[WikiEN-l] Anne Milton (was Re: Attack blogs in WP:LIVING articles)

[charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote

> If we excluded people on the basis of potential conflict
> of interest we would have no encyclopaedia, but in my experience,
> David presses the point long and hard, and that is precisely the point
> Alphax was making, I think.

Well, take care you aren't going over the edge on the other issue I mentioned.

Specifically in relation to politics, and particularly in the matter of identifying 'political positions', I think there is a basic style point anyway. For any close follower of politics there may be an excessive interest in 'pinning the tail on the donkey': locating politicians on a spectrum, getting the ducks in a row as to exactly where they stand. When I talk about 'understatement', I think there are a number of stylistic points that ought to differentiate WP's coverage from that of someone very interested in partisan politics (from any angle). Something like this:

(a) Obviously membership of intra-party groups is OK to mention (if verifiable);
(b) Obviously labelling someone a Marxist, Eurosceptic, racist, whatever is not acceptable except as self-identification, or in the context of controversy that we should include and can support with sources;
(c) I notice plenty of 'epithetting' going on, with attempts to place labels like 'far right' on people next to a wikilink (rather than in the article itself); this is really not good, but is the kind of style people adopt either because they are imitating print journalism, or because they are a bit too interested in extremism;
(d) Closer to the Anne Milton thing: presumably anyone active in politics has some sort of 'portfolio' of positions one could research. What gets included and how does it get treated? I don't know, as an abstract question; US politicians in Congress tend to have their voting records recorded, but UK politics coverage usually doesn't focus on that. I do think that principles from the 'living persons biography' criteria can be applied, within reason. Basically there are things about a politician that are fairly 'salient', and should be included if verifiable. If other matters are raised in an article, one should wonder why they are there.

I don't suppose this will resolve the particular dispute, but it seems an interesting area to look into, in general terms.

Charles

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