In a message dated 4/22/2008 10:03:38 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, thomas.dalton@gmail.com writes:
"We should not do harm" >>
----------------------- If people are going to keep rephrasing BLP into "do no harm", can we please rewrite 9000 BLPs right away? Because we certainly do "additional harm" collating and collecting details into one mass.
That's been the essential argument which is imho entirely ridiculous and specious.
So we collect together details like Jimmy dumped his girlfriend over the internet, Jimmy was born in Alabama and Jimmy ran a porn site and voila we've done additional harm that any individual source did not do.
"We should not do harm" is not what BLP says, nor what it should say. We are reporters and editors, the fact that we must oh I don't know... EDIT... should be relevant. But we should not censor.
I'm in a soapbox mood today, sorta pissed off about the Genie (Susan Wiley) article, and the incredibly silly counter-arguments being used there.
Will Johnson
**************Need a new ride? Check out the largest site for U.S. used car listings at AOL Autos. (http://autos.aol.com/used?NCID=aolcmp00300000002851)
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 1:29 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 4/22/2008 10:03:38 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
thomas.dalton@gmail.com writes:
"We should not do harm" >>
If people are going to keep rephrasing BLP into "do no harm", can we please rewrite 9000 BLPs right away? Because we certainly do "additional harm" collating and collecting details into one mass.
That's been the essential argument which is imho entirely ridiculous and specious.
So we collect together details like Jimmy dumped his girlfriend over the internet, Jimmy was born in Alabama and Jimmy ran a porn site and voila we've done additional harm that any individual source did not do.
"We should not do harm" is not what BLP says, nor what it should say. We are reporters and editors, the fact that we must oh I don't know... EDIT... should be relevant. But we should not censor.
I'm in a soapbox mood today, sorta pissed off about the Genie (Susan Wiley) article, and the incredibly silly counter-arguments being used there.
Will Johnson
**************Need a new ride? Check out the largest site for U.S. used car listings at AOL Autos. (http://autos.aol.com/used?NCID=aolcmp00300000002851)
Quoth the WP:BLP "An important rule of thumb when writing biographical material about living persons is "do no harm"."
What this means, of course, is anyone's guess.
WilyD
Quoth the WP:BLP "An important rule of thumb when writing biographical material about living persons is "do no harm"."
What this means, of course, is anyone's guess.
What it means is that we should completely ignore NPOV with regards to living people, which I don't think anyone is actually in favour of. The policy page should be corrected.
WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
So we collect together details like Jimmy dumped his girlfriend over the internet, Jimmy was born in Alabama and Jimmy ran a porn site and voila we've done additional harm that any individual source did not do.
I'm amused by the suggestion that stating that someone was born in Alabama somehow does harm. It's been a long time since 1865. :-)
Ec
The idea that "I don't have to do it if the law doesn't make me" or "If it isn't against the law there is no reason I can't do it if I want to" is not exactly limited to Wikipedia. Seems to be a standard human character defect, to not do difficult things unless forced and to not forgo anything wanted unless forced. Wikipedia hasn't been immune to this problem, but I'm not sure if the "Do no harm isn't a policy" is really the same thing.
Harm is relative, it doesn't work as an objective standard in editing (unlike in medicine, whence "First, do no harm."). If an article is sourced, we may 'do harm' by making more centrally located and prominent a collection of published criticism of an individual. That doesn't mean we shouldn't appropriately include sourced criticism.
Nathan
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 2:32 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
So we collect together details like Jimmy dumped his girlfriend over the internet, Jimmy was born in Alabama and Jimmy ran a porn site and voila
we've
done additional harm that any individual source did not do.
I'm amused by the suggestion that stating that someone was born in Alabama somehow does harm. It's been a long time since 1865. :-)
Ec
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l