Consumer Action Taskforce:Sample/Incident/Help

Sample Incident Article: Amazon PhotosPlus Discontinuation

An Incident page will cover an event, or chain of events, which surrounds one instance of anti-consumer activity (or anything else, such as the passing of a law, which is relevant to the wiki). These will make up the bulk of the pages on the wiki, though likely not the bulk of the traffic. These pages should be able to be referred to as something of a ‘historical record’ and should have a good deal of factual content relating to the event(s) in question, complete with links to, and citations of, various contemporary sources.

The key components of an incident page will be:

• A brief overview of the incident (i.e. 3-4 sentences at the start of the article)
• The details surrounding the business practice in question.
• An explanation of the harm caused by the business practice, along with a link/reference to any relevant Themes.
• A brief history of how the practice came to the public’s attention.
• The immediate aftermath of the incident, and the company’s reaction to it (this will be short in most cases, but may be substantial if there was, for example, a protracted legal battle).
• Whether the offending party continues the anti-consumer practice to this day, or whether they have changed their approach to the issue in question.

These Incident pages are the areas where citations and ‘receipts’ in general will be most important, as they will form the factual basis for the conclusions reached in the Tier 2 articles discussing the companies and people involved.

Incident articles should be written with the 'Factual, non-accusatory, and legally safe' tone.