User talk:Szimonsays

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Welcome!

Hello, Szimonsays, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Your remark on my talk-page

(copied from user talk:beetstra)

Hi Dirk I am still really a newbie. The effexor article sure draws passionate feedback. I saw some other of the contributors, very impressive. I read the current version of the article again, and i really believe that it has improved considerably notwithstanding a bit of an editing war. I am not really as familiar going around Wiki as I wish i could be, but time is so limited. thanks for your earlier message of assistance. sorry i didn't respond to that, but i am really not familiar on how to do that. must spend a bit of time learning.Szimonsays szimonsays

Hi! I know, I saw your account appearing in some of the pages I monitor since some time (couple of weeks?). And I saw now that there was no welcome template on your talk-page (how rude of us!), so I decided to add that.
Pages on food supplements and certain medicine tend to be very controversial, and I have been involved in some of the edit wars, trying to resolve these (it is time to go around some of these pages again, but I have been occupied with some mediawiki programming). The article is now quite OK. The anonymous editor that left the remark today has a point in that the page is quickly changing on some days. But most of these pages stabilise in time. And you are right, most info can be found on internet (not always a reliable source).
About going around, I suggest you go over the pages that are linked in the welcome that I put on your talk-page. One of the things is signing, please end remarks that you put on talk pages not with your name, but just type ~~~~ When you save the page, these four tildes will be automagically replaced by a link to your page here (you can change how it appears in the settings), and stamped with a date and time. This not only saves you work, it also is easy to see when and who added the last remark.
Also, please put the remarks at the bottom of the earlier text. When you add to an existing paragraph, use the edit button on the section, and add to the bottom of the section, when you add a new subject, the easiest way is to click on the '+' next to the edit button, this gives automatically a new section at the bottom of the page.
You can answer here on this page, I will be watching this talk-page for some time (this keeps the conversation together), I may jump in if I can be of help. See you around, and happy editing. --Dirk Beetstra T C 22:30, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please

Please, could you sign using four tildes (~~~~) instead of typing your name, or a link to your name? It is the customary way of signing on talk-pages. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:53, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] response to venlafaxine edits

Hi Szimonsays. I read your comment, and looked around the latest edits. I am a bit in a dubio here, I do agree with you that there should be said something about the petition, but the wording you use is not encyclopedic (and for now I do not yet see a proper way of incorporating the text. Could you please and find a better way on the talk-page.

I have reverted your latest addition, not only because of the choice of wording, but you also reverted a reference to an established journal. Please do not do that without a proper explanation. I am not really knowledgeable in the subject, as I earlier explained, I am a chemist, not a pharmaceutical guy, but I am into semantics and encyclopedic and scientific content. As I read it now, the paragraph where you add this info, could be combined with the next paragraph, it somehow feels like it is similar. I will, as normal, keep a bit of an eye on it, if I am not too busy writing new extensions for the mediawiki. See you around! --Dirk Beetstra T C 23:48, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] response to edits

Hi Dirk.. thanks for the feedback. I deleted the other material because it appeared to me to be off the subject of the heading "Physical and Psychological Dependency" and was basically one of those "beg the question" arguments in which one point of view is presented with supported references to "prove a point" when the real point of the heading is that people do become physically dependent on Venlafaxine. I had not touched this before as I felt that the petition item presented the reality, but with Skinwalker constantly deleting this at whim, i decided that his material was irrelevant to the actual point. The last version before he deleted the petition commment was very well balanced, but it has gone back to distortion again, and I feel it my responsibility to not let that happen. I have saved my last version as I got tired of having to rewrite the brief petition comment section over and over again from scratch. I will look at where it stands now. A recognized journal entry may not necessarily be in the right place. I won't delete this time, but I hold the view that without the petition comment that heading is distorted beyond any reality. I had occasion to speak to the daughter of a friend who was briefly on Venlafaxine and her comments confirmed the experiences of the petition signatories. If that is not reality, I don't know what is. I did not tell her about the petition. Szimonsays 00:18, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Szimonsays, the addition as you make it is not encyclopedic. Please try to settle this via the talk-page of venlafaxine, or try to find another way of adding this info. Online petitions are just not a reliable source, its power is comparable to a forum, even if the setting is more serious (anyone, also people who have not been influenced by cases of venlafaxine-dependence/addiction can fill it in, and could be influenced by mass-additions (see e.g. a message on the MSN zyban/bupropion forum; and these things can be done in clever ways, and I do say could, I did not say it was in this case). About the reference you deleted, I don't see why "Prescribing antidepressants in general practice. People may become psychologically dependent on antidepressants" is not relevant to the subject. It just describes scientifically the same point as an online petition. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:43, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 3RR on Venlafaxine

Please refrain from undoing other people's edits repeatedly, as you are doing in Venlafaxine. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Rather than reverting, discuss disputed changes on the talk page. The revision you want is not going to be implemented by edit warring. Thank you. Please take a look at WP:3RR before you edit Venlafaxine again. Cheers, Skinwalker 00:55, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] please refrain from undoing my edits as well

hi again Dirk..thanks for the feedback. my comment subject is directed to Skinwalker. I deleted that reference because it was more a question of an editor weighing information to make a point while trying to prevent the subject getting a fair treatment. The term "encyclopedic" applies easily to my edit as it is a question of information on a subject. The mentioning of the effexor petition is certainly not a forum. The petition is not a place of discussion or argument rather it is directed at the manufacturer by users. It is as if someone wanted to delete the history of General Motors regarding the Chevrolet Vega because it was uncomfortable, or in a history of Ford that Henry Ford was ruthless in dealing with strikes and was an anti-semite. The petition is not only relevant, remarkable, and significant, but it also is a unique item related to dissemination of information and the power of the internet, and in this instance, due to a controversial way of drug marketing, training of doctors, and interpretation of data. This is a matter of ethics Dirk, not merely a disagreement between two editors. The petition needs to be there in the body so readers know about it, not merely in the references/links. Thalidomide is currently a drug in use, so should the teratogenic effects be hidden from reader, or perhaps if there were an impact statement on the effects this drug had because the teratogenic studies of the time were inadequate. I really find the argument against mentioning the petition to be so weak as to be ridiculous. There is direct impact and the petition has its own clear significance as a means of public expression that was not possible before the internet. If a patient is looking up the drug, they should have access to this material. I am going to continue to paste my edit back. If you could take this to a higher place of ejudication in Wikipedia, perhaps that is best. I am sincere in my view on this as i know you realize, and i am tired of skinwalker doing his arbitrary deletion. The page was quiet for a while and i had not made any changes till this started all over again needlessly. best wishes Szimonsays 14:05, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

The way the text is that you are adding, it is unencyclopedic. I have undone the edit. The data is there, the negative effects are being expressed, and scientifically referenced. Though the petition makes a point, certainly not in these words. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:08, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
I looked up the word encyclopedic and i cannot comprehend your argument about unencylopedic. I am adding the edit back. I cannot see any reason why you should delete again. The data just does not give the true picture and lacks the impact of the petition. Wikipedia is not a scientific journal with the restrictions and rules that journals have, and there is certainly good cause for this information. It appears that you and Skinwalker are treating this article as a scientific journal or a pharmacopeia and this is not what Wikipedia is about. I am a relative newbie and certainly not as experienced as you are, but i read the guidelines and i do not see any reason why my edit should be deleted. If you want to take to a higher authority in Wiki, please do, but i am going to put back the edit, and until such time as there is a ruling, i expect you and skinwalker to leave it there. your deletion is arbitrary and that is not what Wiki is about. You do not have any real grounds to delete this other than your subjective view. with all due respect, please respect my view until this is resolved.My argument for including this is actually stronger than yours for excluding it - much stronger Szimonsays 01:37, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
It is not that the petition would be unencyclopedic, it is the way you have written it now. And if the petition has impact, then there will be scientific reports about that, or official statements from drug-companies. So again, reword carefully, and do not just paste. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:08, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I am going to add to this. A forum/petition is not a reliable source, per the things that Skinwalker and I have explained (they are in general unchecked, they provide a one point view, they have not been checked against a 'blank', may contain multiple entries about single cases, may contain garbage entries, &c.). In that regard, the place to tell about the existence of a forum/petition can for sure not be mixed in with sections that report scientific results. That will confuse, it will give the impression to a lay-reader that the forum ís reliable. The solution to that is not 'there is a online petition,ref to forum and well, it is not reliable, but it shows that it has made a great impact on the patients' (I have written a simplified entry, but you can recognise your text in it), that is unencyclopedic for the following reasons, the first half is OK 'there is an online petition', but then it is explained that it is unreliable, which makes the addition on itself already superfluous, and removing the 'it is unreliable' is not possible when mixed with scientific (peer-reviewed) references). The end of the sentence is untrue, there is no way (per reliable source) that that can be checked. There are petitions agains some normal food-additives (I think saccharose, e.g.), which have been signed by thousands of people, but there are millions of people who do not have any problem with that food-additive. Now I understand/believe that venlafaxine does not have that big a difference, I guess it will be the other way around (more, if not all, people do have a discontinuation syndrome with this compound). Still, it is not a good source. I guess the only way to add this information in the text, is to find references which officially recognise the petition, and then write something like 'An online petition,ref to petition which has been signed by more than 13,000 people, has been recognised by both the scientific community,ref to peer-reviewed articles and/or industry.ref to industry pages' For now, there is a link in the external links section, since the title of that section is 'external links', people know they are taken to the outside of the wikipedia (I hope they are smart enough to understand), so there is no problem there (I see there are even two of these pages linked there).
I hope this clarifies a bit why we revert this piece of text (and if you follow my edits, there have been other cases where I have taken out certain pieces of text pertaining to fori/petitions), and why I ask you to reword the text carefully. I just did a little resort in the external link sections (I hope I sectioned it right), so that the patient experiences come out a bit stronger. I hope you can find some peer-reviewed response to the petition, and then try to add the info again. All the best, and hope to see you around, --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:10, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] what is encyclopedic. what requires peer review, or scientific sources?

thanks for your feedback Dirk. An interesting read, honest feedback. I had written a response, but unfortunately my wireless link burped and i lost 20 minutes of writting effort. i'll try to rewrite my commments here briefly. I looked up the term encyclopedic and my understanding is that it is summary of knowledge on a subject. Wiki does not necessarily require sources or references in every instance. The article on Effexor is NOT an entry in a drug compendium or pharmacopeia, therefore the rules that would apply to a scientific journal do not apply in this article. Certainly, any statement of scientific information that is specific such as results of research should have a source, but that does not mean that speaking to an other type of material is excluded. My understanding is that if the material is presented for what is is, then it does not need to be excluded. Your point about reliability is an interesting one, but as it is stated that the petitition is not a scientific paper, one does not need to presume that 12,000 peope are not telling the truth. An organized immorality that has been imparted into a population such as justification of segregation does not make the position ethical or justificable, but if one were to state that the majority of Alabamians supported segregation, that would not justify excluding this from a history of segregation in the south. Except perhaps, if it were presented as a statistic as opposed to a report of a particular "petition" as it were. This is not the same as the effexor petition, but what is happening is that the arguments to exclude a few lines about this are not grounded either in wiki rules, nor in what an encyclopedic entry is about. The comment does not require support in scientific or peer review because what it is, is the feedback of 12,000 (give or take) effexor users as individuals, and no one would presume that it is contrived or that one person wrote all the entries, nor even that it represents the majority of users. The motivation for deleting this entry baffles me. I will see if there are other places where the petition has been mentioned or if there are othe rsources, but i don't believe this is really necessary. The petition stands on its own merit and it is accessible easily to any wiki reader who can judge it on its own merits. That is more than most of the references that are often not accessible to the general reader. I could argue in a similar vein that any article that is not accessible to a reader should not be used in wiki. (of course it is an empty argument), but the petition IS accessible, so let the reader know about it, and if they wish, they can read it and agree or disagree as they wish. best wishes .. i am not going away.. wiki is an interesting place with lots of interesting people. And I will be re-entering the piece about the petition. If you think you can do a fair edit to it, i am certainly open to that.. Cheers... and thanks for your feed back again Szimonsays 20:15, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I saw you added it again, and I have already removed it again .. a) the petition can be found, see external links and b) the way you write it now, is unencyclopedic, and I have described why. Please, Szimon, first do some research now, and then add it in a proper way. Cheers. --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:21, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I added it again.. this is ridiculous. it was up for weeks.. and if you do a google on the petition you will see it is coming up in doctor's forums, and elsewhere. If you don't agree with my arguments, let's have it go to a higher authority in wiki as I feel my arguments are more substantive than yours with freedom of speech at the top. Wiki is not about censorship and this is not a pharmacopaiea. with all due respect. Szimonsays 20:34, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
if you believe there is a proper way of adding it so we can stop the edit war, please provide more details. I will not say it is unreliable because that is dishonest to users who made their entries.. we presume innocent until proven guilty.. Szimonsays 20:37, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I have given you a way of adding it, with an encyclopedic tone, see my earlier texts of this week, this text is not encyclopedic. Google testing does not help the cause, there are many things googleable, which have no right on existence. That the text was there for weeks does not make it right, and you know that you have now two people against you. Bring it to a higher authority, I am going to warn you for 3RR. --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:51, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
take it to a higher authority then. You don't need to warn me.. warn yourself. I am a reasonable person who likes things to be honest, truthful, and hates censorship. Look at the addition now about a new variant right at the top of the page. Is this a page an apologia for Wyeth? No, google doesn't make it valid, but is worth a look for you. That was my point. That the text was there was a fact. Your removing it also does not make it right. Sure take it to a higher authority in wiki. Two on one also doesn't make it right either. Szimonsays 20:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] venlafaxine

Please refrain from undoing other people's edits repeatedly. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Rather than reverting, discuss disputed changes on the talk page. The revision you want is not going to be implemented by edit warring. Thank you


[edit] edit war

please apply this rule to yourself as well. leave my edit.. discuss it on page, get a survey, ask for arbritation. do not keep deleting my entry. you are not the authority. Why should i leave an entry about a new version of effexor ? If I follow your rule, i delete it becdause it is inappropriate. applies to you but not to me.. leave my entry till you have undertaken a survey or arbritation please. I think that the entry about the new version is inappropriate here. this is not the wall street journal with info that has market implications, it is an information page about a drug. and it is also not a pharmacopeia (sp). If there is a new version planned, it might be appropriate under another section IF there was some reference. Please leave my edit till either survey or arbitration. I do not appreciagte your deleting it and i certainly do not agree with your comments. I have the right to re-enter it if you keep deleting it and we disagree. Leave it till it is arbitrated. The arguments are laid out here in detail in any case.Szimonsays 21:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Szimon, it is indeed an edit war now. If you read back, you see that you have two 3RR warnings. Maybe you should consider doing the discussion on the talk-page. The way it is written is unencyclopedic, NOT the information that you provide. If it was censorship, we would also have deleted the link in the external links section, which, f.y.i. I have made more clear in the list. I have tried on several occasions to convince you to rewrite the entry, and you are not listening at all to that. --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:54, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't understand the 3RR warnings. If others delete my entries, and I re-enter, then who should be subject to warnings? Dirk, you suggest i rewrite, but then you ask for a reference to scientific source that is just not the nature of petititons. I think that my arguments about the entry are substantive, but you ignore those arguments. That is not a form of discussion when each side presents one argument and then refuses to respond to the other's argument. My arguments: 1. a resource or scientific reference is not mandatory in wiki, the petition entries are not scientific entries, but experiences of users 2. this is not a pharmacopaeia nor a scientific journal, but is an on-line encyclopedia, and therefore relevant information can come from a variety of means including witness statements, 3. the petition has a huge weight as it represents users and even if one discounts some percentage of entries as invalid, the numbers are still HUGE,and in addition to this, there is a considerable recent history of black box warnings with SSRI's and Effexor is included in the group though it is a variant SSRN. There is also a considerable information in the media and elsewhere about lack of proper information to patients about use. This is covered in the petition. The idea of an encyclopedia should be to present balanced inforamtion and the few lines i have on the petition are balanced. I am open to appropriate revisions of those lines so long as the basic meaning is not distorted. Otherwise, I do suggest arbitration on this. One of us may not agree with the arbitration but we are bound by it even if we disagree. I feel very strongly that preventing this from being in the main body is wrong ethically. If you don't like my language in it, be my guest to do it justice, but asking for scientific validation of this petition is really disingenous. It is not a scientific piece. Szimonsays 22:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I am trying to rewrite it into a better style, but I can not get it into satisfactory state, there is only one sentence which is encyclopedic, but not a reliable source. There MUST be reports available that recognise the petition. I hope you can do something to find recognition of it. I do understand your points you state, but the trouble is now, the way you are writing it is the problem, not the info. 1) You are right, resource or scientific reference is not mandatory, but preferred. 2) Yes, it is an encyclopedia, hence, the text must be encyclopedic .. we are trying to get this thing into a format that can be printed, as a book or sold on CD, see for example wp:wprv (I am, albeit not very, active in that as well), hence, the text must be suitable for that (technically, we are writing an encylopedia, not an online encyclopedia, that it is online should only put more concern on the way it is written!). 3) No, the petition is not a reliable source, there is no counterweight, there is no blank,etc. etc. I tried to explain that earlier. Anyone can edit that, technically, even one person behind a proxy could write all the 12.000 entries.
About 3RR .. also the first addition counts (which was already a reversion in itself). The explanation is on WP:3RR. --Dirk Beetstra T C 23:26, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi again Dirk.. first let me say I do appreciate your efforts in this. We can get passionate about our beliefs in a particular point of view or arguments to support our ideas, but mutual respect means a lot. I understand the 3RR now. I wrote to the petition to see if the creator of the page had an idea of how to provide a resource. I think that deleting the entry is not fair.. Perhaps we can agree to one day on, one day off. I am looking for the kind of resources your mention, but I stil contend that in the overall, the petition is reliable not as a statistic or a scientific study, but as a "snapshot" of user experiences. Perhaps a sentence saying that there are millions of users who use the product successfully, and that side-effects are often individual might help. In the course of reading about this group of drugs and first hand discussions with family members who have lost children to suicide, the use of SSRI's such as Seroxat in UK and Effexor in North America are under suspicion in addition to the controversy about drug firms not emphasizing negativce results, and the contradictory meta-studies some of which say suicide rates are down since SSRI's began to be used and others that show a much higher risk of suicide ideation caused by SSRI's. I know that there are some flaws to an online petition of this kind that is a posted comments rather than a series of questions, but if anyone did a random looksee, it is clear that it is not one or a few persons writing thousands of entries. I still hold that the petition deserves to be in the article and that the disclaimer does sate the limitations. I just don't believe that there is anything to be found to give this more reliability. The entry about a new version to be marketed is just not appropriate for this article at all - at least not until the new product has been approved. It is just pure promotion and has nothing to do with content.Szimonsays 20:04, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
The current entry for the petition looks fine to me Dirk. Short, but it is there. ThanksSzimonsays 21:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi Dirk.. I didn't realize the other changes you had made such as making more subheadings for links. This is really great. I had just added the severe discontinuation (withdrawal) syndrome back to the title, but a fine point. Very much appreciate your changes. I am really fine with it as it stands. thank you for your effort.Szimonsays 16:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
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