David Gerard wrote:
2009/3/3 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
<cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>:
Sure, the persons themselves can not be harmed,
but our
deep understanding of the forces of history, and what force
personality, heredity, cultural context and up-bringing play
within it, is immeasurably impoverished by getting a view that
is faulty.
In which case it's an important issue, but it's not *this* important
issue. At all. Even a bit.
I'd argue that they're actually pretty closely interwtined issues---
incorrect information in a Wikipedia article harming actual, currently
living people. There are some areas where this is very unlikely, and
other areas where it's more likely, and I agree with many that we ought
to have better policies on the areas where it's more likely. But I think
we do somewhat a disservice to the overall mission by splitting off BLPs
into separate policies and treat them as if they're some unique category
unto themselves. Rather, I'd gather together "negative information about
living people", "inflammatory information about ongoing conflicts",
"poorly source information relating to current elections", and similar
categories into a tier of information that has particularly stringent
application of the verification and NPOV policies.
-Mark