Among issues difficult to resolve while respecting the limitations of
the BLP policy, enter the article about a world-class athlete whose
gender has recently been questioned. The problem is this: can the
article discuss the supposed results of the tests and its
implications, as widely reported, without violating the BLP policy?
The information is clearly personal and very sensitive, and the
official results have not yet been released (and they may not be). In
normal circumstances, that would argue strongly against including
speculation. The perverse effect in this case, though, is that details
that have become common knowledge are entirely missing from our
article.
I think this might be one situation where our duty of care in
biographies of living people is being overzealously observed, but its
definitely a gray area and I'm not at all certain. It's jarring for me
to see some obviously relevant information excluded from the article,
particularly when its been reported in most major news venues in the
world, but I do understand the desire to be above the gross
speculation found in some outlets.
Thoughts? Have we been so successful at permeating the community with
care for BLPs that we need to start emphasizing the limits of that
care more clearly?
Nathan
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