In a message dated 10/1/2008 2:31:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dgerard@gmail.com writes:
He's famous for the science, the personal life is not particularly relevant to that and probably shouldn't go into the article.)>> ____________
*Unless* it's been cited and sourced for 20 newspapers and his ex was on Oprah dishing him right?
The Johnson and Johnson family is well-known for being wealthy, but they are also well-known for having one of the largest will-contests in history.
I'm sure we wouldn't want to advocate hiding information that is already well-known among those who know anything about it in the first place.
Will Johnson
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2008/10/1 WJhonson@aol.com:
In a message dated 10/1/2008 2:31:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dgerard@gmail.com writes:
He's famous for the science, the personal life is not particularly relevant to that and probably shouldn't go into the article.)>>
*Unless* it's been cited and sourced for 20 newspapers and his ex was on Oprah dishing him right? The Johnson and Johnson family is well-known for being wealthy, but they are also well-known for having one of the largest will-contests in history. I'm sure we wouldn't want to advocate hiding information that is already well-known among those who know anything about it in the first place.
Well, no. If a scandal was clearly noteworthy, it's clearly noteworthy. BLP really kicks in for the minorly notable.
- d.
2008/10/1 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
The Johnson and Johnson family is well-known for being wealthy, but they are also well-known for having one of the largest will-contests in history. I'm sure we wouldn't want to advocate hiding information that is already well-known among those who know anything about it in the first place.
Well, no. If a scandal was clearly noteworthy, it's clearly noteworthy. BLP really kicks in for the minorly notable.
Quite. No-one seriously advocates using BLP to argue, say, that we shouldn't mention Prince Charles or Paul McCartney got divorced, and that it was a bit embarrassing for all concerned[1]. Arguing against using it in general cases of less remarkable people, however, with "but what if it's notable! what if it's famous!" is a bit of a red herring, because it almost always *isn't*.
We keep falling back into this trap every time we discuss BLP...
On Oct 1, 2008, at 5:37 PM, David Gerard wrote:
2008/10/1 WJhonson@aol.com:
In a message dated 10/1/2008 2:31:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dgerard@gmail.com writes:
He's famous for the science, the personal life is not particularly relevant to that and probably shouldn't go into the article.)>>
*Unless* it's been cited and sourced for 20 newspapers and his ex was on Oprah dishing him right? The Johnson and Johnson family is well-known for being wealthy, but they are also well-known for having one of the largest will-contests in history. I'm sure we wouldn't want to advocate hiding information that is already well-known among those who know anything about it in the first place.
Well, no. If a scandal was clearly noteworthy, it's clearly noteworthy. BLP really kicks in for the minorly notable.
Though also tricky is the extended public meltdown Britney Spears is clearly notable in part for her lengthy and public difficulties. We could easily narrate those at length - after all, every bit is well- sourced, and it's clear that scandal is a part of her notability.
The problem is often not even one of deliberate POV, but of a lack of understanding of the process of summary. It's the same problem we have in our fiction articles as we get grotesquely long plot summaries - people narrate things event by event instead of tracing major threads, and treating the article like an argument with a thesis statement and evidence to back it up.
Which is to say, Wikipedia is written by people who never took or passed a basic composition class, and it sometimes shows. Go figure.
-Phil