On Mar 28, 2007, at 10:10 AM, Marc Riddell wrote:
No. Dead
people should be treated with equal respect to living ones.
I agree. And the key word, I believe, that should guide any Article
on any
person - living or dead - is RESPECT.
The problem, Marc, is how do you enforce respect? We have seen it
again and again and more so as Wikipedia becomes such a prominent web
destination. It is soooo tempting to the anon visitor, seeing the
article about this "Professor John P. Smith", which the anon knows,
to add these "tidbits" of information from the local weekly, just for
fun.
It is only when the shit hits the fan that we act and promptly remove
that information.
I have seen these discussions too many times: "The Washinton Post has
run a story in 1978 in which person X, that is a detractor of Y, says
of Y 'he is a [expletive] abuser, and he poured chemicals on Z', so
we should mention detractor's opinion in the article about Y because
it has been published in a reliable source". Of course, that story
has only appeared once, no scholars studying Y or other mainstream
press has picked up and reprodduced X's viewpoints of Y, but
nonetheless, editors push for its inclusion in a BLP on the basis of
the argument "it has been published in a reliable source".
IMO, WP:BLP needs more teeth than it has now. Maybe a more stringent
application of NOR and V is now due.
-- Jossi