[WikiEN-l] A new solution for the BLP dilemma

Jay Litwyn brewhaha at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
Fri Jun 5 05:48:09 UTC 2009


Okay, if I hav this straight, then wikipedia should not index the article, 
either. In other words, you would not find some people from their family 
name or stage name, unless they issue some form of approval. Those who are 
interested in getting their facts acceptable would know exactly where the 
article is, so they can keep working on it, and links to the subject from 
categories and from other articles would not function: You would still be 
able to get there if you type out the URL. The noindex and nofollow 
directives in a robots.txt file (and something like them on each web page in 
meta tags) are nearly standard, because some people want to keep their 
writing projects under the scrutiny of a few friends before any spider finds 
it.

A simpler option would be password-protecting an article, along with the 
names of people who can offer the password. Once you explain your purpose, 
you should be able to get the password by e-mail. There was once a popular 
disclaimer on web pages "Under Construction". It is almost certainly still 
around, because it is the nature of the web to provide volatile information 
or incorporate feedback.

So, the protection levels for an article COULD be:
Deleted -- Subject made application to oversight committee.
Protected -- sysop only.
Moderated -- Edits go through moderators; identical to proxied edits.
Password protected -- Primarily for biography under construction.
Not Indexed -- Hard, and not impossible to find -- fails approval from 
subject.
Semi-protected -- Contentious subjects demand a degree of identification.
Open -- Not a debatable topic.
(So far, nobody is trying to tell user:cluebot that wikipedia is not 
censored)
_______
Yo momma so fat she had to go to Sea World to get baptized

"Durova" <nadezhda.durova at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:a01006d90906041359p5465d053w10bdd7fffb71aa01 at mail.gmail.com...
> Hi all, in two years of looking for solutions to the BLP issues have 
> finally
> stumbled upon an idea that hasn't been raised before. Basically it's this:
> *Suppose we noindexed biographies of living persons, upon the subject's
> request.* This would require developer assistance, and require a bit of
> structure to make sure the ability doesn't get misused. An initial draft
> proposal is at my blog. Am interested in thoughts and suggestions.
>
> http://durova.blogspot.com/2009/06/biographies-of-living-persons-ingenius.html
>
> Best regards,
> Durova
> -- 
> http://durova.blogspot.com/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> 






More information about the WikiEN-l mailing list