[Gendergap] Drama issue ... not my experience

[Ism Woonpton]

I've lost Daniel's response, but need to correct one last important
misunderstanding and then I hope I'll have done.

The response doesn't address the main point of my post, about passive
agression being just as aggressive and offensive as active aggression,
but I trust the point was taken, and I appreciate the more
straightforward nature of this latest response.

But there seems to be a significant misunderstanding about what I mean
by areas where vested interests work tirelessly to advance agendas.
I'm not talking about areas of real life strife and controversy,
goodness; I wouldn't think of editing in such areas.   Areas like
Israel-Palestine, climate change, intelligent design, abortion --- I
wouldn't go near those political minefields.  But I think it's worth
noting that those areas differ materially from the areas I'm talking
about, in that in those political areas there are reliable sources on
both sides and the question is how to negotiate neutrality between
contradictory sources.

What I'm talking about is areas where the consensus of research
literature is unequivocal and clear  but where vested interests
continually remove scientific literature reviews and replace them with
blogs or  promotional literature or other less reliable sources, in
the interest of promoting  unscientific or pseudoscientific claims,
most often to serve a financial interest.  It's like trying to bail
out the ocean with a teacup to keep those articles neutral, and
there's little help from anyone  on the project; when one of these
topic areas goes to ArbCom it's most often  someone on the side of the
encyclopedia rather than on the side of the vested interests that is
banned for becoming frustrated and losing their temper.   Occasionally
an editor that is seen as too close in a COI way to the interest
that's being served by the POV edits is banned, but as I've said
before, there are always more where those came from.

As I've said before, this is all somewhat off the topic of gender,
except that it may be that women are less interested in getting into
the mud and duking it out with people who are so invested in their
cause that they will take the fight out into other parts of the
internet and one finds oneself (thankfully identified only by a fake
Wikipedia name, but still) vilified and misrepresented in odd corners
of the web.  I don't know about other women, but I know for sure I
don't like it at all, and am very sorry that I opened myself to this
kind of smear campaign by innocently trying to improve a couple of
Wikipedia articles that were not accurately representing  reliable
sources.  Knowing what I know now, I would never click on that "edit
this page" button, and I urge everyone I know to stay far away.  Now,
I'm done.  I appreciate the indulgence and patience of the list.

Woonpton


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