ShamansDrum's Profile

Here’s the full story as I understand it

Becky Northey has ambitiously chased the word “arborsculpture” all over the web in order to misinform people that the word has not fallen into general usage.

The word “arborsculpture” was coined by Richard Reames about 15 years ago. He never capitalized it, called it “the arborsculpture method”, or did anything similar to imply that it is a term for his method. The world needed a word for the sort of 3-D pleaching done by Erlandson and others, so Reames made up a useful term that easily gives a sense of what it refers to.

Over time, it became a popular term. Numerous published articles refer to the work of Axel Erlandson and others as “arborsculpture.” Some of these are in notable publications such as Popular Science and Science Frontiers, or are related to the relevant departments at respected universities.

Archive's on the talk page of Wikipedia’s “tree shaping” article documents dozens of occurrences of “arborsculpture” as a generic term. If the person who invented the term, and the world at large, consider a term to be generic, there is no logical reason why 1 or 2 people should be able to override that and tell us it is not.

I haven’t seen any evidence that Reames has exerted improper influence in promoting the use of this word. Like any author and lecturer interested in income, he does self-promote, but I haven’t seen evidence that he does so in a way that should provoke criticism.

Becky Northey considers Reames’ methods inferior to her own, apparently because they can involve the bending of relatively hardened wood versus the bending of the younger, softer wood she prefers.

Therefore, I conclude, that Northey’s obsession with suppressing the widely-used term “arborsculpture” is driven by her professional rivalry with Reames.

After manipulating the Wikipedia article “tree shaping” to serve this agenda (despite policies against editing articles when a conflict of interest exists), Northey left posts on numerous internet forums referring people to the Wikipedia article as supposed proof of her assertions.

Northey’s has even managed to get well-meaning Wikipedians to avoid the word “arborsculpture” on the grounds it’s “controversial. It’s amazing (and sad) the influence one single person with skewed thought processes and a mania for advancing them can accomplish. On the surface, there’s no harm in avoiding the word “arborsculpture” just to keep Northey happy. But Wikipedia is supposed to be objective resource. Instead, it has become part of Northey’s greater effort across numerous internet forums, comment boards, etc.

In the comments above, someone referred to Northey’s efforts as cyberstalking. This caused someone else to say very correctly “Commenting on one blog is hardly cyber stalking, it’s voicing an opinion.” Becky Northey, however, has made countless of posts as part of a systematic effort to assert that “arborsculpture” is the name for what she considers an inferior method of tree shaping. I would deem that cyberstalking.

If you don’t believe me, Google “Northey arborsculpture” and wade through the results. As for evidence of arborsculpture as a generic term used by numerous authors, search the net yourself or see the proof already gathered in Archive #4 of the talk page of the “tree shaping” article on Wikipedia.

Why someone should go to such great efforts to create the impression that “arborsculpture” isn’t a generic term does puzzle me a little. My best guess is that it is driven by her animosity towards Reames and a belief that people using the term benefits Reames in some enormous way. From what I can see, it doesn’t. It looks like Reames only lectures a few times a year, and he doesn’t sell a ton of books either.

But if Reames can derive a little prestige, and perhaps some beer money, from having coined a useful word, why begrudge him that? Whether people say “the Pooktre method of tree shaping” or the “the Pooktre methods of arborsculpture” doesn’t affect Northey’s livelihood. She should therefore stop harassing Reames and channel that energy into the positive goals of refining her own methods, implementing them, and sharing them with the world.