As you say, this sort of problem is already covered by existed policy and established practice, and does not need the policy. But the proposed policy will remove the positive material as well.
There are some articles that basically consist of nasty claims, yet
have no sources. If we remove all the unsourced and potentially defamatory claims, we get "Joe Smith (b. 1964) is a Canadian" rather than "Joe Smith (b. 1964) is a Canadian criminal best known for molesting several young moose over a seven-year period in 1992", and at that point the article is pretty much worth quietly losing.
So I take out the claims, slap a prod tag on it, and let it be. To my delight, this has been mostly successful - only two or three got reverted with whiny edit summaries, and one of them got taken to AFD and deleted anyway (on the grounds that we really, really aren't a sex offenders registry). I strongly feel the encyclopedia was substantially better for doing this, and isn't that the point?
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- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
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