User talk:Sideswipe9th

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Hello Sideswipe9th,

Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.

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Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!

Hey, thanks so much for your contributions on the ABA page. Unfortunately debate is still ongoing, so I have raised a formal dispute resolution thing. I've named you on it as someone who's been part of the debate (albeit not very recently). I hope that's okay!

]

Hi

WP:UNDUE. There is quite clearly no consensus for this content, at this time, and you have yet to convince any editor that the content is due. I would strongly urge that you self-revert this edit and re-engage on the article talk page. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:41, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply

]

I dont think anyone other than you have argued that it is undue, the only concern had been the reliability of sources, which shouldnt be a problem anymore --FMSky (talk) 01:43, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@FMSky: both myself and Aquillion have said that this is undue in any form. Additionally, as I've just noted on your own talk page, you are currently in violation of the 3RR brightline, having made 4 reverts in the last 10/11 hours. Please self-revert your most recent edit to the article. Thanks. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:45, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for self-reverting. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:45, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If anything this article confirms that NICE is expected to be and generally considered to be independent of government interference. Your comment "and as far as I can tell, no reforms to prevent future political interference took place" is somewhat overselling this as though it was a scandal that one might expect to lead to reform. The NICE statement that the change was made "to align with the revised remit given to NICE in 2014 that no recommendations addressing national public policy issues or legislation should be made in NICE guidance, unless specifically indicated within a topic referral." can be taken at face value if you want to. The guideline states its remit is to "Commissioners, managers and practitioners with public health as part of their remit, working in the public, private and third sector" and "the public". None of them are "the government". So I can see the point that minimum-price legislation for alcohol could be regarded as outside of their remit. And I can see why campaigners would be disappointed if they had false hopes it would be. Can you imagine if NICE recommended that tax on alcohol be directly hypothecated for the NHS. You and I might agree it had overstepped its remit there. So a line needs to be drawn somewhere and perhaps that line should have been made clearer to those drafting that guideline, so they weren't disappointed later. It isn't really convincing as evidence of a systemic problem of political interference.

The other example you gave, on guidance on adult depression, isn't political at all AFAICS, so not sure how it is relevant. But reading the article suggests that there were problems with a draft that will be addressed. They say "NICE listened to our serious methodological concerns and engaged with us appropriately with regard to these. I am very pleased with that and now hope that they’ll indeed address them all in this third revision". Not really seeing what's news here. Second draft revision gets revised, after consultation and feedback, for third draft revision. Hmm. -- Colin°^Talk 11:28, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Colin. So on the political interference article, there is a world of difference between expected to be free and actually being free of government interference. In this instance, NICE removed part of their guidance because ministers at the Department of Health wrote to them telling them to remove it. The issue isn't whether or not NICE overstepped their remit, it's that the government wrote to them in secret to remove part of the guidance and NICE did it. To quote the chair of the committee for this guideline, the change was "imposed after the committee had signed off a final version of the guidance".

Now, I'm sure we can both agree that issues relating to trans and non-binary people are a political hot topic within the UK right now, especially when it comes to youth. A few months ago we saw some pretty awful non-statutory draft school's guidance from the Department for Education that government lawyers assert has a high risk of being found unlawful, yet the government pressed ahead with publishing. Almost two years ago we saw guidance from the EHRC allowing for the exclusion of trans people from single gender services aligned with their gender identity. Because of that guidance, the EHRC itself is currently under investigation by

Baroness Falkner

in December 2020. In this set of circumstances, it is not out of the realm of possibility that the NICE guidance on puberty blockers has been subject to political interference from the government.

As for the other example I gave, you are correct that it wasn't about political pressure. If you re-read my comment on YFNS talk page, I was also making the point that the guidance NICE issue can be incorrect. The 2017 incident was because they issued incorrect draft guidance, and a large coalition of health organisations called them to task over this. Per the original stakeholder position statement from the coalition, they raised the concerns about fundamental methodological flaws during the first draft of this guidance, and those concerns were not addressed in the second draft. According to an archived copy of the Society for Psychotherapy Research website from November 2021, even the third draft of the guidance did not address all of their concerns. That guideline was eventually released in June 2022, and according to an archived copy the Society for Psychotherapy Research website from that same date, even the final version of the guideline had the same methodological issues that the large stakeholder group raised with the committee during draft 1. According to the final stakeholder position statement summary, the stakeholders still "remain concerned about the trustworthiness of the guideline" based on its final draft.

The overall point I'm making is that, while we may consider NICE guidelines to be high quality per MEDRS, they are not perfect. They are not immune to political pressure, nor are they immune to methodological flaws that compromise the trustworthiness and reliability of the guidance they provide. They are not above rebuke by other high quality reliable sources, and treating them as though they are is doing ourselves and our readers a disservice when that information is contextually relevant to an article and has

due weight. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:54, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply

]

The BMJ article doesn't state it as strongly as you, only that "The edit appears to have been made as a result..". Comparing the draft with the final, the scope of "Who should take action" was revised from "They could be working in government departments, Public Health England, local government, the NHS and other organisations in the public, private, voluntary and community sectors." to "They could be working in local government, Public Health England the NHS and other organisations in the public, private, voluntary and community sectors." Quite clearly "government departments" was removed. The recommendations still "Making alcohol less accessible, affordable and acceptable". How one makes alcohol less affordable I would argue really is the sort of policy a government should make. They could by all means ask a body, perhaps NICE, to recommend among options, but I can also see that this could quite reasonably be viewed as a political decision.

NICE have thousands of guidelines and reports. You only have a few examples. Yes I'm sure they get some things wrong, that they don't revise guidelines as frequently as one might like, that some bodies are unhappy with some decisions (but you don't hear so much from the ones who are happy), and so on. You'd really need a compelling source that it is institutionally incapable of making wise evidence based decisions, and I don't think you'll find it. The whole NHS is a tale of people disagreeing on how to do it, often very vocally. It doesn't mean those involved aren't in good faith trying their best. -- Colin°^Talk 19:16, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WT:MED

) has anyone actually said that we should not include the findings of the NICE review into puberty blockers? Because if they have, I must have missed it. If they have could you link me to the comment(s) where they did so? What I have seen across those discussions is some editors wishing to contrast the NICE review against some other high quality sources (ie WPATH, the paper by Horton) that have criticised its findings and methodology, in a contextually appropriate manner. That's why I've stressed the point to you that NICE are not infallible. They can make mistakes, and they can be called out for those mistakes by other high quality sources.

There is also a discussion on whether to include SBM's criticism over NICE rejecting a freedom of information request for the names and qualifications of those involved in the review. While SBM clearly isn't MEDRS, and it would be inappropriate to discuss that in the Puberty blocker#Gender-affirming care section, due to the way that article is currently structured a good faith argument could be made for including it in the Puberty blocker#United Kingdom section, just as there are good faith arguments to oppose it. Most NICE guidelines that I'm aware of include names, job titles, and summary qualifications of the guideline committee members. For example, here's the list of members for the committee behind the 2022 depression in adults guideline we've been discussing here. Here's the member list for the guideline on the diagnosis and management of ADHD. Here's the list of members for the guideline on the diagnosis and management of autistic adults. And here's the member list for the guideline on epilepsy in children, young people and adults.

From reading the original FOI requests, for their part NICE seem to be considering this specific list of names and qualifications to be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act 2000, on the grounds of data protection. This seems to be at odds and seemingly out of step with how they handle the names and qualifications for other guidelines they publish. Accordingly this does seem like fair criticism to make against the organisation and the circumstances that lead to the development of this guideline. Now it's possible they've withheld this because the development of this guideline was a part of the Cass review, and the review itself has been withholding the names and qualifications of all of its members. As a former academic in a different field (computer science), the level of secrecy behind both the NICE guidance and the Cass review is concerning to me. Outside of the blinded peer-review process, the authors behind a piece of good science should be known, and I have to wonder why they are being withheld in this circumstance. There's a rumour that Cass will be publishing the final report sometime later this month or early next month, and perhaps when she does so we'll find out who was involved. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:38, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See my latest comment at YFNS page. I've never complained the report was being removed or suggested to be removed, it was the "not give a lot of weight to" a review from "a country the CoE say is ...". That's just plain offensive. And foolish.

I'm not particularly focused in this particularly NICE review or whether it itself has problems. I'm much more interested that editors review RS with decent arguments. Neither YFNS argument, nor your "I found a few cases of complaints about NICE over the years" arguments are good imo, if one's point is to "not give a lot of weight" or regard a source as being less reliable. If your point was only to say NICE isn't infallible then you wouldn't have me disagreeing with that and needn't have done all that research. But if your point is that because they made this mistake here or nearly made that mistake there, then we should also "not give a lot of weight to" this other review/report/guideline there, then that doesn't add up. Because, as I said, NICE produce thousands of such reviews/reports/guidelines. We'd need evidence of a systemic problem.

I wonder if the anonymity is due to threats, though. I mean, it's pretty likely those involved will get death threats. Whereas you don't tend to get that for prioritising the "wrong" epilepsy drug.

I'm reading Fighting for Life: The Twelve Battles that Made Our NHS, and the Struggle for Its Future. It's pretty good if you like that sort of political history. Anyway, they mention NICE and Herceptin. That's a good example of political interference, but the opposite way around, where they were pressured into agreeing an expensive treatment that would normally have failed their algorithm. Turns out there's a magic money tree for cancer.

NICE have a hard job to do and they are in a battle with the best funded companies in the world. So I can imagine that a lot of the criticism they get is directly or indirectly (though funding charities) from drug companies disappointed with their opinion of their hoped-for-megabucks-blockbuster. I imagine also their reviews are used as bargaining tools to argue the price down. So I suspect there's a lot of pressure on them. -- Colin°^Talk 08:49, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sideswipe9th,

I think it would be kind of you (and in-line with Wikipedia policy) to restore the IP's comment and explain why we use they/them pronouns to refer to Nex Benedict, as opposed to the he/him we see in most sources now, and the she/her we saw in very early reports, and how this is because Wikipedia operates under a system of gaining consensus for policies, and all articles, per current consensus, must comply with

...all of this is obvious to you and I is not so obvious to a first-time editor.

Imagine you were brand new to Wikipedia, were confused about the Wikipedia style guide, and asked a question on an article talk page to this effect. Then your comment disappeared. Because you're not familiar with Wikipedia, it's not immediately obvious what happened or where it went. Your original question went unanswered, and now you're only left with more questions.

which you cite, states that talk pages should not be used as a general forum for discussing the topic of an article, but rather on how to improve it. IP's comment, while ill-informed, is relevant to improving the article (by changing pronouns), and is not general commentary on the subject. Thus, it seems as though this is an inappropriate rationale for removing the comment when we can politely end the user's confusion.

Thanks, Peter L Griffin (talk) 01:17, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Peter L Griffin.

The IP editor's comment was a forum style comment about pronouns, it was not a suggestion on how to improve the article. On articles in this content area we see dozens of this type of comment every day, and they are typically removed per

WP:NOTFORUM. So I will not be restoring it at this time. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:21, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply

]

It would seem the IP's (implied) suggestion was to modify the pronouns in the article to reflect Nex's sex assigned at birth. Peter L Griffin (talk) 01:25, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You are welcome to hold that opinion of the comment, however that seems unlikely given that the comment ended with Those are the only pronouns. The facts do not care about your feelings. There are a great many editors, including myself and EvergreenFir who would remove this type of comment per the reasoning you've been given. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:28, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, hanlon's razor may apply here. I'm not going to start an editwar with you over this, but IP clearly does have an (ill-informed) opinion about how the article ought to read and has some logic of sorts to back it up. I do think a reply would be courteous. Peter L Griffin (talk) 01:36, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hanlon's is often tempered by Occam's, and the simpler explanation is that this was just a forum style comment about pronouns. You are of course welcome to post a message about why the comment was removed on the IP editor's talk page if you so wish. However that type of comment has no place on an article talk page. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:39, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

IgnatiusofLondon (he/him • ☎️) 11:50, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:27, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

]

@Bishonen: Hey, sorry been away on holiday for the last week, haven't touched my computer and still not fully back yet. Saw the email I think you're talking about and I'll give a quick response in a sec. Sideswipe9th (talk) 14:59, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks very much. I was worried you might be having the same health troubles as before; delighted it was just a holiday. Bishonen | tålk 16:41, 8 April 2024 (UTC).[reply]

I saw your message on Roxy's page, and I want you to know that you are in my thoughts. Be safe. Best, --Tryptofish (talk) 23:42, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Tryptofish: It's been a tough couple of days. Can't go into more details for now I'm afraid, but thanks for the thoughts. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:03, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to hear it. I understand. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:46, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sideswipe9th, the ARCA you filed has been closed. The consensus of arbitrators was that the current procedures are sufficient for the area. firefly ( t · c ) 16:36, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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