2009/9/21 Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com>om>:
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.