On 3/31/07, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
"I was heartbroken and nauseated almost to the point of vomiting about the last two lines"
These are the words of an e-mail I dealt with today - and they are not untypical. Without breaching confidentiality I can say little more. But it related to a biography which, without any citation, commented on an individual - making outrageous (and quite probably libelous) claims about certain activities.
Did you check?
On behalf of wikipedia and the community, I apologised and assured the complainant we took such things seriously and were working to ensure they didn't happen. I may have lied.
Perhaps a more honest reply would have been:
"We're sorry you had to complain about this. Regrettably that's the price you pay for our determination to retain as many articles as we can, even though we can't currently maintain most of them. You see, if we change things we might upset some of our editors who might have some of their unreferenced articles deleted by mistake. Basically, we're more concerned with that type of collateral damage than with wrecking your life.
Someone whose life is wrecked by a Wikipedia article THEY THEMSELVES CAN CORRECT has bigger problems than the entry itself.