In a message dated 10/28/2008 2:35:44 PM Pacific Daylight Time, snowspinner@gmail.com writes:
"I want to take away the right for an editor to revert an edit for the sole reason that we can't verify the person's identity so what they say doesn't count. I want to mandate actually looking at the sources, thinking about the issue, and making a decision based on something other than "The rules say X, period.">>
----------------- This has absolutely nothing to do with what occurred. What occurred was that the subject of the BLP made claims and this entire thread is about whether we can alter an article based on the subject of the BLP making claims without our ability to identify whether that person is actually who they claim to be.
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On Oct 28, 2008, at 5:49 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 10/28/2008 2:35:44 PM Pacific Daylight Time, snowspinner@gmail.com writes:
"I want to take away the right for an editor to revert an edit for the sole reason that we can't verify the person's identity so what they say doesn't count. I want to mandate actually looking at the sources, thinking about the issue, and making a decision based on something other than "The rules say X, period.">>
This has absolutely nothing to do with what occurred. What occurred was that the subject of the BLP made claims and this entire thread is about whether we can alter an article based on the subject of the BLP making claims without our ability to identify whether that person is actually who they claim to be.
That is all it's about. It's not about any thing else.
Nobody has argued that we should alter based purely on Lanier's edits to the wiki. But on the other hand, Lanier's edits to the wiki should have been sufficient cause to look at the claims and fix the article. That the article went un-fixed after his edits is inexcusable.
Lanier's claims should have caused the article to be fixed. That is not equivalent to "We should have changed the article on his say-so."
-Phil
WJhonson wrote:
What occurred was that the subject of the BLP made claims and this entire thread is about whether we can alter an article based on the subject of the BLP making claims without our ability to identify whether that person is actually who they claim to be.
Right. And the unambiguous answer is, yes, we can alter an article based on the subject of the BLP making claims without our ability to identify whether that person is actually who they claim to be.
Suppose that our [[Pope Benedict XVI]] article were found to contain the sentence "Bennie is a homosexual drug user". Suppose that a banned troll editor, posting from an anonymous IP address behind an unsecured Wifi hotspot in a repressive, America-hating country, posted to the talk page to say, "Hai! I'm Pope Benedict and I'm nicht gay. I tried the article to edit but it is protekted." Now: would we quibble over whether the talk page poster was or wasn't actually Pope Benedict before considering whether the objected-to sentence might need some attention?