User talk:Willscrlt/MEDCAB/Cases/2006-12-28 Insider201283 and Will Beback re Alticor, Amway, Quixtar issues/Archive 1

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Initial response

Hello. I noticed at the Mediation Cabal that the two of you ( User:Insider201283 and User:Will_Beback) are having a really tough time finding some common ground on the Alticor/Amway/Quixtar family of articles. I would like to help, if I can. However, before I invest a lot of my limited time into helping, I want to be sure that the two of you are serious about working out some kind of an agreement, or if each of you is just hoping to have someone back you in a fight. If it’s the first option, I’m hopeful that we can reach an informal agreement, but if it’s the second option, I’m not interested in picking sides.

To addressing potential concerns of bias, I have had only two interactions with either party. Will_Beback left a message on Talk:List of cocktails complimenting the list which I have spent a lot of time renovating. I appreciate that bit of kindness, and I also respect Will’s commitment to Wikipedia by being an admin. I left him a message on his talk page inviting him to vote in a name change at WikiProject Mixed Drinks. I have read the user pages, talk pages, and article talk pages of those involved. That is the limit of my knowledge and feelings concerning either of you. The small amount of extra good will (no pun intended) toward Will_Beback from our limited previous interactions in no way impacts my ability to be a good mediator, because I am very good about focusing on pertinent facts and actions, regardless of unrelated ones.

I am no sock puppet of Will_Beback’s. I know our handles are similar, but life is funny that way. There was a baby born in the same hospital I was, on the same day I was, and probably only our different middle names and very different skin colors kept us from being mixed up at birth.

Insider201283 has expressed concern that admins express bias against MLMs and entrepreneurs involved with such organizations. Insider has also expressed concern that admins do not understand the industry. Will_Beback has expressed frustration at Insider’s general disregard for certain policies (WP:EL, WP:COI, and WP:POV being the most commonly cited concerns.

Well, I grew up in a household involved with Amway of old. This was the Amway of the 1970s, possibly into the early 1980s. I don’t think we ever achieved a level higher than Direct Distributor, and hopefully my terminology is correct. The whole new Quixtar and Alticor era is new to me (though I guess Alticor was in existence, but not mentioned when my parents and I were involved). We bought many training materials and attended rallies all over the Western U.S., but we never made much money in Amway. We do not look on it as a waste of time or money, because we did learn a lot about entrepreneurship in the process, and I credit much of my success in forming and running my own IT consulting firm to the knowledge I gained as a young child listening to the Tape of the Week playing in our station wagon as I rode everywhere. On the other hand, it was disheartening that we never were successful in the business, though we did have friends who did quite well and others who were far less successful than we were. Overall, my feelings toward Amway are very neutral. It can be good for some people and bad for others. I presume that Quixtar and the related companies are much the same.

I have experience with several other MLMs (long distance telecom, prepaid phone cards, travel services, outdoor goods, and maybe one or two others). We did better and worse in some of these, but most were still fairly neutral I have less than neutral opinions about some of the people involved with us in those ventures, but I am able to separate those feelings from my feelings about MLMs in general and the companies specifically.

Will_Beback is probably thinking by now that I am a gung-ho MLMer, but that’s not true either. That is all stuff I did prior to and during my early years in college. Since then I have become a “respectable” business owner/entrepreneur. When I say “respectable”, it is with a twinkle in my eye, because I am familiar with how both sides of the MLM divide view each other. I often say that I hold no “religious convictions” when it comes to computer operating systems (Windows, vs. Mac, vs. Linux), and the same holds true with business. The right type of person can do very well when matched with the right business opportunity and a fair amount of good luck. Now, when I said that, was I speaking of MLM or non-MLM business opportunities? The answer is both. And for everybody else, there are plenty of jobs out there to fill the 9-5 work week.

I know enough about Amway and Quixtar to know that Insider was right (IMO) that many products should be listed in Amway, Quixtar, and Alticor categories at the same time. This is not spamming the categories with products, but the reality that different branches of the same company may sell different items as well as some of the same items. Having said that, is that the only solution? Probably not. Off the top of my head, I could imagine consolidating the various categories into one much broader categories uncreatively named “Alticor, Amway, and Quixtar products” and have all of them appear in one big group. Is that a viable solution? Dunno. Depends on how much overlap there is. If 80-90% of the products are the same in all categories, then it’s kind of pointless to maintain separate categories for each, and it does give the air that such listings are simply to increase relevancy in searches or other less than noble reasons. If it’s the other way around, with maybe 40% or more difference between the product lines, then it really does make sense to break it out. Yes, 40%. Even if it’s only 50%, there seems to me to be enough of a difference that the average reader interested in the topic would appreciate the extra levels of categorization.

Over in WikiProject Mixed Drinks, we include the same drinks in several substantially similar categories. The guideline I try to use is to place myself in Joe Average Wikipedia Reader chair, and think about how I surf to find the information. If it makes sense in Joe Average terms, it probably makes more or less sense in Wikipedia, even if that results in something which could be seen as spamming by an interested party. In this case, since Insider is an interested party, it is easy to assume that any decision he makes is self-promoting, which is why it is important to think in terms of Joe Average. This is further complicated by the fact that most Joe Averages looking for Amway products are not so average, but rather Amway-oriented (and I use Amway in the broad sense because it’s too hard to type all the alternatives). That makes it a bit tricky with some of Wikipedia’s policies, because then you start looking at specialized, non-encyclopedic information, and that is not what Wikipedia is about. I believe Insider mentioned a Quixtar wiki, and that would be a perfect place for such specialized information. It would also seem to make sense to link to such a specialized wiki from one main page (probably Quixtar), but not blanket the site with such information. I’m assuming here that such a wiki is a valuable and informative, largely NPOV site, not just a marketing tool to recruit members. If so, that changes things a bit.

In summary, I can certainly see why the two of you are having troubles figuring out what stays and what goes. I have seen examples of what I would call bad sportsmanship on both sides of the issue. WP:AGF is a very important thing to remember. You both obviously care very much about your causes (Insider with Quixtar, and Will_Beback with Wikipedia), but that is no excuse to behave in ways that reflect badly on either of you. In my opinion, there is too much citing of policies and too much citing of inappropriate actions, and not nearly enough listening to both sides of the issue. So, if you are interested in making a fresh start at this, let me know. If it’s a go, we can move the case to open status and start working toward resolving this.

If we go forward, this would be my first mediation case. (That’s probably obvious from my very long-winded introduction.) I don’t know if I will do everything “the right way” or not, but my heart will definitely be in the right place as I do it. If you have concerns about what I do or don’t do, you may address them with me, but I will certainly seek input from more experienced Cabal members, rather than relying only upon your concerns. --Willscrlt (Talk|Cntrb) 07:23, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Responses from the involved parties

Willscrlt is an acceptable mediator to me. Thanks for taking the case. I do request that mediation case be changed to a more neutral title, such as "Will Beback & Insider201283", "Amway/Quixtar" etc. -Will Beback · † · 07:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to rename one of these (an ordinary move or something else?), but I do agree with the request for two reasons. The first is obvious: Will_Bebeck is a misspelling. Secondly, I think it unfairly places Will_Beback in a negative light at the outset. My recommendation is to focus on the topics, not the people. Sure, it's the people who are having the disagreements, but hopefully the disagreements are directly concerning the edits within the articles and/or actions taken by the parties, and not the living, breathing, typing (or hunt-and-pecking, I shouldn't make assumptions) people involved. So, how about (once I figure out how to do it) we rename the case to 2006-12-28 Alticor and related article issues, since (I hope) that is really what this case is really about. --Willscrlt (Talk|Cntrb) 12:45, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Willscrlt is acceptable to me also, thanks very much for your time. I've no problem with a rename. --Insider201283 23:29, 10 January 2007 (UTC)