Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Landmark Worldwide

Landmark Worldwide

The filing party (the editor who opened this request) will add the basic details for this dispute below.

Editors involved in this dispute

1. DaveApter (talk · contribs) – filing party
2. Astynax (talk · contribs)
3. Theobald Tiger (talk · contribs)
4. Legacypac (talk · contribs)
5. Cathar66 (talk · contribs)
6. Manul (talk · contribs)
7. John Carter (talk · contribs)
8. Tgeairn (talk · contribs)
9. Nwlaw63 (talk · contribs)

Articles affected by this dispute

Landmark Worldwide

1. Landmark Worldwide (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Other attempts at resolving this dispute that you have attempted

• RfC at List of New Religious Movements Sept 2013 [[1]]
• Rfc at Landmark Worldwide Sept-Oct 2014 [[2]]
• Extensive discussion at Talk:Landmark Worldwide (29 pages of archives)
• Arbcom case Oct-Dec 2014 [[3]]

Issues to be mediated

What is this dispute about? What sections, sentences, or issues in the article(s) can you not agree on? If you are the editor who opened this request, list these issues to be mediated under "Primary issues". If you did not open this request, you can add additional issues to be mediated under "Additional issues". The issues to be mediated would be properly agreed upon later, if this request for mediation is accepted.

Primary issues (added by the filing party)

1. Does issue of 'Religious characteristics' merit an entire section, and a mention in the lead? An RfC from September 2013 on the List of New Religious Movements concluded that Landmark should not included in that list.
2. Is the 'Background section' proportionate and relevant to the subject matter as a whole, and is it excessively based in speculation and conjecture?
3. Recently added material alleges tax-minimisation arrangements undertaken by Werner Erhard, the previous owner of Landmark’s intellectual property, from years before Landmark was founded. Quite apart from the fact that all this is completely irrelevant to the topic of the article, the whole thrust of the section, which now occupies half the article, is to cast aspersions on this individual, describing him in various unflattering terms.
4. Is the balance of fact to opinion, and the relative weight given to critical and favourable opinions appropriate for an encyclopedia article?
5. In the past the article contained a mixture of both positive and negative opinions expressed by various people. In recent months extensive negative commentary has been added at great length to the article, while a great deal of the more positive remarks have been eviscerated.

Additional issues (added by other parties)

• Additional issue 1
• Additional issue 2

Parties' agreement to mediation

If you are a named party, please sign below and indicate whether you agree or refuse to participate in mediation. Remember that all editors are obliged to resolve disputes about content through discussion, mediation, or other similar means. If you do not wish to participate in mediation, you must arrange another form of dispute resolution. Comments and questions should be made underneath the numbered list below, to avoid confusion.

1. Agree. DaveApter (talk) 15:23, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
2. Disagree Legacypac (talk) 18:32, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
3. Disagree. Theobald Tiger (talk) 22:11, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
4. Disagree. Cathar66 (talk) 15:38, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
5. Agree. Tgeairn (talk) 00:15, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
6. Agree. Nwlaw63 (talk) 12:43, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Comments:

• The arbitration Committee asked for uninvolved editors to work on the article. When uninvolved editors arrived trying to provide balance to the article they have been bullied, taken to ArbComm, and treated to OWN tactics by DaveApter and others. I expect it will be used as a delay tactic and excuse to remove material that the filer does not like, claiming the material is under mediation. Mediation is a waste of time because selected editors have no intention of achieving balance. Instead, the new Discretionary Sanctions against the pro Landmark POV pushers who are abusing processes are required. Legacypac (talk) 18:32, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
• I have received several treatments that make it very difficult for me to believe that all editors involved act in good faith, which is a serious obstacle, if I have understood it correctly, to the mediation process. I am pretty sure that there are several editors mentioned above who have a CoI. Naturally, they try to deceive suspicious editors to let them believe otherwise. Compromizing with CoI editors is not something that makes me particularly enthusiastic. When I arrived at the Landmark scene, I became immediately involved, unexpectedly so, in an Arbitration process, including offensive, insinuating and unfounded accusations with respect to my history on nl.wiki. Now, one of the editors mentioned above has requested to have discretionary sanctions enforced on me. This request is still pending. Theobald Tiger (talk) 22:11, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
• In real life things are never black and white. A wikipedia article cannot be an attack page or a PR article. It is I suppose a question of balance. Editors should act with commonsense. There are sensible rules regarding behaviour between editors which I accept exist are absolutely necessary for good reasons. (Real life should not intrude or be affected) Most of the rest are guides that commonsense can be debated upon. WP is a sort of participative democracy not a set of legal principles. This page is a classic binary argument. It would be a useful lesson to step back and view the other point of view. Ideally some of the editors should temporarily edit from the alternate perspective. I don't see that happening at the moment but if everybody acknowledged the validity of the opposite pole position. Perhaps mutual agreement could ensue. There is nothing to mediate without some form of mutual acceptance. As the proposed mediator noted it is a controversial page. What drew me in as an outsider was the lack of a controversy/criticism section (apart from obvious editor behaviour). It is a highly litigious company which has intimidated media coverage. etc etc.

I was a fresh pair of eyes who wasn't blinkered. I know Wikipedia is not a writing class but everybody should know the 4W's How, Why, when, where. These are not present. In the future perhaps I would support arbitration. In fairness to the first page it was naive as was the standard of editing (all parties). Its good to see that 2 of the early editors are still here-surprising because without top ups the forum affect (raised dopamine levels) and group interdependency usually last less than 18 months.(an ovoid curve) There is a wealth of information in academia that explain the affect and some that explain how. The technology is the combination of a psychological trick and slick marketing (chain letter or encyclopedia salesmen recruiting effect) which exploits the euphoria and groupthink. Think of youths reading the article. They don't deserve to be exposed to this. Good men (and nobody owns a monopoly of goodness) should be capable of sorting this out even if the balance is 60/40 in favour of the corporate self deception. It makes me feel like I stepped in something.Cathar66 (talk) 15:38, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Decision of the Mediation Committee

This section should only be edited by a mediator. The Mediation Committee's representative will indicate in due course whether the request is accepted (meaning a mediator will be assigned) or rejected (meaning you will have to try a different type of dispute resolution). If the mediator asks you a question in this section, you may edit here.

• Chairperson's notes: Since this matter is obviously controversial, let me make some opening remarks:

• Please read Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Guide before weighing in here to get an idea of what can and cannot be done here and how the request and mediation processes work.
• If anyone feels that other parties should take part, please feel free to add them and our bot will notify them.
• Feel free to Agree or Reject and sign your position and, if you Agree, to add additional issues to be considered by the mediator, but do not become involved in discussions between one another here. If the case is accepted and a mediator takes the assignment, the mediator will work out what issues will be mediated and if you do not agree with that you can withdraw from the mediation at that time.
• For the same reason, think twice about making conditional Agrees or Rejects on this request: Unless your stated condition is something that we would probably do here anyway, I'm probably going to evaluate your conditional Agree or Reject as a Reject for determining whether or not we have enough Agrees for the Committee to accept this case.
• Finally, remember that the standard discretionary sanctions passed during the recent arbitration case apply to this request page. If this request is accepted, the mediation proceedings themselves will be privileged, but the parties must remember that the Committee may waive privilege if a party attempts to disrupt the mediation process through disruptive or bad-faith conduct.

For the Mediation Committee, TransporterMan (TALK) 18:07, 6 February 2015 (UTC) (Chairperson)

• Reject. Fails prerequisite for mediation #5, "A majority of the parties to the dispute consent to mediation." For the Mediation Committee, TransporterMan (TALK) 18:48, 13 February 2015 (UTC) (Chairperson)