Wikipedia:AMA Requests for Assistance/Requests/January 2007/Rsue

Case Filed On: 02:14, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedian filing request:

• Rsue (talk · contribs)

Other Wikipedians this pertains to:

• amber_luxor (talk · contribs)

and other editors who use only IP addresses.

Wikipedia pages this pertains to:

• Mary Kay (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Questions:

Have you read the AMA FAQ?

• Answer:yes

How would you describe the nature of this dispute? (policy violation, content dispute, personal attack, other)

• Answer: content dispute, personal attack, continual editing and no discussion

What methods of Dispute Resolution have you tried so far? If you can, please provide wikilinks so that the Advocate looking over this case can see what you have done.

• Answer:discussion on Discussion page which is ignored.

What do you expect to get from Advocacy?

• Answer: some type of supervision, possibly banning of inappropriate editors

Discussion:

• Have requested that advocee give a short summary of the events. -Royalguard11(Talk·Desk·Review Me!) 20:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Just a note - the AMA advocates cannot (and will not) block users, but can try to amicably resolve disputes, perhaps bringing bad behavior of editors to the attention of the community, which may decide to ban Martinp23 17:43, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Ok, I did get a summary here, but it doesn't appear to be anything that the AMA can help with, just seems like your everyday wiki-battling. We need a certain issue to tackle, not play wiki-super-heros. -Royalguard11(Talk·Desk·Review Me!) 00:56, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Not sure where to put this, so I am adding it here.

Requests:

1. Archive the talk page for the Mary Kay article. (I'd do it if I knew how to correctly do it.). The only things that should be on the "new" talk page are "Please Sign your Posts" and "Wikipedia rules". Comments there have been randomly deleted by people who did not write them. I'd like some resemblance of preserving what was discussed;
2. Implement a "No External Links" policy. To wit: There should not be a section labelled "External Links". Statements within the article should be referenced. The list of references can serve as an external link list. This was a compromise made on the talk page. A discussion that has been lost due to deletion of comments in the talk page.

Issue Summary

The major "groups" of people editing the article are:

1. The pro-Mary Kay faction;
2. The "reform Mary Kay" faction;
3. The "shut down Mary Kay" faction;

Each of these factions edits material to support their position, or,more commonly, deletes material that does not support their position. (For example, BlueAmy's deletion the 'controversy" section, or 4.246.201.148's effort to rewrite the article as an anti-MK recruiting pamphlet.)

The "reform Mary Kay" and "shut down Mary Kay" factions will run afoul of:

1. Wikipedia:Neutral point of view
2. Wikipedia:No original research
3. Wikipedia:Verifiability
4. Wikipedia:Reliable sources

Ignore All Rules is their defence.

Original Research:

The "Mary Kay Sales Figure" table probably constitutes "original research". It was created as support for the statement that "front loading is encouraged". The "Markets Mary Kay is in" table is something else that appears to be "original research". Most (?all) of the other material that might be "original research" has been deleted from the current ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mary_Kay&oldid=110545251 ) version.

Sources

Most, if not all of the anti-MK links will be to blogs, mailing lists, and similar sources. This is due to two major factors:

1. In the last fifteen years that the "do it fast" mantra" has exploded. With this has come a shift from retail sales, to recruiting.
2. Only in the last two or three years, have people who suffered financial (and emotional) damage from Mary Kay found each other on the Internet. What they have are "I Stories", which don't make for verifiable sources. [Last year, one of the anti-MK sites had a chart that implied that its members had returned over $1,000,000 of product to MK. It made no attempt to verify that product returns had been made, nor that product returns were only listed once.]

Several people have stated that they will be writing books about their experience in Mary Kay. Whether or not those books will be verifiable sources, will have to be decided in the future.

"Blackmon v Mary Kay" is a verifiable source. We just have to wait for that court trial to migrate through the different court systems.

RSue's specific issues

For the record, I'll point out that here that these specific issues were addressed on the talk page. For various reasons, RSue was not happy with the responses.

a) The statement that Mary Kay is a pyramid scheme. This is stated as a factual statement. No discussion of this on the talk page, no sources. Where is the proof that Mary Kay IS a pyramid scheme?

The current article simply states "One of the criticisms of Mary Kay is that it is a product based pyramid scheme. This criticism is based upon the pressure to purchase more inventory than one can expect to sell within a reasonable period of time."

Neither the article, nor the talk page defines "product based pyramid scheme". On the talk page at least two different reasons why Mary Kay is pyramid scheme are provided.

From the Talk Page: In re Kescott International 86 F.T.C. 1106) the ruling was the MLMs were not legal. In Re Amway (93 F.T.C. 618) the court essentially said that if you follow these guidelines, you are not a pyramid scheme. In Webster v. Omnitrition, 79F.3d 776, 782, 784 (9th Cir, 1996) the court ruled that having a set of rules is not enough. The rules must also be enforced. Since then, the FTC has broadened its definition of what is unacceptable. One point that they have made very clear is that adherence to "The Amway Safe Harbour Rules" does not suffice. Since 1996, their strategy has been more along the lines of filing the take down order, then going to court.

b) The statement of directors losing their units due to serving in the military and being out of the US for 90 days. There is no source for this at all:

The source of the clause is the Director's Agreement. What is not referenced in the article is the names of the individual's who have been affected by it. Perhaps a sentence saying "Individuals thus affected have no legal recourse" should be included, though the reference to USERRA should make that point clear.

Amber luxor 15:03, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Followup:

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• Answer:

AMA Information

Case Status: open

Advocate Status:

• Cocoaguy 従って _contribs^talk Get Lost 15:30, 3 February 2007 (UTC)