Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Income Inequality in the United States

Income Inequality in the United States edit

Editors involved in this dispute

Tolinjr (talk · contribs) – filing party
Mark Miller (talk · contribs)
EllenCT (talk · contribs)
Mattnad (talk · contribs)
C.J._Griffin (talk · contribs)

Articles affected by this dispute

Income inequality in the United States (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Other attempts at resolving this dispute that you have attempted

[[1]]

Issues to be mediated edit

Primary issues (added by the filing party)

Income Inequality article is factually incorrect and /or purposefully misleading in several areas. Attempting to clarify five specific points of fact ... and one brief discussion relating to economic (capitalist) vs political (socialist) causes of income inequality with a criticism section.
Criticism section was deleted and moved to talk area for having "undue weight". However, original article is massive at nearly 15,000 words. Criticism section would only represent 10 percent of article (this would make it very similar to Criticism of 'Capitalism' article ... although 'Criticism of Capitalism' also has its own article, in addition to its own separate section within main 'Capitalism' article).
Criticism section also censured by editors for not having reliable sources, although 10 of the 17 seventeen sources were the same sources already listed in the primary article. The remaining seven sources are direct research from University of Chicago, Stanford, Brookings Institution, Federal Reserve, etc.
Recommendations were made to break some of the sections down and insert one or two sentences into the primary article. I contend that in an article this massive, separate one-line criticisms can be relegated to obscurity and are easily swamped with counter-journalistic POV, and subject to easy dilution or elimination by subsequent editorship.
The entire primary article is littered with political POV and conjecture ... literally dozens of blogs, and non-relevant sources such as Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, etc. Yet the criticism section seems to be held to a more difficult standard.
There are a handful of one or two sentence comments with opposing viewpoints currently in the article (re: Executive and labor pay, Globalization, and a quote from Paul Ryan, perhaps one or two more) wherein a comment is couched (or buried) within a particular heading and then it is destroyed in subsequent paragraphs of argument. These 'sacrificial lambs' were hand-selected by the people writing the original article for the purpose of making a counter-point in support of their own argument. Classic "straw man" argumentation.
The main article is being policed by leftist editors and any modifications critical of the article are summarily pulled off the article.
Another editor (Mattnad) supports rationale for "a contained and cogent section" within the article.
Issue was extensively, and eventually 'heatedly', discussed online (please read thread) with no result.
In sum, the primary article, as it stands now, is heavily-skewed and factually misleading. A contained and cogent section summarizing the counterpoints needs to be a part of it.
The term 'consensus' is bantered about by editors ... but what good is consensus if all editors who contribute to the article all share the same socio-political world-view? Doesn't that make consensus meaningless? Is the consensus that no challenge to the primary argument be permitted?
For the record (I have said many times). I'm not challenging the overall thrust of the article ... I'm not trying to assert that income inequality does not exist, nor am I saying that income inequality is a good thing.

- - - Today, as a test, I did what other editors recommended. I made four discrete entries in the main text of the article. Within seven hours of my additions, an editor (with whom I had problems with before: CJGRIFFIN) entered qualifying statements either before or after each of the entries with the express intent of negating and nullifying the points being made. This is what I called 'sandwiching' in the discussions I had with the other editors and is precisely the knee-jerk response that I anticipated would happen if I attempted to make any modifications or additions to main body of the text. Here is what I said in those discussions: "Making inputs on a piecemeal basis, as you recommend ... particularly in an article as massive and slanted as this, reduces them to insignificance. Furthermore, subsequent editors would whittle-away at them over time until they ultimately disappeared, one at a time." Well, this is exactly what is happening. In one case, he copies a completely redundant statement (almost exact same sentence), from earlier in the section, complete with same footnote, and drops it in immediately following one of my entries. Sole purpose is to have the last word. -- UPDATE: Subsequently (and apparently after reading this comment) he re-edited that redundant comment again, removing it from the first location, but making sure that he gets the final say at the end of my statement.

- - - I have read CJGriffin's comments. Nevertheless, I stand by everything I have said ... and am willing to mediate or do whatever else is required to correct and/or make the article less biased. Whether that is by insertion of individual lines or a separate section. All I ask is that Wiki administrators monitor the actions of follow-up editors such as CJGriffin (please review recent edit history to understand what I mean).

Additional issues (added by other parties)

Additional issue 1
Additional issue 2

Parties' agreement to mediation edit

Agree. Not completely sure how much discussion is required. My experience started with an attack on me right out of the box several weeks ago by another editor. Mark may not have known this. The key here is the message, not the messenger. Would I go through all of this if I wasn't sincere in trying to improve the truthfulness and legitimacy of the article? Tolinjr (talk) 15:11, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Do not agree. Sorry, but I disengaged on that page and frankly there doesn't appear to be enough discussion for this to become a mediated dispute and what is there looks like a formed consensus the editor is attempting to simply bypass. I had said good luck to all but decided against that. I don't wish luck to editors that use personal attacks in these requests.--Mark Miller (talk) 21:21, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Do not agree. First of all, there is nothing wrong in adding other voices to what was characterized as a "significant and ongoing debate," prior to that it was merely the views of one economist (Edmund Phelps, with *four* citations) in this so-called debate. The two I cited are prominent economists and are already mentioned in the article. Secondly, the paragraph Tolinjr added pertains to wealth inequality, not income inequality, with the latter being the focus of the article. That being the case, I modified and moved a long-standing sentence which briefly mentions wealth inequality down to the paragraph he added as it seems to fit better there. Thirdly, I have not added qualifying statements to "each of the entries" made by Tolinjr. And I did not attack Tolinjr, but removed his very disruptive edits to the article, which contained, among other things, arguments not backed by sources (Take the first sentence for example: "While the explicit goal of income inequality advocates is to improve economic conditions in the United States, it is also very clear that an implicit motivation of many proponents is to consolidate power within the federal government through the implementation of a centrally-planned economy." I vehemently challenge the factual accuracy of such an unbelievably biased statement which came with NO citation) and nearly 1/4 of what he added was merely an attack on Thomas Piketty's work, which has no place in the article in question. So if this is Tolinjr's idea of what a criticism section should look like there isn't much to discuss.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 16:56, 19 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Undecided. The party requesting mediation has suggested that his beliefs are consistent with the mainstream Chicago School, but has expressed a desire for replacing income tax with consumption tax, a radical regressive fringe view which the Chicago School adherents generally reject. EllenCT (talk) 21:12, 19 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Consumption tax is neither regressive or fringe ... except possibly only to the above observer ... Bill Gates is currently proposing a consumption tax, and it is receiving strong support from many economists. Here is a video of him discussing it ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar0ri9NLArs )Tolinjr (talk) 21:29, 29 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Decision of the Mediation Committee edit

Reject: Prerequisite for mediation #5 not met, acceptance by a majority of parties. For the Mediation Committee. — TransporterMan (TALK) 17:02, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]