Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-01-14 Psycho-Babble (virtual community)

Request Information

 * Request made by: ProveReader 20:03, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Psycho-Babble
 * Where is the issue taking place?

At this time primarily ProveReader and SExposingtheJournalisto
 * Who's involved?

As documented on the now-lengthy talk page, this article was created by members of a mental health forum after discussion on that forum about creation of this article, and after encouragement there by the forum owner. The original draft was constructed in the form of encyclopedic prose, but primarily represented the point of view of people who advocate the merits of that forum. The second substantive editor was the psychiatrist who owns the forum, and who has in other publications characterized his forum as "The Best of Both Worlds." Within the first two days, another unregistered editor began submitting edits that reflected criticisms of the forum, but which tended away from neutrality and well-constructed prose.
 * What's going on?

About a week later, I became involved in editing the article, submitting perspective gleaned in part from discussions elsewhere with members who are critical of the forums. Soon thereafter, SExposingtheJournalisto began making edits that included allegations of stalking, ad hoc medical diagnosis of members of the forum, a dead link and off-topic remarks in the content of the article. I corrected content that did not meet Wikipedia standards, and tediously documented my activities on the talk page. SExposingtheJournalisto responded by deleting comments from the talk page, and with allegations there that I was attempting to own the article. Eventually, SExposingtheJournalisto began deleting large sections of the article itself, thereby blanking most what was then several editors who had worked to include representation of diverse viewpoints related to the topic.

Hsiung also returned in short order to further edit the article. I responded to his extensive edits, explaining each of my changes. Hsiung made further changes, but I took a break for a week, in part to see who else might be interested in getting involved. When I returned, I corrected and documented the correct information for what appearered to be factual errors Hsiung introduced, including an error of two years concerning when he launched the domains that are the topic of the article he was editing about his activities. I also responded to Hsiung's request that I document my citation of his claim that his site has only one rule, citing his 2000 Best of Both Worlds article, and cited edit history's to rebutt his claim that he had not removed statistics that represent declining interest in his site. Hsiung has established in the same Best Of article that traffic can be an anecdotal indicator of results of his project, and therefore an accurate representation is useful in encyclopedic articles.

Because Hsiung's edits have on at least some occassions been documented here as less than accurate representations of his own activities, I continued to watch the article. My name appears often in the history list because I have attended to content, gramatical and stylistic matters, including correction of my often incorrect spelling and grammar regardless my extensive previews of my edits. But the effect of my work has been to preserve and temper the editorial intent of all good faith editors, regardless the fact that my contributions have tended to balance those of forum members and the forum owner, whose interests in a favorable view of the forum tend to conflict with an interest in a dispassionate recognition of both its merits and shortcomings.

Now, SExposingtheJournalisto has yet to submit and defend any substantive contribution, but maintains a persistent concern, which is represented by personal attacks, a false claim to own a blog critical of the site, and most recently addition to the main article a link purpurtedly to a blog about Psycho-Babble but in fact to a blog about the content of the Wikipedia article. . I moved that link to the talk page, along with yet more tedious explanation.

I have attempted to correspond with SExposingtheJournalisto on the talk page and on their user page. In response, they have made deleted comments from the talk page, made false claims, advanced personal attacks and acknowledged using the article as bait in their personal endeavor to speculate about the identity and motivation of contributors - an ad hominum goal unrelated to perfecting content in the article.

SExposingtheJournalisto might or might not be interested in editing collaboritively with other editors willing to write and interact critically of a psychiatrist SExposingtheJournalisto admires. It seems apparent, however that the writer is unwilling to recognize the good faith in my efforts or to respond in kind to my overtures to develop with SExposingtheJournalisto constructive dialogue. Today I again offered an open-ended querry asking the person what they want, within the context of Wikipedia policies, but in view of the pattern of edits outside those policies, I wonder if that editor is interested in working with me to compose mutually acceptable content within those policies. What I would like to change is that editors appreciation of Wikipedia policies as an interest the eclipses their interest in a favorble representation of a Web forum described in a Wikipedia article. I brought the matter here because the editor's perception of my analysis of the Psycho-Babble forums might make it difficult for them to appreciate my interest in editing within Wikipedia policies. Perhaps a third party would be better able to influence that editors perceptions.
 * ''What would you like to change about that?


 * footnote: It seems SExposingtheJournalisto is responding on the talk page at this time. I'll check there - it seems the proposal is to remove both a link to a blog about Psycho-Babble and the link to the blog SExposingtheJournalisto created about this article using my screen name. I'll consider that. Please stand by. ProveReader 20:03, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Status: SExposingtheJournalisto proposed removing both blog links. I did. It seems SExposingtheJournalisto or whoever created the second blog was altering the content of the blog, and in the altered form it conformed to standards I proposed for relevance in an article about User:Hsiung's forums. The pattern of deception and denial continued, withSExposingtheJournalisto denying that "How accurate could a ProofReader write an account of Nazi Germany, if they was a Jew who was involved in the content of the war." was an accurate quote from the blog. I have no prob with the blog being listed, if it is about Pscyho-Babble, but if it is primarily about the Wikipedia article, it doesn't belong in the article. Either way -- I'm more concerned about SExposingtheJournalisto's persistent uncooperative tactics in an already difficult collaborative process. Let's see how it goes from here...ProveReader 20:54, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

the usual, mind meld, telepathy, etc. Nah, it's already a public dialogue, as it should be.
 * If you'd prefer we work discreetly, how can we reach you?

Mediator response
Hello there. I am a little confused about the nature of the dispute.

As far as I can tell, the problem is that you feel SExposingtheJournalisto is inserting unsourced material into the article.

A second problem is that SExposingtheJournalisto is using as one of his "sources" a blog that he controls or maybe doesn't control?

My feeling here is that blogs by anonymous or pseudonymous authors should in general not be used as sources. If the blog contains information that you want to use, it should source that information elsewhere, and you can cite the original non-blog source instead.

Please let me know if I am right about what the dispute is over so I can help. Sdedeo (tips) 01:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Close enough. The problem was a series of devious edits, including blanking, unsourced allegations, promotional slant by an editor who is a member of the forums the article discusses, personal attacks and falsely claiming ownership of a blog to keep that a reference to that blog out of the article. Your argument against anonymous blogs would have worked better. But the devious participation was in addition to contributions of generally poor grammar that included sentence fragments, run-on sentences and non-sequitor constructions. It probably matters none though, because the problematic editor said they are not participating any more in the page, and page is listed on articles for deletion, which might spare editors from needing to continue rebutting poor edits by members of the forum seeking to promote their "virtual community." ProveReader 03:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, sounds good to me. I'll "close out the mediation"; good luck in the future! Yours, Sdedeo (tips) 06:47, 16 January 2006 (UTC)