On 11/15/05, Joseph Reagle <reagle(a)mit.edu> wrote:
But what of
when the edit is of merit? Are the most qualified primary sources
disqualified from editing the Wikipedia article? Need a primary source
published her first person claim elsewhere before it can bear upon the
Wikipedia article?
I've never liked [[WP:AUTO]] myself. I would be inclined to let
article subjects edit the articles about themselves in the same way
that anyone else is, perhaps held to a higher standard on attributing
every assertion to a verifiable outside source and writing neutrally.
Sure, they can leave notes on the talk page. Which for a major
celebrity is great, as plenty of people will be watching or otherwise
interested in the page. But for some of these minor figures who
stumble across their entries, this may be the only attention the
article gets for a long while. It may also be one of the only sources
of information about them on the web, and probably the most prominent
-- first Google hit on their names, etc. -- and to say "no, you can't
edit this article, you have to let wrong information sit there until
someone bothers to come by to fix it" doesn't seem quite right, and
doesn't seem like the way to establish goodwill.
As Matt posted, the nutcases aren't the norm, and they can be dealt
with for the misbehaviors that make them come off as batshit crazy
rather than writing about themselves. Most are reasonable people who
happen to quite reasonably not want falsehoods spread about them on a
top-40 website (or anywhere, really), and are just not familiar with
the way Wikipedia works enough to realize that everything must be
cited and NPOV. I don't see much harm in letting them edit on
themselves with a little guidance, some strong prodding to cite
sources, and a caution that they don't have any more authority over
the content of the article than any other editor. Still vastly
preferred for others to edit instead, of course, but sometimes no one
else really takes enough interest.
-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]]
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