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General Information
I am Australian living in Europe. My major interests on Misplaced Pages are in monitoring and updating pages related to the Amway and Quixtar Business Opportunities. I've noticed extreme amounts of not neutral POV often appears in these articles, aided by a very small but vocal minority of Amway and Quixtar critics, who, virtually by definition, have more time to edit and change these than do Amway and Quixtar Independent Business Owners. Unfortunately I've also discovered that Misplaced Pages administrators seem to lack the knowledge of how Multi-level Marketing or Network Marketing works and thus often, almost instinctively, believe the same, false, myths these "critics" promote.
Hopefully I can help enlighten people!
Please note: I do not work for Amway or Quixtar or any of the affiliated IBO organisations. I'm not paid by anyone to promote any of these companies or organisations on[REDACTED] or elsewhere on the web.
Other Sites
As IBOFightback I run a number of hooby sites around this issue, including Get the Facts - The Truth About Amway and Quixtar where I am directly addressing many of these misconceptions, Amway Watch where I'm collating news articles about Amway, and Amway Wiki - a wiki dedicated to collecting Amway facts and information. One article I encourage people to read is Amway/Quixtar Myths, Psycho-facts and the Internet Echo Chamber. I've discovered a real tendency for people to believe things just because it's repeated a lot on the internet - argumentum ad numerum. It's a logical fallacy!
A Fairness issue with Misplaced Pages and the Internet
Quixtar and Amway have a fundamental "fairness" issue with regard to Misplaced Pages and the Internet. The great majority of people building an Amway or Quixtar business are doing so part-time on top of their existing careers - in otherwords, 10-20hrs of work a week on top of their 40 hour jobs. The majority of people you would consider Amway and Quixtar supporters simply don't have the time to spend monitoring and editing Misplaced Pages articles for balance.
Of IBOs that have built large enough businesses to "retire", many are older and not so IT literate (it generally takes up to a decade to build a business to walk-away retirement status) or made a decision a long time ago not to waste their energies on "negatives". Indeed, they would normally advise their "downline" to avoid spending time on sites like this as well. We all have limited time and there are more productive things to do.
Amway and Quixtar "critics" on the other hand have this extra 10-20hrs a week that the supporters do not have. A small number of them (and there is not that many) have made it their hobby, and in some cases, passion, to damage Amway and Quixtar as much as possible. Amway and Quixtar themselves made a decision some years ago to simply ignore them and hope they would go away, something they have now admitted was a mistake.
So where does this leave the issue of "fairness"? Well, it means that there are actually very few people with the time, experience and knowledge, both with the internet and the business, to defend Amway and Quixtar on sites like Misplaced Pages and various forums. Thus you would fully predict that you would get a view of A/Q biased towards the "critics" view of the business. Exactly as I believe has happened.
I'm attempting to right the balance, but wikipedians should be aware of the very sensible reasons why there aren't more vocal supporters like myself.
Background
I have degrees in IT, Psychology, and Health and worked for many years as a research scientist in the medical area. I love to research and analyse things and I'm interested in FACTS, not non sequiturs and myths. While I am registered with Amway I have not been actively building an Amway business for many years.
Other points of interest
It may surprise some who believe the myths about Amway and Quixtar to learn -
- 1. I'm an atheist, or more specifically a Secular Humanist
- 2. If I was an American, I'd vote Democrat
- 3. One of my favorite sites is JREF