Talk:Plague of Corruption

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Arbitration Ruling on the Treatment of Pseudoscience

In December of 2006 the Arbitration Committee ruled on guidelines for the presentation of topics as pseudoscience in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience. The final decision was as follows:

Neutral point of view as applied to science: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a fundamental policy, requires fair representation of significant alternatives to scientific orthodoxy. Significant alternatives, in this case, refers to legitimate scientific disagreement, as opposed to pseudoscience.
Serious encyclopedias: Serious and respected encyclopedias and reference works are generally expected to provide overviews of scientific topics that are in line with respected scientific thought. Wikipedia aspires to be such a respected work.
Obvious pseudoscience: Theories which, while purporting to be scientific, are obviously bogus, such as Time Cube, may be so labeled and categorized as such without more justification.
Generally considered pseudoscience: Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience.
Questionable science: Theories which have a substantial following, such as psychoanalysis, but which some critics allege to be pseudoscience, may contain information to that effect, but generally should not be so characterized.
Alternative theoretical formulations: Alternative theoretical formulations which have a following within the scientific community are not pseudoscience, but part of the scientific process.

Contested deletion[edit]

This page is not unambiguously promotional, because... (reasoning here) -- The initial submission has been submitted in good faith, based upon facts and information gleaned from sources such as Amazon books and the NYT. As a starting point, from which additional perspectives and reasoned tweaks can be incorporated, the article is far more likely to attain polish with npov congruity, more likely, that is, than with the type of highly pov text substitution and wiki-lawyering that has been evidenced by two subsequent pov artists. Premature or hasty deletion of what is clearly a good faith stub submission is not only unwarranted, it does not evidence the collaborative spirit upon which the Wiki should be, and once upon a time, long ago, seemed to be so... Ombudsman 21 May 2020 (UTC)

First I will say that it is difficult to assume good faith when someone immediately resorts to personal attacks such as calling editors "pov artists", and referring to their edits as "patent vandalism", and "crap". Secondly, the stub as initially presented was filled with WP:NPOV, WP:FRINGE, and WP:PUFFERY violations. The manner in which it was presented was clearly and unambiguously promotional, with statements such as "the accomplished and acclaimed virologist", "With brilliant insight, based upon decades of medical research and a doctorate in molecular biology", and "her publications and professional bona fides are concurrently being slammed with often abusive, pejorative laced, character assassination 'hit pieces' across the spectrum of orthodox mainstream media" all unsourced and all made in Wikipedia's voice. It is unclear that the book is even WP:NOTABLE enough for an article, but even if it is we are bound by policies not to present fringe material as though it were fact, and it must always be counterpointed with what the actual scientific consensus is. AmbivalentUnequivocality (talk) 05:42, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Also, it's worth noting that this article also probably qualifies for a WP:G5 deletion as the editor who created it is topic banned from articles related to autism or vaccines. AmbivalentUnequivocality (talk) 06:13, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@AmbivalentUnequivocality: I think a WP:G5 deletion would indeed be applicable. But seeing as you effectively rewrote it as the current stub, my thinking is that it's worth keeping this as your version. Does that sound acceptable to you? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:57, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah that sounds totally acceptable to me. Thank you for your swift action! AmbivalentUnequivocality (talk) 09:23, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

At the revision at which it was nominated for speedy deletion, this article was in clear breach of WP:G11, and had it remained in that state I would have deleted it. Now that it has been reduced to a stub, I've declined the deletion request. @Ombudsman: If you continue with this kind of blatlantly promotional writing, or with attacks on other editors who resist it, you will not be editing here for much longer. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:27, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Boing! said Zebedee, that seems a reasonable solution. Ombudsman's topic ban has been violated, and they have made some serious personal attacks, so I'm not sure what should be done (I'm not an admin), but they must not edit the topic of vaccines or discuss it anywhere at Wikipedia, so this article, Judy Mikovits, talk pages, etc, are all off-limits for whatever was included in the topic ban, broadly construed. Your warning is proper and warranted, as, IIRC, many years ago s(he) was a very active and disruptive POV warrior who constantly promoted fringe views. -- Valjean (talk) 14:26, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - There's a warning about the personal attacks at their talk page and they've been reminded of their topic ban, and I've also left a fresh Discretionary Sanctions notice concerning pseudoscience and fringe science. I think that's probably all we need now, and I can impose Discretionary Sanctions if needed. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:38, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - Excellent! The warnings are clear enough. If they heed them, they can edit here. If not, they are NOTHERE. Any signs of ADVOCACY of fringe POV should not be tolerated from them. -- Valjean (talk) 18:07, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

>If y'all might be so kind, it'd be appreciated seeing clearly good faith, constructive edits around here, instead of a continued push in the direction of personal attacks; what we now have here is little more than a mirror of what has become of the article itself. Misconstruing my good faith npov edits, deliberately or otherwise, is a lame excuse for personally attacking my good faith, and smacks of what is called 'projection'. Likewise, it'd be much appreciated if we all can now turn attention back toward improving the article, beginning with removal of the libelous pov now plaguing the current Plague of Corruption article iteration. Ombudsman 21 May 2020 (UTC)

(Just noting that I originally removed this comment as a topic ban violation, but the validity of the old ban has been questioned and I think it would warrant scrutiny. So I've restored the comment. I've now imposed a new topic ban, and documented it at the appropriate place, so any future comments here from the same editor would be violations of the new ban. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:29, 22 May 2020 (UTC))[reply]

Preliminary new page patrol review[edit]

There are no references on the subject of the article (the BOOK) nor is there even content on it. Article also has serious WP:BLP problems. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:38, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]