G'day Steve,
On 21/04/06, Michael Snow
<wikipedia(a)earthlink.net> wrote:
First of all, a neutral encyclopedia article is
not an
unrestrained free
speech zone, and I think the rhetoric of
someone's freedom of speech
being chilled is out of place to begin with. Second of all, it is
entirely consistent with our mission to seek to "chill" content
that
is
decidedly non-neutral and in most cases fails to
provide verifiable,
reputable sources for its assertions besides. Finally, in terms of
I would be curious to know - not necessarily with examples - whether
we have had legal threats related to articles that did meet WP:V. That
is, we published something which was by all accounts true, and had
verifiable sources to back it up - and yet was deemed offensive by
some miffed party.
It's not *exactly* what you're asking for, but ...
A while back soufron appeared on IRC asking for Australian editors to check up on our
article on Piers Akerman, which had been the subject of a legal complaint. I had a dekko,
and it appeared that Mr Akerman was a South African who left to protest the end of
apartheid and came to Australia, where he immediately began to indulge in a life of
debauchery and drug use. Or something like that. Now, as any Aussie not too busy
braiding their armpit hair could tell you, this is about as far from the life story of Mr
Akerman as one could get.
I went in and found some sources and re-wrote the article. My source was 11 years old, so
I had to make some changes after he helpfully pointed out that, for example, he
doesn't live in Melbourne anymore. He was still unhappy about one thing: the article
claimed that he'd quarrelled with his school headmaster and failed to complete his
exams, whereas Mr Akerman says nothing of the sort happened. Seeing as he didn't
provide a source, I went with "/The Age/ says blah blah blah, but Mr Akerman denies
this." So far he seems to be happy with that arrangement, at least, I believe the
Lawyer Cabal (TM) haven't received further complaints.
--
Mark Gallagher