Charles Matthews wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote
What I DO find hurtful is any implication that I SHOULD feel hurt by it.
That's not the point. And implications that anyone who tries to discuss this objectively is somehow unsympathetic are very unhelpful.
<snip a lot of text about how Autism is difficult to diagnose accurately>
You're falling into the classic "sympathy" trap, but I'm going to drop it and just say that I still fail to see why this is *any* different from any other Wikipedia article, especially on a contentious subject.
I have intervened on the talk page. There are comments there about having the page run on a more principled basis. That seems not in practice to be happening: anyone who wants to know why Gary Numan is cited will refer to neurodiversity.org, which refers back to the WP Gary Numan page, which refers to a woman's magazine article about how his wife decided he had Asperger's, and so on.
If you feel there is a problem with the listing, by all means change it. Apparently there's a consensus that the page should be fixed, so fix it. Being annoyed that no one else is fixing it really isn't going to get you anywhere.
Incidentally, the talk page has been idle for a few weeks now, and the person that added some questionable names recently doesn't appear to have even participated on the talk page, and for all we know may never have read it!
I raised it here because it is a problem with large-scale POV, going to WP's reputation, and because of the very issue about defamation. Bill Gates
There doesn't seem to be any indication on the article's talk page of anyone opposing more careful practices in the listing, so I'm at a loss as to what the problem is. You want the article changed, no one seems to have any strong objections, so change it.
As it is, WikiEN-l is hard to keep up with, if every time there was a potential defamation issue it was brought to the list instead of dealt with in-wiki, it would be entirely impossible to follow (ever try reading linux-kernel? picture it multiplied by three or so).
probably is too busy to be concerned; but why list him without something more definite? (I haven't gone into this one.)
An excellent question highly appropriate for the article's talk page. If you can't get a satisfactory discussion of it, perhaps removing his name from the list will give rise to a detailed and thought-provoking discussion on that very topic! It's nothing that can't be undone later if it turns out to be the wrong move.