[Foundation-l] Paid editing, was Re: Ban and moderate

[wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk]

On 23/10/2010 15:15, WJhonson at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 10/23/2010 3:40:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk writes:
>
>
>> OK this is going to be controversial but have you ever considered taht
>> maybe you shouldn't have anything on Atorvastatin other than what comes
>> as the medical advice in the packaging? One cannot provide any useful
>> advice on whether someone should use the drug or not that should be
>> between the patient and their doctor. I mean its not as if wikipedia is
>> an expert pharmacopeia as wikipedia doesn't have experts weighing the
>> evidence one way or the other, all you can do is mimic the day to day
>> controversy which of its very nature is going to be conflict ridden.
>>
>> If there are still any pretensions of being encyclopaedic here then any
>> such articles should only be written once the conflict has been resolved.
>>
>> Example here is the MMR article from one period in 2004:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MMR_vaccine&oldid=6127791
>>
>> any parent reading that article at that time is highly unlikely to have
>> opted for the vaccine. Or take the final paragraph here:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MMR_vaccine&
>> oldid=6127791#The_MMR_controversy
>>
>> adding every rumour, statement, or innuendo that someone somewhere in
>> the world might have once said, however wrong, is unencyclopeadic. It is
>> certainly not without consequences. How many children were made ill by
>> those paragraphs?
>> http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/vaxpictures/measles3.htm
>> http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/vaxpictures/measles1.htm
>> http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/vaxpictures/mumps1.htm
>> http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/vaxpictures/mumps2.htm
>> http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/vaxpictures.htm>>
>>
>
> Why would you make such outrageous statements and expect any result here?
> On what space have you been slumming where people add "every rumour,
> statement or innuendo that someone somewhere in the world might have once said"?
> Please tell me, I'm dying to know.  I mean I'm really dying.
>
> See I took Atorvastatin and you wouldn't let the project report that the
> Stanford Medical Journal reported that it causes more damage to the heart than
> is acceptable.


Such claims are best kept within the confines of official medical 
journals, the news media, and personal blogs. Not put into a forum "that 
everyone can edit" where it masquerades as having some authoritative or 
encyclopaedic perspective. The danger is that "everyone can edit it" so 
any particular page fetch may have just been edited by someone with a COI.



> You want us only to report things once the controversy is
> over, in other words once 25,000 people have gotten sick from salmonella
> eggs... not just a thousand.  No wait, actually after all the lawsuits are over
> and the people involved are all dead as well.


Sound good to me. At least while that is happening the news channels are 
reporting the current state of play, and the wikipedia page isn't being 
edit warred by those telling everyone that nothing is wrong.