[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...

[Ken Arromdee]

On Wed, 22 Apr 2009 WJhonson at aol.com wrote:
> > You're arguing for a policy that says that
> > someone without a source can't correct errors about himself *at 
> > all*--whether
> > you looked up the official site for his radio station or not.  Verifying 
> > his
> > identity is, in fact, completely irrelevant to this policy.>>
> ----------
> No Ken.  Because we do not require sources for non-controversial points in 
> the first place.

If he's correcting an error, another person disagrees with him, so it's by
definition controversial to some degree.

Also, remember that we're talking about BLPs.  BLP subjects may be unfamiliar
with Wikipedia and do things like publically complain--and once they do that,
it's guaranteed that if they try fixing the article, someone will remember
their complaint and automatically treat the change as controversial.

> WHEN a statement is fact-tagged, then a source should be provided.

That doesn't work too well when the source is wrong.

Remember that "verifiability, not truth" means that sometimes it will be
verifiable, but not true.

> The sole place where the subject may have a special position, is in 
> providing a response to a well-sourced negative statement.

What if it's a well-sourced non-negative, but false, statement?

> If we have a statement 
> like "Britney Spears stabbed her husband and was arrested" (L.A. Times, 12 
> Oct 2007), then she is quite welcome to provide an alternate version such as 
> "she stabbed him, but it was with a nail file and the skin wasn't even 
> broken, he's just a big cry baby bitch." (Britneyspears.com, "Why I was arrested 
> last week")

If it's not Britney SWpears, but the guy whose radio station you looked up,
why should we require him to create "guywithradiostation.com" before he can
correct facts?

> However, this does not mean that we remove the L A Times reference.  That 
> would be whitewashing the article.  We are here to provide the reading public 
> with the most consistent, neutral, inclusive view of pop culture.  That 
> isn't simply the glamour magazines, it has to include as well the news articles 
> that have negative material.

Ah.  "Joe Blow claims he was born on January 15, but the New York Times
says he was born on January 14.  Joe Blow insists this is a mistake."