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*'''Delete''' Oh, what a mess. Yet, that's pretty much a textbook example of [[WP:SYNTH]]. Even if each separate axis of criticism was supported by rock-solid RS (which is not really the case at the moment but it is within the realm of possibilities), what would be needed is sources (e.g. sociology studies; emphasis on plural) lumping all those separate criticisms together. A quick GScholar search did not turn up anything remotely resembling that, though I will admit that's not my domain and I might have overlooked something obvious. <small>Also, the first AfD's closure might have been invalid, but plainly on procedural/closure rationale grounds, and it certainly is no obstacle to quick renomination.</small> [[User:Tigraan|<span style="font-family:Tahoma;color:#008000;">Tigraan</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:Tigraan|<span title="Send me a silicium letter!" style="color:">Click here to contact me</span>]]</sup> 11:41, 29 May 2018 (UTC) |
*'''Delete''' Oh, what a mess. Yet, that's pretty much a textbook example of [[WP:SYNTH]]. Even if each separate axis of criticism was supported by rock-solid RS (which is not really the case at the moment but it is within the realm of possibilities), what would be needed is sources (e.g. sociology studies; emphasis on plural) lumping all those separate criticisms together. A quick GScholar search did not turn up anything remotely resembling that, though I will admit that's not my domain and I might have overlooked something obvious. <small>Also, the first AfD's closure might have been invalid, but plainly on procedural/closure rationale grounds, and it certainly is no obstacle to quick renomination.</small> [[User:Tigraan|<span style="font-family:Tahoma;color:#008000;">Tigraan</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:Tigraan|<span title="Send me a silicium letter!" style="color:">Click here to contact me</span>]]</sup> 11:41, 29 May 2018 (UTC) |
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* '''Comment''' We have 17 deletes, 1 split, 1 keep, and 1 22kB argument. Are we going to make this run another 3 days? [[User:Natureium|Natureium]] ([[User talk:Natureium|talk]]) 13:55, 29 May 2018 (UTC) |
* '''Comment''' We have 17 deletes, 1 split, 1 keep, and 1 22kB argument. Are we going to make this run another 3 days? [[User:Natureium|Natureium]] ([[User talk:Natureium|talk]]) 13:55, 29 May 2018 (UTC) |
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*With only one supporter of the article not sitting out the vote, you're at 94 percent. Don't you want to try to raise that? The old Soviet Union would routinely get over 95 percent voting for the Communist Party. You should be able to match that.[[User:NightHeron|NightHeron]] ([[User talk:NightHeron|talk]]) 14:29, 29 May 2018 (UTC) |
Revision as of 14:30, 29 May 2018
Criticisms of medicine
- Criticisms of medicine (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Not a viable article topic; there are insufficient sources on "Criticism of medicine" per se to allow a neutral and non-original article. Some aspects such as criticism of research methodology, ethics, etc. could potentially be put in relevant articles. Alexbrn (talk) 17:55, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:01, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete - appears to have been created purely for the purposes of pushing a particular point of view. Deb (talk) 18:13, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
*Procedural Issue - Is an AFD appropriate where we have an AFD just so soon and it was overturned at DRV see Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2018_May_18 for keep. This is WP:FORUMSHOPPING already and disruptive. --Quek157 (talk) 18:15, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
:I am just commenting, as an admin can you advice me on? --Quek157 (talk) 18:27, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
:will it fall under WP:SKCRIT 2(a)??? --Quek157 (talk) 18:29, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
text quoted from DRV
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Delete. Although I am not against a "Criticism of.." type of article, in the present form this article has no reason to exist. It is basically just a citation. I would suggest that the editors restart from a draft and seek collaboration to try to produce something encyclopedic.Gianvito Scaringi (talk) 18:34, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
:Just noting this is an editorial dispute where large chunck of texts are removed unilaterally without talk page discussion, the nominator just remove texts and then sending this to AFD??? Mere abuse of process. And now it is the same nominator who did the first nomination, wonderful. Will not care for this anymore but this is clearly outrageous, unacceptable --Quek157 (talk) 18:35, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
**Quek157 makes a good point, so I support the Procedural Issue view. Gianvito Scaringi (talk) 19:05, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
*Will however, leave it to an uninvolved admin / experience user to do anything to this, I will just rescue myself and be neutral. Just as a passerby seeing a few people fighting around with small knifes, unarmed, untrained, so the only way is to call the cops, I don't want to die in crossfire --Quek157 (talk) 19:07, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
Just to add to nominator, why do these things, can you guys talk it out. As a fellow 2007 user, I will sincerely hope this is a talkpage discussion not here. --Quek157 (talk) 19:09, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Keep Criticism of medicine despite being quackery is notable per sources provided. I've restored the good version, it is unbecoming to remove all sources which give claim to notability and nominated for AfD. Valoem talk contrib 19:13, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Except you've restored unsourced content and content which is sourced to sources which fail WP:V, and/or which are off-topic, which is bad. Alexbrn (talk) 19:18, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- It is never good faith to removed 40 sources and then nominate for AfD. It would say this is bad faith editing. You made an AfD, so the version in question is up for debate. Removing an article down to one line and one source favors deletion and is bias. Valoem talk contrib 19:22, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Utterly wrong. Editing of articles for deletion is encouraged: WP:EDITATAFD. And the discussion is not wholly about the present text but about the viability of the topic. If anything, your restoration of unsourced and irrelevant dodgy content is bad faith; it is certainly bad editing. Alexbrn (talk) 19:31, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- It is never good faith to removed 40 sources and then nominate for AfD. It would say this is bad faith editing. You made an AfD, so the version in question is up for debate. Removing an article down to one line and one source favors deletion and is bias. Valoem talk contrib 19:22, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Except you've restored unsourced content and content which is sourced to sources which fail WP:V, and/or which are off-topic, which is bad. Alexbrn (talk) 19:18, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete — There is nothing I can say here that was not said in the original deletion discussion. There is only the vague notion that there was a procedural error in closure. This should never have lead to anything being overturned, but of a simple correction of the rational. Carl Fredrik talk 19:38, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
@Valoem: Thanks for restoring a good version from before it was butchered by Alexbrn in preparation for AfD (and now again by CFCF). But in view of the procedural issues and questions that have been raised about editor conduct, I think it best to do nothing until we hear from the closing administrator who restored the page. Thanks.NightHeron (talk) 20:01, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete The topic is framed as an attack page in an inherently biased way and so is contrary to core policy. Andrew D. (talk) 20:46, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete again. This article can only ever be either an apologia for quackery or a vast nit-picking back and forth. Guy (Help!) 21:28, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete - Whether process had been abused or not, whether there are any disputes or not, this topic can never end, edit conflicts that have the potential to reach a level of full protection, there can simply be no one agreeing on this issue.
This is a TNT and IAR delete. To the original editor, this is a topic that is so controversial that it cannot be easily dealt with, so I recommend taking on other less controversial pages in the future, at least a topic such as Criticism of Alternative Medicine may well be better or not?--Quek157 (talk) 21:36, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Just to add, in addition to the above, this article in full is like a LISTCRUFT/SYNTH idea when list articles are mentioned and discussed. Is basically sourced information amalgamated together to form a topic where it can be better used in other articles. Delete the page. Selective
Merger from history will be the best process.using the sources now to expand on current topic This is exactly what the DRV closer stated above. SYNTH can only be used for list but I find this argument relevant in a form of extended list. This can be called List of Criticism of Medicine which clearly then SYNTH applies. So delete with a proper rationale not IAR TNT. --Quek157 (talk) 18:19, 26 May 2018 (UTC) clarified --Quek157 (talk) 21:34, 27 May 2018 (UTC)- Two points:
- You can either delete the article, or merge content to other articles. You can't do both, because of copyright requirements.
- I keep seeing this belief that nobody has truly criticized the institution and practice of medicine, and that anything that discusses concrete problems is just a made-up mishmash, and I keep being baffled by this. There have been multiple books on this subject, such as Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates (Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0199212798). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:02, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Two points:
- Delete. There are several overlapping problems here. The current (at the time of this posting) state of the article is essentially a content fork of alternative medicine. The longer version has that same problem; it is also something of a coatrack that also forks iatrogenesis. In any version, the ability to provide facially-acceptable sourcing has to be balanced by the demands of WP:FRINGE; and make no mistake, at least every recent version of this article serves as quiet advocacy of fringe medical positions. There are certainly aspects of this topic that can be addressed appropriately, but "criticism" of "medicine" broadly construed is always going to be a fringe-theory article with the inherent problems, and this falls short of the expectations of that standard. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 23:32, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete. I have read the so-called "good" version, and I'm actually sympathetic to some extent towards the notion of having an article like this. My liberal bleeding heart, always eager for a new excuse to ex-sanguinate, is moved by the assertions in the article that modern healthcare systems underserve women and minorities. But — big but — that is not a criticism of medicine. That's a criticism of healthcare. To take those arguments and lump them into an article with some alternative medicine woo-woo is WP:OR.
- To come at this from another direction, I think that an article about historical criticism of medicine would be fascinating. I'd love to read about how phrenologists defended phrenology as their weird psuedoscience fell into discredit, but again, that's information that lives more happily elsewhere, in an article less likely to be a coatrack for fringe crazies. The fact is that there is never going to be a substantial amount of reliable sources that compile credible criticisms of medicine itself. A Traintalk 23:51, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete - I can't put it better than A Train did. Alexbrn turned the article into something resembling an actual Wikipedia article, and removed a lot of the problems, but no amount of editing can fix the fact that this is not a viable topic. --bonadea contributions talk 15:35, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Illegitimate process I think it makes sense for supporters of restoring this article (the vote among admins in the appeal discussion was, as I recall, 4 to 1 for restoration) to continue just sitting out this illegitimate AfD2. Of course, as the nominator said, WP policy encourages editing an article before and during an AfD. But obviously the purpose should be to make a good-faith effort to improve the article in order to see whether or not improvement is a better option than deletion. The policy of encouraging editing is not intended as a justification for vandalizing the article -- reducing it to an incoherent stub -- right before proposing it for deletion. That is simply disruptive editing, and it causes the whole process to become illegitimate. So I think that those who disagree with the Anti-CAM Justice Warriors that this article supports fraud and quackery should just sit out this illegitimate procedure. It's analogous to a bogus election in an undemocratic country -- often the best strategy of the democracy advocates is to sit out the "election" and challenge its legitimacy later; if there's no effective way to do this within the country in question, then maybe pressure from outside the country would help. In the case of Wikipedia, this means off-wiki sources calling attention to what's going on. This has already been done on Slashdot. In short, the conduct of the Anti-CAM Warriors does not bring credit either to Wikipedia or to the medical profession that a few of them belong to. This is unfortunate and unfair, because their conduct is an outlier. From all I've seen, the majority of veteran editors do not behave this way, and the majority of physicians and medical researchers do not share their simpleminded POV that criticism of medicine is the same as support for CAM and that anyone who has an openminded view of certain forms of CAM (e.g., 88% of Americans surveyed and 60% of U.S. medical schools) is promoting fraud and quackery.NightHeron (talk) 15:17, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- NightHeron, please correct me if I'm misunderstanding but I think you're making two points here.
- First, you're saying that it's unfortunate that the article was stub-ified during the discussion. I concur with you, but I'm not sure that this is a big of a problem as you seem to think it is. Seeing previous versions of an article is trivially easy and experienced editors (such as those who tend to contribute at AfD) know how to do that. I read the longer previous version of the article before opining and it seems very clear to me that some if not all of the editors voting to delete here did as well.
- Now your second point is making me worried. Are you saying that you've encouraged Slashdot readers to brigade this AfD? That is poor form, if so. I'm not sure what to make of "Anti-CAM Warriors", so you may want to re-phrase that for folks like me who aren't steeped in the jargon of alternative medicine.
- Thanks, A Traintalk 16:51, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- NightHeron, please correct me if I'm misunderstanding but I think you're making two points here.
- @A Train: Thanks for your courteous tone toward me, and I apologize if I was unclear. To answer your second point first, I had nothing to do with the posting on Slashdot. I've never used Slashdot and didn't even know what it was until it came up in the NPOV Noticeboard discussion. I was simply saying that some external criticism of Wikipedia should kick in if internal safeguards don't work. That's all.
- In answer to your first point, I made up that term myself; I don't read pro-CAM propaganda, so I don't know whether or not they use it. My choice of that term was by analogy with the common pejorative "Social Justice Warriors" for people who think that their cause is so important as to justify censorship.
- I personally agree with the objectives of both groups. I believe in social justice, and I also believe in combating fraud and pseudoscience. Where I part ways with both groups is that censorship is not the right way to go about it. Wikipedia policy very clearly says the same thing.NightHeron (talk) 20:07, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- @A Train: Concerning your other point about the disruptive editing that occurred immediately prior to the nominator renominating the article for deletion: This could have confused and probably did confuse some editors about what was going on and what was the article being evaluated. There's no way to know. In any case it was an abuse of procedure, and so this AfD is illegitimate. It makes sense for people who oppose deletion to just throw up our hands and boycott such a travesty. I understand that WP policy allows repeated proposals to delete a given article. But presumably that is because some time has passed and new editing of the article or new off-wiki events showed that the article is now inappropriate. Renomination is not supposed to be used because the original supporters of deletion are unhappy with the concensus that emerged in the deletion appeal process. Editors spent 3 weeks debating this. Why not let normal editing occur now, wait a few months, and see whether the case for deletion becomes stronger or weaker with time?NightHeron (talk) 21:04, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- I agree with you that the speedy re-nomination isn't ideal. But we're ultimately responsible to Wikipedia's readers. Given a choice between pedantically following the letter of the rules and taking action to remove an article that isn't in keeping with our standards for WP:NPOV, WP:SYNTH, or WP:FRINGE, we'll choose the latter every time. That's actually the essence of one of Wikipedia's five pillars: there are no firm rules, just the goal of making a good encyclopedia. There's a good consensus developing here that this article isn't fit for purpose. That's not censorship, it's just maintaining the standards. A Traintalk 23:22, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- @A Train: I'm sorry, but you're not really agreeing with me. I didn't say that the speedy (as in: within a half-hour) renomination "isn't ideal"; I said that it was a refusal to accept consensus (as in: consensus of admins in the appeal discussion) and hence contrary to WP policy. It is not "pedantic" to insist on respecting consensus.
- How can you call the article "fringe" if every single one of my sources is a non-fringe non-CAM source, and several (Angell, Ernst, and of course the source about the Wakefield fraud) are strongly anti-CAM? Please point to a single thing in the article that is "fringe." Nor is it "synth"; please see WP:SYNNOT#Synth is not juxtaposition. It just blows my mind that anyone could defend Alternative medicine as not having an NPOV problem and accuse Criticisms of medicine of violating NPOV. Please just show the two articles side by side to any scientist you know outside of Wikipedia and ask them which one is biased or polemical. The claims that my article violates basic WP policies or that it would harm readers to see it are just absurd. Wikipedia's "responsibility to readers" is not to censor things.
- There was no consensus, as 4 out of 5 admins agreed during the appeal process. There might be one now, since it's largely the pro-deletion editors who are happy to go ahead with this illegitimate process. Other editors think three weeks on this is enough, and I fully sympthasize with the viewpoint that it's a waste of time to debate people who refuse to accept consensus.NightHeron (talk) 23:44, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Since the outcome of the last AfD/review was effectively "no consensus", this new AfD is a good thing to get to that consensus. Relisting AfDs to widen consensus is routinely done, and this new AfD is no different in principle to doing just that. This is why nobody with any clue is buying the "abuse of process" argument; that argument looks to me more like an attempt to subvert the emerging consensus. Alexbrn (talk) 01:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Alexbrn: I suppose you'll also argue that it's perfectly normal and in line with policy to vandalize an article (18 delete edits reducing it to a stub) within minutes of the posting of the appeal outcome and immediately before renominating the article for deletion?
- In WP:PROCEDURALCLOSE it says that an AfD nomination is in error if "Nomination is an immediate objection to a prior deletion outcome," and so merits a procedural close. Thus, if the first closing admin had ruled "No Concensus" (and so kept the article) and if you had immediately renominated, that would have been grounds for procedural close. This isn't, of course, what you did, since the first ruling went in your favor. But the appeal ruling corrected the earlier ruling to "No Consensus," so what you did was very similar. You expressed your objection to that ruling (in apparent anger, since it is not normal for an experienced editor to vandalize an article by 18 deletion edits to bring it down to an incoherent stub) by immediately (within about a half hour) renominating it for deletion. Your actions that violated policy were refusal to accept consensus, disruptive editing, and inappropriate use of AfD to object to an appeal ruling.NightHeron (talk) 02:31, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- In WP:RENOM it recommends waiting "at least two months" after a "no consensus" close before renominating. The admin who closed the appeal said in reference to this second AfD: "I wouldn't be surprised if the AfD got speedy closed by somebody, but I'm not going to do that. It's better I leave that decision to an uninvolved admin."NightHeron (talk) 02:43, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- You need to read WP:NOTVAND. Considering the circumstances my renomination was good and I believe fully aligned with the goals of the Project. We shall just have to wait and see if the wider community supports my judgement. In any case, the relevant policy (for post-review renomination) has already been quoted to you at AN/I: WP:DP#Deletion review – "Overturned deletions may go to a deletion discussion if someone still wishes to delete and chooses to nominate." Ultimately however, we are driven by the great tide of consensus, not by WP:WIKILAWYERING. Alexbrn (talk) 02:50, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- Please don't accuse me of lawyering just because I'm making a policy-based argument. I'm talking about basic issues like disruption and censorship; I'm not a lawyer haggling about technicalities. I'd prefer not to haggle over words either, but okay, I read WP:NOTVAND it's clear that vandalism should not be used if an inexperienced editor did what you did. But it's not clear whether the policy says anything in the case of an experienced editor who knows the rules. According to the lede of Vandalism on Wikipedia, "On Wikipedia, vandalism is the act of editing the project in a malicious manner that is intentionally disruptive. Vandalism includes the addition, removal, or modification of the text or other material that is ... [in an] otherwise degrading nature." If the word "vandalism" seems inaccurate, then other possible words to describe what happened: disruptive editing and butchering the article right before nominating. I don't care which words we use. It was clearly against policy in any case. The "great tide of consensus" among the "wider community" is nonsense, since most editors have little patience for endless debates with people who refuse to accept a consensus reached at the admin level after 3 weeks. Only the diehards are in it now; others lose interest when the same arguments are being beaten to death for the 4th straight week.NightHeron (talk) 03:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- No, we're getting fresh eyes all the time, usefully broadening the consensus. So far as I'm concerned this is just a run-of-the-mill exercise to remove bad content from Wikipedia. No big deal. With your talk of butchery and censorship and off-wiki judgements and beating to death you're already quite a way up the WP:REICHSTAG. Have you considered that you might ... be wrong? Alexbrn (talk) 12:44, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- Please don't accuse me of lawyering just because I'm making a policy-based argument. I'm talking about basic issues like disruption and censorship; I'm not a lawyer haggling about technicalities. I'd prefer not to haggle over words either, but okay, I read WP:NOTVAND it's clear that vandalism should not be used if an inexperienced editor did what you did. But it's not clear whether the policy says anything in the case of an experienced editor who knows the rules. According to the lede of Vandalism on Wikipedia, "On Wikipedia, vandalism is the act of editing the project in a malicious manner that is intentionally disruptive. Vandalism includes the addition, removal, or modification of the text or other material that is ... [in an] otherwise degrading nature." If the word "vandalism" seems inaccurate, then other possible words to describe what happened: disruptive editing and butchering the article right before nominating. I don't care which words we use. It was clearly against policy in any case. The "great tide of consensus" among the "wider community" is nonsense, since most editors have little patience for endless debates with people who refuse to accept a consensus reached at the admin level after 3 weeks. Only the diehards are in it now; others lose interest when the same arguments are being beaten to death for the 4th straight week.NightHeron (talk) 03:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- You need to read WP:NOTVAND. Considering the circumstances my renomination was good and I believe fully aligned with the goals of the Project. We shall just have to wait and see if the wider community supports my judgement. In any case, the relevant policy (for post-review renomination) has already been quoted to you at AN/I: WP:DP#Deletion review – "Overturned deletions may go to a deletion discussion if someone still wishes to delete and chooses to nominate." Ultimately however, we are driven by the great tide of consensus, not by WP:WIKILAWYERING. Alexbrn (talk) 02:50, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- Since the outcome of the last AfD/review was effectively "no consensus", this new AfD is a good thing to get to that consensus. Relisting AfDs to widen consensus is routinely done, and this new AfD is no different in principle to doing just that. This is why nobody with any clue is buying the "abuse of process" argument; that argument looks to me more like an attempt to subvert the emerging consensus. Alexbrn (talk) 01:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- I agree with you that the speedy re-nomination isn't ideal. But we're ultimately responsible to Wikipedia's readers. Given a choice between pedantically following the letter of the rules and taking action to remove an article that isn't in keeping with our standards for WP:NPOV, WP:SYNTH, or WP:FRINGE, we'll choose the latter every time. That's actually the essence of one of Wikipedia's five pillars: there are no firm rules, just the goal of making a good encyclopedia. There's a good consensus developing here that this article isn't fit for purpose. That's not censorship, it's just maintaining the standards. A Traintalk 23:22, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- @A Train: Concerning your other point about the disruptive editing that occurred immediately prior to the nominator renominating the article for deletion: This could have confused and probably did confuse some editors about what was going on and what was the article being evaluated. There's no way to know. In any case it was an abuse of procedure, and so this AfD is illegitimate. It makes sense for people who oppose deletion to just throw up our hands and boycott such a travesty. I understand that WP policy allows repeated proposals to delete a given article. But presumably that is because some time has passed and new editing of the article or new off-wiki events showed that the article is now inappropriate. Renomination is not supposed to be used because the original supporters of deletion are unhappy with the concensus that emerged in the deletion appeal process. Editors spent 3 weeks debating this. Why not let normal editing occur now, wait a few months, and see whether the case for deletion becomes stronger or weaker with time?NightHeron (talk) 21:04, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
The issue is not whether I was right or wrong to write an article on this topic. Apparently the most active members of WikiProject Medicine for the most part believe I was wrong. That's fine. The issue is the highly irregular procedure that is being used to overturn a decision reached by consensus after 3 difficult weeks of debate. All the "new eyes" this week on one side and none on the other side -- no surprise there. Your side can legally rally the troops. The other side cannot, or it would be canvassing. There's no "WikiProject Crit of Med", nor should there be. Also, most on the other side, including people who are more experienced and less naive about Wikipedia procedures than I am, don't want to waste their time -- just as it would be foolish to waste time campaigning in a rigged election. Apparently other people have had similar experiences long before I started editing.NightHeron (talk) 14:52, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- As they should. Spouting pseudoscience gets you an admonishment and if you continue it gets you a ban. Wikipedia could not exist if we allowed every quack to WP:BLUDGEON all of our processes. Science is not a democracy, it is biased to the scientific method. Carl Fredrik talk 15:23, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- Am I a "quack" now? Have I been "spouting pseudoscience"? Am I soon to be banned? Are other editors who have supported the article also a bunch of "quacks"?NightHeron (talk) 16:29, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- As they should. Spouting pseudoscience gets you an admonishment and if you continue it gets you a ban. Wikipedia could not exist if we allowed every quack to WP:BLUDGEON all of our processes. Science is not a democracy, it is biased to the scientific method. Carl Fredrik talk 15:23, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
I'm not using "censor" as a type of miscellaneous expression of annoyance, but rather in the precise sense of WP:CENSOR, where the first sentence states: "Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive—even exceedingly so." The history of our controversy makes the central issue clear. I was led to the article Alternative medicine when looking for material on a subtopic of abortion that's also a subtopic of alt med, namely herbal abortifacients. I was shocked by the tone and POV of the alt med article, which I'd never before encountered on Wikipedia. Among other things, I tried to put in a section on criticism of medicine, in order to show that some of the appeal of alt med is due not to a belief in "magic, childishness, or the downright absurd" (to paraphrase a formulation that was in the alt med article's lede at the time, but since removed). Rather, this appeal might result in part from the less-than-perfect image that medicine has among much of the public. That section didn't survive, but an experienced editor advised me instead to write a separate article on the subject, which could then be cited from the alt med article in lieu of a section with that material. I much appreciated the constructive suggestion, and also the considerable help that editor gave me in improving my sandbox draft. When I posted it, the trouble started, with immediate suspicion of my good faith, e.g., a comment on the Wiki:Project Medicine talk page by a veteran editor saying "I smell a sock" (??). (In my comments on the alt med article, I had stated that I was strongly opposed to pseudoscience, quackery, and fraud, and that's why I wanted to improve the article. But since I was editing anonymously, editors had no way to verify that I wasn't lying.) Throughout the lengthy discussions on the crit of med talk page and three different delete-related discussion pages the persistent theme of the pro-deletion comments is that any article on the topic is automatically POV, essay-like, SYNTH, OR, and other nasty things. The reason is because of a "problematic agenda" (in the words of the deletion-nominator Alexbrn), namely to promote alt med. No one has ever pointed to a specific source or wording in the article that supports the alt-medists. But no matter. It's offensive to a dominant group of editors that includes some very active veteran editors in the medicine project, apparently because an article on such a topic is viewed as inconsistent with the need for an uncompromising battle against alt med. This is censorship in the Wikipedia sense of the word. Among my acquaintances in the off-wiki world I'm reasonably sure that every one of them would view it as such.NightHeron (talk) 16:23, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- NightHeron, you are (again, I'm sorry to say) taking a pedantic, highly idiosyncratic reading of WP policy and bending it to your purposes. What WP:CENSOR means is that Wikipedia hosts content that some folks may find objectionable (viz. penises, images of the Prophet Muhammad, and Nickelback samples); it does not mean that we should ignore all of our content policies about fringe science or original research. There are over a dozen reasonable, highly experienced editors here who have collectively been editing Wikipedia for more than a hundred years. As Alexbrn asked you earlier: are you sure that maybe—just maybe—it's you that has the wrong end of the stick here? A Traintalk 23:01, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- @A Train: Don't you at least find it odd (although perhaps justified from your POV) that the crit of med article is continually being labeled as "fringe" or "pseudoscience" even though every single source (over 40 of them) is mainstream RS, nothing the least bit fringe? Doesn't that tell you that there might be something strange about what's going on?
- As far as Wikipedia policy goes, I don't believe you're correct. It's not just for offensive images that someone doesn't want their children to see or that offend some religious notion. The policy in WP:CENSOR seems much more to be a core policy related to major content issues. The one where much of my editing has taken place is abortion. Wikipedia explicitly tries in various ways to protect super-controversial articles such as the abortion article from POV-groups and it seems to me that Wikipedia is relatively successful there. Even the frequent IP-vandalism isn't much of a problem, since it's usually reverted within a few minutes at very little effort -- that's what the "undo" click is there for (as it took me over a month to realize). Right now I'm involved in two discussions I instigated to change the title of United States pro-life movement and United States pro-choice movement to NPOV-compliant titles, replacing "pro-life" with "anti-abortion" and "pro-choice" with "abortion rights." To my pleasant surprise, both discussions have been going well, with no real animosity, no insults or violations of WP:GF. Nobody accused anyone of a "problematic agenda" or being a "quack" or said "I smell a sock," and nobody threatened to have anyone banned. The only place I've encountered that has been in the alt-med and crit-of-med context. Doesn't that seem strange to you? It does to me. BTW, none of this applies to you -- you've been consistently cordial and never assumed bad faith on my part.NightHeron (talk) 23:43, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- @A Train: After I posted the above reply to you, I noticed that the edit summary of your last response to me (which I had not even noticed) had been removed by an admin for containing "Grossly insulting, degrading, or offensive material." Of course, it's too late for me to read it now. I want to say that the last BTW sentence above was meant sincerely, not as sarcasm (because if the edit summary did insult me, I hadn't read it). Second, if the issue in the edit summary related to something not directed against me, then please let me know what it was so that I don't jump to an inaccurate conclusion.NightHeron (talk) 00:41, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- I was surprised to see a deleted edit summary in this page's history, and particularly surprised that A Train would post an edit summary falling under RD2. On reviewing the deleted summary, I am comfortable saying that the deletion of the edit summary was in error. The deleting admin was – presumably – unfamiliar with the phrase "hill to die on". A Train's rather sensible advice to you was simply (NightHeron, find another hill to die on), which I suppose could be seen as rather threatening if one didn't know the idiom involved. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:04, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- @TenOfAllTrades:@A Train: Of course I'm not insulted by that expression, so my last sentence about cordiality in my earlier response to User:A Train still stands as correct. However, I think there's a U.S.-specific reason why it was probably correct for the admin to delete that edit summary under RD2. Many people in the U.S. are hypersensitive about certain things, especially coming from someone who's an adversary, and some wish for them to "die" (even if it's in a common expression) would be perceived as some weird kind of death threat. I kid you not. I'm not hypersensitive (if I were, I'd find something else to do than edit medicine-related articles on Wikipedia, that's for sure).NightHeron (talk) 01:58, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- Ah yes; clearly he needed to delete it to protect the ignorant and illiterate Americans. It would probably be a good idea for you to stop replying. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:37, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- Sorry -- I removed my negative comment alluding to literacy in America, since apparently it offended you. I thought it appropriate to reply, because it seems the admin thought that the edit summary would be offensive to me. So I wanted to clarify that I was not offended, but in view of various tensions in the U.S. right now and the sensitivity of people when someone tells them something about "dying," the expression, though an accepted idiom, might be taken badly by some people. Is that okay? Or am I violating some policy? Speaking of interpreting or misinterpreting things, could you tell me what you meant by "a good idea for you to stop replying"? Was that a warning or threat? If so, please tell me what policy I was violating by replying to you about the edit summary?NightHeron (talk) 04:11, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- Ah yes; clearly he needed to delete it to protect the ignorant and illiterate Americans. It would probably be a good idea for you to stop replying. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:37, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- @TenOfAllTrades:@A Train: Of course I'm not insulted by that expression, so my last sentence about cordiality in my earlier response to User:A Train still stands as correct. However, I think there's a U.S.-specific reason why it was probably correct for the admin to delete that edit summary under RD2. Many people in the U.S. are hypersensitive about certain things, especially coming from someone who's an adversary, and some wish for them to "die" (even if it's in a common expression) would be perceived as some weird kind of death threat. I kid you not. I'm not hypersensitive (if I were, I'd find something else to do than edit medicine-related articles on Wikipedia, that's for sure).NightHeron (talk) 01:58, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- I was surprised to see a deleted edit summary in this page's history, and particularly surprised that A Train would post an edit summary falling under RD2. On reviewing the deleted summary, I am comfortable saying that the deletion of the edit summary was in error. The deleting admin was – presumably – unfamiliar with the phrase "hill to die on". A Train's rather sensible advice to you was simply (NightHeron, find another hill to die on), which I suppose could be seen as rather threatening if one didn't know the idiom involved. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:04, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- delete. This page is a POV fork Jytdog (talk) 16:11, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete The article is simply an essay promoting a fringe POV, fleshed out with disparate sources. Any particular source or sentence could be justified as criticism of a relevant aspect of medicine, but no reliable source has proposed the same thesis as this article. The way it is assembled is tantamount to WP:SYNTH. --RexxS (talk) 20:00, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Split the content to more relevant articles, and – eventually, when all of the usable content has been correctly placed in other articles – redirect this name to Medicine, which probably will end up with a ==Criticism== section as a result. You can see one example of a very simple split in this diff, which shows me moving a sourced sentence to an article that did not previously contain such a concise explanation of how cultural expectations affected the opioid epidemic. This is not a difficult kind of editing task, and it WP:PRESERVEs verifiable content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:51, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- You split out one sentence, and now the article must be kept for attribution... Natureium (talk) 21:28, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- No, it can be solved with a history merge. It's a lot of extra work for some administrator, but it's going to need to happen now that this was done. All it needs to do is attribute NightHeron, but something needs to be done to ensure the diff is truncated — it is currently the whole article, which should under no circumstance be part of the diff. Just for the sake of it I will make it clear I strongly oppose a redirect. Carl Fredrik talk 21:33, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Or the single edit could be rev-del'd (i.e., from the target article). I made sure to document the diff, so that it would be easy to do that if wanted, and difficult to overlook the necessity if editors conclude that this title absolutely must remain a redlink instead of pointing at Medicine. I think that quite a lot of the material in this article could easily find a home in other articles.
- Carl, I'd like to know more about why you oppose a redirect. Do you believe that this needs to be a redlink, or do you only oppose a redirect that has the article history behind it? ("Somebody might revert the redirect" could be reliably solved with page protection.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:31, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- No, it can be solved with a history merge. It's a lot of extra work for some administrator, but it's going to need to happen now that this was done. All it needs to do is attribute NightHeron, but something needs to be done to ensure the diff is truncated — it is currently the whole article, which should under no circumstance be part of the diff. Just for the sake of it I will make it clear I strongly oppose a redirect. Carl Fredrik talk 21:33, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- You split out one sentence, and now the article must be kept for attribution... Natureium (talk) 21:28, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete The article is an essay with opinions gathered by an editor (WP:SYNTH) to show one side of a story (WP:POVFORK). Anything as complex as medicine is going to have a lot of problems (and misguided accusations of problems), and listing them should be done on a blog. Johnuniq (talk) 23:12, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete/Split as a WP:POVFORK. Some of the content is criticism of the US healthcare system (which already has its own article and plenty of space for criticism), some is criticism of frauds (which exist in all fields, not just medicine - and a relevant article also already exists), some is criticism of historical behaviours which can hardly be attributed to the field of medicine alone, and the article overall is a haphazard collation of those, and it constitutes POV-pushing WP:SYNTH (since it is criticism taken out of context, see this older AfD - sure, there's criticism, but the article in this form is unacceptable WP:CHERRYPICKING). Relevant content can thus be split to relevant articles (if it isn't already there), and the rest can go where it rightfully belongs (i.e. the trash can, if you were not sure). 198.84.253.202 (talk) 13:10, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete. There just isn't a clear concept of what this article is intended to cover, so it's always going to be a neither-fish-nor-fowl laundry-list muddle. It's called "Criticisms of Medicine", but it's really a poorly-scoped agglomeration of anything negative that's tangentially-related to the past or present of medicine. There's stuff there that better fits in – and is often already part of – our articles on healthcare, or history of medicine, or informed consent, or scientific misconduct, and others. (The old editor's saw: What you've got is good and original. But the good stuff isn't original, and the original stuff isn't good.)
The novel synthesis and agglomeration of this grab-bag of bits and pieces isn't a helpful construction (except, perhaps, to an anti-medicine crusader looking for Gish Gallop fodder), and the lumping-together in this way isn't supported by suitable sources. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:51, 28 May 2018 (UTC) - Delete. No systematic framework, not likely to be anything but a tirade. WP:CRITICISM is always risky and I'd say any useful content should be merged to the specific phenomena being criticised, not the practice or profession of medicine as a whole. JFW | T@lk 17:58, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete and salt the tittle, because no encyclopedic neutral article can exists there. I painstakingly surveyed all accessible so-called references, they revealed one thing: this article s epitome of WP:SYNTHESIS and concoction to paint picture that never was and push fringe POV masquerading as an encyclopedic article. I am also pertubed by the badgering by account solely created to mask identity and fight for keeping this mess in the name of article.Forum shopping after DRV and their apparent attempt to recreate the article after this is eventually deleted. –Ammarpad (talk) 05:24, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete. The article is more like an essay or list that cherry-picks events where healthcare services have been substandard. There is no overall direction. (I have looked at the previous "good" version.) Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:30, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- Delete Oh, what a mess. Yet, that's pretty much a textbook example of WP:SYNTH. Even if each separate axis of criticism was supported by rock-solid RS (which is not really the case at the moment but it is within the realm of possibilities), what would be needed is sources (e.g. sociology studies; emphasis on plural) lumping all those separate criticisms together. A quick GScholar search did not turn up anything remotely resembling that, though I will admit that's not my domain and I might have overlooked something obvious. Also, the first AfD's closure might have been invalid, but plainly on procedural/closure rationale grounds, and it certainly is no obstacle to quick renomination. TigraanClick here to contact me 11:41, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- Comment We have 17 deletes, 1 split, 1 keep, and 1 22kB argument. Are we going to make this run another 3 days? Natureium (talk) 13:55, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- With only one supporter of the article not sitting out the vote, you're at 94 percent. Don't you want to try to raise that? The old Soviet Union would routinely get over 95 percent voting for the Communist Party. You should be able to match that.NightHeron (talk) 14:29, 29 May 2018 (UTC)