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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by SandyGeorgia (talk | contribs) at 09:05, 15 April 2020 (→‎Doc James: sp). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Main case page (Talk) — Evidence (Talk) — Workshop (Talk) — Proposed decision (Talk)

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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 editing, OWNERSHIP and IDHT that has impacted editors 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 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 (video problems), 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 potential conflicts of interest as well as conflict with the wider community.

Further, several of the WPMEDF projects lead directly to 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.

Current and former officers and advisers of WPMEDF include, but are not limited to:

  1. User:Bluerasberry, secretary
  2. User:CFCF
  3. User:Doc James, founding member & co-treasurer
  4. User:FloNight

Editors

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 driving force behind advocacy for inserting drug prices into pharmaceutical articles, backed by James (WPMEDF), who singlehandedly 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. According to Bluerasberry, policy NOT is inapplicable to drug prices because the text is 15 years old, and he outlines 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

During formulation of the second drug pricing RFC, it was discovered that Bluerasberry had altered pre-existing redirects, away from WP:NOT policy and to an essay he created, in which he also asserted an inaccurate statement about WP:NOT policy on prices on the first line.

Canvassing at RFC

After I queried the admins as to whether we could ping the many editors who had seen their policy-compliant edits reverted by James on drug price articles, and received a "no" answer as that would basically be canvassing, Bluerasberry canvassed the Video Game Project.[3][4] More than two dozen policy-compliant editors had seen their edits reverted and were not pinged to participate (rightly so), while others were canvassed. Two editors advocating to insert drug pricing into over 500 articles achieved a fait accompli, while 26 editorsa attempted to revert that content per policy.

a Editors reverted included 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) and @Pol098, Jorge Stolfi, Surtsicna, Gprobins, Jrfw51, Garzfoth, Pol098, Zefr, D A Patriarche, David notMD, and Mparagas18:

Altering posts to control the narrative

At Talk:Simvastatin (the edit war which led to this arbcase), where a Wikilawyered and misleading RFC question ("Simvastatin is relatively low cost") was formulated too quickly (and shown inaccurate in subsequent discussion[5]) and was being asked in a format that encouraged editors to offer a "yes or no" to the wrong question rather than discuss to form consensus, 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
  • Bluerasberry reverted, but never did the same for oppose/neither !votes, leaving a misleading impression to RFC newcomers.

CFCF

Doc James

James and WPMEDF members have conflicts of interest that lead to inappropriate semi-protection of medical content

The WPMEDF-backed drive to journal publish has led to conflicts of interest and editing practices detrimental to overall article quality, editor recruitment, and editor retention. Bluerasberry (WPMEDF) posted this study (paid for by a Wikimedia Foundation grant and described as a "powerful research paper") for discussion at WT:MED, where not even medical editors (who should be accustomed to spotting problems in methodology) seemed to notice that parts of the study were flawed in that—with the exception of Featured articles, which are community reviewed—the very assessments being measured are often done (or GA status protected) by WPMEDF members who are driving for similar publications, or that GA is literally one editor's opinion at one point in time, and GA status is rarely re-evaluated even when articles fall into serious disrepair or are outdated.

In the "Encyclopedia that anyone can edit", medical articles are often semi-protected—a practice that not only discourages editor recruitment: in many cases it has resulted in outdated, inaccurate static versions of Good articles or Featured articles, for the appearance of preserving a certain version, while assessment status is touted to the media and in journal publications. Contrary to journal and media assertions, in fact, the only articles that undergo a community review process are Featured articles, and they have seen a once vibrant participation turn to stagnation in medical FA production, as the focus of WPMED has moved towards off-en.Wikipedia projects and collaborations. The majority of medical FAs today are in need of a Featured article review and many of them are grossly outdated (as most likely are the Good articles, based on what I have observed about OWNERSHIP editors being spread too thin).

Here are four samples only, where semi-protection appears unnecessary, and there is an appearance of COI for James, a sysop. In the interest of brevity and limited time, I stopped reviewing after I found these four, but I encourage others to fully explore all of the medical articles that have been semi-protected. Obviously, there are many articles like vagina, penis, sexual intercourse, and Tourette syndrome (coprolalia) which do need to be protected from vandalistic edits, but these I have found did not. 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, for no evident reason.

Further, this oversized, WPMEDF-project-inspired template was installed (in the references section, no less), 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 think it appropriate to place that template in the article. I moved it to article talk. More to come on Conflict of interest.
James' response lists vandalism that well pre-dates the semi-protection. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:30, 15 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
James' response to the concern shows a lack of understanding about the good-faith misinterpretation of a source, versus vandalism (not all discussion of sex organs is vandalism, and this one wasn't).
James has a long-term history of edit warring

On July 14, 2009, James was restricted by Arbcom for editwarring. On July 25, 2009, he was blocked for 48 hours for editwarring in breach of that restriction. This is his only block for editwarring.

James' pattern of edit warring since his 2009 arb restriction has never abated; I present a few samples only, spanning the years, having experienced it myself many times. 3RR is not an entitlement to revert a page a specific number of times, we don't expect an admin to run right up 3 or go beyond, but James frequently does, and edit wars equally with respected peers, other users with a more problematic history, and IPs alike.

  • The March 2020 edit war at Simvastatin is documented in the case request by others, where he edit warred after an RFC and against multiple well-established peers and senior editors.
During all of this, on talk is a discussion about the difference between Side effects and Adverse effects, and the alternate name for the drug that James keeps removing, including the "per Doc James" Ozzie10aaaa who supports with no other reasoning, concluding with James' two-to-one "Kashmiri you obviously do not have consensus for this."
  • 2015: Significant edit warring, appearance by QuackGuru and Ozzie10aaaa, result is page protection
  • 2014: e-cigs again, with an appearance from QuackGuru, both warned
  • 2011: Although James editwarred, the other guy had more reverts than James, so page protected.

Ozzie

QuackGuru

AlmostFrancis

Other

Topics

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 3O are:

SG: responses to other evidence

Regarding James evidence, [8] 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. That is my problem: I have the option to change my preferences if the pain becomes too great.

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)[reply]

Efforts to shut down develop of consensus

...

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.[9]

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. She has continued on the pinging tradition with 6 pings on March 30th, all to bring my attention to a single discussion I was obviously watching.[10][11][12][13][14][15] 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 she 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.

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 she found that supposedly supports this does not mention shrinkage.[16] 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 around that time.User:Gout2012

With respect to gastroenteritis, replacing the name of a disease with that of a probable living person is vandalism.[17] Other IP vandalism.[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]

Evidence presented by Colin

Doc James and QuackGuru are advocacy-editing wrt drug prices

  • "We know that the pharmaceutical industry really really wants to suppress the cost of medications..... Wikipedia is not censored."[27]

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.

Doc James ignores consensus

Evidence presented by Ozzie10aaaa

Good faith effort/discussion

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

Content dispute in Ivermectin

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

Behavioral problems at Ivermectin

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.

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)[reply]


Evidence presented by Jorge_Stolfi

Distorton 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)[reply]

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 {your user name}

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

{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.

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