Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-08-02 Tom's Hardware

Who are the involved parties?
210.124.181.153, 210.124.180.125, bom_tuannguyen

What's going on?
I (bom_tuannguyen) have added the editorial staff to Tom's Hardware. No marketing information was added. The above user 210.124.180.125 removes the staff indicating that "A listing of the staff members is not needed." I re-added the staff information. The above user 210.124.181.153 removes the staff information again. This time becoming anti-civil in the revision notes: "You can get that from the site. What if this was a big company than what would you do, have a whole page of staff members. Also, 'External Links' go at the bottom at the page, if you haven't noticed."

-- Anon user mentions that I have placed an external link in my edit, which I did not. -- Anon user also mentions "Forums can be reached through the mainsite, again not needed. We also know what the site offers since it is mentioned in the article." But I did not place any forum links. And I did not add any text to the article explaining what the website was about except for the editorial team information.

User IP appears to be from one single editor on a dynamic IP connection.

What would you like to change about that?
I would like a mediator to give a third opinion to this matter. I did not insert any marketing, or POV, or anything of that sort into the article. In fact, there's no staff information on Tom's Hardware's website itself. So adding the staff would be a positive thing anyway. GameSpot page lists forums. AnandTech page lists staff. Why is this user targeting Tom's Hardware? Gives the impression of being biased. I requested that the anon user follow the same standards on Wikipedia given to other peer publications.

Mediator notes

 * 210.124.181.153 and 210.124.180.125 appear to be the same user.
 * Has been a rathor heated debate from what I can tell on the talk pages.
 * Edit warring has occurred.

Discussion
Okey guys, do you all accept mediation?  « l | Ψrom3th3ăn ™ | l »   (talk) 13:30, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Staff list must be removed. It should and must not be added. Same goes with IGN and other such articles. We are writing an encyclopedia and adding staff list is not at all encyclopedic. --SkyWalker (talk) 13:55, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Please, if you have a interest in this article do list yourself as an involved party. Also note that coming into medcab case stating the way things should be done is somewhat counter productive and would most certainly start a Flame war :-)  « l | Ψrom3th3ăn ™ | l »   (talk) 14:38, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I do accept this mediation. Bom tuannguyen (talk) 17:36, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm in. (210.124.181.153 (talk) 01:18, 3 August 2008 (UTC))


 * Ok, lets procede on the pretense that the two anon users are most probably the same or closely related people. So the question is does the staff list belong in the article? Just for interest sake im going to ask you guys to present your own view of why or why not as well as any relevent wikipedia policys or guidelines to each other, in hope that there may be compromise or acceptance of one or another's view  « l | Ψrom3th3ăn ™ | l »   (talk) 07:20, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I think putting the list in there just clutter's the page. If somebody wanted that information they could look it up on the main site, and if it's not on the main site we could point them in the direction where they could find it (link). Wouldn't the list have to be verified with a reference, anyway? I propose leaving the list out but putting the reference as a link. (210.124.181.153 (talk) 02:37, 4 August 2008 (UTC))

The reason for my other edits, which were also reverted by the same user. I took the forum link out of there because I don't think it is needed when you can get to it from the mainsite. I don't understand why putting the forum site up there is a must over any other section of the site (which I don't think should be up there either). The reason why I placed the external links at the bottom of the page instead of the middle because every article that I have been to has set it up this way, including the featured articles. (210.124.181.153 (talk) 03:01, 4 August 2008 (UTC))

Update (concerning 'third opinion'): I agree with placing the key staff members in the infobox. Provided it is not ridiculous in the amount of members that is placed. Note: ...181.153 and ...180.42 are the same person. (210.124.180.42 (talk) 09:43, 8 August 2008 (UTC))

-- My main gripe with the edits by 210.124.., is that he claims several different reasons, and points out that IGN page had a notice that the page was not up to Wikipedia standards - and it had a staff list. This did not support his argument at the time because the Tom's Hardware page did not. He also pointed out, when I asked him to apply his own standards to other pages of similarity, in which he responded "I did. Thanks for your concern," (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:66.171.233.231) which was a blatant lie, since he did not do it. Also, the fact that he has no account, indicates he has never really edited anything on Wikipedia before. I counter myself with this, as even though I do have an account, I too have never edited Wikipedia before. But his IP indicates that even clearer - or else he would have used the login. This brought up the question of why he chose to edit the Tom's page at all. Disclosure: I am an employee of Bestofmedia, even indicated by my login name as BOM (for Bestofmedia)_Tuannguyen. Even so, I did not add any marketing or related information. I simply viewed the Wiki pages of our peers to see what information they had, and then thought it would be appropriate to add a similar list of staff. For example, AnandTech wikipage does not have a notice that it may not meet Wikipedia standards, and it has a small staff section. So I thought, it would make sense to add one too. Also, 210.124 argued that if the company was big, the staff list then would be too large and unnecessary -- Agreed: which is why I only put the main editorial people of the site itself, and did not put in any other employees of the publication. I do not believe I did anything questionable here, even though I am an employee of the company. Also, I was not involved in editing in forum links or anything of that nature. Another concern here was that 210.124... reverted my change of the staff section 3 times, which is just about to clip the 3RR policy defined here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Three_revert_rule I am sure if I edited the page again, 210.124 my changes would have been reverted again. The bottom line is, if 210.124... is so concerned with the staff section IN GENERAL, he would have done something similar on other peer pages. He has not. This does not support his claim of making things better on Wikipedia and keeping things "cleaned up" as he put it. Why spend nearly 2 days arguing back one small tiny section? If he was really concerned with cleaness with no indication of bias towards the Tom's page, he would have performed similar edits on other pages. His user history indicates contrary to this, as he has focused entirely on the Tom's page (save for one page about a movie on a DVD and then a page on Windows) and no other publications or related pages even. He said he wanted to make the page clean and "uncluttered" yet when I asked him about IGN, he said "No need to, I don't like IGN so I don't really care about that mess." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:66.171.233.231). So how is this a concern for being cleaned? It is total bias as he indicated in his response. He didn't even want to help edit the IGN page. There is a key difference between saying "I edit Tom's page but it doesn't mean I have to edit any other page" and saying what he said above. I myself mentioned the IGN huge list of staff and xeno (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Xenocidic) helped remove it as it was very, very large. I pointed out several "facts" of 210.124's actions here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:210.124.181.153 which go against his claims of using time wisely, indicating that he performed similar edits to other pages (lie indicated by his history), and other areas of his argument that do not hold ground. Let's make something clear here: I am not against removing the section of that is deemed not useful, but I am against someone making all sorts of claims as to why he removed it, which turned out to be lies, self indicating bias or down right suspicious. Bom tuannguyen (talk) 07:05, 4 August 2008 (UTC) -- I also want to add that the small staff section I added was not obnoxiously long as the one that was on the IGN page, and it was not a directory of people in the entire company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT#DIRECTORY). For example, if there are key people listed, I believe this is fine and does not violate any Wikipedia policy as long as facts and not marketing is presented. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameSpot this page lists several key people, but even then, is it necessary to list an employee who was let go and started something new? I think most people do something new when they leave a company, so what makes Jeff any more notable than any other person at GameSpot? It is more relevant to list people actually at Gamespot responsible for significant things as "notable." I only listed key editorial people to Tom's Hardware and did not even list key people to its parent company, Bestofmedia, because I did not think those business and sales people were relevant to the publication itself. The bottom line I think, is that every Wikipedia article is different and does not necessary follow the "that page is this, so this page must be this" rule, and there's no set rule like that. But 210.124's comments and claims make his edits look very bias. There are many wiki pages on companies where staff is listed. I do not see anything wrong with this. Key people, these might be interesting to readers of Tom's Hardware to know who the key editorials are. I do not see any violation of policy, and I did not bend any rules, or go "overboard" with information. I added several key staff, and left it as that. 210.124... made his changes repeatedly to my edit using the argument that IGN's page did not meet Wiki standards. Whether or not IGN's page meets Wiki standards or not resides with that page itself. I did not use IGN's page to credit myself and justify my reasons for adding in the staff, but I used IGN as an example to explain why 210.124's argument do not hold up. Bom tuannguyen (talk) 07:13, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Since you have both agreed to an informal mediation, I think that giving a third-party opinion at this point would be premature. Let the mediators rule first. Advocate 12:12, 4 August 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Advocate70 (talk • contribs)

Third Opinion
Stafflist: The staff list that was being added did not belong in the article because it added very little meaningful value for such a small website and will most likly never be used for most forms of research. But, I think adding 1-3 of the key staff members to the infobox will be an acceptable compromise without adding unnessery cluter and will be a good balance between useful information and junk.

External Links: Only one link needs to go to tom's hardware (the home page) as for all other subpages can be accessed via that. The external links should be at the bottom of the article per the manual of style, section management dot point 5 "The standard order for optional appendix sections at the end of an article is See also, Notes (or Footnotes), References, Further reading (or Bibliography), and External links; the order of Notes and References can be reversed. See also is an exception to the point above that wording comprises nouns and noun phrases."  « l | Ψrom3th3ăn ™ | l »   (talk) 10:46, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Objectives Met
I'm closing this case because the objectives have been met and no one has added any reason to keep it open. If you would like to ask anything further please feel free to contact me on my talk page.  « l | Ψrom3th3ăn ™ | l »   (talk) 22:04, 10 August 2008 (UTC)