On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:36 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, David Gerard wrote:
I was thinking more "where's the catch?" I still can't see one. A lollipop for each catch anyone can spot!
Some catches:
- Glosses over how you reconcile the conflict of interest policy and
allowing people to fix their own biographies.
- It gives a cursory, vague, reference to human dignity, but in general it
emphasises accuracy and verifiability too much. Some BLP problems aren't really about that, and painting them as such is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Privacy problems aren't about either one. Undue weight problems *could* be called accuracy, but that gives the wrong impression. Someone who shares a name with a child molester and finds Wikipedia the first Google hit for his name can't really complain about accuracy or verifiability. And this doesn't even touch the issue of what to do with information is verifiable but false.
- And then there's this:
# Treating any person who has a complaint about how they are described # in our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encouraging # others to do the same. The problem here, as with so many things in Wikipedia, is that Wikipedia is set up so that in a conflict where some of us want to use a rule and some want to use human judgment, the rule wins. If someone who complains ends up violating a rule, it doesn't matter how many times we say he needs to be listened to with patience, kindness, and support; he'll probably get treated as a rule violator.
I'm going to put forwards a theory...
I think that this is the Foundation basically saying in as neutral a way possible "The underlying idea behind the Enwiki BLP policy is good and should be a standard throughout WMF projects".
I think this is NOT an attempt to interject "Enwiki BLP sucks and needs to be enhanced/changed/warped"
I think that the problems we're having with Enwiki BLP emphasize how problematic it is to determine a right solution and how to enforce it. The Foundation can acknowledge that, and ask that other projects begin to unversally adopt the concept, while accepting that we have a ways to go before the policy is perfect.