---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net Date: 2009/4/21 Subject: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
As I mentioned in my previous message, the Board of Trustees prepared a statement at its meeting related to biographies of living people. It touches on the major considerations in this issue, but also how this relates to our fundamental objectives. The statement was unanimously approved by the board. The text of the statement follows:
The Wikimedia Foundation takes this opportunity to reiterate some core principles related to our shared vision, mission, and values. One of these values which is common to all our projects is a commitment to maintaining a neutral point of view.
In our efforts to offer a source of knowledge that is valuable and useful to all, we have a responsibility to uphold these values by also providing accurate information. Participants in Wikimedia projects have created resources of vast size and scope. As we have emphasized for several years, in addition to the quantity of knowledge that is available, its quality is also an essential matter. The generally high quality of information in Wikimedia projects has been confirmed by a number of studies, but it is important that we always strive to improve. As with any endeavor that provides educational and informational material, errors need to be avoided, especially when they have the potential to cause harm. One area where this applies is when writing about living people.
Increasingly, Wikimedia articles are among the top search engine results for just about any query. That means that when a potential employer, a colleague, friend, neighbor or acquaintance looks for information about a person, they may find it at the Wikimedia sites. As the popularity of the Wikimedia projects grows, so does the editing community's responsibility to ensure articles about living people are neutrally-written, accurate and well-sourced.
As our popularity has grown, some issues have become more prominent:
* Many people create articles that are overly promotional in tone: about themselves, people they admire, or those they are paid to represent. These are not neutral, and have no place in our projects. Generally, the Wikimedia community protects the projects well against this common problem by deleting or improving hagiographies. * People sometimes vandalize articles about living people. The Wikimedia community has developed tools and techniques for counteracting vandalism: in general they seem to work reasonably well. * Some articles about living people contain small errors, are poorly-written or poorly-sourced. Articles about people who are only marginally well-known are often neglected, and tend to improve much more slowly over time, if at all. * People sometimes make edits designed to smear others. This is difficult to identify and counteract, particularly if the malicious editor is persistent.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees urges the global Wikimedia community to uphold and strengthen our commitment to high-quality, accurate information, by:
1) Ensuring that projects in all languages that describe living people have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;
2) Taking human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account when adding or removing information, especially in articles of ephemeral or marginal interest;
3) Investigating new technical mechanisms to assess edits, particularly when they affect living people, and to better enable readers to report problems;
4) Treating any person who has a complaint about how they are described in our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encouraging others to do the same.
--Michael Snow
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David Gerard wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees urges the global Wikimedia community to uphold and strengthen our commitment to high-quality, accurate information, by:
- Ensuring that projects in all languages that describe living people
have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;
- Taking human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account
when adding or removing information, especially in articles of ephemeral or marginal interest;
- Investigating new technical mechanisms to assess edits, particularly
when they affect living people, and to better enable readers to report problems;
- Treating any person who has a complaint about how they are described
in our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encouraging others to do the same.
--Michael Snow
And?
Where's the beef?
2009/4/21 doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com:
And? Where's the beef?
I was thinking more "where's the catch?" I still can't see one. A lollipop for each catch anyone can spot!
Think of a Wikimedia where [[:en:WP:BLP]] and its associated infrastructure is doing the best at tackling the problem. Does the Board note make more sense then?
- d.
On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, David Gerard wrote:
I was thinking more "where's the catch?" I still can't see one. A lollipop for each catch anyone can spot!
Some catches:
1) Glosses over how you reconcile the conflict of interest policy and allowing people to fix their own biographies.
2) It gives a cursory, vague, reference to human dignity, but in general it emphasises accuracy and verifiability too much. Some BLP problems aren't really about that, and painting them as such is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Privacy problems aren't about either one. Undue weight problems *could* be called accuracy, but that gives the wrong impression. Someone who shares a name with a child molester and finds Wikipedia the first Google hit for his name can't really complain about accuracy or verifiability. And this doesn't even touch the issue of what to do with information is verifiable but false.
3) And then there's this: # Treating any person who has a complaint about how they are described # in our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encouraging # others to do the same. The problem here, as with so many things in Wikipedia, is that Wikipedia is set up so that in a conflict where some of us want to use a rule and some want to use human judgment, the rule wins. If someone who complains ends up violating a rule, it doesn't matter how many times we say he needs to be listened to with patience, kindness, and support; he'll probably get treated as a rule violator.
On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:36 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, David Gerard wrote:
I was thinking more "where's the catch?" I still can't see one. A lollipop for each catch anyone can spot!
Some catches:
- Glosses over how you reconcile the conflict of interest policy and
allowing people to fix their own biographies.
- It gives a cursory, vague, reference to human dignity, but in general it
emphasises accuracy and verifiability too much. Some BLP problems aren't really about that, and painting them as such is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Privacy problems aren't about either one. Undue weight problems *could* be called accuracy, but that gives the wrong impression. Someone who shares a name with a child molester and finds Wikipedia the first Google hit for his name can't really complain about accuracy or verifiability. And this doesn't even touch the issue of what to do with information is verifiable but false.
- And then there's this:
# Treating any person who has a complaint about how they are described # in our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encouraging # others to do the same. The problem here, as with so many things in Wikipedia, is that Wikipedia is set up so that in a conflict where some of us want to use a rule and some want to use human judgment, the rule wins. If someone who complains ends up violating a rule, it doesn't matter how many times we say he needs to be listened to with patience, kindness, and support; he'll probably get treated as a rule violator.
I'm going to put forwards a theory...
I think that this is the Foundation basically saying in as neutral a way possible "The underlying idea behind the Enwiki BLP policy is good and should be a standard throughout WMF projects".
I think this is NOT an attempt to interject "Enwiki BLP sucks and needs to be enhanced/changed/warped"
I think that the problems we're having with Enwiki BLP emphasize how problematic it is to determine a right solution and how to enforce it. The Foundation can acknowledge that, and ask that other projects begin to unversally adopt the concept, while accepting that we have a ways to go before the policy is perfect.
2009/4/21 doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com:
David Gerard wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees urges the global Wikimedia community to uphold and strengthen our commitment to high-quality, accurate information, by:
- Ensuring that projects in all languages that describe living people
have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;
- Taking human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account
when adding or removing information, especially in articles of ephemeral or marginal interest;
- Investigating new technical mechanisms to assess edits, particularly
when they affect living people, and to better enable readers to report problems;
- Treating any person who has a complaint about how they are described
in our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encouraging others to do the same.
--Michael Snow
And?
Where's the beef?
Are you disappointed that the Foundation has rejected the concept of applying different standards to BLPs?
On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 9:48 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Subject: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people
<snip>
Is this being announced/discussed anywhere on en-Wikipedia?
*Is* there anywhere on en-Wikipedia to discuss WMF statements?
I think it just missed this week's Signpost (but that's more news than discussion).
Someone suggested Village Pump, but I'm thinking more of when the Non-Free Content resolution was passed. That resolution prompted revamping and discussion of the corresponding pages on en-Wikipedia (I think). This doesn't seem to be a resolution (maybe it should have been), though it was passed unanimously, but it should at least be announced and discussed at the talk page of the policy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons
Anyone want to post something there? Or is it best to wait until there is a page at the WMF wiki to link to?
Carcharoth