2009/4/22 WJhonson@aol.com:
In a message dated 4/22/2009 11:31:48 AM Pacific Daylight Time, arromdee@rahul.net writes:
But if you're going to go that route, that means that once you have verified their identity, you should indeed let them fix the incorrect claim in their biography. That's not what you're saying. You're arguing for a policy that says that someone without a source can't correct errors about himself *at all*--whether you looked up the official site for his radio station or not. Verifying his identity is, in fact, completely irrelevant to this policy.>>
The sole place where the subject may have a special position, is in providing a response to a well-sourced negative statement. If we have a statement like "Britney Spears stabbed her husband and was arrested" (L.A. Times, 12 Oct 2007), then she is quite welcome to provide an alternate version such as "she stabbed him, but it was with a nail file and the skin wasn't even broken, he's just a big cry baby bitch." (Britneyspears.com, "Why I was arrested last week") However, this does not mean that we remove the L A Times reference. That would be whitewashing the article. We are here to provide the reading public with the most consistent, neutral, inclusive view of pop culture. That isn't simply the glamour magazines, it has to include as well the news articles that have negative material.
I think at this point you're arguing past each other. Neither of you actually works to the ridiculously extreme straw-man standards you ascribe to each other.
WP:BLP may be summarised as "we're here to write an encyclopedia, but have to be very careful not to be dicks about it."
- d.