Talk:American Consumer Institute

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 4 January 2008. The result of the discussion was No concensus (default keep).

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the American Consumer Institute article.
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[edit] Conflict of interest

  • its interesting that COI was discussed and resolved earlier and it seeems that someone has taken a excerpt of that earlier discussion, but conveniently omitted positive comments by third-parties.

Profedit (talk) 11:19, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

  • I think all of the concerns have been addressed. The piece was simplified and bias (one contributor was using blog comments as facts) were removed. More citations were added too. Thanks Seattle1999 (talk) 18:22, 4 February 2008 (UTC)


The only editor of content on the article is a representative of the organisation. The article has no third-party references and really needs some neutral editor review of material. -- Whpq (talk) 21:48, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

There's also no assertion of notability...which is also why the three other previous versions of this article were speedy deleted. --SmashvilleBONK! 04:24, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I agree with one of the earlier comments, the comparison between this group and other groups should be edited out, because it is difficult to verify and source.

On the other hand, I think it is otherwise accurate. I am a student at UVA and did a project on this and looked into a few of these nonprofit consumer groups-- CFA, CU, etc. That is why I added the news clip from FOX TV on this group yesterday and I believe I saw one from ABC, as well as some news clips. I can add these, when I return to school in a couple of next weeks, if the page is still available, which will address the issue of notability.

One thing troubles me, though. If you do not leave the page up for more than one day, how would you expect their to be more contributors to it? And then, the lack of contributors becomes a reason for deletion? By the way, the group's "name" was mentioned on other wiki pages for quite some time (a year?), but now it's been edited out altogether without any reason given. It seems like there is more than careful gatekeeping going on here ... --Wahoo4u (talk) 18:44, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment - you claim to be a UVA student that happened to do a project on these types of organisations. Yet in the AFD debate, you referred to ACI material as "our stuff", and you appeared to edit this article after my COI comment from above indicating neutral editors should be involved. It seem to me that there is a high likelihood that you are somehow affiliated with ACI. There is no prohibition against you editting so long as the material adheres to a neutral point of view, and you really should disclose any affiliation and how you came to edit this article. -- Whpq (talk) 14:35, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

Seattle1999, who interestingly enough seems to have contributed no edits other than those related to this organization, deleted all criticism of the organization from the article. He characterizes some of it as "using blog comments as facts," but Broadband Reports isn't a "blog." It's a reputable news site that's been in business for a decade. If the criticism is unfair, feel free to edit it to make it more balanced, but you don't get to just delete it because you don't agree with it. Binarybits (talk) 19:26, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Binarybits is wrong here. I just checked and the Broadband Report citation is an editorial (look at the heading) ... that means it is an opinion. Opinions are not factual and should not in the article. Profedit (talk) 00:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any Wikipedia policies excluding opinion pieces from being reliable sources. In fact, I specifically referred to it as an op-ed in my contribution. The point is that the only reliable source that discusses the organization in any detail claims it's an astroturf organization deserves to be mentioned in Wikipedia. I notice that the organization has been cited by several organizations, but it doesn't appear that any of them give much detail about the organization, and none of them seem to refute DSLReports' claim that the organization is little more than a front group for the telecom industry. So that information is useful to Wikipedia readers and should be included in the article. Binarybits (talk) 02:21, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
By the way, I notice that your only contributions to Wikipedia so far relate to the ACI. Are you affiliated with the organization, by any chance? If so, I would encourage you to review Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest. Cheers! Binarybits (talk) 03:05, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Your contributions represent intentional unconstructive edits. You are citing a couple of webpages consisting of an editorials and a blog that make unsubstantiated claims and offer no direct evidence. Then, these sources are repeated by other blogs and op-eds, citing the earlier pieces as evidence. But, if you read the cited pieces, you will see that there is no evidence presented that supports the claims made. Including these in the article makes it an opinion piece.
There is not one example of financial backers as the edit claims or citations claim. Binarybits is wrong about the advocacy and lobbying claims -- the group is a 501c3 organization, which is by law prohibited from lobbying and advocacy. The edit cites the New York Times as saying that someone in the organization argued for "filtering the Internet." But this claim is nowhere to be found in the NYT article -- not the word "filtering" and not the person mentioned in the edit. The discussion of a lobbying agenda by two companies have no bearing on this organization and does not belong here. The claim that this organization only does telecommunications research is not correct either, if you just visit the web site. The comment in the third paragraph "in contrast" reveals more of the edit's bias. I think this piece was better when it was simple. If you want to add the cite from the NYT, that fine, just refer to it correctly. If you want to state is position on a certain policy, that's fine, just footnote it with a reliable public source. But, the other additions are factually incorrect. I think you have an agenda here that is not in the interest of improving this article. Profedit (talk) 22:42, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Ars Technica is not a blog, it's a serious online news source that's been in business for close to a decade. And as I already said, there are no rules against using editorials as reliable sources. The filtering quote was from Fox News, not the NYT. I've altered it to have a direct quote from the article. My edits don't say that the institute only does telecom research. If other research has been cited in reliable sources, please add it. But the citations we have so far certainly support the notion that telecom research is the dominant activity of the organization. Again, I have to urge you to review Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. If you're affiliated with ACI somehow, that doesn't make you ineligible to contribute to the article, but it should make you think twice before deleting criticism of it. Binarybits (talk) 23:01, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Funny comment, given that you have heavily edited the Cato Institute article and appear to be Cato adjunct scholar Timothy Lee. DickClarkMises (talk) 16:35, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure how that's relevant. If any of my edits to the Cato article violate the COI policies, please bring them to my attention. Binarybits (talk) 17:33, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

These edits by Bianarybits are nonsense. Bianarybits' submissions appear to be slanderous. Assume that the editorials have some shred of truth -- that someone worked for a company 20 years before joining the nonprofit and assume that this someone has their name as an administrator on the nonprofit's website, big Deal --how does that lead one to conclude that the nonprofit is taken financial support from some specified corporations, as claimed. It is too polite to say that this is opinion; it is actually is just a perpetuation of lies and nonesense. It may raise some legal issues, because it appears to be slanderous. The edits are clearly unbalanced and not helpful to the community. The citations merely cite one another without introducing any supporting facts. Profedit (talk) 11:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

This is getting tedious. It's not Wikipedia's job to determine the truth or falsehood of claims about your organization. Rather, it's to fairly represent what has appeared in reliable sources regarding the organization. The article isn't saying that we think ACI is an astroturf organization. It's saying that two reliable sources and at least one prominent organization thinks so. It's not our place to second-guess those sources, but merely to accurately report what they've said.
Now, if you've got other information that has appeared in reliable sources that would tend to refute the claim that your group is an astroturf, that, too belongs in the article. If you feel I've given undue weight to these particular articles, the solution isn't to delete my contributions but to expand the article to include additional information that gives a more balanced view. Frankly, I think that will be hard to do since ACI's press coverage seems to magically dovetail with Verizon's lobbying agenda. But I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong. The way to do that isn't to stubbornly delete all of my contributions, but to edit the article to make it more balanced, citing reliable sources to demonstrate your point of view. Binarybits (talk) 13:03, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
These edits that are being added are fake charges (a hoax). By repeating them as fact you are attempting to legitimize the hoax and that is vandalism. If you read your cited materials you will see that there is no supportive evidence that vaguely suggests any inappropriate behavior by this group. Anyone with a computer can draft a hoax or blogs. By placing them in this article, and early in the article, you are trying to claim some legitimacy that is not there. The charges are slanderous. The way the article was written before, it took no sides, presented no opinions and it is open to unbalanced contributions. I suspect you are connected to one of groups spreading the hoax. The burden of proof is on you. Profedit (talk) 13:48, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Look dude, Ars Technica, Broadband Reports, and Common Cause are not "hoax" publications or organizations. Maybe they're right about ACI, maybe they're wrong, but they're certainly sufficiently credible sources to include their opinions in the article. The way the article was written before, it omitted relevant information about the organization that has been discussed by multiple reliable sources. Again, if you feel the article is unbalanced, your recourse is to add additional information from reliable sources disputing these allegations. But you don't get to just delete information that casts your organization in a negative light.
There's no "burden of proof" on Wikipedia, because I'm not asserting anything. I'm just reporting what some reliable sources said about ACI. It's not my fault that some of them have a negative opinion of the organization. You don't get to delete that information because you don't agree with it, and neither I nor anyone else bears the "burden of proof" that the information is accurate. Binarybits (talk) 15:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] References

If you wish to add content that could be potentially problematic, legally, we're going to need better references that sites like Broadband Reports. They're really not reliable enough, if anybody wishes to recreate the article with additional reliable sources, please do so in their own userspace and contact me. I'll quite happy to move a very well sourced version of the page back into the mainspace, provided it's completely neutral, totally verifiable and extremely well sourced. Sorry for the trouble folks, but such is life. Nick (talk) 18:33, 6 February 2008 (UTC)