Talk:Mission statement

Concern about mission statement

The mission statement itself is a bit scaring. It's the first page to see and could turn away people that try to look up something in the future. This article has to move at some point to a more inviting page, maybe not in the next time tho. Tpat90 (talk) 22:06, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

     Agree, but until we are aiming to attract readers rather than contributors, I'm happy for us to keep it as is. It'll likely be a while before the wiki is useful to a casual reader  Keith

Thoughts on archiving sources

It should be mentioned that this wiki could be used as an index for solicitation with copyright requests, or through some other method, to take down at any point any of the sources listed on each page. Those sources, then, should at least be checked to make sure that they have been captured by the Internet Archive, or through some other service. I think it'd be tedious and unhelpful for every source to directly link to an archive page, but there should be some kind of policy to make sure that these sources are archived. User:Liana (talk) 17:11, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

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I think it'd be a much better idea if the sources WERE directly archived and/or pertinent screenshots pushed into the articles themselves so that any replicas of this wiki have them too. The Wiki likely should be easy to replicate, by the way. Maybe with published wiki dumps or such. - User:Anonymous 20 January 2025

What is the line in the sand for "new" consumer protection?

"A company remotely disabled software of consumers who posted bad online reviews" and "All consumer devices with needless cloud connection were bricked when a company went out of business" would be within scope for the wiki at the very top of the gradient of badness, but where along the gradient do these stories fall out of scope?

1. A car manufacturer sells a heated seat subscription even though the consumer already purchased the hardware with their car, but the manufacturer is upfront & honest about it when they purchase the car
2. A manufacturer that sells hardware also provides the software necessary to use said hardware, but it requires a subscription service lest the hardware becomes a brick which they are transparent about when purchasing the hardware
3. Same as 2 with some free functionality in the software, but the software (for the hardware you already purchased and own) is designed to be frustrating to use (subjective guess) to force users to buy the software subscription
4. Same as 2, but the software is a perpetual purchase at least (though still the hardware will be a brick without purchasing the software)
   • Does it make a difference between how "reasonable" the price is (subjective)? E.g. $100 purchase vs $5000 to keep your $5000 hardware from turning into a brick
5. Company which sold yearly releases for software that users would own in perpetuity (think Photoshop CS6 or pre-365 Microsoft Office) changes to a subscription model for new releases going forward so that now users who relied on their software can never "own" it again
   • This is "okay" in today's climate due to the gradual erosion of consumer ownership, but would have been an outrage 40+ years ago
6. Same as 5 except the company never sold perpetual licenses in the first place and is just riding on the coattails of other companies which have eroded consumer ownership
7. A consumer device has a cloud connection, which hasn't yet been bricked because the company is still in business
   • It would be fair game once consumer devices are bricked, but do we have to wait? Is any cloud connection which can result in a loss of functionality the consumer paid for fair game even before it is lost? I imagine consumers would want to know that a device they plan on purchasing is at risk before they make the purchase
8. "Schematics or Die": if the device is fully offline and cannot be affected by the manufacturer post-sale but they refuse to provide schematics to owners upon request, is that "intentionally [creating] obstacles to repair"?
   • Does it change if the reason is because they don't own all of the IP and can't legally release schematics? (would we even know the difference between whether this was the case or they were intentionally making it harder to repair if they did not directly tell us?)

These all "take away the consumer's right of ownership." in the words of the mission statement, but have become increasingly accepted and "fair" with the erosion of consumer ownership over time. They are not even necessarily a "revocation" of ownership because the consumer was never provided the opportunity of ownership in the first place. User:DrewW (talk) 06:58, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

I'll try to tackle a few of these:

For #1: yep, even if it's clearly communicated, it's taking away ownership and the ability to use your thing. The fact that it's clearly communicated and so on should be mentioned in the article for it.

Similarly, for 2 through 4, I think we can apply similar logic - it's anti ownership even if reasonable. i do hesitate at #4 though, as I think in that case it might come down to reasonability, and whether the cost of the software was advertised as part of the cost of the package, or whether it was more hidden.

Honestly, 5 and 6 are tricky... I'd need to think more about them.

For 7: It's fair game, as the product would be bricked right now if a tree fell on their datacentre's powerline. it's a problem when a perfectly good product has the potential to be worthless just becausee someone else turns off their computer. Obviously, if nothing has yet happened, the article should reflect that, and state as much.

For 8: I'd say so, though I think this might fall under the umbrella of 'old' consumer protection, and need to meet a size threshold. Situations like that one you mention with the IP being unreleaseable are exactly why tone is so important for this wiki - we should simply state that they are not releasing the schematics, that this is causing people problems, and any statements the company has publicly made. We should not ascribe intentionality to the company's actions when we do not know their intentions.

For now, we're mostly going to be drawing the line by feel, as we don't want to discourage people from writing potentially relevant articles. In a month or so we might revisit exactly where the line lies.

I think the key takeaway is that even if it's a relatively benign example, because we will be presenting things in a factual and neutral tone, it's fine to make an article about it. We will do our absolute best not to misrepresent things, so a benign example will read less severely to an extreme example when someone is reading an article.

Consider also that somewhere in the policy (I forget where, but I definitely wrote it) it mentions that it's perfectly ok to write articles about relevant positive incidents, such as steam removing forced arbitration.

Thank you very much for the question, and I hope this provides some insight as to our stance! Keith (talk) 20:59, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Hiding the table of contents on the homepage

Now that this page is much shorter, I think it would be a good idea to hide the table of contents by placing __NOTOC__ at the top of the page (right above the first line, with no blank line in between). Right now, the table of contents takes up half of the available space on my screen. Waldo (talk) 07:05, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Steve from GN even hid it himself in his video: https://youtu.be/zdLr5CKFiJs?si=yL7pRnuAHhbtbTk5 Waldo (talk) 16:04, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Rewriting the Main Page and some broader site organization work

This is a vision I have for what the main page of this site could be, and how some organizational changes could be made on the site overall to make it more approachable, more educational, and easier to navigate. I've previously sent this to Support in Discord, but thought it might be good to share here. This proposal is better than the one I had sent in Discord.

In short, my vision is for the main page to be an intro to the website as a whole, and a central navigation point to help people get to the specific information they want, rather than a page focused on contribution to CAT.

A.) Title: Change this page's name from "Mission statement" to "Consumer Action Taskforce Wiki".

B.) Intro: Above the table-of-contents, add a one-paragraph summary of what the site is about/for. The Mission could be included here.

C.) Article/ToC: My proposal for the Table of Contents and overall article is to feature each major category of Consumer Rights, with Contribution and extra information toward the end.

ToC Proposal:

1. What is "consumer protection" and how are we taking action?
2. Right To Repair
3. Right to Own / Right to Use What You Own
4. Right to Privacy
5. Right to the Justice System (Forced Arbitration)
6. Right to Cancel
7. Violations by Company
8. Resources for consumers
9. Fight for change / Take Action
10. Contribute to this wiki

Each of these sections would be brief. The 'Right To Repair' section would introduce the issue, link to a couple of relevant articles for examples ('John Deere fails to uphold right to repair agreement' & 'Future Motion Onewheel skateboard...'), and link to a dedicated 'Right To Repair' page.

I would also suggest having the ToC be flat (i.e. no sublists)

D.) Dedicated Pages for each main topic

The dedicated 'Right To Repair' page would introduce the issue, feature a couple of example articles, and also catalogue all articles regarding 'Right To Repair'. 'Right To Own', 'Right To Privacy', and others would have dedicated pages in the same vein.

The catalogue of relevant articles on each dedicated page may be further organized. For example 'Tesla asks customers to vote against Right to Repair' might fall under a 'Political' category of R2R, whereas the Onewheel article might fall under a 'Devices' category. Some articles might appear on both 'Right to Repair' and 'Right to Own', so perhaps an additional section on each page for these multi-category articles.

E. Resources for Consumers (potentially off-topic)

'Resources for consumers' would include things like 'Privacy Not Included' from Mozilla, repair.wiki, iFixit. It could additionally include recommendations for consumer-respecting devices and consumer-respecting software, but I know that product recommendations are off-topic for this site. The Editorial Guidelines state "This Wiki is not a place for product recommendations, and cannot be turned into a place for sneaky guerilla advertising, or the promotion of contributors' pet projects." As an alternative, perhaps a guiding article for consumers of what to look for could be helpful when trying to choose consumer-respecting devices and software. Is it Open Source? Are Replacement Parts Available? Is a subscription required? Can it be remotely disabled? Is my data collected/sold? And then linking to other online resources where you can try to get answers to those questions.

F. 'Fight For Change / Take Action' (potentially off-topic)

The Editorial Guidelines state that "We will be especially vigilant against potentially harmful content, and take strong action against users who: (1)Advocate for direct action against malicious companies or individuals within articles themselves". So I don't know if a general guidance article on taking action for Consumer Rights is appropriate or not. Such an article, if it is appropriate, could direct folks toward contacting their representatives, using products that respect consumer rights, educating their friends, sharing the site.

This or a similar section of the site could also direct folks toward proposed legislation, failed legislation, maps of states that have addressed consumer issues, overview of the political process for getting R2R or other relevant legislation, and other legal/political resources of the sort.

G. Contribute to this Wiki

Provide brief summary of what does and does not belong on the wiki, and link to a dedicated 'Contributions' page that goes into more detail. Alternatively, brief summary then a list of links to more information.

A dedicated 'Contribute' page could give a numbered list of 'Before You Contribute', which then recommends things like 'Learn what belongs here', 'Learn what doesn't belong here', 'Read the Editorial Guidelines'. Then have a 'How To Contribute' section listing 'Edit Articles', 'Create New Articles', 'Discuss Changes' (talk page, discord), 'MediaWiki Formatting'. Then have a 'Contribute' section listing links to 'Convert Videos to Articles' (video directory), 'Articles in need of work', and whatever other avenues are recommended for contribution.

H. Navigation Menu

Suggestions:

• Put 'main page' at the top, followed by 'All Pages', then 'Categories', then the other links below those.
• Add a 'Consumer Rights' navigation box with the 'R2R', Right to Privacy, and dedicated-page links that I've suggested in the ToC section above.

ReedyBear 22:50, 20 January 2025 (UTC)