On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Scott MacDonald
<doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
Geni, you are now being obtuse.
Sometimes we publish false crap on people, sometimes we do it all on our
own, and sometimes it's because we're following a source that is publishing
falsehood.
When a victim tries to get a correction, the whole deck is stacked against
them. Edit Wikipedia and get hit with COI. E-mail OTRS and you're dealing
with a non-editorial non-authority, who might not believe who you are, and
probably won't accept your own testimony as other than worthless. Even if
you convince the OTRS person, he might well get reverted by someone who
can't see the e-mails.
Now, along comes another way of people setting the record straight, and you
reject it because a) it doesn't comply with policy b) people may pay $1,000
to impersonate someone c) you choose to be cynical about their identity
checking d) it doesn't make sense to you.
The bottom line is that you are representative of the most cynical,
irresponsible BLP attitudes on Wikipedia, and if we were serious about our
responsibilities here, people with you cavalier attitude would be banned
from BLPs, and BLP process, as a positive menace.
Scott
I think you're going a bit overboard there, Doc. I agree that the
claims of the subject shouldn't be ignored, particularly if they spend
$1000 to publish a correction on a startup site (as long as we can
confirm it is them). But should it count as a reliable reference to
trigger a chance in our articles? Not necessarily. Geni and I have
both worked over the years on a particular BLP where the subject has
enormous financial resources and the apparent desire to
distort/falsify his record. If we were to credit his public statements
as fact, we'd be allowing him to hijack our content to suit his own
needs.
Nathan