I hope you'll forgive me - I've joined this mailing list half-way through this discussion. I am interested in what's being said, but am having a hard time trying to summarize it in my head.
If I'm right, Phil is complaining that NOR contradicts NPOV because someone won't necessarily be able to defend themselves in their article because what they say (eg through a letter) will be OR, and therefore the article won't have NPOV?
And then there's the discussion about whether the subject of an article can request the permanent deletion of that article? But then of course we'll have the scenario where only generally positive articles remain. Can't we just have it so that they insist that Wikipedia correct factual errors about themselves?
And what's all this about spoiler warnings? Has there been a recent policy change? Where does one find out about these things?
Thank you for being patient! I look forward to participating in the mailing list constructively.
On Wed, 31 Dec 2008, CrustyBush wrote:
If I'm right, Phil is complaining that NOR contradicts NPOV because someone won't necessarily be able to defend themselves in their article because what they say (eg through a letter) will be OR, and therefore the article won't have NPOV?
It has to do with a specific phrase that was inserted in NOR:
Without a secondary source, a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is easily verifiable by any reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge.
The phrase that's the problem is "without specialist knowledge".
The problem is that there are topics where it pretty much takes specialist knowledge to summarize them at all. This leads to the scenario where B publishes a criticism of A, and A replies. The criticism published by B isn't a primary source, and may be summarized. The reply by A is a primary source, and may not be summarized.
And then there's the discussion about whether the subject of an article can request the permanent deletion of that article? But then of course we'll have the scenario where only generally positive articles remain. Can't we just have it so that they insist that Wikipedia correct factual errors about themselves?
People can be hurt by things which are factually accurate, especially if they're the #1 hit on Google for that person (as we are).
And what's all this about spoiler warnings? Has there been a recent policy change? Where does one find out about these things?
It's not recent. I pointed out that one of the abuses that was possible here (taking advantage of the fact that without consensus we go with the status quo) also happened when spoiler warnings were taken out.