Among issues difficult to resolve while respecting the limitations of the BLP policy, enter the article about a world-class athlete whose gender has recently been questioned. The problem is this: can the article discuss the supposed results of the tests and its implications, as widely reported, without violating the BLP policy? The information is clearly personal and very sensitive, and the official results have not yet been released (and they may not be). In normal circumstances, that would argue strongly against including speculation. The perverse effect in this case, though, is that details that have become common knowledge are entirely missing from our article.
I think this might be one situation where our duty of care in biographies of living people is being overzealously observed, but its definitely a gray area and I'm not at all certain. It's jarring for me to see some obviously relevant information excluded from the article, particularly when its been reported in most major news venues in the world, but I do understand the desire to be above the gross speculation found in some outlets.
Thoughts? Have we been so successful at permeating the community with care for BLPs that we need to start emphasizing the limits of that care more clearly?
Nathan
2009/9/21 Nathan nawrich@gmail.com:
Among issues difficult to resolve while respecting the limitations of the BLP policy, enter the article about a world-class athlete whose gender has recently been questioned. The problem is this: can the article discuss the supposed results of the tests and its implications, as widely reported, without violating the BLP policy? The information is clearly personal and very sensitive, and the official results have not yet been released (and they may not be). In normal circumstances, that would argue strongly against including speculation. The perverse effect in this case, though, is that details that have become common knowledge are entirely missing from our article.
The case in question is a fairly easy one. The media speculation is based on a report from a single newspaper and it's somewhat questionable if that paper's source is as solid as they claim. We wait.
geni wrote:
2009/9/21 Nathan nawrich@gmail.com:
Among issues difficult to resolve while respecting the limitations of the BLP policy, enter the article about a world-class athlete whose gender has recently been questioned. The problem is this: can the article discuss the supposed results of the tests and its implications, as widely reported, without violating the BLP policy? The information is clearly personal and very sensitive, and the official results have not yet been released (and they may not be). In normal circumstances, that would argue strongly against including speculation. The perverse effect in this case, though, is that details that have become common knowledge are entirely missing from our article.
The case in question is a fairly easy one. The media speculation is based on a report from a single newspaper and it's somewhat questionable if that paper's source is as solid as they claim. We wait.
It's easy to be dismissive by claiming that the question is an easy one. The controversy itself is an issue, in addition to the underlying ambiguity of the athlete's gender. Your claim that the story is based on a report from a single newspaper should itself be subject to verification. Similarly, questioning a newspaper's sources also needs to be subject to verification. Substituting a perceived bias about an individual with your bias about a newspaper is no solution.
Ec
2009/9/21 Nathan nawrich@gmail.com:
Among issues difficult to resolve while respecting the limitations of the BLP policy, enter the article about a world-class athlete whose gender has recently been questioned. The problem is this: can the article discuss the supposed results of the tests and its implications, as widely reported, without violating the BLP policy? The information is clearly personal and very sensitive, and the official results have not yet been released (and they may not be). In normal circumstances, that would argue strongly against including speculation. The perverse effect in this case, though, is that details that have become common knowledge are entirely missing from our article.
When you are unsure how to apply a policy to an unusual situation, it is best to go back to first principles and consider the reasons behind that policy. The main reason for BLP is to reduce harm to living people, so the question you need to ask is "Will including this information cause more harm to the subject than is acceptable?" (what is acceptable is obviously subjective). In this case, the information is so widely available that I can't see including it doing any significant harm at all, so we should include it.
Nathan wrote:
I think this might be one situation where our duty of care in biographies of living people is being overzealously observed, but its definitely a gray area and I'm not at all certain. It's jarring for me to see some obviously relevant information excluded from the article, particularly when its been reported in most major news venues in the world, but I do understand the desire to be above the gross speculation found in some outlets.
Thoughts? Have we been so successful at permeating the community with care for BLPs that we need to start emphasizing the limits of that care more clearly?
The distinction to be made is between information about a person, and popularly reported claims about the person. It needs to be made clear that reporting about a controversy is not identical to reporting about the person. It's disingenuous to pretend that a very public controversy doesn't exist. Rather than suppressing anything about the controversy we would do better to find the appropriate language for discussing it neutrally.
It's much easier to permeate a community with a series of doctrinaire rules than with a grasp of the underlying principles.
Ec
2009/9/21 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
The distinction to be made is between information about a person, and popularly reported claims about the person. It needs to be made clear that reporting about a controversy is not identical to reporting about the person. It's disingenuous to pretend that a very public controversy doesn't exist. Rather than suppressing anything about the controversy we would do better to find the appropriate language for discussing it neutrally.
It's much easier to permeate a community with a series of doctrinaire rules than with a grasp of the underlying principles.
The key point with that, in general, is "undue weight" - it is easy to give too much weight to a controversy. In this case, though, the controversy is so high profile and it is pretty much the only thing the public know about this person that the due weight is very high.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
2009/9/21 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
The distinction to be made is between information about a person, and popularly reported claims about the person. It needs to be made clear that reporting about a controversy is not identical to reporting about the person. It's disingenuous to pretend that a very public controversy doesn't exist. Rather than suppressing anything about the controversy we would do better to find the appropriate language for discussing it neutrally.
It's much easier to permeate a community with a series of doctrinaire rules than with a grasp of the underlying principles.
The key point with that, in general, is "undue weight" - it is easy to give too much weight to a controversy. In this case, though, the controversy is so high profile and it is pretty much the only thing the public know about this person that the due weight is very high.
But if the only substance to the controversy is rumour, and speculative discussion of rumours, we don't need either BLP or NPOV to work to exclude it or cut it back to a bare statement. So I agree with geni. I have never heard of this idea of giving weight to public conceptions or misconceptions. (Time to check up on how many urban myths we have. I'm glad to see that [[tulip mania]], a topic constantly referenced in the newspapers at the present, does sound the cautious note: "Many modern scholars believe that the mania was not as extraordinary as Mackay described, with some arguing that the price changes may not have constituted a bubble." That one has been running since the 1840s. Pretty much the only thing the public know about tulips in the 17th century is that it was a bubble.)
Charles
Charles
I see people are saying it's obvious, but they're saying it about each of the incompatible alternatives.
I think we have a clear rule about this, which is to wait for a confirming source. If it's talked about so widely, someone will do it in print. In essence, I agree with Matthew. This is one of the things provided for in the BLP compromise.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 3:08 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
2009/9/21 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
The distinction to be made is between information about a person, and popularly reported claims about the person. It needs to be made clear that reporting about a controversy is not identical to reporting about the person. It's disingenuous to pretend that a very public controversy doesn't exist. Rather than suppressing anything about the controversy we would do better to find the appropriate language for discussing it neutrally.
It's much easier to permeate a community with a series of doctrinaire rules than with a grasp of the underlying principles.
The key point with that, in general, is "undue weight" - it is easy to give too much weight to a controversy. In this case, though, the controversy is so high profile and it is pretty much the only thing the public know about this person that the due weight is very high.
But if the only substance to the controversy is rumour, and speculative discussion of rumours, we don't need either BLP or NPOV to work to exclude it or cut it back to a bare statement. So I agree with geni. I have never heard of this idea of giving weight to public conceptions or misconceptions. (Time to check up on how many urban myths we have. I'm glad to see that [[tulip mania]], a topic constantly referenced in the newspapers at the present, does sound the cautious note: "Many modern scholars believe that the mania was not as extraordinary as Mackay described, with some arguing that the price changes may not have constituted a bubble." That one has been running since the 1840s. Pretty much the only thing the public know about tulips in the 17th century is that it was a bubble.)
Charles
Charles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania#cite_note-5
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
2009/9/21 David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com:
I see people are saying it's obvious, but they're saying it about each of the incompatible alternatives.
I think we have a clear rule about this, which is to wait for a confirming source. If it's talked about so widely, someone will do it in print. In essence, I agree with Matthew. This is one of the things provided for in the BLP compromise.
No-one is suggesting we report that she is intersex. We have plenty of reliable sources about the controversy and rumours, and reporting them won't do any significant harm, so why not do so?
2009/9/21 Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com:
But if the only substance to the controversy is rumour, and speculative discussion of rumours, we don't need either BLP or NPOV to work to exclude it or cut it back to a bare statement.
I disagree. The controversy is notable, so why not discuss it? Perhaps it should be split off into a different article with just a brief summary in the BLP, but I don't see why it should be ignored.