On 10/03/2011 18:16, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 10 March 2011 13:11, Fred
Bauder<fredbaud(a)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