Consumer Rights Wiki:Draft policy on the inclusion of positive consumer-focused acts and practices
Articles about 'positive' aspects of consumer rights have been a bit of a gray area since the founding of the wiki, and this policy aims to clear up our stance on the matter.
Basic principles
No reviews
First of all, the Consumer Rights Wiki is not a review site. Just as we do not consider the creation and sale of a product which is simply bad or poor quality to be an anti-consumer act worthy of coverage on the wiki, we do not consider the simple shipping of a high-quality product with good customer service to be a pro-consumer act that should be discussed on the wiki.
No glazing
There are a lot of people out there who are staunch fans of particular companies or products. The Consumer Rights Wiki is not the place to wax lyrical about them, and positive things mentioned about a company must have significant consumer rights relevance and media coverage. Everyone's favourite company is someone else's most hated, and we don't want to get bogged down in arguments over it. The best way to avoid these arguments is to have precise criteria over the kinds of positive things that can be covered on the wiki
No recommendations
While we may cover positive aspects about a product or service, we should never appear to make recommendations.
Article types
The stance on documentation of positive practices in different article types is as follows:
Theme articles
Theme articles about positive practices will generally be a good fit for the wiki, since cataloguing basic aspects of the consumer landscape furthers the Wiki's mission. The nuance here is that they should not be general 'how to run a good company' business-advice-type practices, but articles specifically relating to things a company can do that positively affect how well-protected a consumer's purchase is.
Examples of theme articles that fit the wiki:
- Warranties - an article that explores the concept of a warranty, going through the various different kinds of warranty
- Acceptance of liability - where a company willingly takes additional responsibility for the proper performance of their product
- End-of-life planning - discussing what affirmative actions companies can take to ensure that their products remain useful to consumers long after official support ends
- Right to repair - discussing the legal and practical issues around the right to repair movement
Examples of theme articles that would not fit the wiki:
- DRM-free software - something being DRM-free is simply the absence of DRM, and should instead be covered as a subsection in the DRM article.
- Pleasant customer service interactions - an article about how businesses can make interactions with staff pleasant is general business advice, and not consumer-rights-wiki relevant content.
- Long-life engineering - While good for consumers, discussion of engineering techniques used to make products last longer is more 'advice on how to make a good product' and less 'consumer rights/protection material'.
Law articles
All consumer-relevant laws, positive or negative, are relevant to the wiki and should have articles discussing their contents and scope.
Incident articles
incident articles - if a positive consumer-relevant incident has happened, where a company had received substantial coverage for taking a stance above and beyond the norm for consumer protection, then the incident can be covered on the wiki. This needs to be more than marketing/puff pieces and there needs to be proper substantial coverage of a company taking a specific positive action for it to be considered for an incident article on the wiki.
draft note: maybe we should have a more Wikipedia-like notability threshold here in terms of the sources we require?
In general, for a positive incident to be included on the wiki, it must:
- be notable (has received significant coverage outside of promotional puff pieces)
- affect the rights or protections of existing consumers of a product
- not represent an industry norm
Examples of positive incidents might include (Draft note: more examples and edge cases here would be very much appreciated):
- Valve removing forced arbitration from their TOS
Examples of positive incidents which would not fit the wiki:
- EA making the old Command and Conquer games freeware and releasing source code - giving things away for free is nice, and something that people will appreciate, but it does not affect the rights or protections of the consumer
Company and product articles
For companies or products, articles should not be made just because a company is 'generally' or even 'exceptionally' good. In the absence of any relevant negative incidents, a company or product should only have a page on the wiki if they have been directly involved in at least 2 named wiki-worthy positive incidents (regardless if those incidents do or do not yet have pages on the wiki). For companies where negative incidents have been recorded and so have a space on the wiki anyway, positive incidents can be mentioned on their company page so long as they meet the above notability criteria, as well as general wiki standards.
Charities and foundations dedicated to supporting some piece of open-source software, or those pieces of software themselves, will not generally be suitable for the wiki, as these typically are just non-problematic entities which make good software and provide competition in the relevant spaces, rather than ones which actively enhance consumer rights/protections.
Examples of exclusively positively notable companies/products which fit the wiki: Draft note: some input on good/bad examples here would be appreciated!
Examples of positive products/companies
- Under this policy, we'd probably want to remove the GrapheneOS page, and move it to being a subsection of a theme article on mobile operating systems or something? The GrapheneOS page should then just serve as a redirect to that subsection.
Articles about people
Draft note: really not sure about this one, might be better to keep this negative only?
As with any articles about people, relevant individuals need to have made a major, personal, and direct impact on the consumer landscape. The Consumer Rights Wiki should, as always, ONLY document their consumer-protection-relevant activities, aside from any very basic details needed for context. Individuals should only be documented on the wiki if they have been directly involved in changing the approach of large companies, or drafting/passing laws. We should not cover general consumer journalists or celebrities who advocate in passing for changes to consumer laws.