Lately, SV and a couple of other editors (Rockpocket and Tryptofish) have been working on the Pit of despair article, which is about a restraint device that was used to study depression in monkeys. Both Rockpocket and Tryptofish have taken issue with the NPOV, or lack thereof, of SV's edits. SV did not take to kindly to the placement of a POV tag on the article and has been expressing her displeasure with those editors on the talk page, especially here.

SV, Wikipedia is a collaborative effort. If someone puts a POV tag on an article and disagrees with your editing, please try to work with them instead of personalizing the dispute.

Frankly Cla, I can't see where SV's conduct here is a problem, and I think the 'other' side is just as likely to have a POV here. I've looked at this and compared it to the 'CFS' page, and I can see very some similar subtle goal-post shifting on sources, naming etc. and POV promotion from both Rockpocket and Tryptofish. Where has she 'personalised' the dispute? I can't actually see it. (That may be I've missed something of course.) I note the deeming of SV herself by as 'naive'- patronising and guaranteed to get one's back up: a couple of appeal to ('scientific') authority fallacies on the talk page etc. This is common Wikipedia fare.

Frankly ALL contentious articles on wikipedia would do well to be slapped with a POV tag- and that should apply to ALL viewpoints. But then I'm banned and a non-person! What do I know?

Battleground article; you're not going to get the parties in this dispute to agree on any one presentation as "neutral", no matter how much you try, because the parties are fighting a pitched battle for ideology. Slim has no interest (or, I suspect, capability) of writing "neutrally" on an animal rights issue, and I suspect the people on the other side are explicitly baiting her, to boot.

If Wikipedia isn't willing to allow multiple articles on the same topic written from different viewpoints, it should probably just delete entirely battleground articles like this one, or reduce them to extremely short stubs and lock them in that state.

I think you're probably right. Wikipedia is incapable of effectively enforcing its proclaimed NPOV pillar, as everything that happens is just a vote, under the subterfuge of "consensus". All that "consensus" means is that you got all your mates to turn up and agree with you.

Well yes. Only that then may mean that MANY articles on wikipedia should be in that state (locked short stubs.)

I would like to see that on the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Lyme articles, to name just a few. That's because I do have what might be termed an 'ideological' standpoint. But good grief just look at each and every contributor to that bunch of articles. Not one of them is free of such a thing. I am just more honest about where I am coming from.

It should be done to Intelligent Design, Cold Fusion, Lyndon LaRouche, most of the psychology entries, evolution etc. etc. There are so much more- especially where 'ideology' is hidden. Perhaps the vast majority of WP articles need to be locked stubs.

The problem is that some people really believe they are 'above' ideology, that they have privileged access to an 'objective' viewpoint etc. or that they alone are perfectly able to be 'neutral'. But even here we see Tryptofish and Rockpocket being just as 'ideological' here as SV, and just as incapable of acting 'neutrally'.

The NPOV rule never works because the vast majority of Wikipedia editors and admins have no idea about the epistemology of claims to neutrality. I don't know why that is exactly, though I could hazard guesses. There's many possible explanations. Maybe anyone who wants to become an admin should be made to study a 'feminist epistemology 101' course at their local university, financed by Wales (shocking for some. Except those 'girlies' are one of the few academic groups who actually have a handle on this problem!)

I don't think it's only "girlies" who see or suffer from this problem, it's endemic. Try editing any article on an Irish Republican topic for instance, or any article discussing Israel's relationship with Palestine. Heck, why not try editing any article on the Catholic Church?

No rational person could expect teenagers to be able to effectively intervene in those kinds of daily battles. All they're qualified to do is to bleat about "civility".

Nice example of the way Wikipedia works.

The purpose of the experiments is reduced to the sentence, "The aim of the research was to produce an animal model of clinical depression."

Good luck if even 10% of the audience understands what that is, and how it can help them and their families. Better to gloss over it and get to the pointless monkey torture.

Slim should be topic-banned from animal-rights articles for the same reasons Jayjg was banned from Israel-Palestine articles -- she is incapable of writing from anything resembling a neutral position. Combine this with her admin bit and substantial history of wielding it (and/or horse-trading with others to get them to do her dirty work), and you have a chilling effect on any but the bravest editors trying for academic tone and balance.

What exactly her deep interest in Marshalsea Prison (T-H-L-K-D) might spring from I do not know, but she would do better sticking with deep history of English jails rather than Lyndon LaRouche, Animal Rights, Palestine, or other areas where her biases might mislead an innocent and ignorant user mistakenly thinking s/he is reading an encyclopedia.

But then this issue is ENDEMIC in wikipedia. If you ban SV from Animal Rights etc., you'll also have to also topic ban JzG on nearly everything. You'd have to topic ban Mast Cell, JFW, Tim Vickers, Science Apologist, Orange Marlin, the whole of the 'ID Cabal', Killer Chihuahua, various- probably most- people from here, because they all -we all- are incapable of writing anything completely neutral. Even 'resembling neutral' isn't possible with many. Just because you might agree with them, doesn't make their position neutral.

Even Tryptofish and Rockpocket from the 'pit of despair' are writing from a clear value position on the topic and are promoting their own POV in the article and on the talk page.

There are just so many Wikipedians whose "biases might mislead an innocent and ignorant user mistakenly thinking s/he is reading an encyclopedia." This is one of the major problems of the project (and one of which Jimbo Wales appears to have no intellectual understanding), yet it is on the other hand merely a reflection of human societies in general.

It's not just teenagers though.

You have to start somewhere.

Yes. Sounds good to me.


More seriously: yes, of course. And what we have evolved in human society to combat this tendency might roughly be called the scholarly method of erudite writing followed by peer review, and the tendency for mass-market encyclopediae to only report on somewhat settled areas of science and history.

Suggesting that because Wikipedia eschews this method it should not be called on it, well, that's just silly. (Not that you said that, but essentially everyone on Wikipedia does, either explicitly or implicitly.)

No, they don't. Wikipedia's tendency to follow the stories of the day instead of focusing on "proper" encyclopedia articles is a cause of concern for many.

I read this article and I think it's quite good; I don't see any overt POV problem, and I'm not sure there's a subtle POV problem either. If a positive appraisal of these experiments has been expressed anywhere (in a notable context), that should be represented in the article--but if such viewpoints exist, the other editors involved should be trying to find them instead of simply slapping a tag on the article.

A major issue with the neutrality problem on Wikipedia is that generally the only people interested in writing a detailed article on a topic already have established an opinion on it. The way you get around that in the real world is to pay people to write/edit/review with the expectation that they won't be paid well/rehired if the wider generalist community finds their work biased and refuses to buy it. So even those with strong opinions will suck it up and write a neutral piece to play to the crowd or their editors will get people to review it and have it edited into something that at least looks neutral.

Today I saw a large exhibit at the Smithsonian on nosegays that showed there was substantial historical commentary on them. Right now the article is barely a dictionary definition since so few people have an opinion on it that they want to push. Even if I could find an expert on it and convince him to write a free article, it would probably not be neutral since he would be able to write his opinion knowing he would not be financially impacted in the future as a result of the article.

Also, it has absolutely nothing to do with Cla68's comments, but File:Pitofdespair-Harlow.jpg is totally insufficient and in violation of WP:NFCC #1, #3a, and #10c

Um.... I can't help but think of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shii/Ima...ime_by_nima.jpg. You are walking on dangerous ground.

(that said, I don't see the problem with the article either. A tag adds no value if there's no actual substantial dispute other than people wanting to put a tag on.)

I'd have to agree with the folks who posted earlier to suggest that an article of this length on this subject is simply excessive. I do think SV means well, and I personally don't have a problem with it in terms of bias, but she simply doesn't understand the concept behind the statement "there's no such thing as bad publicity." Information regarding horrific animal experiments like this should be confined to "expert literature" such as scholarly journals and the like, and even then, suppressed as much as practicable. Going into this much detail on a highly-visible website, viewable by all, just gives bad people bad ideas and legitimizes their sick fantasies.

If you want to call that censorship, go ahead - but I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that fewer animals would be harmed if "how-to" articles like this were deleted.

That appears to be a dispute over derivative images, which are poorly defined in general, on the other hand, I have tagged or deleted over 20,000 images on en for these kinds of NFCC things and several hundred more on Commons where I am an admin, so I do have a fairly good grasp of the material and would not make an FFD nomination unless I was fairly confident.

Have you even looked at my FFD nomination for this image yet or are you just generalizing that some people are exempt from NFCC rules?

That tag should be justified with some concrete examples from the article but they are there to be enumerated.

I was rather dismayed to read the threads on the talk page after Tryp brought the matter to my attention.


There are no free passes on Wikipedia, everyone knows that.

The problem here isn't necessarily the articles's content, it's SV's reaction when a couple of editors objected to how the article was written. Her responses to them on the article's talk page were unnecessarily hostile and personal. Having a NPOV tag on an article shouldn't be a big deal. If you're the primary editor of the article, just go to the talk page and try to work through the concerns with the objecting editors.

Based on my experience, Rockpocket is mildly pro-animal rights, Tryptofish is mildly antagonistic, and we have a fairly good idea where SV stands. The three of them should be able to amicably resolve the POV concerns in the article. Rockpocket and Tryptofish are generally very polite and respectful editors, at least from what I've seen. In this case, SV was out of line.

If an editor submits their work to the Good Article and/or Featured candidacy forums, this is an indication to me that the author is willing and able to receive feedback and constructive criticism on their articles, inluding any suggestions that their editing isn't sufficiently neutral. Often when I work on an article about some military controversy, like this one, I can't help but get a little worked-up by the obvious outrage expressed by the journalists and observers reporting on the incident. I genuinely hope, however, that the FAC reviewers will point out if the resulting article is sufficiently NPOV or not.

(Could a moderator combine this comment with the preceeding one I just left a few minutes ago? I thought the forum software would combine both automatically.)

Cla, I just cannot see where SV is 'out of line'. You'll have to point it out.

The other thing is, we actually don't know exactly where tryptofish and Rockpocket stand on the issue. We only know SV's stance as she has made it explicit (This of course is one of the problems with anonymous editing). For all we know, it might not actually be possible for them to 'amicably resolve' POV issues, because we don't know how entrenched the other two's ideological positions actually are: unless they've made them explicit- which they don't seem to have done.

This whole matter illustrates a recurrent problem on WP. Wikipedia is written by uncredentialed persons often as anons or pseudonyms. It purports to a encyclopedia of general use, a source of information for person entering with no special level of understanding. Other encyclopedias of general use experts to document the the current academic or professional consensus of the topics covered. They tend to eschew controversy. Other encyclopedias of general use limit the level of detail of coverage to a level appropriate for their stated purpose (General Use.) They will have articles on the psychologist Harlow and Animal rights. They will not have articles on specific pieces of lab equipment used by Harlow. Wikipedia offers a vehicle to provide detailed overage of just about any topic to almost any imaginable level. So they do have articles about the specific pieces of lab equipment. The more WP burrows down into detailed levels the more inappropriate it is allow uncredentialed persons to engage in the editing. So Wikipedia gets a double whammy that makes it an attractive nuisance for cranks, vain self-styled "experts," people sent on missions from god and POV pushers of all types.

The devil is in the details.

No. "Theoretically" there are no free passes on Wikipedia. Everyone knows that there are, for years at a time, free passes. Jayjg had one. Slim is regaining hers. Will Beback has one on Lydon Larouche, it would seem. David Gerard has one. Newyorkbrad has one allowing longwinded tendentiousness. There are plenty of free passes on Wikipedia. Everyone knows that.

I believe I may have said that already. In fact you recorded it for posterity in another thread in this section. My apologies for omission

However I am not sure I agree that NYB is tendentious.

I believe your denial is expressly indicated in his pass.

Um no. At least theoretically, it's possible to write in a neutral way even if one has a strong ideological position. As Cla68 says, taking something to FA will ferret out whether you did a good job or not, at least most of the time.

In my view, SlimVirgin is not very good at writing in an NPOV way. She is good at playing the game of asserting she is and using that against others, but that's not quite the same thing. This article suffers greatly from POV problems, and the talk suffers greatly from SV apparently playing this "I'm NPOV and you're not" game against the other editors, who in my view are trying hard to work with her. Bullying may well be the best one word description of her actions on that page.



You'll have to elaborate, I'm not following you, sorry.

These things get so complicated you need a scorecard. Hence Wikipedia Review.

My point was more that it is an incident in the past where someone questioned the copyright status of an image and SV immediately personalized the issue with a claim that the other user had a grudge against her.

We'll see how this plays out.

I had emailed the alleged source of the image (a doctor at the NIH), trying to clear up the copyright (and maybe even get a free donation of some images), but according to his response, his thesis had no images whatsoever and the image isn't owned by him, so the source is 100% incorrect.

I'm afraid you're just going to have to give me the examples there of SV's 'bullying', POV problems and her playing games. I just can't see it. But I did note the 'naive' putdown against her.

Whether it should be theoretically possible to write in a neutral way does not mean individuals are necessarily capable of writing in a neutral way, or that Wikipedia's FA checks and balances will somehow ferret out POV writing, especially when most Wikipedians, especially the elite among them, up to the God-king himself, seem so unaware of the complexities of claims to 'neutrality' and objectivity (Please correct me on this. I would LOVE to see a proper awareness of such issues, such as I've highlighted before, among the WP elite. All I've seen is the opposite.)

When one wants to demonstrate an intent to work hard in a spirit of cooperation, the first thing one should do is slap a POV template onto the top of the article in question. After that, one should endlessly bicker over minor points until the other party is reduced to a state of seething frustration. At no point should one attempt to conduct actual research, expand the article with details about another POV, or anything like that.

Slim's problem on Animal Rights is that she is immersed in a new "consensus" that animals are hard done by and anyone writing that does not accept that consensus are an old guard that just don't understand. Therefore any writing that does not take a sympathetic viewpoint is expressing an inappropriate point of view and has not been educated towards the new neutral POV. In other words, if you don't agree with her you are wrong, and no amount of sourcing is going to get her to shift, especially with a endless supply of resources filtered into false accuracy through Google searching to come up with sources that match what she wants to write.

Her editing technique of writing and then retrofitting sources to support her "neutral" viewpoint then exaggerates the problem as she will then use the RS argument to cement her viewpoint against others.

It is a good example where selectively and sequentially applying policy, (often pedantically, rather having a dialogue working towards a common understanding, together with rational and supportable differences which perhaps do not need to be resolved for a coherent document) does not guarantee that it is likely that the best possible Wikipedia article will appear.

Well, ok, here and here she personalizes the dispute. A neutral editor, apparently agrees that there are some POV concerns.

I suspect that when SV is spending a lot of time and effort on an article, such as this one, she doesn't have much patience with other editors who come in and quibble with what she has done. In fact, she appears to take it personally, indicated by saying things like, "If you don't stop this I'm going to take this article off of my watchlist." Comments like that are not helpful. If this was an isolated incident, then that would be one thing, but I think there's a pattern.

Well, yes and no. Yes, Stroynaya is a consummate gamester of just the stripe you describe. However, I also think she understands the NPOV policy all too well, and likely better than you do. She appreciates its fundamental illogic and its game playing possibilities and exploits the same. Look at it from her perspective: why not game a system that was designed for gaming from the outset?

THAT'S the 'bullying'? Really?

Do go and look at the Simon Wessely archives and see what was done to me and 'MEAgenda', among others. Go to the CFS page and see what was done to Guido Den Broeder. Go and see what is done to editors like Ombudsman and Ferry lodge, Moulton. You may not agree with their apparent standpoints (even if you think you know what they are) - but you'd get some much firmer evidence of 'bullying' and 'out of line' behaviour there from multiple editors and admins, than the examples above. Those are just a few examples.

The 'neutral' editor- again, NOBODY can be said to be indisputably 'neutral' on any given subject, especially animal testing. Undecided because of not knowing all facts may be one thing- this does not constitute 'neutral'. Men do not know the experience of menstruation pain. Does this therefore make them neutral authorities on the pain of mentruating? No. Nor could women be 'neutral' on matters of penile erection, being kicked in the testicles etc. But then, I'm no 'neutral' authority on women any more than men here are 'neutral' authorities on penile erection and testicular injury! I've used these examples because the vast majority of the world are one biological sex or the other, sometimes both.

Authorities on appeals to 'neutral' authority are themselves a form of 'appeal to authority' and constitute a common logical fallacy on wikipedia. How do we know the standpoint of the 'neutral' editor? Because they say so? I've seen this on Wikipedia so many times. Someone weighs in to a debate with the classic 'I'm neutral' claim - then proceeds to lay into one side. Because they've claimed 'I'm neutral', everyone defers to them- but there is no way of knowing how 'neutral' they are- primarily because of their anonymity!

This is one of the major problems on Wikipedia- which is why their NPOV policy is basically a very bad joke.

Didn't she write it? I'm all for some sort of NPOV, and it's essential for a serious work of reference. I mean, look at Conservapedia for something without NPOV! It's just gone a teensy bit awry.

This deserves to be re-emphasized. Her bullying is subtle; she doesn't make strident denunciations of her opponents on talk pages, she simply orchestrates a maddening Kafkaesque environment where the rules apply to you, but not to her.

She is also adept at "Nacht und Nebel" tactics. I haven't been able to unravel the fine points of the following scenario, but it is definitely a case of giving a fatal bite to the newbie. If you look at the revision history for "Lyndon LaRouche" on September 2, you see SlimVirgin editing like mad, reverting anything that gets in her way. What got in her way was Steve Grayce (T-C-L-K-R-D) , so she reported him at the 3RR board and got him blocked for doing a milder version of what she was doing herself. Scroll down the page and you will see Leatherstocking making a futile attempt to complain that SV was doing the same thing as SG; his complaint is shut down in short order by William Connolley (who I guess won't be doing that sort of thing anymore for a while.)

Now comes the good part: SG gets permablocked as a sock of yours truly. He attempts to get unblocked, citing this page, where it says that his IP address is not mine. It avails him naught. But take a look at Jpgordon's talk page, where curious admins inquire about this odd fact. JPG silences them with the enigmatic "email scent." (Wow, that really is enigmatic.) Now, do I have any hard evidence that SV played a role in this latter sequence of events? No, of course not. Let's just call it a hunch.

I think an email scent is when they get a developer to extract someone's email address and declare it suspicious.

What's needed is objectivity, which is similar to NPOV, but without the problematic dramatic tension generated by competing editorial factions.

That's just nomenclature. You can have as much fuss about "objectivity" as NPOV any day.

There is actually an important difference between NPOV and objectivity. The latter is well-defined in the literature of journalism and scientific reporting. NPOV has no definition anywhere except in WikiCulture. An objective report would have no propaganda at all. An NPOV article has to carry balanced amounts of propaganda from competing factions.

However, it's a fair bet that if Wikipedia adopted the term "objectivity" we wouldn't recognise its implementation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=307529219

Nuff said?

If Wikipedia is a "PIT OF DESPAIR" I present one of it's true pitchforkmen in that pit...
A certain admin, the The Grand Gamalie , in true form and function as a trollman and enabler in the furnace of lies, hate and Wikipedia.

Hmm. I think my point is substantiated.

It couldn't possibly be a typo for "email sent" - that'd be too obvious.

SV is still edit warring over the POV tag on the page. Again, having a POV tag on the page is no big deal, the concernshave been explained on the talk page. Engage in discussion, make the necessary changes, then remove the tag.

That's a standard part of her repertoire, despite the fact that the tag says "Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved." It's an opportunity for her to demonstrate afresh that she's above the law.