[WikiEN-l] Koch brothers articles doctored says Think Progress

[Fred Bauder]

> On 10/03/2011 18:16, Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> On 10 March 2011 13:11, Fred Bauder<fredbaud at fairpoint.net>  wrote:
>>>> What is an "airbush"? I think we should be told.
>>> Our article "Airbrush" does not include information on the use of
>>> "airbrush" as a metaphor
>> Charles' point was that the article says "airbush" not "airbrush" in
>> the headline.
> There's a more serious kind of point that goes like this: the article in
> question being a BLP, we should very much judge the content in the light
> of BLP policy rather than who inserted it or edited it. What to an
> activist intensely interested in the subject of a BLP may seem like a
> whitewash may, in the light of the way we handle BLPs, be simply a
> scrupulous application of our criteria on referencing, due weight,
> salience and so on. In fact if that doesn't happen in such a contested
> area as US politics, something is probably wrong: we're writing an
> encyclopedia, after all, not operating a political seismograph tracking
> every little uptick of comment. That is not to excuse the activities of
> those who'd wish to put spin-doctor content onto the site.
>
> In short,  the way COI applies to BLPs ought to be even-handed, because
> the coverage we want is neutral.
>
> Charles

I've been looking into this. Much of the uproar was based on this section
on a talk page:

Talk:Political_activities_of_the_Koch_family#Time_for_a_deletion_debate

Which is where the alleged socks show up and seem to be piling on. The
problem is that not much checked out. However MBMadmirer was never
unblocked. The only basis he could be blocked on, in my opinion, is
Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#Blocks and I'm not sure he actually
engaged in behavior that was disruptive enough to actually justify that.

Fred Bauder