User:Bluerasberry/controversy

Some people ask me whether I have either been a party to controversy on Wikipedia or whether I have edited controversial articles. This page contains summaries of and links to the most complicated controversies in which I have been involved.

I do not think I have done anything controversial on Wikipedia, although I have been in disagreements with others many times. In a disagreement my strategy is to refer to the rules and if we parties need further guidance, we call for outside opinions and ask for policy clarification. When I have been a party in a disagreement I think I have always been able to find resolution quickly and amicably.

I usually do not edit controversial articles or add controversial content because there are so many interesting things to do on Wikipedia which are not controversial, so if I perceive strong opposition my response is to state my case on a talk page, field questions, request comments, then move onto something else and let someone else handle the controversy.

I regularly mediate controversies in which I am not a party. I find these by responding to requests for comment, requests for third opinions, or occasionally by personal request from users I know. Perhaps 90% of the time the result is dispute resolution within a day after no more than 30 minutes of discussion and usually only 10 minutes. The most common cause of problems is new users not understanding Wikipedia policy or how to learn it.

I may be misrepresenting myself because of course my personal bias is that I am right and good, so feel free to look at my collection of controversies below. Feel free to add content or critiques of my assessments of myself and the situations. I included word counts in the summaries so that readers can gauge how controversial anything has been. I used this tool to calculate the word count. There are about 500 words per page on standard size paper.

Public health website using self-published statistics
A public health website uses statistics and other primary data, which I argue is against Wikipedia rules. This was my first talk page debate and I was clueless about Wikipedia policy but I am happy with everything I said and another user taught be a lot during this.


 * August 2009

This was the first discussion in which I engaged on Wikipedia. I proposed changes relating to the use of efficacy statistics for a drug use health intervention. I met a resistant experienced user who did a mix of teaching me things and treating me badly. Ultimately I felt acknowledged enough to stay with the Wikipedia project, but looking back I think my arguments, though sometimes ignorant of Wikipedia policy, were worth answering. Some months after this the user with whom I had this controversial discussion left Wikipedia after being involved in other controversies, and this user has not returned as of April 2012.

The conversation is here. It is about 3700 words. About half of those words are mine.

Sikh history
Knowing nothing about Sikhism, I respond to a request to settle a dispute on Sikhism. I learn about Sikhism but fail to settle the dispute.


 * August 2009

In 2009 I was experimenting with Wikipedia's dispute resolution process. I answered a request for a third opinion from two users in a disagreement. Both were expert on the topic of the history of Sikhism, and I know almost nothing of this issue but since their dispute was about an interpretation of text I thought I could help. A major contribution I made was in looking in a physical book available at my local library, scanning a page, and then sharing it with the two, as one of them was using a reference without having access to the text. I was unable to help the two find a resolution which either of them. I think in this case they both had points of view which were each correct and conflicting and it would have been very difficult to explain the cultural topic under dispute with concision.

The conversation is Talk:Khokhar. It is about 5600 words. At least 1600 of those words are mine.

Transgender culture in India
Hijra culture is a transgender culture in India. I feel like I have a liberal Seattle viewpoint on gender and sexuality; two other users with two different perspectives on the same have a long talk on how to describe this Indian gender topic.


 * March 2010

It is difficult to explain what the hijra culture in India is, but here are some ways that people describe hijras: homosexual males, intersex or transgender persons, males dressed as women, persons born with gender-ambiguous genitalia, a third gender, and an Indian cultural and religious gender designation. The problem in the hijra article was that scholarly sources acting as definitive descriptions of hijra culture are in conflict with each other, as scholars in different countries and in different decades have had vastly differing accounts of hijra culture.

I and two other editors came to this article simultaneously and initially no two of us agreed on anything. After some weeks two of us agreed on some things, and the third user, despite good behavior on this board, was banned for inappropriate behavior relating to gender and sexuality discussion on another board. It is difficult to make consensus in cultural and humanities studies when there are many sources which give conflicting information. I think the talk page discussion was entirely productive in determining which parts of the article need good sourcing.

The first part of the conversation is here. It is 7700 words. 1150 of those words are mine. The second part is here. It is 13000 words. 2600 of those words are mine. This conversation also went to other boards. One endpoint summarizing a lot of the conversation is here.

My stalker
I am not sure what I did, but I think because I proposed deletion of the article of a minor local musician, I got a stalker who sent me threatening messages regularly for several weeks.


 * March 2010

I was doing page patrol checking new edits, and I tagged a page for some musician as being problematic for lack of sources. It often happens on Wikipedia that people make articles for local musicians who do not meet Wikipedia's notability criteria. I would guess that I never spent more than 15 seconds reviewing the article in question because it was obviously problematic, but the user who created the article was very upset and accused me of having a racial or cultural bias. I do not recall the article indicating the race or culture of the artist, but the user who was upset seemed to not know English. I assert that what I did was unarguably in accord with Wikipedia policy, and as I had only tagged the article, this meant that I asked a second user to look at it and either take action or delete my tag. The second user agreed and did the deletion. Shortly thereafter someone began posting insults to my userpage and telling me to "watch out" This persisted for weeks and it was my first time having an online stalker.

I think this experience shows how doing anything online can make a person a target for other people who are willing to spend their own time trying to disrupt the lives of others.

The conversation is here. Other conversation and interference in my Wikipedia activity happened elsewhere. It was a little disturbing but that person eventually left after visiting regularly for about two months. The entire episode was not more than 500 words.

iPad working conditions
There was talk in the media which said that factory owners mistreated Chinese workers making iPads. Some users wanted to make this information prominent on the iPad article; I thought it should be linked from there to another article because the issue did not merit much weight.


 * May 2010

The controversy was about a series of news articles which said that working conditions in[ China were poor for those manufacturing Apple computer personal electronic devices. The issue was how significantly these reports should figure on the pages describing the histories of the projects. The solution was to postpone the discussion until more sources in the future clarify the reports.

The conversation is here. It is 8300 words. 1000 of those words are mine.

East Africa region names
It would undoubtedly hurt one political cause and harm the opposite political cause if a certain new nation got an article by its name on Wikipedia. This dispute was comparable to international diplomacy because the information which Wikipedia gives will undoubtedly affect the perspective of everyone who reads about these nations. Both sides had excellent supporting documentation for their perspectives. Ultimately a huge amount of discussion was not able to find a resolution which made anyone happy.


 * June 2010

I participated in mediation under the Mediation Cabal over a dispute on the preferred naming of East African geography. I had for some time been involved as an informal mediator in this issue then became an observer in the more formal process. I was never a party in the discussion and never offered opinions except to help the people in the discussion to organize the debate. I was neutral and only watching the conversation to learn about the issue.

Perhaps 6-8 users contributed to this discussion over a period of months. They all seemed independent and wanted different things. I tried to direct the conversation, particularly here where I counted the content to that point to be 56,000 words among those users on this one topic.

The talk ended here in mediation. I am sure the entire conversation went over 100,000 words. There was no consensus in the end. If I had to guess I would say that I wrote 4-6000 words on this.

Religious figure gay scandal
A United States religious scholar who spent his career as an expert opposing homosexuality hired a male sex worker. There actually was little controversy in this because the media presented facts neatly and there was not much to debate.


 * May 2010

A top-level United States religious scholar and religious institution organizer who was an architect of many religious anti-gay movements in the United States was found with a male sex worker who he admitted hiring. Anderson Cooper and other American journalists interviewed the sex worker, who spoke freely. The religious leader retired from public. The reported facts in this case were not controversial and there was community consensus on what should be in the article, but many people came to Wikipedia only to insert unsourced opinions on this topic. This article is an example of how heated debates in public discourse often do not lead to heated debate on Wikipedia, because when perspectives are well-defined Wikipedia editors have little trouble summarizing and sourcing them without debate. I would not call this a Wikipedia controversy, but the topic was controversial outside Wikipedia.

I added biographical content about this figure's academic work and publications but did not participate significantly in the sex scandal editing.

The talk is here. It is about 15,000 words and I contributed about 1000 of them.

Saffron terrorism
Some news media report on Hindu terrorism or Saffron terrorism. Some Hindus object to the term "Hindu terrorism" and more sources use the other term. This article was a result of a national conversation and controversy in India, but the debate on the article was rather calm and organized.


 * September 2010

Scholars and journalists have associated acts of terrorism by fanatics of many religions who commit the terrorism in an attempt to protect their religion, but it seems that nowhere in the scholarly or mass media literature at the time of this discussion were there any reliable sources naming any acts as Hindu terrorism. At the time of this discussion there were some acts of terror committed by a nationalist organization which was culturally Hindu, but there was consensus that the group was promoting a cultural identity which was distinct from any religious practice. The media's name for terrorism by this culturally-Hindu non-religious group is saffron terrorism after a color this group uses for advertising.

Part of the talk is here. It is 11,000 words. I contributed 3000 of those words.

Tree shaping
This was the craziest argument in which I have ever participated. I came to this as a moderator with no interest in the subject. I was unable to bring closure to the issue. Participants in this talk eventually received bans.


 * August 2010

"Tree shaping" is one of the names used to describe the practice of forcing a tree to grow in a certain way as an art form, as in the Japanese art of bonsai. Some users requested other opinions on the neutral point of view noticeboard that third parties comment on the tree shaping page to settle a dispute. As an outsider the problem seemed absurd to me - there were more than 50 pages of discussion about the preferred way to describe this practice. Multiple users involved in this discussion had a commercial interest in the outcome.

I was one of the moderators in this talk. Eventually it went beyond informal moderation to arbitration and later two editors being banned from discussing the topic further, and I participated here in judging that ban. It was one of the ruder discussions in which I ever participated and many people broke Wikipedia civility rules. I also was at my rudest and with the most inappropriate Wikipedia behavior I ever exhibited, because I said on the administrator noticeboard "I think user:(USER X) is being naughty because - if I understand him correctly - he is saying that..." My accusation was that USER X was incontestably incorrect about a factual statement saying that a third user did not link to commercial content about tree shaping, and I thought it was naughty of this user to do what I saw as supporting advertising. USER X took great and serious offence at my characterization of his behavior as naughty and I truly believe that I hurt his feelings only with the above statement, but the rest of what I said is linked. I still think this user's behavior was inappropriate based on my understanding of what he did, and I explained this here on the administrator noticeboard and here where we made peace by talking things through. I do not think "naughty" is a harsh insult but it is an insult and since then I have never used any negative personal characterization of anyone.

I think that a lot of this debate was a waste of energy and effort because too much discussion happened without a resolution. It taught me that when I moderate a dispute the first order of business is to plan for an endpoint so that the parties are concise and have a motive to summarize their points.

This talk is more than 100,000 words on many different articles. I regret contributing about 3000 words to this. It is a great example of an out-of-control debate and what moderators should prevent from happening. I will never support the existence of a talk like this again.

Sexually transmitted disease
There is a perennial debate about whether "sexually transmitted disease" or "sexually transmitted infection" is the correct term for the article of that name.


 * January 2011

The issue is that most public health agencies and health science institutions worldwide seem to choose the term "sexually transmitted infection", but the American CDC prefers the term STD and anyone they fund uses their term.

Read about it here. This talk is about 10,000 words and I contributed about 1500 of those.

LGBT harrassment against Wikipedia user
A Wikipedia user claims that his editing of LGBT articles led to him receiving harassment both on Wikipedia and in his life away from the computer. I supported protection for this user.


 * January 2012

User:Fæ, an active Wikipedia user and a member of the board of the UK Wikimedia Chapter, claimed that people targeted him on Wikipedia and by tracking his person details at his workplace and elsewhere to harass him and his associates. I was among those who called for broader discussion about what protections the Wikimedia Foundation should support to make Wikimedia Projects a safer place for socializing.

A short summary of my perspective is here on Fæ's talkpage and I think this alone represents everything about my participation in this issue. Several users complained that Fæ was a poor Wikimedia contributor, and some people made statements that some of the complaints were from users who are unfriendly with LGBT content on Wikipedia. Some users complained that Fæ was not attacked, and they made complaints here and here. In the end the consensus was to take Fæ's complaint seriously.

I was very proud to receive a "Fæ classy in crisis" award for my contributions.

The entire discussion was about 20000 words on various Wikipedia boards and perhaps 10,000 words on forums about Wikipedia which are not hosted by Wikimedia projects. I contributed about 1500 words.

Academic publishing costs
I participated in a debate about whether an article about a protest of academic journal prices should be on Wikipedia.


 * January 2012

In January 2012 there was worldwide talk which focused in the United States about censorship of the Internet due through government laws which many people claimed were funded by large corporations. I was particularly interested in the protests claiming that the prices of subscriptions to academic journals make them inaccessible to most of the scholars in the world. There was a protest called The Cost of Knowledge for which I created an article. The protest received continual mass-media news coverage from its beginning and until the present (April 2012), but for different reasons, some people wanted to delete the article. I argued to keep it. The talk is here.

This talk is about 3000 words. About 800 of those are mine.