Talk:Abuse/Archive 1

Move
I moved the old version of this article to Abuse/old and restarted with a basic definition. I will try to move some of the more encyclopedic information from the old one to this one over the next day or two. Feel free to help out or add. DJ Clayworth 21:23, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Abuse Template
The tag is being inserted into a lot of articles where IMV it is unhelpful. Does anyone know where it originates from? The Land 14:20, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Where the heck is this remplate located, seriously. Dan B † Dan D  04:14, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Incest and not homosexuality or beastiality?
I have nothing against both homosexuals and those who have an incest relationship (although both are a bit "sick" to me) but why is incest on the list? If we have incest on the list why don't we put homosexuality? I think that is a double standard. I think either we should remove incest or keep it along with homosexuality. What do you think? Zachorious 04:18, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Consensual incest is vanishingly rare: the overwhelming majority of cases are of child abuse by an adult relative. Dan B † Dan D  20:03, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Unsourced and unverifiable. In any case, abusive incest is already include by 'Sexual abuse', so I'm removing it. The way, the truth, and the light 05:58, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Eagerness to label
Thanks to various clinicians who are compelled to find a label for any and every human social/emotional difficulty, "abuse" may be used too readily. The minimum criteria for physical, verbal, and emotional abuse, particularly can be very elastic. Early in the 21st Century, there is great concern for the victim and there may be times and situations when even a high level of discomfort should not be defined as abuse by others in that person's social constellation. An addition regarding this elasticity of definition might be in order. 207.178.98.9 22:27, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Verbal abuse
There is a problem with the Verbal Abuse link. The link directs you to a Texas band named Verbal Abuse which is completely irrevelant. Same goes with zoophilia or beastiality. I think beastiality is more of a candidate for abuse than voluntary homosexuality or incest. Zachorious 04:24, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Incest is a crime and is shown to be destructive to families. It also invariably involves one party that is extremely domineering over another, calling into question the ability of the dominated party to consent. Homosexuality is none of these.  138.88.125.189 19:44, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

See Talk:Violence
Take a look at the other talk pages concerning violence and abuse; they all surround each other. J.S. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jshephard (talk • contribs) 13:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC).

TfD nomination of Template:Abuse
Template:Abuse has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Joie de Vivre 15:29, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

this is how they nail sportsmen and the weakened aura fields leave the sportsment viulnerable to being hurt as their antipodal double is being damaged and when asleep causes them to be hurt. I however do not sleep in the night, so the attacks cn be sent to the West and their LGBT friendly societoes. I don't know who uses these methods obut the FBO should be able to home in in the perps. I think this is how whales are being beached also. As the try to save the Nature spirit, the whales take the damage on behalf of the nature spirti, the elementals as well.

Confusing definition

 * "Abuse refers to the use or treatment of something (a person, item, substance, concept, or vocabulary) that is seen as harmful. A persons intent and motivation to cause non-consensual harm to another."

This is confusing to read, primarily the 'seen as' part. I would figure abuse is something that IS harmful, not just something that is seen as harmful. If something is not harmful but seen as harmful, the person seeing it as harmful would call it abuse, but if it was not, it would not be abuse. Shouldn't the 'seen as part' be taken out? The next part is a sentence all on its own as a separate paragraph and looks very odd. Furthermore, it is worded very strangely. Firstly, abuse/harm can occur even if it is not someone's intention to harm another. It call also occur with or without consent, a person can be harmed/abused even if they give informed consent to something. This definition seems far too specific and ignores the multitude of circumstances in which it can occur. In fact, I'm going to be bold and erase these overgeneralizing disclaimers. Abuse is a very extensive topic and the many ways in which harm can occur should not be skimmed over! Tyciol (talk) 17:54, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Please would you add to the definition of Abuse, "Abuse may be intentional or unintentional". Thank you. 81.99.104.50 (talk) 02:26, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I also find it confusing that the definition uses the word 'gain'. I do not believe that all cases of abuse stem from what the abuser can gain from the victim. It would be beneficial to clarify that point. Tmgonzalez (talk) 03:56, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Proper general article on abuse needed.
The abuse template covers the disambiguation. There is quite a lot that can be written about abuse in general. --Penbat (talk) 20:02, 24 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Hey Penbat, here's the command which can limit how many levels out the Table of Contents can go: . That limits the levels to 4. But you can change it around. So, if you group the TOC so it has different levels, you can control how many are seen. But I don't know if you're interested in doing this. I'm having fun with a new charting tool; check out Summit High School (New Jersey) -- the math section -- I just put in a cool new flowchart for math courses.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 01:05, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * By the way, I think this is an excellent article; you've done well with this. Great job!--Tomwsulcer (talk) 01:06, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I came across this :in American society, females are, on average, approved of violence against males in the psychological characterisyics section. I was going to fix it but wasn't quite sure what was meant. Fainites barley scribs 22:43 wikipedia articles and it is not as if the length makes navigation difficult as the article structure is simple, only going down one level, and there are no long passages of text in each section. It is difficult enough doing this article at all, without having to make it conform to artificial packaging constraints.--Penbat (talk) 22:58, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

The Malay Astral/Ethereal Torture Method

as i try harder to recall, more energy seems to go into the spin until tornados form there was a scene in Virtuosity (where the Sid 'android' looks like Miscavidge) where the hero had to stop a fan from rotating to save a child, how does this fit

in? The washing machine features in clothes I wear somehow because of the spin effect. this would be linked to LGBT hate ahdn Xian with Muslim fundos in the government, how can a person demand asylum for abuse that is not quantifiable? this is how they nail sportsmen and the weakened aura fields leave the sportsment viulnerable to being hurt as their antipodal double is being damaged and when

asleep causes them to be hurt. I however do not sleep in the night, so the attacks can be sent to the West and their LGBT friendly societoes. I don't know who uses these methods obut the FBO should be able to home in in the perps, I think this is how whales are being beached also. As they try to save the Nature spirit, the whales take the damage on behalf of the nature spirti, the elementals as well. The Monitheists want to kill the Polytheistic spirit to power tech. All humans involved are damned. This is a human rights and NATURE spirit abuse case.

Dictionary-like
Much of this article reads like a dictionary definition. Indeed, the lead section very closely resembles abuse. Can the page, or at the very least the lead section, be developed to give an encyclopedic overview of what I'm sure is an important topic? Cnilep (talk) 19:10, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes the first few lines are basically like abuse. Can you clarify what you mean by encyclopedic ? Much of the article gives a short description of each abuse type which are generally described in detail in other articles. The idea of the latter sections was to cover common characteristics of abuse and it is intended to expand them. Yes this is a very important article but it is tough to work on and i think it best if it is changed slowly over time. Expansion and development of the latter sections also depends on finding suitable sources.--Penbat (talk) 19:33, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * When I say "encyclopedic" I mean an article written in encyclopedic style about a coherent topic. A good article also complies with Wikipedia's Manual of style, including introducing the topic and summarizing key content in its lead section. You're quite right that such development takes time; I'm sorry if I seemed to suggest that it could be done quickly or easily. This should be the goal that we are working toward, though. Cnilep (talk) 20:31, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I take your point. I think that means there ought to be a summary in the lead of the material covered in the end sections describing common features of abuse. The end sections need developing more first i think to make that possible so it is balanced. Individual abuse types are generally studied and researched in isolation, but at the same time there are quite a few common strands between abuse types. --Penbat (talk) 20:56, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Disability abuse ---just sayin'
I've never heard the term "disability abuse" before. I immediately understood it to be comparable to "welfare abuse". That is, people are on welfare, and shouldn't be, or are accepting disability pensions, and shouldn't be.

Admittedly I don't live in the USA, but Wikipedia is supposed to be universal. Where I live, disability pensions are part of welfare, and can be abused. Any article on the subject must make it very clear at the start, in which direction the abuse is going. I'd prefer to see a longer, clearer title: Abuse of the disabled. --Hordaland (talk) 17:43, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi there are some intrinsic ambiguities anyway. For example with Child Abuse "child" is the subject of the abuse but with Police Abuse "police" is the perpetrator of the abuse. Parent Abuse, for example, is confusing, does it mean abuse by parents to their offspring or does it mean abuse to parents by their offspring ? Thanks for your suggestion and I will consider it. --Penbat (talk) 18:16, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Economic vs Financial abuse
Do we really need two separate sections here?--Cybermud (talk) 07:12, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
 * They are usually given distinct meanings in the literature. Info for both of them needs to be tightened up. I plan to create separate articles for them eventually with decent citations.--Penbat (talk) 11:15, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Alphabetization
Why are all the "Abuse of" alphabetized together and others not? For example, why is "Market abuse" under M rather than under A for "Abuse of the market"? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 13:12, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Quite simply i have tried to use the most common expression for each abuse type. For example doing a quick scan of Google Books and Google Scholar, "Market abuse" beats "abuse of the market" by a big margin. --Penbat (talk) 14:00, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Split types section
The section on Abuse is unreasonably long - 108 subsections at this point - just a laundry list of various types of abuse. It should be removed and made into either a disambiguation page for abuse, or a List of types of abuse, or possibly (with appropriate grouping) into an Outline of abuse (if outlines are still considered acceptable). There are far too many subtypes of abuse to cover them individually in an encyclopedia article. Zodon (talk) 08:19, 26 September 2011 (UTC)


 * It was originally a DAB page and i developed it into a proper article. Your attitude seems to be one of debasing and undermining the article. Firstly preconceptions of "long" mean just applying fixed notions of perceived appropriate packaging for Wikipedia. It would be wrong to apply artificial constraints because of rules of aesthetics. The idea is to provide a short summary of each type of abuse and provide a link to the corresponding main article if it exists. The other purpose of the article is to cover common strands and concepts covering the different types of abuse in general and there is text after the "abuse types" which tries to cover some common abuse concepts (to be expanded). The fact that there are common strands can be seen by reading the short descriptions of the different abuse types as there is often similar text in each case. Also deleting entries that just redirect to other entries is debasing the value of the article. The article is not a laundry list - the whole point of the article is to explore interactions and overlaps between different abuse types. There is often common underlying psychology behind the different abuse types. --Penbat (talk) 08:47, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Neglect
"thereby resulting in the victim's demise."

This section says that if the victim doesn't actually die, it isn't abuse. I wonder if the article isn't wrong about this particular type of abuse. --95.34.7.47 (talk) 22:20, 17 January 2012 (UTC)


 * No, neglect is still abuse, whether the victim dies or not - certain legal provisions even treat "opportunity for probable harm" as neglect. For example, frequently leaving a baby home alone may result in child protective services taking the child. Of course, this is just one example showing that many - although I believe that most - cases of neglect do not result in the victim's demise. Either the person who wrote that was mistaken, or he/she/they wasn't using the word "demise" correctly. Poor word choice can easily result in misunderstandings; I'll update the article's definition (with references, of course) to prevent further misunderstandings.


 * Hope I answered your question. Thank you for bringing this to somebody's attention (even if one of us answered you a bit late) meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 11:33, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Problems
I have neither the inclination nor the ambition to go through all of this, but there are a lot of problems with this article.


 * Sourcing: Looking through the sources, a great number of references are citations to self-published books from vanity presses, anonymous web pages, blogs, Wikis and the like. I have found only one instance where the self-published source (Fuller, Footnote #3) probably passes the "previously published expert" exception under WP:SPS. The rest of these need to be eliminated.
 * Dead Links: A lot of citations are to dead links, advocacy organizations that have gone out of business, etc. It is impossible to tell if these ever were reliable sources or not.
 * Citation style: Many references are incomplete, in some cases so incomplete as to make identification of the source unverifiable. (EG #38 - is the entire catalog of everything Houghton Mifflin ever published the source here?)
 * Scope: There is no rhyme nor reason, nor any consistent criteria as to what has been included in this list. The scope of the article is stated to be This article is about the mistreatment of people or animals. For other uses, see Abuse (disambiguation). And, yet we have listed "abuse of statistics", which links to Misue of statistics and  "flag abuse", which are clearly neither, and a vast array of unrelated things whose inclusion is dubious at best (is "prejudice" abuse if not acted upon? Is antisocial behavior or incivility or rudeness "abuse"?...) I'm tempted to add an entry for "musical abuse" citing A Mighty Wind and the citations found here. Per WP:LISTN, this list needs to be based on reliable, secondary sources which gather together all these disparate concepts together, otherwise this is simply WP:OR and WP:SYNTH . Fladrif (talk) 15:05, 19 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Ref points 1, 2 and 3: This article largely consists of summaries of different types of abuse. In most cases there is a separate article for each type of abuse and a link is given. The summaries are taken from the leads of these separate articles so any issues with poor quality references etc are a function of those separate articles and not intrinsically of this article.
 * Ref point 4: The scope of the article is not stated to be "This article is about the mistreatment of people or animals. For other uses, see Abuse (disambiguation)". That is just a simplistic summary for the purposes of mentioning the DAB page. The real summary is the lead text given afterwards. Anyway the text was depreciated by the edit done on the 13th of March which substituted "systems" with "animals". I have now put "systems" back in so that improves the sentence.  There probably isnt any restriction in the scope of what can and cant be included in this article but it must be notable. Nearly all are deemed notable by the fact that they are deemed importance enough to have a separate Wiki article and any that dont have the potential in time to be developed into separate articles.
 * Incidentally Im now dubious whether we even need an abuse DAB page as I recently added substance abuse to the abuse article so there is only a video game called "abuse" left.
 * --Penbat (talk) 18:08, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It is no excuse for the sourcing on this article that is just mirrors other articles with bad souces. Clearly, you are very interested in this subject matter, and properly sourcing not only the portmanteau lists you've created, but also the individual articles themelves should be a priority for you. As for those individual articles, I see that quite a number of them are extremely problematic. Some are completely unsourced, others are extremely poorly sourced, and virtually all of them are replete with sources that do not meet the basic standards of WP:RS and WP:V, and have been tagged as such by others for literally years. There is a very substantial question as to whether a number of the subarticles are notable at all. Others, quite frankly, appear to be an abuse of the word "abuse", calling anything and everything imaginable as "abuse". To admit that the scope of the article is, for all intents and purposes, without limit and to have no real criteria as to what should nor should not be included is to admit that there is no notability, and no reliable secondary source report for the creation of this list. It does not matter if every single thing on the list is notable in and of itself. The list itself must be notable and sourced as a list. You might as well make up an article "People named "John" who have Wikipedia articles about them. This is just a glorified disambiguation page, that fundamentally violates WP:LISTN Fladrif (talk) 18:28, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Arguments about the notability or otherwise of an individual abuse type should be had on that abuse type's talk page not here. This article was originally just a DAB page but unlike other DAB pages there are many common threads, links and relationships between the differing DAB items (in terms of the underlying psychology etc) although not the same ones in each case. There is a debate to be had whether the scope of this article should be restricted, for example up to recently "substance abuse" and "drug abuse" was omitted. Just to mention "flag abuse" - that is obviously not just abusing an inanimate object as the action of destroying a flag has huge societal symbolism.  Im not aware of any more notable abuses that need to be added to the abuse article.--Penbat (talk) 18:49, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * If this is just a DAB page, then it should be cut down to a DAB page. I should not be an article unless the list is notable as a list. The notability of the list is whether reliable secondary sources present these items gathered together in this manner as a list. WP:LISTN According to what reliable secondary source are all the things in this list related? No such source is cited at any point. According to what WP:MEDRS compliant source are they related according to underlying psychology? No such source is cited at any point. Without those sources, this list is simply the original research of the Wikipedia editors who compiled it. Fladrif (talk) 01:34, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * No you are misrepresenting what i just said. This article is an unusual case as it is about halfway between a DAB page and a fully fledged article. Converting the page to a DAB page would seriously debase the articles value. The text summaries of the abuse types often contain links to other abuse types so the interrelationships are apparent. Also at the end of the article a start has been made to cover the underlying psychology of abuse in general terms.--Penbat (talk) 07:30, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

And, you are pointedly ignoring what I have said. The interrelationships are not apparent at all, and there is no source to support the assertion that there is a relationship of any kind. The claim that there is any relationship whatsoever between some of these items, no less in terms of "underlying psychology" is ludicrous and laughable, and the little essay at the end is utterly irrelevant to the basic question here which you have proven incapable or unwilling to answer. Explain, for example, what the underlying psychology of Misuse of Statistics, or the informal logical fallacy of argument ad hominem, or flag desecration, just to use a few examples, have to do with the other things on this list, and don't just explain - provide reliable secondary sources not your own rationale. Turning a DAB into a nonsensical article with no criteria and no sources whatsoever other than you own whim, and then having the audacity to rate it by yourself as Highly Important on two Wikipedia project is the height of arrogance. What an examination of individual articles shows is that you've classified all sorts of things as "abuse" and added them to your various lists without any basis whatsoever, sort of like a workman whose only tool is a hammer, so everything looks like a nail. Fladrif (talk) 15:36, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * No it is you who have ignored what I said. I already said that there is a discussion to be had about the scope of the article, for example I already explained that "substance abuse" and "drug abuse" were previously omitted. I also already said that although there are common strands for the different abuses they werent necessarily the same strands in each case. There is quite a lot of underlying psychology behind "abuse of statistics". --Penbat (talk) 17:24, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * There is no information whatsoever in the article Misuse of statistics discussing in any way the "underlying psychology behind 'abuse of statistics', nor any source whatsoever to support your bald assertion that there is "quite a lot" of it. Fladrif (talk) 00:39, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * That is a flaw in Misuse of statistics that it doesnt cover the social psychology. It may get written one day. Misuse of statistics is widely used in coverups, deceit and power abuses etc. Article does say "In others, it is purposeful and for the gain of the perpetrator" - that needs expanding. Deception is definitely rooted in psychology or social psychology. I notice that Category:Deception is a parent to Category:Misuse of statistics.--Penbat (talk) 09:06, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * No, it's not. It would be an absurd WP:COATRACK to have [Misuse of statistics] include a chapter on social psychology. We've got a perfectly good article Lies, damn lies, and statistics on the old adage. Beyond that, most misuse of statistics is explained by Hanlon's Razor not psychology. I give exactly zero weight to the whims of Wikipedia editors adding articles to categories at their whim. Fladrif (talk) 12:47, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I am not gong to waste my time giving you a lecture on psychology and social psychology. It clearly isnt your forte. And I dont give much credence to Hanlon's razor.--Penbat (talk) 14:04, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * What I've noticed in your responses to me and to other editors across multiple article talk pages is that you have no interest whatsoever in discussing the scope of the articles over which you've claimed ownership or the sourcing issues which plague them. Condescending comments like the above are typical from you, and are personal attacks on other editors beyond the bounds of this project. The burden is on you to justify, with sources, the things you've insisted in including in the vast network of articles you've claimed as your own. "I'll get to it later" would be more convincing if you hadn't made the same claim over dozens of articles for years, with no effort whatsoever to provide the necessary sourcing. Fladrif (talk) 00:07, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

How are alcohol abuse, sexual abuse, sectarianism, and humiliation related abuses?
Why is human sacrifice on this list but not murder? This is just a list of categories, dictionary definitions, unreliable sources for unrelated topics and stuff. What's the thinking for putting all this together with almost no reliable sources, and "Further reading" sections stuck here and there in this list? I'm not sure what the purpose of this is, unless it's to see how many misleading piped wikilinks and redirects can be put in one place. Is there a rational for having different sections for substance abuse and alcohol abuse? Is binge drinking really abuse the same way rape is? Why are victims and abusers mixed up in the list with no apparent rationale? Farrajak (talk) 20:54, 23 April 2013 (UTC)


 * There was a logical rationale here before it recently got mangled. There is no official consensus anywhere about what is and isnt abuse. The main problem is that it pulls in 2 different dimensions - specific style of abuse and specific context of abuse, but style also varies in some cases on the context. Although academic research suggests that a proper classification model for abuse would be a good idea I am not aware that anybody has managed to do one. Most of the abuses listed here contain the word "abuse". You could say that just about all crime is abuse but there are thousands of crimes and are obviously covered in crime articles and categories. Crime of course also partly reflects cultural values of what is normal and acceptable. Killing and maiming in war may be compulsory but in civilian life it is a horrendous crime. On the physical side there is basically just "physical abuse" listed. Also some abuses are words in common usage, some relate to psychology, some to sociology & social psychology etc.--Penbat (talk) 11:51, 1 May 2013 (UTC)


 * In addition, the article focus is terribly conflicted. The first section practically lists everything even loosely related to the word "abuse", while the other sections straight-up assume this abuse is human-on-human. If not for the latter, this would be a decent disambiguation page instead of the total clusterduck that it is now. 8ty3hree (talk) 07:54, 8 June 2013 (UTC)


 * As i have said before, there are quite a few common strands and relationships between the different types of abuse but not necessarily the same strands or relationships in each case. The later sections deals with strands and themes for a fair number of abuses but obviously not all.--Penbat (talk) 08:01, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Abuse Of Abuse
There are some 122 specifications of "abuse" in this article. Why is it that on whole Wikipedia there is no article about the "Abuse of Abuse"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.192.101.231 (talk) 12:36, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 14 August 2013
121.79.205.135 (talk) 22:51, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I am a 12 year old girl writing a speech on abuse. When I looked at this page, I saw some articles on different types of abuse that could have been merged in a way. For example: sexual, rape, child on child sexual abuse, and a couple more articles could be merged, like I said. So I would like your permission to edit a few of your articles on abuse.

P.S I do not have an email, I have a blog, and I do not like to give peronal information away.


 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done:


 * 1) Firstly the edit request is not specific enough.
 * 2) Secondly I think the editor is confusing the fact that pretty much all abuses have common features and threads between them (although not the same features & threads in each case).
 * 3) Sexual, rape, child on child sexual abuses are all distinct major subjects of study but obviously they have common features and threads and overlap to some degree. To illustrate the difficulty with lumping together, child sexual abuse could alternatively have been lumped together with child abuse. Individual abuse types often pull in two different directions.
 * --Penbat (talk) 07:10, 15 August 2013 (UTC)


 * To the person who made this request: you're right not to give out personal information. You never need to give your email address or blog url on any Wikipedia talk page. Rivertorch (talk) 06:52, 17 August 2013 (UTC)


 * However, this diff is this IPA number's only previous edit. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:28, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 18 September 2013
I am the author of a book entitled Abuse. Domestic Violence. Workplace and School Bullying, published by Cork University Press. I would like to add a section on the abusive personality. thank you,

Jim O'Shea

Principal3 (talk) 16:32, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please make your request in a "change X to Y" format. In other words, please propose the precise wording here so that it can be evaluated and, with consensus, added. It would also be helpful if you'd provide multiple reliable sources for the proposed content. Your effort to improve the article is much appreciated, as is your advance disclosure of a possible conflict of interest. Rivertorch (talk) 18:09, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * You will not lose privacy if you register as a Wikipedia user with a username. Choose a username that does not tell people who or where you are. People cannot find your email address or other personal details through it. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:22, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for a radical change of the article's organization
 began:

User:Penbat, you're being very unclear regarding your this article Abuse in many different ways, and I seek better formatting and policy for Abuse. Your actions are mysterious to me, as well. When I went and tried to edit a little bit at a time, you said "we already have a system; refer to the talk page and bring it up as a proposal instead" (not verbatim). So here I am. I'm going to write this of "radical redesign" proposal worded as if talking to you, because you're the most significant contributor right now, but it can be applied to other editors, and other editors are free to comment.

(@Penbat): It would seem you've reverted this article to the version before I ever started on it, undone all I have written, coded, or clarified. Since the Internet lacks paralanguage, I'm going to say this frankly: it was kind of insulting, and you came off as bossy - as if you're the supreme editor who WP:OWNs this article or something (though I realize that was probably not your intent).

First off, let me say (@Penbat) that I'm not trying to "hate on you", "diss you", or hurt your feelings when I make make the following criticisms of your style. Instead, I want to thank you for what you have contributed because I imagine it must have taken you hours to organize and synthesize this article the way you did. And I'm sure it was hard work all the while. I don't think your efforts don't count; I just want to build on them and present the data a bit differently. Also, when I use boldface or italics my intention is to clarify, not to WP:SHOUT. Please do not take undue offense at this.

My proposal is to go from list format to prose format, with grouping, new sections, and deletion of non-noteworthy content.

If alphabetized listings are rewritten as prose, it would not only make the content clearer and more concise, but would automatically gives more relevant links for further reading. If someone has already read Gay abuse, for example, they are more likely to want to read Lesbian abuse, Transgender abuse, and Corrective rape of LGBT folk, than they are with the titles of the Index. (Hereafter I will sometimes refer to "the user-interface concept of the extensive section-headings the reader is intended to browse through using the Table of Contents sidebar" as the "Index", for short.)

As for pruning the unimportant content - WP:NOTADICTIONARY. I genuinely believe nobody lands on this page wanting to read "Flag abuse" or "Ad hominem abuse". I think they'd search elsewhere for that, maybe on Wiki with "Flag abuse" and "Ad hominem" as search terms. Also, Wiki is a work in progress; it doesn't have to include everything.

After such a long time working on the Index it must be very hard to let go, but please consider this the next step you provided, and be open to the possibility of change. Your efforts were not in vain. They were appropriate before the list grew so big; today (i.e., currently, or nowadays) I believe the Index is not popular with editors, or they don't understand it. Many people have requested changing the structure, and you've defended your stance on the indexing system. Other people's remarks tell me this system is non-intuitive, unexpected, or causes problems:


 * Talk:Abuse Note the title
 * Talk:Abuse Note the title
 * Talk:Abuse Requests prose in 3rd comment
 * Talk:Abuse Request to merge sections
 * Talk:Abuse Requests for prose rather than sections
 * Talk:Abuse Criticism (heated argument)
 * Talk:Abuse General complaints
 * Talk:Abuse Request for merging sexual issues

Personally, I saw the editors as giving up after talking to you, not agreeing with you. So I don't think you ever really received WP:CONSENSUS, so much as they gave up (or in one case, just argued heatedly until someone broke it up). Furthermore, it's reasonable to believe that for every one editor confused with this system, there is one reader out there who is confused with the Index. The reader, however, won't get any clarification, and may simply conclude the article needs work or is confusing. They may leave the page altogether rather than tapping this vast resource of knowledge here.

As for the logical system you said existed on the talk page, I'm guessing this may be it here (feel free to elaborate if I didn't quite grasp the idea):†

† Talk:Abuse ‡

If the Index system works better than Prose in presentation, WP:IGNOREALLRULES would be a good statement of philosophy here; The Road Less Traveled kind of thing. All right. However, I do not feel that WP:IGNOREALLRULES is really justified in this case.

While it's noble for you to wish to preserve this content - and to organize it accordingly - this is unwieldy for two reasons.
 * 1) You can't sync each and every article's summary here with updated content there: that's a nightmare to maintain.
 * 2) "...the whole point of the article is to explore interactions and overlaps between different abuse types." Let's consider any type of abuse as some combination of the following 3 broad categories: physical, emotional/psychological, and/or sexual. This eliminates confusion. Now we can just mention how they overlap. Thus, we can create lead sections that describe what most people want to know - i.e., what does the basic idea of abuse generally entail? How is it similar to other types? In other words, we create an overview, a very powerful tool that we don't have right now.
 * For the overview, I recommend each type - physical, emotional, and sexual abuse - placed in their own separate paragraph right after the first paragraph, with examples (I consider them as part of the lead, by the way). As the WP:MOS reads: "The lead is the first part of the article most people read, and many read only the lead." So by making three small introductory sections following the very basic lede (and explaining that the 3 broad types of abuse often coincide) we allow readers to grasp abuse as an abstract concept that can applied nearly anywhere.

The meticulous way you insist on presenting the content significantly takes away from the article in certain respects:
 * You "correct" anybody who seeks to change the structure; and so I ask you to please allow others to edit the page under reasonable circumstances.
 * From a coder's standpoint, linking to your own sections is generally a bad idea - any change in their names or categorization will break the link; we need to avoid that, keeping it only where editorial discretion dictates it should remain.
 * You seem to list everything anyone could ever possibly want to know about abuse and it's simply too much. For example, the "bullying" section:


 * is redundant. "Bullying in academia" is covered by "Academic abuse"; "Bullying in information technology" presumably by the "cyberbullying" link; "Bullying in medicine" by "Nursing abuse or abuse in nursing"; and so forth. Too many links overwhelms the reader and detracts from the content. I believe we are, unintentionally, WP:OVERLINKING this article.


 * You list things in a manner that most people don't expect, using explicit wording. While different wording can serve as a sort of "redirect", text-based redirects do not belong on the page (that's the purpose of redirects).
 * Examples:
 * "Nursing abuse or abuse in nursing"
 * "Drug abuse: See Abuse#Substance abuse"
 * "Abuse of the system: See Abuse#Gaming the system"
 * You argue to keep (in my opinion) unneeded content (just a few examples):
 * Detainee abuse: I doubt many people will come looking for this. I'm well read, yet cannot define detainee offhand, nor do I expect it to be (directly) linked on the page Abuse. Perhaps under a page entitled Legal terms, maybe.
 * Umpire abuse: equally not notable. It is valid, but it's not WP:LIKELY to be requested by the reader. Perhaps at an article about sports, but not here.
 * Abuse of the system: I can, as you've suggested before, use the Index sidebar.
 * Abuse of process: Again, law term; few people know this or look for it.

In case you are a visual person, I synthesized my thoughts in the following dummy page I wrote: ‡‡

Reader feedback: This seems like a very long ...
This seems like a very long list, not an article. Soranoch (talk) 22:49, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the feedback. meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 00:08, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Even if it was a list, back in April, it was heavily revamped as an article by Penbat before it was massacred by the indef-blocked user Fladrif back in March 2013, and Fladrif's comments did not gain any support after that heated discussion there. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 23:01, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 September 2014
I have never logged into Wikipedia with a username or password. My computer has been hacked into on several occasions. I noticed on my favorites bar this site came up and it said there were administrators? Please investigate this situation as it is very disturbing for me.

174.100.251.144 (talk) 23:45, 20 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I am not sure what you are looking for but this page is dedicated to the improvement of the abuse article. If you have never created a Wikipedia account then there is little to nothing an administrator here can do for you. If your computer has been hacked into I can only suggest you obtain some sort of antivirus software. Cannolis (talk) 02:05, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Possible new external link
Please consider adding the following organization as another external link:


 * CAPSA (Citizens Against Physical and Sexual Abuse)

Moulton (talk) 11:21, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 July 2015
Please add a Split template at the top of this article (or, even better, directly split this article, if you can), please. Many subsections, in "Types and contexts of abuse" section are not pertinent to "This article is about the mistreatment of people, systems or animals." For example some are pertinent to Substance abuse, see Abuse (disambiguation). Thank you. --5.170.65.168 (talk) 06:44, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

5.170.65.168 (talk) 06:44, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: - this article is a set index listing a broad summary of all articles on all types of abuse, of which you can see there are many. There is no need to split topics from a set index page. If you think that the hatnote ("this article is about ...") is confusing or misleading, perhaps you could suggest better wording. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 22:13, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 7 one external links on Abuse. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120619160335/http://familylives.org.uk/sites/default/files/When%20family%20hurts%202010.pdf to http://familylives.org.uk/sites/default/files/When%20family%20hurts%202010.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090618204928/http://noragging.com/index.php/Research/Reports/Ragging-History-and-Evolution.html to http://noragging.com/index.php/Research/Reports/Ragging-History-and-Evolution.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090220222902/http://stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov/index.asp?area=whatbullyingis to http://stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov/index.asp?area=whatbullyingis
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110611053853/http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29633 to http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29633
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141229141744/http://lab.drdondutton.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/DUTTON.-1994.-PATRIARCHY-AND-WIFE-ASSAULT-THE-ECOLOGICAL-FALLACY..pdf to http://lab.drdondutton.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/DUTTON.-1994.-PATRIARCHY-AND-WIFE-ASSAULT-THE-ECOLOGICAL-FALLACY..pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100708031024/http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/%7Ejjf/articles/gf05.pdf to http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/articles/gf05.pdf
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/sccwebsite/sccwspages.nsf/LookupWebPagesByTITLE_RTF/The+different+types+of+abuse?opendocument

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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 02:51, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Abuse of users via formatting of the accompanying article
The TOC is practically useless, and in practice conceals the existence of the 2nd section and its subsections. There are mechanisms for overriding the default TOC structure, some of which facilitate custom-designing the presentation of the ToC, and some of which are stunningly easy ways to improve usability over the default, in cases like this one, even if in the long term it deserves a truly bespoke TOC. --Jerzy•t 08:27, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Improving child sexual abuse description as it was a little overbroad.
The examples of child sexual abuse listed in this section were not entirely accentuate. There were two issues I addressed. The first is that indecent exposure is a legal term and what it constitutes can very from, jurisdiction and country. The term also has a cultural concept as too what constitutes indecent exposure in a general non-legal sense. Mere nudity can in some case be legal considered indecent exposure in some case without there being a consensus that children's exposure to such nudity is "child sexual abuse". as they define it. Nor would it necessarily be classified as CSA under the law either. depending on the motives of the person engaging in indecent exposure. It generally must involves intentional exposure of private parts in front of a child for the sexual gratification of the flasher/nude person or to shock or disturb the child. There is no consensus among CSA researchers that mere exposure to fully or partially nude adults in and of itself is sexually abuses and thus that should not be implied in the description of CSA in this article. Second, Viewing or engaging in sexual contact with a child's genitals is not in and of itself abuse if done for legitimate non-sexual purpose. The way it was previously written basically stated that doctors who conduct genitals exams of a child, parents cleaning their baby's genital area after a diaper changing, or a parent who looks at a rash on their child's genitals out of a health concern would be engaging in the crime of child sexual abuse, which is not true under most CSA laws or under CSA definitions used by CSA researchers. --Notcharliechaplin (talk) 05:37, 21 October 2016 (UTC)