Misplaced Pages

Please take a moment to review the simple guide and join the discussion. Thank you! EarwigBot  23:21, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Pharmaceutical Industry

Hi Slim, As we have been unable to resolve our differences, I have posted a request for dispute resolution which you can see here. Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Pharmaceutical Industry. Albert Bertheim Talk page

I have also posted a summary of my position on the Pharmaceutical Industry Talk page. I suspect you will want to do the same.

Respectfully, Alfred Bertheim (talk) 23:24, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Frankenstein's Cat: Bioengineering The Animals Of The Future

I think you would find this NPR interview interesting:

"In her new book, Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts, science journalist Emily Anthes talks about how the landscape of bioengineering has expanded since Dolly the Sheep was cloned in 1996. Scientists, she says, are now working to create pigs that can grow organs for human transplant, goats that produce valuable protein-rich milk, and cockroaches that could potentially serve as tiny scouts into danger zones for the military...."

Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 06:16, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. A mouse that buries marbles endlessly. :-/ SlimVirgin 20:20, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Infoboxes:

I've archived the debate . Nothing more productive was going to come, and the majority approved the motion that info boxes are not always necessary. Seems a good compromise.  Giano  19:12, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

It's fine by me. SlimVirgin 19:24, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

COI template

I have initiated a discussion at Village Pump Proposals regarding applying Template:COI editnotice more broadly, in order to provide advice from WP:COI directly onto the article Talk page. Your comment, support or opposition is invited. Cheers. CorporateM (Talk) 19:44, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Wilhelm Reich

Just a quick note to say that the Wilhelm Reich GA review is coming soon. My web connection has been fickle for a few days, but I am sorting it out. Though not as early as promised, will have some comments out this week. Thanks! EricEnfermero 13:38, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Responded

Hi SlimVirgin,
I have left you a note on my user talk page for this account. Thank you. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 22:25, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Paid editors

It is good to have you at the BP article. I have been concerned about paid editors ever since my experience with Silverseren at the Cracker Barrel article. Also, please see topic #24 at the Chevron Corporation article where I say, I have spent several hours to familiarize myself with this environmental disaster. I've never worked on an article where it was acceptable for a controversial section of a corporation article to be completely rewritten as the corporate rep has done in this case. I think that it should go without saying that this is completely unacceptable for Misplaced Pages. I find the rewrite a brazen attempt to bias our readers to the Chevron viewpoint rather than an unbiased telling of this unfolding incident. This paid editor has gotten rid of the Independent, the BBC, Reuters, and CBS and replaced them with court documents and Forbes." All it would take would be for a person such as Silverseren to round up a crew to get this paid version into the article. Gandydancer (talk) 23:44, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it's unacceptable, and I'm thinking about raising it somewhere. I'm not yet sure where, or what information to include. Apparently the BP rep went through OTRS and someone there (Ocaasi) referred the rep to Rangoon, even though both Ocaasi and Rangoon had worked together on the article before, and Rangoon's edits there and elsewhere are somewhat contentious. So that referral seems problematic to me, but I haven't read all the archives, and I feel I should do that before I can comment further. But anyway, bottom line: these companies should not be writing their own articles (directly or by proxy), and if they are, we should signal that to the reader with a box at the top of the article. (I'm not suggesting anyone should create such a box; I'm just thinking out loud that for some articles it might be the only ethical way forward.) SlimVirgin 23:57, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Just to clarify a point, Arturo at BP posted on the article talk page and the COI noticeboard asking for help; as far as I know it did not go through OTRS. I have worked with Rangoon before; it was in the midst of the Deepwater Horizon spill and we significantly reorganized a pretty messy article amidst a lot of incoming media coverage. I believe the coverage was very fair, perhaps even overemphasizing the recent disaster. The only changes we made together involved how to structure the litany of such incidents in the company's past. I think we improved that structure. I haven't been following Arturo's work with Rangoon, I just know that he's doing it as transparently as one could and going through the talk pages as we've suggested such editors should. Slim we do have a Template:Connected_contributor if you think that's appropriate. (I haven't had a chance to look at your idea yet but am glad you posted it.) Cheers, Ocaasi 01:12, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I understood from one of your posts that, via OTRS, you had referred BP to Rangoon11. You wrote: "Typically for OTRS requests I first investigate the claims myself and see if it's something minor I can handle. If it involves anything complex or controversial I'll look for an active, non-POV pushing editor at the article's talk page/history whom I respect to put the person in touch with. At BP that person was Rangoon11 ..."

As for the box, it's worse than a connected contributor. It's BP writing the article on BP. That should never happen, but it's being facilitated by editors who are posting BP's drafts word-for-word into the article (e.g. ). Silver seren has now advised the BP rep to "ignore them," apparently referring to Wikipedians who are objecting, and to answer only Silver seren's questions. So really it could not be more problematic. SlimVirgin 01:48, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Embarassingly, Slim, for my error and how unbelieveable it may sound to correct it, the Arturo to Rangoon handoff I alluded to didn't happen through OTRS, on Wiki, or off it. I admit I was under a bit of pressure with your questioning and mixed up the particulars. While I have led representatives to active talk page editors in the past, and would have thought to do the same in this case, it's not what happened. Looking through the history, to my knowledge, Arturo contacted Rangoon directly here and used the COI noticeboard here. Rangoon replied here. I checked my talk page and email history and see I hadn't spoken with Arturo until this past month when I asked him through email for an interview about his experiencing working on the BP article. That said, I likely would have trusted Rangoon's judgement and hadn't seen any behavior from him before that was concerning, so in this case I mistook the spirit of your question for the details. Checking the OTRS archives could probably confirm we hadn't heard from Arturo (at least I hadn't). My apologies for that weird confusion; it might have made the situation sound worse than it was. Although, regardless of how Arturo found Rangoon, he did, and the article draft that came out of that process is still concerning to you, so I don't think these details ultimately have any effect on the current discussion. Also note that this has gone through Dispute Resolution Noticeboard, so it's hand a good run of back and forth.

We also have Template:COI. "Use this tag to indicate that an article is biased or has other serious problems as a direct result of the editing done by the subject of the article or a person with a close connection to the subject (e.g., professional public relations staff). Do not use this tag unless there are significant or substantial problems with the article's neutrality as a result of the contributor's involvement. Like the other pov tags, this tag is not meant to be a badge of shame. Do not use this tag if you can quickly solve the problem, e.g., by removing peacocking and puffery or by reverting the blanking of well-sourced criticism. Like the other neutrality-related tags, this tag may be removed by any editor after the problem is resolved, if the problem is not explained on the article's talk page, and/or if no current attempts to resolve the problem can be found."

I think "ignore them" is never wise advice. We're all accountable to critics and it's part of consensus to address those concerns. I still think we're going to have to figure out when it's appropriate to object merely for a process violation rather than for a content objection. "The company wrote it" is a persuasive but not sufficient criticism if the draft is neutral and well-sourced and has been through review from any editors at the talk page who want to comment. This strikes me as a typical dispute...the article should be more or less frozen while discussion continues and editors bring more thoughts, sources, and suggestions to the talk page.

I suppose there's a related WP:BURDEN question one could ask. Is the burden on the corporate representative to prove their draft is neutral, or on the talk page critics who question its bias to counter with opposing sources? I don't think we have clear guidance on that, but it might be useful. Ocaasi 02:18, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for explaining that, and no worries if you made a mistake. I'm glad it was a mistake; I was starting to get concerned about OTRS being used in that way. I can't agree with you about Rangoon11, though; his editing at these articles is problematic. I won't say more, because I don't like to see editors being criticized on user talk pages without being invited to take part, but I don't particularly want that discussion here.

As for BURDEN, articles have to reflect the body of literature that's out there. For an article like BP, that involves a ton of reading. Very few of these editors are in a position to say whether BP's drafts reflect that body of literature, because they're not familiar with it themselves; there are some knowledgeable people on the talk page, but they're not the ones adding BP's drafts (that I have seen). To say "we should add BP's text unless we find mistakes in it," is to completely misunderstand what neutrality means on Misplaced Pages. SlimVirgin 02:40, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

(Yes, to be fair, I notified Rangoon on his talk page of our discussion last week). I always interpreted his approach as lacking an agenda to either criticize or promote corporations; I appreciated how he wanted to give controversies attention but not at the exclusion of other aspects of the company. I still think that's a fair approach, but of course disagreements about WP:WEIGHT are challenging and easy to interpret differently, even moreso when a COI editor is involved. If this was not a COI editor situation, we would demand that someone demonstrate proper weight by citing more and better sources. You're saying that's not feasible here, so it's not going to be simple to resolve.

I think I understand why you want to exclude corporate representatives from the drafting process as such, but what mechanism would you suggest that would still allow one to give input? Are you saying they shouldn't participate on talk pages either, or yes but not with full drafts? What's the process look like instead? And if we're very strongly discouraging direct editing, then is not responding to talk page suggestions defensible or reasonable? If we don't respond to talk pages are we going to nudge folks back underground to edit in secret? I'm not sure I see the alternative yet, except for the kind of robust debate that's going on right now out in the open. (Oh yes, you posted an idea on my talk page. I'll get to that this week when I can give it some time. Win-win would be great if you have found one). Ocaasi 03:16, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

EDIT CONFLICT  ::::::Thanks so much SlimVirgin, it is good to see that somebody understands the situation. When I read Ocassi's post I almost could've wept. Why on earth should the paid editor's rewrite be held superior to what we've been able to put together, imperfect though it may be, to the point that we need to spend endless hours picking his version apart? Furthermore, there is a lot more than just the facts of what is written, it is how the facts are presented when just one word or lack of it can completely change the tone of what is being presented. Ect. Gandydancer (talk) 03:27, 18 March 2013 (UTC) Occasi's more recent post leaves me at a loss for words... And of course the great trust that s/he puts in Rangoon is just mind boggling. Gandydancer (talk) 03:27, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Slim, if we can use BP as a case study I'd like to continue to try and draw out best practices (or practices to avoid) for these kinds of situations. I don't know what they are, frankly, I just know I generally prefer corporate representatives acting transparently rather than in secret. Cheers, Ocaasi 04:21, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Slim Virgin, I did go back and look at BPs edit/talk record and I found that Ocaasi did work extensively with Rangoon on the BP article. It does concern me that at Ocaasi's final edit on Jan 6, 2011, the lead included this info on the BP spill incident, or more accurately did not include any information on the spill, the worst environmental disaster on record in the US other than the Dust Bowl: BP's track record of corporate social responsibility has been mixed. The company has been involved in a number of major environmental and safety incidents and received criticism for its political influence. It is my opinion that Osaasi is either intentionally biased or easily misled and naive. I believe the latter. Generally one should never go into a discussion of other editor's motives, etc., but I did note that editor Ocaasi has suggested that your view fringes on "conspiracy", so it seems to me to be appropriate. Gandydancer (talk) 14:02, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Please keep in mind the context of that period. We had an article on BP, the hundred year old company, which was being absolutely deluged with information about Deepwater Horizon. Keeping that incident treated with appropriate scale and not becoming a news article on the single (enormous) disaster was an intentional attempt to remain balanced and neutral. The article was also a mess, and I simply organized the history of controversies into Safety, Political, and Environmental categories for more easy reading. I think you're excluding the possibility that I may just have a different informed opinion on the matter... I may be naive or misled here, I accept that's a possibility, but the more likely explanation is that I stopped working at the BP article once the Deep Water Horizon incident had slowed from the news and have not followed the day to day debates at the article over the past year. My renewed interest in the BP article came about because we have a transparent corporate representative working on it through talk page suggestions; that's a model I'm interested in and want to see how it's working. Ocaasi 17:15, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Also, for reference, when I started editing this article in 2010, I was still using an IP. Here is the major reorganization I made. You can see at this time the lead had only two paragraphs, one of which was on Deepwater Horizon. This edit summarized the political, environmental and safety record. By the time of my last edit, the version mentioned the mixed safety/environmental/political record but also noted BP's pro-environment efforts. I think that version could use more detail on the scale of the disasters that have happened. I haven't been involved at BP since then, almost 2 years ago. Ocaasi 17:34, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Gandydancer, maybe I can shift this conversation towards more productive territory, noting that the battleground mentality percolating around this article isn't very productive. It's clear that you don't like or trust the work of corporate representatives, which is a reasonable and defensible position. However we're basically prohibiting such folks from directly editing and best practice at this point is direct them to talk pages to make suggestions, propose sources, and offer drafts, advising they do so with full disclosure. Arturo did disclose his COI in his username, at the article talk page, and at the COI noticeboard. How else do you think we can make this process useful and effective? It seems to me that the added scrutiny and discussion going on at the article is a good thing, despite its contentiousness. Do you have suggestions on how it could be made/done better? Ocaasi 19:11, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Ocaasi, you talk about "full disclosure," but that BP is writing the article is being hidden from the readers, arguably the only people who matter. Editors are inserting BP's words into the text (extensively) without quotation marks and without in-text attribution. BP is choosing what to highlight, choosing the sources, and choosing the words and tone. That really has to stop. SlimVirgin 19:38, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Ocaasi, yes you are correct, I have great concerns regarding paid editors. They are professional writers and they know very well how to spin information. I am dealing with that right now in the section that deals with the 2006 North Slope Alaskan spill. Arturo and BP supporters want to say "BP admitted..." while I want to phrase it "The U.S. Department of Justice disclosed that BP...". You see the difference? As for Arturo, I have nothing negative to say about him. He was only doing his job and as far as I know was open and honest in his work. My problem is a concern that more recently he has gone to WP:COIN and asked for assist which seems to have brought a new sheriff to town, if you will, and and the new sheriff has given a promise to Arturo that he can round up a posse to post his drafts if need be, so not to worry.

Ocassi, you seem to think that there are plenty of editors at the BP article to have a "robust discussion", I think were your words, but that is not the case. A corporate article is not any fun at all. Who would really want to spend hour after hour attempting to keep a corporate article from becoming nothing more that a corporate webpage filled with glowing praise? Right now at BP there is only Binksternet and I. Editor Petrarchan was with us and she did a lot of work--we both worked at the BP spill article as well and one day she just got totally fed up and left. If you happened to look at the Chevron article that I mentioned above, only two of us--I am not familiar with the other editor--objected to what I called a blatant attempt to spin the information re that company's ongoing lawsuit. He threw out all of the secondary sources and substituted a legal document that would make sense to no one. I had been watching Chevron and he had been posting his drafts but no one had responded so he went ahead and posted them in the article--they were all corporate stuff and I had no objections. But in the case of the law suit, if I and one other editor had not shown up, he would have done the same with that draft as well. In the case of that paid editor, I don't think I should be forced to work with him because I consider him to be nothing more than a goddamn crook.

Ocassi, I read some of your posts on your talk page--I'm not done yet--and it is my impression that you mean well but you really are out of touch with the reality of this situation. That's why I was so grateful when someone (Slim Virgin) came along that finally seemed to understand how perilous and urgent this situation really is. Over the years I have complained but my experience has pretty much been a you can like it or lump it--it's here to stay.

As for improving the situation, it seems that paid editing has started a whole cottage industry to spring up out there. That can't be good. And then when they arrive at our doors it seems that we all but have ambassadors of good will in place to greet them and show them around and help them out and so on... When Arturo posted at COIN editors responded with good cheer, and "let me know if you need anything!", etc. One even gave him a wikilove message. Even still, paid editors may have a place--if I were a corporation I'd want a fair shake too. But now that they are rewriting whole sections of their articles and Misplaced Pages has formed a group of editors that jump from one article to another to insert their copy into articles, that is not the way to keep our 'pedia from, as I think Slim Virgin said, nothing more than a free advertisement for their wares. Gandydancer (talk) 21:25, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure most of you already know that I have the greatest sympathy for the position of Slim and Gandydancer here. I'm afraid that this might just be a case where the letter of the rules are being followed but not the spirit. BP obviously needs to back off on inserting its interpretations and addressing matters of weight, which require independent judgement.

But BP should also know that this type of editing just cannot possibly work, either for them or Misplaced Pages. Say PBS and other national news organizations find out what they are trying to do here - they will be vilified in the press and get no PR benefit at all from this, and Misplaced Pages will be viewed as just another corporate spam mirror.

In short, if this is not a matter of rules being broken, then we need to change the rules. The discussion should likely be at WT:COI, where I'll take it (in a few hours from now) unless somebody has a better place for the discussion. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:02, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree, and it has left me wondering about BP's position in all this. There are news organizations that would have a field day with it, and both BP and Misplaced Pages would end up looking terrible. I'm reluctant to stress this too much on the talk page in case anyone interprets it as a threat to go to the media, but it does make me wonder who within BP knows that this is going on. Smallbones, I would be very grateful if you would raise it at COI. I've been thinking about where and when to raise it myself, and how to phrase it because it has several arms and legs. If you would get the ball rolling, that would be great. SlimVirgin 23:09, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

The same thing was done, as I have said, at Chevron and nobody seems at all concerned. Cracker Barrel was a total rewrite by a paid editor as well and they have not been mentioned--only BP. I also know of one other article that was a total rewrite by a paid editor. Silverseren is well aware of this and yet I note that he is apparently one of those that others go to for advice and opinions about paid editing. OrangeMike is aware of it too. Frankly it is hard for me to understand why this has been going on for so long if there is a problem. To then have Slim Virgin speak out at the BP article as though those of us that approved of Arturo's drafts are to be forgiven because we "haven't thought it through" seems a bit condesending...and irritating. Gandydancer (talk) 23:58, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

My apologies, Gandydancer, if I expressed that badly, and I wasn't thinking of you, but of the people who've been helping BP, and BP itself. I wonder whether senior people in its corporate communications department have agreed to insert company material into independent publications in a way that hides the company's involvement from the readers. That's what I mean by people not thinking it through, i.e. not realizing how bad it makes BP and Misplaced Pages look. I know it has gone on elsewhere, and it's often or always the same small group involved, some of whom seem to be connected to CREWE, though that may be incidental. Hopefully if we start a discussion about it somewhere, we can try to set some limits on it. SlimVirgin 00:16, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#BP_and_large_company_editing_in_general Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:11, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Muhammad al-Durrah incident

Hi SlimVirgin, I see you haven't edited the article in awhile, but as its primary contributor, I was hoping to gain some feedback as to your feelings regarding the Muhammad al-Durrah incident becoming a TFA on the Main Page?--Chimino (talk) 00:22, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Chimino, I wouldn't support that, for a number of reasons. The best time to have done that would have been the 10th anniversary: I didn't submit it then because it is so contentious. Also, it would have to be completely checked and updated, and that might be quite a bit of work. SlimVirgin 00:26, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I had the same reservation due to the subject matter. It's a wonderful article, still. Thanks for the response.--Chimino (talk) 03:09, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Transition begun for wp:CS1 Lua cites

The replacement and transition began, on 16 March 2013, to use Lua script in some wp:CS1-style cite templates. The good news is that the Lua-based cites have been optimized as much faster, almost 10x times faster than the prior 2012 {cite_web} which had COinS metadata, now restored in the Lua versions. For a large article, with 350 cites, those will be formatted within 3 seconds with Lua (rather than 18-35 seconds). The bad news is that the Lua modules are extremely complex for most people to read (or modify for future features), involving unusual data structures not found in many other computer languages. Plus, as I had feared earlier, some of the Lua-literate editors could adopt a "Luattitude" where they do not respond easily to questions about Lua limitations. This can become a difficult combination, because as more half-readable markup templates are "complified" into Lua-script versions, there is the danger of a growing two-worlds view about template usage, and the potential for a real condescending attitude towards people who do not know "Luaspeak" with its obtuse syntax. Hence, we might need "Lua ambassadors" who feel a need to bridge the two worlds and help to relate issues between template users and Lua programmers. Fortunately, some parts of Lua modules can be kept simple, where many other editors could alter parts of those modules without having a "Lua PhD" spanning all the complex features. Meanwhile, I am beginning to sense the frustration of Galileo, when the Church leaders insisted he write everything in formal Latin, but he wanted to write in Italian for the common people to read, and eventually smuggled his Italian writings out, through help from friends, to teach the world the principles of the "Father of modern physics". Because small markup-based templates are many times faster than Lua functions, then there is no talk (yet) of Lua-only scripts, but the pressure is there to foment a "template language war" in some cases. I cannot count all the times I have seen computer guys in language wars, transitioning from one computer language to another. As long as we can focus on civility, I think the ongoing transition to Lua can be reasonable. -Wikid77 04:09, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

RfC regarding inclusion of a subsection of Metaphilosophy in the article on Philosophy

An RfC concerning addition of a subsection to Philosophy can be found at this location. Please comment upon its inclusion and any modifications you think would help make it better. Brews ohare (talk) 20:46, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

And the 2013 Milo Minderbinder of the Year Award goes to...

SlimVirgin!!!

The companies would pay this independent body, and that body would take a percentage and pass the rest to the Wikipedian. Companies would have no say over who is given assignments, so that editors did not feel they had to comply with the company's wishes for fear of never being given another one. Sorry, there were no Catch 22 photos so I had to take this one which took the photographer four hours to catch. Happy editing Slim--Misplaced Pages is lucky to have people like you. Keep on baiting those traps and helping Misplaced Pages to keep the rat population down to a minimum! Gandydancer (talk) 13:50, 19 March 2013 (UTC)