Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Medicine/Evidence: Difference between revisions
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[[User:Evolution and evolvability|T.Shafee(Evo<small>&</small>Evo)]]<sup>[[User talk:Evolution and evolvability|talk]]</sup> 06:54, 24 April 2020 (UTC) |
[[User:Evolution and evolvability|T.Shafee(Evo<small>&</small>Evo)]]<sup>[[User talk:Evolution and evolvability|talk]]</sup> 06:54, 24 April 2020 (UTC) |
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==Evidence presented by Literaturegeek== |
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===Doc James background=== |
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Doc James has been a productive wikipedian for many years. He is very skilled at reading and interpreting the medical literature and summarising said sources. Many articles have been greatly improved by Doc James’s medical additions. Much of the problems began when he seemed to veer away from his skill set and began doing extensive copy editing and trying to make technical words less technical (despite Doc James admitting on his profile that he has difficulties in this area such as spelling, choice of words etc), often he made an improvement but heated disputes arose with Colin and others that he sometimes made the wording worse. Also, some in the community disagreed strongly with Doc James adding video content to medical articles, but their reaction was way over the top in terms of aggression. Disputes therefore arose regarding Doc James adding videos to articles and his grammar, Colin in my mind stood out as one of the most problematic editors. |
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For what it is worth I think Doc James should focus more on his strengths of summarising the medical literature and less so on areas that cause arguments. But Colin’s Battleground behaviour below was never justified. |
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===Colin=== |
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Colin is a good editor, he is intelligent and for many years he edited the project peacefully and productively. I do not think that he should be site banned or blocked but rather some measure should be in place that compels him back to his productive behaviour, like a warning or restriction. Believe it or not I actually like Colin as an editor, and am grateful for his contributions, but I do not like his recent year or two of bad behaviour. For the positive contributions of Colin I opposed, on ANI, a topic ban on Colin and instead supported a drug pricing RfC instead. |
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Colin has engaged in BATTLEGROUND behaviour. He disparagingly calls Doc James a deity and bully even though James’s interaction style is one of being chilled out and because James has editing colleagues who agree with him. Examples: |
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Colin attacks Jytdog, per [[WP:BATTLE]], and insults Doc James as a deity in reference to people defending or agreeing with Doc James: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=prev&oldid=832553594 perhaps Jytdog if you could stop worshiping the WP:MED deity for a moment] |
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More [[WP:BATTLE]] from Colin: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:WhatamIdoing&diff=prev&oldid=832659639 The WP:MED deity-bully is a problem for others to recognise and solve.] |
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Colin has [[WP:OWNERSHIP]] issues of [[WP:MEDMOS]] and a strange disruptive belief that because he largely wrote the first version of MEDMOS many years ago that his original intent trumps later consensus and he is therefore justified in abusive outrage in response to this belief system. This motivates him to say this about Doc James not following Colin’s original intention. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Ketogenic_diet&diff=prev&oldid=832763099 “Doc James”, “modifying articles”, “destroying”, “vandalism“.] |
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More [[WP:BATTLE]] with aggression from Colin: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Epilepsy&diff=prev&oldid=832913941 Secondly, if you make another comment like "How many instances of "patient" have you converted to "person" over the last two years?" I will take you to ANI to get you blocked.] |
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Colin is not [[WP:CIVIL]] to his colleague: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine&diff=prev&oldid=832876976 unlike Doc James, I shall use an edit summary when doing so] |
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Colin engages in [[WP:HARASS]] [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine&diff=prev&oldid=832931903 Topic ban proposal for doc James by Colin] Colin harassing Doc James, cannot see his behaviour is actually a lot worse than Doc James’ minor issues. |
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Confirmation it was harassment is the community rejected the topic ban: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Archive_108#Topic_ban_proposed_for_Doc_James Topic ban was overwhelmingly rejected by the community.] |
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More BATTLE conduct: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine&diff=prev&oldid=832944512 Are Doc James and CFCF going to edit war on those too? If not, why not?] |
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine&diff=prev&oldid=832959076 James, would you please, please, take this Citizendium nonsense to another project]. More of Colin assuming bad faith, not civil, confrontational, etc. |
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More personalising disputes: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine&diff=prev&oldid=833074521 Who's the bully asserting his authority with no consensus? James]. More hypocrisy with aggressive bullying type behaviour from Colin trying to dominate chilled out interaction style Doc James because Colin does not like Doc James’s editing. |
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Colin is again not [[WP:CIVIL]] to Ballena or Doc James: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine&diff=prev&oldid=833064904 James must show the material meets WP:V prior to reinsertion. He does not do that. He's a bully. I'm not asking you to give Ballena dictatorial control, and I don't think they are the sort of person to behave that way, unlike James.] |
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Colin is not [[WP:CIVIL]] again: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Doc_James&diff=prev&oldid=833227066 better communication with the wider community is definitely one of the lessons you need to learn, and admit you need to learn.] More abusively belittling Doc James in front of his editing peers. |
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Colin [[WP:ATTACK]]s all who he disagrees with: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Colin&diff=prev&oldid=833590203 Insults an entire wiki med project] |
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Colin has markedly poor insight as he can only see fault in others but cannot see fault in his behaviour which is much worse. This prompts serious [[WP:NPA]] behaviour: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Doc_James&diff=prev&oldid=833771852 But there are real problems with his behaviour on his project, and frankly those problems are not helped by editors like you worshipping him........ James is so arrogant....... these videos are just a symptom of a deep illness affecting WP:MED, and James is at the core of it.......... This "making Wikipedia more shit" has been going on for years. James has good intentions for doing it.....] |
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Doc_James&diff=prev&oldid=833761638 This then becomes a deliberate lie: you are now knowingly telling untruths to further your case. We've seen this about the lies that the videos were summaries of......... just about sums up the dreadful way that James edits Wikipedia and appears to encourage others to do likewise.] Colin again personalising of disputes. |
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Doc_James&diff=prev&oldid=833982077 Wrt James "keeping his cool", well he has his worshippers who speak on his behalf, just as James speaks on behalf of Osmosis. Jtdog, CFCF...... guys like Tryptofish spend their time devoted to defending James] Attacks Doc James and anyone who agrees with him, escalates disputes needlessly. |
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Personal attacks from Colin: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Ketogenic_diet&diff=prev&oldid=833832374 Colin insults another medical editor] |
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More personal attacking: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Zefr&diff=prev&oldid=833821802 Colin is hostile towards other medical editors if he perceives they made a mistake] |
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'''The sexual stuff was what prompted me to gather these diffs for a user RfC that I never filed at the time. Here it is:''' |
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Doc_James&diff=prev&oldid=834240966 These things that are being discussed are symptoms of an underlying illness with WP:MED which at its core lies Doc James, with a chorus of worshippers......... Tryptofish, do you realise your comments ''"If you choose to edit medical pages, you can, but you have to deal with it as it is"'' sound exactly like an apologist for sexual abuse in the workplace: ''"The guys here are a bit crude at times, might feel your bum in the lift, peer down your top, but you know, they don't mean harm by it, and if you want the job, well you have to deal with it as it is"''. Wrong and bad.] Compares people who defend Doc James to sex offenders. |
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People can say crazy inappropriate things under stress and then regret it but not so with Colin, he repeatedly refuses calm requests to strike the very inappropriate reference to sexual abuse: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Colin&diff=prev&oldid=834278612] |
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Colin&diff=prev&oldid=834290736] |
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Colin&diff=834308664&oldid=834290736#Talk_page] |
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Colin continues to refuse to strike or remove the sexual assault comparison of Doc James with work place sex offenders. Colin never did to this day strike or remove those comments. Colin has a long pattern of humiliating James publicly throughout Wikipedia. Most people would develop a mild case of PTSD and leave the project based on how Colin treated Doc James, which, all things considered, I think was actually Colin’s intent. |
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==Evidence presented by {your user name}== |
==Evidence presented by {your user name}== |
Revision as of 13:18, 25 April 2020
Case clerk: TBD Drafting arbitrator: TBD
Wikipedia Arbitration |
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Track related changes |
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Evidence presented by SandyGeorgia
WPMED tension is long-standing
The WPMED dispute this time erupted after the drug pricing RFC, but some of the fundamental tension that exists in medical editing is about broader, long-standing COI, OWNERSHIP and IDHT that has impacted editor retention and dispute resolution processes, affecting content and the editing environment since at least 2012.
Wiki Project Med Foundation (WPMEDF) is a Wikimedia thematic organization and an advocacy organization with its own governing board and projects, aims, applications and interests, based upon Wikipedia content. It was started in 2012 by, among others, Doc James and Bluerasberry. WPMEDF requires an email address renewal every two years for members and has "frequent, ongoing internal communications via email". Members must assert when re-applying biannually that they support the WPMEDF (advocacy) mission. WDMEDF is distinct from, but membership overlaps somewhat with, the English Wikipedia Wikiproject Medicine (WPMED). The overall mission of WPMEDF appears to align with the principles of the Wikimedia movement but implementation aspects of WPMEDF projects and collaborations has not always aligned with the principles, policies and goals of English Wikipedia. As examples, the content on Wikipedia should be freely and easily created and can be edited online by anyone (for example, the Osmosis videos), the lead of an article should be a summary of its most important contents, and Wikipedia is not a sales catalog. Methods used in implementation of external projects—such as internet-in-a-box, translation task force, journal collaboration, and other partnerships with commercial and other organizations—have created the appearance of conflicts of interest as well as conflict with the wider community.
Further, several of the WPMEDF projects lead directly to potential conflicts of interest on the English Wikipedia. For example, one of WPMEDF's Projects is an ... effort to get academic credit for contributing to Wikipedia.
This desire for publication puts WPMEDF editors in direct conflict with overall aims of a dynamic encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and lends a motivation to semi-protect articles unnecessarily to assure minimal change in content, a motivation to edit war, and de-motivation to keep articles updated once preferred versions have been "set" in peer review or content review processes.
The aims and goals of WPMEDF also place some its members in constant tension with WP:MED founding members, many of whom were responsible for initially crafting the guideline pages for the Medicine Project, WP:MEDRS and WP:MEDMOS, and in particular, Featured article writers who must adhere to policy and guideline. Several long-time highly productive WPMED members have been alienated by seeing the MEDMOS guideline applied as if it were policy when that suits WPMEDF goals, while Wikipedia policy is ignored as if were guideline when that suits WPMEDF goals (for example, WP:NOT on drug pricing).
Current and former officers and advisers of WPMEDF include, but are not limited to:
- User:Avicenno Membership
- User:Bluerasberry, secretary
- User:CFCF
- User:Doc James, founding member & co-treasurer
- User:FloNight
- User:JenOttawa
- User:RexxS, chair
Some WPMEDF members have expressed conflicts of interest
The WPMEDF project to journal publish has led to conflicts of interest and editing practices detrimental to overall article quality, editor recruitment, and editor retention. Bluerasberry posted this study for discussion at WT:MED, where no one noted a conflict: that the very article assessments being measured are often done by WPMEDF members who may then semi-protect the preferred version for purposes of these publications.
Bluerasberry
- Drug price advocacy
Advocacy is the use of Wikipedia to promote personal beliefs or agendas at the expense of Wikipedia's goals and core content policies, including verifiability and neutral point of view.
Bluerasberry (WPMEDF) has been a force behind advocacy for inserting prices into pharmaceutical articles, backed by James (WPMEDF), who inserted prices into more than 500 articles, before, during and after a 2016 RFC that found no consensus for an exception to WP:NOT policy. Bluerasberry holds that the NOT policy does not apply because it is 15 years old, and that there was a plan for drug pricing content (emphasis added): [1]
The plan has always been that this price information is a pilot, and after we discuss the multiple major social issues around managing this, then we plan for a next set of development processes which include tools, more collaboration, policy development, and better control over this content.
- NOPRICE redirects
In 2019, it was discovered that Bluerasberry had altered redirects, away from NOT policy and to an essay he created, in which he asserted an inaccurate statement:
- May 2009: Thumperward created the redirect WP:PRICE, pointing to WP:NOT
- September 2010: Eraserhead1 created the redirect Wikipedia:PRICES, pointing to WP:NOT
- October 2015: Bluerasberry created the essay Wikipedia:PRICES with the false statement:
Wikipedia has no specific policy on presenting prices of products.
At that time, WP:NOT read:[2]An article should not include product pricing or availability information unless there is a source and a justified reason for the mention. Encyclopedic significance may be indicated if mainstream media sources (not just product reviews) provide commentary on these details instead of just passing mention. Prices and product availability can vary widely from place to place and over time. Wikipedia is not a price comparison service to compare the prices of competing products, or the prices and availability of a single product from different vendors or retailers.
- October 2015: Bluerasberry changed the redirect of Wikipedia:PRICES to point to his essay.
- May 2016: Bluerasberry changed the redirect of Wikipedia:Price to point to his essay.
- The redirects to an inaccurate statement stood for over four years, until I corrected it in January 2020.
- Canvassing at RFC
After a discussion about pinging the editors who had been reverted by James on drug price articles, Bluerasberry canvassed the Video Game Project.[3][4] Twenty-six editors editors who attempted to uphold policy were not pinged, while others were canvassed. Editors reverted were 7 student editors (now all gone), 6 IPs, and 13 still-active editors, including Hipal/Ronz and Seraphimblade (who had weighed in on the RFC or formulation), @Pol098, Jorge Stolfi, Surtsicna, Gprobins, Jrfw51, Garzfoth, Pol098, Zefr, D A Patriarche, David notMD, and Mparagas18: and others.
- Altering posts to control the narrative
At the Talk:Simvastatin RFC, Bluerasberry:
- Altered the Support votes to convert them to a numerical count,
- while leaving the Oppose and Neither (which were all essentially opposes)—that tallied to almost the same number as the Supports-- as bullet rather than numerical points.
- I undid, saying not to alter others' posts and Bluerasberry reverted, leaving a misleading impression to RFC newcomers.
CFCF
Doc James
Conflicts of interest have impacted James' use of tools
In the "Encyclopedia that anyone can edit", medical articles are often semi-protected—a practice that discourages editor recruitment and can result in outdated, inaccurate static versions of Good articles or Featured articles. Leads only are maintained for the purposes of WPMEDF-inspired projects, with overall content stagnating. Medical Featured articles—the only content reviewed by the community or more than one editor as in GA—have seen once vibrant growth and participation flatline since 2015 and fall out of date, as the focus of WPMED has moved towards off-en.Wikipedia projects and collaborations and away from overall content improvement.
Semi-protection at times appears unnecessary, and there is an appearance of COI in these few samples only. Articles like vagina, penis, sexual intercourse, and Tourette syndrome (coprolalia) do need to be protected from vandalistic edits, but these do not seem to. There seems to be a pattern that, once an article is promoted to GA or FA (or its contents "set" for the translation project or internet-in-a-box), the preferred version is semi-protected without cause.
- Dengue fever
is an outdated Featured article (FAC nominator James) that is not maintained or updated. When noting the problems, I questioned why the article was semi-protected by James for “persistent vandalism” (Article log). The log link at that time showed two IP edits—one good, and one extremely minor instance vandalism. After I queried, James removed semi-protection, and the article has done just fine. Semi-protection was not needed, the article is not being updated, but semi-protection prevented IPs from editing for seven years.
- This over sized
WPMEDF-projecttemplate was installed in the references section, pointing to an eight-year-old internal "peer review". Since that review would not hold up to WP:MEDDATE, it is surprising that medical editors would consider it a reference. The appearance is that the template’s purpose was promotional.
- This over sized
- Gastroenteritis
, a James GA, and its article log, protected by James multiple times for "persistent vandalism" and "poor quality edits". The history link for the latest protection shows, in the two months prior; the IP insertion of a good faith valid term that is nonetheless not-MEDRS-sourceable, but added to Society and culture, where MEDRS sources are not typically required; one instance of minor vandalism, and one good faith IP edit.
- Gout
, a James GA, and its article log, protected by James, no reason given. At the time of protection, the month prior saw an edit that was good faith but not reliably sourced [5]; See Update in response section another good faith but not reliably sourced edit; [6] a valid IP edit; one IP removal of cited text; and one instance of vandalism that was oddly self-reverted by the same IP. No indication for semi-protection.
- Hepatitis C
, a January 2012 James GA, protected in June 2012 (never before semi-protected) by James with the reason "Persistent vandalism: High quality article subject to lots of vandalism." The history log at the time of semi-protection shows a good faith IP edit, that was twice Huggle reverted; minor IP vandalism that was reverted by another IP; and an IP edit that is difficult to be viewed as vandalism because IPs may be unaware of MOS:CURRENT.
- Schistosomiasis, B-class, semi-protected by FloNight, who was a WPMEDF board member at the time, for "persistent disruptive editing" against good faith IP edits during an edit war with James.
Conflicts of interest have impacted content
James has a long-term history of edit warring
User:SandyGeorgia/Edit warring diffs
Case study: Schizophrenia, James editwars with senior editors and content experts
James and Ozzie10aaaa have installed a set order of sections in every medical article, a fait accompli, even though the MEDMOS list is explicitly only a suggestion (largely written by Colin over a decade ago) for writing new articles or substantially rewriting existing articles. MEDMOS says:
The following lists of suggested sections are intended to help structure a new article or when an existing article requires a substantial rewrite. Changing an established article simply to fit these guidelines might not be welcomed by other editors. The given order of sections is also encouraged but may be varied, particularly if that helps your article progressively develop concepts and avoid repetition.
James, by fait accompli has also installed a set order of the narrative in the lead of every medical article (edit any medical article and see the inline comments in the lead), which is not prescribed by any guideline, but is a personal preference, related to the use of leads for WPMEDF projects and applications.
Casliber is a practicing psychiatrist, prolific FA writer in the extreme, and responsible for multiple medical Featured articles. Casliber did not initially write the Featured article, schizophrenia , but I pinged him to the article talk page in December 2019 because the article had fallen out of compliance with FA standards. Several editors, including Cas, have worked to restore it to FA standard.
After Cas re-ordered the sections in the article to a narrative that in his opinion better worked for the topic schizophrenia, James reverted in several edits at 09:14 7 January, without the courtesy of discussing first on talk with Cas. At 09:17, I reverted. At 09:24, James reverted again.
Yet another WPMED RFC is held, with all the typical issues discussed in other evidence. The RFC found the suggested order of sections should not be altered, but it is nonetheless only a suggested order, and a practicing psychiatrist and prolific FA writer surely knows how to structure an article on schizophrenia.
Case study: Down syndrome, edit war over an apostrophe
WPMEDF-inspired projects aim for standardizing the leads of English Wikipedia medical content in ways tailored to WPMEDF products, but not necessarily to Wikipedia guidelines. MOS:FIRST—a guideline open to interpretation and consensus—says: "Be wary of cluttering the first sentence with a long parenthesis containing alternative spellings, pronunciations, etc.
Down syndrome is a Former featured article that I have followed since its 2006 WP:FAC and 2010 WP:FAR (unwatching when I gave up on participation at WPMED).
Diffs of extended edit war and appearances by editors who had never before engaged the article
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James never had and still has not gained consensus, yet has edit warred ten times (plus Ozzie’s one) to install a personal preference. In a familiar pattern, when that fails, James starts an either–or, yes–no or otherwise misleading RFC, and reinforcements who have either never before engaged the article or enter little reasoning to support their position, appear to support "per Doc James"; in this case, Ozzie, CFCF and Flyer22 Reborn, in other cases in evidence on this page, other WPMEDF colleagues.
Wikilawyering 1
At the Ethosuximide RFC, after the closing admins had been pinged twice to clarify, James still interprets the RFC conclusion as applying to "numerical" prices only, and repings the admins for a third clarification after they had just been pinged by WhatamIdoing 20 minutes before. Wugapodes responds: "I would encourage editors to read Wikipedia:The rules are principles and Wikipedia:Tendentious editing before trying to find more loopholes as my patience is growing thin."
[7]
After Wugapodes clarified the RFC findings, James interspersed his own interpretation of that out of chronological order, and outdented it, creating the effect of highlighting his single interpretation and conclusion in the discussion.
Wikilawyering 2
WP:MEDLEAD has long been disputed. I started a December 2019 RFC on MEDLEAD, which was a well-and-good disaster, in an RFC malformed by me, and made even worse by my attempts to fix it mid-stream and which I have many times acknowledged. I learned a big lesson there from WhatamIdoing, and she many times asked WPMED editors to hold off on any more RFCs while the Drug pricing RFC was being conducted. (Here is a recent sample of a familiar plea by WAID.) Nonetheless, in spite of some blunderbuss by others at the MEDLEAD RFC, RexxS, Ian Furst and I did achieve some compromise on talk, with each of us adjusting our initial positions and moving towards some consensus. (Confirmation that we are all capable of working together.)
After the inconclusive close of the MEDLEAD RFC, and during the drug pricing RFC, with pleas by WAID to hold off on further action, the talk page bot archived the dispute discussion on the MEDLEAD RFC. And yet, in the midst of this arbcase—that specifically relates to these behaviors and issues surrounding WP:MOSLEAD and WP:MEDLEAD—James removed the disputed tag from MEDLEAD, stating that there was no ongoing discussion. While we subsequently made progress and seem to be at a position of some tentative consensus, a more collegial approach to this matter would have been to un-archive the ongoing discussion, or raise the matter on talk; the dispute/discussion was clearly ongoing, and unresolved, but had been archived by the talk page bot.
Ozzie10aaaa
Intersecting contribs Ozzie and Doc James
As demonstrated at Ivermectin, Simvastatin, and Down syndrome, Ozzie10aaaa frequently backs James in editwars. There is already other evidence on this page that Ozzie frequently and swiftly supports James in disputes on articles where Ozzie had never previously appeared, and without providing policy-based rationale. On Ozzie’s most common rationale, Wikipedia search engine reveals:
Further analysis of a small portion of James and Ozzie intersecting contribs is at User:SandyGeorgia/Editor interaction. James encounters a dispute on an article where OZ has never before engaged, Ozzie10aaaa is in there quickly, not necessarily fully engaging, but "agreeing per Doc James" with rare exceptions. In the majority of instances, while James had a long history at each article, Ozzie had no prior engagement, and only appeared when James encountered conflict. Ozzie disagreed with James in two instances.
In other MEDMOS discussions, Ozzie similarly supports James without providing reasoning.[11]
Case study in frustration: Chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome, Ozzie10aaaa and James with an inexperienced user
At times, it is apparent that Ozzie is not clear what he is reverting or why, or that he has engaged and digested the discussion. At Talk:Chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome in this discussion and this RFC a relatively inexperienced user, User:Thomas pow s, attempts to discuss with James. (It appears to have been a good faith discussion on Thomas' part, met with stonewalling, contradictory information, and Ozzie intervention. We can see from that editor's contribs that they gave up and left.)
Article and talk page interaction at Chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome
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As the end of what looks like an excruciating encounter for a relatively new user, some content that could have been sourced was cut, and some important theories that needed to have been there all along were added because of this editor's persistence. This editor is gone.
QuackGuru: Anti-woo culture and quid-pro-quo at WP:MED furthers disruptive editing
- (See Barkeep's evidence on Quackguru history-- which btw is missing most recent arb enforcement)
A bad bullying dynamic has overtaken medical editing, and has become an unfortunate role model for other editors. The notion that the bullying and editwarring is a necessary factor in combatting woo, trolls, quacks, and POV pushers is prevalent, and yet evidence indicates that there is plenty of editwarring that has little to do with anti-woo, rather a cultural approach to dealing with disputes that is less than adequate. (Samples: general edit warring, Schizophrenia, Down syndrome, [ to be added 1,] [to be added 2,] chronic prostatitis, drug pricing dispute, and general, to name only a few.)
That MEDRS has become an anti-woo bludgeon is a source of discomfort for several of the editors who helped write that guideline (myself included, and I will let others speak for themselves rather than spend time on a diff search); I have chosen to distance myself from WPMED and the bullying that has overtaken it. So, medical content has already lost valuable editors because of these unaddressed issues.
Arbcom (Jytdog) and arb enforcement (QuackGuru) have recently made inroads towards changing this dynamic. A very small minority of medical editors (including James) expressed support,[12] or found no problem with the behaviors that led to arbcom action, defended the behaviors, or expressed dissatisfaction with arb actions. (Roxy the dog, Seppi333, Ozzie10aaaa, Boghog) James once said: "we could technically over ride arbcom".
The cultural change is explained by WhatamIdoing in this post from December 2019:
SandyGeorgia's comment about the long-term changes in the group resonates with me. We used to be focused on writing brilliant articles filled with precisely delimited claims and superb sources. Then we went through an anti-woo phase: almost anything's okay, as long as it hurts the spammers and alt-med proponents ... Now we seem to be talking more about issues of health policy, which is a more approximate subject area with a focus on practicalities, like approximate prices. Which is naturally going to frustrate both of the previous groups, because it's not up to the standards of the first group, and practicalities sometimes don't produce the proper anti-woo signals.
But in my experience, a more effective way to deal with woo is to focus instead on re-writing articles to a higher standard, addressing the woo components directly, as I did years ago at MMR vaccine and autism, and have tried to do at the common battleground pages of delusional parasitosis and its "sister" article, Morgellons (both conditions are delusional psychiatric disorders). The attitude that prevails in medical editing is worth looking at in this discussion, where editors who are highly likely to have a mental disorder are called LUNATICS, and both Jimbo and a sysop are used as examples of role models in that behavior, and bludgeoning techniques are used to keep out perceived woo. In this perennial issue at Morgellons, I did the research and added content to address the frequent questions.
Bludgeoning and bullying approaches only further woo issues, do little to resolve them, and impact editor involvement, as editors who don't appreciate these techniques are alienated and become less involved in day-to-day editing.
With that as background:
- In this October 2019 ANI regarding QuackGuru's behavior, discussion stalled with Andy Dingley pointing out the MEDRS bludgeon, and medical editors James, Seppi333, Bluerasberry, and Ozzie10aaa, James again, and Roxy the dog being part of the reason ANI could not achieve consensus.
- In this March 2015 ANI regarding QuackGuru, no consensus was found with medical editors Jytdog and James weighing in in favor of Quack, while medical editor CFCF, James, Jytdog, RexxS, and others (it continues) lead to the withdrawal of the other party.
- In this May 2015 ANI, restrictions are imposed on QuackGuru, over sustained opposition from James.
Reviewing the history of editors involved in supporting editwarring, and the multiple other case studies presented on this page, a quid-pro-quo, "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" appears to be an issue. The same editors mutually defending each other appear at ANI, AN3 and other dispute resolution fora, preventing community consensus on dealing with these editors.
Drug pricing dispute
- Fait accompli
At Ivermectin, in this September 2019 discussion, Hipal/Ronz and Doc James are in a drug price dispute. Ozzie10aaaa enters an "agree w/ Doc James", Seraphimblade disagrees, Quack Guru supports James. The only two independent opinions, who come from Wikipedia:Third opinion are:
- May His Shadow Fall Upon You, who notes the text is not in compliance with MOS:LEAD, and
- ReconditeRodent who evidences the fait accompli; RR provides for reasoning the fact that many other drug articles contain prices in the lead, likely unaware that they were mostly inserted by one editor, against policy.
- Participation in RFC formulation
After the 7 December 2019 ANI close remitted all discussion of drug pricing to a single forum to formulate an RFC, between that time and 23 January 2020 when the RFC was launched, James engaged on 9, 10 and 16 December, and not again until 3 January. [13]
- RFC participation affected by canvassing and WPMEDF entering “drive-by” commentary
-
- ( See also Down syndrome case study on WPMEDF "driveby" supports)
The second RFC on drug pricing attracted 40 editors (43 total in page history includes the three sysops adminning the process).
Of those 40 editors, 10% (4) were canvassed or were WPMEDF colleagues who did not engage the core of the issue, rather entered "drive by" commentary:
- User:Axem Titanium was canvassed from the Video project [14] (see my evidence section above on Bluerasberry)
- User:Avicenno (WPMEDF) entered a 6 February no policy-based reasoning, ILIKEIT opinion.
- User:AbhiSuryawanshi (WPMEDF) entered a 3 February no policy-based reasoning, OTHERSTUFFEXISTS
- User:Pratik.pks (WPMEDF- videos) entered a 3 February no reasoning at all—Pratik has five article edits on Wikipedia as of 15 April [15] and has mostly edited the Dengue fever video (a video that “Not anyone can edit”, based on outdated text, and yet installed in the lead of a Featured article)
The RFC was open fox six weeks (23 January to 7 March); three WPMEDF members who had no previous engagement entered "driveby" positions within three days of each other.
- Simvastatin RFC
The second RFC on drug pricing closed on 27 March. Colin initiated discussion at WT:MED on 28 March. Differences in interpretation and how to implement surfaced quickly. On 29 March, WhatamIdoing took one of the clearest examples of non-compliant drug price text, at Simvastatin, and removed the text from the lead, while adjusting the text in the body. Edit war discussed in other evidence ensued, with James and Ozzie together reverting five other editors on 30 March.
With insufficient discussion on talk, and no discussion about how to correctly frame an RFC, James unilaterally launched another RFC only three days after the community-wide RFC closed. Similarly, he unilaterally launched another RFC at Talk:Ethosuximide.
- James set up the RFC as a "yes-no" !vote format and disallowed threaded discussion. (This is after months of RFC formulating, and two other RFCs, where WhatamIdoing many times outlined the problems with yes-no RFCs, but James didn't hear that.)
- James positioned the RFC as if the dispute was whether two sources verified the text, rather than whether the text complied with the conclusion of the RFC about drug prices in the lead—obtaining the desired answer by asking a misleading question.
- Ozzie10aaaa supports within minutes.
- WhatamIdoing explains the problems with the RFC statement, and removes the requirement for no threaded discussions, which is reinstated by James. A meta-discussion about how to run an RFC ensues, and James is reminded that the question should have been worked out in advance.
- Bluerasberry alters the format of the !votes (see Bluerasberry evidence above) so that by the time other editors begin showing to the discussion, they see a misleading RFC question, allowing only a yes-no !vote, where threaded discussion is disallowed, and Support votes are numbered but Opposes are not, and discussion of what the actual dispute is about is buried somewhere below. [21]
Most of the editors opining do not appear to have read or understood what the actual issue is (because it's buried below), but WPMEDF officers and members, having limited previous engagement, support:
- Avicenno (WPMEDF officer) does not engage discussion
- Ian Furst (WPMEDF) offers sound reasoning for his support but that very same reasoning indicates he may not have read the discussion, or realized he is answering the wrong question
- JenOttawa (WPMEDF former officer) supported without appearing to engage the discussion
- Myoglobin (Osmosis) emails James at 14:13 9 April and supports at 15:52 9 April
- AbhiSuryawanshi (WPMEDF) supports per WPMEDF colleagues James and Bluerasberry
- CFCF (WPMEDF officer) supports
- Bluerasberry (WPMEDF officer) supports
- RexxS (WPMEDF officer) also supports, but does engage the full discussion that was moved below, and offers reasoning
With a just-closed community-wide RFC finding no consensus to breach WP:LEAD or WP:NOT for drug prices in the lead, local consensus is overriding global consensus based on WPMEDF support.
SG: responses to other evidence
Responses to James:
Regarding James evidence, [22] he had never before asked me not to ping him. After he first asked on 31 March, he had an acknowledgment from me within 13 minutes. James misrepresents my statement about "arrogance" and fails to AGF when reading. Yes, it would be arrogant of me to demand that people not ping me because it makes extra work for my arthritic hands; I have the option to change my preferences if needed.
The vaccine section at Dengue fever was updated a month after I tagged the section, and the Research section remains dated, while the References section reflects some WP:MEDDATE issues, and the Epidemiology section needs an update.
- James states that "The claims around dengue are false." I don't want to continue a content dispute on the arb case page, and will separately make a post to Talk:Dengue fever re-listing all of the issues that remain to be updated. However, the "false claims" needs to be addressed here. This is the lead that I tagged in January 2019.
"The vaccine, however, is only recommended in those who have been previously infected"
is inaccurate. This is the current lead, since corrected, stating that:"As of 2018, the vaccine is only recommended in individuals who have been previously infected or, in populations with a high rate of prior infection by age nine."
The update was made at my instigation; the body of the article is still out of sync with the lead, and there are still tagged updates needed. My concern (as indicated in this primary study and others similar) is that during the Crisis in Venezuela it is important to stay on top of the content in this article, keeping it timely and accurate. Inaccurate statements about vaccines can directly impact people in Venezuela, where Dengue has and will escalate during the ongoing Venezuela crisis. Others reading this might say, SOFIXIT: in the past, I have been accused of COI and threatened with topic ban on medical articles by a now-banned editor; I had dengue fever when I lived in Venezuela, so am concerned I will be similarly charged if I make substantive edits to this article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:11, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
James' response lists vandalism that well pre-dates the semi-protection at Gastroenteritis.
James' response to the concern about Gout shows a lack of understanding about good-faith misinterpretation of a source, versus vandalism (not all discussion of sex organs is vandalism, and this one wasn't).
- Update: As James points out, one of the edits interpreted as vandalism (and the semi-protection) occurred in January 2012, while the source was accepted for publication in March 2012 and published in July 2012. We cannot know if the IP (who has no other contribs) had advance knowledge of the publication, and interpretation of that edit as vandalism at that time could not have been avoided. The overall conclusion remains: there doesn't seem to be enough indication for indefinite semi-protection in any of these cases, and I am happy to see that James is willing to adjust these. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:14, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
FeydHuxtable, thank you for the considered evidence (I don't believe I ever saw that "leading light" reference). I turned my attention prematurely to the Workshop page because it has been impossible to pull up diffs for several days due to something going on with the server, so I was trying to make use of my time. I am also well aware that Workshop proposals are for generating ideas and discussion; please take note of what kinds of remedies I am not suggesting. Bespoke remedies to a novel situation will be needed for us to return WPMED to its former standing, my evidence is aimed at showing why the standard measures may not work, generating ideas for what will work, and I doubt that any of us want to lose any of the few valued medical editors we have. We all just want to be able to edit: for almost five years, I haven't been able to. I also agree that S Marshall has it about right; well-intentioned people trying to do too much, too fast, and not realizing how they are impacting the editing of others. I hope my-- and everyone's-- contributions are equally valued. Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:57, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
- Also, regarding the timing to "launch attacks on Doc James", the timing was James' choice. Barkeep49 initiated this case after James appeared to ignore a community-wide RFC, edit warred, and launched two more local RFCs. Noting that James had time for 175 edits in a 9.5-hour editing session on 16 to 17 April. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:53, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
Regarding this statement from Ozzie, I am happy to let the sitting arbs (who were involved in that issue) pass judgment on whether such "harassment" ever occurred (particularly since that block was removed quite quickly, and before I even knew it happened).[23] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:10, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
Regarding this statement about Down's syndrome from Ian Furst, SandyGeorgia began editing Down syndrome on 2006-12-02 00:16 and Colin on 2006-12-08 23:36 (clearly related to the peer review leading to a Featured article candidate); James began editing on 2009-06-14.[24] The disputed text was present at every stage of content review that Down syndrome has been through, according to the Article milestones.
- 2006 Peer review [25]
- 2006 Featured article candidate [26]
- 2010 Featured article review [27]
- 2012 Peer review [28]
- 2014 Good article [29]
and in fact was only removed by James, in 2016,[30] coinciding with the timing when he began imposing his idiosyncratic views of leads on every medical article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:43, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
In this section of T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)'s evidence, described as "set[ting] up unconstructive friction", the full discussion is omitted from the link presented, and can be found at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 134#Featured article removal candidates. What started as a post to solicit help in maintaining FAs, and where in fact there was a good deal of helpful commentary kindly provided from MILHIST members, turned to addressing some inaccurate and discouraging initial commentary from CFCF.[31] Specifically, the statement that "FA … lacks understanding of what concessions need to be made for medical articles" is just odd, considering that two former FAC delegates (SandyGeorgia, Graham Beards) and one current FAR Coordinator (Casliber) are medical editors; there is no other content area (except perhaps MILHIST) that has such a high representation. After I point out the inaccuracies,[32] and that CFCF is not in a position to criticize how the process works as he hasn't participated there,[33] he calls that statement an "ad hominem".[34] With now two statements that WPMEDF members are not concerned to participate in keeping medical FAs up to date,[35][36] and with these roadblocks thrown up when Featured article reviews are mentioned at WTMED, the effort has unfortunately had to move off of the Medicine project page, to a grassroots effort to update the articles, which has seen good results (example Wikipedia:Featured article review/Chagas disease/archive1, where new editors are also willing to undertake repairs to Dengue fever).
I have not yet finished my evidence regarding other portions of Evo's statements, but have stricken above the statement that the template is a WPMEDF project. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:04, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Doc James
Agree that the issues at WPMED have been ongoing for years. A fair bit of it involve incivility, efforts to silence voices though intimidation, and to close down discussion. We are seeing this in the most recent round of discussions around prices but it is not new.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:43, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Inappropriate behavior by Colin and Sandy
Some discussed at this ANI in Dec of 2019 with respect to Colin. On Dec 2nd I requested that Colin stop pinging me.(Dec 2nd at 19:04) I had previously requested, a number of years back that they not post on my talk page, which they also did not follow. Colin replied to this request “James As long as you won't drop this issue, you'll get pinged whenever I mention your name.” and he not only pinged me in the reply but continued pinging.[37]
After being brought to ANI and being threatened with a block they backed down. SandyGeorgia was the first one to respond and did not appear to have any concerns with their behavior. They have continued on the pinging tradition with 6 pings on March 30th, all to bring my attention to a single discussion I was obviously watching.[38][39][40][41][42][43] Sandy has criticized me multiple times for requesting unwanted pings to stop, Mar 31st stating "you disallowed pings and were not keeping up with discussion". On Apr 7th they calls those who make such requests "arrogant".
When the harassment team initial stated they were developing a tool to silence unwanted pings, I did not think such a thing was needed as I assumed all one would ever have to do was politely ask. I have now changed my position on this and fully support the development of such a tool.
Consensus being misinterpreted
A 2016 RfC concluded "Except in the cases where the sources note the significance of the pricing (which did have consensus), there is no consensus to add the pricing to the articles." We have plenty of sources that note significance. Plus there was no consensus for removal of prices.
There have also been efforts to shut down develop of consensus through RfCs such as here "Wrong RFC."
General audience
Many editors at WP:MED have spent a significant amount of time improving the readability of the leads of medical articles. A published analysis found that the reading levels changed from grade 15.7 in 2008 down to grade 12.7 in 2018.
The work is supported by guidelines such as “Strive to make each part of every article as understandable as possible to the widest audience of readers who are likely to be interested in that material.”
WP:MEDMOS has summarized this as “The lead of an article, if not the entire article, should be written as simply as possible without introducing errors or ambiguity.” since 2015.[44]
There however was attempts by Colin and Sandy to remove this wording in 2019 without discussion.[45][46] And a push to use more complicated wording though a compromise was reached.[47] This involved small adjustments like using “loss of interest” rather than “apathy” added here [48] adjusted here [49]
Colin stated Mar 2018 “I have seen too many times Doc James pervert our article content to suit his pet projects, which are not aligned with English Wikipedia. Four years ago I saw him spend his time dumbing down our leads to baby language in the assumption that this made it easier to translate or with the idea that this was Simple English wikipedia, for those who find English hard to read.” And this insulting of writing for a general audience continues to Apr 23 2020 with "Doc James does not write about cost, he adds factoids".
Here is a list of more than 1,300 leads I have worked on and I would invite people to decide for themselves if these are inappropriately dumbed down or written in baby language.
Consistent organization
There have been efforts to improve the consistency of the layout of disease and medication related articles over the last 10 years. This makes the WP easier to use, especially by those who do so frequently. It also makes our content easier to maintain. The suggested ordering is present at WP:MEDMOS and is supported by the majority of the community. Yes there can be exceptions but these generally need justification.
Collaborating between languages
Sandy attempted to remove the fact that there is no rule against citations in the leads of articles from MEDMOS in 2018.[50] Translation between languages, a project being working on since 2012, would not be possible without references in the lead. These efforts have resulted in the translation of more than 6 million works of text by the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_task_force Efforts have concentrated on translating the leads of articles due to feedback from a number of languages. The attempt to remove this text occurred despite this having been discussed multiple times.[51]
Making our content more global
Wikipedia’s content is often US / EU centric. In collaboration with the World Health Organization WP:MED/WPMEDF worked to improve our coverage of all medicines listed in the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines. This is a list of medications that should be present in all health systems due in part their efficacy, safety, and cost. As part of these efforts the WHO released the 2017 list under a CC BY SA 3.0 IGO license. These efforts worked to add a decent summary, including details on use during pregnancy and discussion of cost. The latter of course bringing us here. Well there appears to be consensus on including the numerical prices of medications in the leads of articles when those medications are expensive in the United States such as pyrimethamine and onasemnogene abeparvovec, some appear unwilling to allow prices of any sort in LMIC anywhere in the article despite 1) plenty of sources discussing costs of essential medicines generally 2) a book published by the WHO which has these details. I am happy to consider changes; the details in question can be presented without interpretation and within the body of the article rather than the lead, and I hope that the other people involved will accept this also. I am also happy to put the question to the community. Also many have suggested improving our coverage of costs of medications including User:Nbauman back in 2014.[52] Yes it is more difficult to include coverage pertaining to LMIC as high quality sources are harder to find, but when such sources are available Wikipedia should not actively avoid providing appropriate details. The population of LMIC is 6.4 billion (85%) out of 7.5 billion people as of 2018. https://data.worldbank.org/income-level/low-and-middle-income That I editing via consensus and working to develop consensus can be clearly shown in this RfC and other RfCs.
Other formats
Wikipedia needs to be not only in a language that people can understand but also a format that they can use. We do and can adjust our content rules to make enWP universal, and we have from the very start. The goal was to make a free encyclopedia, free for anyone to adapt, and enWP and the foundation have always kept the other purposes of society in mind.
I have collaborated to develop offline apps in various languages and offline distribution systems. We are not just writing enWP for online use, we are also writing enWP for offline use. And the changes that make enWP better for offline users also makes enWP better for online users.
I have supported multiple video collaborations including with the Khan Academy,[53] HealthPhone,[54] Osmosis,[55] and WP:Videowiki. Rich content, such as video, was the second most requested improvement in the 2015 readers survey.[56]
Comments such as “VideoWiki, as an attempt to get editors to create and edit videos for Wikipedia, is a failure. The videos are rubbish too.“ [57] Sure the efforts are a work in progress but so is all of Wikipedia.
Other collaborators
Yes WPMEDF has collaborations with the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Our World in Data, Cochrane, the University of California School of Medicine, HealthPhone, Internet-in-a-Box, Kiwix (Wikimedia Switzerland), Translators Without Borders, ECGepedia, VideoWiki, Turnitin (copyright detection tool), and Radiopedia, among other organizations. These have led to release of content under open licenses and positive recognition for our movement. The goals of WPMEDF are inline with those of the Wikipedia editing community and these efforts have generally advanced our mission. We are not going to succeed at collecting the sum of all human knowledge by ourselves.
Response to other evidence
With respect to the semi protection of gout, this was in 2012 following a brief episode of semi-protection not being effective. The good "faith edit" to gout that SG described added the text to the "cause" section of the article "gout may also cause the sex organ to shrink in men and render the sex organ inoperable if left untreated". The source they found that supposedly supports this does not mention shrinkage and was published after the edit in question.[58] That SG is trying to present this edit as good faith is strange. I do not clearly remember all the details from 8 years ago, but we did have a pharmaceutical company trying to promote their medication for gout User:Gout2012. I have removed protection from the pages in question.
With respect to gastroenteritis, replacing the name of a disease with that of a probable living person is vandalism.[59] Other IP vandalism.[60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68]
The claims around dengue are false. When a vaccine came out in Dec 2015 it was added that month.[69] When concerns about the vaccine came out in 2017 they were rapidly added that month.[70] When Sandy tagged the article Jan 28 2020 claiming that the most recent WHO article on the dengue vaccine was old they were simple mistaken.[71] What was there was a Sept 2018 paper by WHO.[72] which is still the most authoritative source on the topic. Yes there is a closed source analysis of the paper by Elsevier which does not really say anything different.[73]
We have an entire section on the Down_syndrome#Name. Most of our medical articles only contain one of these minor spelling variations. I started the RfC in question. The majority disagree with my position and the new version is now in place. This is how Wikipedia works, not seeing the big deal.
With respect to Graham Beards concerns about my edit summary in this edit on March 30th 21:58.[74] This was preceded by a discussion on their talk page March 30th 2020 at 19:21 to which they never responded.[75] They had previously removed all details of cost March 30th at 16:37 from simvastatin.[76]
Graham’s comments make it appear like I either added or supported the addition of Twitter and FB as references. I did neither. In fact I have removed such links.[77] GB did not feel WPMED deserved credit for work done on COVID19 despite User:Whispyhistory working a lot on the topic.[78] With respect to the claim that I do not see him as a peer, I did recommend that the journalist who wrote this piece reach out to him due to their involvement. Simple put I do view them as a peer.
Evidence presented by Colin
Doc James, Blue Rasberry and QuackGuru are advocacy-editing over drug prices
The community has since 2007 required prices to be exceptional, not routine; to reject the "ephemeral trivia" of "street prices" "that can vary widely from place to place and over time" and not be "a price guide to be used to compare the prices of competing products, or the prices of a single product across different countries or regions". This policy statement came from two lengthy discussions (here and here).
The earliest medical discussion on drug prices is this one from 2010. There was very much support "to remove such information on sight" and reaffirming policy requirement for notable issues concerning price. This prompts User:WhatamIdoing to add prices to the MEDMOS list of things (along with dose and titration) that should not be included in articles "except when they are extensively discussed by secondary sources". The MEDMOS change is swiftly synchronised with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Pharmacology/Style guide by User:Anypodetos. This view requiring prices to be exceptional and notable is repeated at this discussion in 2014 on the Pharmacology Style guide.
The advocacy to include drug prices in all articles begins in this discussion at WT:MED from June 2015 started by User:Bluerasberry, who wants a "List price for month supply (US)" infobox field. This idea is strongly rejected by several users. James picks up the idea with this discussion in August 2015 which is on the talk-page of the {{Infobox drug}} template and is about the infobox and wikidata, not article leads. Ozzie10aaaa supports, though is short on justification. Bluerasberry, on the other hand, is effusive with advocacy reasons to include prices. There is strongly held opposition and no consensus to add prices to wikidata, infoboxes and never once is there a suggestion to add price sentences to the lead.
In August 2015, James begins adding MSH Price Guide based prices to the leads of drug articles. After inserting prices in 30 articles, James removes "pricing" from the "do not include" list at both style guides: here and here. He justifies the edit by citing the 2004 Pharmacology Style guide discussion. That discussion was very much against routine prices. The discussion resumes, provoked by opposition to James's change to the style guide, and BlueRasberry continues advocating for prices.
After adding prices to 100 drug articles by May 2016, James informs WP:MED of what he has been doing by starting a poll-style RFC. It is somewhat unclear what the RFC is actually proposing, other than a vague confirmation of what James has done, which isn't described in any detail. Ozzie10aaaa offers James his support, without any rationale. BlueRasbery joins in with his advocacy. James notes "Doctors Without Borders has done a fair bit of work to increase price transparency [79] and this is something they are interested in collaborating on."
About 40 participants discuss and are numerically split evenly.
Admin User:Jc37 closes the RFC in July 2016: "Except in the cases where the sources note the significance of the pricing (which did have consensus), there is no consensus to add the pricing to the articles."
Despite a lack of consensus to add prices, and an explicitly requirement for the sources to "note the significance of the pricing", James continues to add prices solely sourced to product price databases, which contain no commentary on the price at all. By the end of the 2016, over 300 drug articles have MSH Price-guide "developing world" prices, and currently 530 drug articles have explicit price statements in their lead (User:Colin/ExistingPrices). As User:Colin/PriceEdits shows, the vast majority of the edits to insert prices have no edit summary or the vague "added".
There is an edit war at Ivermectin in September 2019 over prices. In the talk page discussion, James notes industry lobby/censorship, lawsuits about TV commercials and industry hiding costs. At WP:NOT's talk page, James notes industry transparency issues and makes a comment about his personal experience. At WikiProject Pharmacology, James makes further advocacy comments. At WP:NOT, James says (without providing evidence) that "Every essential medicine has extensive coverage / discussion of its pricing by reliable independent sources"
(there are 500 WHO essential medicines).
In October 2019 QuackGuru edits MEDMOS in support of James's article-lead pricing, and edit wars over this (see Barkeep's timeline). A long discussion begins WT:MED, mostly involving James and Colin. CFCF makes a personal attack on Colin. James posts about the pharmaceutical industry suppressing medication price information and then accuses Colin: "That you are pushing the industry position to try to WP:CENZOR Wikipedia is concerning."
James goes on to create a subheading "Knowledge equity" where he expands his advocacy case. . The discussion continues on the MEDMOS talk page. Here QuackGuru says "NOT does not apply to medical content." (presumably referring to WP:NOT). James argues that relying on "the popular press" would lead to a US bias (presumably referring to WP:NOTPRICES policy requirement for mainstream media sources). JzG raises a concern about making the RFC conclusion watertight.
After over a month's gestation and much discussion, the RFC opens on 23 January 2020. James argues that prices are critical to human health and hyperlinks to an advocacy organisation's story: "Secret medicine prices cost lives". James tries to dismiss that WP:NOTPRICE ever had consensus. James selectively quotes WP:NOTPRICE. QuackGuru says readers may want to compare prices to other similar drugs. BlueRasberry argues that WP:NOT does not apply here and that he is not concerned about current article content. Later he makes a further dismissal of WP:NOT. BlueRasberry notes his previous employment relationship with Consumer Reports.
The RFC closes after two months on 27 March. A few editors remove price content from a few articles. The prices are restored by James, and edit warring occurs (see Barkeep's timeline). On 13 April, James criticises the RFC and those who drafted it.
Doc James reverts and edit wars on drug prices
User:Colin/PriceEdits contains all edits on drug prices on 530 articles since 2015. They were all added by Doc James. Attempts to remove prices are swiftly reverted by Doc James, occasionally aided by Ozzie10aaa and QuackGuru.
- Abacavir remove restore after 16 minutes.
- Aciclovir remove restore after 7 hours
- Ampicillin remove restore after 6 minutes
- Aspirin remove restore after 4.5 hours
- Buprenorphine remove restore
- Buprenorphine/naloxone remove restore after 16 hours remove restore after 15 hours remove restore after 1 minute
- Cholecalciferol remove restore after 4 minutes remove restored next day remove restore next day remove restore next day remove restore six minutes.
- Clarithromycin move to body restored to lead next day.
- Clindamycin remove restored next day.
- Condom remove restore
- Emtricitabine/tenofovir remove restore after 9 hours.
- Ethosuximide remove restored after 5 hours.
- Gabapentin remove restored after 5.5 hours.
- Gentamicin remove restored after 5 days.
- Ivermectin Massive edit war involving Doc James, Ozzie10aaaa, QuackGuru vs Ronz and Seraphimblade. See User:Colin/PriceEdits#Ivermectin.
- Lactulose reduced restored next day revised restored after 9 minutes.
- Metformin remove restored after 45 minutes.
- Methocarbamol remove restore.
- Risperidone remove restore.
- Salbutamol remove restore after 3 hours.
- Simvastatin Edit war involved Doc James and Ozzie10aaa vs WhatamIdoing, SandyGeorgia, Graham Beards, Hipal/Ronz, Seraphimblade. Examples: remove restore after 17 hours remove restore after 3 hours remove restore after 1 hour remove restore after 13 minutes.
- Thiamine remove restore after 3 hours.
- Valaciclovir remove restore after 5 days.
- Valproate remove restore after 6 days.
- Vitamin C remove restore after 14 hours
Response to evidence by Ian Furst
Ian Furst, I cannot find a single time when I have been critical of you personally. I have been critical of VideoWiki, which has largely been promoted by James, but that is content plus a set of tools, and we clearly disagree on its merits. My only personal interaction with you I can recall is when we crossed paths in 2013 over an issue (with another editor) at Water fluoridation, an article that I played a minor role in aiding Eubulides to get to FA. I gave you some friendly advice about potential COI in an article you were drafting and you thanked me for helping a newbie.
Wrt VideoWiki criticism, here are just a few examples of issues in articles today.
- Each of the following videos have
<font>
tags visible in the Closed Captions, and have done since they were created a year ago: HIV/AIDS, Cholera, Cystic fibrosis, Polio, Hypertension, Influenza, Malaria, Multiple sclerosis, Sepsis, Urinary tract infection. - Any images included in the video that are square or portrait-shaped, are squashed to 16:9 landscape. Examples at 2:18 of HIV, 1:24 of Cholera, 2:28 Cystic fibrosis, the first two frames of Polio, a very squashed pregnant lady with Hypertension at 2:34 who also has Malaria at 2:04. The archive footage at 0:32 of Multiple sclerosis is so vertically distorted as to appear barely human. The worst is really the poor little lad at 2:23 of Sepsis.
- Major_depressive_disorder has an upside-down photo. You can even see it on the script page.
- There is a video, which I won't name here, that in the very first frame identifies by name a person with a socially stigmatising disease. The source image was taken down on Commons with a DMCA notice after lawyers contacted WMF, citing the distress it was causing their client. James commented at Commons on the case, and patched up the article lead image after its removal. The image was removed by Commons-delinker from the VideoWiki script. However, the VideoWiki video still contains it seven months later, and is still present on a major article that gets about 5000 hits every day (I can email diffs/links to arbs)
WP:NOTYOUTUBE warns about the problems that occur because the scripts and videos have nearly nobody watchlisting them. They clearly also have nearly nobody watching them either. The above presentation errors would all have been quickly spotted and resolved if they had occurred in articles or with still images, yet are still present a year later. Ian accuses me of "hyper-critical remarks about the quality". Judge for yourself. Would we accept HTML tags all over article content, or thumbnails with terribly squashed people in them, or images that even after they are legally removed from the wiki text, are still rendered to viewers of the page seven months later? -- Colin°Talk 21:43, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
Wrt Simvastatin, Ian Furst says pricing long preceded Doc James and was "Always with allowed sources". Partly true. The diff Ian supplies shows that User:Rod57 added the price unsourced in 2008. In fact, it took Rod57 four years to get around to adding the reference! Simvastatin in 2008 represents the very normal and policy-compliant situation where Wikipedians comment on the tiny minority of drugs with notable cost. As the first major statin to come off-patent in 2006, it was a very attractive generic, especially compared to the blockbuster atorvastatin, the biggest selling medicine of all time, which was still expensively under patent. Atorvastatin's patent expired in 2011 and today it is (in the UK) almost identical in price to simvastatin. So for those few years between 2006 and 2011, the relative cost difference between the two drugs was notable and did indeed get coverage in "mainstream media", which WP:NOTPRICES requires. Today, though, simvastatin is just another generic statin. The cost/benefit arguments of having a percentage of the population on prophylactic medication is true of all such statins, and not specific to that one drug. The argument for Wikipedia specifically discussing the (relative/absolute) price of simvastatin is today hugely weaker than it was in 2008.
The real change that James, encouraged by Blue Rasberry, introduced and enacted alone, was to routinely add prices to all drug articles, to do so at length in the article lead, and to conduct original research and cherry-picking of product database records to invent a treatment cost that no secondary source mentions. -- Colin°Talk 16:53, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
Doc James does not write about cost, he adds factoids
When James removed the constraint on adding price from both medical style guides (see above), User:Johnbod objected, saying "I'm in favour of discussing it where it is exceptionally high, & discussed as such in sources (see above), but we do not want people adding the (inevitably) USD prices of standard cheapish out-of-patent drugs, & proposing their favourite sources etc. Or international tables... Something needs to be added to say so."
and warned "I don't think we should just remove all MOS controls on the topic. Inappropriate factoids often get added by well-meaning editors, & editors need a simple MOS reference to quote when removing them."
. How precient. After the most recent RFC a couple of test edits were made to remove some database-sourced prices from two articles (see Barkeep's evidence). James restored those prices and expanded on the cost section in the body with yet more prices: Simvastatin and Ethosuximide. I shall discuss cost text in the workshop/analysis. James's edits demonstrate not only a disregard for consensus but a poor and ultimately harmful approach to adding content to Wikipedia, which frequently brings him into conflict with editors. This isn't article writing, it is just factoid insertion.
Evidence presented by Ozzie10aaaa
Good faith effort/discussion
- Talk:Ethosuximide#RfC demonstrates a good faith effort on Doc James part to discuss whatever issues, however if you read the text the RfC is rejected--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:27, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
SG
- response to SandyGeorgia,.....yes I often keep an eye on Doc James due to his Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Stats/Top_medical_editors_2019_(all), as a consequence I try to chime in on any medical articles he may be on (AFTER READING, AND DECIDING WHAT IS BEST FOR ARTICLE), he is an elite editor and therefore I try to learn as much as possible from him. However I do not always agree w/ Doc James as SG noted on their post or on many occasions I simply do not give an opinion, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:42, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
Colin
- reponse to Colin,...…(see above answer to SG, thank you)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:47, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
- copied from the Main page response...... (With regard to Colin's indication ...I agree w/ Doc James, it should be checked in my edits that 1. I have on several occasions "agreed w/ WAID [WhatAmIDoing]" (on other articles/matters) , 2. as well as many other editors...I don't/never will write a "wall of text", I usually keep it simple, 3. and most important I don't always agree w/ Doc James, therefore I do not support/do not comment on the article/matter whatever it might be, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:43, 2 April 2020 (UTC))--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:29, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
Evidence presented by bluerasberry
Conduct, not content, is the source of conflict
The nominal subject of this case is "inclusion of prices of drugs in Wikipedia articles". I feel that there has not yet been civil discussion on this topic.
Evidence presented by Hipal/Ronz
Doc James has added pricing information to the lead of hundreds of articles
Judging from my own sampling (User:Hipal/scope), as well as that of Colin (User:Colin/ExistingPrices and User:Colin/PriceEdits, included in his evidence), Doc James has been adding pricing information to hundreds of medicine articles. It appears to include all of Category:World Health Organization essential medicines (currently 463 entries), minus the few (nine?) entries that are not specifically medicines).
Doc James has added pricing information only to the lead of most of these articles
Doc James, with extremely few exceptions, has placed pricing information only into the article lead.
Doc James has engaged in original research for most articles when adding pricing information
Content dispute in Ivermectin
Behavioral problems at Ivermectin
Related behavioral problems at IPhone 11
Evidence presented by {D A Patriarche}
Against including any pricing info
I was not aware of edit warring; I am glad to have it drawn to my attention. I had assumed the widespread insertion of pricing info was evidence of GF & WP consensus, & bowed to what I took to be policy. However, I am strongly against including this information, most especially in the lead. Some of my arguments were published on the Methocarbamol Talk page: Talk:Methocarbamol#Marketing - cost in 2018-19, but received no response from Doc James or any other editor.
Methocarbamol is a drug of particular interest to me, partly because it's a "poor sister" to contemporaneous drugs such as the benzos. It's very widely prescribed and taken OTC but comparatively little research has been published. Because of its enormously wide use OTC, especially in analgesic compounds for back pain, the "pricing" information seemed particularly egregiously misleading to me. I am a former medical biophysics researcher with a continuing interest in the field. --D Anthony Patriarche, BSc (talk) 05:03, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Jorge_Stolfi
Distortion of Wikipedia's goals
I have clashed with DocJames on several articles.
For one thing, he seems to have decided that he "owns" articles on pharmaceuticals, and proceeded to edit them according to specific idiosyncratic rules, with a rigid layout for the head section; and shows little tolerance for views of other editors. Most pharmaceuticals are also chemical substances, however he insists that the corresponding articles be cast as "pharmaceutical articles", in his standard "pharmaceutical" format and with a "Drug" infobox instead of a "Chemical" infobox. In at least one case, ascorbic acid, the article had to be split in two, one about vitamin C as a drug, and another one as chemistry of ascorbic acid -- instead of placing that contents as separate sections of the same article.
Another problem is that he has sought to organize the articles on medical drugs according to the WHO list of essential medicines. In vain I tried to explain that Wikipedia is not meant to mirror the content or organization of external databases, even if authoritative (which that list is definitely not).
Finally, he insists on listing the market price in the head section of every drug article. While that information does not seem to have commercial motives, it is inappropriate for Wikipedia because it is ephemeral, may vary a lot from country to country, and is better obtained directly from external sources rather than from Wikipedia. My attempts to remove those lines were promptly reverted by DocJames, ignoring my justifications.
More than a complaint about DocJames's behavior, this comment of mine should be read as a complaint about the attempts of many editors to turn Wikipedia into a federation of partial encyclopedias, each managed by a clique of editors of one specific WikiProject, who assert "ownership" of those articles and thus act as if their preferences had priority over those of other editors.
Wikipedia would be infinitely better if all WikiProjects were closed and their guidelines deleted, if every topical sidebar or navbox like {{Template:Thermodynamics sidebar}} was eliminated from individual articles and turned an index section in the main article of the topic.
Also, every infobox like {{Template:Infobox drug}} should be reduced to a button that the reader had to click to expand into the full box. Then an article on something that is both a chemical, a drug, a fuel, and a foodstuff could have all four infoboxes -- instead of only one, arbitrarily chosen.
However, there does not seem to be a space in Wikipedia where those systemic diseases could be discussed...
--Jorge Stolfi (talk) 07:41, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
S Marshall's evidence
On another RfC within the scope of WP:MED
On electronic cigarette: Doc James reverts my changes and suggests I could try RfC. I began the RfC Doc James suggested on the same day. Doc James expressed confusion about what the RfC was asking. I explained, and please will Arbcom also note from that diff where I specifically asked Doc James to slow down and read attentively (emphasis in the original diff). Cunard closed the RfC with consensus for the changes I proposed. Doc James then claimed (on my talk page) and claimed (on the article talk page) that he thought the RfC that I'd begun at his suggestion was about a pipe link.
Analysis
Doc James isn't basically an obstructive editor, although he does display an awful lot of confidence in his own judgment. And this isn't a deliberate tactic to exert control and ownership of article content. His behaviour does have that effect, but it's not intentional. It's because his attention is spread so thin. His watchlist is so big, and he's active on so many pages, and he makes so many edits per day, that he can't follow the sequences. Therefore he doesn't make the connections that would be obvious to someone more focused.
With hindsight, my RfC could have been more clearly-worded, although nobody else who participated experienced any confusion.
Evidence presented by FeydHuxtable
SandyGeorgia, Colin & Doc James are serious editors, we're extremely lucky to have them. So it's distressing to see them squaring up on a board that traditionally see's a decisive winner.
SandyGeorgia and Colin were amazing MEDS editors
Back in Jan 2019 I noted it would be good if Sandy & Colin returned to being "leading lights on the MEDS project. " . That was based on considerable attention to their work (as explained here.)
Sub optimal time to launch attacks on Doc James
As others have noted, this can be seen as a conduct dispute. Given the nature of submissions so far, this case is no longer just about drug prices. The outcome has a bearing on the Docs future participation in senior roles.
Granted, theres much valid criticism that could be levelled at the Doc and his crew, S Marshall's point is an excellent example. Yet medicine is an especially challenging area. Articles have an above average potential for harm, aggravated by motivated editing from cranks & shrills. So little wonder a group of "good" editors with clique like qualities emerged. It's not easy to diff, but on balance the current MEDS team seem a huge net positive – and article quality likely to suffer if they're taken down.
What can be easily demonstrated is that Covid is causing abnormal stress to editors with the most relevant real world expertise. This mirrors real life where nurses have took their own lives due to the stress. At least two editors with RL expertise in infectious disease recently expressed a desire for a permaban or courtesy vanishing, which the young doctor later clarified as partly due to Sandy & Colin.
Some have said if folk have time to edit war over prices in articles, they have time to discuss. That would be fine if this was just about prices, but as above the fate of outstanding editors seem at stake. Even though she's a party to this case, Sandy has already laid out 8 remedies for Doc James and his crew, which in context seem severe. Talk about being previous, the evidence phase hasn't even closed, the Doc might change his position. Sandy's multiple edits to the case these last few hours suggest she's on a mission. Jytdog may have been overly aggressive, but his resignation to the community at his Arb case was angel like in comparison. Granted, knowing some of the history, Colin and Sandy's recent actions may be justified. There's literally > 1000x to this than there was to the portal case, so it's hard to form an accurate opinion. Hence not posting many diffs against them, though it would be easy to build a submission suggesting they're more at fault than Doc James. IMO it's currently not realistic to expect the community to carefully attend to this. It's to be hoped the side too busy saving lives to properly defend themselves isn't rewarded with severe sanctions.
Evidence presented by AlmostFrancis
Response to evidence by SandtGeorgia (SG)
SG claims that their is a direct conflict of interest between Wikipedia and WPMEDF as it pertains to encouraging colleges to give academic credit to Wikipedia work. SG then gives a list of reasons that would seem to fit better with the Feautured Article process, which as far as I know has never been considered a COI. SG give no evidence to support her assertion about WPMEDF and as far as I an tell the assumption would be that the article would be edited in the standard way.
Evidence presented by Barkeep49
Timeline of MOS Dispute
- July 28, 2006 WP:MEDMOS created as a proposed guideline
- April 29, 2007 MEDMOS becomes a guideline with Colin and Sandy Georgia each having contributed substantially to the writing.
- April 8, 2008 First mention of drug cost/pricing on the guideline talk page (discussing what scenarios it would be included)
- July 16, 2010 WhatamIdoing introduces language about not including drug pricing following a discussion at WikiProject Pharmacology
- September 4, 2015 Doc James removes the prohibition on including drug pricing linking to a discussion at the Pharmacology WikiProject
- May 15, 2016 Doc James starts an RfC at WikiProject Medicine to include pricing in medication articles. References three prior discussions: [80] [81] [82]
- July 9, 2016 jc37 closes the RfC with the close of
Except in the cases where the sources note the significance of the pricing (which did have consensus), there is no consensus to add the pricing to the articles. There were several ways to present this information proposed in the discussion (such as wikidata). Please feel free to start a follow-up discussion regarding that.
- July 9, 2016 jc37 closes the RfC with the close of
- September 30, 2019 Doc James makes a change to the guideline saying pricing/costs may be included if reliably sourced
- October 1, 2019 QuackGuru creates a new section on product pricing expanding on James' language.
- November 14, 2019, after not having edited the guideline for just over 6 years, Colin makes a series of edits that changes multiple sections of the guideline including article titles, LEAD, and product pricing.
- QuackGuru reverts Colin's change to product pricing minutes later.
- Over the next 5 days QuackGuru makes a series of further changes in response to Colin's edits, including one to product pricing whose edit summary is
Add neutral worded content. See WP:CIR.
- November 21, 2019 DocJames further reverts some of Colin's changes.
- November 21, 2019 QuackGuru opens a discusson at Talk page for WikiProject Medicine
- December 5, 2019 01:15 Ozzie10aaaa opens an ANI thread reporting Colin for incivility and excessive pinging of Doc James.
- December 5, 2019 09:08 NilEinne proposes an indef block of Colin. There is some support but a majority oppose.
- December 5, 2019 10:50 Colin proposes a TBAN on Doc James from drug pricing. There is a little support but a strong majority oppose.
- December 6, 2019 10:33 JzG and Guy proposes a four point plan for moving forward. There is nearly unanimous support.
- December 7, 2019 19:53 Barkeep49 closes enacting Guy's proposal and adding two implementation notes as closer.
- December 8, 2019 Kashmiri removes the product pricing section.
- QuackGuru reverts two minutes later.
- Peter coxhead reverts three minutes after that.
- Barkeep49fully protects the guideline 22 minutes later.
- December 21, 2019 Tryptofish creates a proposed RfC format
- December 26, 2019 Tryptofish creates a second RfC format draft
- December 22, 2019 SandyGeorgia launches an RfC on the guidelines for the lead
- January 1, 2020 WhatamIdoing proposes an RfC structure
- After discussion and revision this would be the template for the RfC which is launched
- January 7, 2020 Barkeep49 updates AN on the dispute both on the RfC and conduct. This includes asking for closers.
- January 7, 2020 Casliber launches an RfC about the order of sections in the guideline
- January 23, 2020 Barkeep49 launches the RfC on pricing
- Ymblanter marks the RfC as closing
- Wugapodes closes the RfC
Closing statement
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* Editors are generally opposed to inclusion of prices in the lede. While basic calculations are not considered original research, the pricing statements in the examples require interpretation of primary sources that may not be straightforward. This makes the editorial claims difficult to verify, and especially so for drugs whose prices are not widely discussed in published sources. In addition, there are concerns that proper explanation of the situation for the indicated price would give the price undue weight.
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- The closing would end up with several clarifying statements by the two closers
- January 24, 2020 Barkeep49 removes full protection from the guideline.
- January 25, 2020 Barkeep49 topic bans AlmostFrancis under discretionary sanctions from all Medical MEDMOS discussions broadly construed for this comment.
- March 28, 2020 Colin opens a discussion about the RfC at the WikiMedicine Project
- Discussion remains ongoing
Post RfC Case Study: Simvastatin
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- March 30, 2020 Barkeep49 requests an ArbCom Case be opened
- April 7, 2020 the case is formally opened
- April 12, 2020 Doc James removes the disputed tag around the LEAD in the guideline
- 43 minutes later Sandy Georgia reverts
- 4 minutes later Doc James restores and opens a discussion on the guideline talk page
- April 13 Colin removes a sentence
- 41 minutes later Sandy Georgia makes further changes to the section
- April 14 Sandy Georgia adds a citation needed tag
- April 15 Doc James adds a reference to address the citation needed tag
QuackGuru History
- Block log includes:
- 5 editwarring blocks
- 3 disruptive editing blocks
- 1 additional disruptive editing blocks where the block sysop accepted an unblock request
- 2 Personal attacks or harassment: continued disruptive editing, edit warring, harassing other editors blocks
- 3 Arbitration enforcement blocks
- 1 overturned indef block
- July 23, 2011 topic banned from
pseudoscience and chiropractic, broadly construed, for one year.
- October 6, 2015 topic banned from acupuncture
- November 17, 2015 warned by ArbCom about e-cigs
- April 19, 2016 topic banned from Vani Hari and the talk page for 3 months
- August 23, 2017 topic banned from
all articles and edits related to religion, broadly construed
by the community
Evidence presented by Graham Beards
Doc James acts as though he his exempt from our policies
Here is an extract of a comment I wrote in 2018 [87] and it is sad to note that nothing has changed.
"He (James) has a cavalier attitude to the core principles of Wikipedia and collaborative contributing. He seems to think consensus means agreeing with him and never considers for a second that he might be wrong. His arrogance knows no bounds. He is difficult to work with and often doesn't bother with edit summaries. It seems to me that James strives to dumb down Wikipedia when others strive to improve it as a solidly reliable source. Our policies on verification and so forth have done us proud. James's hard work and apparent popularity must not be used undermine and negate our core principles".
All of this is still happening. The lack of edit summaries, or worse, the untruthful ones are a particular concern. He reverts edits with the summary "adjusted". As he did here [88] when I deleted a vague comment about the cost of atorvastatin (a drug I have to take every day and turned to our article for other information).
With regard to our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, which to be frank was worse than poor to begin with, I had to point out to the Medicine Project that a pandemic was actually happening and that our less experienced editors were alone at the helm! When James and other Med Project members finally came to help all regard for WP:MEDRS was left behind and Facebook and Twitter were being allowed as sources.
James seems to think that he is above his peers (e.g. me) in a (non-existent) Wikipedia editors pecking order. Graham Beards (talk) 18:24, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
Evidence presented by RexxS
The disputes need to be seen as philosophical, not behavioural
Unusually, I'd like to present narrative testimony, rather than a series of assertions about behaviour. I do this because I continue to believe that attempts by ArbCom to understand the issues will be distorted if they view the case solely through the lens of a behavioural dispute. I also believe that a better understanding of the proper scope of this case case requires a full understanding of its history and context.
First of all, I contend that the vast majority of parties to this case are respected, long-term editors who have made considerable contributions to the field of medicine on Wikipedia over many years. It should be taken as a given that every single party's foremost aim is to improve Wikipedia, although there exists a wide range of opinion on how that is best achieved. I'll supply metrics on editor contributions if anyone wishes to challenge my initial contention.
Secondly, I contend that there is a broad philosophical difference on the question of innovation on Wikipedia. There are not two distinct camps, but there is a spectrum of affinity to two distinct positions: one which wishes to preserve the established encyclopedic conventions of highest quality, sourced, textual content, supplemented by images; and another which wishes to experiment with new formats, new outlets for content, and new sources of information. For what it's worth, I see that same difference of philosophy not just in the medical field, but I'll confine my evidence here to medicine.
Finally, I contend that where some editors push hard to innovate on a particular issue, a flash-point often occurs where other editors resist the changes involved. This is partly due to differing philosophical leanings, and partly due to problematical personal interactions, and I acknowledge my own inability to work with some editors, where I just seem to "rub them up the wrong way". I'll adduce examples of where these flash-points have occurred over several years, and I'll give my understanding of what was happening.
Background
I'd like to make clear my own background: I've been editing for more than 12 years. I have some expertise in technical issues and hyperbaric medicine. I am a founder member of WikiProject Med Foundation, now known as Wikimedia Medicine (WMMED) since it was granted thematic organisation status as an international affiliate to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). I have served as secretary to WMMED and now am privileged to serve as its chair. For six years, I've also been a trustee of Wikimedia UK (WMUK), the UK chapter affiliated to the WMF. I maintain that I have no conflict of interest between either of those affiliates and my contributions to the English Wikipedia, because the affiliates' aims are aligned by their constitution with those of the Wikimedia movement. Nevertheless, the members of WMMED are international, and represent many different countries and languages. That predisposes them to taking a different view on innovation from editors working principally on a single Wikipedia.
Translations
One of the first tasks undertaken by WMMED was to identify a number of vital health articles, and then to translate them into as many different languages as was possible. An organisation called "Translators Without Borders" partnered with WMMED to do translations, both on a rolling programme and on demand whenever a medical emergency occurred in a region where there was little Wikipedia health information available in the local languages. The first target was to translate the lead section of those vital articles as widely as possible.
That presented consequences such as the problems caused by a lack of sourcing in the lead of articles, which needed to be carried over to the short translated articles being created in multiple language Wikipedias. That lead directly to initiatives to source the lead section of medical articles and the advice in WP:MEDLEAD to provide citations. Similarly, the advice to keep language simple and to make sure that the lead contained a comprehensive overview of the topic were partially driven by a desire to make the translations as rapid, accurate and comprehensive as possible.
That naturally created a tension with other editors who wanted to see the guidance in MEDLEAD match that in MOS:LEAD. That has recently produced edit wars over the wording, multiple debates on the talk pages and eventually an RfC.
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles/Archive 10 #Not writing for patients or professionals – debate over reading levels
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles/Archive 10 #LEAD redux – list of lead-related discussions from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles/Archive 9
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles/Archive 10 #Lead – argument over wording
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles/RFC on lead guideline for medicine-related articles – "Should WP:MEDLEAD be in sync with WP:LEAD?"
Internet-in-a-box
Another initiative by WMMED was a partnership with Internet-in-a-box (more detail at meta:Internet-in-a-box), which aimed to make available Wikipedia's medical content in a number of languages to areas where no internet access existed. A device was produced that used a tiny computer working as a wireless access point and serving all of the medical content via Kiwix (a WMF sponsored project to distribute content offline on small memory cards). That was used in many places throughout the third-world, and found use as part of emergency response to disasters where the infrastructure had been destroyed.
While working on VideoWiki last year (see next section), we were presented with evidence that multimedia presentations such as videos had far better results in communicating health information for people who could understand spoken English, but not read it. Hardly surprising, of course, but it lead several of us to conclude that there would be extra value in including videos in content delivered offline (where the target audience is often poor in reading English), even when consensus was against placing such videos on the English Wikipedia. As a compromise, I created Template:OnlyOffline which excluded its content from the online Wikipedia, but allowed it to be read and delivered offline by readers like Kiwix. Believing that the template would have general use, I requested a CSS class be created at
The use of the template was challenged at its talk page. It started cordially, but descended into unpleasantness, spilling over into criticism of the VideoWiki project and the Internet-in-a-box project in general:
- Template talk:OnlyOffline #Uses (August 2019)
That lead to a lengthy and rather acerbic proposal to delete the template:
Videos
As stated above, WMMED looked at evidence indicating that readers who don't have English as their first language often respond better to short video clips to summarise key medical information. At present, YouTube is the biggest publisher of such clips and it's a jungle, with fringe medicine and dangerous advice being afforded equal footing with evidence-based medicine. That lead to an attempt to source good quality short video clips that gave an overview of various conditions.
As far back as 2013, there was an exploration of the possibility of using Khan Academy's videos in a collaborative venture, but it came to nothing as we couldn't overcome the copyright problems.
Osmosis
A commercial company called "Osmosis" produced about 300 video clips and released them in April 2017 under a CC-BY-SA licence suitable for Commons. They can be found at c:Category:Videos from Osmosis. When some of these were used in Wikipedia articles, objections were raised in March 2018:
- Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 110 (yes - the whole archive)
The initial complaints were that the Wikipedians were unable to edit the videos, that the facts were not verifiable, and that the videos contained an advert for Osmosis at the start and end. I did my best to answer these objections by editing some of the videos and removing the first few and last few seconds. Compare File:Abscesses.webm and File:Abscesses 1.webm, for example. Osmosis were unhappy with the derivatives and it soured relations.
Eventually an RfC was started, which resulted in the decision to terminate the collaboration. James removed all of the videos used on Wikipedia.
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Osmosis RfC
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Osmosis RfC #Update - the decision
VideoWiki
The issues identified with the Osmosis initiative led James to look for a collaboration that could deliver videos that could be created by Wikimedians from a script. The idea was that the script would be editable by anybody to update and add references. By July 2018 a working version of a tool was added to wmflabs and a documentation page created on Meta. The latest versions are at:
In November 2018, a WikiProject was set up, dedicated to working on collaboratively created videos:
This was announced at WTMED in February 2019 and received considerable feedback, particularly concerning the accessibility of subtitles, but sadly the discussion descended into acerbic dialogue.
A post talking about the New England Journal of Medicine's increasing use of videos also sparked a negative response:
In January 2020 a complaint was made about the small number of editors actively engaged in creating videos:
Drug pricing
to be continued
Evidence presented by Ian Furst
Timing of this is horrible
Myself, and many others in HC, are deep in mitigation and management of COVID. I would participate more but my energy is needed elsewhere. Time for a meaningful debate is just not available even if we find time to comment on talk pages. The lack of a word limit makes this doubly-hard. Also, tensions are high for everyone right now due to COVID which may influence passions and positions.
Conflict:Content
I do not perceive the conflict on WP:MED any worse than other pages. In fact, I find it less partisan, more evidence based, and generally civil. Especially with the number of articles we collaborate on. I have no means to measure the conflict:content ratio but my perception is it's low.
WPMEDF
The Wikiproject Medicine Foundation’s mission is “To make clear, reliable, comprehensive, up-to-date educational resources and information in the biomedical and related social sciences freely available to all people in the language of their choice on and off line.”[89] not to somehow subvert the purpose of Wikipedia to an alternate path. Last year, we made an application through Gates to bring Wikipedia to war ravaged areas with Internet in a box. That is the work of WPMEDF (among many others). The WPMEDF has made no claims to MEDMOS, the goals of Wikipedia, and “WP:MED founding members” should have no claim on WPMEDF or it’s membership. I find it troubling that experienced editors, with a long history of editing without COI, should have to defend their charitable affiliations over what is, largely, a content dispute. I also worry about the precedent set if this line of argument is entertained.
Conflict scope is relatively narrow
The conflict is isolated to a few very niche areas of WP:MED. For instance, an edit and then the question, "Should we state " Simvastatin is relatively low cost." at the end of the 4 paragraph of the simvastatin article?" resulted in the current conflict. Yes, it's around pricing but if we accept that there is no community consensus for this, the statement itself (with a reference) is nothing compared to many of the topics dealt with in WPMED. Of the ?thousands of edits that are made and managed on WP:MED monitored articles, we do pretty well at building consensus. This interaction between James and Sandy from just 3 days ago is civil and closer to the normal[90].
Simvastatin case
With respect to current content conflict: pricing in the Simvastatin article has been present since 2008 [91] and long before Doc James. First as a cost/benefit issue then as an essential medicine issue. Always with allowed sources. The attribution to Doc James as the source of conflict are misleading in my opinion.
edit>>revert>>edit>>discuss>>RfC when other guidance fails
Regarding the broader content issue of discussing relative pricing; there is no consensus among WP:MED editors despite the RfCs, therefore, page discussions and RfC's have resulted. The path of edit>>revert>>edit>>discuss>>RfC is the prescribed process and Doc James (and many others) has followed it. See example in previous section; more available. Without community consensus this is the appropriate pathway to resolution of content issues imo.
Doc James will engage with anyone willing to discuss
I see a lot of blame being thrown at Doc James for not resolving conflict but he is following the rules and is an active content contributor to all of these articles. He does not claim ownership nor does he roll over when he disagrees with an edit. He has saved medical content from conflict of interest editing with bold edits. On the other hand, other editors, who have never contributed to a page make unsourced content changes then claim foul when Doc James reverts it. Just two examples already in evidence in this Arbcomm case:
- Doc James contributed to Atorvastatin regularly for 9 years only to have the pricing info deleted with the editor commenting "deleted drug "cost" fromm the Lead as per RfC"[92]. That was the editors only contribution to the article and now a claim that Doc James didn't leave an adequate edit summary in reverting that edit.
- Doc James contributed and edited Down Syndrome for a decade only to have an editor drop in and add an alternative name in the lead which he edited to the infobox[93]. A battle resulted about where this content should go (and is now cited as evidence about his incivility) without mentioning that the instigating editor appears to have no other interest in content creation on this page[94] except to see this single edit in the first sentence. I would urge Arbcomm to read the Talk page of this; Doc James started the discussion, started the RfC, and offers some very compelling arguments for his position. With that, the consensus is split and the added text is still in the first sentence. Regarding the "...we have a history of being the two most prolific medical editors on English Wikipedia" comment cited above (a) that is factually correct and (b) it was not braggadocious but in response to an editors dismissive response to Ozzie agreeing with Doc James.
Walls of text and changing questions in RfCs
A significant issue with building consensus is the use of walls of text and editors rapidly changing scope and context of (originally) pointed RfC’s...
- As entered in evidence above, and in answer to the question "Should the lead of ethoxuximide summarize the section on cost as "As of 2008 it was generally affordable in many areas of the world." by Doc James on Apr 5 (a modification from a previous sentence on March 31), I offered an answer[95] that is quoted as arbcomm evidence as "Ian Furst may not of realized he was answering the wrong question". When the flow of the talk page is reviewed[96] it can be seen my answer was in response to the RfC question. The critique (I believe) is aimed at the difference between the NOPRICE argument I discussed vs LEAD and WEIGHT. Left out, is that Sandy had originally opposed (the RfC in general) and the original sentence based on NOPRICE[97] then Sandy and Colin had left 2400+ word ‘updates’ under the RfC in which Sandy states, “...but don't mind if we mention relatively low cost in the body,”[98] and the conversation shifted to LEAD and WEIGHT without changing her opposed stance in the RfC above. Now, the insinuation is I’m a puppet for James after a thoughtful response to an RfC on a 13 word sentence.
- This RfC[99][100] on lead structure resulted in no consensus in large part because every piece of opinion (from me at least) was met with walls of text. At one point, we had a chart of 7 aspects of the lead with 4 positions. Unless you were willing to argue 28 points, consensus was impossible without dedicating full-time to the RfC, in an effort to follow the arguments. I felt that I spent a ton of time on that one RfC and still added only 6% to the text. SG, on the other hand, monopolized 50%. Another example of walls of text from Colin and SG are here [101] where multiple editors appear frustrated by their conduct, “I've had enough of this garbage. I am now taking this page off of my watchlist. Do not ping me or ask me to come back. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:03, 26 April 2018 (UTC)” or here [102], an RfC I purposely avoided knowing it would be an issue, and where 60% of the text is from WAID, SG or Colin.
- This RfC[103] which asked for acceptable wording suggestions resulted in a 1,900 word (initial) response from Colin without offering a suggestion on wording then subsequent walls of text each time James posted.
Other efforts to block content creation
Accepting that there is not consensus to add or removing certain drug prices, I believe that the walls of text we've seen in the discussions about MEDMOS, LEAD and Talk pages are designed to discourage and exhaust the editors who are attempting to add the content. This is based on my previous experience with Colin during his mission to stop VideoWiki[104]. To repeat, myself, James and Pratik came together for a 6 month push to make the platform Wikipedia compliant and engaging. At each stage of development and in almost any forum we needed to post, Colin would participate with 1,000+ word comments, links to his essay on his opposition to video, dismissive remarks about the project, hyper-critical remarks about the quality, and belittle stated reasons for the project. Examples can be found in the discussions about a namespace for scripts, templates for offline discussion, even congratulations on a Slate article and minor edits of related files on Commons. Constant critiques like, "...boring Siri slide show...", "...better of watching a video created by an Indian government agency...", "...glorified PowerPoint slideshows with tedious robot narration...", "...half-baked "solution" to a problem Wikipedia does not have...", etc... by the same person in multiple forums of Wikipedia is both exhausting and a little frightening. It certainly made me second guess posting in many discussions and it absolutely took much of the enjoyment out of volunteering for the project.
Summary
I hope this helps explain why myself, Doc James, and many others choose to engage with quicker edits, revisions, talk, and RfCs where a decision is needed. Normal discourse, in certain circumstances, is nearly impossible when Talk page discussions are met with walls of text, whataboutism, and constant modifications to the target issue. This should be enjoyable for all, and I applaud the deep engagement of all involved to the Wiki movement, however the vilification of James is misplaced imo and the tactics used to dominate discussions is pushing editors to the sidelines. Ian Furst (talk) 12:41, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Evolution and Evolvability
Conduct
I've found conversation on WT:MED getting heated way more frequently than other wikiprojects I've been involved in. This sometimes gets in the way of productive discussions, even when I think participants fundamentally agree. Writing FAs / improving lead readability / forming outside partnerships / video content / translation / offline content are presented as incompatible or competing in a way that sets up unconstructive friction and that I don't think is necessary (example discussion).
Since there are also a number of specific content questions being simultaneously brought up, I'm not sure getting into the details of content questions is really the point, but I'll briefly respond to a couple of comments above.
Pricing
To the extent that this is also about content, I've already commented in the earlier RfC that I think that including pricing in medical articles (drugs and others) is notable in most cases. I really don't think inclusion of medical drug prices is advertising or promotion (often the opposite).
Video content
The collaboration with Osmosis was a good idea, since video content is an under-utilised potential for a non-paper encyclopedia (and something I've found readers often bring up). However, the main problem was lack of editability such that a video with a single error had to be excised in its entirety and in the end all were removed (I imagine a bit disappointing for he contributors). Granular and collaborative video editing via videowiki was a reasonable response to this. I've not seen it unfairly pushed on anyone who doesn't want to contribute.
Encouraging academics to contribute to Wikipedia
Again, I think there are false dichotomies drawn between internal FA processes versus external quality assurance and academic outreach activities (Cochrane collab, journal publishing etc). Articles involved in these partnerships are not protected at a greater rate than others (as far as I can detect), and all participating partners are explicit that any content in Wikipedia is a) decided by the Wikipedia community and b) is expected to continually evolve.
Template
Since Template:Academic_peer_reviewed was also brought up here, I just want to add a couple of notes about it.
- It's not a WPMEDF template, it's used for a range of articles (category), and indeed the dengue article is the only one of its kind for which that template is omitted.
- The peer review performed by Open Medicine was not internal.
T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 06:54, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
Evidence presented by {your user name}
{Write your assertion here}
Place argument and diffs which support the first assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.
{Write your assertion here}
Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.