Wikipedia:AMA Requests for Assistance/Requests/October 2006/shotwell

Wikipedian filing request:

• shotwell (talk · contribs)

Other Wikipedians this pertains to:

• AWeidman (talk · contribs)
• DPeterson (talk · contribs)
• JohnsonRon (talk · contribs)
• MarkWood (talk · contribs)
• RalphLender (talk · contribs)
• JonesRD (talk · contribs)
• SamDavidson (talk · contribs)

Wikipedia pages this pertains to:

• Advocates for Children in Therapy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Candace Newmaker (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: There are three distinct content issues in this dispute. This dispute is also hinting at being personal given the sock-puppet allegations I've made, the various vandalism warnings put on my talk page when I make good-faith edits, and so on.

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: I have discussed these things extensively on the talk pages. I've made two rfc's concerning the ACT and DDP disputes. I made a medcab request and also brought some of the issues to the attention of the Psychology Project and Medicine project.

What do you expect to get from Advocacy?

• Answer: My most optimistic desire is that an experienced and neutral advocate rationally explains to me why I'm wrong about the WP:V issues. If this is not possible, I am interested in figuring out how to proceed. The discussions on talk-pages are completely dead-locked and the medcab mediator seems to side against my position regarding Advocates for Children in Therapy (ACT) without giving any rationale (the mediator stated this is his/her first case and I'm willing to deal with any mistakes made along the way; everyone has to start somewhere). I would very strongly prefer that these content disputes don't go beyond medcab because they are simple WP:V issues.

Summary:

I will list each of the disputes and give a brief summary below.

1. On the ACT article, I believe there is one claim that is not supported by the six inline citations it has been given. This claim reads vaguely like "Major professional organizations are not associated with ACT, but they are associated with other groups". Firstly, I find that this is irrelevant and simply discredits ACT. Secondly, the inline citations simply link to places like the APA's website. Those on the other side of the dispute have said that this counts as a source because "if you click around on those websites, you'll see it is true". I don't believe this qualifies as a reference. The other issue is that one claim purports to reflect ACT's definition of Attachment therapy by using a quote from an essay by the organization. In that essay, the quote is found under the heading "What Attachment Therapy is Like". Later in the essay, ACT gives their actual definition of Attachment therapy. This particular issue could be easily solved by changing the word "defines" to "describes". There are various other problems with the article that I'm willing to ignore.
2. In Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), I do not believe that claims concerning efficacy, evidential basis, and compliance with therapeutic guidelines are warranted. This is despite the fact that a peer-review study has concluded these things. My reasoning is based on the fact that a single study does not reflect wide scientific consensus. The others claim that these claims are referenced by more than the single study, and I claim that the other references do not satisfy WP:RS or are not relevant to the specific claims. My view is strongly supported by something that has been recently published by a highly credible organization. (It explicitly says, "this therapy cannot be labelled as evidence based" and vaguely says "we cannot be sure if the therapy is non-coercive"). This dispute extends into many other places, as the people listed above have inserted claims about DDP into a wide array of articles. DDP is a very obscure form of therapy that is practiced and taught at exactly one (non-notable) clinic. At least one of the people above is associated with this clinic.
3. On Candace Newmaker there are various disputes. I believe that we're making uneasy progress on this article and slowly starting to work together. This article is an easy place to agree because it documents a case that was widely covered by major media outlets; there was even a book written on the subject. Unfortunately, it appears that some of the progress we've made is starting to unravel.
4. I strongly suspect that these users are sock or meat puppets of AWeidman. I made a rather detailed sock-puppet report. The recommendation was that I bring it to WP:RFCU and the RFCU was declined without further comment. I trust the decisions made by people who have checkuser abilities and I wouldn't dispute their actions. I would like to know why it was declined because the answer may quell my suspicions. These allegations go both ways, as it would also appear that I'm being subtly accused of being User:Sarner's sock or meat puppet. (The mediator refers to me as Sarner, for example, and thus far has made no correction when I point out that I'm not Sarner).
5. If I make a controversial edit, it is instantly reverted. It has been the case that they give me a vandalism warning following the edits. In fact, nearly everything I do is labelled as vandalism. It appears that they would like for me to explicitly list every change I propose and then have a straw poll to determine whether or not the edits should go into the article. They even have polls about whether or not the placement of a dispute template can stay on the DDP article. On that article, the only lasting changes I've made were slight wikification edits that greatly improved the article's readability. I've never encountered anything like this. As completely ridiculous as it sounds, I feel as if the articles are being held hostage.

Discussion:

• I am currently acting as advocate for RalphLender on the other side of this, and David.Mestel has previously acted as an advocate for User:AWeidman. I think it's a great idea for Shotwell to get an advocate too, and appreciate his desire to resolve these disputes. I recommend that an experienced advocate take Shotwell's advocacy -- this dispute has a long and tangled history, and maybe if we work from both sides, we can untangle it. TheronJ 16:36, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
• There is a mediator working on the related disputes involving the Bowlby, Candace Newmaker, Advocates for Children in Therapy, and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy articles. The disputes began with User:Sarner, who is a leader of Advocates for Children in Therapy and at least one of his colleagues. It currently involveds primarily User:Shotwell and on occassion User:StokerAce who is from the same area as Sarner. There are a large number of other editors who disagree with Shotwell (five or six) and he has been reluctant to accept their input. He has made some comments that suggest he, like Sarner, believes all the others are merely sockpuppets of Dr. Bekcer-Weidman and has, at times, represented a clear POV similiar to that of the Advocates for Children in Therapy and Sarner. DPeterson^talk 03:12, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
• I believe the case is now closed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2006-10-07_Advocates_for_Children_in_Therapy DPeterson^talk 12:36, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I closed it myself, hopefully that is ok. shotwell 22:03, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Followup:

When the case is finished, please take a minute to fill out the following survey:

Did you find the Advocacy process useful?

• Answer: Very useful.

Did your Advocate handle your case in an appropriate manner?

• Answer: Yes. He was incredibly helpful, reasonable, and appropriate. He didn't just arbitrarily support me as if he were a lawyer; I appreciated this very much. Wonderful advocate.

On a scale of 1 (worst) to 5 (best), how polite was your Advocate?

• Answer: 5

On a scale of 1 to 5, how effective do you feel your Advocate was in solving the problem?

• Answer: 5

On a scale of 1 to 5, how effective do you feel the Advocacy process is altogether?

• Answer: 5

If there were one thing that you would like to see different in the Advocacy process, what would it be?

• Answer: Nothing. All of the other advocates involved were equally helpful.

If you were to deal with this dispute again, what would you do differently, if anything?

• Answer: I wouldn't have filed the sock-puppet allegation or RFCU.

AMA Information

Case Status: closed

Advocate Status:

• I'll give it a shot. What's up Shotwell?--Amerique ^dialectics 05:03, 4 November 2006 (UTC)