I noticed an interesting juxtaposition above. Star Wars Kid, and the
glaring lack of the real name, was brought up. Charles stated above
that NPOV is not negotiable. I would hope, then, that he is entirely
for including the name in this article. The absolute overwhelming
majority of reliable sources reporting on the Star Wars Kid incident
used his real name. By failing to follow that lead, we are pushing a
POV, that POV being "They were wrong to publish that." Pushing a POV
by silence or removal is no more acceptable than pushing it by what we
do write. Given the number of sources which have so chosen to report,
that is clearly a minority, fringe POV, and has no place dominating an
article.
Here, we have a real situation where NPOV and (the expanded version
of) BLP have come into conflict. BLP used to mean, very simply, "You
want to say something negative or controversial about a living person,
you must source it very well." Those of us who had misgivings about
creep, especially given the proposed strict enforcement, were given
assurances that it would never go beyond this narrow scope. Yet, here
we have a piece of information which can be very, very reliably
sourced, is not negative (it is a simple statement of simple fact),
and is reported in the overwhelming majority of sources on the matter.
NPOV would demand that we follow the lead of those sources and include
the name, regardless of whether we personally agree, just as we always
follow sources whether or not we personally agree. Yet we are seeing
an expanded, creeping interpretation of BLP used to state that this
information should be kept out.
And now we are seeing an expanded "enforcement" provision come into
place. I think, before we worry about -enforcing- BLP more strictly,
it needs a good reining in. It needs to be strictly defined as "no
unsourced negative information," and perhaps "no undue weight to
negative information." NOR should already serve to protect "privacy."
If something hasn't already been published in a publicly available
source, we can prohibit it under NOR, if it has, there's no privacy to
protect.
--
Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.