Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 01:48, 12 January 2007

Farmers Insurance saved my life!

Come on, with a little civility, we can have a decent article. If you want to post legitimate criticism, fire away, but save the editorializing and rumor-mongering for your gripe sites and personal blogs... I did not remove the entire criticism section, only the paragraph lifted word for word from the gripe site. Our friend M4J did that for us.Buzzards39 01:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I apologize for removing your paragraph but your response was not ridiculous enough. If a few people want to be childish I can play along. Your paragraph was very well articulated and right on. It was the cute summary of Farmers that got my attention; I didn’t realize you were the only one trying to be civil.

I used to think Misplaced Pages was a useful tool… Until I read this. I don’t know who published this cute article on Farmers and I don’t care. Now that I know this is the MySpace of encyclopedias I will treat it that way.

The fact remains that thousands of people consult Misplaced Pages for unbiased, objective information. In the last several weeks, a straightforward entry on an insurance company has been hijacked by the person who runs a gripe site against Farmers. I am doing him the courtesy of leaving in specific examples that he cites, but a comment such as "Worst Insurance Company in the USA", lifted word for word. from his site, is subjective at best. The other goblin is Paul Drockton, AKA "Mormons 4 Justice", a formers Farmers manager who has been on a jihad against all things Farmers the past several months over a dispute dating back to 2002. He has posted on several forums and has a web blog. His main issues seem to be supposed religious discrimination against himself and disagreements with his congressman, who he blames for his story not getting any traction.Buzzards39 05:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

If you think he was a former farmers manager I have some ocean front property for sale in Arizona. This guy is from Arlington TX. The same city and state I am live in today. Go to his NEW domain www.farmersinsurancesucks.com formally www.boycottfarmersinsurance.com. Per his website: he received a cease and desist order so he changed his domain to www.farmersinsurancesucks.com. He thinks that there is a conspiracy involving farmers insurance and his claim. The reality is that he needs a job. As far as fair and unbiased I don’t think that’s possible. I agree with you, thousands of people depend on this site for reliable information. I was one of them. Then I see this article which I know to be completely false. You said it yourself he hijacked this article. I am not a regular wikipedia editor, however I do know this article is not biased. What are you suggesting that I do? Let someone use wikipedia as t heirtool of misinformation and slander. I feel that I was pretty liberal to leave half of the article that is in red. I only removed what I know to be false.

What I cannot stand are people who abuse the anonymity of e-commerce. It is people like him who ruin it for everyone because they can hide behind a PC to say things they would never say in person.

The gentleman from Texas posts the criticism articles. As misleading as I consider them to be, if they are based on facts and do not editorialize, they would seem to be acceptable on Misplaced Pages. M4J is based in Utah and posts the Cannon/Abramoff/Farmers rumors. He thinks that Farmers and his congressman (Cannon) have conspired and spent millions of dollars to ruin his life. Run a Google on "Mormons 4 Justice" and you will see how far and wide he has taken his claims. And now he has found Wikipdia. I'll give you one thing, the fellow is persistent, if more than a bit Quixotic.Buzzards39 14:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Criticism section reduced significantly

I removed a bunch of the more in-depth stories that while referenced properly seem outside the scope of an encyclopedia article. Neutrality doesn't mean we cannot write negative material, and I find it hard to believe that there is no positive material out there...and if we need to add a bunch of positive feel good stuff to balance Ethel Adams etc then the article spins off into another world. I'm willing to discuss this with other editors and see if we can come to a reasonable balance to turn this into a quality article for the encyclopedia.

In addition, I removed the EL to farmersinsurancesucks.com. Aside from having an overt bias, it was not itself a primary source but instead was a clearinghouse of links to possibly primary sources. Regards. Syrthiss 20:36, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• Removing criticism that is cited is not the answer to improving this article. The criticism articles were in national news and had an effect on others. Would you go and delete criticism of Enron or Worldcom to cover up their mis-steps also? Criticism is just as important as the core information about this company. The link to the gripe site provides another prospective about this company and and has links to legitimate articles and lawsuits concerning Farmers Insurance. Router 22:42, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, in comparison to State Farm Insurance, the criticism section as restored by you is too "in depth". I certainly don't mind something like:

"There are several instances of consumers being denied claims , and former State Farms adjusters stated "There's so much pressure on you to settle for the least possible amount" . In at least one case above though, Farmer's did indeed eventually pay the claim ."

...which has an encyclopedic tone, with proper sources. One of the sites I removed https://secure.farmersclass.com/clients/farmersclass/ gets a 404 error both from my work and from home, so its a useless citation (which is why I removed it and its paragraph). There's no reason to have the 'farmersinsurancesucks' site linked if we have proper, sourced criticism. Per WP:EL and WP:RS is should be removed. If you need a precedent, someone tried to add www.jaythejoke.com to Jay Mariotti and even to make an article about it. Both the link in the article and the article on jaythejoke were removed as not being a qualified reliable source that supported information in the text. Syrthiss 22:10, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

• I updated the Bell v Farmers Link, will look for citations for the others when time is available. This is in depth because it is more of an encyclopedia not a dictionary. I did look at the Jay Mariotti article and the citation was badly written and appropriately removed. The external link was removed by an IP address without any comment. I think the external link that was critical of Mariotti is appropriate and should not have been deleted. Router 21:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
• In regards to the external link critical of Farmers Insurance, "On articles with multiple points of view, the number of links dedicated to one point of view should not overwhelm the number dedicated to other equal points of view, nor give undue weight to minority views. Avoid undue weight on particular points of view. Router 17:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Coming here in response to a note on WP:AN/I, the criticisms section didn't read like a balanced criticisms section should. The problem was a mixture of how it was set out (a long list of complaints rather than prose) and some POV wording. I've put the list into a tighter prose format, which now doesn't convey the POV feel of the original, but has the same information, laid out in a way that avoids these. FT2 01:48, 12 January 2007 (UTC)