Talk:Reed College/drug use dispute

message: This page is the subject of periodic spasms of change (and sometimes vandalism) from first-timers (either to Wikipedia or to the Reed page) who think the page is too positive about Reed.  The "Drug Use" section (see talk below) is a frequent target, though several other sections get hit as well.  The general comment is that the page is POV in being too positive.  I have just done a brief survey of about 20 other small college pages, including Swarthmore, Haverford, Grinnell, and many others, and Reed's page is in no way unusual, certainly not in being overly positive.  If someone wants to make a serious contribution about, e.g. the curriculum (too conservative?), to politics (too liberal?), or something else that can be based in some sort of objective fact, please feel free to do so.  But consistent vandalism in the form of spurious negative commentary does not belong here.  NPOV doesn't mean mindlessly adding negative comments until the page seems "balanced".  Add facts, not opinions. -- Gnetwerker 06:40, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV Debate (General)

message: I'm not sure why you put the words "primarily responsible" in quotes. My suggestion is and was that you may have, for example, a fiduciary responsibility to Reed College and, as such, a duty to recuse yourself from this page. Obviously, you are not in and of yourself Reed College, such that your comments could not be strictly speaking considered "autobiography." And yet, the WP policy I quoted remains:  "...editing an article about...  your business, your publications, or any of your own achievements is strongly discouraged." No one person can be said to "own" Reed and therefore no one person can be accused of promoting his or her own business by boosting Reed in this article. But if, for example, a member of the Board at IBM were to make changes to the IBM article, that would be a violation of WP policy. My suspicion is that this is an analogous case. Although I believe I know who you are I do not wish to name you as 1) you have a right to remain anonymous on these pages and 2) I could be quite wrong about your identity and therefore I would not be inclined to insist on your identifying yourself. However, I ask that you stipulate that you have no financial or fiduciary responsibility for the well-being of Reed College, as that is a clear conflict of interest. If you can honestly do that, I withdraw my request for your recusal. IronDuke 02:28, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I put the phrase "primarily responsible" in quotes because it is the phrase that appears in the WP policy statement. Reed is not my business and this is not an autoiography. Other than that, I do not accept your interpretation of the guidelines, and will not rise to your bait.  Reed has 1300 or so students, tens of thousands of alumni and parents, 200 or more faculty and staff, roughly 40 Trustees, and thousands of substantial donors.  Which of them, in your opinion, should be constrained from participation here, and in which class are you?  -- Gnetwerker 07:12, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I had no intention of baiting you. I indicated above what the parameters for participating in the editing of this page were, as per the Wikipedia guidelines. I am taking your refusal to deny that you have a financial/fiduciary relationship with the college as an admission that you do. As for my own connection or lack thereof with Reed, I assure you that I have no such relationship. IronDuke 23:28, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Let me add this: I may be in error in my interpretation of the WP policies. Perhaps a way to resolve this might be to seek mediation on the specific issue of whether, for example, trustees may edit articles on institutions they are members of. Is this acceptable to you? IronDuke 23:34, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I think you should strive to correct or reinforce your understanding of the policy before we undertake anything as heavyweight as mediation.  Why don't you post on the discussion page for the policy?  My refusal to tell you my relationship with Reed should not be interpreted to mean that I have any particular relationship.  As a matter of law, as it turns out, college  board members are not always fiduciaries for their institutions, so this in and of itself may not even be dispositive. -- Gnetwerker 01:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not altogether certain how you mean for me to correct my understanding of policy. Posting on the discussion page would not, I think, be a fruitful way to solve the issues that have arisen between us. Perhaps I can simplify my point a bit here: I, myself, have no interest in seeing Reed succeed, nor do I have any interest in seeing Reed fail. Can you say the same? I have no desire to see "positive" or "negative" facts about Reed included in this article, merely notable facts. My suspicion is that you are too close to the institution to edit in a NPOV manner, but I may be wrong in this. I invite you, again, to mediate this dispute with me. IronDuke 02:35, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recusal 

message: The stuff below does not belong here. It could be part of its own Reed Legends article, if people felt like that was a legit topic for WP. 
(Unlike the circumstances of most Reed legends, there are still alumni alive who will vouch for the veracity of the MG story. Specifically, the vehicle's alleged owner claims that while he was abroad playing Capoeira in Europe one summer, several inbrebriated friends thought it might be funny to push his car into the foundation. . . and then could not remove it. Though the story cannot be confirmed, the alumnus still lives in Portland and is still pissed about the whole event.)
The placement of a copper time capsule in Eliot Hall is suggested in the blueprints but has not been confirmed.''
 IronDuke 02:47, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reed Legends 

message: Made a pass over the article and tried to weed out the more transparent examples of POV. There were many, so I'm not going to write about each one but summarize and say that the article looked an awful lot like a brochure for Reed. Many of the comments were entirely unsourced, and some of them would not be appropriate even if they were. If anyone has a problem with any of one of those edits, I'd be glad to get specific. IronDuke 02:50, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your edit was improper. I had thought that even though you and I appear to disagree on the emphases that are appropriate to place in this article, that together we were actually improving this section, adding sourced and verifiable information. I had left a few things in the section that you had added even though I was uncomfortable with them, even though I believe you ought not to be editing this article at all, as a way of trying to compromise. If you believe the drug section should be removed, perhaps an RfC would be in order. IronDuke 23:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

text: The edit was completely proper.  I invited you to discuss your concerns on this Talk page before editing a document that has been largely stable for months.  Your edits have been uniformly POV and also not Verifiable, and this one is no exception.  I have removed the unverifiable comments and retained those supported by specific citations.  The fact that you retained some well-sourced facts that I added only to ameliorate your POV doesn't make it any better.  If you want to stop editing and have a discussion here, relying on concensus to determine the outcome, then please do so and stop editing -- that is the Wiki way. In the meantime I will remove any statement that violates WP:V -- Gnetwerker 02:12, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we're on the right track again. Let's see what we can do to provide relevant, cited information in the drug use section. Although I think we can work together on this, again, I would ask that you not edit the article directly, but simply post suggestions on the talk page. If I am wrong about you, and you have no stake in Reed, please accept my apology in advance for insinuating that you did. IronDuke 02:41, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would ask that you not edit the article, especially to remove sourced, relevant information balancing your own POV (which is well-recorded here on these pages).  Anyone who makes the claim "heroin deaths at Reed are not uncommon" has a clear POV (see results of my research below).  However, I will refrain from further edits if (and only if) you will. -- Gnetwerker 05:47, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I suppose locking down the page is a reasonable short term step. I'm not sure what it is that we have to work out from your perspective, but I can tell you mine. There are three issues: 1) Your relationship with Reed, which you refuse to divulge. This relationship does not mean that I think, for example, you would be inclined to lie about Reed. I'd liken it, rather, to a doctor diagnosing himself. They are certainly capable of doing so, but are instead supposed to rely on other doctors to diagnose them. 2) You seem to have a problem with the drug section in general. This makes me question how dedicated you are to providing a fully-sourced, verifiable, non-argumentative section (and when I say "argumentative, I mean adding in your own thoughts about Reed's drug use/binge drinking in relation to other colleges. It is akin to writing, "Yeah, sure there are drugs at Reed. There are drugs everywhere. What are you gonna do?") Your multiple edits of the section, then wholesale deletion of the section, are troubling. 3) Tone of talk comments. You have improved greatly in this area over the past few days, and I appreciate it. I hope you (and I) continue in this vein. IronDuke 15:15, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV 

message: NB: Several different discussion threads, “NPOV, Drug Section, Recusal, etc.” were deleted and moved to another page. I have put them back in place for the reasons below. I have also, in replacing them attempted to put them in as much of a chronological order as I can and still have the entries make sense which I think is WP policy.   
Gnetwerker: An important principle of WP is that we assume good faith. I’ll confess, I’m finding it very difficult to do that in this case. I understand that you object to the substance my edits, that you maintain that I lack knowledge of Reed, and that I am pushing POV. While you have a right to all of these objections, you do not have a right to bury this discussion. Merely asserting that you do not wish to hide the discussion is essentially meaningless when you, in fact, hide it. 
There are at least two or three ongoing disputes between us (that I know of, perhaps you have other issues with me). The first dispute is about the “Drug Use” section. The issues there are notability, verifiability and POV. It is not, I think, an easy thing to untangle. But I had thought that, together, we were actually improving that section, even if we didn’t agree on all points. The second issue concerns other edits I made removing what was, in my view, unsourced and POV material, and your subsequent inclusion of a straw poll that is misleading at best. “Colorful” vs. “rigorous?” But that is it’s own issue and if anyone actually responds to the poll, I’ll try to say more than subject. The third issue, and most important, is your conflict of interest in editing this page. That you are attempting to sweep that under the rug confirms my fear that you would not suddenly begin to edit this article in an NPOV manner. 
In any event, my opinion is not the deciding one here, it is the opinion of the WP community. But they must be given an opportunity to make an informed decision, and ready access to an ongoing debate is part of being informed. The discussion we are having is neither “old” nor “moribund.” I think you must know this; you’ve actually left your own comments on the page dating back to September! Perhaps there is some way in which those comments are “fresher” than the ones you and I exchanged just days ago. Gnetwerker: there is no, repeat no, legitimate reason to move this still very live discussion elsewhere. I cannot stress that enough. When the issue is resolved, appropriate archiving of the discussion can and should happen. In the meantime, do not do this again.  
I think, all in all, that I’ve been pretty patient with your breaches of NPA and lack of civility, and that I have tried to reach out to you on that and other issues. You have admitted (?) that your talk entries have been "harsh" and "intemperate," and that is perhaps a beginning. However, as I know you are aware, WP is not a usenet group. There is no room for flaming here. IronDuke 03:53, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please allow me to sigh here as well. You moved a discussion that was currently in progress and kept far older discussions in place. If you had wanted to make a legitimate archive, I believe you would have removed older edits first. And in fact, you removed one of my comments from the same time period, then decided it was for some reason acceptable to you, and deigned to put it back. This is transparent. IronDuke 17:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm going to let this one go. The last thing I want is for there to be a revert war on the talk page. However, my reordering was not arbitrary, it was an attempt to undo your penchant for posting things at the top of the page when, I believe, we are encouraged to make new posts at the bottom. In fact, I believe your straw poll would have gotten more traction if you had done this. IronDuke 17:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of several different discussion threads 

message: Just to be sure everyone is on the same page (no pun intended), here is what I think the resolution is:
:Since the 1960s, Reed has had a reputation for tolerating open drug use among its students , and the 1998 Princeton Review listed Reed as the #3 school in the "reefer madness" category . The Yale Daily News Insider's Guide to Colleges also notes an impression among students of institutional permissiveness: “according to students, the school does not bust students for drug or alcohol use unless they cause harm or embarrassment to another student.” (2006 edition, p. 771)
:The Reed Psychology Department has conducted an ongoing survey  since 1999 regarding both drug use and perceptions of drug use on the Reed campus. The study found that the perceived level of drug use was exaggerated: in particular, the perceived use of marijuana at Reed is once a week while the actual reported use is 50% once a month or more often. Meanwhile, on average only 21% of the overall college student population have used the drug within the last month .
So, barring further complaint, I will 1) Request the page be unprotected; 2) Remove the POV lable form the page; 3) Replaced the current "Drug Use" section with the one immediately above; and 4) Archive this discussion with a prominent pointer to it.  Agreed? -- Gnetwerker 00:49, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds like a plan. And I'm assuming here by "this discussion" you are talking only about the drug use discussion. IronDuke 03:24, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

text: By "this discussion", I mean everything on this page related to the edit war. Also, you earlier made a convincing argument to move older discussion to the archive page.  Result will be two pages, existing archive (with a few more items), and "edit war" page.  -- Gnetwerker 06:31, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Resolution 

message: Gnetwerker: in your last edit, in your summary you noted that you were “rev per mediation.” This was never agreed on. You may not have seen your talk page, where I posted this message from our mediator:
“Thank you very much both Gnetwerker and IronDuke. Being "on the other side" is very interesting, and I encourage you to try your hands at medcabal yourselves. It is definitely a learning experience. IronDuke, re: archived comments, I don't have a strong position on that sort of thing, and in general if someone objects to a talk page "refactoring", it's best to err on the side of not archiving stuff. Sdedeo (tips) 04:22, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Rather than me boring us both with a discussion on what constitutes "deleted," let me just say that moving my comments on your relationship with Reed, my comments on my own edit regarding NPOV issues, and other items not relevant to our mediated dispute on the Drug Use section to a section titled Talk:Reed_College/drug_use_dispute is arguably worse than deletion, as no one will know to look for my comments there. I have been and will continue to abide by our mediated solution, however, I would disagree with you that this solution entailed removal of my comments. I cannot see any place in our discussion where I agreed to this, and would quote the following response I made to your suggestion that we archive the discussion: "And I'm assuming here by [archiving] "this discussion" you are talking only about the drug use discussion." I posted a query about this issue on Sdedeo, our mediator's, talk page, and got the response I pasted in above here, the relevant part of which I'll quote again here "...in general if someone objects to a talk page "refactoring", it's best to err on the side of not archiving stuff." []. You may also note that our mediator expressed concern over POV issues in your recent edits: "Some of the new edits seem to have some NPOV problems, but I believe it's nothing that couldn't be resolved with patience and respect." IronDuke 20:56, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sdedeo is the one who refactored the comments, and is he thinks they should be reverted, it should be him who does it.  I assume that he moved them because they were which were part and parcel of the Drug Use Edit War.  Regarding his final comment, I completely agree -- any possible POV issues can be resolved with patience and respect.  We now have other long-time contributors to this page back, and I hope you will have patience with the process and show respect for me and the other contributors. -- Gnetwerker 21:29, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please stop deleting comments from the talk page 

message: I’m going to do my level best not to get into an edit war on this. If you’re going to make a point by point reversion of my edits, please discuss them with me first. IronDuke 16:17, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think, rather than begin what might be another contentious discussion, I'll just go ahead and let the Reed College page stand as it is and not address your specific arguments at this time, unless you feel strongly for some reason that I should, pending the arbcom decision. IronDuke 21:01, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Your reversion of my edits without discussion 

message: Gnetwerker, please refrain from removing my comments (or refactoring them, or archiving them) from this talk page, for any reason. If you feel that my comments violate a Wikipedia policy, do not hesitate to make an admin aware of it. In the meantime, I repeat: do not move them. They are not part of the “drug-use dispute,” as you claim in the edit summary. In part, and ironically enough, they concern your previous removal of my comments, my objection to it, your POV editing, your relationship to Reed College, and my bringing this matter before arbcom (which is ongoing). IronDuke 15:31, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gnetwerker, please do not remove, refactor, or archive my comments