User talk:RJ Clothier

A tag has been placed on Healthy Skepticism, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article seems to be blatant advertising which only promotes a company, product, group, service or person and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become an encyclopedia article. Please read the general criteria for speedy deletion, particularly item 11, as well as the guidelines on spam.

If you can indicate why the subject of this article is not blatant advertising, you may contest the tagging. To do this, please add {{hangon}} on the top of the page and leave a note on the article's talk page explaining your position. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would help make it encyclopedic, as well as adding any citations from reliable sources to ensure that the article will be verifiable. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Eliz81 00:29, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Healthy Skepticism article

Hi there. Took me a while to remember what happened with the article... looks like I had tagged it for speedy deletion, it was deleted, and then you've brought it back in a form that's now tagged for notability and wikification. I think the wikification tag needs to remain on there, since it's not laid out in the standard format with headings, subheadings and the like. I'm glad you've taken the trouble to cite some third party sources, which certainly add to the article's credibility, but I'd like to see some more outside sources confirming the notability of the company (preferably hyperlinked) before I would personally remove the tag. How big is this organization? Who is the founder/head? What is their media presence? Have they conducted any interviews you could cite, from a well respected newspaper or other outlet, that could also attest to their influence? I hope this was useful and I applaud your efforts for your second go-round with this article. Let me know if I can clarify anything or be of any more help. Eliz81 06:18, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I see you've recreated the article, and it looks better this go-round. It doesn't read as an advertisement anymore (hooray), but I'm still concerned that in its present format it violates WP:NPOV. For example, the sentence 'raising awareness amongst health professionals of their vulnerability to the distorting influence that marketing techniques' is *not* NPOV. I'm certainly no fan of irresponsible marketing of drugs (who is?), but it's important to stick to an encyclopedic tone as much as possible. If you can reword the portions of the article which pass judgment on the drug companies, I think you should be all set. Eliz81 22:55, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi again, I see you've updated the POV comment I suggested in the article. Let me again reiterate that I'm sympathetic to Healthy Skepticism and its mission, but my goal is to get this article as encyclopedic as possible. If I may make some more specific suggestions for how to improve neutrality:

"reducing harm from misleading drug promotion" this is a toughie. could you reword it so that it's from Healthy Skepticism's POV?
"campaigning against questionable marketing practices" change to a description of what exactly these marketing practices were e.g. "campaigning against the marketing practice of the promotion of appetite stimulants, tonics and anabolic steroids..." etc.
"parents who were struggling to afford food for their children" should be reworded and cited. What is the evidence they were marketing specifically to poor parents? And try to find a NPOV way of phrasing that they were poor.
"many improvements in drug marketing, several products being removed from the market and many advertising claims changed" again, improvement isn't NPOV. 'change' is. So could you alter this to simply list the changes that were made in response to Healthy Skepticism's advocacy (company pledge to reduce marketing to the destitute? reduced funding for advertising? Change in tone of ads? Whatever actually changed.)
"misleading drug promotion in all countries" again, instead of using the word misleading, state specifically what the nature of the misleading drug promotion was (they did x, y, and z).
"raising awareness amongst health professionals of their vulnerability to the influence that marketing techniques have on their decisions" Although this sentence is better than before, I think it would benefit from rephrasing. how about something like ""raising awareness amongst health professionals of the potential influence that marketing techniques can have on their decisions"? Again, hope this helps, and keep me updated on the article's progress. Eliz81 19:49, 24 June 2007 (UTC)