http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Doolittle was around 85% knocking copy. I removed this and put a strongly worded comment on Talk about undue weight and WP:LIVING. I don't give a rat's ass if there is a close-fought election in process, if anything that is the worst conceivable reason for bloating an article with guilt-by-association and innuendo.
Needless to say there is an edit war. Of course these facts are cited; but do we really need to know that he took campaign contributions from some guy and did not give them away like the other people who took the guy's money? Is that *honestly* the business of a neutral encyclopaedia article?
We are surely not far from the day when a politician sues the project for causing him to lose a knife-edge election. Or is that [[WP:BEANS]]?
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Needless to say there is an edit war. Of course these facts are cited; but do we really need to know that he took campaign contributions from some guy and did not give them away like the other people who took the guy's money? Is that *honestly* the business of a neutral encyclopaedia article?
Seems like a balance issue rather than a BLP one, no? The facts are the facts, but given without proper expansion of other points doesn't create a BLP issue.
-Jeff
Jeff Raymond wrote:
Seems like a balance issue rather than a BLP one, no? The facts are the facts, but given without proper expansion of other points doesn't create a BLP issue.
Without making any statement on this particular case, which I have not studied enough, I just wanted to point out that a balance issue can and often is a BLP issue. Indeed, BLP issues are more often about balance than anything else.
It is often that case that the worst bios of living people involve a skeleton bio with a huge puke of negative information (properly sourced) in the middle, so that the article as a whole is completely biased. Because of certain cultural norms against ever ever ever removing any precious little tidbit of information, despite it boring the reader to tears and being a form of attack and bias, it can be hard for people to combat it.
Remember, NPOV is non-negotiable. Wikipedia is not a data dump. Quality requires editorial judgment and good sense.
--Jimbo
Can I just re-inforce this statement, to the effect that removing infomation is not the core policy of wikipedia, but neither is the spread of disinformation. Puhlease keep the distinction clear.
On 10/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
Seems like a balance issue rather than a BLP one, no? The facts are the facts, but given without proper expansion of other points doesn't create a BLP issue.
Without making any statement on this particular case, which I have not studied enough, I just wanted to point out that a balance issue can and often is a BLP issue. Indeed, BLP issues are more often about balance than anything else.
It is often that case that the worst bios of living people involve a skeleton bio with a huge puke of negative information (properly sourced) in the middle, so that the article as a whole is completely biased. Because of certain cultural norms against ever ever ever removing any precious little tidbit of information, despite it boring the reader to tears and being a form of attack and bias, it can be hard for people to combat it.
Remember, NPOV is non-negotiable. Wikipedia is not a data dump. Quality requires editorial judgment and good sense.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:19:56 -0400, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Without making any statement on this particular case, which I have not studied enough, I just wanted to point out that a balance issue can and often is a BLP issue. Indeed, BLP issues are more often about balance than anything else.
Thank you, that was precisely my point.
Guy (JzG)