Wikipedia talk:Co-op/David Tornheim

Hello, David Tornheim. I understand that you would like to work with someone in respect to neutral point of view. I've had some experience with this, and am willing to help you out. Is there something specific that's giving you trouble?—Anne Delong (talk) 23:59, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

@Anne Delong: I just noticed this. Thanks for your interest in helping out. To give you an idea of what I have been recently working on, I strongly supported the COI Duck essay that was recently deleted here which at one time looked like this. I also have been contributing to discussions on COI editoring at Jimbo's page: (1) Proposed Auditors (2) WifiOne Case (3) RE NPOV (4) Coi Ducks (5) COI in Nature News.

Right now there is an issue at Bayer. FYI, I am being watched. Just look at the talk page there.David Tornheim (talk) 00:34, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, David Tornheim, being watched is a fact of life "on" Wikipedia. Even if there were no watchlists, the talk pages are an open forum, unlike e-mail, which is more confidential. I have 115 watchers myself right now (to your 9)! Actually, a large number of watchers can be an asset, because when you become involved in a discussion some of them are likely to chime in, and a conversation with plenty of people involved is more likely to end with a consensus (as people bring in information and look at a question from various angles) and seem less like a head-to-head battle. When an editor complains about canvassing, it's because he or she may feel that only editors on one side of a disagreement are being notified. There are ways to encourage more people to take an interest without being partial - there's Wikipedia:Third opinion if only two editors are not able to agree and you want to invite one more which neither of you choose, and there's Wikipedia:Requests for comment if you want to invite a bunch of random editors to comment on a specific point of disagreement. The advantage of the second one is that it's official, and after a period of time an admin or other experienced editor will come along and judge the consensus, after which whatever action was decided upon will be carried out, with no edit warring. Of course, this means that you have to accept the result and move on even if it's not what you wanted. Oh, and thanks for the links. I read through them and found them quite illuminating. My experience had been more with people trying to (1) add promotional material about a company or (b) promote individual people by adding material about them to a company article, and (c) making the company look more important by adding the names of famous people or companies who have been customers. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:38, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. I have been working on something to show you that demonstrates industry slant, so that I might seek your feedback on what, if anything, can be done to make it NPOV. It might be a week before I can show it to you and say anything about on Wikipedia. So, when the time comes, I'll definitely want your help with it.

On-Wiki recently

• I have continued in discussion on Jimbo's page about COI.
• I also commented on my shock that a previously banned user petitioned on Jimbo's page (even admitting he had violated the rules and sock-puppetted during the ban) and was almost immediately reinstated without notifying/inviting or waiting for those who had previously banned the user to speak, and with zero evidence presented by Petitioner. Even more shocking was the ridicule I received for suggesting those who asked for the ban participate or that Petitioner should have provided any evidence of why he was banned, evidence proving his claims that his accusers were "are now either banned themselves, or have left, or were sockpuppet accounts created specifically to support the ban", and assurances as to what would be different. My confidence in the due process of Wikipedia has really declined watching that process.
• participated in the discussion on COI talk page here
• participated in continued discussions on COI Ducks essay here

... to be continued (I think there were other things I wanted to mention)-- must run... David Tornheim (talk) 00:43, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello again, David Tornheim. Looks like you've been busy! Yes, I saw the ban repeal discussion you were upset about. I find editors are often lenient about things that happened years ago. Perhaps their optimism will be justified. I too have found a few things here that surprise me, but I try to remember:

(1) Editing Wikipedia is a hobby; perhaps you enjoy working in the controversial areas, but then take it as an intellectual challenge and don't let the strong-willed characters you meet get under your skin. If you need a break you can always join me at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/G13 rescue, where all the drafts are abandoned and it's very peaceful.

(2) Wikipedia has become an important source of information that can affect people's lives, and keeping articles accurate and neutral is an important activity. However there are many, many editors, the vast majority of whom really want to follow policy, and each has his or her own idea of how to do that, which may not jibe with yours. Sometimes a consensus goes against you and you just have to accept it gracefully and move on.

About conflict of interest: Every one of us has COI about some topic. The problem comes when a COI editor begins to use deception, doublespeak and trickery to get their way. However, calling people silly names is rarely helpful, so if there ends up being an essay about non-neutral editing, I would hope that no farm animals were mentioned in the essay.

Thanks for your interest in the essay. Yeah, I can see why you would not like being called a farm animal. But I don't think the kind of COI editing you would do would qualify--you seem like an honest editor. I don't think the essay is meant to be talking about just individuals who might have particular biases, but groups of editors that work together (i.e. a flock of ducks) misbehaving, deliberately breaking the rules, and protecting each other and each other's agenda in NB's and hence are not being held accountable and don't care, a bit like a gang who runs wild in a neighborhood and threatens people who try to report their behavior or keep them in check. I doubt you would do that right? I know I sure wouldn't. So, yes it's indeed pejorative. But then again, so are words like "pseudo-science", "quack", "charlatan", etc. that a group of skeptics love to throw around and put in CAM articles. The skeptics form one kind of narrow-minded advocacy that I think is trying to be described by the "duck" essay (amongst other deep routed COI behavior), but we would have to check in with the author to be sure. In my mind the essay is also primarily talking about problems as severe as the WifiOne, the BP particle, the NYPD edits or Congress editing, where people are clearly doing damage to the reputation of Wikipedia's NPOV policy on important topics and articles that get wide visibility and these gangs of editors don't care because their editing serves their agenda. That kind of editing is a very big problem on Wikipedia IMHO and will slowly erode the public's trust in Wikipedia, which is already slipping. So, is it really a problem to use a pejorative name to people like WifiOne who are deliberately undermining Wikipedia to push an agenda that deprives readers of NPOV content? David Tornheim (talk) 08:16, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Anne Delong: Did you see this^? David Tornheim (talk) 22:22, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

I will continue to read whatever you write to me here - or elsewhere - but I will answer here if I have any suggestions. —Anne Delong (talk) 07:22, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

That's fine, probably best and what I expected.

David, it's not that using pejorative language is wrong, since Wikipedians are allowed to express their opinions on talk pages (although not in articles). In my experience, though, it is counterproductive. The optimum scenario would be for COI editors to gain understanding of WP policies, and either (1) start making more neutral edits, or (2) go somewhere else to promote their ideas/company/favourite pop star. When you call people names, or make fun of them, their natural reaction is to change their behaviour to be emotional instead of logical, and they will stubbornly reject anything else you say. You will be perceived as an unpleasant person whose ideas can be ignored. (This is basic leadership training stuff). Comparing a group of editors to a flock of ducks may relieve frustration and may even be totally warranted - but it will not improve Wikipedia. Focusing on the appropriateness of particular edits, rather than on who made them, and making constructive suggestions for neutral wording will be more likely to attract support from other editors.—Anne Delong (talk) 02:13, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Notifying other editors

Question: I'm a bit unfamiliar with how pings are supposed to work. It's typical of those things that new users don't learn about and do wrong and even more experienced editors like me often don't learn without having to spend quite a bit of time searching. I have read tons of stuff from policy and guideline, but stuff like proper pinging I typically don't see in the "manuals" and find by seeing someone else doing it correctly or scolding me for not doing it correctly. I would love to see more work done to help users learn the ropes. Although WP:5PILLARS is fine for explaining the purposes and priorities and key policies, it is not good for people who just want to get an article up or want to jump in feet first and don't know what to do if someone reverts their work for example, which I think is how a typical user would do it--just like a typical programmer who is not going to read the entire manual on their programming language before writing their first program. And those who are protective of articles, especially from people who don't share their POV can be pretty frosty with new users. I have seen it. I even asked how to protect such users when I see they are being abused and saw no advice on that. Any suggestions? I can give you an example or two if you wish, and show you why it was a disaster for me to try to protect the user from abuse.

Back to my question: I have long understood it is good practice to notify people when you talk about them or what they have said, and until recently I thought that meant you had to go to their talk page. Then someone said you just use the "ping" thing. I think this might have been invented at some time after I joined in 2008 or was still in development. So I started using \{\{ping|...user...\}\} which puts the @ sign which I don't like which doesn't happen when others "ping" me. I used that when I notified people in that ANI about the Petitioner who got unbanned. Was that proper form, or is there another proper from to show to 3rd party reader that you officially pinged someone without giving a diff from that users talk page? You were able to ping me by using \[\[User:David Tornheim|David Tornheim\]\]. Is this explained somewhere? Is that the generally accepted way? Also, I find it almost impossible to look up specific policy or guideline questions. For example, if I looked up "ping" with Google of "ping wikipedia", the most relevant thing that comes up is this template. But that is more documentation for how the template works, not a style guide like you might find here. It could be that everything is organized in a way that you can find things by doing the right search, but I have found it often takes 1/2hr - 1hr to answer simple questions. Maybe that is "just the way things are" at present. I keep hoping not. David Tornheim (talk) 07:56, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

David, the notification system is indeed relatively new, and still in flux. When I joined, the main way to notify people was with the Template:Talkback. The page you are looking for is Wikipedia:Notifications. As well as the ping that you mentioned, the notification also works with [[User:Username|Username]] or {{U|Username}}, but only if you sign with the four tildes in the same edit. Otherwise people would get multiple pings if you corrected errors in your post. To be really sure, in cases where policy demands notification, an actual message on the talk page is best such as "ZZZZZZ: A discussion which concerns you has been started at WP:ANI/Bubblegum chewing by ZZZZZZ. You may wish to comment." or something like that.—Anne Delong (talk) 21:12, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! Yeah talkback was the only thing I was aware of when I joined. David Tornheim (talk) 22:02, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Helping new users

You asked how to help new users who are being treated badly by experienced editors. My suggestion is to be a counterbalancing experience - praise something they've done well, make positive suggestions, and maybe explain that some Wikipedia editors unfortunately have abrasive personalities. If you agree with what the rude editors said, you could rephrase it more politely (example: Editor A: "Idiot, don't you even know how to make an infobox?" Editor B: "Hey, I fixed your infobox; you left out a bracket. Infoboxes can be tricky; lots of people need help with them.") You likely know some of this already. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:13, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Question for you

@Anne Delong: This article seems fairly balanced in its coverage of the material. However, if you look at the current version of the controversy article, hardly any mention is made of the concerns raised by Charles Margulis and Jane Rissler, Ph.D. and the lack of regulation of the FDA as compared with the E.U. where there is tight regulation. I am always amazed that despite the length of the Wiki article it fails to mention this basic fact. And I am pretty certain if I made any attempt to put that in, I would be taken to the cleaners. Would you be willing to help me in dealing with the fallout of trying to balance the article to include something so straightforward? Or do you think it is a lost cause to balance the article? David Tornheim (talk) 09:27, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello again, David. I looked over the two links that you provided, and here are some comments:

• The NOVA page is actually not an article at all. It is a collection of excerpts from interviews, related to a NOVA series called "Harvest of Fear", which, from its title, is not likely an unbiased report. Interviews are weak sources, because neither the interviewer (who's not even named here), nor his/her editor, is required to check the factual accuracy of the interviewees' statements, which are just printed as is. Also, the two people whom you mentioned don't compare American and European regulations. I mention this because you shouldn't use this web page as a source.
• There is quite a bit of mention of both European and USA regulations in Genetically modified food controversies, as well as in other articles (for example Regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms and Genetically modified organism containment and escape. The article you are thinking of changing is about controversy, and I'm not sure that the fact that regulations in general may be laxer in the US is a controversy, since no one is disputing it.
• The two people that you mentioned discuss two areas, labeling and field trials. The article already states that there have been many efforts to increase labeling regulation in the US, so I don't see an imbalance there. That leaves field trials. There is indeed little mention of controversy about the regulations in this area in the article. If you believe it exists, and you find both 1) reliable sources about the actual regulations in both EU and USA, as well as (2) published articles showing that recognized experts disagree about the appropriateness of the way the trials are regulated, this might be a legitimate addition to the page. That's a lot of work, though.

Anyway, if you decide to take this on and it leads to discussion on the talk page, I would be willing to take part in the discussion, but I can't guarantee that I'll agree with your changes without having seen what you write.—Anne Delong (talk) 15:40, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. David Tornheim (talk) 15:47, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

AfC and G13

@Anne Delong: Today, I decided to look at AfC/G13 rescue you suggested above. I spent maybe an hour reading over things. I read most of the main page, read up on the Seigenthaler incident, read about half of the "reviewing instructions" (not the Show more parts), reviewed the entire flow chart, and looked over a couple of the draft articles at Pending AfC submissions:Rusty Braziel, Love Poems, and Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act (LARA) of 2015, curious to see how others handled it and if I agreed with their assessment and whether it seemed simple. And read up on Notability definition for BLP, since Rusty Braziel was said to lack Notability. Like many things on Wikipedia, it was a bit overwhelming and a thumbs up or down was not a straight-forward answer on any of the three, although I came to agree with the reviewers of the first two after spending some time looking over the material carefully. Even after I finish reading the "reviewing instructions", I'm not sure I will feel ready to do a full review yet, or to re-review articles that failed the first round. Is there a way to just do very simple stuff (e.g. the "quick review", especially to prevent spam, vandalism, hoaxes, etc.) until I get used to the process, or have someone review my review to make sure I am doing it right? You could assign me a couple of them and I can tell you what I would do with them if you wish. David Tornheim (talk) 06:49, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Hello again, David. I moved your question to a new section for easier editing. I agree that reviewing can be challenging, mainly because there are conflicting goals. (1) We want to discover new editors who will be an asset to Wikipedia and encourage them to learn the policies so they can improve their editing. (2) We want to protect Wikipedia from spam and copyvio, which is what many of these new editors want to insert.

Although AfC reviewing and G13 rescue both use the AfC Helper script, they are really two different things:

• AfC reviewing: This is where we contact the new editors and help them if we can. One tricky part is telling the difference between a draft that isn't showing notability and one whose subject is just not notable at all. Asking an editor to add references in the first case is a good idea, whereas in the second case it's just wasting everyone's time, and a friendly explanation is in order. A good way to deal with cases where you just aren't sure is to post a notice about a draft on a suitable WikiProject. Some of these have special notability qualificationss, and they also know which sources are good ones for their areas. To find submissions that are easy to review, go to the tail of the category, where the most recent submissions appear. There will be blank ones (which need checking to make sure that they aren't blank because of some format trouble) and copyvios (which need checking to be sure that the source text isn't freely licensed) and test pages {"Hello... is this working?") which are fairly straightforward to start out with. I don't think me assigning you ones to review would work, because there are a lot of other reviewers, and the chosen ones may already be reviewed by the time you see them. However, there is a talk page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/Reviewer help. If you post a question about a reviewing topic or a specific draft there, an experienced reviewer will answer (maybe me if I'm around at the time).

• G13 rescue: This is different from regular AfC reviewing because in most cases the original editors have gone away. You don't need to worry about contacting them and encouraging them. The process is (1) check for copyvio using Earwig's Copyvio Detector and deal with any problems found. (2) Check to see if the topic is already in the encyclopedia; if so, the draft may be in need of some kind of merging or may need deleting under another criteria - you can refer these to me if you're not sure. (3) Tag any that don't seem worth improving with db-g13 (non-notable topics, totally promotional material, link farms. etc). (4) Ones that look promising, use the script to "postpone" deletion, and either fix them up yourself or leave them for someone else.

Okay, good luck, and go to it! —Anne Delong (talk) 09:25, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. G13 does look much easier to start with. That makes sense about the notability concerns being address by subject matter. David Tornheim (talk) 20:09, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

NPOV issues: GMO

@Anne Delong:: Hi Anne. Hope all is well. Long no talk. I wanted to let you know that I started working on some NPOV and made a number of comments recently on these two talk pages:

1. Talk:Genetically_modified_food
2. Talk:Genetically_modified_food_controversies

with specific issues related to NPOV I raised that I might like your assistance with soon:

1. Talk:Genetically_modified_food#Issues_with_NPOV
2. here

Thanks, -David Tornheim (talk) 02:45, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi David. I have made one comment at Talk:Genetically modified food. You have chosen a difficult area to work in, so don't get discouraged if your ideas are not always accepted. Although the articles are related, try to keep the discussion of a particular article on the the talk page of that article, to avoid confusion. Also, on the principle of flies and honey, you may get further if you suggest specific changes without making a point of criticizing the current version (for example, by calling it POV), which gets other editors' backs up and makes them less likely to be accepting of your ideas. I say may... I am going to a music festival for four days, and I doubt there's WIFI in the woods there, so I won't be able to comment further until after that. Good luck. —Anne Delong (talk) 11:53, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Decision making

@Anne Delong: I had a question here about what is to be done when there is a dispute about content, and the parties agree that the decision is not based on policy, but on editor discretion. My specific question was " Also, if ultimately the decision is really nothing but a mater of editorial judgement rather than WP:PAG, should we then decide based the decision on majority rather than consensus, if no consensus can be found? I'm often puzzled as to the correct choice of action in Wiki dilemma if there is no consensus for either of two choices when there is disagreement. Sometimes it is impossible to achieve consensus, so what is one to do in the meantime?" How would you respond to the question? I'm not so interested in how it relates to the subject matter where I posted it. I have seen many times when there is disagreement on what should be in an article and there is no consensus on which course of action to take. Although usually those agreements are not based on editor judgement but on a disagreement about what the correct policy or interpretation thereof is, which makes it much more complicated. David Tornheim (talk) 22:52, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi David. The usual thing to do in a situation like this is to do a WP:RFC. I see that you have decided not to do this because there is new information appearing in the news about this topic, and the !votes would become dated. Keep in mind that Wikipedia is not a newspaper; it's not intended to be up-to-the-minute, but more of a historical perspective. If information is in flux, and there's no consensus right now, one possibility is to agree to wait for a while and discuss it again at a later date. Whether or not a couple of words are in the lead or not isn't going to seriously compromise the accuracy of the article in the mean time. Later, when more source material has appeared, it may become more apparent which option is best.

You say that you have come across many cases where there is no consensus. One thing to ask yourself is, "how important is this?". I have seen editors spend a lot of time arguing over something rather trivial, such as whether to say "slow" or "leisurely", or some such thing. Sometimes the most efficient thing is to be gracious and move on. What to put in the lead is a good example of this, because since it's a summary of what's already in the article, its exact content is less vital than some decisions. When editors can't agree on a small thing, here's something that may save time. If the difference of opinion is important though, the RFC process usually does work. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:15, 5 August 2015 (UTC)