On 10/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
See [[WT:BLP]]. I've been changing "negative" to "controversial", since controversy is the problem as I see it, and using the word "negative" is blatantly throwing NPOV out the window.
Our pop culture articles are a wasteland of fan-maintained hagiography anyway. Do we need to throw NPOV out for those? See e.g. http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/05/what-bears-do-on-lawn.html
While it's obvious that we shouldn't leave out negative information just because it's negative, we need to be especially careful with negative information. Hagiography is an article-quality issue - we aren't going to get sued and we aren't going to damage someone's career if hagiography stands in an article for a few days or weeks. More importantly, hagiography isn't different for the living or the dead defamation is. What's unique about Living people is that they can be harmed by what is said about them in an article far more than dead people or mountain ranges. So there's a very realy reason to focus BLP on negative or potentially damaging information.
I think the best conception of BLP is "make sure that information content clearly outweighs the harm done", not "make sure than the information is accurate". I'm not aware of anyone who ever lost their job because people said nice things about them.
Ian
There's also a fair bit of Jimbomancy going on, which doesn't help.
- d.
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