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I can't say I'm convinced Wikipedia will care to be netural, but in the final paragraph of this article, the dispute with SPLC is listed, and the commentary provides incorrect information by quoting SPLC alleging only 2%-8% of sexual assaults are false (which is still ridiculously high considering that the criminal justice system operates on a premise it is better to let a guilty man free than for one innocent person to be convicted of something they didn't do). Here is an infographic from StatsCanada, award-winning organization and world leader for accuracy, in a country that is perhaps the most progressive in the whole world, and who stopped reporting this statistic 2004-2016 due to pressure from feminist lobbies, and has created a new metric that reports unfounded allegations only in cases where the "police officers investigated the allegation and proved it could not have been true." Hope you read that right. In other words, they are not to count the instances where the charge was simply dropped for lack of evidence, or where the alleged victim dropped charges, or where the state couldn't proceed, or where the accused played trickery with good lawyers, no, the figure I'm about to share with you is only in instances where the police actually investigated the claim to such a length that they not only didn't find evidence sufficient to proceed with the allegation, but where they actually disproved the allegation, i.e. it could not have happened. The number is 19% in 2016 and 15% in 2017. If you include all those other categories where the police resources didn't permit them to actually exonerate the accused, but simply didn't proceed, Paul Elam's assertion of 40% is probably correct. Here https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2018024-eng.htm
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Declaration of CoI: As noted above, I am David King, now AVfM's CIO. Amongst IT-related duties, I manage the LLC's financial accounts. Notwithstanding, I declare that receive no compensation from AVfM in any form.
I've just made two sets of edits to bring this article up-to-date. Said edits were reverted by User:Bbb23 without much apparent explanation other than minor protocol matters, though on subsequent follow-up they indicated that I should not be editing the article in the first place. Fine. Here's what needs changing.
A conference was planned for 2015 in Houston, TX but subsequently cancelled in May of that year. A 2016 conference by the same name but not organised by AVfM was held in London, UK in July of that year. As of late 2016, a 2017 conference is planned for Queensland, Australia.
Neither strike me as being particularly controversial edits. The WIPO citation is indisputably reliable, being an independent primary source and whatever I personally feel about the matter, I have stuck to the impartial facts. Per WP:PRIMARY, primary sources are not forbidden and I do not rely on it for analysis, only WIPO's finding of facts in support of the statement that AVfM did not own the domain for the past two years, and documentation of the transfer order to White Ribbon Australia.
I can't cite the cancellation of the 2015 conference because avoiceformen.com is blacklisted. I can provide references to ICMI '16 and '17 but, given my CoI, I don't want to be seen as shilling for the event. Input on that score welcome.
This section is very out of date and may now constitute a BLP violation because it imputes income to Paul Elam that I know for a fact he doesn't have.
The claim wrt income and number of employees is supported only by a 3rd hand, undated Dun & Bradstreet report itself cited by a BuzzFeed article written by Adam Serwer which features a caricature of Elam photoshopped onto the Westinghouse Rosie the Riveter poster in which Serwer makes clear his disdain for Elam. No reasonable person would consider that article remotely neutral and there is no particular reason to believe any claim he makes about AVfM or its finances.
I note User:Sonicyouth86's remarks about the alleged reliability of Serwer's article, but they give no reason why, even if BuzzFeed and D&B are RS in other contexts, that they are RS in this specific case given the evident animus Serwer exhibits toward Elam. Arguably, therefore, the Serwer article is in violation of WP:SOURCE and the whole passage should be removed unless a more reliable source can be found, and the D&B reference is in violation of WP:V because it cannot be independently verified.
I can say with certainty that the claim has never been true since the formation of AVfM Education, LLC in February of 2015. I am not privy to what happened prior to then, for which reason and in the interests of neutrality and giving the benefit of the doubt given my CoI, I proposed to put that passage into the past tense rather than remove it because I don't know that it has never been true.
In any event, the article gives a misleading impression of the financial situation of the organisation. I would like to clear that up because apart from being misleading, it is a common criticism that MRAs don't do anything in the real-world. MRAs say they/we don't have the money to do much in the real world and yet this article suggests otherwise contrary to fact. I'm trying to avoid the political element as much as possible and keep to NPOV, and as much for that reason as any other, I don't see that the public is well served by what I know (and what few others can know) to be misrepresentations about the organisation.
Anyway, here are the facts as they now stand:
Elam formed a Nevada LLC taxed as a C corporation in February, 2015 to separate his personal finances from those of the organisation. Short of the NV SoS entity record I don't know what other evidence could possibly establish this yet Bbb23 seemed to object to an external link. If the problem was just that it was inline rather than a reference, I wonder why they didn't just move it especially when they then say I should not make such edits nor, presumably corrections.
That LLC now receives all donation revenues, which the site no longer actively solicits (by way of donation drives). Though it still accepts donations, it now relies on membership-subscriptions and AdSense revenue all of which are paid to the LLC. Paul runs some 'informal' (ie not syndicated) ads which he may or may not personally benefit from. If he does, I am not privy to the arrangements. It is obvious enough that the organisation now is ad supported, but historically? I can supply a reference for the membership-subscription model but, again, avoiceformen.com is blacklisted.
Nobody draws a salary from the LLC, not even Paul. I should know, because I do the book-keeping (for what that's worth, since I can't independently prove it and nobody has any particular reason to believe me). He made a statement to that effect some time ago, but I can't link because avoiceformen.com is blacklisted.
Here's what I proposed to insert/change:
The site also accepts donations, all of which went to Elam until February 2015 at which point Elam formed a Nevada-based LLC which now receives all revenues and is taxed as a C corporation. As the LLC's manager, Elam still controls those revenues and says he uses the money to advance his cause.[1] According to Dun & Bradstreet's database[when?], AVFM had an estimated $120,000 in yearly revenue and one employee.[1]. By Q1 2015, AVfM was ad-supported and Elam claimed not to draw any regular income from the LLC. By July, 2015, AVfM began to use a membership-subscription revenue model. The LLC still accepts donations.
— Strix t 16:09, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
References
I flagged this for neutral point of view because over 50% of the text in the entry is devoted to criticism. This is very abnormal. The only reason I can see for devoting more text to criticism of the group than to other aspects of the group is because men's rights groups are unpopular and therefore entries about them are subjected to greater and more negative scrutiny. I think the criticism section should not be more than 50% of the entry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.150.45.83 (talk) 16:04, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
Criticism
AVFM has been criticized on several occasions by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). In the spring 2012 issue ("The Year in Hate and Extremism") of their Intelligence Report, the SPLC included the AVFM's website ikn a list of twelve specifically identified as being misogynistic. A 2014 statement by the SPLC criticized the International Conference on Men’s Issues, run by AVFM Education, LLC, particularly finding fault with citations claiming that "40% to 50% of rape allegations are false". And in 2015, Mark Potok, then of the SPLC, wrote an article critical of the founder and leader of AVFM, Paul Elam. The organization has also been the subject of criticism in publications such as The New York Times and Time magazine , and it has been accused of using misogynistic and hateful rhetoric by several commentators, including Leah McLaren, Jaclyn Friedman, Brad Casey, and Clementine Ford, |
I removed the part of the intro reading "for profit limited liability corporation" since the supporting evidence was a link to Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed is a dubious factual source and has been known to create sensational articles rather than articles which follow journalistic precedent. Oakstone123 (talk) 09:12, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
This is about this edit, and it's multiple reversions.
The source does support this point, but it is a single sentence contextualized it as part of the "red pill moment" jargon used by MRMs. Without that context, it's just a free-floating bit of weirdness, and even with that context, I'm not clear what it says about this organization. I'm fully aware of what it implies about the organization, but we shouldn't include things like this specifically because they are strange, or because they imply things we wish we could say, but can't. This is neither explained, nor emphasized, by the source, so it I don't think it belongs. Grayfell (talk) 06:51, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
I have put together a map and table of ICMI conferences. A Voice for Men runs ICMI conferences either on its own or in conjunction with other organisations. As I am on staff at AVfM I will not add this to the page myself due to CoI. Robert Brockway (talk) 07:12, 2 January 2019 (UTC)