2008/4/22 Peter Ansell <ansell.peter(a)gmail.com>om>:
If the article is properly sourced then all of the
opinions and facts
expressed in the article are derived from outside sources so they are
not being harmed by unique information in wikipedia, just their
perception of wikipedia being more influential than scattered news
articles and books. If wikipedia doesn't say anything new any harm due
to the compilation of facts is immaterial IMO. Unless a court rules
that random facts can't be combined in properly sourced
secondary/tertiary sources due to the effect of the combination alone
then they have no case.
For the usual case, it's not so much "they have no case" as
"that's
not such a good article, and while being firm in our neutrality we
shouldn't be dicks about it." Hence the WP:BLP rule about the facts
being of note themselves. (e.g. minorly-notable physicist who had a
messy divorce - messy divorce details may be documentable, but they're
not relevant to what he's famous for and no reader would care, unless
the messy divorce itself was notable.) We get too many BLPs where
someone mistakes Wikipedia for a repository of investigative
journalism and throws in material that really doesn't belong in a good
article.
- d.