Jimmy Wales wrote:
The victim of the bad biography in this case did
nothing to deserve the
insults that were flung at him by the vandals. I am not suggesting that
we hide embarrassing things done by various people, not report honestly
on murder cases, etc. All of that has absolutely nothing to do with
what we are discussing here.
What's the pressing issue here, though? As far as BLPs go, I'd put
"juvenile vandalism" pretty far down the list of things to worry about.
People who have been accused of serious but unfounded things have a
legitimate worry about Wikipedia damaging their reputations by repeating
libels or half-truths. It's particularly damaging if the article looks
authoritative---well-written, good formatting, footnotes duly inserted,
etc... but highly biased and libelous. On the other hand, a union leader
being called "a douchebag" by a random person on the internet, with bad
grammar and the offending juvenile insult removed a week later, doesn't
suffer particularly great harm. Heck, someone temporarily vandalizing
[[clinical depression]] with "LOL UR AN EMO FAG" probably has more
potential negative real-world effect.
-Mark