suspicion of authorship: he repeatedly worries (2008 March, July) about COI regarding the accurate and constructive material on the DR bio, but appears to have had no interest whatever in who the conspicuously-frantic vandal is — or the fact that he obviously has a vitriolic COI. VsMyth also takes no notice of relative academic competence. (There are several possible obvious interpretations of this point, none of them creditable.) VsMyth's only equanimity here was his astonishing 2008/3/10-11 sorta-equating the rights of the constructive, scholarly party and the destructive, scatter-slanderous, vandalizing, pretending, suppressive, threatening one!
Even so, VsMyth couldn't help (in the very next sentence) jettisoning any claim to impartiality even in this hugely unbalanced sitation, when he ignored Stall-Wall's vandalism, while calling “puffery” B's constructive, scholarly, sometimes DR-critical edits on various pages of Wikipedia (which were almost entirely factual and wholly non-vandalistic). To repeat: VsMyth offered not the slightest criticism of the party that had invaded bio after bio with crude vandalism (frequently “DD” [Drop Dead]) — e.g., to Keith Pickering and to a defender of the Buffett's circle).
[VsMyth's 3/10-11 (anonymous!) demand was: no more anonymous editing of the DR bio. But when Keith Pickering afterwards non-anonymously edited it, that was ruled out as COI (Catch 22?) — and VsMyth reactively, insultingly threatened (2007 March & July) to semi-protect against putting pro-DR information in the bio, threatened to turn the bio into a stub, and (in odd encouragement to non-anonymity!) attacked a Pickering site. (Isn't stubhood earned by insignificance rather than by disagreeing with a power-mad Administraitor-to-the-cause-of-truth?) How did such a bigotted amateur get the power and arrogance o make such threats against the mere dissemination of access to high scholarship — and to exposures of the occasional academic misbehavior of some captive institutions?
Note: several 2008 Winter warnings on the DR WPTalk page should've been sufficient to wake up any neutral Wiki Administrator; further, in 2008 May, DIO's Keith Pickering entered upon VsMyth's own page an alert that the party harassing the DR bio had been regularly vandalizing. VsMyth indicated no concern.]
Regardless of how deliberately cohesive the several attackers of the DR bio are, they are certainly bound together by a common cause: the desire to prevent exposure of DR findings that discomfit themselves and-or their cults. (It is shameful, ironic, and ultimately damaging to science, when those who think they are defending science against cults become a cult themselves.)

Anxious to avoid having his attacks on the DR bio trigger a Wiki edit-war between DR and certain “rationalist”cults, Stall-Wall began during 2007 to build long in advance a disguised identity. On 2007/5/17, he first tested an untraceable IP# (just doodling “hahahaha what ever”), to which he did not return until months later (thereby covering the connexion to his May alert from Ancient Egypt), in anticipation of his long-term plan (to ultimately employ a scattered mass of IP#s throughout his part of England), shortly after a DR 2007/4/7 letter was read by Robert B. Partridge, Editor of the British magazine Ancient Egypt, a letter which showed that John-Wall's attack on DR in the 2007 Feb-Mar AE was such a scholarly disaster that Wall has not attempted to defend it.
His only hope of escape has come from Stall-Wall&co's attempts (including Stall-Wall's killing a reference to the DR WPTalk Page, when he realized it contained a link to a shredding of John-Wall's Ancient Egypt paper) to lower the odds that anyone will read DIO — remarkably similar to the tactic of the establishments which Stall-Wall tries to pretend he doesn't serve. To watch Stall-Wall repeatedly do what John-Wall needs, inspires one to wonder how rationalists can refuse acceptance of Jungian synchronicity — and it has a parallel in the equally astonishing preternatural guardian-angel good fortune of Respectable establishments with vandals.
[Note in passing: though DR has for decades written against kooks (astrology, ESP, F.CookSoc), it's not the kooks that are vandalizing WP to damage his rep.]
[Of more than incidental interest in the present context is the fact that DR's letters to AE (well before the attacks on the DR Wiki bio) provided evidence connected to [a] trying anonymously to intimidate people, & [b] conspiring in attacking a proscribed scholar. If all this sounds unbelievable, well, have a competent astronomer read this material, and see what his funny-bone concludes.]
In his 2007/5/5 letter to DR, Ancient Egypt Editor Partridge, just returning from a trip, acknowledged receipt of DR's 2007/4/7 letter and that he had talked to John-Wall and was sending along a copy of DR's letter: Stall-Wall's 1st test-edit (IP#86.145.11.103) was about 10d after receipt, 2007/5/17. (On 2007/9/11, at the Wikipedia Galileo Talk the same vandal by now boasted of using dozens of anon IP#s. [For obvious reasons, he later went over largely to screen names whose geographical origins are protected by Wikipedia.] His laborious misbehavior on Wikipedia's Galileo Talk was enormously wasteful of the time and good intent of several honest editors there — all this botheration simply to lay the groundwork pretense to be eventually attacking DR out of Catholic fanaticism — as if atheist DR is a major figure in the non-believer cult! — which in fact dislikes him. But the act is undone by a check of the history of Stall-Wall's longtime main IP# (87.194.4.21, going back to 2005/11/26): no sign of such fanaticism prior to 2007 May. More Stall-Wall synchronicity with JHA-publication-debtor John-Wall. (Note that DR was the only subject of the Stall-Wall vandalisms [which included the bios of Richard Dawkins&co [starting well into 2007, long after publication of RD's book], Warren Buffett&co, etc] whose bio Wall urged be entirely removed from Wikipedia.) For anyone familiar with the vandal, it doesn't even require inside information to know who tried to destroy the Wiki DR bio — a bio which linked readers to DR's detailed 2007/4/7 letter to AE, demonstrating at a high level of physical science the quality of John-Wall's astronomical-geodetic competence, as well as pointing out bizarre screwups which only make sense if a 3rd party was involved, whose relayed data were carelessly unchecked.
[Typically for DR opponents, there is no reply to demonstrations of fumbling, other than shun-avoidance, craven hiding, fleeing face-to-face debate with DR & and using tactics ranging from slander (see DIO 4.3 [1994] ‡15 §H [pp.133-135]) to censorship, in order to prevent others from ever having access to arguments & evidence that can't be credibly answered.]
Note: on 3/10 (same day as 2nd Stall-Wall threat), VsMyth helpfully destroyed the link to a mild version of the DR letter (to Ancient Egypt) exposing Wall's innocence of a spectrum of technical points relevant to his Ancient Egypt article. (The full letter has now been posted as well.) Which raises the question: does the tight coincidence (vandal's threat against young Wiki Administrator & VsMyth censorship of DR bio: both 3/10) betray fear of threat? — or something more?

But since 2008 July, on Wiki Velikovsky Talk, VsMyth has acquired a new and equally high-quality companion in DR-abusement: “Eleland”, whose act has been rightly compared by Phaedrus7 to that of a Sagan groupie (with billions&billions of stars in his eyes).

Triggering event: “Phaedrus7” had posted an account (quoted from DIO 1.1 [1991] p.76) of Carl Sagan's 1985/12/5 appearance on Ted Koppel's Nightline, which showed Sagan as less than frank about what he didn't know. Again, the facts can't be disputed, so “Eleland” started inserting a mountain of fantastically careless & uninformed slander against DIO (& DR) on Carl Sagan Wiki Talk, attempting to mitigate the damage to Sagan of undeniably accurate quotes from Sagan himself. E.g., the 7/15 post of “Eleland” calls DIO a “potentially disreputable” journal, before warping that to just-plain “disreputable”.
[Note resemblance to an equally sane transformative mind: DIO 9.3 [1999] ‡6 §F [p.126].]

Around the same time, “Eleland” entered the DR Wiki bio, challenging the neutrality of a section, even though he couldn't point to inaccuracy in any of its statements. (By an irony, this is the section that effectively predicts attempts to suppress awareness of DR and DIO!)

Sadly, facts aren't neutral; and “Eleland” offered no way to improve the neutrality.
[Attacks upon the authorship or neutrality of the B edits are typical of the personal nature of most attacks on DR — and they divert from the Wiki ideal: the answer to a non-neutral entry isn't whining-botheration of Wiki personnel; the answer is: edit it yourself for better neutrality. (Such action on the DR bio was explicitly invited on the DR Wiki Talk page.) Wikipedia cannot realistically insist upon “disinterested” neutrality in contributors. (As someone once told VsMyth: who would write about or link to something he wasn't interested in?) In controversial cases, it must hope that successive edits from both sides of disputed points (perhaps occasionally assisted by [non-amateur] monitoring) will arrive at polite equilibrium via conflicting non-neutrals.
The 9/10 B entry on the DR bio's Talk compares the DR-critics' sputterings to DR's question for religious apologists who explain away the Problem of Evil by admitting they're too dumb to know god's plans: in which case, what makes them think they're so smart that they can know if god exists? Analogously, if the critics of the DR Wiki bio are too dim to improve its neutrality, why do they think they're smart enough to know it's non-neutral?
Note: on 9/10, exactly 6 months after VsMyth's trashing and slandering of the DR bio & DIO, B added to the bio a list of prominent articles attacking DR. The pre-3/10 version of the bio had provided access to these and to DR's replies (& several concessions) to critics. The present version supplies only the attacks on DR. It has been no surprise to see that this skewed situation appears perfectly to suit VsMyth & his fellow “neutrality”-wardens, who have systematically fought against ready public access to DR's defenses against attacks on his reputation and his contentions.
The list of these DR-attacking articles should of course remain in the bio. But, outside of those which DR himself wrote (against his own former errors), these articles are largely — though not entirely — bad science (and the authors are all meagre specimens, as scientists), so Wiki readers ought to have access to DR's responses — as they did before 3/10.]

Almost immediately after anti-DR hysterics from “Eleland”, a bio-less “Chris Cooper” placed on DR Talk the claim that the DR bio evidenced self-love, though he acknowledged that DR had enough genuine accomplishments that much of the bio should stay (merely be made more neutral by an independent hand). At this point, Neutral-Marine VsMyth sarged in to take CC's side, with “Yup” — and threatened to turn the whole DR WPbio into a stub. That is not exactly the CC suggestion which he was yupping-to.
Question en-passant: isn't it remarkable that VsMyth should pop up on a non-DR Wiki article (Sagan), to continue the suppression of DIO links, which expands the effect of diminishing Wiki readers' chance to see (for themselves) DR's analyses and defenses? Also, outrage at DR by “Chris Cooper” appears almost simultaneously with that of “Eleland”. The timing is intriguingly consistent with [A] organized vandalism, and [B] the theory of a bad-CSICOP-good-CSICOP setup, where the former creates a fight and then the latter Obamaesquely “compromises” by accomplishing the main desideratum, which in this case would be super-shrinking the DIO links.
“Elkeland” scoffs at the idea of such cohesion as imaginary: see under the History of the DR Wiki bio for the July sarco-comment by “Eleland” re “plot” accompanying his neutrality-complaint. He seems unaware that DR's shunning by certain journals & academic politicians is common knowledge and has been published even by DR's most public smearer, Sky & Telescope. N.B.: Shunning doesn't work by ESP. It requires [a] communication for assent and sanctions to assure the rigid uniformity without which it vanishes; and [b] threat against both the heretic and anyone who resisted the shun. (For explicit threat not to get near DR, see Vsmith's fellow “rationalist” Stall-Wall..) Moreover, since most of those involved try to keep the shunning's existence secret — especially from the public (requiring reporters' assent, for fear of losing their archonal contacts) — shunning may accurately be called: conspiracy. The reality of the decades-long cult-shunning of a co-founder of DIO, Johns Hopkins APL Space Sciences Supervisor Rob't R. Newton, was later certified by a chief shunner (O.Gingerich), and the shunning of DR has likewise been certified by one of his shunners (Sky&Telescope 2002 Feb p.40). Thus, JHA Editor-for-Life Michael A.Hoskin's 1/4-century (1983-present) “blackballing” [MAH's own explicit, verbatim private term for his tactics, precisely confirmed by close colleagues of his] of DR threatens BOTH heretic and non-joiner, since DR in 1983 was not only a heretic but (in a carrot&stick situation) was ignoring both bribe (DIO 1.1 [1991] ‡1 n.11 [p.6]) and shun-threat — the carrot being the attempt to cajol him to join the shunning of R.Newton, an approach that seems to work smoothly with so many other historians.
[Little-pondered but inevitable realities of shunning:
[a] Academic shunners are HIDING. Hiding from encounter or debate with the shunnee — hardly necessary if the latter could be shown wrong by the former, in whatever scholarly dispute triggered the shun.
(Since the shunnee obviously seeks open debate, the act of shunning is simply punishing the shunned party out of fear of fair debate.)
[b] Since it would obviously be criminal to suppress valid scholarship, all shunning requires a concomitant pretense that the shunned's scholarship is utterly worthless. (See DIO 1.2 [1991] §H2 [pp.124-125].)
So, to sum up: the shunning of genuinely contributing figures (e.g., W.Luytens, Finn Ronne, Rob't Newton, etc) has entailed cowardice, faking, conspiracy, and slanderous deceit. None of which (though it goes on all over academe, at obvious cost to truth) appears to interest the press very often.]
Thus, the hope of ensuring a fair DR Wiki bio is submerged in an environment where there are just too many pols who fear the public's access to DR's revelations — and too many mediocre-scholarship gofers who want to syc up to said cower-operators (by helping the submersion) — as (admittedly!) their pathetic selves' sole non-miraculous hope for academic advancement.

Only 2^h37^m after Phaedrus7 responded (2008/7/25) to “Eleland” by citing lots of DIO's eminent authors & DR's prominent publications (and debunked VsMyth's bigotted delusion that Velikovsky-spoofer DR was pro-Velikovsky), cementally ineducable VsMyth (instead of admitting his gross mistake) struck out at DR again! — by re-eliminating a bunch of DIO citations from the DR bio (the few that had been restored months earlier by Pickering). He went on soon after to excise all DIO-quoted material from the Sagan Wiki article, saying: “Gee, what fun I just removed a rather trivial post [Phaedrus7's quote from DIO] …. The reference given [DIO 1.1] reads rather like a blog and seems written by someone annoyed by Sagan's criticism of Velikovsky … what does that have to do with anything?” Trivial? The Sagan quote shows (read it and judge for yourself) that he was not being exactly frank about his knowledge (at least in the 1985/12/5 Nightline appearance). Is deviousness trivial?
[Phaedrus7 posted the fact that DR has from the start and for decades been utterly anti-Velikovsky. (As VsMyth himself could have known, had he bothered to read the very same issue he was condemning: DIO 1.1 [1991] ‡1 n.18 [p.8].) But VsMyth remains as unbendingly infallible-in-his-own-mind as ever. Why bother checking facts when your own brilliance enables you to judge material by style (allegedly blog-like: but, again, judge the quality of writing and humor for yourself) instead of evidence — or by hairtrigger-inducing that DR's DIO 1.1 comments were inspired by the anger of a Velikovsky-defender! When one is an astronomical amateur of the ilk of VsMyth etc — but nonetheless desirous of condemning a source — one is reduced to complaining of style or rule-nits, thereby casting aside such trifling matters as accuracy, import, truth, creativity, testimonials, etc. Cultist minds naturally tend to operate with such tightly-blindered focus.]

What binds VsMyth&co together is a common sham: all pretending that they are just enforcing rigid rules (actually Wiki discretional recommendations at best, which VsMyth has transformed into rules), when their actual (but -unstated) purpose is to eliminate material they regard as a kind of heresy against their icons.
[DR has criticized those who call atheism a religion, so he is particularly sensitive to fanatics who seem to volunteer validation of that corny linguistic & philosophical confusion.]

The saddest part of VsMyth's tyranny is that he obviously believes he is Doing Good. Even the vandals probably think the same. (And, on balance, they may be right — given the US' growing wave of occultist bilge.) One of the reasons DR has (DIO 9.3 [1999] ‡ §§A&N1 [pp.120&135]) less patience or sentimentality than most regarding crackpottery (whom all of us are battling against) is this reality: cranks' outpourings so clutter the desks of editors, that valuable temporarily-unorthodox ore gets barely examined or is totally lost in the overwhelming gush of crud.
[Over the years DR has debunked astrologers, the ESPbrained, Velikovskians, & the Dr.Cook cult. Where he differs from most skeptics is in his willingness to scrutinize — with equal force — zany (temporarily) orthodox claims and their often-unprincipled dictatorial defenders, for the excellent reasons that
[a] these do even more harm (to potential communal academic progress) than the fringe-folk just cited; and
[b] money&conference-controlling power-operators (such as the JHA's Hoskin & Gingerich) cow most scholars into silence, so that any journal (such as DIO) with the freedom to fight censorship & shunning is obliged to do so.
See DIO 1.1 [1991] ‡1 §C4 [p.7] (a passage misconstrued as indiscriminate knee-jerk anti-orthodoxy at S&T 2002 Feb p.40).]

It is hoped that VsMyth will be relieved at the very least of his Wiki-Admin-ownership of the biography — and that a few genuinely neutral (perhaps even scientifically able) Administrators will be alerted to watch for attacks on the bio that are sure to continue if it attempts to accurately reflect and source DR's generally positive contribution to the scholarly community.

It is ghastly enough that a scientifically-underequipped Wikipedia Administrator wilfully kept mis-classifying a high-level journal, evidently in an attempt to CENSOR readers' access to its important revelations on CENSORship. But to do so in-concert with one side (the censorial, ad-hominem one) of a dispute?! — that defies and degrades the entire spirit of Wikipedia.
[One expects squabbles between individuals, but not that an Administrator would side with vandalism — and effectively join it.]

There is merit in having a detailed Wiki bio of DR. He publishes a high-level academic journal, whose nerviness towards academe — and proclivity for providing information not readily found elsewhere — parallels Wikipedia's purported independence of orthodox centrist encyclopedias. DIO even parallels Wikipedia's use of anonymity as a protection for contributors, our mutual theory being that ideas ought to be judged on their merit not their origin's eminence. As noted on every DIO's inside back cover, DIO refereeing anonymity works inversely to the usual: the contributors, not the referees have the option to be anonymous if they wish.

DR has a good many academic firsts and vindications. In the Wiki bio, his currently unaccepted proposals are clearly designated so (with evidence pro&con provided), yet their concise and competently rendered enumeration will provide scholars wide access to them in the full context of his previous record of vindications (which may or may not prove relevant). While the DIO web-page's sprawling DR-Contributions compilation was merely chronological, the Wiki summary of his scholarship is by contrast terse, subject-organized, & non-judgemental.
[Most recent major edits to DR WParticle
: [a] Add a sadistic link (2009/7/5 by “Mhym”) to the WP bio of embattled Nick Kollerstrom (co-author of Scientific American's 2004 Dec exposure of the Brit theft of Neptune), which pays no attention to Nick's adept physical capture of the prime document of the Neptune case.
[b] Regrouping 2009/8/11 by “Rursus” of DR's academic contributions, shrinking the apparent percentage of scientific work, as if ancient astronomy is of no utility for science. Though there is little need as yet, we may for future reference counter the re-grouping ploy by (for convenience) grouping all vandals on DR-related WP articles as “Stall-Wall” — since, after all, he's hardly the lone figure he fakes it as.]

Further on the matter of DR WPbio structure: anyone consulting a DR discovery in one area of scholarship may (if its article is linked to the DR bio) find himself interested in another area of DR's wide-ranging detective work. Why stub out that progressive possibility?

But if the cost of maintaining the DR WPbio is that DIO people stay silent about academic crimes, then it will inevitably be removed or gutted.