Do you think Wikipedia's current article on chiropractic is a good one? If not, care to rewrite it?
Wikipedia on Chiropractic
There are a lot of politics behind that page, so if you're not an active Wikipedia user you're going to have to understand how Wikipedia works in general before you start editing or else you will get IP blocked - guaranteed. If you are already active on Wikipedia but haven't been active on that page in the past you're going to need to do a lot of digging though past conversations (Talk page -> archives) to see what has already been fought over. Every sentence of that page has been fought over in some capacity and there are rules in place that contest their changing. There is a long process just to change single words too - for many days the page described Chiropractic as a pseudoscience in the lead, and it took much argumentation to get that word removed.
I've proposed quite a few changes in the past and the resulting conversations are always polarizing and largely non-productive. Wikipedia has a large population of MDs, PhDs, etc who hold our profession low esteem so making changes is hard. Also, there's no such thing as making changes in the favor of our profession because Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral, and therefore any glamorous chiropractic talk is swiftly reverted (despite rampant bias on other pages on the site).
If you really want to get involved, throw up your suggestions on the talk page before making any edits to the article itself. Read over WP:UNDUE, WP:NPOV, and WP:HEALTHRS before you do that though. As well as their corresponding pages.
I don't say this all to dissuade you. I just get tired of people making large edits to the page only for them to be reverted and watch another argument unfold on the Talk page.
EDIT: In a similar vein for some time now I have been wanting to start up a WikiProject Chiropractic. For those who don't quite understand Wikipedia, this is basically a page where all Chiropractic articles are listed and categorized by how well written they are, and how important they are to Chiropractic as a whole. The point of it is to get a group of people together to find all the chiropractic articles and then systematically make them all better. All pages related to Chiropractic, in some capacity, would be a part of this project. In order to start a project however you need a team of a few active Wikipedia users to help, so if you're interested let me know. (Figured this might be a good relevant topic to add that in!)
I've proposed quite a few changes in the past and the resulting conversations are always polarizing and largely non-productive. Wikipedia has a large population of MDs, PhDs, etc who hold our profession low esteem so making changes is hard
Yep. I've tried to make simple changes too; same problem. I'm not even trying to promote chiropractic, I sincerely want to bring the page to neutral. The problem is that (most of) the people currently controlling the page have such a tremendous negative opinion of chiropractic, that they view their very biased changes as neutral (or they don't care).
to u/Uljanov, Just to illustrate to you how difficult making small changes is:
Recently a relatively "high-ranking" editor named SMcCandlish commented on how bad the page is.
Why are we tolerating such a one-sided attack piece on an entire range of disciplines, that include doctors and quacks, not just quacks? There are multiple approaches to chiropractic, which did have pseudoscientific origins, but has evolved a long way since then. There are chiropractors who do hold with the nonsense 19th-century views (and probably also offer aromatherapy and naturopathy; if you encounter one, back out of the door slowly ...). But there are plenty of chiropractors who approach this as a scientific medical discipline, grounded entirely in observable facts, like whether one of the vertebrae is observably out of place. Anyone who's actually been to a chiropractor of the latter sort (e.g. because they couldn't stand up straight after twisting their back and were in great pain, and had this problem resolved in 15 minutes of manual or activator adjustment, with no hint of mumbo-jumbo) knows the difference.
and
This article, at least its lead, is just a Wikipedia embarrassment. We never permit a piece this single-mindedly hateful to sit here like this for so long. This is a community matter, not a personal one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chiropractic/Archive_39#PoV_hatchet_job
He said quite a bit more, but that's summarizes most of his point. Even after that comment, nothing was done. I promise you that over the last year myself and some others have made some changes to that page to bring it closer to neutral, but it is a slow and painful process.
I completely agree with what u/Chaoss780 said about reading WP:UNDUE, WP:NPOV, and WP:HEALTHRS. I think it would also benefit you to read WP:OR because that will help you understand where a lot of the problems with the article are coming from. Good luck on making changes, and feel free to PM me if you have any questions about Wikipedia changes. I'll do my best to help you.
QuackGuru also does good NPOV work which he gets slammed for constantly. Thanks for linking what SMcC said, especially the issues with the lead. He's right, it makes chiropractic sound inherently dangerous and not practically applicable or even cost-effective. It's because they cherry pick studies and completely ignore the rest of the literature. I feel like the people who put those studies there break WP:HEALTHRS but god forbid you try to say that because they always find ways to justify it!
Thanks for your help with the page as well :)
I agree, QuackGuru does a great job. I actually had a few sentences written about him in my original reply, but decided to delete it, lest it get used against him in the chiro talk page. He is one of the best NPOV editors I've seen with regard to chiropractic and his other articles. He has argued fervently against the OR in the chiropractic lead.
I like your idea about WikiProject Chiropractic, and I'd be interested in participating if you start it. If you choose to start that, you may want to forward an invite to some of the members of Wikiproject:Alternative Medicine especially the ones who listed an interest in chiropractic. That wikiproject appears to be mostly dead, but some of them may still be active users. here is another list of members which seems more up to date.
I hope we can get more people involved in making these changes, but it needs to be done delicately.
Figured I'd get a start on it. Didn't realize how intensive it is to make one of these, but it's up in draft form currently! WP:CHIRO
For anyone here, add your name if you'd like! Or make an account and put your name in! The more the merrier. I will be working on it all weekend but article tags can be doled out as placeholders on all chiro-related pages for now to review later - once we decide how to score the importance of articles. That can all be discussed on the talk pages.
More posts from r/Chiropractic
