On 8-Sep-06, at 9:34 AM, David Gerard wrote:
I agree, this is a major problem when working with press and also
constitutes a large percentage of large-issue communications with the
Foundation Office and with OTRS.
The [[WP:BLPP]] addresses many of the concerns, and is a great idea.
However, this treats the symptoms of two fundamental issue which
en.wp is not addressing: Who is noteworthy enough for inclusion in an
encyclopedia, and what/how much should be said regarding living
persons. These two issues cannot be resolved by a technical solution.
The Patrol is a reasonable stop-gap measure which will address the
problems we have now, but it is unlikely to scale well, nor is it a
solution for all wikipedias. I would encourage the en.wp community to
create a few objective measures akin to the USA State of Florida
judicial "Public Persons" test. It seems to me that any encyclopedic
living persons biography must be about a person who is, at the very
least, a public person (that is, someone reasonably well-known or in
a position where they are likely to be addressing a general public
audience, such as politicians for public office, newspaper editors,
actors, radio announcers, clergy members, corporate spokespersons, &c.)
It is not reasonable to have large, in-depth biographies about living
persons. Too much information makes is included, often with such
detail that make an en.wp article a considerable risk to the
subject's privacy and security (such as identity theft, among other
things.) Deep articles are prone to bias, either showing the subject
unfavourably or too favourably, and often give undue weight to some
minor element of their life to push a point of view (a classic
example are US Congressional members, whose articles almost
universally contain extensive coverage of the most recent few years
of public service - particularly perceived scandals - and may
completely lack any mention of previous public positions or private
careers.) Subjects can and do dramatically alter their lives and
goals, and en.wp articles are not able to be relevant to these changes.
For these and other reasons, en.wp should develop policy limiting
living persons articles to primary career facts and academic
achievements, current positions held or endeavors, and minimal
personal facts. By presenting a minimal set of biographic facts the
community can circumvent a large number of internal and external
conflicts, whilst avoiding maintenance issues and keeping the
articles relevant until such time as the subjects may be viewed in
historical context.
</rant>
Amgine