Corrected posting: Note the "in general" . Our purpose is not the defense of the innocent or the guilty, or the bystander, but the provision of acurate POV information about matters of concern to the public. The provision of this information is of general befit to the entire community. We have a responsibility to our subject, and a equal responsibility to each individual human being. A reporter, who enters into a relationship of trust with an individual, may-- & in some circumstances must-- feel differently. If he enters into an engagement with an individual to provide information, he must honor the terms. I would say this applies to a reporter for Wikinews conducting an interview. But at WP. we do not enter into these relationships, and we use only public information. That is in fact the point of avoiding COI, to avoid a personal relationship with the subject because such relationships prevent NPOV. This applies of course only to public information--if we accidentally come across private information, we should not publicize it, regardless of its tendency. But that's not specific to BLP--it's simply a case of avoiding OR. Can someone provide an argument why we owe any special responsibility to our subjects rather than our readers, except that of avoiding wanton damage to private individuals through recklessness or malice? If there is any uncertainty in the balance, there will be more than one reader, so the interests of the readers will always predominate. To say otherwise tis to commit the fallacy of being concerned with named, rather than presently nameless, individuals, merely because we can identify and name them. But in reality, since we have no confidential or personal relationship, they are all equal. To the extend we let the feelings of the subject affect an article, we are engaging in conduct in defiance of NPOV and COI. If any person can not square his personal conscience with this due to whatever ethical conceptions or misconceptions, he has a remedy: not to work on BLP articles. Just the same as any other COI. A person who writes or discusses on the basis of personal sympathy with a subject should not be working on that article, any more than if he had personal hatred. On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 5:12 PM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG