NPOV is not just a rule. It's what allows us to have a project at all. It is not "right" to violate NPOV because reality hurts someone's feelings. Reality frequently is painful. It's neither possible nor our job to change that. It's our job to make a neutral, factual, verifiable reference work. Not to impose our notions of right and wrong. Polarizing the issue into "those who agree with me are right and all others are wrongdoers" is unhelpful.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net Subj: Re: [WikiEN-l] Biography of Living persons Date: Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:13 pm Size: 509 bytes To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
I've even been told, by someone who should know better, that BLP is more important than NPOV, and saw not a bit of outrage.
NPOV is a rule. BLP is about doing what's right.
Some people elevate rules over doing what's right. I'm not one of them.
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On 31/12/2008, toddmallen@gmail.com toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
NPOV is not just a rule. It's what allows us to have a project at all. It is not "right" to violate NPOV because reality hurts someone's feelings. Reality frequently is painful. It's neither possible nor our job to change that. It's our job to make a neutral, factual, verifiable reference work. Not to impose our notions of right and wrong.
That is A definition of right and wrong, you're saying that the wikipedia is more important than individuals. You're valuing the wikipedia more than them. That's your right. But it's also his right to value individuals above the wikipedia.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net Subj: Re: [WikiEN-l] Biography of Living persons Date: Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:13 pm Size: 509 bytes To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
I've even been told, by someone who should know better, that BLP is more important than NPOV, and saw not a bit of outrage.
NPOV is a rule. BLP is about doing what's right.
Some people elevate rules over doing what's right. I'm not one of them.
2008/12/31 Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com:
That is A definition of right and wrong, you're saying that the wikipedia is more important than individuals. You're valuing the wikipedia more than them. That's your right. But it's also his right to value individuals above the wikipedia.
False dichotomy.
BLP only works insofar as it doesn't contradict NPOV.
What part of valuing individuals do you consider requires violating NPOV?
- d.
On 31/12/2008, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/12/31 Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com:
That is A definition of right and wrong, you're saying that the wikipedia is more important than individuals. You're valuing the wikipedia more than them. That's your right. But it's also his right to value individuals above the wikipedia.
False dichotomy.
No, no. It's not a dichotomy at all, there's a continuum between how much people value rules/ordered societies and how much they're prepared to trample over a few rights or people's lives and how much it's essential not to trample on anyone. It's not about good or bad, it's just how different people look at things; it's about values. There's no provable right or wrong on this.
BLP only works insofar as it doesn't contradict NPOV.
What part of valuing individuals do you consider requires violating NPOV?
Well, off hand (and not necessarily a perfect example) the Star Wars kid's name. It may well be considered that not having his name in the article violates NPOV. I'm not saying that I think that or that I don't, but *purely* for the sake of argument let's say that it is obviously a violation not to have it and let's say in our hypothetical world that absolutely all sources have it.
Then one point of view would then be that his name should be in the article, unless BLP then gets in the way, in which case you can reasonably argue that NPOV was violated because you value the impact it could have on the kid and that is more important to *them*.
On the other hand some people will argue that NPOV should triumph, because all sources have it, and so it's NPOV to have it and the rule is intended to improve and give an orderly and well written wikipedia and so in the long run improve countless people's lives; perhaps even save their lives, and this is more important to *them* than the (possibly minor) inconvenience to the Star Wars kid of NPOV forcing something into the article.
That's the general idea anyway-this guy probably puts it better than me (it seems to be about the same idea, although he explains it in political terms):
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
- d.
On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 7:03 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/12/2008, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/12/31 Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com:
That is A definition of right and wrong, you're saying that the wikipedia is more important than individuals. You're valuing the wikipedia more than them. That's your right. But it's also his right to value individuals above the wikipedia.
False dichotomy.
No, no. It's not a dichotomy at all, there's a continuum between how much people value rules/ordered societies and how much they're prepared to trample over a few rights or people's lives and how much it's essential not to trample on anyone. It's not about good or bad, it's just how different people look at things; it's about values. There's no provable right or wrong on this.
BLP only works insofar as it doesn't contradict NPOV.
What part of valuing individuals do you consider requires violating NPOV?
Well, off hand (and not necessarily a perfect example) the Star Wars kid's name. It may well be considered that not having his name in the article violates NPOV. I'm not saying that I think that or that I don't, but *purely* for the sake of argument let's say that it is obviously a violation not to have it and let's say in our hypothetical world that absolutely all sources have it.
Then one point of view would then be that his name should be in the article, unless BLP then gets in the way, in which case you can reasonably argue that NPOV was violated because you value the impact it could have on the kid and that is more important to *them*.
On the other hand some people will argue that NPOV should triumph, because all sources have it, and so it's NPOV to have it and the rule is intended to improve and give an orderly and well written wikipedia and so in the long run improve countless people's lives; perhaps even save their lives, and this is more important to *them* than the (possibly minor) inconvenience to the Star Wars kid of NPOV forcing something into the article.
That's the general idea anyway-this guy probably puts it better than me (it seems to be about the same idea, although he explains it in political terms):
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
- d.
-- -Ian Woollard
We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly imperfect world would be much better.
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Actually, I do see it as a false dichotomy. We're presenting it as "rights" against publication of verifiable, reliable, already-published material. These rights do not exist. I do not have a right to tell you that you may not talk about me or publish information about me, provided what you say is true.
People do, to some degree, have a right to privacy, but not nearly as extensive of one as most would believe. We already cover that with NOR, V, and RS-digging through someone's tax records and synthesizing a conclusion is already unacceptable, and if no other reliable source has seen fit to publish what's found in those records, we shouldn't either. However, once something is already -in- public, and reliable sources with ethics departments and legal departments have already published it, it's no longer private information. At that point, there is no BLP issue other than possible neutrality violations.
How do we avoid neutrality violations? We follow, rather than second-guess, reliable sources. In every case, every time. That's what NPOV means. Imposing our own viewpoint, including "They SHOULDN'T have published that!", is the very definition of a violation of NPOV.
NPOV is still a pillar and the founding cornerstone of our project. BLP is a necessary reaction to a bad incident (Siegenthaler) that was originally well done but now has gotten way out of scope and way out of control. There should be no question about which is primary. The fact that there is any question is unsettling at best.
2009/1/2 toddmallen toddmallen@gmail.com:
Actually, I do see it as a false dichotomy. We're presenting it as "rights" against publication of verifiable, reliable, already-published material. These rights do not exist. I do not have a right to tell you that you may not talk about me or publish information about me, provided what you say is true.
If I understand you correctly, you would be (theoretically) fine with me creating a wikipedia page of you and filling it with true information about you, including your social security number, bank account number, telephone number, mothers maiden name, address, entire sexual history, provided all of this can be said to be correct by a notable source and referenced correctly?
I'm assuming not, at least I hope not.
But in practice then, legally and morally and by wiki policy and guidelines, these rights to demand that information be removed do exist for certain classes of information.
So I think what we're really discussing here *which* kinds of personal information may be published in the wikipedia and under what circumstances.
2009/1/2 Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com:
If I understand you correctly, you would be (theoretically) fine with me creating a wikipedia page of you and filling it with true information about you, including your social security number, bank account number, telephone number, mothers maiden name, address, entire sexual history, provided all of this can be said to be correct by a notable source and referenced correctly?
You're resorting to hypothetical hyperbole. This does not convince.
- d.
2009/1/2 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2009/1/2 Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com:
If I understand you correctly, you would be (theoretically) fine with me creating a wikipedia page of you and filling it with true information about you, including your social security number, bank account number, telephone number, mothers maiden name, address, entire sexual history, provided all of this can be said to be correct by a notable source and referenced correctly?
You're resorting to hypothetical hyperbole. This does not convince.
Actually, no, I'm being hypothetical, but not hyperbolic.
My point is that there exists classes of information that are true, but are not suitable for inclusion in the wikipedia. Todd Mallens point was that there were no such classes of information possible, and I believe that I have shown this to be false. Indeed within the wikipedia these kinds of information are specifically only protected by the BLP policy.
Todd seems to have been actually hyperbolic: "These rights do not exist. I do not have a right to tell you that you may not talk about me or publish information about me, provided what you say is true."
Truth or verifiability is not sufficient for the wikipedia. In our heart of hearts we know that, that's what undue weight is mostly about, that's what notability is about.
We protect the wikipedia against distortions of information, it seems to me that BLP can be seen as a part of or an extension to undue weight as regards to an article on an individual.
- d.
On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 8:42 AM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/2 toddmallen toddmallen@gmail.com:
Actually, I do see it as a false dichotomy. We're presenting it as "rights" against publication of verifiable, reliable, already-published material. These rights do not exist. I do not have a right to tell you that you may not talk about me or publish information about me, provided what you say is true.
If I understand you correctly, you would be (theoretically) fine with me creating a wikipedia page of you and filling it with true information about you, including your social security number, bank account number, telephone number, mothers maiden name, address, entire sexual history, provided all of this can be said to be correct by a notable source and referenced correctly?
I'm assuming not, at least I hope not.
But in practice then, legally and morally and by wiki policy and guidelines, these rights to demand that information be removed do exist for certain classes of information.
So I think what we're really discussing here *which* kinds of personal information may be published in the wikipedia and under what circumstances.
-- -Ian Woollard
We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly imperfect world would be much better.
The problem with this statement is that the fact that few of these things are known publicly and the inappropriateness of publishing them in Wikipedia are correlated. My telephone number is already on the internet where any idiot with ten seconds to spare can find it (http://www.411.ca) which also tells you my street address. The rest of these things simply aren't available, which is reflective of the fact that publishing them is seen as inappropriate -
Cheers Brian
Wily D wrote:
On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 8:42 AM, Ian Woollard wrote:
If I understand you correctly, you would be (theoretically) fine with me creating a wikipedia page of you and filling it with true information about you, including your social security number, bank account number, telephone number, mothers maiden name, address, entire sexual history, provided all of this can be said to be correct by a notable source and referenced correctly?
The problem with this statement is that the fact that few of these things are known publicly and the inappropriateness of publishing them in Wikipedia are correlated. My telephone number is already on the internet where any idiot with ten seconds to spare can find it (http://www.411.ca) which also tells you my street address. The rest of these things simply aren't available, which is reflective of the fact that publishing them is seen as inappropriate -
Most of these things on Ian's list are ones that we wouldn't include anyways. The mother's maiden name may be biographically relevant, and in exceptional cases the sexual history, but we can probably achieve near unanimity about keeping the rest out. That doesn't translate into some kind of blanket policy to withhold anything that the subject wants kept out.
Ec
On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 6:42 AM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/2 toddmallen toddmallen@gmail.com:
Actually, I do see it as a false dichotomy. We're presenting it as "rights" against publication of verifiable, reliable, already-published material. These rights do not exist. I do not have a right to tell you that you may not talk about me or publish information about me, provided what you say is true.
If I understand you correctly, you would be (theoretically) fine with me creating a wikipedia page of you and filling it with true information about you, including your social security number, bank account number, telephone number, mothers maiden name, address, entire sexual history, provided all of this can be said to be correct by a notable source and referenced correctly?
I'm assuming not, at least I hope not.
But in practice then, legally and morally and by wiki policy and guidelines, these rights to demand that information be removed do exist for certain classes of information.
So I think what we're really discussing here *which* kinds of personal information may be published in the wikipedia and under what circumstances.
-- -Ian Woollard
We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly imperfect world would be much better.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I would have a problem with that if all that information weren't already publicly available. On the other hand, if it had already been published on the front page of the New York Times, I probably wouldn't much care-that information would already be out, and I'd already be in the process of changing those numbers and the like. And sometimes sexual history -is- genuinely relevant to an article (see [[Monica Lewinsky]] or [[Gary Hart]] for examples).
Of course, a simple factual real name is a bit different than publishing someone's telephone number, SSN, or phone number, none of which I've ever seen in an article (at least not for very long). Nor do reliable sources tend to publish such things.
An accurate comparison would more be like saying that my real name is Todd Allen, were there someday to be an article on me. I would expect that such an article would have my real name in it, and you can see how little I mind if that's known. The rest is hyperbole, and no one is arguing to include such things. I can't think of a possible scenario in which someone's social security number or bank account number would be relevant to an article, nor can I think of any circumstances under which a reliable source would publish them. Names are not the same. "Who" is one of the 5 W's that is taught in elementary school writing. An article on a subject that does not answer that question is inherently lacking. The same is not true if it does not include their credit card number.
People are readily identifiable by the information given about them anyway. How hard is it to find the Star Wars kid's name, even from our article, where all the sources we use readily publish it, or a google search on the article title brings it right up? If something is in public already (which it by definition is, if reliable sources available to the public have published it), it is no longer private. You can say that's good, or bad, or simply inevitable, but it's still the fact, and to think we can stuff genies back in bottles (even provided that to do so would be desirable, an odd position for a project specifically dedicated to making information available to take) is monumental hubris. We're big, but we're not -that- big.
I don't want to see BLPs that protect this notion of privacy, that we should not make people identifiable, because in the end, such an article could say exactly nothing. Giving enough specifics to be worthwhile makes identifiability inevitable.
toddmallen wrote:
People are readily identifiable by the information given about them anyway. How hard is it to find the Star Wars kid's name, even from our article, where all the sources we use readily publish it, or a google search on the article title brings it right up? If something is in public already (which it by definition is, if reliable sources available to the public have published it), it is no longer private. You can say that's good, or bad, or simply inevitable, but it's still the fact, and to think we can stuff genies back in bottles (even provided that to do so would be desirable, an odd position for a project specifically dedicated to making information available to take) is monumental hubris. We're big, but we're not -that- big.
(Off-Topic):
And yet, see [[illegal prime]], and [[AACS encryption key controversy]].
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
toddmallen wrote:
People are readily identifiable by the information given about them anyway. How hard is it to find the Star Wars kid's name, even from our article, where all the sources we use readily publish it, or a google search on the article title brings it right up? If something is in public already (which it by definition is, if reliable sources available to the public have published it), it is no longer private. You can say that's good, or bad, or simply inevitable, but it's still the fact, and to think we can stuff genies back in bottles (even provided that to do so would be desirable, an odd position for a project specifically dedicated to making information available to take) is monumental hubris. We're big, but we're not -that- big.
(Off-Topic):
And yet, see [[illegal prime]], and [[AACS encryption key controversy]].
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
The idea is that we do the right thing regardless of what anyone else does.
Fred
On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 7:37 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
toddmallen wrote:
People are readily identifiable by the information given about them anyway. How hard is it to find the Star Wars kid's name, even from our article, where all the sources we use readily publish it, or a google search on the article title brings it right up? If something is in public already (which it by definition is, if reliable sources available to the public have published it), it is no longer private. You can say that's good, or bad, or simply inevitable, but it's still the fact, and to think we can stuff genies back in bottles (even provided that to do so would be desirable, an odd position for a project specifically dedicated to making information available to take) is monumental hubris. We're big, but we're not -that- big.
(Off-Topic):
And yet, see [[illegal prime]], and [[AACS encryption key controversy]].
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
The idea is that we do the right thing regardless of what anyone else does.
Fred
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Fully agreed. We provide information without bias, slant, or censorship, regardless of what anyone else does. That is the right thing to do, and that's what we do. Unfortunately, we don't always seem to do that anymore.
On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 6:40 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
toddmallen wrote:
People are readily identifiable by the information given about them anyway. How hard is it to find the Star Wars kid's name, even from our article, where all the sources we use readily publish it, or a google search on the article title brings it right up? If something is in public already (which it by definition is, if reliable sources available to the public have published it), it is no longer private. You can say that's good, or bad, or simply inevitable, but it's still the fact, and to think we can stuff genies back in bottles (even provided that to do so would be desirable, an odd position for a project specifically dedicated to making information available to take) is monumental hubris. We're big, but we're not -that- big.
(Off-Topic):
And yet, see [[illegal prime]], and [[AACS encryption key controversy]].
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
And note that none of those numbers, -even when protected by law-, stay a secret.
On Fri, 2 Jan 2009, toddmallen wrote:
Actually, I do see it as a false dichotomy. We're presenting it as "rights" against publication of verifiable, reliable, already-published material. These rights do not exist. I do not have a right to tell you that you may not talk about me or publish information about me, provided what you say is true.
"Having a right" and "doing what is right" are not the same thing.
How do we avoid neutrality violations? We follow, rather than second-guess, reliable sources. In every case, every time. That's what NPOV means. Imposing our own viewpoint, including "They SHOULDN'T have published that!", is the very definition of a violation of NPOV.
I'm going to bring up spoiler warnings again, because this is an abuse of NPOV, in the same way that saying "we don't have a source which declares that that is a spoiler" is an abuse of NOR or NPOV. All editorial decisions are viewpoints; NPOV doesn't apply to them. It's our viewpoint that a person is notable, or that a source is unreliable, or that it's wrong to publish something. We don't go around saying "you can't call that non-notable! If you do you're imposing our viewpoint that it's non-notable!".
The reason this abuse happens is that NPOV is supposed to take precedence over everything else and leaves no room for discretion. If it violates NPOV, you can't include it, period. This absolute nature makes it very inviting to win an argument by squeezing everything and anything into NPOV (or NOR) regardless of whether it really fits.
I've seen this particular abuse enough times that we really ought to have something in the rules specifically to prevent it. Of course, there's no way to do that....