User talk:Riverrunrun

Policy of Neutrality

Your "Naked Short Selling" page is definitely biased in favor of the naked short seller. It is not neutral!

I have tried to replace it with factual information to no avail. A poster named ESKOG has entered a message to me that I am in violation of the "neutral" policy of Wikopedia. Either the author is not adequately knowledgeable regarding naked short selling or he is intentionally placing untruthful and biased information on this page.

I sincerely hope that this person is not an official moderator who controls this page. If this is an example of neutrality, it is blatantly hypocritical. Please let me know how to correct erroneous and biased information on this "Naked Short Selling" page.

Reply
First, please keep in mind that we can't have a conversation if your username/IP changes every time you edit. If you could stick to this username for the duration, that would be helpful.

I am not an "official moderator" of Wikipedia; in truth, no one really is. We are all editors trying to work together to create the best encyclopedia possible. Among our guiding principles are a neutral point of view policy and a committment to citing sources whenever possible. I, along with other editors, felt that the version you continued to reinsert was extremely biased with a thesis that "naked short selling is bad." The article is not supposed to be making such an argument; it should only be outlining what it is and a discussion of major literature surrounding the subject. The page has been protected as a result of our edit war, and you are welcome to engage in the discussion on the page's talk page. Our goal is to create a neutral version of the page that stands up to consensus.

Here are some problems I had with your version of the page:
 * 1) "it is generally accepted... [as] simple fraud" in the opening paragraph is clearly not true, and also uses weasel words in lieu of citing a source.
 * 2) The word "apologists" applied to those who argue it is not illegal is a very judgmental word.
 * 3) General phrasing - "It is difficult to argue with a straight face" - "Another canard that is floated by apologists" - "There is no controversy" - fly in the face of maintaining a neutral point of view.
 * 4) The Argument/Fact structure used in the Controversy section is not encyclopedic in the slightest, and is more correctly structured for an argumentative essay. That is not what Wikipedia is about.

I hope these comments help, and feel free to engage in the discussion on the Talk:Naked short selling page. If you have any other questions about the process, my Talk page is always open. (ESkog)(Talk) 00:46, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Alright, I'll gladly admit that you are much more knowledgeable about this specific subject than I am. But "taking a stand for neutrality" is one of the core principles of Wikipedia, and it's not going away anytime soon. With good sources (which it appears you have), we can build an article that is structured in a neutral tone which still presents all the facts. See Murder for a good example of a page about a clearly defined crime - there isn't really a section where we come out and argue that murder is bad, even though we all can agree that it is. We do state why/how/where it is illegal, as well as some famous examples of it. This might be a good model for us to start building the new page. While the page is protected you could create a page such as Naked short selling/temp where we could collaborate on the wording and presentation of the information. (ESkog)(Talk) 02:11, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Might it be possible to have one central place for discussion of this issue? This dispersal of the subject is confusing.--Mantanmoreland 03:26, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Compromise page attempted
Based upon my own research, I have created a first draft of an attempt at an unbiased article at Naked short selling/Workshop. Feel free to contribute in whatever way you can - make sure to carefully cite unbiased sources as this is apparently a contentious topic. (ESkog)(Talk) 20:05, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Re: Churning
There is an article about this at Churning (stock trade) that could probably use some expansion if you're up for it. (ESkog)(Talk) 01:18, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Sorry, guess the definition I described has developed more recently than the legal definition you directed me to. What I described does indeed exist and is widely practiced. If you were seriously into stock market investing, you could see this at work very easily by following the bid/ask realtime and notice how many instantaneous paired trades occur which sell into the bid in target stocks. This was meant just FYI. river

Re: Naked short selling
Thanks, I really think we all were able to work together and come up with a much improved version. This is Wikipedia though, so the article is never done. You are still free to use the Edit button and change anything you'd like - if you feel like your change might be controversial, you might consider running it by Talk:Naked short selling first, or do it first and justify it on the talk page, or whatever. We are always supposed to assume good faith by our fellow editors, as I think we all did (for the most part) in this last minor conflict. Thanks for your help in resolving it. (ESkog)(Talk) 05:35, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Your comments in naked short selling
Just a friendly suggestion, from one new editor to another, that you assume good faith on the part of other editors. Naked shorting is one of the more controversial topics in finance and discussions get heated, but that is an important principle to remember. Thanks. --Lastexit 20:47, 3 May 2006 (UTC)