On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 4:47 PM, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.comwrote:
On 9/24/08, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) newyorkbrad@gmail.com wrote:
This is not true in the least. There are clear ethical issues arising
from
the fact that a Wikipedia article on a living person will generally
become
one of the highest (if not the very highest) search-engine result for
that
person's name. Writing a Wikipedia article including derogatory
information
about someone is not the same thing as writing a comment on some other random website.
No.
If I refuse to write derogatory information about you at all, I am ethical.
If I write or condone derogatory information about you elsewhere on the internet, but refuse to post it or discuss it on Wikipedia on the basis of ethics (basing my ethics on estimated google juice), I am a hypocrite of the worst kind.
—C.W.
I think our disagreement may stem in part from an ambiguity about the meaning of "derogatory information." If we are interpreting it as meaning "blatant lies and malicious gossip," then if course it does not belong anywhere on the Internet, period, end of story. But if it means "negative information that is true and can be sourced, but it is still questionable whether there is value in publicizing it," then the context for doing so may become more significant. As many BLP problems deal with the second of these categories as the first.
Newyorkbrad