[WikiEN-l] English Wikipedia Policy as sovereign law -- corrected posting

[David Goodman]

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 at gmail.com> wrote:
> note the "in general" . Our purpose is not the defense of the innocent
>  or the guilty, but the provision of acurate POV information about
>  matters of concern to the public. The provision of this information is
>  of general befit to tthe en tire community. We have a responsibility
>  to our subject, and a eq
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 2:59 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > On 22/04/2008, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >  > In the long run, we avoid harming people in general by telling the
>  >  >  truth.
>  >
>  >  I don't see how that works. If the truth is negative, telling the
>  >  truth does harm. The net result to society is positive (we generally
>  >  consider having a free, neutral encyclopaedia a good thing), but that
>  >  doesn't mean we haven't harmed the subject.
>  >
>  >
>  >
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>
>
>
>
> --
>  David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
>



-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG