On 23/08/2011 12:11, Tony Sidaway wrote:
Here is an interesting article by David Swindle of Front Page, about Wikipedia's problems with biographies of living persons. Swindle sees it in terms of a persistent left wing bias.
I won't pretend to agree with everything he says--it is not helpful to compare Michael Moore to Ann Coulter or Keith Olbermann to Glenn Beck. The gist of the article has merit, though. I think he makes some reasonable points about the biographies of Noam Chomsky and that deceased poster child for youth rebellion, Che Guevara.
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/23/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-1/ _
But "bias" of the kind he works with is a really unhelpful concept for us, in practice: especially when trivialised by being "metricated". The usual issues being whether particular kinds of material are "overstated" or "understated" (given neutral use of language), we should aim in BLPs to be slightly "understated". Whether it is fair to judge us on BLPs of people who practically make a career out of courting controversy, I don't know. For those who professionally seek attention, it is easiest of all to make mountains out of molehills when that should be vice versa.
Charles