G'day Steve,
In the context of WP:OFFICE, as well as more recently, Jimbo and others have written somethings about "hurt feelings," as if it was a policy ( WP:CODDLE maybe) which could circumvent even important policy ( WP:NPOV maybe). Could you explain this?
We take a generally lax view towards rumour-mongering on Wikipedia. This is partly due to the CWE[0] (witness, for instance, the users who've decided that since {{fact}}[1] exists, nothing, however idiotic, may be removed from an article as untrue); partly due to Wikipedia's perceived "anything goes" values (something to do, I believe, with "anyone can edit" and anti-elitism); and partly because Wikipedia is so damned big that a poor edit (e.g. Siegenthaler[2]) can go for some time unnoticed, if placed in the wrong spot.
The new(ish) emphasis on the biographies of living persons is there to acknowledge that, while we should strive for top-notch articles on any subject, a poor article about a person who is alive today and capable of being affected by the content of the article is particularly damaging, and cleaning up such an article should be a higher priority.
Another problem is the famous Wikipedia "Fuck You" Response, wherein a person with a complaint about the content of their article is told where to go, not because their complaints are groundless, but because We Shall Publish What We Like And To Hell With You. If certain editors need to be reminded that such a response is immature, offensive, and potentially dangerous, then I see no problem with doing so.
I agree with the idea of treating bios with care, but that does not necessarily necessitate the use of an entirely different methodology than any other wiki page - including censoring talk pages. You may as well start a biowiki that operates under entirely different rules.
BLP at its best (I'm not saying there isn't any instruction creep and CWE cruft appearing at the edges) is not about establishing a double standard. It's about making damn sure the standards we should be applying to other sections of the encyclopaedia as well are followed on the biographies of living persons.
Untrue statements should not be published in our encyclopaedia. Since the project is so big (and we have contributors who are misinformed, stupid, or just plain malicious), problems are unavoidable. By being strict about the biographies of living persons, we're trying to crack down on problems that can actually hurt people here and now. True statements which happen to raise the ire of an article's subject, however, should remain, and insisting on a reliable source for such statements simply gives us something to point to next time the article's subject comes around to complain.
For some editors, WP:BLP is the difference between "fuck you, man, you can't tell us what to do" and "I'm sorry you feel aggrieved. Our article about you is well-sourced, however, and contains no errors of fact as far as we can see. If you dispute the content of a particular statement we've made, please point to a reliable source providing an alternate theory and we'll be happy to update the article. Thank you for helping us improve Wikipedia."
The talk about being sued --- which I know you didn't mention but I thought I'd throw in here --- is really a red herring. There are people out there who will only do the Right Thing if threatened with something big and heavy. This saddens me, and I don't doubt it saddens you. It's my view that we ought to do the Right Thing because, well, it's the bloody *Right Thing*, y'know? Unfortunately, some people --- some *Wikipedians*, believe it or not --- refuse to do so unless you write it down in some policy, or (in extreme cases) press the Guilt Button by telling them they're going to get Wikipedia sued. No, really!
Of course, this tends to backfire rather often. Human beings, even the human beings who take this view of the world, have rather good brains and are capable of assessing situations for themselves. What this means is, some people will ignore stupid shit in an article if they decide that it won't end in a court action, because after all, the only reason we're trying to improve the quality of this encyclopaedia is to avoid getting sued. Then we get to the copyright issue, where people say, "Sure, it's stealing, but I've looked at it myself and I believe we're going to get plenty of warning before anyone tries to sue over it, so that makes it legal." Sometimes I suspect it would be better if the "you'll see us in court" genie had never been let out of the bottle.
[0] Chinese Whispers Effect. No, I'm not going to shut up about it.
[1] Which creates a superscript "citation needed" marker, for those unaware.
[2] Have I spelled it correctly yet?