On Mon, 5 Dec 2011, Steve Summit wrote:
Even if Demi Moore is
perfectly reliable on the truth surrounding her birth name,
common sense tells you that a 140-character tweet (or two) is not
the sort of place where you can make nuanced distinctions between
"I was born Demi, which is to say, that's what everyone always
called me, even though it says 'Demetria' on my birth certificate"
versus "I was born Demi, and it even says that on my birth
certificate, but my parents always said it was short for
'Demetria', and I always believed that, and told the story in a
People Magazine interview, too, and I only just recently learned
the truth."
The trouble with this reasoning is that BLP subjects who are not specifically
experienced with Wikipedia won't make statements with lawyer-like precision.
If you reject the BLP subject's own statement on the grounds that there could
be some nuance which makes it say other than what it seems to say, you end up
with an excuse that pretty much lets you ignore all BLP subjects whenever you
want.
Furthermore, I can hypothesize that People Magazine left out a similar nuance.
Of course they are not limited by the length of tweets, but it is routine
for the news media (especially gossip-type media like People) to paraphrase,
summarize, reword, etc. in ways that ignore nuances. The People interview
doesn't say "birth certificate" either, after all, so by the "maybe
they missed
a nuance" argument it could still mean Demi is on her birth certificate.