MartinCannon

/* Help me! */ new section

Please help me with... I have not written or contributed to an article yet. Such an attempt may be pointless, in light of Wikipedia's guidelines.

I spent a year researching and writing a book on phantom social workers -- imposters claiming to work for child welfare agencies. My book is titled "The Child Stealers: Phantom Social Workers -- an American Mystery." The endnotes include hundreds of citations of solid, mainstream sources. I feel certain that any fair-minded Wikipedia editor who reads my book would agree that it is written to a high standard. However, I decided to self-publish, primarily because -- for once in my life -- I wanted to work without deadlines or "helpful" input from an editor.

Wikipedia's current article on this topic is very misleading. Contrary to your current article, the phantom social worker phenomenon originated in the United States in 1919, not in the U.K. in the early 1990s. (The U.K. wave actually began in 1989.) Children have indeed been kidnapped by these imposters. In the United States, there were three such kidnappings in 1980 alone, the most famous of which was the David Blockett abduction, which gave rise to an "Ebony" magazine cover story in 1985.

A number of these imposters have, in fact, been arrested over the decades -- as happened, for example, in the 2019 case of Sara Orozco Magana in Santa Ana, California.

The phantom social worker phenomenon has no connection whatsoever with the U.K.'s Cleveland Child Abuse scandal of 1987. My book cites hundreds of cases predating that scandal. The post-1987 cases in the United States have no relationship to that controversy. (Most American citizens do not even know that there is, or was, a place called "Cleveland" in England.)

The current article uses the words "It is thought" to link the phantom social worker phenomenon to the 1987 Cleveland scandal. Is a phrase like that consonant with Wikipedia's standards?

Wikipedia's current article is based on a misleading, self-contradictory and factually incorrect piece published in "The Independent" on August 16, 1995. That article claims that "Operation Childcare" deemed only two out 250 reports to be genuine. In fact, earlier articles published in "The Guardian" cited a much higher percentage. The Yorkshire police were hampered by a lack of transparency -- they published no report -- and by their complete ignorance of the American precedents.

I could go on and on -- and I can back everything I say by citing sources which most or all Wikipedia editors would consider worthy of citation.

Alas, as things stand, I may not be able to place any of this data on Wikipedia. I can understand why Wikipedia would consider any reference to my book to be self-promotion; that seems fair. On the other hand, you probably would not allow me to contribute an article on this topic which cites dozens or hundreds of newspaper articles. Such a piece would prove tedious to readers and probably would open me up to charges of conducting original research.

In this situation, an overly-strict application of the "no original research" rule could mean that false information stays on Wikipedia and genuine information is prohibited. This situation is not fair to your readers.

Frankly, it is also unfair to presume that all self-published works are written to a low standard.

Is there any way I can contribute well-researched, factual information on this topic?

Thanks,

Martin Cannon

PS: You can read my book for free on Kindle Unlimited. I would be happy to send a free pdf to any Wikipedia editor. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QRH81DK MartinCannon (talk) 12:27, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello, Martin. I understand what you are saying, and you raise a number of points which deserve answers. Here are some thoughts on some of them, which I hope you may find helpful. I am leaving your help request open, in case someone else can help.

Of course it isn't true that "all self-published works are written to a low standard". The problem, however, is that some of them are, and so how do we judge which are and which aren't? We don't have a board of adjudicators or some such body to which such decisions are delegated, so we need criteria which can be applied in a routine way without recourse to an appeal to an authority of that kind. Obviously we can't decide that a self-published source is reliable because its author says so. Unfortunately the criteria Wikipedia uses are very far from perfect, so that for example the kind of erroneous reporting which you attribute to the Independent often gets through, while the kind of carefully researched work you say you have done doesn't. On the other hand in that last sentence I said "you say" because I have no way of knowing how reliable your work is. The presumption that information from "respectable" sources such as the Independent is automatically more reliable than something some person has written and posted on the internet is, of cause, flawed, but it is more often right than any other criterion that we could use. Also, in principle it is only a presumption, not a fixed assumption, and can be subject to review in individual cases, though unfortunately it is in practice often difficult to find objective evidence to form the basis of a review of the reliability of self-published work.

If your research is based on reliable sources then you should be able to cite those sources in support of changes to the article. That would be much better than citing your own work, and would justify changes to the article.

You could add a citation to the Guardian article you mention, indicating that the Independent's statistic is at best questionable. Clearly that would fall far short of the radical change you wish for, but it would be a start, and very easy to do. JBW (talk) 13:43, 6 February 2022 (UTC)