Talk:Crisis negotiation

Behavioral Change Stairway Model

Hey there, Tuntable! Thanks so much for contributing. I saw that you included a section on 'how to' negotiate under a certain method, and thought it might be better as a sentence under Techniques (now History) per WP:not an instruction manual.

If you get a chance, I've been hoping someone will scare up a citation for the three bullet points in the intro, or else rephrase them to be simpler. FekketCantenel (talk) 23:09, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I think it is fairly obvious that an article on Crisis Negotiation should document the types of techniques used. I am not wedded to the stairway model, and there may be others more worthy of description. But deleting it without comment is not appropriate.Tuntable (talk) 02:05, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

From Wikipedia's policy page on 'What Wikipedia is not':

Instruction manuals. While Wikipedia has descriptions of people, places and things, an article should not read like a "how-to" style owner's manual, advice column (legal, medical or otherwise) or suggestion box. This includes tutorials, instruction manuals, game guides, and recipes. Describing to the reader how people or things use or do something is encyclopedic; instructing the reader in the imperative mood about how to use or do something is not. Such guides may be welcome at Wikibooks instead.

You're correct that the page should list notable techniques, but it need not describe them in detail, and it especially need not provide instruction on how to use them. If someone wants to learn what a car is, they come to Wikipedia; if they want to learn even the basics of how to drive one, they go to more specialized sources. FekketCantenel (talk) 02:14, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Also, I don't appreciate your implication that I deleted the section 'without comment'. I explained the edit above, minutes after making it. FekketCantenel (talk) 02:29, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Whoops, forgot to mention: Since I've outlined Wikipedia policy above and demonstrated that this content does not belong in the article, I'm reverting to the version in which this technique is listed, with citations, in a manner that matches the tone of the article and of Wikipedia in general.

If you still think the full section should be included despite this clear policy, we can discuss the fact that it's a barely-rephrased version of copyrighted content from the first cited article. In fact, now that I look closer, the first citation is to a click-baity article on Time.com, while the second citation is to a for-profit website with content redundant to the first citation. How about we instead include a citation to the earliest notable paper I can find on the Stairway Model? (If you can find a more appropriate mirror hosting this paper for free, please insert it!). FekketCantenel (talk) 03:03, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Good news: There were already issues with the article when you found it. Rather than add a clean-up banner, I've edited down cruft that can be found immediately on the cited pages, so that the page provides a more useful summary for a layperson. There remains an issue with missing citations in the History section, if you'd still like to apply some elbow grease to the article. FekketCantenel (talk) 03:25, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

So, I have reworded it not to include any hint of instruction manual. Do-it-yourself hostage negotiation had not occurred to me to be an interpretation any more than an article on the brain being a do-it-yourself-brain-surgery instruction. But otherwise a basic summary of what this model is obviously relevant.

Your reference is obviously much better than the one that I had found and is also consistent. It would be great if you could us it to improve the base article, I have just taken the stairway model. Tuntable (talk) 03:21, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

P.S. The Vecchie article you found is actually quite good, and a summary would be good in this page. (That, by the way, is what Wikipedia does, take information from various sources and present it in a coherent form.) I might even make time to do that but not if you are just going to revert any changes. Tuntable (talk) 03:30, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm happy to compromise at this point, since the new section is less instructional and more exemplary.

However, I wish you wouldn't mix compliments with sarcasm :( It's not necessary. I'm sorry that life on the internet has made you feel like you need to do that, and if anything I said above inadvertently contributed to it. FekketCantenel (talk) 03:45, 1 March 2015 (UTC)