On Wed, 29 Oct 2008 WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
You must be fairly new then. When I read BLPs I see tons of statements that are not sourced. I don't remove them all and claim "not sourced!" I add a few {{fact}} tags here and there and move on.
You are focused on the fact that some anonymous editor complained about one issue. But that complaint should be treated as coming from an anonymous person.
Calling him an anonymous person, or treating him as one, privileges rule literalism over common sense. He did not fit a particular Wikipedia rule about use of self-published sources, but that rule is imperfect. We knew who he was by any reasonable standards, he tried to correct his own article, and we refused to correct it, even though unsourced material can be deleted from a BLP at any time. This is very bad.
The normal course of action, is to fact-tag the clause and move on.
The normal course of action is to delete the statement, at least if it's a sincere complaint.