On 5/26/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
geni wrote:
On 5/25/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com>
wrote:
But, she has a stalker.
The stalker posts longwinded ranting criticisms and insults of her.
Do we cite those?
Depends. Who is the stalker? Who reported on the stalking?
Precisely my point. It is an editorial judgment. We can't say "just
because it is true and verifiable we should post it in wikipedia".
We do have a simple test to guide us:
* If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to
substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
* If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should
be easy to name prominent adherents;
* If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited)
minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some
ancillary article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and
regardless of whether you can prove it or not.
So the first bar to get over is, is the stalker "prominent"? I take
this to mean "could the person have an article written about him/her"?
If not, then the viewpoint doesn't need to be included.
Thoughtful judgement helps out when the test fails to give a simple
answer, for example it may be decided that the views of someone shown
to be a stalker should not be included at all, even if they were
someone notable.
--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain(a)gmail.com