User:Filll/AGF Challenge 3 Exercises

 AGF 3 |  Take the AGF Challenge 3 !


 * Note: Although the WP Challenge exercises are based for the most part on real situations, the details have been altered slightly to obscure the identities of those involved.

3.1 No littering
A prominent late night television advertiser Jack Jackson is promoting a new technique for reducing colon cancer. Jackson sells a book that recommends a number of unconventional preventive measures, including the consumption of ground up kitty litter. The idea is that certain brands of kitty litter introduce extra nonnutrative crude fiber in the diet and also absorb toxins in the colon as they travel through the human body. In particular, Jackson sells and promotes Cat Sleevins brand kitty litter for this purpose.

Cat Sleevins was the subject of some legal action a few years ago over its name, mounted by Cat Stevens, but this was settled in Jackson's favor since Stevens had changed his name to Yusuf Islam in 1978. Cat Sleevins is promoted with television ads featuring a dancing granny dressed up in a cat suit, while an announcer intones, "Cat Sleevins! Some eat it with milk as a breakfast food. Some add a little sugar, or you can try it plain. Full of goodness, and good for you too. Kitty loves it, and you'll love it too". A special regional advertising campaign for the Southern United States features a drawling announcer asking, "Do you like grits for breakfast? For a real treat of gritty goodness, try Cat Sleevins for breakfast. If you haven't tried it, you don't know what you are missing". The packages of Cat Sleevins include a small printed warning that states, "Consumers are advised to eat only fresh Cat Sleevins and to avoid consuming Cat Sleevins after kitty has used it" which they are required to do by the Food and Drug Administration.

A small group of Cat Sleevins enthusiasts write an article for Wikipedia describing the health benefits of Cat Sleevins. They include links to the commercial website promoting a related book and the cat litter itself.

There are a handful of scientific studies on the value of this technique. Most of them are not double-blinded or even singled-blinded studies, and all have a only small number of participants. A few show of these studies some positive effect from this procedure, but some show very little difference between consuming cat litter and a placebo treatment. They are published mainly in a few journals devoted to alternative medicine.

Recently a few review articles and larger studies published in mainstream medical journals have been published. The larger studies and metastudies show almost no difference between these cat litter treatments and a placebo. A couple of blogs and less prominent sources have called this treatment a form of "quackery" and fraudulent. The French, German and Swiss governments cut their insurance reimbursments in government health plans for this treatment based on the negative results of the large studies.

The article is rewritten to include a mix of the positive and negative research results. The WP:LEAD includes a paragraph with quotes from representatives of the mainstream medical establishement, identifying the treatment as fraud and quackery.

Several new editors arrive on Wikipedia, including a famous alternative medical practioner who has an adjunct faculty position at the UCLA Medical School. These new editors diligently try to remove all information drawn from the large negative studies, and promote the results from the small positive studies. Lists of the small positive studies are posted over and over, dozens of times on the talk page of this article. The talk page has to be automatically archived every 48 hours because it is getting so many posts; at least 100 or 200 kilobytes are archived every 2 days. There are increasingly heated arguments on the article talk page.

The new editors claim that the editors who are trying to include the large studies are "science zealots" and unfair and unCIVIL and are violating WP:BITE. It is claimed that including the words "quackery" and "fraud" in the article, and especially in the WP:LEAD, is inflammatory, and is inappropriate since the use of these words is not well-sourced anyway. The new editors say that to follow WP:NPOV, all the critical material must be removed from the article, since it is not neutral, as required by WP:Neutral Point of View.

What should be done here? How should the article be written? Should the terms "quackery" and "fraud" appear in the article? Should they appear in the LEAD? Does it violate NPOV to have critical and negative material in the article? Are the experienced editors violating WP:BITE? Is it unfair to criticize this alternative health treatment? Are there problems with the promotion of this treatment? Are there any problems arising from the promotion of the commercial cat litter product? How many hours of editor time should Wikipedia spend to deal with this?

3.2 Black like me
A dispute has broken out on a number of articles about black people in Wikipedia. A group of editors claim that Jamaicans and Ethiopians are not black since they are not the descendants of slaves living in the United States and therefore are not worthy of the label "black". The US government definition of a black person, being someone from subSaharan West Africa, is trotted out. Other editors from Australia, South Asia, and Egypt disagree. Someone points out that according to this definition, South Africans of European descent are defined as black people. Conflicting government definitions from Canada, Cuba, Australia, the UK and the US are presented. Some view the phrase "black people" as a positive label and a source of pride, and others view it as a slur and do not want it applied to a given group. Eventually one particularly aggressive group of black studies students from the United States demands that their definition is the only correct definition, and that the other definitions do not exist and should not appear in the article. Anyone who disagrees with them is charged with racism and a huge fight ensues.

What should be done? How should this article be written? Which definition of the term "black people" should be used? How should the aggressive black studies student editors that seem to WP:OWN the article be dealt with? How does one persuade the warring factions to agree? What if the groups refuse to take part in mediation? How many hours of editor time should Wikipedia spend to deal with this?

3.3 Splitting hairs
A group has started a public relations campaign to encourage as many people as possible to grow their hair as long as they can, on the basis that (1) long hair is more natural; after all, primitive man did not have ways to cut hair (2) hair represents the life force of the person (3) cutting the hair exposes the person's head to more cold air if the hair is cut too short and can contribute to diseases.

An article or two promoting this view is started on Wikipedia. In the middle of heated talk page discussions, one editor, User: Gravy Boy, calls another a "barber" because he wants to remove part of the article, effectively "cutting" it. A senior member of the Wikimedia Foundation states that calling someone a "barber" or alluding to cutting in any way is blatantly offensive and a violation of WP:CIVIL and obviously a blockable offense. Not long after this, you run into two editors involved in a dispute, where one has said they need to cut down an article because it is too long, and the other has charged him with a WP:CIVIL violation and is demanding that an admin take action to sanction him.

What would you do? Is the word "barber" unCIVIL because someone from WMF says so? Should an admin sanction the editor who wanted to "cut" the article down? What is CIVIL anyway? How important is it? Does CIVIL take precedence over all other policies because it can be applied more easily? Is it possible to be too aggressive in enforcing CIVIL? Does a lack of civility really drive away new users? Does a lack of civility really hurt the working environment on WP? What hurts the working environment more, use of a term like "barber" or using the word "cut" as a way to try to get an opponent in an editing dispute sanctioned? Should the efforts to get others sanctioned by using CIVIL as a weapon be permitted? Are they sanctionable? How many hours of editor time should Wikipedia spend to deal with this?

3.4 Judge not, less ye be judged
An anonymous editor on Wikipedia who frequently edits legal articles and who advertises himself as a retired judge often gets into disputes. Nevertheless, he seems to be a valuable contributor and seems to know a lot. You have his page watch listed, and you notice that this editor has been blocked for 2 weeks for stating in the middle of a heated argument that he was a judge. The blocking admin, User: Osama ban Hammer, stated that it is inappropriate to use this sort of information in an argument, and compared the judge to Essjay. You notice that the blocking admin, User: Osama ban Hammer, who is very prominent on Wikipedia, edits a lot of religious articles, and in particular articles about Judaism. He advertises prominently on his user page that he is a Rabbi.

What should you do? Is it hypercritical for Osama ban Hammer to block the judge for something he himself is doing? Is the judge doing anything at all comparable to Essjay? Should ban Hammer remove the information from his user page about being a Rabbi? How many hours of editor time should Wikipedia spend to deal with this?

3.5 Poof its gone!
A prominent belief in the Islamic World is that the World Trade Center never existed, and therefore the attack on September 11, 2001 never happened. A group holding this belief on Wikipedia rejects all sources to the contrary as biased and propaganda. Most of this group appear to be Muslim from Islamic symbols on their user pages.

Anyone who disagees with them is accused of being bought off by the US government, or a CIA mole, or hopelessly deluded. News programs from Al Jazeera and other similar sources are suggested to show that this theory is correct and should be the preferred one on Wikipedia. When it is suggested that this is a WP:FRINGE belief, Muslim editors counter with surveys of the Muslim world showing that 86 per cent subscribe to this belief, and with 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, in addition to many in Europe and India and China, those who disagree are a distinct minority.

Wikipedia refuses to write its articles as though the World Trade Center never existed and locks all the relevant articles on this subject. However, a petition that quickly gathers 500,000 signatures is created on the internet, asking that Wikipedia allow its article to be written from the point of view of the mainstream in the Islamic World.

Some Muslim editors claim that there are no reliable sources showing that the World Trade Center ever existed. Pictorial evidence is said to be doctored, and is rejected. Other Muslim editors claim that the World Trade Center is still standing, and that there are no reliable sources to show that it is not. Again, pictorial evidence is rejected and articles about the disaster are rejected as biased or just propaganda.

What should Wikipedia do? Does the large number of sources from the Muslim world and the results of public surveys outweigh the sources in the West? How does one determine WP:FRINGE in this case? Is it reasonable to reject all the Western sources as these Muslim editors are demanding? Should the petition carry any weight? Is it unfair to not respond to their demands? How many hours of editor time should Wikipedia spend to deal with this?

3.6 I love Jesus
In an article on I Love Jesus Ministries International, someone with no user page and no talk page history puts a section reading

with a link to a main article about Mission Possible Cards:

What is appropriate to do here? Should this section be included? Does it restrict religious freedom to remove it? Is it notable? Is it relevant to the main article? Does it cross the line into a commercial advertisement? When is a section that almost sounds like a commercial advertisement like this permitted in an article? Are commercial influences always to be excluded from Wikipedia? How many hours of editor time should Wikipedia spend to deal with this?

3.7 Always wear a helmet
A disabilities lawyer on Wikipedia has been repeatedly tagging a popular motorcycle brand's article with and. In the article's discussion page, he says:

However, the editor only has 5 contributions to the article: 4 add the tags, and 1 reduces the lead. There is no evidence of him ever having added criticism or safety sections to the article. In fact, his point of view is entirely contained within the discussion page. When suggested to boldly edit, the editor replies he already has, and that it was whittled down by the same "aficionados" until nothing was left. He's "been there, done that". Going through the history, you find no evidence of him having contributed anything aside from the tags.

Editors are starting to get frustrated, and the talk page is getting heated.

Are the tags appropriate? Should this editor be allowed to spam the talk page with his arguments? What should be done to calm things down? Does Wikipedia inappropriately encourage dangerous activities and should Wikipedia try to discourage them? Is it unethical to have articles on motorcycle riding? How many hours of editor time should Wikipedia spend to deal with this?

3.8 Don't link me
Editor User: Franklynn123 posts a note to editor User: PhantaStick's talk page arguing about the article History of the Portcullis. A huge debate has developed over the correct plural form of the word portcullis; one group maintains that it is portcullises, another claims it is portculli and a third group declares that it is portscullis. PhantaStick's friend, editor HerbAlBurt, sees Franklynn123's post, and is interested in it. HerbAlBurt notices that the article name History of the Portcullis is not linked in Franklynn123's post, and so when HerbAlBurt replies to Franklynn123's post, he also wikilinks the phrase "History of the Portcullis" on PhantaStick's talk page. Franklynn123 takes umbrage at this wikilinking and files claims at Wikiquette Alert and AN/I stating that this is highly inappropriate and calling for HerbAlBurt to be sanctioned for editing Franklynn123's post. HerbAlBurt apologizes, but Franklynn123 becomes even angrier and demands that sanctions be levelled on HerbAlBurt.

Is Franklynn123 correct? Is it forbidden to edit his posts to add a wikilink? Should HerbAlBurt be sanctioned for his bad judgement? Does the apology matter or not? Should HerbAlBurt have known not to do this? Does it matter that this is on PhantaStick's talk page? What if PhantaStick had wikilinked instead, on his own talk page; does it make a difference? Would PhantaStick be permitted to do so? Should Franklynn123 be permitted to do this or warned about abusing the process? How many hours of editor time should Wikipedia spend to deal with this?