Anthony wrote:
On 6/21/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/22/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/21/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/21/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
What -is- the ethical question? The information is already easily available to anyone who wishes to find it, so right-to-privacy doesn't hold.
Actually, it does. We are not a newspaper archive and our standards are not theirs. If we do not need to use the names of living private individuals, we should not do so, because *every* publication of information about a private individual diminishes his privacy, and while we are not in a position to control the contents of many newspaper archives, we certainly are in complete control of one of the most popular information sources on the planet. We should not needlessly compromise privacy.
I can only agree with that for some value of "needlessly". While there are some cases where there's absolutely no benefit to adding a name to an article, and other cases where there's absolutely no point in having an article without having a name, it's those in-between cases that are the ones where we have to make a judgment.
Absolutely. The key is that we should always ask ourselves if including the names of private individuals is necessary for completeness. Usually it isn't.
When dealing with information which has already been published elsewhere, I put the balancing question closer to whether or not including the name of the individual makes a better encyclopedia article. Usually it does.
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One would certainly think so. I think the questions would be "Is it necessary to carefully craft and twist the prose in order to avoid the names? Do people keep adding them in, thinking they're helping out? Would a reader expect to see names in such an article and be surprised to find them missing (and, again, perhaps add them)? Do most or all of the sources I'm using mention someone(s) by name?"
The more of those that are a yes, the more likely you should mention specific names. If they're all yes, it's almost a lock-the names effectively must be used for the sake of accuracy, completeness, and reflection of sourcing. We shouldn't sensationalize, but that doesn't mean we need to bowdlerize.