[WikiEN-l] Jimmy Wales should reconsider

[MacGyverMagic/Mgm]

On 4/21/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 4/21/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Arguments that suggest that any change is equivalent to "might as well
> > shut Wikipedia down" are useless and will of course be sensibly ignored
> > by the community.
> >
> > "Delete any bio if the subject objects" is pretty clearly too simplistic
> > a policy.
> >
> > But I think it is entirely possible to strengthen our policies in a way
> > that is consistent with our values and traditions, and broadly
> > acceptable within the community.
> >
> > One possibility that someone mentioned the other day would be to have a
> > shift in policy that looks something like this:
> >
> > Whenever the subject of a biography objects on the grounds of being
> > non-notable, the subsequent AFD has a shifted "default"... instead of
> > needing a "consensus to delete" we would have a "consensus to keep".
> >
> > Another version would say this for ALL bios of living people:
> >
> > For biographies of living persons, there must be a "consensus to keep"
> > rather than a "consensus to delete".
> >
> > Another version would say this for ALL bios of living people:
> >
> > For biographies of living persons, a "majority to delete (taking into
> > account sock puppets, and taking into account the number of edits of
> > those participating in the discussion" shall be sufficient to delete.
> >
> Those all seem like creative and possibly acceptable solutions, at
> least so long as "consensus" in "consensus to keep" is treated more
> like the "supermajority" that is currently the de facto standard.
>
> I think the problem with a bio on Brandt goes beyond the usual,
> though.  [[Wikipedia:Conflict of interest]] seems to apply to that
> biography for pretty much all active editors, which suggests that all
> of us should at least exercise great caution when editing the page.
> I'm not sure a neutral bio can possibly be written about Brandt by
> Wikipedians.


I don't think a neutral bio can be written by Brandt himself either, so him
claiming it's defaming him, is probably a worse case of WP:COI.
Mgm