On 3/28/07, Jossi Fresco jossifresco@mac.com wrote:
On Mar 28, 2007, at 10:10 AM, Marc Riddell wrote:
No. Dead people should be treated with equal respect to living ones.
I agree. And the key word, I believe, that should guide any Article on any person - living or dead - is RESPECT.
The problem, Marc, is how do you enforce respect? We have seen it again and again and more so as Wikipedia becomes such a prominent web destination. It is soooo tempting to the anon visitor, seeing the article about this "Professor John P. Smith", which the anon knows, to add these "tidbits" of information from the local weekly, just for fun.
It is only when the shit hits the fan that we act and promptly remove that information.
I have seen these discussions too many times: "The Washinton Post has run a story in 1978 in which person X, that is a detractor of Y, says of Y 'he is a [expletive] abuser, and he poured chemicals on Z', so we should mention detractor's opinion in the article about Y because it has been published in a reliable source". Of course, that story has only appeared once, no scholars studying Y or other mainstream press has picked up and reprodduced X's viewpoints of Y, but nonetheless, editors push for its inclusion in a BLP on the basis of the argument "it has been published in a reliable source".
IMO, WP:BLP needs more teeth than it has now. Maybe a more stringent application of NOR and V is now due.
-- Jossi
The key issue here is the reliability of the detractor. Most detractors are strongly POV, so unless it's a majority opinion shared by more people, it shouldn't be included, even if it's published by a newspaper.