Talk:List of Misplaced Pages controversies

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Issues

So many issues with this article, where do I even begin. Let's see, I guess i'll start from the simplest and go toward the more complicated.

1. There are several statements in the article that are not properly referenced and, since they are statements making an opinion about something on behalf of an outside group, they especially need to be referenced. I have tagged those with citation needed tags.

2. The references. Referencing another Misplaced Pages article, even if it is the About page, isn't really useful for anything. Nor is saying "See also" to another Misplaced Pages page in the references. Just include the relevant references that are used on those other pages. There are also several uses of primary sources, which in an article like this that is giving opinions, should really be avoided as much as possible. There are also sources of questionable reliability for this subject (Daily Mail) or of known non-neutrality for the subject (Violet Blue) that's being presented as a neutral source. Then there are the unreliable sources (Misplaced Pages Review).

3. In turn, these references of questionable reliability are being used to prop up non-neutral language. In fact, quite obviously POV language. The most explicitly obvious POV being in the line "Misplaced Pages administrator and community liaison Oliver Keyes wrote a blog post ridiculing Roth for his approach, but supplied no viable alternative", where the reference for this is the blog post itself, clearly showing that the writing is meant to be POV without any attached reference. There are a number of other such examples throughout the article.

4. In total, it adds up to an article that can be easily viewed as having been constructed to be POV from the get-go, using shoddy references and POV language to push the reader toward a certain viewpoint.

Though I do note that a lot of this language can be attributed to IP 174.141.213's edits. Silverseren 07:11, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I can only speak to your point number 2, since it complains about my use of a wikilinked article after the phrase "see also" in the references. This footnote falls under WP:EXPLNOTE. It's not supporting anything, it's merely explanatory. I would have used the {{further}} template, which I assume you would have had no problem with, but it seemed to overwhelm the single bullet point. Also, it seemed like overkill to list the referenced article in the see-alsos for the whole article, since it really only applies to that section. Do you have a better solution than this? It's certainly not an instance of a WP article cited to assert a fact. You only say it's "not useful." How so? It seems obviously useful to me.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 14:38, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I went ahead and took it out of the footnotes since it was bothering you.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:20, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Your edits were perfectly fine, I just question the editing neutrality of others that have edited the article. As for the See also thing, I feel that we should try and keep inter-Misplaced Pages articles out of reference lists. It causes a self-referential issue. Even for information that is just explanatory, I feel it would just be best to include an actual reference and have the Misplaced Pages article link be included in the article text itself. Silverseren 15:53, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

See section below for another response. I definitely agree with you about that line about "definitive proof."— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:13, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Seren, can you be a bit more specific about which parts of this article are POV? Your complaints are a bit too vague (except for some of number 2).Volunteer Marek 23:16, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

WR found definitive proof...

I removed this:

Misplaced Pages Review found definitive proof that Jordan made false claims about his academic qualifications and professional experiences on his Misplaced Pages user page.

since it doesn't seem to be sourceable and does seem to need a source. Thoughts?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:12, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Pretty much all Misplaced Pages Review info and references in the article should be removed, since the information doesn't appear to be corroborated by independent news sources. Silverseren 15:53, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

You might source something along those lines to the following passage from an independent news source: "Misplaced Pages's success has led to many sites focused on its foibles. One such site, the "Misplaced Pages Review", was the locus of much investigation into the "EssJay" scandal in which a highly ranked administrator falsified academic degrees and lied to the New Yorker", which appears in a column in The Guardian, "Inside, Misplaced Pages is more like a sweatshop than Santa's workshop". At this point I would normally engage in a little self-deprecating humor regarding the author of that column. But I've learned from past experience that such jokes are very dangerous to make on Misplaced Pages due to the peril of being taken out of context. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 12:37, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

POV

And with this edit, the IP has clearly revealed their non-neutral intent in wording. Please keep an eye out for any of their future edits to this article and revert them if they are of the same kind of non-neutral wording. Silverseren 15:59, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Do note that the IP's ISP (or they themselves) seems to be continually switching the last two digits of their number. So leaving talk page warnings is pretty much useless, as you'd be leaving them on a different one every time. I do note that they have been blocked before, fairly recently too. No idea how many other times they might have been because of the switching address. Silverseren 16:02, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

it is metropcs, which has dynamic (as fuck) IP's. there is no way of knowing which previous user of that IP made the edits that got that IP blocked. 174.141.213.27 (talk) 17:19, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

what was not neutral about those two edits? the word "copious"? please identify what was not neutral about the edits so that in the future i can avoid using whatever has upset you. 174.141.213.24 (talk) 17:18, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Notability template

I removed it in line with the template documentation, since I am "certain that enough in-depth, independent sources have been published about the subject to overcome any notability issues." Matters were not helped by the fact that the editor who added the template did not start a discussion about the issue here on the talk page. I hope that, in the future, editors templating this article will start sections here clarifying exactly what problems they think need to be addressed.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 19:30, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I think you'll be on safe ground if you deal only with issues that were dealt with by more than one RS. That's the definition of a controversy, imho. I think that this article is a good resource, but it bothers me that you have "controversies" consisting of one negative press clip. Coretheapple (talk) 04:48, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The definition of a controversy given by the OED is "Disputation on a matter of opinion; the contending of opponents one with another on a subject of dispute; discussion in which opposite views are advanced and maintained by opponents." In other words, there have to be at least two contending schools of thought. Many of the entries are not controversies. For example, the Seigenthaler incident was a hoax. Everyone seems to agree that it was a deliberate deception which should have been caught and corrected. So, where's the controversy? Genuine controversies tend not to be isolated incidents as, by their nature, they take some time to debate and resolve. For example, some educators support the use of Misplaced Pages and some oppose it. This is a complex matter which is taking time to work out. Incidents of scholarly use and abuse are material in that debate; they are not the actual controversy. Warden (talk) 07:22, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

It seems that the use of Controversy in this instance has precedence across 100s of other wikipedia articles. John lilburne (talk) 09:38, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Our article controversy starts by defining the concept: "Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view.". This seems to confirm my point. The examples which follow in your link likewise confirm the point. Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy is about free-speech vs Moslem taboo. Creation–evolution controversy is about the religious vs scientific views of the origin of species. The incidents presented here do not have this character; they just seem to be one-sided mud-slinging, contrary to WP:NPOV. Warden (talk) 11:15, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

And this is about what? And this is about what? All of it is about someone taking exception to some isolated thing that someone has said or done. Which is exactly what the list is doing, it is pointing to things that wikipedia has said or done. It is the instances where wikipedia is used by people either inside wikipedia or external to wikipedia have used wikipedia to advance a POV/COI, or where internal wikipedia policies have resulted in unforeseen consequences in the outside world. When fly-by vandalism can result in some national football team gets called Sand Monkeys in otherwise respected news sources, when someone gets labelled as an assassin, when people are credited with having done something they didn't do, and when false factoids get published externally as truths then that those are not isolated instances. That my friend is your prolonged dispute, that it is affects isolated individuals and isolated external articles does not mitigated the fact that the vandalism, POV/COI and the rest is a continuous pollution of the external world. John lilburne (talk) 13:38, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Your first example, Rape and pregnancy controversies in United States elections, 2012, is detritus from last year's electioneering, contrary to WP:SOAP. One can find plenty of junk like that in Misplaced Pages, hence WP:OSE, but when you start ranting about "continuous pollution" then you well demonstrate what's going on here. Warden (talk) 14:29, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

IOW it is wikipedia controversy. Is it not educational to provide authors and journalists a list of times when their fellow scribblers had been caught out by vandalism in WP articles? John lilburne (talk) 15:20, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not a controversy just because you want to make it one. Other organs such as The Guardian are notorious for their errors. Do we have a list of the errors made by that or other news media? As everyone makes errors, wouldn't compilations of them tend to be indiscriminate? And don't we all agree that errors are bad and best avoided? Still not seeing the controversy. Warden (talk) 16:15, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The Gruniad doesn't fills its pages with statements, presented as facts, that X is an assassin whilst simultaneously denying any responsibility for such statements. Comparing the unwittingly publishing of errors by those and having legal responsibility for such errors, with the deliberate insertions of falsehoods by those hiding behind immunity, is a rather controversial position to take, and one that most people would feel to be quite bizarre. John lilburne (talk) 18:12, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

There does seem some definitional confusion, and a lot of lumping different kinds of things together. It would be more useful if it was split into related lists. One would be List of hoaxes on Misplaced Pages (which, oddly, is currently a cross-namespace redirect to Misplaced Pages:List of hoaxes on Misplaced Pages) - that's quite a few items here. Another would be something like "List of people who were reported in national media as editing Misplaced Pages for their own benefit" (or something in that direction) - that's quite a few items here. Clear those out, and the remaining items would be easier to evaluate, to maybe split the list further, or else provide a workable definition of "controversy" for the purposes of the list. Rd232 11:48, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I think that what perhaps may be happening is that some of us are conflating a controversy within Misplaced Pages that gets outside coverage to genuine controversies that people outside Misplaced Pages would care about. BP is a good example of the latter. Most of this article is a list of the former, and really doesn't belong as an article anywhere in Misplaced Pages. Trust me, people outside Misplaced Pages don't give a damn about internal intrigue. You can distinguish easily the latter from the former by the number of media outlets that talk about it. Coretheapple (talk) 15:43, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

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