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Helping you to sip from the information firehose
The Church of Scientology (TM) is the fastest-growing religion on Earth, according to the Church of Scientology; and like many fast-growing religions, they are aggressive at self-promotion. I took a look at their web site, and was struck by the fact that they have an entire web page just to hold all the web awards they've won. I decided to take a look through the impressive list, to see if I could find out how one site could get so much critical acclaim.
The first award is "The Dandelion Web Award". Nice little logo, let's go see who else has won the award...
Well, it looks as if the Dandelion award is a personal thing issued by one Kevin Taylor. And who has won this prestigious prize? Well, firstly there's the Scientology web page and the "Rogue's Gallery of A.R.S. Bigots" -- though the latter doesn't seem to exist, or if it does Kevin doesn't link to it. (A.R.S. is of course alt.religion.scientology).
Taking a look at Kevin's own web page we find his poems, and a glossary of words he uses in them. The glossary has an entry for "theta", explaining that it "means spirit, soul, the 'you' that you are". Well, unless I'm mistaken that's a definition straight from the Church of Scientology, so it looks like Kevin might just be a Scientologist.
Another Dandelion award went to David Allio's "Fine Photography Portfolios", which Kevin mysteriously doesn't provide a link to. Could it be the same David Allio who specializes in pictures of naked women in the countryside? I think it could. Don't worry, though, it's all philosophically and religiously sound, and not just a bunch of nudie pics.
The final Dandelion award winner is The Orchid Lady's web page. She seems to exist and not have anything to do with Scientology; perhaps Kevin really liked her poems.
On to the next award on the Scientology site, "The Silver Cup Award for Web Excellence". This one's hosted on a personal home page on GeoCities, which gives you an idea of how prestigious it is. The award seems to be the work of the Feltners, a quilt-sewing family who are deeply concerned about missing children. It took me a while to find their listing for the Scientology web site, but once I'd passed "Welcome to Hamster World", I found it on page six. Looks like the Dianetics (TM) site won an award too, they must be so proud.
Award number three points at Will's Movie Star Fan Page, also on Geocities. Will's list of the top 30 winners of his award doesn't include the Church of Scientology, so presumably Scientology wasn't as inspiring as "Poems, Pleasures and Promises" or "Down On The Farm With Granny".
How about the award from MultiReviews? Well, it appears to be genuine; however, the site no longer lists web reviews on its main page, so it looks as though they're out of the reviewing business. Well, I say "they"; actually, if you check the Internic's whois database or hunt around on the site for long enough, you'll find that it's a personal web site run entirely by Danny Robert Brooks.
Award number five is the Silver Cup Award For Extreme... wait a minute, I'm getting a feeling of déjà vu here. It's the same award all over again. Then there's Will's Award again, and MultiReviews again.
Now, I'm pretty imaginative, but I can't imagine the Scientologists thought nobody would notice if they just repeated the same awards over and over again. Let's put it down to a bug in their HTML editor.
Next up, a WISE (TM) award. WISE, we are told, stands for "Web Integrated Strategic Environments". It's an award given by Mansfield and Associates, who have developed web sites for many professional clients including the Sync Research, MiLAN Technology, Sechrist Industries, TeleProcessing Products Online, the AmeriCorps National Service Resource Center, www.complete-support.com, and Microsoft. Previous winners of the WISE awards include Sync Research, MiLAN Technology, Sechrist Industries, TeleProcessing Products Online, the AmeriCorps National Service Resource Center, www.complete-support.com, and Microsoft. I'm sure it's just a coincidence -- after all, Microsoft have won the award three times and MiLAN have won it twice.
Of course, WISE is also the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises. In fact, WISE is a trademark of the Scientologists, so I imagine they could have sued Mansfield and Associates for trademark infringement if they had wanted to. I'm sure they worked it out amicably, though; it certainly looks as if they're on good terms, what with M+A giving the Scientology web site an award. Strangely enough, it looks as if Mansfield and Associates stopped issuing WISE awards in 1997...
The Humming Award for a Humming Good Page. Well, fancy that, it's Linda the Orchid Lady again! The list of award winners includes many other big names, like The Cockatiel Page and Veronica's Beanie Baby Page. I'm afraid I didn't have the stamina to read through the rest of the award winners to find the Church of Scientology: it looks as if 205 sites have won the award in July 1998 alone.
Point Communications' Top 5% of the Web. Unfortunately, it looks as if pointcom.com is blank; obviously the web awards business wasn't a profitable one.
A NetGuide Gold Site! I hurried to the NetGuide site and did a search on "scientology".
Search Results
Found no suitable matches for the term "scientology"
I see. Well, I'm sure they were mentioned there once.
A kEwL (sic) Site Award.
404 File Not Found
File Not Found
The requested URL /kewl/ was not found on this server.
Oh dear.
A Walking The World Wide Web Premier Site! Unfortunately vmedia.com seems not to have a valid DNS entry, just a whois entry pointing at a hotmail mailbox.
A QR Award-Winning Site, a Family Jewel Award winner -- and a couple more "404 Not Found" pages I'm afraid. It looks as if the Global Entrepreneurs Network and The Family Jewels are no longer in the web awards business.
They're a Ravi's Pick Elite Site. If you're wondering who Ravi is, well, an AltaVista web search will turn up the answer. He's a 16 year old who gives out awards in order to get links to his home page. The Scientologists seem to have backed down on their side of the deal, though.
The Scientology web site is also a Magellan Four Star Site. Magellan was bought out by Excite -- but still, it's a genuine award, so why don't they link to The McKinley Group site? Perhaps they don't like the review they were given, which says "A full examination of the religion is viewed from all angles including opposing views, of which there are many."
Finally, a Best Of The Net award from EZ Connect (sic). Another genuine award, and this time they link to it.
So here's the final breakdown of those 18 awards:
I'm prepared to accept that Scientology may have some merits as a religion -- which is more than many are willing to do -- but doesn't the awards page look a little bit sad and embarrassing? It's like the priest who tries to persuade teenagers that he's 'hip' and 'with it' by playing old Bay City Rollers tunes on his acoustic guitar.
Perhaps it's time for me to start giving out web awards. Yeah, let's have Mathew's Award For Web Sites Which Are Obviously Desperate To Have Lots Of Awards But Can't Get Any. I see a great need.
mathew
Scientology, Dianetics, WISE and a zillion other things are acknowledged trademarks of the Church of Scientology. Check their web site for a complete list.
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Last updated: Wednesday, 30-Nov-2005 17:06:10 CST
