User talk:Bananaramadingdong

Your off-wiki comments

I have observed that someone who appears to be you has made some off-Wiki comments about the management of the Alcoholics Anonymous article and the fact that someone who is probably you was not satisfied with the discussion at Talk:Alcoholics_Anonymous/Archive_9#The_13th_step_movie. Let me quote some of what probably-you said off-wiki:

Any time someone tries to add information about the ineffectiveness of AA's all-or-nothing treatment of substance abuse, the abuse/harassment that goes on in groups, the documentary that revealed said abuse and harassment - one of a small handful of accounts, who rarely participate on any other page, immediately revert the edit with a gish-gallop of claimed wikipedia violations.

Now, aside from the fact that reverting edits is supposed to be something of last resort - the reasons they cite for removing stuff strain credulity all the time. For example, they dismiss the documentary because it apparently wasn't screened in enough festivals and theatres. Which...might be a thing (it really isn't), if one were trying to cite it as a source...but you can't even mention the existence of the documentary, a demonstrable fact, without that being shot down as well due to the documentary not meeting their standards for a documentary.

Let me respond to that here.

• >>the ineffectiveness of AA's all-or-nothing treatment of substance abuse<< This is straight up a false claim. The 2020 Cochrane Review saw a significant increase in abstinence among subjects randomly assigned to AA-centered treatment. As per WP:MEDDATE, “Cochrane Library reviews and NICE guidelines are generally of high quality”.

• >>the abuse/harassment that goes on in groups<< We have a section on 13th stepping, but, really, women-only groups have always been around, and, as per actual reliable sources, “Women-only meetings are a very prevalent part of AA culture, and AA has become more welcoming for women.”

• >>the documentary that revealed said abuse and harassment<< As per our discussion from four years ago, I pointed out that Wikipedia policy is that “the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all”. You mentioned that there is a section in the notability guidelines entitled Notability guidelines do not apply to content within articles or lists, but that section clearly states “Content coverage within a given article or list (i.e. whether something is noteworthy enough to be mentioned within the article or list) is governed by the principle of due weight, balance, and other content policies”, and the policy on due weight says we do not include “views of tiny minorities” at all, and a movie which never got mentioned in any mainstream source is one only of relevance to “tiny minorities”. That particular documentary, as pointed out by another editor, “does not have much coverage”, and for something this contentious to be included in a Wikipedia article which gets nearly 1,000 views a day, it needs to have some coverage in reliable third party sources, such as a review of the movie by a major newspaper or other reliable source.

• >>a small handful of accounts, who rarely participate on any other page<< Because the AA traditions request that I be anonymous in public forums, including the Wikipedia, and because my main Wikipedia account has my real-world identity attached to it, I created this account in light of those AA traditions on anonymity.

It is unfortunate that probably-you is holding on to a four-year-old discussion on the Wikipedia which did not go your way, but the fact of the matter is that Wikipedia has policies in place to protect it from false claims, and, yes, claiming AA has “ineffectiveness” here in the 2020s is a false claim which flies in the face of established science. SkylabField (talk) 19:42, 22 January 2022 (UTC)