On 28 March 2011 13:50, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Claims
authentically by the subject are relevant to BLP issues.
Site say no fact checking remember. That means we don't actually know
it is the subject.
No fact checking of what the subject *says* is very different from no
fact checking of who the subject *is* - for them to fail to do the
latter, or at least make a good attempt at it, would turn the project
into an very elaborate way of becoming bankrupt!
This particular site is, I think, something of an inspired device for
parting rich people from their money (a thousand dollars? really?) but
in spirit, it's not a bad idea.
One of our problems has always been dealing with cases where there's a
widespread error floating around about someone - often relatively
trivial, the exact location of their birthplace or their mother's
name, the sort of minor detail that annoys them but that isn't really
enough to get Corrections Published and so forth. As such, it persists
in the sources, and then we pick it up; they try to correct it, or
contact us to complain, and... well, we revert them saying "check
sources", or say "well, um, sorry, but we can't do anything", etc. -
usually, the best we can do is advise them to set up a website,
publish a correction on it, and hope we notice. We really don't have a
good, workable method for dealing with these situations, and the one
we have now is really a bit undesirable.
So, any reasonable solution is good. If we were to actually encourage
the creation of one - presuming this site isn't quite what we're after
- how would it work? This might be a good opportunity to encourage an
independent but useful "right of reply" project...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk