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Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/The Man Who Would Be Queen/First mediation

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Latest comment: 15 years ago by DarlieB in topic Content issues
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Further information: Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/The Man Who Would Be Queen (term v phenomenon) and Talk:The Man Who Would Be Queen/mediation

Mediation facts

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Latest comment: 15 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Involved parties

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Filing party: you must serve all of these editors with notifications. See here for instructions.

Articles involved

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Issues to be mediated

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The party filing this request uses this section to list the issues for mediation. Other parties can list additional issues in the section below.

Additional issues to be mediated

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Other parties can use this section to list any others issues they wish to include in the mediation. Please do not modify or remove any other party's listing. Please sign all additions to this section if there are more than two parties involved in this case.

Request for opening statements

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Latest comment: 15 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Conflict of interest

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Latest comment: 15 years ago27 comments5 people in discussion

Thank you for all the statements. If anyone else wants to add something, please do, as the input is very helpful.

I'm trying to get the COI issues straight. First, WP's definition of a COI is:

an incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia, and the aims of an individual editor. ... Where advancing outside interests [including your own] is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest.

Jokestress

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Jokestress has self-identified as Andrea James, an LGBT rights activist. Hi Jokestress. :-) J. Michael Bailey told the Northwestern Chronicle [1] that, as part of your critique of his book, you published a satirical webpage that showed photographs of his children, with comments about whether he had sodomized them. You're also accused of having contacted people who helped with the book, and of having threatened them. Are those claims correct?

If the allegations are accurate, you probably shouldn't be editing any articles about Bailey. When an issue becomes personalized to that extent between living people, it's important that related Wikipedia articles don't end up appearing to be involved in the dispute. The same would apply to Bailey editing anything about you.

Can you agree to stop editing articles about Bailey and his work, and to refrain from making edits about him in other articles? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 21:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Hi SlimVirgin! ;) To answer your questions, no (though it is correct those claims were made) and yes. I should note that the editor of the Northwestern Chronicle had to retract some libel he published about me in that same issue of their conservative student blog.
Would my agreement include talk pages? I'd like to have a way to address various types of misinformation promulgated in this debate besides BLP and OTRS. Jokestress (talk) 22:03, 1 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
If you like, you can e-mail me with details of the libelous claims and their withdrawal, but if you agree not to edit the article, then perhaps it's a moot point — and thank you for agreeing; it helps a lot.
As for talk pages, my personal preference when dealing with BLPs, or material about living persons elsewhere, is that conflicted editors should not edit the talk pages, because problematic material might end up being posted there too. However, I know that most other editors and admins do allow talk-page editing when dealing with BLPs, so we should probably abide by that, as most people find it reasonable. The only thing I'd ask is that you be extra careful not to violate WP:BLP (in letter or spirit), and not to post links to personal websites, or any other self-published material, containing contentious claims about Bailey. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:55, 1 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Dicklyon

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Hi Dicklyon. :-)

You're apparently a personal acquaintance and former employee (30 years ago) of Lynn Conway, who is part of a real-life campaign against J Michael Bailey and his book. Can you say how close a friend you are of Conway's? If you're simply someone who used to work for her, I see no conflict of interest. But if you're someone who has dinner with her regularly (for example), and if your interest in editing in this area stems from an ongoing relationship with her — in other words, if there's any sense in which you're acting as her proxy — then there might be a COI. I'd appreciate more details about how you stand in relation to her, if you don't mind — by e-mail if you'd prefer.

The other issue raised regarding you is incivility. Can you agree not to make any more uncivil remarks about other editors, no matter the provocation? That applies to everyone, of course, but a specific commitment from you would be helpful. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 21:53, 1 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I see Conway every few years. We are not close. I don't think I've had dinner with her in the last 10 years; I haven't seen her since some time before I noticed Cantor attacking her bio. I have informed her by email that I'm working on her wikipedia bio; I've also made it clear to her that I am not going to take sides in any real-world disputes; I just want both sides to be represented appropriately. Dicklyon (talk) 02:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
If you can tell me which remarks you consider to be incivil, I will do my best avoid things of that sort. The feedback from Cantor and Hfarmer seems to be that if I say what I think of their motivation or behavior, that's incivil; should I avoid mentioning such things in this mediation? Dicklyon (talk) 02:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I don't see that you have a COI in relation to this. Having worked for someone a long time ago, and seeing her only every few years, doesn't create a COI in my view. You otherwise have nothing to do with this topic area in real life that I can tell.
The arguably uncivil comment was the one pointed out by James, where you described a couple of editors and said something like, "good luck with those two." It's best to avoid comments that anyone might see as a personal attack. If it's important for the mediation to describe someone's (perceived) motivation and behavior, please go ahead, but perhaps tread lightly in the way you phrase things. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 04:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
By the way, Slim, your premise "who is part of a real-life campaign against J Michael Bailey and his book" buys into what the Bailey side claims, which is that the campaign is against Bailey personally; most of what I see on Conway's pages is specifically about objecting to the book; all the charges against Bailey were about his actions in writing the book, including interactions with his subjects for it. I don't think it has been reported by anyone but Dreger that it is against Bailey the person, and Dreger got plenty of objection to that assessment. I'm not saying that it was or wasn't a campaign against Bailey; rather, that there are opinions on both sides of that question, and it shouldn't be reported based on Dreger's opinion alone. Dicklyon (talk) 01:45, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

James Cantor

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I'm not clear about James Cantor's COI, though several of you have mentioned it. He works at a mental health clinic that specializes in sexology and transsexualism. He is a colleague of Ray Blanchard, who first came up with the theory of autogynephilia, or who was the first to coin the term, which has made Blanchard controversial within the transsexual community.

Does that mean that none of Blanchard's academic and medical colleagues are allowed to edit in that area of Wikipedia? I would find that a stretch of the COI definition. James is not associated with J. Michael Bailey, so far as I know.

James, have you had any direct involvement (in real life) in this dispute, either the Bailey aspect or the area of autogynephilia in general? When I say "involved," I don't mean simply writing academic papers or book reviews; I mean in a more personal sense — personally criticizing or being personally criticized. Another editor wrote in his or her statement that you stand to gain professionally or financially from promoting the concept of autogynephilia. Is that correct, and do you feel you have a COI? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 23:19, 1 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I was student of Ray Blanchard's until 2004 at which time I was hired onto the staff at CAMH, but not reporting to Blanchard. Blanchard and I work together on several projects (none on transsexuality), and we have co-authored several papers together (mostly on pedophilia).
I know Bailey through academic conferences. Those of us who work on the same research questions tend to hang together at the social events held during such conferences, so Bailey and I are often in the same cluster.
If you take out academic writing and what happens on WP, the only remaining involvement I can think of would be the comments Andrea James and Lynn Conway have made about me on their websites. I don't think I have ever written about any of them outside of a professional context.
I have no professional or financial interest in promoting autogynephilia. I have never published papers about autogynephilia (although I may have referred to the concept in papers on other topics), and any effect the acceptance or rejection of the theory would have on my professional reputation would be indirect, through my association with Blanchard on other research topics. The Gender Identity Clinic at my hospital is in a different department from where I am, although I will occassionally fill in for someone there. My job is unionized, and my salary and benefits are solely a function of time of service. No one could reward me financially for WP edits even if they wanted to.
Actually, I don't feel that I have a COI; however, I more than appreciate why people would have the perception that I do. Because there is no real reason that anyone should have to take my word for it, I am entirely willing to act as if I did have a COI. Interesting question. No one's asked before.
— James Cantor (talk) 00:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Cantor forgot to mention that he wrote the review of Bailey's book that the publisher used to promote it; and that he's on the editorial board of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the journal that pretty much defines who is an expert academic sexologist. Dicklyon (talk) 03:14, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I forgot no such thing, and your sarcasm is unnecessary. SlimVirgin said specifically, "I don't mean simply writing academic papers or book reviews." — James Cantor (talk) 03:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Again, I can't see a COI here. We want editors who are knowledgeable in an area; being an expert and working with other experts doesn't in itself create a COI, and being on the editorial board of Archives of Sexual Behavior is an advantage in this area, though it might be best to avoid editing that particular article. As for having written a positive book review of Bailey's book, I don't see that it creates a COI. We have no reason to believe James is keen to promote Bailey's interests over Wikipedia's, and there are no personal disputes that might create a BLP problem.
James, if you want to act as if you do have a COI, and voluntarily stop editing in the area, that's up to you. If you do decide to edit, please bear in mind that the spotlight is on you to some extent, so it would be worth making an extra effort to be neutral e.g. by not focusing exclusively on issues you agree with, and being sure to make edits sometimes that don't reflect your own position. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 04:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I agree entirely. In fact, I already ceased editing in those areas. Even though Dicklyon ended our prior agreement and "permited" me to edit there again as he re-started doing, I have instead continued to restrict my edits to the talk pages. The same is true with regard to putting in WP information that I personally don't agree with. The most recent example that comes to mind of my having done so is yesterday on Courtship disorder [2].
— James Cantor (talk) 13:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

James, the point about the review of Bailey's book that you wrote, describing it as "scientifically grounded", is that it hitched your academic credibility to his; the fact that he had to back-pedal and call it not science to get out of some of the accusations is what pretty much "ruined" Bailey if anything did; to say that you're not conflicted about that is simply not credible. And you didn't comment on the community of people who get to publish in the Archives. Are there other places where people can publish on sexuality and be considered experts? Dicklyon (talk) 04:19, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Bailey is ruined? Bailey back-pedaled on something? Publishing or reviewing for Archives is the only way to be called an expert on sexology? I’m happy to expand on any of the following points if SlimVirgin deems it relevant, but (to me) Dicklyon's claims range between irrelevant and "if it's negative it must true, and if it's positive it must be part of a conspiracy of sexologists."
Bailey continues to publish in top journals (including several that are quite superior in impact to Archives) and to receive substantial research grants. A recent student of his (and Blanchard’s) was extensively (and quite positively) featured last week as the cover story of The New York Times Magazine. Dreger's article on the topic (concluding essentially the opposite of you) received a Guggenheim Award to be expanded into a book.
Archives is a specialty journal; sexologists tend to publish our big findings in large, very high impact journals and publish findings that are likely to be of interest only to other sexologists in sexology specialty journals. Archives is one of the most prestigious of the sexology specialty journals. There are about 50 others, including the one in which Kelley Winters published, which SlimVirgin posited as sufficient for her SPS’s to merit inclusion in WP. Since a list of all the sexology journals seemed an appropriate thing for WP to contain, I added them to the sexology page here instead of just inside this mediation. As is true with most established sex researchers, my best known publications did not appear in Archives at all; they were published in Neuropsychology, in Psychological Bulletin, and in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.
It is still unclear to me how any of this is relevant to the discussion here, however.
— James Cantor (talk) 15:19, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

As to whether there are real-world personal disputes that can create a problem, a simple search of "James Cantor" along with "Lynn Conway" or "Andrea James" will reveal that there certainly is a real-world dispute involving him and them in connection with Bailey and Zucker, and the Archives and the Clarke, etc. Dicklyon (talk) 04:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Such a google search produces exactly what I said already: comments that Andrea James and Lynn Conway have made about me on their websites.
— James Cantor (talk) 13:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Dick, would you mind linking to something that you feel shows a COI e.g. because of the dispute getting personalized? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 10:31, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I linked earlier this attack] that he, as User:MarionTheLibrarian, made to the Lynn Conway and Andrea James biographies, which was a quote of his own disparaging remarks about them that he had emailed to Dreger who had posted them on her blog. That close involvement, and the pre-publication glowing review used to promote the Bailey books, seem to me to make his conflict very clear. His recent creation of the "feminine essence" joke of an article is another; he conveniently ignores what transsexuals say or believe about "feminine essence" and focuses instead on the "theory" that his buddy Blanchard made up just for the purpose of shooting it down in an attempt to discredit the whole idea (that's when I called him a "jerk", substantially proving that I stayed well under control). He has also done dozens or hundreds of edits that clean up the public image of his buddies at "The Clarke" as come call it; I have not specifically objected to any (or many) of these, as the previous coverage may have been biased the other way, but in his position it's really not appropriate to be doing such PR image-polishing; I can look for examples if you like; they'll mostly be from MarionTheLibrarian, as he's been much more circumspect since admitting his relationship with this bunch. Dicklyon (talk) 01:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
On this point, Dicklyon is correct. I do indeed regret some of the early edits I made in my first few weeks. Although that edit would have been perfectly legitimate had it come from another editor (and that was the justification in my mind at the time), it was inappropriate coming from me, notwithstanding my anonymity at the time.
— James Cantor (talk) 02:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
It would have been OK to quote your email on Dregers blog and attribute it to "some scholars"? Unlikely. Dicklyon (talk) 16:08, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

ProudAGP

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It would be nice to hear from ProudAGP, too. From her recent comments, it seems clear that she's either a principal in the real-world disputes, or is very close to them; she knows their literature and arguments very well, and is a WP:SPA in pushing their side on wikipedia. Dicklyon (talk) 17:27, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, kind of, Dicklyon for admitting that I know the literature and arguments well. I guess I also concentrate my efforts on things I know, and care, about. (There's too much for me to do even in those few pages I've contributed to.) I am highly dedicated to pushing my side, which is the truth. Although you have had ample chance to provide evidence of my bad edits, what you provided was unspecific and labeled with your usual subtlety, "obnoxious." My behavior on Wikipedia has been acceptable or better--unlike some people I have never been temporarily banned for edit warring, for example. I have had a few edits overturned, mostly by you and DarlieB. The pages I've spent time on are much better than they used to be (not just due to my involvement, of course). Compare for example this version of The Man Who Would Be Queen (largely written by Jokestress) with its present incarnation: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Man_Who_Would_Be_Queen&oldid=44075384 . The current version is much better even including Dicklyon's recent destructive edits. Or compare this version of J. Michael Bailey (also largely written by Jokestress) with the present version: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=J._Michael_Bailey&oldid=65699850 . It is difficult to respond to accusations of POV when they are wielded as a blunt instrument, as Dicklyon is prone to doing.
As for COI, I feel confident in saying that if neither Dicklyon nor James Cantor has sufficient COI to keep them off the same pages I'm on, then neither do I. Jokestress has no idea who I am, and I intend to keep it that way. Which means that I will not provide further details of who I am, what I do, why I'm interested, or why I know things. Even in a private email. I don't feel safe doing so, even to Wikipedia administrators. SlimVirgin, this is no offense to you. But Jokestress is cozy with various administrators, and the mere fact that she is welcomed here on these pages despite what Andrea James has done to various people (let alone to Wikipedia pages--see above) is enough to prevent me from trusting Wikipedia to that degree. And anyone who doesn't know what I'm afraid of hasn't been following this controversy close enough.
I entered WP with the expectation that I could remain completely anonymous, and I intend to do so. If what I have provided above isn't sufficient, well then I'll leave. But COI is something that ultimately is either obvious (as with Jokestress) or that we have to trust others to reveal or not reveal. Like we have to trust that Dicklyon isn't more involved with Lynn Conway than he says he is, for example. You'll also have to trust me, or not.
The fact is that I am a knowledgeable and effective editor who usually disagrees with Jokestress and Dicklyon. That is why they want me off these pages. So they claim "COI" and "POV," etc., etc. I could actually be a resource for them. I think I could provide them with good sources for balance, for example. But I don't have time to do that when I'm dealing with their persistent and tedious attempts to distort the truth.ProudAGP (talk) 17:18, 7 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I feel confident in saying that if neither Dicklyon nor James Cantor has sufficient COI to keep them off the same pages I'm on, then neither do I. I'll take this as your admission that you're just as close to Bailey, Blanchard, Zucker, and Lawrence as Cantor is. Dicklyon (talk) 17:23, 7 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
You should take what I said to mean nothing more than what I said.ProudAGP (talk) 17:40, 7 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
OK, I get it; you neither confirm nor deny that you are a principal in the real-world debates. Did I get it right this time? Dicklyon (talk) 06:02, 8 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Content issues

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Latest comment: 15 years ago83 comments8 people in discussion

It would be helpful if each party could post below diffs to one or two examples of inappropriate editing, so I have an idea of which content, or editing style, is seen as problematic. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 10:29, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

It may be better if we listed things by who did what. So instead of "examples from James Cantor", just "Edits by Dick Lyon". How about that?

Examples of Dick Lyon's edits.

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It is not clear to me whether SlimVirgin is asking for one or two in total, or one or two for each editor we think makes problematic edits. Here are two regarding Dicklyon, but I can produce others with regard to Jokestress and DarlieB if that's what's being asked. As I said earlier, Jokestress' edits are typically problematic by what she omits from the story rather than by what pieces she elects to include.

  • Dicklyon attributes to The Man Who Would Be Queen passages it does not in fact contain. (See here and thereabouts.) Although I don’t like to surmise what is on the minds of others, this smacks of ‘If Cantor wants it out, it should stay in’ without bothering to check for accuracy.
I made no such attribution. If you look at the edit summary there, and the one on the edit I was undoing, it's very clear; it's quite a stretch to say this edit was inappropriate or to say that I'm making some attribution. Dicklyon (talk) 22:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
James, are you saying someone originally added that quote as if it came from Bailey, but in fact it appears nowhere in Bailey's work? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 18:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Yes, that was the situation exactly. Dicklyon restored to the page a quote from the book that never appeared in the book at all. — James Cantor (talk) 18:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Do you happen to know who added it originally? Dick seems to have restored it because the person who removed it said it was "off topic," or something like that, in the edit summary. I'm sure he didn't realize it wasn't something Bailey had written — though there shouldn't be any quotes in articles without attribution in a footnote. In future, anyone adding or restoring a quote should make sure it has a citation after it. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:50, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
That quote seems to have been lifted from this article. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:55, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
When I restored that quote, its source had not been questioned; it had been removed by Cantor (MarionTheLibrarian) with edit summary "Off topic." Obviously, it's was on topic, so I disagreed with that and put it back. Did I put it back again after it's source was challenged? I don't recall; I'm sure Cantor will point it out if I did. Dicklyon (talk) 05:56, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • On Lynn Conway, Dicklyon removed the sentence “The tactics she used against Bailey have been criticized by some as academic harassment and intimidation,” which was sourced to The New York Times, doing so here. (The “by some” refers to Alice Dreger who is quoted in the Times article.) In the diff, Dicklyon wrote “limit to what the cited source supports,” even though the source does indeed support that claim (in my opinion). Whether the sentence Dicklyon removed accurately reflects the content of the source or is merely using a WP-acceptable reason to mask an WP-unacceptable edit is, of course, up to the reader. It is my experience that Dicklyon cites clusters of WP policies irrelevant to the context, demands that editors justify at length edits that no other editor objects to, posts intimidating templates on their user talk pages together with incivil comments on article talk pages, all of which scare off any new or uninvolved editors from editing the pages he has chosen to defend. In combination, it is highly disruptive to WP. This pattern of his is not limited to this topic or this group of editors, as reflected by Dicklyon’s edits and block history.

— James Cantor (talk) 16:46, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I don't remember exactly, but it appears to me that there's nothing in the cited source about intimidation, and nothing about any "some", just one Dreger. I agree that I should probably have made a finer cut and attributed the harassment complaint to Dreger. On the other hand, nobody objected to, nor undid, that edit, so it seems odd to bring it up now. Dicklyon (talk) 22:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
But Dreger does use the term "harassment." You're right to object to "some" say this or that — that kind of edit should always use in-text attribution e.g. "Alice Dreger told The New York Times that the tactics used against Bailey amounted to 'extraordinarily bad' harassment," with a footnote to the source directly after it. If you see something attributed inadequately — but you know that it's more or less correct — the thing to do is to fix the edit, or ask someone else to fix it, not remove it entirely. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 18:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Actually, I think that now is the perfect time to bring up concerns like this, because it wasn't an isolated edit: you deleted that kind of information from more or less all of the related pages, not just on Conway's bio (Here, for example).
That one was clearly unsupported in Dreger even; she doesn't mention "unconscionable" (as far as I can find), and doesn't blame the pictures thing on multiple critics (clearly). So my edit was proper, was it not? Dicklyon (talk) 02:19, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
It doesn't look to me like it was presented as a direct quote, and editors are allowed to describe things without finding each and every word in the source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Dick, why did you remove the whole edit, rather than simply removing the word "unconscionable," and fixing whoever the campaign was attributed to? And whoever added that word, can you explain why? A "campaign of harassment" is not necessarily an "unconscionable" one. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 18:41, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I won't claim to be either the first or the only person to use that word in this context -- it seems likely that I saw it elsewhere and thought it fit, but we're talking about edits from more than 16 months ago, so I really can't say that I remember -- but since I did use it at least once, and since I still think it's a reasonable description, I will explain that choice of words. My American Heritage dictionary defines unconscionable this way:
  1. Not restrained by conscience; unscrupulous
  2. Beyond prudence or reason; excessive
For the first definition, IMO attacking innocent children simply because you're mad at their father is a good example of behavior that is "not restrained by conscience; unscrupulous."
For the second definition, IMO trying to get someone put in jail for writing letters that caused no one any harm is "beyond prudence or reason; excessive."
I agree that not all campaigns of harassment are unconscionable -- but this campaign was. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I just noticed Slim question to me above. I do sometimes work to source stuff and to correct unsourced or poorly sourced stuff, when I think it's good stuff. In the case that Cantor mentions above, I didn't see a reason to try to fix this weasel-worded attack on my friend. I left the source and what appeared to be a valid statement attributed to it, and figured that was enough. In WhatamIdoing's hot-button issue, the text said "critics" as weasel word for Andrea James, and includes a strong interpretation that was not supported by the source; with those two strikes against it, I didn't see why I should take it on, so just removed it. Dicklyon (talk) 06:08, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
If memory serves, the eventual solution was to put the entire Dreger quotation on a page so that it was perfectly obvious to everyone that the word "harassment" really was present in the NYT article.
As for "intimidation": Dreger's paper quotes psychologist Steven Pinker about "The intimidation directed at Bailey"; the quotation is specifically applied to "Conway and her colleagues." So that suggests that the opinion is not held by Dreger alone in the entire world, and also that it applies to more than just Andrea James' behavior. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:03, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
If intimidation was from a different source than the one cited, that explains why I found it not verifiable there, yes? Dicklyon (talk) 02:19, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
No, that it explains why it failed verification in the listed source. It is obviously verifiable. And again: it's not actually necessary to find the exact word in the source. I think that the listed source communicates the concept of intimidation, even though it doesn't happen to use that specific word. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
When things are controversial, it's best to adhere strictly to WP:BLP; you are free to put stuff back with a source in which it's verfiable; of course, some balance would still be a good idea, too. Dicklyon (talk) 04:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Following on with the examples of problematic editing by DickLyon... I added information which I found on Lynn Conway's website. Where she describes how the wheels of the "Bailey investigation" got rolling. It makes it clear that she was a prime mover, or a hub around which other spokes turned. Dick Lyon does not like that being said of Conway's involvement, however, again here is what her website says. I added practically what was said on her website, cited it, and added other citations that back up what's on her website. Dick Lyons reaction was uncivil and assumes bad faith. Which is something I think he misunderstands, that does not mean good faith to the subject, it means good faith to other editors, and that editors should be assumed to want to make wikipedia more factual. He has done this more times that I can count on my fingers and toes, but I cannot find diff's for all of them. This is one example where he snapped at me when I expressed my real sympathy for his position on the commentaries. He replies "Save your feigned feelings, please. These are no more self-published than Dreger." That inspite of the fact that in two, two request for comments it was made clear that only academic experts SPS's may be used. I tried to argue what I beleive which is that being a transsexual makes one the best expert on this. But uninvolved editors disagreed. Then there is what he wrote in response to James Cantor's creation of an article Asbestos won't save you this time. What a jerk! This was inrelation to the article Feminine essence theory of transsexuality.--Hfarmer (talk) 20:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC) I owe it to him to at least mention that not all of his edits are bad. He just has a tendency to fly off the handle. After seeing that what I added was in Lynn Coonway's website he (and whatamIdoing) edited it into a form he found agreeable and I found a greeable.--Hfarmer (talk) 21:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
These speak for themselves. Strong reactions now and then when provoked, but certainly still well under control, responsive to the context. Dicklyon (talk) 22:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Again, it would have been better to rewrite that edit, rather than remove it. Lynn Conway did acknowledge those actions on her website, and we do allow material self-published by the subject to be used, so long as s/he is talking about him or herself — it's the only time self-published material is ever allowed in BLPS. She also talks about Bailey, which would make it unusable if the controversy hadn't been written about elsewhere, but given that it has been, and given that it's almost entirely her own actions she's writing about, it's legitimate to use Conway's website to report the origins of it. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 18:52, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I should add, Dick, that you're right in general to prefer secondary sources. It's almost always better to use secondary sources for contentious issues, because primary-source material can easily be misused. But that rule of thumb shouldn't be used to keep out primary-source material that's clearly relevant and accurately summarized — though I also think Hfarmer labored the points a little, perhaps trying to put too much emphasis on Conway's role. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:00, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
SlimVirgin's question pertained to edits that are problematic regarding page content, not problematic for their incivility. I can't speak for anyone else, but edits selected to exemplify Dicklyon's incivility would be different from the ones above; in the above cases, the incivility was incidental to the problematic page content. Moreover, I personally would not be convinced by a person declaring his own behavior to be "well under control," nor would I personally be convinced by someone who blames his own behavior on those who "provoked" him.
— James Cantor (talk) 00:51, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I'm not blaming the provokers, as I see no need for blame here; I'm saying that my comments were reasonable in context, especially the part in reaction to your "I'll need a new set of flame-retardant clothes, I'm sure..." Dicklyon (talk) 01:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Whether you are not blaming the provokers or merely not recognizing that you are blaming is, of course, for SlimVirgin to opin. It is also for SlimVirgin to opin whether I was incivil in predicting (or in how I predicted) that I would be flamed for creating Feminine essence theory of transsexuality. Because you and Jokestress immediately brought that article (in rapid and overlapping succession) to an AfD, RfC, and a proposal to move, my prediction was correct. Because the article was supported, in unanimity by all the uninvolved editors, one can reasonably speculate that the motivations for the (multiple) nominations was for some reason other than for the actual merits of that page. In fact, that should probably have been the example I gave for problematic edits: For reference, these are the discussions from the AfD, the RfC, and the proposal to move.
For the record, one person supported the proposal to move: Hfarmer thought that that page should have a different title. So, I say "unanimity by uninvolved editors" rather than just 'unanimity'.
— James Cantor (talk) 01:51, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Well I admit you showed incredible balls in creating that article; and in still defending it. I was also amazed that the others were not able to see through your charade there. This may take some time. Anyway, it's not really up to SlimVirgin to decide; she's here to help us work it out, and I'm just trying to make sure she understands what's going on, as it's really quite complex; but if she has a reaction I'll be happy to hear it. Dicklyon (talk) 02:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

For an example of DickLyon's problematic edits see especially (and very recently):

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Man_Who_Would_Be_Queen&diff=264766544&oldid=264662376

The quotation by Moser, saying that "the allegations were basically true," is unacceptable for at least two reasons. First, as WhatamIdoing has said, Moser is not an expert on IRBs. His quote is from a non-peer-reviewed response to the Dreger target article. Dicklyon has repeatedly insisted that these be usable, and twice they were vetted at the appropriate WP site. Twice it was concluded that these should be treated as self-published, and that only experts commenting on their level of expertise could be quoted. Second, Moser contradicts himself. From Moser's own commentary: "None of my following remarks should be construed as supportive of them, their accusations against Bailey, or their tactics." Also, consider Dreger's response to Moser: "Moser says Northwestern University’s investigation ‘basically concluded that Bailey had not violated any professional, ethical, legal, or moral standards; no penalties were levied.’ That’s not what I found. It’s possible Moser knows something I don’t know, but I doubt it." And: "How Moser could conclude the allegations made against Bailey were ‘basically true’ is beyond me, and apparently beyond the scope of his article to explain in any evidence-based fashion."

Dicklyon made the above edits after he broke an editing truce with James Cantor, because he was upset at some edits made by Hfarmer at Lynn Conway. Please know that we have left Dicklyon's recent edits at The Man Who Would Be Queen not because they are acceptable, but because we did not want to engage in an edit war just prior to mediation. ProudAGP (talk) 23:42, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for pointing that one out, as it gets to the heart of the dispute; it's not a behavior issue nor a COI issue on my part, clearly, but a feeling that wikipedia ought to report both sides of a controversy if it reports one side. I don't accept that "Twice it was concluded that these should be treated as self-published." There was no such "conclusion." And even if there had been, to exclude Moser on the basis of his expertise being not on the topic of IRBs is an absurd stretch. Dicklyon (talk) 01:20, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
The other challenge with the Moser comment (aside from it being the self-published opinion of a person who no relevant expertise, which means we can't use it on Wikipedia) is that it's not clear what "the allegations" refers to. The allegations that he talked to people and didn't have the sign informed consent? I think that's amply justified by the record. The allegation that Bailey had sexual relations with a transsexual prostitute who was his research subject? I think there's no evidence of it happening, and some evidence that at least the specific alleged incident is entirely false. It would be easy to interpret Moser's comment as "I think that Bailey got into bed with JMS," and I doubt that Moser meant it that way. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:10, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I think it was POV of Dicklyon to change the header, because this clearly became a dispute about academic freedom. But I don't understand why Moser would be regarded as non-expert and self-published. His comments were published in a journal, were they not? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 18:07, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Moser's comments were published as open-call, publish-all-submission "letters to the editor" in the journal, not as a proper article. There's zero peer review. The editorial control is not dramatically different from comments posted in a moderated forum on the BBC's website. These comments have been discussed at RSN (repeatedly) and the response is always that they can be used like any other letter to the editor, which is to say, only when they comply with WP:SPS.
In practice, this means that we can cite the parts of Moser's letter that discuss his professional opinions (he says, for example, that he disagrees with both Blanchard's taxonomy and the 'feminine essence' story that so many SPS guidelines demand) and personal experience (he says that he has also been on the receiving end of withering personal attacks for his professional views), but not for opinions that are outside his area of expertise (for example, whether having people attempt to put you in jail for writing letters is good for science). As far as WP:V is concerned, Moser's opinion on that subject is just as valid as yours or mine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
SlimVirgin, you have just hit upon the key method by which WhatamIdoing engages in POV-pushing. Dismissing commentary (PMID 18431627) by Charles Allen Moser as "the self-published opinion of a person who no relevant expertise" is an obvious misrepresentation. WhatamIdoing wants to discredit Moser as part of her attempt to right great wrongs via Wikipedia. In this case, she objects to Moser's comment that allegations about Bailey were basically true but did not constitute any formal misconduct. WhatamIdoing characterizes this as "whether having people attempt to put you in jail for writing letters is good for science," which is another deliberate misrepresentation of the issue. The issue is the abuse of gatekeeping power for personal gain (in Bailey's case, access to the object of his interest). There is an ethical debate on whether having sex with students and patients/clients is OK, and Bailey has made it clear that he sees "nothing intrinsically wrong or forbidden about having sex with a research subject."[3] There's also a question of whether it's good for science to use gatekeeping as a means for convenience sampling, a common criticism of Bailey's work. But WhatamIdoing wants to make this a very clear-cut case of some magnanimous guy persecuted for writing permission slips for access to health care in order to develop relationships with people in a distinctly disadvantaged power arrangement. The larger issue is why trans people need to have these permission slips in the first place, and what happens when abusive gatekeeping occurs. Jokestress (talk) 18:52, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Examples of DarlieB's edits

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DarlieB's work is the low-hanging fruit here:

I believe that every change that DarlieB makes is reverted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I agree. DarlieB is clearly one of those transsexuals who feel outraged by Bailey, Blanchard, Cantor, Dreger, etc. Her wikipedia edits transparently reflect that POV, but do not provide much net help in moving toward more balanced coverage. Every now and then she drops in, does a POV-based edit, which gets reverted, and then she's gone for a while. She's not really very relevant to the dispute, but should learn how to edit within the context of WP:NPOV. Dicklyon (talk) 01:24, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply


Gentlmen, "low hanging fruit". Why not just call me a "faggot "? Charming insults  ! This article is a mess and nothing but POV ! Oh but sorry I'm just a fetishistic homosexual pretending to be a transsexual so I can have sex with Dr Bailey ! Alice Dreger deserves her quote as the defender of Baileys right to academic expression, well he really was never restricted , but the right to fake academic suppression on his discredited book .DarlieB (talk) 22:53, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Examples of James Cantor's edits

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As I've said, except for the feminine essense pretense, he hasn't done overlty conflicted edits in article space since we made our truce in mediation and he changed his identity from MarionTheLibrarian (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). So I'll have to go back a ways. On the Lynn Conway article, here's a good one. Notice a few choice words to suggest Bailey could have been exonerated (obviously a stretch, adding no new information beyond whether he was or was not punished), and a long quote from a "B. Rind". This is one of those "self-published" commentaries on Dreger in the "archives."

I don't see anything wrong with this edit, except that it could use extra footnotes (e.g. after the quote). Saying "whether or not he was punished" strikes me as POV. It would be enough to say that the university did not reveal its findings. But if "punished" is there, there's no reason not to add "exonerated." SlimVirgin talk|contribs 18:14, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

At this point, Cantor was likely the only editor who knew about these commentaries, and he was picking the ones he liked and not noting that they were commentaries in response to Dreger, and that most of them express opposite opinions; of course, as he was hiding his identity as an insider on the board of the archives and a buddy of the principals, it might have been awkward to reveal where he came up with this stuff. The cited B. Rind commentary did NOT say something that would support Cantor's assertion "Scholars reivewing the controversy have concluded that Conway generated false allegations against Bailey." Rather, Rind simply refers to Dreger's findings, saying "as Dreger painstakingly demonstrated, the allegations against Bailey were either unfounded or irrelevant to the integrity of his work." So it's Dreger only, not "scholars;" and it's not "false allegations," but "unfounded or irrelevant" in Dreger's opinion. So Cantor was pumping up both the conclusion and attribution ("multiple scholars" is a bit much for just Dreger, just as his "Al Sharpton" edit applied "scholars" to just himself).

Later, he agreed to email me a copy of the whole Dreger article with commentaries; after his first email from a well anonymized MarionTheLibrarian account, he sent me the PDF from his other MarionTheLibrarian account the was set up differently and included his name in the headers; it took me a while to convince him that he had thereby revealed his identity to me; consulting an admin privately I learned about WP:OUTING, so I didn't get to post the evidence he kept calling for about his COI. He was, however, careful to never actually deny that he was an insider among the principals.

Here he puts his "Al Sharpton" attack back, with wholly unresponsive edit summary. At the same time, he's referring to Dreger's hit piece as "A comprehensive, documented history of the controversy," which is certainly not supportable, in light of the reactions to it, but represents the POV of his buddies. And then he fixes "James" to "Conway" again; recall that this is where he refers to himself as "Some scholars." How is this anything but blatant COI?

Here, in the guise of redundancy removal, he removes the fact that Conway was not the only one who wouldn't comment for the NYT story, effectively criticizing her more, unfairly (the cited NYT article specifically says "A spokesman for the university declined to comment" as well as "Dr. Conway did not respond to requests for an interview").

I admit I got to edit warring over these dumb attacks, and even got a 3RR block at one point; my bad. Similarly, he got to warring with Jokestress over edits to the Ray Blanchard page (a much closer relationship than mine to Conway, clearly).

I'll find more later. Dicklyon (talk) 05:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

You've provided four diffs from May 2008. Here are my thoughts:
  1. Bruce Rind + Alice Dreger = More than one scholar, i.e. scholars. More importantly, while I agree that the Rind source shouldn't have been used on Wikipedia (for this subject), I don't think that an "unfounded allegation" (of, e.g., practicing psychology without a license) is materially different from a "false allegation" of the same thing. The set of True™-but-unfounded allegations is the null set.
  2. About the 'Al Sharpton' line, Cantor shouldn't have been quoting himself -- and he apologized for it and (importantly) stopped doing it, so I think we can safely put that to rest. Weren't we all new to Wikipedia once upon a time? As for the 'comprehensive, documented history of the controversy', I think that's a fair description since Dreger's Arch Sex Behav paper (1) seems to cover everything that happened, (2) has extensive footnotes/documentation, (3) is a history and (4) is about the controversy. However, I think that the description is also a violation of general encyclopedic style and probably WP:PEACOCK, too, and I'm happy to see it go.
  3. I read the source listed in this diff, which says "Although these people call themselves activists, they are of the Al Sharpton rather than the ML King sort". You may note that the phrase these people is plural, and that Andrea James is only one individual person. Additionally, since Cantor wrote that line himself, don't you think he might be an authoritative source for exactly who these people refers to? So while it shouldn't have been added in the first place, I do think that Cantor was correct in applying it to Conway.
  4. Your then-preferred version of this paragraph reads like this:

    Northwestern University...did not comment on whether or not Bailey had been punished....when The New York Times covered the story, Northwestern refused comment and Conway did not reply to a request for an interview.

    Cantor's edit summary is "Redundant with prior sentence", and I think he had a valid point there: It's not really necessary to say that NWU refused to comment twice, in two back-to-back sentences.
Overall, while there were a few problems "way back when" (in Internet time) that were resolved months ago, and while these diffs clearly demonstrate Cantor's perspective with respect to Conway, I really don't think that they demonstrate an unresolved dispute (unlike, for example, the ongoing problems with DarlieB's edits). WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Yes, these are way back when; they are primarily included to show what he did that made me jump in and start defending the Conway bio. He realized he can't edit this way any more, and doesn't need to since you and ProudAGP do it for him now.
As to how Rind reporting Dreger's opinion turns into "Scholars reivewing the controversy have concluded," I disagree.
I don't recall Cantor apologizing for his Sharpton attack (do we have a link?); I never questioned whether it applied to both Andrea James and Lynn Conway, just pointed out that he added it to both of their bios. Obviously he knew who he was attacking by this funny line (not to mention the implied attack on Al Sharpton).
The thing about Conway not commenting for the NYT story could have been omitted; if included, it needs to be balanced by noting that so did Northwestern; to resolve the redundancy my making it this asymmetric was clearly a design born of bias.
Anyway, thanks for clarifying your position on these issues. Dicklyon (talk) 16:12, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Examples of WhatamIdoing's edits

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Checking back, I see what she was on this topic back in Sept 2007, way before many of us. For example, here she replaces a true "decontextualized half-truth" with a false one. Her first Lynn Conway edit asserted that the campaign was against Bailey, and the bit about harassment and intimidation, with no source, and with the unsupportable statement the Bailey was cleared; now I see where it came from. And here again she says Bailey was totally cleared; apparently she must be seeing Dreger as an official report on an investigation, or some such confusion. She has explained elsewhere how she is motivated essentially by wanting to get back at Andrea James for what she did to Bailey and his children. I'm not saying that any of this is COI or otherwise outrageous editing, just that it's very biased, and violates WP:BLP, and that she needs to acknowledge the bias and work toward balance; and try to get the facts straight, or at least respect WP:V. Dicklyon (talk) 07:16, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Examples of Hfarmer's edits

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The three-part addition to the Lynn Conway article is the one I reverted, abandoning the previous truce. It's easier to see in one part, where she put it back denying that it had any BLP issues. I'm sure she knew that Cantor and I had negotiated a truce after failing to quite converge on a mutually acceptable wording, but this edit throws it so far off from there that it was just not tolerable to leave it; I explained on the talk page, as mentioned before. Most of H's other antics have been on the talk pages, so need not be brought up here. Dicklyon (talk) 07:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I knew nothing of that truce. As for that having BLP issues It's on her own freaking webpage. Just to put this to rest once and for all and to make it really easy for people to see. I give you the top part of the webpage I got my information from.
Bullshit. You made the edit on Jan. 7. A week earlier, on Dec. 30, you had affirmed that you were familiar with the truce agreement, here. Dicklyon (talk) 19:40, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

The Bailey Investigation:

How it all began with a series of e-mail alerts

Copyright @ 2004 by Lynn Conway

All rights reserved

'Introduction:

This page documents the onset of the trans community's investigation into the publication of J. Michael Bailey's book, The Man Who Would Be Queen, by the National Academy Press.

It all began when Lynn received a message alerting her to the publication of Bailey's book, on 4-10-03. Immediately realizing the seriousness of the situation, Lynn alerted her friend Andrea James (webmistress of the widely-read TS RoadMap) about the book, and they began digging into what had happened.

Within a few days (on 4-12-03), Lynn began posting information about the book on a new page in her website (that page became the "Bailey Investigation website) and alerted Andrea and their mutual friend Becky Allison. The next day (4-13-03) Andrea posted a review and other information about the book (that new page later scaled up to become the BBL Clearinghouse website). Meantime, Becky Allison began posting information about the book into her Blog.

Based on what they had all learned so far, Lynn alerted a wider circle of friends on 4-18-03 about the book, and Becky posted a review of the book that she'd sent to Amazon.com that day. These alerts and the reviews by Andrea and Becky triggered a wave of follow-on negative reviews by many prominent trans women and men (more).

Now realizing the true gravity of the situation, Lynn began spreading the alert more widely in messages to trans advocacy groups (such as in this message to GLAAD) on 4-21-03. Responding to those alerts, Christine Burns at Press for Change (PFC) in the UK then spread the alert worldwide by posting it in the widely read "PFC News", on 4-22-03 (more)

Almost immediately a widespread collaborative internet-based movement formed to investigate and figure out what had happened to cause this book to be published, and to investigate in depth the "science" and "scientists" behind the book.

The very following day (on 4-23-03), we learned from Prof. Joan Roughgarden that Bailey had promoted his book while mocking gay men and transsexual women in a psychology department lecture at Stanford University.

Not long after that (on 5-04-03), Bailey's research subject Anjelica Kieltyka e-mailed Lynn and began telling her story of how Mr. Bailey exploited her and the young trans women she was mentoring in Chicago - using them as unwitting research subjects without their knowledge - and then publishing intimate details about their sex lives in his book without their permission.

As the full gravity of the situation sunk in even more deeply, including awareness that a serious exploitation of research subjects underlay the book, prominent trans women began openly alerting the National Academies: Joan Roughgarden wrote an open letter to the Presidents of the National Academies on 5-05-03, followed by Christine Burns' writing one to the Academies leaders on 5-06-03 Those letters were followed by many many more to the Academies leaders, from trans people all around the world.

And thus the Bailey investigation was launched, and was on its way.

After reading that what is any editor supposed to say? She was just totally surprised to find that her website had become a repository for any kind of negative information on Bailey, Blanchard and Lawrence. That she was totally unaware that her signature was being forged on doccuments? That she was totally shocked an appalled to find that some sneeky people had put her image on a website at her instituion of learning, and outed her to the world? As if she was totally passive in all of this?
Gimme a break.--Hfarmer (talk) 15:15, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
My key objection there was the statement that had been sitting there unsourced, "She was also a key person in the controversial campaign against J. Michael Bailey," being attributed to her web pages, when she clearly says the campaign is against the book; that's an interpretation (opinion) of others. It would have been better to remove or balance that opinion. Plus it went against a general consensus on the talk page to keep this section small, referring to the BBL page for details. Dicklyon (talk) 16:03, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
That's not unsourced. Saying that she was a key person is a way of condensing that whole passage from her website into a sentence. She was key. There is not any other way to look at that. If it had not been for her, the controversy would have been composed of some angry letters nothing more. As for the campaign being aginst the book. The book was not accused of having sex with JSM. A person was accused of having sex with that woman.--Hfarmer (talk) 17:36, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Examples of ProudAGP's edits

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ProudAGP (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is a WP:SPA who showed up July 1, about the time Cantor stopped editing the controversial articles; you can just pick an edit at random to get an idea of her shtick; her July 1 edits were particularly obnoxious, but she had no idea that wikipedia had any rules and such, I guess. It's probably someone very close to Bailey and Blanchard, but at least someone proud of their autogynephilia concept. Dicklyon (talk) 07:38, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

OK, that was too snarky; I apologize; not all of her edits are bad, even if they are all single-purpose. Let's look at examples:
  • [7] Here she adds, as others have, the assertion that Conway's campaign was against Bailey personally, backed up by Carey of the NYT and by Dreger. Carey doesn't say that; it's only Dreger's opinion; and if you check Dreger, she says "Vasey was calling to ask me whether I knew I was listed as a supporter of Conway’s anti-Bailey campaign on her University of Michigan Website (dead link)..." referring to presumably to Conway's page [8] that says "We wish to acknowledge the many trans women, friends and allies who participated in this investigation." Now, it's OK for Dreger to have this interpretation, but not to attribute it to Conway; and it's OK for us to report that Dreger has this interpretation, as long as we balance it with the interpretation of others who disagree, and it's NOT OK to attribute it the NYT, which doesn't say that. Dicklyon (talk) 17:38, 7 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

These are the kinds of issues that editors can and should work together on. I do not think I have failed to be amenable to concerns and feedback like that you provided above.ProudAGP (talk) 17:41, 7 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

  • [9] This one too has similar attribution problems with respect to Dreger and the NYT (I don't find a source for the quoted "essentially blameless" in Carey's article, for example), but better balance; the unsourced weasel-worded "Some feel that Conway's investigation was seriously biased..." is not necessary. The statement "Dreger's article was published alongside 23 commentaries, including some critical of Dreger" seriously underplays the majority pushback on Dreger; it would be better to quote a balancing viewpoint from one. Dicklyon (talk) 18:00, 7 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • Um, Dick, have you checked the listed source recently? See the fifth paragraph, first page:

      “What happened to Bailey is important, because the harassment was so extraordinarily bad and because it could happen to any researcher in the field,” said Alice Dreger, an ethics scholar and patients’ rights advocate at Northwestern who, after conducting a lengthy investigation of Dr. Bailey’s actions, has concluded that he is essentially blameless. “If we’re going to have research at all, then we’re going to have people saying unpopular things, and if this is what happens to them, then we’ve got problems not only for science but free expression itself.”

      -- WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:55, 8 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Dang, I hate it when I do that. So I take that part back. It's only slightly biased, not a terrible edit; certainly not the kind of example I was looking for. Dicklyon (talk) 05:40, 8 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • [12] back in August she had added and re-added the bit about the "essentially blameless" attributed to an NYT article that didn't say that, and claimed in her edit summary that nobody that objected to this version (her long unverifiable version); she means only I objected. Dicklyon (talk) 20:39, 7 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Examples of Jokestress' edits

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In this edit, Jokestress adds to J. Michael Bailey several statements from Bailey’s critics. The sources that Jokestress uses are all from Lynn Conway’s website which, in turn, links quite heavily back to Jokestress' personal and commercial websites (ts.roadmap.com and deepstealth.com). The statements violate WP:BLP, the sourcing fails to meet WP:V (because of its failure to meet WP:SPS), and the echoing of claims between their websites violates WP:COI. (The interconnectivity among Conway's and Jokestress' websites and others is no secret; the passages from Lynn Conway's site that Hfarmer inserted above describe how the stories were passed from blog to blog.)

I have already mentioned the rapid-fire wiki-assaults on Feminine essence theory of transsexuality by Jokestress and Dicklyon, each of which failed in turn.

— James Cantor (talk) 19:33, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

The links I made in 2005 to websites containing full text of sources were for the convenience of readers. The information I added has all been published in reliable sources. BLP was emerging as a policy at that time in 2005, due to a certain person's biography (who shall remain nameless, right Slim?). I believe that if you look at the balance of information I added at that time, it was not controversial, and along with all Wikipedians, I have become much more rigorous when making any controversial edits following development of BLP (in which I was involved). Jokestress (talk) 21:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

The literal "essence" of Cantor and WhatamIdoing

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The recent article Feminine essence theory of transsexuality, and the conversation that led to it, at User talk:James Cantor#Ideas, are good illustrations of the conspiracy of James Cantor and WhatamIdoing to promote the theories of their buddy Blanchard. It starts by WhatamIdoing asking Cantor if there are other theories besides Blanchard's; obviously he's the wrong guy to ask if she really wanted to know. He responds by making this "fun" article on yet another crazy Blanchard idea; although he refs another Blanchard paper that most of us don't have access to, Blanchard first presented this idea in one of the commentaries in reaction to Dreger; he took the opportunity to bolster his two-category theory by making up a third category so absurd that he could easily discredit it, while tieing it to his opponents in the disputes. He took Dreger's comments on "feminine essence narrative" and "feminine essence story", and turned it into a strawman "theory" with the absurd tenet (among others) that 1. Male-to-female transsexuals are, in some literal sense and not just in a figurative sense, women inside men’s bodies. To support Blanchard in this abusive strategy, Cantor created an article and cast it as The feminine essence theory refers to the idea that male-to-female transsexuals are, literally rather than figuratively, females inside male bodies, and actually cites Dreger for this nonsense along with Blanchard. He cites lots of other stuff, too, none of which has anything to do with this "literal" theory that Blanchard just made up, but which is helpful in telling a story to try to make MfF women look foolish for opposing the great scientist Blanchard. WhatamIdoing and Hfarmer support him in this, for reasons I find hard to fathom. It is so blatantly in violation of everything good and proper about wikipedia, yet other editors either can't see or won't see what he's doing. Quite amazing, actually. Dicklyon (talk) 20:36, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I'm also a bit concerned about that article. It does seem as though Blanchard created a straw man that he could then knock down easily. That's fair enough — academics do it all the time as a debating tactic. To turn it into a WP article, though, conveys a respectability on it — as a real theory, rather than as an opponent's representation of something he's arguing against — that even Blanchard may not have intended it to have. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:58, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Indeed, there's a rich history of the concept of a {woman,female} {soul,mind,essence,personality,heart,brain} {in,trapped,imprisoned} in a {man,male} body, in both homosexuality and transsexualism (e.g., these books). Little or none of it has any relationship to the Blanchard literal theory or to this article. Cantor is obviously well aware, as he cited a very early instance of the idea. What he and the Clarke guys seem unwilling to do, however, is to allow a discussion of transsexualism as a gender/identity issue separate from paraphilia and mental health issues; respecting a person's indentity doesn't seem to mesh with their brand of "science". Dicklyon (talk) 22:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Dicklyon mistakes both Blanchard’s intent for explicating the tenets of the feminine essence theory and my intent in creating the page. To see this first requires remembering exactly what a strawman is and how science goes about finding the best explanation for any phenomenon.

A strawman is when someone presents a weak version of an idea and knocks it down in order to help conclude that one’s own argument is the stronger. What the page does, however, is present a strong version of the idea (as strong as the RS’s allow, anyway) and come to no conclusion at all. (Moreover, in the article where Blanchard spelled out the idea and gave it a name, he said specifically that people who support that theory should improve upon his description of it. In WP, of course, that’s automatic.)

The reason that a strong versions of theories need to be spelled out is so that they can be tested. Science does not advance by knocking down strawmen. Although the feminine essence theory is very widely discussed, it had been described only in vague terms (as Dicklyon pointed out rather accurately as “{woman, female} {soul, mind, essence, personality, heart, brain} {in, trapped, imprisoned} in a {man, male} body”). All Blanchard did is give the idea a name and some structure.

Getting back to the page, I very purposefully left out the arguments that Blanchard made for why he believes the feminine essence theory not to be correct. So, even if Blanchard did build a straw man, the page does not. The page, as an uninvolved editor said, left it as a description of the theory and a brief description of the lay of both lands, upon which other editors could expand as they saw fit.

— James Cantor (talk) 00:28, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Nonsense; it's clearly a weak strawman; the explicit tenets are designed to make it ridiculous and thereby weak. The opening sentence of the article makes it sound like a theory that someone holds, or proposed seriously, which it is not; why you cite Dreger there is beyond my imagination. Then you repeat that error, saying "This idea was first called the 'feminine essence narrative' by Alice Dreger." In fact, Dreger says null, zip, nada about any "literal" interpretation of feminine essence. The you assert that "There continues to be debate regarding whether and to what extent male-to-female transsexuals are like versus are females inside male bodies." If this were true, a citation would let us know what the heck you are referring to; if I had taken the article seriously, I would have tagged it, but since the article is just a fun joke on wikipedia, I didn't want to dignify it with such an edit. It gets even more comical when you state that "The political and personal implications of the feminine essence theory have been discussed relatively frequently, but not so the actual content of the theory." WTF? How can the implications of a theory have been frequently discussed, if the theory had never before been stated? It just gets crazier from there: "One of the predictions based on the feminine essence theory is that male-to-female transsexuals would possess female rather than male brain anatomy." That's absurd; nobody would make such a prediction about literal brain anatomy with a straight face, would they? Why not substitute other body parts there for brain? Femur, for example. Or substitute mind, soul, personality or something would make some kind of sense and have some kind of historical antecedent? Then the weasel-worded "Proponents consider that primary evidence supporting the feminine essence theory of transsexuality is that many male-to-female transsexuals say they feel it to be true," as if such proponents exist; they don't. So stop pretending that this article can be taken as a serious attempt to describe something based on reliable sources; it's not. Dicklyon (talk) 00:59, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Unless SlimVirgin asks me otherwise, I am simply not going to respond to a long series of incivil because-I-say-so's. — James Cantor (talk) 01:56, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Here is what this is all about. If you read even the first freely available page of Blanchard's work he refers' to the idea that transsexuals have brains that are neuroanatomically more like thsoe of females as being the feminine essence narrative.[Deconstructing the Feminine Essence Narrative http://www.springerlink.com/content/t04w7522m5177rt1/?p=56b8ae02ddd94ca38e0607ec3502dffd&pi=8]. (Come to think of it the article would likely have been beeter named "feminie essence narrative.) This idea was around in the world of transsexuals for a long time. It gained scientific support when the following was published in the journal Nature. A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality ;Jiang-Ning Zhou*, Michel A. Hofman*, Louis J. G. Gooren† & Dick F. Swaab. The idea is so intuitive to transsexuals (myself included) that even a seven year old knows about it. Youtube video where a 7 year old transsexual named "jazz" who appeared on 20/20 explains that they have a "girl brain in a boy body". Other transsexuals tried for a while to define this as a condition they called "Harry Benjamin Syndrome" which gained some traction among transsexuals who would claim that this intersex condition (because to them being IS'd is better and more real) was what they had. HBS never had support among doctors, or sexologist at all. However vartions on the theme of a female brain in a male body sometimes called "Brain sex" (there was even a book by this name) have been set forth as the alternative to Blanchard's typology. However it should be noted that the one piece of scientific work that was all based on, Zhou's study has had serious doubt cast on it by a study which measured both overall brain volume and the volume of major regions of the brain before during and after a period of cross sex hormone treatment and found "Changing your sex changes your brain: influences of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure" Hilleke E Hulshoff Pol, Peggy T Cohen-Kettenis1, Neeltje E M Van Haren, Jiska S Peper, Rachel G H Brans, Wiepke Cahn, Hugo G Schnack, Louis J G Gooren2 and René S Kahn (note that Gooren was also involved in the debunking work). In short this article is something that should be here but it needs allot of work. Not unlike most other new articles. --Hfarmer (talk) 02:13, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I think you mean this article could be about something real; instead it's about Blanchard's stupid straw-man. Dicklyon (talk) 05:12, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
It's not a strawman just because you say it is. The article is about an idea that as I demonstrated with evidence has been thought of by transsexuals for quite some time. (In a sense even the traditional views of transgenderism posit a feminie essence ie. Two-spirit native americans, hijra's who are neither male or female but a little of both, dito Khatoey etc. etc.) I would also point out that the straw man arguement was made in the deletion discussion and many uninvolved editors voted to keep the artilce seeing that it was in fact NOT a strawman.--Hfarmer (talk) 06:07, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I don't understand why you're acting this way; did you actually read anything I wrote? Dicklyon (talk) 06:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I agree with Hfarmer that the feminine essence story was not invented by Blanchard, Bailey, and/or Dreger. Dreger's article talks about the feminine essence narrative at some length. While the name is hers, the idea certainly is not. Consider these quotations from her paper, which include Bailey's informal definition, the fact that it's a popular notion in the non-scientific media, and the fact that the 'feminine essence' story (although it was called other things, like "true transsexuality") was required in many SRS clinics for decades:

  • "Indeed, TMWWBQ’s title and cover explicitly contrasted with those books on transgenderism which adhered to the ‘‘woman trapped in a man’s body’’ narrative of transgender identity, or what I will call hereafter the ‘‘feminine essence’’ narrative. The feminine essence narrative is summed up by Bailey this way: 'Since I can remember, I have always felt as if I were a member of the other sex. I have felt like a freak with this body and detest my penis. I must get sex reassignment surgery (a ‘‘sex change operation’’) in order to match my external body with my internal mind.' (Bailey, 2003, p. 143)" (Dreger, p 378)
  • "It certainly does seem to be the case that Bailey’s book and Blanchard’s theory continue to be largely ignored in the popularized gender psychology literature, literature that generally accepts and promotes the feminine essence narrative as the one and only true story of MTF transsexualism." (Dreger, p 413)
  • "Ironically, as some science studies scholars have suggested, it is gender clinicians and sexologists themselves who have set the scene for trans women denying anything other than feminine essence autobiographies by demanding singular sorts of Western heteronormative stories out of MTFs seeking SRS (Stone, 1991; see also Meyerowitz, 2002). (Dreger, p 416)

I remember reading somewhere a clinician talking about the transsexual clients, and that he (she?) had suddenly realized that they were all telling the same story -- the "I'm really a woman, I just have a man's body" story that was the only story that the clinic approved SRS for. The clinician finally realized that the transwomen had figured out what the only acceptable story was, and if getting what they wanted/needed meant parroting that story to the clinic instead of telling their true, individual stories, then they were willing to do that. I don't think that any of Dick's complaints about the concept are accurate. 'Feminine essence' really was the story that people told about transsexuals (and demanded that transsexuals play along with if they wanted SRS). It's still the most popular conception; if you asked a few random people what the (politically correct) understanding of a transwoman was, I bet you'd get something remarkably like Blanchard's description. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Sounds like you also didn't read what I wrote; I clearly indicated that the "feminine essence" idea has a long history; it's only the "theory" reported in this article that's due to Blanchard; Dreger has nothing to do with it. Dicklyon (talk) 06:53, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
So find some good sources and improve the article instead of fussing about it not being a finished work of art yet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Phenomenon versus term

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Further information: Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/The Man Who Would Be Queen (term v phenomenon)

(outdenting and edit confliict) SlimVirgin wrote: "To turn it into a WP article, though, conveys a respectability on it — as a real theory." That is an excellent summation of what is going on here with this entire cluster of articles. James Cantor has been creating articles for his friends' neologisms of late, like courtship disorder and this new "feminine essence" thingie they came up with last summer. These guys throw around the word "theory" in a most unscientific way. James Cantor's project here has always been to legitimize the controversial concepts by adding and expanding them throughout the project, and by challenging and removing anything critical of these concepts. There is also the issue of phenomena vs. terminology that has been an ongoing problem here, too. Jokestress (talk) 06:44, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I have replied to Jokestress bringing up the word theory and the issue of terminology Vs phenomena. It was moved Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/The Man Who Would Be Queen (term v phenomenon). Please read it. Bear in mind if I feel this has been ignored then I will withdraw from this mediation. I will not mediate on an unequal basis where others may write as long as they wish and I am censored. I will be reasonable about this instance. In brief I cited the defintions of the words, theory, term, and phenomenon, as found in the dictionary. Then pointed out that the way those words have been used is technically proper. A term is a name, and a pehnomneon is an observeable fact. It has been scientifically observed that transsexuals who meet one or both of Blancahrd's types exist, and at least one of the names Blanchard used has been used by many others. I proposed that we write about both terms and phenomnena and not just either or.--Hfarmer (talk) 17:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps if we call disputed terms/phenomena "concepts," that would get round the dilemma; no one can say the concept doesn't exist in some form, though it may not refer to anything outside itself.
James, it would be helpful if you could make sure any article you create is grounded in something other than Blanchard's own writing. That's not to say his ideas are not worth writing about, but other people should have written about them too, to some extent, before they become Wikipedia articles. That is, the concept should have gained some credence (or notoriety) within the relevant community. There are no hard and fast rules about these things, though; each case has to be judged on its merits. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 18:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I agree (and I apologize if I am seeming evasive in saying this but...) I think that that is what I did. Of the 11 sources on the page, 2 are Blanchard. (Counting another way, of the 17 references to a source, 6 are to a Blanchard source.) As Hfarmer pointed out, the idea/concept/theory is quite old (long predating Blanchard) and very well established. All Dreger and then Blanchard did was to give the idea a name and spell out the idea. Of course, because spelling out the idea was the point of Blanchard's paper, it made the most logical source for use in a WP page. Am I not understanding properly your recommendation?
— James Cantor (talk) 19:24, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I think Dicklyons' point is that Blanchard strengthened the concept, which is old, and insodoing created a straw man i.e. he made it so strong that it sounded ridiculous. If it were an idea that he was putting forward seriously, it would be okay to create a WP article on it, but this is a representation of an idea he proceeds to knock down, so it's not clear that, as he describes it, anyone has seriously proposed it. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:07, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
That's not a compromise really. Simply calling it a concept denies the scientific observations I cited on the long doccument I wrote. It is a scientifically observed, published, peer reviewed fact that (at least) two types of transsexual exist."Transsexual subtypes: Clinical and theoretical significance" The evidence from this study observed that phenomena. ( I really wish that I did not have to cite this again, after citing it and explaining it's significance in that long doccument I wrote). Critical sources like the quotaition from Bruce Bagemihl criticize the terminology used, not the concept. I appreciate that you are trying to help us compromise, but we are writing an encyclopedia. We have to bee accurate and precise, and neutral. Those are all important. Right? :-? --Hfarmer (talk) 19:14, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Calling it a concept doesn't deny any scientific observations. Special relativity is a concept; that doesn't mean it has no scientific validity. That aside, I'm unclear as how the existence of two types of transsexual could be a "scientifically observed ... fact." What kind of scientific observations led to the determination of that fact? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I think it does a concept is simply an idea, any idea floating around. In science we don't have a concept of relativity, it's a theory. In fact most physicist would call it an observed phenomenological fact of special relativity. As for how two types of transsexual can be observed the details of that are in the paper I cited. Basically the participants were chosen at random from patients at two different gender clinics. Their informed consent was obtained. Then using standard psychological test, they would measure, IQ, Gender dysphoria, recollected gender identity in childhood, sexual orientation etc. etc. In the paper above, they also hat various male and female members of the staff rate the applicants on cross gender appearance, claims that "homosexual transsexuals" look better had been made and they even attempted to check that. I have taken simmilar test, the psychologist ask you a few different forms of the same test, it's multiple choice or yes/no answers. In the study I refere you to they also tested FTM transsexuals. To see if they could find the same division among FTM's. The answers any two people give would be statistically insignificant. However if you gather this information for multible people, you can find statistical corrleations between many variables. These corrleations are very strongly tied to the sexual orientation. Or as the study found "One of the two purposes of the present study was to replicate and extend the evidence of the existence of different developmental routes in homosexual and nonhomosexual transsexuals. In this study the two subtypes were indeed found to differ on many characteristics. Replicating some of the previousl observed differences, we found that compared with nonhomosexual transsexuals, homosexual transsexuals reported more cross-gendered behavior, appearance and preference in childhood, and they reported less sexual arousal while cross-dressing in adolescence, applied for SR at a younger age, and fewer were(or had been) married. Unlike Blanchard et al. (1995),we found no differences in height, weight or BMI." That is the peer reviewed published result. That's what we hae to go on. I am certain if the opposite had been found this would not be controversial. --Hfarmer (talk) 19:57, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Special relativity is an idea/concept, as well as a theory, that refers to something that exists in nature, so far as we know. It can't be said that two types of transsexual exist in the same way, and the paper you cite doesn't claim they do. It says only that the typology is theoretically and clinically meaningful. That's not the same as calling something a fact. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:10, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
How can you say they did not find two types of transsexual when they write "In this study the two subtypes were indeed found to differ on many characteristics."? They are saying that two types differed, that implies the two types exist. (This is on the top right of the 8th page of the journal article.)--Hfarmer (talk) 21:47, 4 February 2009 (UTC) It's OT but Special Relativity is something that exist everwhere in the observable universe out to about 12 billion light years. It has been tested to a high degree of precision. i.e. we measure the speed of light to be 299 792 458 m/s exactly. In physics we can know things exactly. Sexology is not like physics though, it's not an exact science. Nothing in psychology can be known exactly. Only statistical correlations, and probabilities can be known. They are totally differnt kinds of science and applying the standards of one to the other is not correct.--Hfarmer (talk) 21:56, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
An even better quote that makes it even more plain "Thus, our data largely support the idea that homosexual and nonhomosexual transsexuals are different subtypes with distinct characteristics. These characteristics suggest that routes leading to a request for SR are not identical because they reflect different etiologies." (page 8 Paragraph 3 of Transsexual subtypes: Clinical and theoretical significance) That's as un equivocal as scientist in that field ever get. --Hfarmer (talk) 22:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
A fact is an actual state of affairs, such as "Barack Obama is president of the United States," and "two plus two equals four." The paper you cite doesn't argue that the proposition "there are two types of male transsexual" has that kind of status. But it doesn't matter for our purposes. Calling it a concept (or typology or taxonomy) doesn't downgrade it, and it avoids the term/phenomenon problem. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:27, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
As far as science is concerned an observation is a fact. They report observing two types of transsexuals in concordance with Blanchards findings which they attempted to test and falsify or affirm. They affirmed. If a scientist writes that they observed say a proton and anti-proton colliding and in the cascade of particles that came out observed the top quark. after analysing the collision products in a particular way... that's a observation, an empirical fact. That's not the issue here.
The issue with Blanchard is what he does with those facts. He interprets them into a model where transsexuals who are not congenitally and terminally attracted to men are all paraphillic ( in less fancy terms... perverts). That is a very offensive use of language. That is Blanchard's theory. That is what's at issue. The phenomena however is something else that has been observed and yes that is a fact.--Hfarmer (talk) 22:38, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Question about the status of Blanchard's typology

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Latest comment: 15 years ago37 comments6 people in discussion

I've been getting the (perhaps mistaken) impression that some editors have been arguing that Blanchard's theory is a minority one, almost a fringe theory. Yet Anne Lawrence, herself an expert, writes that, "Blanchard's transsexual typology ... is now accepted by most knowledgeable clinicians and researchers." [13]

Is Lawrence wrong, or am I wrong in thinking there were efforts to portray Blanchard's ideas as fringe? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:23, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Lawrence is correct that Blanchard's theory is the single best accepted theory among topic experts. The idea is, however, extremely unpopular among activists and bloggers. (Although Jokestress has referred to her own knowledge on the topic as "expert level," I am referring instead to recognized credentials.) For whatever reasons, there are vocal activists and bloggers who at one time supported Blanchard's idea and only came to condemn it later, after the present controversy took off. It is not known what proportion of the regular, everyday transsexual population supports the idea. (By "regular, everyday", I mean transsexuals who change their sex and fade into the social background, living their lives without participating in the public arena of identity politics.) In my opinion, it has been an overt effort to cast Blanchard's idea as fringe, and Jokestress is using WP as a front in the public-relations war whose beginnings Conway describes on her website.
— James Cantor (talk) 19:44, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Lawrence is the L in the BBL theory along with Bailey and Blanchard. I also wonder if it is accepted, in particular if there are any publications that indicate acceptance or support outside of those academics who publish in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Dicklyon (talk) 19:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
James, are you able to provide links or off-line citations (preferably the former) to papers from any current academic expert or clinician, other than the main proponents, who accepts Blanchard's typology, or a similar typology, even if not Blanchard's (if any similar ones exist)? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
As far as who is an "expert," I have published on transsexualism and have appeared in documentaries. James Cantor's attempts to suppress critics by claiming they are not "experts" parallel what this debate is about. So, to answer your question, Blanchard's typology has been around for 20 years and is still only used by his cronies. They are working hard to get it inserted into various things to make it more official-sounding, though. These kinds of fads come and go in psychologists' conceptualizations of transsexualism. Blanchard's taxonomic zeal has been unfavorably noted by peers, but I'm sure it's hard to stop clinging to a taxonomy you created, even if it never catches on outside your clique. Jokestress (talk) 21:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Andrea, please avoid posting anything that might violate WP:BLP. SlimVirgin talk|contribs
Can you link to or cite an example of a paper showing academic or clinical opposition to Blanchard's taxonomy? I'd really like to get an idea of how mainstream or accepted his views are within sexology. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 21:27, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
This is not the academic you're looking for, but some possibly useful discussion in Beauty and Misogyny by Sheila Jeffreys; notice that she doesn't use his offensive terminology "homosexual transsexual" though, preferring instead the "heterosexual transsexual" label based on the person's gender identity. Dicklyon (talk) 22:10, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I think Dicklyon misunderstand's Jeffreys' terminology. "Heterosexual transsexual" is no more or less offensive than is "homosexual transsexual": Both terms refer to sex-of-birth rather than to sex-of-identity. Just for the record, Jeffreys is indeed quite transphobic. She does not recognize any change in sex whatsoever, continuing to refer to male-to-female transsexuals by male pronouns regardless of operative status or identity.
— James Cantor (talk) 23:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
And here is a more practical clinical view. Dicklyon (talk) 22:20, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I'm a little surprised that Dicklyon cited Lev's book. Lev's supports the existance of autogynephilia and that there is more than one type of MtF transsexual. She differs from Blanchard in that she things there is more than two. (Blanchard has never said that there could not be more than two, just that two is the best fit to the existing data.)
— James Cantor (talk) 23:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I only cite it as something that showed up in a search that's somewhat clinical; I haven't read it don't have an opinion about the POV in it; same with the other one, which at quick glance I seem to have misinterpreted. The book searches on those linked pages may show up more useful alternatives. Dicklyon (talk) 23:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Here's another; it refers to "vigorous debates and hostile disagreements among clinicians". Dicklyon (talk) 01:40, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

These are some I have in my files in front of me. I can email them to anyone. They are available from any academic library, but their contents aren't the kinds of things that appear on blogs. Journals that are funded by library subscriptions rather than by advertising don't make their complete contents available on-line.

  • Smith, Y. L. S., van Goozen, S. H. M., Kuiper, A. J., & Cohen-Kettenis, P. T. (2005). Sex reassignment: Outcomes and predictors of treatment for adolescent and adult transsexuals. Psychological Medicine, 35, 89–99.
  • Green, R. (2000). Birth order and ratio of brother to sisters in transsexuals. Psychological Medicine, 30, 789–795.
  • Bentler, P. M. (1976). A typology of transsexualism: Gender identity theory and data. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 5, 567-584.
  • Veale, J. F., Clarke, D. E., & Lomax, T. (2006). Sexuality of male-to-female transsexuals. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 37, 586–59

Typologies similar to Blanchard's date back nearly a century (and he credits them in his own pubs on the topic).

Note, however, that this was a bit of a trick question. Over the years, many academic experts or clinicians have come to accept Blanchard's idea; however, whenever they make a public statement (research pub, pop science book, blog, or whatever), they become targets on Jokestress' and others' websites, subsequently "disqualifying" their opinions as neutral. Jokestress posted this rather elaborate graph on her website here "explaining the connections of all the people in the Bailey-Blanchard-Lawrence investigation" including entire institutions as well as individual people. A few years later, an associate of Conway's with a background in identity politics (and a stranger to Bailey, Blanchard, and the rest) became interested and did some digging around. Despite her positive bias towards Conway, she decided that Conway behaved poorly and published her conclusions and the evidence for them. Her name was Alice Dreger. On that basis of her conclusion, Dreger was subsequently attacked by Jokestress (e.g., "Alice Dreger is always good for a laugh when it comes to her appearance. I believe Dreger is fixated on “freaks” because she feels more attractive and normal by comparison."). On the basis of the attacks, Bailey's critics posit that Dreger cannot be neutral nor her conclusions trusted...even though there was no evidence or accusation of bias before Dreger's conclusions became known.

Moreover, because the sexology is such a small field, the six-degrees-of-separation game isn't very informative. For example, Brian Mustansky was a student of Bailey's and then a student of John Bancroft (who said some unflattering things about Bailey). Bancroft's wife is the current editor of the Journal of Sex Research, and I am on its editorial board. With only little effort, nearly anyone can be connected to nearly anyone on either "side" of the debate.

Finally, Dicklyon's persistent, if subtle, accusations that Blanchard's articles etc. are getting published because of nepotism doesn't fit the history: Blanchard did most of his publishing on the topic before Lawrence and Bailey were on the scene at all and before Zucker was editor of the Archives. Moreover, Blanchard's major pubs on the topic were not in Archives at all, but in mainstream academic journals altogether outside of sexology. Similarly, although Dreger's article was in Archives, it has received a Guggenheim award for expansion into a book. Although Zucker is the head of the DSM committee on the sexual disorders, he was appointed by people entirely outside sexology, etc.

— James Cantor (talk) 22:19, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Nepotism? No, more of an old boys' club, or something pretty incestuous anyway. You, Bailey, Blanchard, Zucker, Lawrence have co-authored papers in many combinations; Lawrence promoted Blanchard's work because it fit her own narrative; Bailey promoted Blanchard's work in a book and you promoted that by a glowing advance review; Zucker solicited Dreger's "controversial paper" to clear Bailey of the mess he found himself in; Dreger and Bailey took their show on the road with National Public Radio; you brought their fight to wikipedia. It's no wonder the transwomen do all they can to fight back and draw connections between you all. Dicklyon (talk) 01:40, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

SlimVirgin: If there is a way for words such as those above to be at all productive to a mediation, the method is lost on me. — James Cantor (talk) 02:00, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

When assessing weather or not a given scientist work is considered fringe one must consider how that scientist is regarded by their peers. Ray Blanchard Like Ken Zucker is on the working group which will re write the DSM's sections of "sexual and gender identity disorder(s)".page 17 The DSM has been described as the bible of psychology. The diagnostic codes used therein will be used by psych professionals from around the world for years to come.
As for who elese has written about it. This issue has come up before and I was able to research and find a number of references for it. The one that comes right to mind off the top of my head is... "Transsexual subtypes: Clinical and theoretical significance" by Yolanda L.S.; Stephanie Van Goozen, Aj Kupier, Peggy T. Cohen-Kettenis You will noticed that Peggy Cohen-Kettenis will is on the same working group as Blanchard. That makes two people who have done important work on Blanchard's "Autogynephilia" who are on that group. If we widen this search one will find that a number of contemporary researchers who are no where near blanchard have used the term homosexual transsexual in their work. prostitution in New Zealand: Predominance of persons of Maori extraction by DF mcFarlane, The following was published as one of the commentaries in relation to the Dreger Article. None the less (baring some kind of total fraud) it is another example Sexuality, and Gender Dichotomized: Transgender Homosexuality in Israel, by Amir Rosenmann1 and Marilyn P. Safir So you see it is not "fringe" work used only in one insular backwater clinic way up the the canadian bush or whatever. It is a theory that has gained traction. However I will point out that the terminology used, which identifies transsexuals by birth sex, has been criticised. Though I have never seen a real sexologist ciriticize any of the actual content. --Hfarmer (talk) 01:53, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
A fair bit of research seems to use the Blanchard typology. See, for example, PMID 18299976 and PMID 18956626. It would be interesting to see a list of research papers that reject it or use a significantly different approach, without being "Ettner's and Brown's cronies", but I simply don't think that many exist (perhaps none, if you restrict your search to reasonably current work). The Blanchard typology, although perhaps not the final word (surely every theory of sexuality could be refined), seems pretty widely accepted by researchers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:25, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

@SlimVirgin: Good places to get overviews of the criticism are the works of the following people:

  • Dr. Madeline Wyndzen [14] (this is the person they hate most of all)
  • Dr. Kelley Winters [15] (you'll note Hfarmer has already attacked Dr. Winters in the user reviews, mentioning Wikipedia)
  • Harper Jean Tobin, J.D. [16] (probably the most accessible overview)
  • Dr. Aaron Devor (criticism of Blanchard's model from an FTM perspective)
  • Dr. Nikki Sullivan [17]
  • Dr. Doug Schrock [18]
  • Rupert Raj, M.A. (works at a main competitor of James Cantor's)
  • Dallas Denny, M.A. [19] (Anne Lawrence attacked this one, and Denny wrote the article "Concerns about Dr. Lawrence" I'd linked earlier)

I'd list all the citations, but first I'll let these guys explain one by one why they believe all of these people are not valid experts or are "unreliable" and thus can't be cited on Wikipedia, etc. My favorite is the tenacity by which they have suppressed Dr. Wyndzen's work because she publishes under a pseudonym, as did Dr. H. Anonymous in the similar debate on disease models of homosexuality. Jokestress (talk) 06:31, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the sources, everyone; they're very helpful. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:04, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
In the same order they appeared above
  • A pseudonymous person who by the standards Jokestress applies to others could be called an "Internet Faker". No one "hates" her a pseudonymous person just can't be used as a source.
  • Dr. Winters is not a PhD. in psychology. She is an engineer by training. I point out it my review the narcicism of her focus on autogynephilia's negative aspects. All one has to do to see that is count her complaints about Blanchard's theory.
  • An hornors undergrad thesis in sociology is not like a Doctoral thesis, it is not a piece of original research and novel contribution to the field. Nor is it then upon approval of the faculty published. This is nothing we can use.
  • Is Dr Devor a PhD in psychology, has Dr. Devor published in an academic journal?
  • You never mentioned her and at first glance this source looks useable.
  • Dr. Schrock is a socilogist not a psychologist.
  • Rupert Raj transgender and a psych professional. Why are you only mentioning him now? Notably he seems to criticize every sexologist of any significance the same way. "A literature search turned up a number of references to transphobia within a clinical context (Gainor, 2000; Hill, 2002; Zandvliet, 2000), as well as several allusions to clinicians' marginalization or discrimination of those who identify as transqueer (also known as transhomosexual) (Benjamin, 1966; Blanchard, 1985; Coleman and Bockting, 1988; Devor; 1998; Pauly, 1974; Pauly, 1998; Rachlin, 1997; Zandvliet, 2000). "[20]
  • This is yet agagin something you are only mentioning now. We would have to vet this source for it's information and useability in Wikipedia. Is it just a name that says something negative about Blanchard's theory in passing. Or does this treatment spend some time deconstructing it?--Hfarmer (talk) 12:25, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I think it is worth pointing out that only Rupert Raj, and Dallas Denny have credentials that would make them psychological professionals. We can use what they have published in RS's in wikipedia. The rest of the people mentioned by Jokestress are looking at this from a completely different perspective thant he field of sexology does. Now I am not saying that perspective should not be in here. I think a sociological breakdown of this theory as it is presented in reliable sources could be interesting addition. However a socilogist cannot declare that a piece of sexology is fringe, no more than either can comment on the scientific content of a theory of physics. To paraphrase Richard Feynman a scientist writing about a field that is not their own is just as dumb as the next guy. The sources in sexology, the pertinent area of science overwhelmingly back Blanchard's hypthesis. --Hfarmer (talk) 12:31, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply


As I’ve said before, Jokestress’ edits tend to suffer by acts of omission rather than of commission. In this case, what she is omitting is the two entire discussions at RS/N, both of which failed to conclude that the comments from the above people met the WP criteria for being RS’s:

The use of Wyndzen received yet another discussion at RS/N just for herself, yielding the same lack of support for inclusion:

Despite Jokestress “letting” anyone explain why those folks’ pubs do not meet WP:RS, it would seem to make more sense to let Jokestress explain why she continues to disrupt WP by making the same demands again and again, despite that they are rejected by uninvolved editors again and again.

— James Cantor (talk) 12:44, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

What "demands" have I made? I have sought outside opinions because consensus can change. Jokestress (talk) 18:28, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Credentialism and meaning of "expert"

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This seems to be a good moment to bring up another aspect of this dispute: credentialism. User:Cerejota's astute overview says, "This is not a classic narrative war but more like a clash between science and political activism." What we see above is a prime example. These guys want to frame this as an academic dispute rather than a dispute about academia (the academic exploitation of transsexual people). If, in an oversimplified description, the two "sides" are science and activism, it stands to reason that experts from one "side" are activists and should thus have their views included. In this case, a number of people on the activist "side" also happen to be widely respected scientists whose primary objections are the misuse of scientific discourse and methodology in this debate. "Expert" continues to be more and more narrowly defined in this dispute, always in a way that excludes opposing views. These guys want to claim the subject position of science and dismiss critics as activists, but activists and various scientists have said what these guys are putting forth is bad science, pseudoscience, pathological science, etc. Jokestress (talk) 18:28, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Activists and scientists are definitely regarded equally in terms of being reliable sources. The only qualifications are (1) if discussing a living person, all sources must have been published by independent, reliable publications e.g. a newspaper or a journal, peer-reviewed or otherwise. And (2) if not discussing living people, the source material may be self-published, but in that case, the source must be an acknowledged expert who has previously been published within that field by an independent, reliable source. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 18:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I think that this statement misses some nuance. A non-scientist is not a good source for scientific facts and information. A scientist is not (any more than the next person) a good source for non-scientific facts and information (or for scientific facts and information outside of that individual's particular field). So if you want to know what the notion of something -- say, anger -- is in the field of psychology, you ask someone who studies anger, not someone whose expertise stems from having an anger management issue. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:47, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Yes, that's almost always true. But imagine a distinguished psychologist who publishes a controversial paper on anger, which alleges that it's now possible, based on animal studies, to identify individuals in the womb who will grow up to have serious anger-management problems, and who may end up committing violence against others. These foetuses should be aborted, he argues.
Any WP article about this would have to allow non-science sources to give their views. Philosophers might want to say that he has misunderstood the meaning of "anger." Sociologists might add that he underestimates the importance of nurture. Animal rights advocates might say that animal studies can be very misleading.
To allow only the scientific POV in controversial areas can be to exclude other important voices — though of course you're right that experts on Picasso can't be used to discuss special relativity. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 18:57, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Yes, exactly. This is about the production of knowledge within different paradigms. This debate encompasses sociology, biotheics, philosophy of science, and a number of other fields of inquiry. Science does not occur in a vacuum. It is influenced (and sometimes corrupted) by cultural factors, biases, etc. As I said earlier, this is a debate about science and whether this is science), rather than a scientific debate. Many people consider this whole way of thinking an iatrogenic artifact, and that ideas like paraphilia and sex addiction that drive these ideologies are social constructs that currently appear scientific but will eventually be understood as pseudoscientific cultural artifacts, the way thinking about homosexuality has evolved. Jokestress (talk) 19:06, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I can agree with that. We should write about all of these things from all of the relevant angles. This is why I have wanted to include historical context, and legal context as much as I could. However we have to bear in mind that because sociologist publishes something trashing Blanchard's theory that does not therefore make it discredited fringe sexology. As for what things will eventually understood as...WP:CRYSTAL..until these thigns are generally understood as pseudoscience we cannot write about them as such.
To whatamIdoing, In the long passage that slimvirgin thought it proper to move (and i really wish she would put it back where I left it) I mentioned a quote from Richard Feynman (paraphrased really) A scientist talking about subjects (not in his field) is just as dumb as the next guy. Wise wise saying from a Nobel laureate.--Hfarmer (talk) 19:23, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Though I have to say about the whole so called "credentialism" thing. That's a interesting neologism there. Credentials mean something. A person with a PhD. is someone who had to make a novel and unnique contribution to the body of human knowledge just to get the degree. A PhD. is a researcher who had to pass extremely rigourous examiniations, both written and oral, they have had to write basically a book then have faculty grill them to perfection. When they invite you into the room to get your results your either Mr./Ms. soandso or Dr soandso. That's when you know if it all came to anything. Only 1/9 people who try for a PhD. in Physics make it to the end. It's even worse in other fields (where the undergraduate course is not as demanding as a B.S. Physics). Let's talk about the anitintellectualism of what Jokestress has written. hmmph. --Hfarmer (talk) 19:31, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Given that Blanchard is on one of the DSM V working parties (thank you for pointing that out, Hfarmer), his ideas can't be described as fringe.
Hfarmer, the term/phenomenon material was just too long for this page — it would have overshadowed everthing else, which is why I moved it. That it's on a subpage doesn't undermine it; I may create different subpages for several of the sub-topics, depending on how things go. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:29, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
FYI, the appointments of Blanchard and Zucker to the DSM group led to huge protests calling for their removal. [21][22][23][24] The author of the last piece says "Zucker tried to sue me and Ex-Gay Watch after I wrote and posted this article." Jokestress (talk) 19:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
What bearing does that have on their scientific standing. Heck people were put on trial and convicted for teaching evolution once. That did not make it false.--Hfarmer (talk) 21:40, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I don't object to the inclusion of non-scientific views by experts in other fields (although I do think it's reasonable for the views we present to actually be within the experts' actual fields: e.g., philosophers should be cited for relevant philosophical issues).
I do object to the representation of individual personal experience as being just as valid and important as the views of the experts-in-the-field. An assertion that "this description doesn't resonate with my internal narrative" doesn't mean that the description is wrong. The logic there is like declaring that many American prison inmates were wrongfully convicted simply because so many say (and even deeply believe) that they are. "He says he is innocent of this crime", although it may be important information to include in an article, should not be confused with "He is innocent of this crime." WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I agree. But similiarly, "Scientist X says that thalidomide is not a teratogen" does not mean "thalidomide is not a teratogen." That's especially true in an area like this one, where the science/ideology divide is quite fluid.
It seems to me that, if we stick rigidly to the policy on sources (which is WP:V, not WP:RS), and if we make sure that the publications we use are as respectable as we can find (but not necessarily peer-reviewed), then we'll be able to include scientific and non-scientific sources, carefully attributing views with in-text attribution, so that we don't appear to declare any of the positions as correct. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:43, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
That's what I have been doing.--Hfarmer (talk) 21:36, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I agree, too. In particular, let's not discriminate among the different opinions published in a special issue of a journal devoted to a controversial topic that we are trying to cover. Dicklyon (talk) 03:36, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Alternate accounts

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Latest comment: 15 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

I haven't yet looked carefully to see whether there are alternate accounts involved in this. If anyone has edited these articles, or is represented in this mediation, with more than one account, could I ask please that you quietly retire the second account(s); then no more will be said about it.

If you do that, it would be helpful if you could e-mail me, in confidence, to let me know the names of the second accounts, so that I know which ones not to address in future. :-) SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:20, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I have not used any other accounts, and I seldom edit without logging in, but it has happened. Some of Cantor's previous accounts and IPs are discussed in my early COI complaint against him at Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard/Archive_25#MarionTheLibrarian; I don't think he uses any alternate accounts these days. Dicklyon (talk) 21:48, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I've used two accounts before: user:MarionTheLibrarian and user:WriteMakesRight. Both are retired already, and they all acknowledge each other on their respective user pages.— James Cantor (talk) 22:23, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Years ago now, when I first started editing here. I had a account "smartgirl62". I changed my wikiname to first initial last name and that account is long since retired.. I felt that I should feel good enough about what I do here to be held publically accountable for my actions. I'll bet your' wondering about how apparently uninvolved the other involved parties seem to be.--Hfarmer (talk) 01:56, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Self-published

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Latest comment: 15 years ago27 comments5 people in discussion

There seems to be some confusion about the meaning of "self-published" on WP. If something is self-published, it means published and written by one individual or by a very small group of individuals, with no professional editorial or legal oversight. A blog is self-published. A vanity book is self-published, even if a vanity publisher was involved, because they interfere only minimally with the author's words, if at all, and will basically publish anything they're asked to.

Self-published material is, by and large, not allowed to be used as source material on Wikipedia. There are two exceptions:

(1) when it is being used as a source of material about the person who wrote it i.e. X's blog may be used in an article about X, or as material about X in another article. However, even though this is allowed, it's not encouraged, because it can lead to a situation where X uses his blog as a platform to get certain points about himself added to WP. It's always better to use an independent source if possible; and

(2) when it is written by an expert in the field, who has previously been published in that field by an independent, reliable source. This means that Stephen Hawking's blog may be used as a source about his ideas within his field, because he is a published author in that field, but it may not be used as a source about his ideas on interior design. Again, although this is allowed, it isn't encouraged, because there's no one other than the author watching what he writes.

Note:

(3) The above exceptions notwithstanding, self-published material must never be used in other people's BLPs. Only the author's BLP may contain that person's self-published material. It cannot be used as a source of material on anyone else.

-- — Preceding unsigned comment added by SlimVirgin (talk • contribs) 16:33, 4 February 2009

That's all true but in the case at hand those "peer commentaries" were not vetted, filtered, or "interfered with" in any way either. In that case you or I could have published a peer commentary just as easy as any academic expert. These were not invited, reviewed or anything else. like that. This is why we have such long arguements over who is an expert and who is not.--Hfarmer (talk) 19:41, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
If you're talking about expert commentary published in journals, I think they would be vetted to some degree, at least for legal problems, or for obvious falsehoods. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:45, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Usually but in this case we know they weren't vetted at all aside from minor spelling erros. We have the "insider" James Cantor to vouch for that personally, as well as a secondary source where Zucker (the editor) says that any and all commentaries that were sent in were published, aside from one which was as he put it way way off topic. --Hfarmer (talk) 21:38, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Whoa. Although I am on the editorial board, I have never vouched for any such thing. (I wouldn't and won't). I have never argued for the inclusion or exclusion of anything on the basis of information that could not be had by anyone else. I am very aware that doing so would be a gross violation of what is expected of me, not only by WP, but also by Archives (and any of the other journals I'm on the boards of). Everything I have ever said about the editorial process for Dreger's article was based on, and only on, what Zucker said about that process in his editorial introducting that issue of the journal.
— James Cantor (talk) 21:55, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
And what Zucker said in "Introduction to Dreger (2008) and Peer Commentaries" was: "I reviewed all commentaries and, by and large, made very minor editorial changes and, if there was a substantive issue, did so in consultation with the author." So this ongoing claim by WhatamIdoing and others that these received no editorial oversight is pretty specious. These are not self-published sources. They are peer commentaries that appear in an academic journal. Jokestress (talk) 22:02, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
...except in the opinion of three RS/N's. — James Cantor (talk) 22:07, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
...because of the way WhatamIdoing (and now James Cantor) use Noticeboards to POV-push. Their campaign to present these commentaries critical of their POV as "unreliable" is a key issue in these debates. Jokestress (talk) 22:11, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
What! The RSN's say what the RSN's uninvolved editors say.... So what do you mean? That they recruited people to come and back them up or something. I mean what are you saying there?--Hfarmer (talk) 22:17, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I agree that these commentaries are not self-published. The journal wouldn't publish a letter that was the first to allege, "X raped his sister last week." That means there's editorial oversight. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:22, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Having once worked for a newspaper, I can tell you that a letter to the editor that made such allegations would similarly not be published. I can also tell you that the typical letters desk automatically corrects grammar and spelling, and frequently edits content (usually for length). Unlike the Archives in this instance, they also publish only a fraction of the letters they receive. But that doesn't mean that letters to the editor aren't considered self-published sources for Wikipedia's purposes. Have you read the RSN conversations? Would you like to ask at WP:V or at WP:RSN how editors classify letters to the editor in general? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:43, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Again, these are not letters to the editor, which are considerably shorter in length in ASB and are in their own section. Here's an example of how ASB presents letters to the editor. The publications in question are peer commentaries solicited in response to a target paper, with a byline and title. Each peer commentary has its own Pubmed ID, is several pages long (Zucker imposed a word limit as I recall), and each costs $32.00, just like the target paper. In most editions, you can buy the letters to the editor as a group. These guys have managed to present this on noticeboards in a way that makes it sound as if these commentaries are as insubstantial as possible, and the people who are noticeboard regulars tend to have a rather specific outlook on what is appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia. Their POV is very similar to that of WhatamIdoing: a rather narrow and rigid conceptualization of reliable sourcing based on their scientism. You'll note that the pseudonymous peer commentary has been used as a straw man to get all of the commentaries dismissed out of hand on the noticeboards. These peer commentaries are obviously verifiable. This is how WhatamIdoing operates on Wikipedia: she does a very subtle form of canvassing on policy pages (like this) where she knows she'll find a sympathetic ear, then lets allies come over and help her "win" her arguments. Jokestress (talk) 00:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Let me check that I am understanding properly. Blanchard's work gets unfair advantage because of a conspiracy of sexologists, and WhatamIdoing gets unfair advantage because of a conspiracy of Wikipedia editors. Did I get that right? Now, is it at all conceivable...I'm not saying that it has to be true or even likely...but is it even theoretically possible, that all these people disagree with you, Jokestress, not because they are all in cliques and cabals, but merely because you are incorrect and that you have a COI that makes it hard for you to see it that way? Just possible?
— James Cantor (talk) 01:09, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Please refrain from being sarcastic on Wikipedia. Jokestress (talk) 01:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I mean it entirely sincerely. I am perfectly happy to say, as any good scientist must, that it always remains possible that my interpretation of my observations is incorrect. I am asking, to help me understand your point of view, do you think that it is even possible that your point of view is incorrect?
If SlimVirgin believes that my question is inappropriate, I would, of course welcome the input. It is no secret that I believe that incivility has been a problem throughout these discussions, and if I am perpetrating it, I would certainly want to know if I am wrong.
— James Cantor (talk) 01:19, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

(Undent) Each of the individual letters to the editor that you linked to also have separate PubMed numbers; see PMID 11974639 for the first letter in your example. Here's the comparison as I see it:

Issue These commentaries Regular letters Regular articles
Is it peer-reviewed? No No Yes
Are any facts checked? Yes[dubious – discuss] No Yes
Must authors declare conflicts of interest? No No Yes
Does it have its own PMID? Yes Yes Yes
Is it edited for grammar/spelling/style? Yes Yes Yes
Is it linked to original article online? Yes Yes N/A
Is there generally a length limit? Yes Yes No[dubious – discuss]
Is every relevant submission published? Yes[dubious – discuss] No No

I think that these characteristics tend to confirm my belief that these commentaries are more like a letter to the editor than like a regular article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:20, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

There's some misinformation in your chart on "Are any facts checked?" and "Is every submission published?" I have corrected those above. Jokestress (talk) 01:28, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I disagree with your changes; perhaps you can agree to my clarification of the question.
Can you show evidence of facts having been checked in the commentaries (at a level that exceeds the 'fact-checking' done for letters to the editor; reputable publications typically refuse to publish anything that is obviously erroneous)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:37, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Zucker said he made substantive changes in consultation with the authors, and I am sure he checked for statements of fact that could be problematic if published. I also tagged the length limit (articles have limits, too) and noted your subtle wording change to suit your needs on "Is every submission published?" (adding the weasel word "relevant"). Basically, the difference between commentaries and articles is the amount of editorial oversight, though Zucker obviously exercised editorial oversight on the whole issue. Jokestress (talk) 01:54, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
A "substantive change" could mean basic editing, such as making an unintentionally ambiguous statement clear. Zucker's statement about changes doesn't necessarily mean that he changed the content of any submission.
I have looked, and I found no information from the journal about standard article lengths. If a journal has an actual limit, then they normally inform authors of it in the standard pre-submission materials. Have you found any evidence that Arch Sex Behav has a page limit, or are you just guessing based on other publications? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:07, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
A "substantive change" could mean basic editing, such as making a factually incorrect statement correct. Zucker's statement about changes doesn't necessarily mean that he changed no facts in any submission. The ASB has a standardized length, which by definition limits the length of all content. If you want to get into word count, the average commentary was about 4-5 times the length of the average letter. Dreger's paper was the longest published in the history of the publication and about 3 times the average length. The word count of the commentaries in total roughly matches the length of the target paper, though the commentaries cover a wide variety of viewpoints. As I have said many times, a target paper is published in order to generate commentaries, so to exclude those commentaries undermines the very purpose of publishing the target paper in the first place. Jokestress (talk) 02:22, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
A question for WhatamIdoing: do you have specific examples in mind of commentary that you feel should not be used as source material? Even if you want to call these submissions "self-published" for the purposes of WP, they're almost certainly written by experts, because why would the journal publish non-expert commentary, so they're allowable under V even if regarded as self-published. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 02:30, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I can't speak for WAID but I would like to see the results of the reliable source notice boards upheld. Which basically interpreted WP:SPS to be that only SPS's published by sources with academic credentials can be used. Consensus can change, but it does not change by changin venue (that's called forum shopping) we can't just ignore what those RS/N's said. --Hfarmer (talk) 03:18, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I have no idea why Arch Sex Behav agrees to publish all on-topic submissions when they run one of these special issues -- absolutely no clue, and someday, when more people have discovered this quick and easy way to get their names listed as 'authors' in a PubMed-indexed scientific journal, they'll probably have to re-think this decision. (Psych grad students should be watching carefully for future announcements.) Fundamentally, though, their motivation is irrelevant: The fact is that they announced in advance that they would nearly abdicate editorial control and publish anything submitted on the topic, regardless of expertise, point of view, previous publications, whether you work in a relevant area, or even a willingness to use your real name.
The published commentaries in this issue include a few eminent sexologists, a couple of physicians, and a few people (all transwomen, I think) in other academic areas (sociology, for one, that I thought was interesting). It also contains comments from several students and several transwomen talking about their personal beliefs and their personal roles in the Bailey scandal. For several people listed, this is the only "scientific publication" that they will ever make. If you and I had known about it, we could have been published, too. For that matter, if a ten-year-old child had written "This paper makes me sad because so many people got hurt. Also, it's very long and was hard for me to understand," then they would have published it.
My goal is not to exclude POVs. My goal is not to entirely exclude these commentaries. My goal is to use these commentaries (only) in ways that comply with WP:SPS, which says that self-published materials -- and I do believe that these commentaries qualify as self-published for Wikipedia's purposes -- can be used on Wikipedia.
The problem is in how we use them. Dick wants to use (carefully selected) quotations from one commentary because (when read out of context) the quotations provide a view that is (deliberately selected to be) different from Dreger's view. Unfortunately, the selected 'expert' is not an expert on the subject that Dick wants to address.
Specifically, Dick wants to use Moser's commentary to imply that Bailey abused his relationship with adults-who-aren't-legally-research-subjects. Moser's view on whether Bailey got into bed with JMS is just as (ir)relevant to Wikipedia as DarlieB's (strongly believes it happened), Hfarmer's (wouldn't be exactly surprised), or mine (no clue, but I believe the reports that say that it couldn't have happened on the specific alleged date). Moser is "an expert" -- but Moser is not an expert on whether or not "the allegations are basically true", so using the source to support that specific statement is a violation of WP:SPS (as well as WP:BLP, since it's a self-published source that supposedly [that is, the way we present it] accuses another person of misbehavior).
Dick also wants to use Moser's commentary to issue grand proclamations about the state of liberty. Moser is also not an expert on the potential implications of this scandal for liberty. Wikipedia provides a definition of expert, and Moser simply doesn't qualify here. Moser's view on whether a single scandal can destroy academic freedom for all time happens to agree very closely with my personal opinion. But he's no more a recognized expert in that area than I am.
I reiterate: I am perfectly willing to use Moser's commentary if it is wanted. WP:SPS allows us to use it (1) for his area of professional expertise, which is sexology and (2) about himself and his own personal experiences. Both of these areas are addressed in Moser's commentary, and I have no objection to either of those uses. Dick apparently has no interest in using this commentary for either of those issues.
Do you understand the distinction here? The issue is not simply "To use, or not to use (at all)": It's "let's comply with Wikipedia's policies when we use these." The current use violates Wikipedia's policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:01, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Commentaries to use in compliance with policies

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@ SlimVirgin: I tried to to this before. Here are the commentary authors in alphabetical order:

  • Jonathan Adler: Two Modes of Thought: The Narrative/Paradigmatic Disconnect in the Bailey Book Controversy.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9318-0 PMID 18431639
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9317-1 PMID 18431640
  • Ben Barres: A Response to Dreger’s Defense of the Bailey Book.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9320-6 PMID 18446433
  • Talia Mae Bettcher: Pretenders to the Throne.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9326-0 PMID 18431632
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9328-y PMID 18431630
  • Antonia Caretto: Dreger’s Adventures.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9333-1 PMID 18431625
  • Nicholas Clarkson: Trans Victims, Trans Zealots: A Critique of Dreger’s History of the Bailey Controversy.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9327-z PMID 18431631
  • Alice Dreger: Response to the Commentaries on Dreger (2008).
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9348-7 PMID 18431617
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9321-5 PMID 18431637
  • Brian Gladue: Gender Identity Politics, Human Subjects Issues, and the ‘‘Law of Unintended Consequences.’’
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9322-4 PMID 18431636
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9323-3 PMID 18431635
  • Riki Lane: Truth, Lies, and Trans Science.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9336-y PMID 18431622
  • Anne Lawrence: Shame and Narcissistic Rage in Autogynephilic Transsexualism.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9325-1 PMID 18431633
  • Robin Mathy: Cowboys, Sheepherders, and The Man Who Would Be Queen: ‘‘I Know’’ vs. First-Order Lived Experience.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9335-z PMID 18431623
  • Deirdre McCloskey: Politics in Scholarly Drag: Dreger’s Assault on the Critics of Bailey.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9337-x PMID 18431621
  • Marta Meana: The Drama of Sex, Identity, and the ‘‘Queen.’’
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9324-2 PMID 18431634
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9331-3 PMID 18431627
  • Margaret Nichols: Dreger on the Bailey Controversy: Lost in the Drama, Missing the Big Picture.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9329-x PMID 18431629
  • Bruce Rind: The Bailey Affair: Political Correctness and Attacks on Sex Research.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9334-0 PMID 18431624
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9344-y PMID 18431619
  • Amir Rosenman: Sex, Sexuality, and Gender Dichotomized: Transgender Homosexuality in Israel.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9330-4 PMID 18431628
  • Julia Serano: A Matter of Perspective: A Transsexual Woman-Centric Critique of Dreger’s ‘‘Scholarly History’’ of the Bailey Controversy.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9332-2 PMID 18431626
  • Elroi Windsor: Accounting for Power and Academic Responsibility.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9319-z PMID 18431638
  • Madeline Wyndzen: A Social Psychology of a History of a Snippet in the Psychology of Transgenderism.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9340-2 PMID 18431620
  • Ken Zucker: Introduction to Dreger (2008) and Peer Commentaries.
DOI 10.1007/s10508-007-9300-2 PMID 18431642

I have linked those with Wikipedia articles for reference, but I believe they all merit inclusion. They are certainly all verifiable. I propose that editors with objections list the ones they feel should not be used in order to be in compliance with policies. Jokestress (talk) 06:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

The key question is what we use each of them for. What I have always supported is that each of these people is at the very least a world expert on their own opinion of the paper. Their personal reaction. What I proposed on the reliable sources notice boards was that we choose from among these commentaries, three or four choice sentences and quote them in verbatim, or we choose one or two choice paragraphs and paraphrase/sumarize them into three or four sentences. With weighting to represent the number of commentaries that had a positive opinion vs a negative opinion of Dregers's work. However that's about all I can see using these for. Because at the end of the day all of these are opinion pieces written for the most part by people who have no first or even second hand direct personal knowledge of anything that Dreger wrote about. The ones I think we should look closer at are McCloskey, Zucker, lane, Green, Bancroft. Each of these people have had some biographical connection, even a weak one to this matter, or are sexologist. They have either published about sexology. or I can't even do this.
You see Andrea that is the kind of thing I suggested at that Reliable sources notice board. They said no to that. Using the BLP exception to get this information into the articles won't work for most of these. If we want to get some of the commentaries in we should look much more seriously at just those of scientist and psych profesionals. That would include Wyndzen IF she were not ananymous and one could "vector and expose" who she was to confirm her claim to being a PhD'd psychologist. Get her to unmask herself and I will fight for her includion but not if you insist on calling the enforcement of policy an act of "hate". (thus assuming bad faith I might add) If we restrict ourselves only to those with verifiable credentials we have Moser, Blanchard,Green, Lane, Roberts, Zucker, and whoever else on that list has verifiable psycholgical credentials. The non-expert objection IMO should not work in relation to them.
As for the argument for including the works of transsexuals just becuse we are transsexual and know about it from direct experience.... the RS/N's very spoecifically rejected that.
Based on the above line a reasoning I propose a compromise. We include in our consideration the commentaries from those who had verifiable pyschological credentials Moser, Blanchard,Green, Lane, Roberts, Zucker, and any others I missed who have verifyable credentials in psycholoogy, . We choose who and how much from each comment that we will use based on the overall distribution of opinions and give comeasureate weight. Paraphrasing in choice sentences and/or paragraphs from each.
How about that? Can we discuss one of my compromise suggestions or are we either going to argue or have the mediator semingly try to dictate what will be to me as if I were 5. (What's the emoticon for crossed arms?) --Hfarmer (talk) 12:05, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Based on SlimVirgin's post below about people on this list who can be cited in compliance with policy, I believe all have been published before within the relevant field by an independent publication except Nick Clarkson and Riki Lane. I have not carefully checked this, but I believe I have read something academic published elsewhere by everyone else. If there are others that some editors wish to challenge, please add them here for discussion. Jokestress (talk) 20:36, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

You say they have all been published within the relevant field. Just what is the relevant field in your estimation. Sexology, psychology, gender studies... what is it to you.
To me there is no "the" relevant field. There is the science of sexology/psychology, which is THE relevant science, but ohter academic perspectives are valid as well. What I say that you seem to disagree with is that a sociologist, with all due respect, cannot declare a work of sexology to be fringe, discredited etc, within sexology, any more than a sexologist can write the same about a theory of sociology. That sociologist could however be used as a source for the sociological aspects of these matters. Do you understand what I mean?  :-/ That each person should be used for their specific expertise. Their opinions that are not witin their area of expertise should be discarded by wikipedia.--Hfarmer (talk) 00:46, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Peer review

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Latest comment: 15 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Again, just a clarification of policy. I've seen a few posts here referring to an agreement to use only peer-reviewed material at certain points. There's no need to do this, and in fact it may cause significant POVs to be left out. All reliable sources are always welcome.

Reliable sources are, according to WP:V: "peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers. As a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny involved in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the evidence and arguments of a particular work, the more reliable the source is." See Wikipedia:V#Reliable_sources. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 18:33, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Reliable sources only no self published matterials. That I can agree to and I think will remain in Wikipedia if it's added. --Hfarmer (talk) 19:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
The issue is basically just that in the special issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, one side of the discussion was called "peer reviewed" and the other side "responses" (or "commentaries" or something like that); we can not have a balanced presentation if we exclude that second side of the conversation on the basis of it being "self published" and the commenters not being "academic experts". It's all reliable as a way to verify published opinions, even the one by the pseudonymous writer, in my view. Dicklyon (talk) 02:10, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
We could write to the editor to ask whether s/he knows who the pseudonymous writer is, which I'm sure s/he does. If the name is known, and the description is accurate, it can be used like any other source, in my view. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 02:32, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Talk:The Man Who Would Be Queen/mediation

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Latest comment: 15 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I've created a subpage to discuss the substantive content issues in The Man Who Would Be Queen. Could people please list there what they see as objectionable in the article?

We'll keep this page for a discussion of the meta issues that could affect all the articles listed in the mediation request. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:24, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Process question.

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Latest comment: 15 years ago27 comments8 people in discussion

When one stands back for a moment and looks at our overall conversation, we seem to have shifted, and I am not clear on where we are headed. We started (I thought) with the belief that the best way to handle the collectivity of content disputes was by (at least) some of us stepping aside rather than be repeating the same disputes over and over, spilling from page to page and noticeboard to noticeboard. Although we all had different ideas about whom to restrict and how, that was how we started. We now appear, however, to be repeating all of content disputes we have ever had together in one go.

We appeared (to me) to start by reviewing the COI issues (a logical place) and then (I thought) to the content issues, and I had hoped the incivility issues would be next. However, instead of merely summarizing for SlimVirgin what the content disputes were, we are actally recapitulating those disputes. I appreciate that there is more than one way to do a mediation—and I do not assert that one way is necessary better than another—but it would be helpful to me if I know what the ultimate strategy here was.

Is the path here to review the content disputes and then to go back to who should step aside and why, or is the path here to actually solve all the various disputes, one by one?

— James Cantor (talk) 22:44, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

My aim is (a) to find out what the behavioral issues are, including COI; (2) to discuss the meta issues, which is most of what's on this page, and then (c) to move to substantive content issues, starting with The Man Who Would Be Queen, which I've started a subpage for; see Talk:The Man Who Would Be Queen/mediation. And after that, to move on to the other articles.
The aim is definitely to solve the disputes, not to rehash them, though the latter may be necessary to pave the way for the former. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 02:26, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I meant to add: do you have suggestions for better ways to proceed? Please feel free to make them if you do. I'm willing to be very flexible in terms of process. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 02:34, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't presume to say better, but I do have a preference. I believe that Jokestress had it right at the very first post to this mediation. By "right," I mean that the issue was about who should step aside and from which pages, for the better of WP. (By "right," I don't mean her specific proposal for who or which pages). I welcome her to correct me if I am wrong, but I suspect from her comment that she (like I) expected that that would be the topic of our mediation. Indeed, stepping aside was the topic of the discussion we had at COI/N which led to us being here in mediation (after a bounce-back from ArbCom). It is my personal preference that that still be our focus.

I say this because I think we have already engaged in all the content issues, most of them multiple times. I appreciate, of course, SlimVirgin's input on the various policy points will be useful (especially to me personally, as a relative new comer). However, it is not clear to me how SlimVirgin's interpretations and experience can help produce a consensus when Jokestress is already unwilling to abide by the multiple consensus'es that the discussions have had already. To take the commentaries as RS vs nonRS, for example, that the rest of us are biased for any of several reasons. So, we did everything that editors are supposed to do when there is a minority opinion among editors; we went to RS/N...two and three times now. Despite the rather consisent opinions there, Jokestress just doesn't want to abide by those conclusions; she says, they are biased too. (And, of course, the reason that scientists disagree with her is because...well, more of same.) So, if the already-repeatedly-found consensuses didn't matter to her, then—even after several weeks of rather hard work—what's to stop Jokestress from merely calling SlimVirgin or the entire mediation process from being biased against her view like the rest? If Jokestress can claim that she is herself somehow more objective than is RS/N (who are biased against her view) and that her view should prevail over that of the three RS/N discussions, when why should this mediation be any different?

If it is still the content disputes that people want to discuss, I will participate. Personally, however, I feel that we have moved beyond that, and it is my preference that we question that (I was under the impression that) we were here to do.

— James Cantor (talk) 03:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

The thing about going to the RS noticeboard is that you may get editors who understand the policies, or you may not. Or they be right about policy, but may have misunderstood the type of source, the context etc. So I would say stick to the sourcing policy, WP:V.
As for the content issues, there's one being discussed on the other subpage right now, so content does seem to be something that needs sorting out.
Regarding COI, Jokestress has agreed not to edit the articles. Were there other COI issues you wanted to look at? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 03:26, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Hmm. That wasn't clear to me, and I'm not sure that it was clear to Jokestress. In it's context, I thought SlimVirgin was just canvassing Jokestress, asking if Jokestress could agree not to edit the main pages, in what (presumably) would be a larger agreement potentially including other editors to whom SlimVigin hadn't (yet) posed the same question. Here, however, SlimVirgin, are you saying that, at the end of this mediation (regardless of how these other content issues are settled), Jokestress may not edit any of the articles in our initial list, but that I can (although I plan not to) and that Dicklyon can (who said he would do so to prevent what he sees as BLP violations), and that the rest of the editors here can also? Jokestress, is that what you believe you agreed to?
— James Cantor (talk) 12:53, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I said that I can agree to stop editing articles about Bailey and his work, and to refrain from making edits about him in other articles. Jokestress (talk) 16:22, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Yes, that's exactly what I heard you to be saying. However, SlimVirgin seems to be under the impression—not that you can so agree—but that you did so agree. (Her words being: "thank you for agreeing; it helps a lot" and "Jokestress has agreed not to edit the articles".) SlimVirgin?
— James Cantor (talk) 16:32, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Can you (Jokestress) please answer the question that we want to know, which is have you agreed that you will not edit articles about Bailey and his work (and not merely that you "can agree")? Furthermore, which articles do you believe this restricts your participation in? The Man Who Would Be Queen would seem to be about Bailey and his work, for example. And SlimVirgin et al., can someone explain to me why, if Jokestress has issues that make her ineligible to edit the pages in question, should we be spending so much time debating her on how to edit those pages?ProudAGP (talk) 16:35, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

For the record, if Jokestress' understanding is that she wasn't agreeing to stop editing (but merely that she could) while SlimVirgin clearly had the idea that she had agreed, then that is a clear violation of good faith, one that exemplifies what it's like to edit with Jokestress. (And Jokestress if I'm wrong, and you have in fact agreed, I will apologize.)ProudAGP (talk) 16:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

My understanding is that Jokestress agreed not to edit any articles related to Bailey or his work, because she's directly involved in real life in the campaign that Bailey has objected to. She may still edit the talk pages to make suggestions, though only if there are no BLP violations in her posts. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:52, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
SV: Have you actually clicked the links to look at the RSN discussions? These were not brief, well-poisoned questions that were replied to be a single newbie. Jokestress and Dicklyon made significant efforts to explain their POVs. I count ten then-uninvolved editors involved in the RSN discussions: User:Vassyana, User:Eubulides, User:Momento, User:Philcha, User:Squidfryerchef, User:soulscanner, [User:Protonk]], User:Paul Barlow, VG and User:DGG. I don't recognize all of these editors, but of the ones I do, I think they're all familiar with Wikipedia's standards. I'll take DGG's opinion of any academic source in preference to my own. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:16, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Hi, I'm not sure what the RS/N can add to this. There is a policy, WP:V, on sourcing. That has priority over anyone's opinion, over any consensus of editors, and over any guideline. I was one of the editors who wrote much of it a few years ago, so I'm very familiar with it, and I believe I wrote everything that pertains to self-published sources (though please note that I'm not responsible for the current writing, which has suffered from too-many-editors syndrome, but the meaning of the section remains the same).
If the issue is that the SPS section is ambiguous or hard to interpret, please let me know which aspect of it is unclear.
As to the substantive issue, the commentaries in that journal are not self-published. They are published in an independent publication, and there is editorial oversight. It matters not that the oversight is liberal; it exists, and that's the only point that matters for WP purposes. These aren't like letters to a newspaper. This is a specialist audience of interested parties and experts.
Having said that, if you want to treat these commentaries as self-published, that's fine, because it makes no difference. Whether they're self-published or not, we would still want to cite the experts, rather than people no one has heard of. And SPS allows self-published expert opinion so long as — and this is key — that person has been published before within the relevant field by an independent publication.
If the difficulty is with the pseudononymous writer, all we have to do is write to the editor and ask him whether that person fits with our definition of expert. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I have been asked to state for the record yet again that I can agree and have agreed to limit my editing as discussed previously. Jokestress (talk) 21:31, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I apologize to Jokestress.ProudAGP (talk) 16:39, 7 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Thank you. James, or anyone, were there any other COI issues that you wanted to raise? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 21:38, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Something is very wrong here.

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None of the various (and worsening) incivilities are being discussed, the issues receiving attention are not those that brought us to COI/N or ArbCom or that we put on the issues list for this mediation, and the belief that prior consensuses can be overturned by a mediator is merely to replace the opinions of a large number of editors with the opinion of one editor. Frankly, I am not at all perceiving SlimVirgin to be mediating these disputes so much as participating in them. If I am the only one who feels this way, so be it, but this is not the discussion I agreed to participate in. Am I alone in this view? — James Cantor (talk) 21:46, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Can you point to recent incivility, James? And do you have any suggestions for how the mediation should progress, if not like this? As I said, I'm willing to be flexible, but you do have to be specific, or I can't know what your preferences are.
My starting point here is the content policies. I've been editing Wikipedia for four years, and I have only rarely seen a content dispute that can't be resolved by having all parties stick closely to the core content policies (NPOV, V, NOR, and BLP). What I'm trying to do here is steer people in that direction. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:13, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I see the same problem; you sound like a polite version of me. How is that going to work us toward a solution, when Cantor and crew insist on interpreting those policies with their own spin, and claiming there was consensus for it? As for incivilities, I understand that I come across as pretty gruff when pushing back on "bullshit", but gruff is not incivil, is it? Let me know when you think I'm over or approaching a civility line. Now as to this mediation stuff, I don't see how it can get anywhere useful, but I'm willing to go along and try. It still appears that Cantor wants to silence the only person working to balance the content (that's me), so his stories can prevail. If we could attract some other people to keep an eye on this space, people without a vested interest in that version of the "story", then maybe I could step back; but not now. Dicklyon (talk) 00:01, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
The recent incivility on his part was Dicklyon's calling me dramatic and theatrical and such. Those are words that sterotype both transsexuals (in particular non or pre operative black and hispanic ones) and gay men. He is using mildly homophobic language to dismiss any issue I raise.--Hfarmer (talk) 02:47, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply


In my comment starting this section, I named three issues: the purpose of this mediation, the authority of a mediator to overturn consensus of multiple editors not involved in this dispute, and unaddressed incivility.

SlimVirgin’s response to me ignores the first two, which only leads me to a greater to a lack of faith in what is going on here. Regarding our purpose here, I appreciate that in SlimVirgin’s prior mediations, going through each of the content issues was very successful. To mediate content disputes, I would likely recommend exactly that. However, because SlimVirgin did not address what I said already, I can only repeat it: This mediation is not for the content issues. The content issues is not what we asked for in applying for this mediation, it is not listed on the mediation page, and it is not what we consented to. We came here specifically in order to resolve the COI issues that we were discussing at COI/N.

As for the COI issues themselves, SlimVirgin said she believed that the COI problems had been addressed. I believe that the subsequent comments made here demonstrate rather clearly that that is not at all the case. Rather, they have merely been glossed over in favor of content issues.

Regarding overturning prior consensuses: Again because SlimVirgin did not address my points, I can do little more than to repeat them.

user:DGG: As an admin with no horse in this race, I am curious to have your input about SlimVirgin’s philosophy. Although I am still comparatively new around here, there is something about a mediator freely over-turning consensus in this way that doesn’t feel quite in line with how I have come to understand WP to work. If anything, WP appears to use the opposite of what SlimVirgin said. (Consensus is the only unbreakable rule.)

Finally, with regard to incivilities, I have to say, quite honestly, that I am dismayed that SlimVirgin must ask for examples. I indicated the personal attack here, to which there was no response. I indicated the incivility here, to which there was no response. I asked specifically for input regarding whether I was being oversensitive regarding incivility here and got no response. All of this followed my indicating that vague requests for civility were insufficient here. When a editor who has been called incivil (in varying degrees) by ALL editors involved can still say "Bullshit. You made the edit on Jan. 7" without so much as a passing remark from the mediator, then what we have is not a mediation at all. It’s merely another round of the same content disputes, this time with a new participant.

All the while that the above problems were being entirely ignored, SlimVirgin was becoming increasingly involved in the actual content disputes which, as I said, is not why we are here. The content disputes are serving as a distraction from the actual issues causing problems. That is, even if the each of the content issues are resolved, the problem would remain: As soon as some new source becomes available, we will be back exactly where we started.

I am afraid I must vote “no confidence” to what is going on here.
— James Cantor (talk) 13:52, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

James asked me for my opinion on the present state of this discussion, & I see my name was been mentioned above.
First, with respect to RSs and consensus. I do not think there was consensus oat any RSN discussion, & I know that my own attitude towards RSs has changed somewhat between and after them. I do not think there is a clear distinction between RS and nonRS. I tried to start saying so at the RSN discussions, and every RS question I've worked with here since on various topics has strengthened my position on this considerably. There is no source that is completely reliable, and no source which is completely unusable. A exclusive focus on peer-review as a criterion ignore the actual nature of the process, especially in controversial issues, and also ignores the extremely low quality & reliability of some peer-reviewed work and the extremely high quality & reliability of some that is not. In short, I consider the questioned material of intermediate reliability. It is obvious to me that when there is disputed academic consensus that neither side is fully reliable, for they are unlikely to do justice to each other. This is true even on topics without a direct emotional or personal component. It is all the more so here. As I said there "This calls for special care in selection of quotes; in description of people's position's; in discussing the state of the field and the context. What one says in response to an attack is not necessarily one's considered view. The problem comes when either someone wishes to omit all mention of a POV, by removing whatever sources there may be on it, or alternatively wants to propagandize for it by treating it as expansively as possible, including every conceivable source. NPOV is at heart a matter of fairness and balance. Not Justice. Not Truth." DGG (talk) 15:55, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
With respect to the conduct of the mediation, no person can deal extensively with any issue without becoming involved. In this case, involvement will inevitably be both with the discussions and with the personalities. I have been dismayed by the last day of discussion at the heading "Expert Opinion, now at the bottom of this page. This is a total descent into personalities. I and SV do not always agree, but I certainly expect she will quickly stop that direction. I might or might not do things differently from her--we tend to have a somewhat different style. I do not think she has become unreasonable or over-involved. DGG (talk) 16:10, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

DGG, thanks for your perspective. James, the first issue you listed for us to mediate is NPOV. I think that's what the "content issues" are that you now say we're not supposed to be trying to address; it's all about how to use sources and balance to make the POV neutral instead of one-sided. The COI issue wasn't something you asked to address; I added that on, as I thought it was the underlying problem or difficulty in achieving NPOV. I think this mediation has been about clarifying our positions, pretty much, and to the extent that the mediator has expressed a bit of opinion that would support my attempt to achieve balance, you are of course upset. I'm surprised, too, a bit, but then I don't see what else she can do; a more experienced mediator might has avoided expressing that, but I still don't see that we would get anywhere. And she could have told me to use sweeter language when expressing my disgust for your tactics; maybe that would have balanced things out a bit; anyway, I have no idea how this is going to be useful other than that we've all made our positions very clear. Dicklyon (talk) 16:26, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

James, I'm sorry you have lost faith in what's going on here, but I ask you to bear with it nevertheless. This is my first mediation, and it seems to be quite a complex one, requiring a lot of reading, and with strong feelings on both sides. I welcome any suggestions you have for moving forward constructively.
Regarding the issue of overturning consensus — first, I'm definitely not trying to do that. I'm trying to find a consensus here, among the involved parties, and to do that, we may have to ignore whatever has been decided elsewhere. However, I also have to say that editors agreeing with you on the RS noticeboard doesn't necessarily add up to something actionable. If we stick closely to the content policies, the issue will almost certainly be resolved. Perhaps you could let me know whether you're talking about the Moser quotation, or some other issue.
As for incivility, I've asked Dick to tone things down. What else would you like me to do? Bear in mind that this is mediation, not arbitration. We're supposed to focus on how we can fix things, not on applying sanctions.
Finally, the request for mediation included, as well as COI, looking at neutrality, original research, and the difference between a scientific debate and a debate about scientific research. These are all content issues, so I would like us to start focusing on content issues, and less on personalities.
Could you say which COI issues are outstanding, in your view? Jokestress has agreed not to edit the articles. You've been asked not to by two editors, though I don't yet know whether you've agreed (if you've posted about this in another section, my apologies). Is there anything else? You keep bringing up COI as though I'm missing something, but without telling me what. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:45, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I have to second James's vote of no confidence. I have had to restate things I said two or three times. I had a reservation about this mediator's mediation experience. But I thought well let's give her a chance. Everyone needs a chance. She has had her chance, and IMHO largely failed. Though SlimVirgin is clearly a very experienced wikipedian, she needs more practice mediating, perhaps with a simpler case? I have wrote to the MedCom requesting a new mediator.
Specifically I feel that I have been ignored. I wrote a very long passage, it was removed to a subpage and basically forgotten. I have since had to retype basically the same arguemetns again. I know it was very long, but this is very complex and justifies the length. The next thing I know I am having to explain the philosophy of science to her. She tried to negotiate about weather or not what a reliable source says they observed can be treated as a fact (the fact being that they observed it.) I am open to negotiating about how the facts are presented. (i.e. sexological study indicates two types of transsexual, sociologist find no sociological difference... or some such.)
I also feel it has been the case here that one side accuses, while the other side responds with evidence to the contray just to be accused again anyway. It is as if all of the benefit of the doubt has been given to Jokestress and Dicklyon. Dick get's to swear yet if I used his name under some circumstance he can get me banned to hell with that. Jokestress get's to express her unbridled rage at the fact that I will not tsao tao to the great Andrea James.
I pledged at the outset that if it looked like I was going to get steamrolled in the name of reaching an agreement. i.e. tagged as COI'd even though I have NO wordly interest in what is here on wikipedia. Or barred from editing just to get the deal done. Or even more gernally ignored, I would drop out. If some change does not come soon, I'm done with this.
I am taking a wikibreak of indeterminate length.--Hfarmer (talk) 17:31, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Process Suggestion

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How about we raise and settle each issue. COI, OR, V, then content. In whatever order. But only one thing at a time. I also have a comment. I understand that we are here to compromise... But I don't think that the facts are subject to negotiation. How we choose to present those facts is.--Hfarmer (talk) 03:01, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Expert opinion

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Latest comment: 15 years ago10 comments4 people in discussion

One of the issues I'm seeing here is that "expert" is being so narrowly defined that it ends up excluding important and relevant opinion. For example, Charles Moser's comments are to be excluded because he is not an expert on academic freedom. Well, who is?

The term "expert" should be broadly interpreted, unless the area in question is so specialized that even someone within the same broader field could not be expected to understand it. That doesn't apply here. Moser is a distinguished sexologist, who is commenting on a work of sexology and the impact that work did or didn't have on its writer.

His comment that "the allegations are mostly true" shouldn't be used because of BLP. But the rest of the quote can be used.

The question is whether you would want to use it, because articles shouldn't be lists of quotes, or lists of citations to who did or didn't like something — which is what The Man Who Would Be Queen amounts to in parts. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:02, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

As noted above, that would exclude peer commentaries by Riki Lane (who is a tutor at LaTrobe University) and Nick Clarkson (who is a grad student in gender studies at Indiana University), but I believe everyone else has published on their area of expertise previously. I would argue that they are experts by dint of their continuing studies, but I am willing to concede those two if there's no evidence they have published on these topics. Jokestress (talk) 20:44, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Who is an expert on academic freedom? Oh, maybe the people who wrote the reliable sources in our articles Academic freedom and Scientific freedom and Academic tenure? Maybe attorneys who regularly publish about Freedom of speech? Maybe some of the authors that wrote the 10,000+ books that searching Amazon.com on the quoted phrase "academic freedom" turns up? Maybe the sources that Proud listed at the TMWWBQ subpage yesterday, who are actually publishing about academic freedom and use this case as an example of challenges (instead of, like Dreger, writing about this scandal and mentioning academic freedom as an example of the problems in this situation)?
There is no shortage of high-quality sources. We don't have to rely on commentaries by people who have no claim to being an expert on liberty. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:18, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
There's no need to sound so angry and sarcastic in your responses. Moser's experience is not only as a physician and sexologist, but also as someone who says he has experienced similar attacks for his own work. I think that makes his opinions about alleged chilling effects (or lack thereof) pretty relevant. Jokestress (talk) 21:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
None of the people you mention are being used as sources in this article, What. My point was that Bailey and Dreger have been allowed as sources on academic freedom, though neither are experts on it, yet Moser's opinion is being opposed on the grounds that he's not an expert on it either. Can you explain why you're willing to have Bailey and Dreger comment on that issue, but not Moser? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:20, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Bailey's quote was published in a newspaper article, which means that it is not self-published under Wikipedia's rules.
  • Dreger's quote was published in a newspaper article, which means that it is not self-published under Wikipedia's rules.
  • Dreger's paper was peer-reviewed, which means that it is not self-published under Wikipedia's rules.
The section on academic freedom, until Dicklyon expanded it, was sourced entirely to non-self-published sources. Non-self-published sources do not have to be written by experts under Wikipedia's rules. Self-published sources do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:54, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Madeline Wyndzen

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I wrote to the Archives of Sexual Behavior to ask if they could confirm that Wyndzen is an expert in the area, but they're unable to shed any light on it, so that would rule her out as a reliable source, unless there's an actual article written by her somewhere. It also indicates that those who are calling these commentaries effectively self-published may have a point, as the journal appears not to have checked who the contributors were. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 06:42, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Exactly I could have wrote a commentary, you could have wrote a commentary. I wrote an email offering to comment and giving an overview of what I would say. But I had no reply. It seems that if I actually had sent a commentary in they would have published it. (I would have been critical of both sides by the way.) I wonder if Jokestress would be as keen to use mine as she has been to use these?--Hfarmer (talk) 16:02, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I would have no problem citing your commentary, but since you have never published anything academic in a journal, you would not be a reliable source under the current proposed minimum standards. Jokestress (talk) 17:31, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
My question really is. Would you have tried to argue that that would not matter the way you did. Say pointing out my level of first hand knowledge.--Hfarmer (talk) 22:37, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

COI again

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Latest comment: 15 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Jokestress, Dicklyon, and James Cantor have self-identified and have declared their relationship to the principals (or as a principal, in Jokestress's case). If any of the other editors are also involved in real life (even arguably involved), please either declare who you are publicly, or e-mail me in confidence — you needn't give me your name, but I'd appreciate a rough description of your involvement. Whether you count as involved would boil down to whether a reasonable person might say you have a COI.

If you'd prefer to do neither, it would be appreciated if you'd stop editing the articles in question, and remove yourself from this mediation. It would be unfair to the editors who've identified themselves if there are others with similar involvement who haven't. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:10, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

You asked above about any remaining COI issues. I would appreciate any updates on the involvement of these two editors as they become available. Jokestress (talk) 21:44, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I have described my relationship to people involved in this a few times. I'll do it again. I have met, just by happen stance a number of people involved in this story. I met Bailey a few times way back when before he published his book. I last met the one known to us as JSM at a TG/TS community function, she lives an easy 5-10 minute drive away from where I live. I have met others Chicagoans who are involved in this controversy. All of us are part of or have spent time in the relatively small community of transgendered folks. (The average prevalance of TG/TS folks per live birth reported in various sources is about 1/2500. Not a whole lot of people.) It's like just happeing to live in the same small town. I quipped above that it's not like me and JSM are going shoe shopping tomorrow, and then I'll go bowling with Bailey next week. I am not "friends" with these people. We are at most, friendly acquanintances, and fellow Chicagoans. That's all. If what I write here is effected by that at all....it is in this way. I am concious of the possibility that if I write something sufficiently outrageous here I could get a knock at the door. I am also very careful to make sure that the writing here is as respectful of all involved. (i.e. I have objected to JSM being chracterized as " a prostitute". I have objected to the sex she says she had with Bailey being called "explotation". One is clearly ment to disparage her, the other disparages Bailey and as collateral damage makes her sound like a child, or child like person. Basically I know from first hand experience no one involved with this is an angel, or a devil.)--Hfarmer (talk) 00:27, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Dispute resolution

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Latest comment: 15 years ago28 comments6 people in discussion

There are two key issues here that I can see. The first is COI. As part of that, Jokestress agreed not to edit the articles in question, but to remain on the talk pages, because she's a principal in the real-life dispute.

No one else has a COI that I'm aware of, although James and Dick are asked to make extra efforts to be neutral because they're acquainted with two of the principals.

The second issue is the actual content of the articles, and the sources that are used. I opened a subpage to start talking about content issues at Talk:The Man Who Would Be Queen/mediation, but it's attracting less attention than this page is, which suggests there are still meta issues that people feel are unresolved.

What are the unresolved meta issues, in brief?

1. Are there COI issues (that we know of) still to be resolved? James, you raised the issue above, but you've not been specific.

2. A couple of you have mentioned confusion over the meaning of the SPS section of WP:V, but again, without being specific. Can you please say what is unclear, or what is causing confusion here, about the SPS rules?

Finally, there has to be compromise for dispute resolution to work. If there are clear factual issues, then of course you can't agree to compromise: you can't agree to 2 + 2 = 3 as a compromise. But where there are simply issues of opinion, or whether to include this or that quote, there does have to be some shifting of positions on both sides. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:31, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

James Cantor is way more than acquainted; he wrote the review that promoted Bailey's controversial book as "science"; he's been attacked for that by Lynn Conway and by Andrea James on their web sites; he works with Blanchard and writes articles that promote Blanchard's nonsense "theory". He's pretty involved, in and out of WP, in ways that are a big problem for us. Dicklyon (talk) 23:50, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
James indicated that he might stop editing the articles because people perceive him as having a COI. James, are you still willing to do that? Does anyone else feel that James has a COI? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 00:01, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Cerejota stated in his opening statement that he felt James Cantor was the only editor with a COI. I feel James Cantor is the most COI editor in this debate, including me. I interpret COI pretty broadly, though. By the standard of "when advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia," I believe COIs exist for the following stakeholders:
  • James Cantor: every edit to sexology and transgender topics that promotes the work and views of his colleagues and denigrates critics. He epitomizes conflict of interest to me.
  • Hfarmer: edits involving this transgender taxonomy because of self-identity and WP:OWN.
  • WhatamIdoing (?): edits involving this debate because of outside interests regarding academic freedom and undisclosed ties.
  • ProudAGP (?): edits involving this debate because of strong views and undisclosed ties to J. Michael Bailey.
The last two have question marks because their level of COI cannot be determined due to their anonymity. ProudAGP certainly has a COI by the definition above. WhatamIdoing is more like DarlieB, but more conversant in WP policies. DarlieB and Dicklyon have other primary policy issues besides COI, though I believe a case can be made that they too have COI based on the definition above. I have stated my COI from the onset and have identified myself by name on Wikipedia since 2004. I have taken pains to edit within policy on topics where I have expertise and have restricted the vast majority of my contributions on these topics to talk pages. However, I don't want these editors' frequently POV edits and sophisticated canvassing to go unchallenged. To be honest, I'd rather be creating missing biographies, but it reaches a point on these articles where I can't abide the misinformation and raise issues on the talk pages. Jokestress (talk) 00:41, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I object to the way you've (mis)represented my situation: I have no undisclosed ties. I have accurately disclosed that I have no ties to any person, place, or thing involved in this scandal.
I do admit to having a very favorable view of scientific freedom.
Cerejota's assertion of James Cantor's COI appears to be based on:
  • a misunderstanding of Cantor's specialty (that Cantor's work was primarily with transsexuality [which it's not])
  • a misunderstanding of Cantor's employment (that he would get paid more if the idea were more famous [which he won't]),
  • a misunderstanding of the COI policy (which explicitly permits experts to edit in their professional area), and also
  • a misunderstanding about your professional work (since, for example, Deep Stealth, Inc. gets paid [although not much] for public speaking engagements about transsexuality).
I think that Cerejota started that thinking that it was a simple matter of opposing a "paid Bailey supporter" against "strictly volunteer" critics, and may have been disconcerted to discover that following the money takes us in the opposite direction. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:27, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Objection noted, but I am rather certain your POV is directly related to your current employment. But then I guess that's to remain a mystery. I view your edits here with the same skepticism I had for those of WriteMakesRight and MarionTheLibrarian before those ties were disclosed, and with the same skepticism I have for ProudAGP, whose undisclosed ties are even more obvious and problematic. I continue to find it interesting that you rail against a psychologist for using a pseudonym while using one yourself. Your reasons for using one are your own, but I imagine you'd be a better editor in terms of content and behavior if we imposed Citizendium-style vetting of editors and you had to own up to your edits IRL. It would certainly make COI matters easier to resolve.
As far as Cerejota, I think you should let him state his own opinion. Jokestress (talk) 02:47, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I have my reasons. As I'm a strictly non-notable person, it wouldn't actually do you any good to know my name anyway. You'll just have to trust me when I say that my professional area has nothing to do with sexology or anything otherwise related to these articles. Cantor may enjoy being a round-the-clock expert, but I refuse to even watchlist articles that are connected with my professional interests. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:45, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Oh, and I don't rail against Wyndzen for using a pseudonym; I only say that Wikipedia's policies won't let us use Wyndzen's self-published materials because we are unable to find proof of relevant expertise. The same would be true if we had a true name and no publications; it would not be true if we knew it was a pseudonym but could find several relevant publications under that name. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:49, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Saying that I have WP:OWN issues is just your opinion. As for my self identity I dont see how that is relevant. I have added well sourced criticisms to the articles I have edited from word one. I have no personal or business relationships that impair my impartiality. Nor am I a principal party to any of this. I will never agree that I have a COI I have never ever done anything but neutrally edit, sometimes agreeing with jokestress sometimes agreeing with James Cantor, usually not agreeing with either of them exactly. In fact it is Jokestress's entrenched POV which makes her see anyone who does not agree 100% with whatver she says as being against her, and biased etc. She is so far to one side that neutral looks biased.--Hfarmer (talk) 02:29, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I think it's nutty to think that one's conflicting interest needs to be about money. Cantor is obviously in the same professional click as Blanchard, Bailey, Zucker, Lawrence, and such, and pushes their agenda in conflict with wikipedia goals. WhatamIdoing is clearly so motivated by revenge against Andrea James that she will always take the other side of the arguments and distort the sources to her will, in conflict with wikipedia goals. ProudAGP does the same, but it's harder to point out exactly what her interest is; most likely she is one of the principals, or very close to one. Jokestress has an interest on the other side, but at least she admits and avoids editing where it would be problematic, something Cantor says he does, but obviosly in light of the feminine essence hack that's not true. These people are mostly single-purpose sexology POV pushers (OK, WhatamIdoing is a lot broader than that). I think I'm the most neutral person here, and most broadly contributing wikipedia editor, with over 30,000 edits on thousands of articles. Sure, I've been in a few fights along the way, as has SlimVirgin in her years of very active editing; it comes with the territory. But I can't just sit back and let these people "own" this area with their strongly biased POV. That's my interest, and I don't think it conflicts with wikipedia's. All I ask is to have both sides fairly presented. How these people can with a straight face continue to seek the exclusion of sources published in the same journal as their side continues to boggle my mind. Dicklyon (talk) 04:15, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
You neutral... :-? Welll let me put it this way, when it comes directly to Lynn Conway's article or on TMWWBQ not really neutral at all. But on the other articles you are relatively neutral. As for being a prolific contributor, I haven't kept count but when I am not editing on this topic I know, I spend my time on WP busting obvious vandalism and rolling it back. I also work from time to time on peer reviews and assessment of other articles. I have never acted like I own any article, i.e. saying that I must aprrove other peoples edits first, or reverting those edits back to my version and what not. I have never ever done that and you can't find a diff that shows that I have. --Hfarmer (talk) 04:46, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
With respect to neutrality, I should point out that what I've done and argued for on those articles is all about representing both sides of the story, not about taking one side over the other; I have not argued that Conway was right or blameless; only that there are two points of view and that representing only one of them violates WP:BLP. In doing so I have sometimes simply removed unfair one-sided stuff, and sometimes added the other side; both approaches were fought back ferociously. If you disagree, point out a diff where I actually take sides. Dicklyon (talk) 06:12, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
If you care, see Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/latest. In order, I think we are SlimVirgin, DGG, dicklyon, WhatamIdoing, Jokestress, and the rest who don't make the list. Looking at WhatamIdoing's edits, I see sort of what Jokestress means; she's clearly into medical/drug testing/regulatory stuff; lots of government info, ongoing drug tests, etc.; I think she said she's in Silicon Valle though, which means probably a high-tech drug company as opposed to a regulatory agency. It might be interesting to know, but I don't see a reason to suspect that her editing interest in the sexology stuff is tied to her job. Dicklyon (talk) 04:54, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
If this were actually a contest to see who edits the most pages, then I win: I've edited more than 15,000 unique pages,[25] or about three times anyone else here. But frankly I consider that pretty irrelevant. An editor who only works on a single article can do good work. An editor who works on ten different pages every day can do lousy work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:45, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Wow! How do you edit so many unique pages? I have 3X as many mainspace edits as you, but you have 2X as many uniques. That must mean... Dicklyon (talk) 07:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
It means that I have very tediously assessed more than ten thousand articles for WP:MED's Wikipedia 1.0 project. I'm about 99% done... and not sure when, or whether, I'll manage to do the last 150. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:23, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Never the less Dick. I have no vested interest, or personal relationship which would give me a conflict of interest of any kind. If your relationship with conway and Cantors with Blancahrd don't make COI's then neither would my freindly acquantance with anyone here in Chicago. --Hfarmer (talk) 05:01, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I don't believe I ever said you have a COI; if I did, I apologize and take it back. Oh, I recall now, I did point out that you list J. Michael Bailey as your only humanoid friend on your scientific blogging page; shit happens. Dicklyon (talk) 05:15, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I added him as a friend there so that when people commented on his article there "transsexual smokescreen" I would be notified. That's all that is.--Hfarmer (talk) 05:26, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Here's what happened with WhatamIdoing as I recall. She opens up the New York Times in 2007 and reads Ben Carey's retaliatory piece about the people who criticized his pro-Bailey reporting in 2005. WhatamIdoing is not happy about what she reads and adds a lot of misinformation across numerous Wikipedia articles, based on her misunderstanding of Carey's regurgitation of Dreger's spin. [26] Enter Hfarmer. [27] I have not been editing for a long time, but I come back on to ask WhatamIdoing very nicely to correct a few errors she has introduced into the articles. [28] She makes some snippy comments [29] and refuses to make changes, eventually even hiding away the links above so my mention of her errors are not part of her visible talk archives. People challenge her edits; she pushes back a bit. Enter DickLyon. [30] Enter crypto-Cantor in various guises to stir things up with lots of COI goodness. [31] [32] Enter a now-banned editor, [33] who is immediately replaced by ProudAGP after being banned. [34] Now the fun starts. And here we are.
As a side note, I see my two edits to Lynn Conway were a spelling edit in 2004 [35] and addition of a source 4 years later. [36] Jokestress (talk) 05:50, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the reminders; that four weeks from BarbaraSue being banned to ProudAGP showing up seemed like forever at the time, and I didn't really make the connection, but it does look possible. Anyway, they do seem to be equivalent WP:SPAs. Dicklyon (talk) 06:36, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

I know we are supposed to move forward, but I must correct some factual things. To begin with, I am keenly interested in academic freedom, science, and the opinion of experts. Second, I do not believe, nor have I ever believed that James Cantor is primarily concerned with transsexualism: that's Blanchard's baby. Third, I followed the money, and I am still not convinced that James Cantor's COI is as minimal as is being played: this is not about expert opinion, but about professional interest related to mentorship, academic politics, and academic career advancement. Fourth, do not presume to think for me: if I had been inactive is because I have been innactive in general (as compared to recent times).

In a tangential but good example on academic COI and bias, the other day I was reading (my primary wikipedia activity) on Dwarf planets, basically because one of my heroes, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, is being sounded for NASA Administrator, and I wikitraveled around from his article. Thing is I came upon this: Controversy over the discovery of Haumea. It is obviously skewed towards one side of the controversy, regardless of the merits. And this is non-trivial: introduction of this bias, means that those adquiring pedestrian knowledge on the matter come out with errorneous ideas, that might provide professional advantages to those involved. I have not noticed any obvious COI, but I am watchful - but I did notice COI in "femenine essence" (a similarly biased article - which has serious notability issues itself): James Cantor appears to be defending a disputed, fringe matter, on the basis that it is a strawman set up by his mentor. Helping your mentor in a small way is still helping your mentor. That is THE definition of COI.

On the money flowing the other way: Our task is to report, but not take sides, on the intersection between science and advocacy:

Around here, and I say this as a commited student and advocate of evolution by means of natural selection (aka "Darwinism"), we do have to teach the controversy. Wikipedia is not a classroom, but an NPOV encyclopedia made by amateurs. That's what we are. That might be bad, but thats irrelevant, verifiability, not truth. You can always join Citizendium. Unless there is evidence of an off-wiki cabal organizing to systemically edit the pages on transexuality, what we have is a run-of-the-mill passionate advocates, with no real professional COI except perhaps in their own articles, or those of their publications.--Cerejota (talk) 08:57, 8 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Moving forward

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This is a very entrenched dispute. It has been going on for years, on and off-wiki, with strong feelings on both sides, and neither side budging an inch. But Wikipedia is not a battleground, and the dispute can't continue here. Mediation is the best chance to get the issues resolved once and for all, at least as they relate to Wikipedia.

I'm therefore asking each party to say here which points they're willing to compromise on, or which behavioral changes they're willing to make. Jokestress has agreed not to edit any of the articles related to Bailey, or to make edits about him in any other article. Can the rest of you please say what you are willing to change about your approach, or which issue you're willing to make a concession on, that might help to move us forward? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 21:03, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Hfarmer

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  • I have made compromise proposals on Term VS. Phenomena, and on how the Dreger commentaries can be used. I have proposed that we write specifically about Autogynephilia and homosexual transsexual as both the term used to name them, and the observed phenomena the term refers to. Let's throw the concepts/theories in there as well. On the commentaries we should use them for what the people who wrote them are actually experts on. A socilogist, engineer, bioloogist cannot declare to be fringe a work of sexology. Nor can any of those people make claims about weather or not certain events took place here, only two people really know about that, neither of who wrote commentaries. We should just be careful and very conservative about how we use them. The way DGG says. I will NEVER agree to the idea that I have a COI simply because I live in the same community as Bailey, and the women he wrote about. That's perposterious. Lastly this is my final warning. If these proposals are simply ignored I'm pulling out. I have made the offer's in good faith. Let's all meet in the middle. --Hfarmer (talk) 22:25, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Reply to Dicklyon
You can't even write the above without being hostile. "being POV pushers with COI". You only seem to notice when the POV expressed is not the same as your own.--Hfarmer (talk) 13:33, 7 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I was pointing out what behavior I'd be willing to stop; no hostility to anyone intended; and please notice again that you are not among those that I believe has a COI issue. Dicklyon (talk) 06:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Jokestress

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I am willing to compromise on a number of things, including:
  • Voluntarily agreeing not to edit as discussed above.
  • Calling the peer commentaries "self-published sources."
  • Not using the peer commentary by Nick Clarkson at this time as a "non-expert."
  • Not using the peer commentary by Riki Lane at this time as a "non-expert."
  • Not using the peer commentary by Madeline Wyndzen at this time because of the pseudonym.
  • Not using the "basically true" comment by Charles Moser. Moser clearly qualifies as an expert, though.
  • Keeping edits and comments civil and strictly within WP:BLP.
These are off the top of my head, and there are certainly others I would consider. Jokestress (talk) 22:31, 6 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Dicklyon

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I can stop criticizing people for being POV pushers with COI if they'll allow both sides of issues to be fairly represented. And I can be more polite in my comments; I'll do that for sure. Dicklyon (talk) 06:36, 7 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Incivility and personal attacks.

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Latest comment: 15 years ago5 comments1 person in discussion
  • From Jokestress: "This debate on Wikipedia is merely an extension of systemic attempts by Cantor et al. to suppress opposing academic views while asserting their own 'academic freedom.'"[37] Such attacks are counterproductive to resolving content disputes. — James Cantor (talk) 18:07, 8 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • From Jokestress: "I don't think Cantor should be trying to suppress the work of his adversaries in the area of paraphilia on Wikipedia."[38] Policy is to address the content, not the editor. Generic accusations without diffs are more counterproductive still. — James Cantor (talk) 18:17, 8 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
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