Ray Saintonge wrote:
I'm making a point of replying to this before I
read any of the other
responses to avoid being tainted by them.
And I am keeping with the spirit of a statement I made in an
earlier post, and am keeping my replies to specific focused
points short and sweet.
Sue Gardner wrote:
* Wikimedians
have developed lots of tools for preventing/fixing vandalism
and errors of fact. Where less progress has been made, I think, is on the
question of disproportionate criticism. It seems to me that the solution may
include the development of systems designed to expose particularly biased
articles to a greater number of people who can help fix them. But this is a
pretty tough problem and I would welcome people's suggestions for resolving
it
The problem with rules that are too detailed is that the letter of the
rules often overrides the spirit of those rules. It does little good
when a discussion about a possibly derogatory statement migrates to one
about the use of primary or secondary sources. When every detail about
a BLP receives the same scrutiny the really bad stuff tends to fall into
the background, and energies are sapped by being perfect over details
which, even if wrong, are harmless. The question, for example, of where
the subject attended school is not usually harmful if it's wrong. If
the subject tries to correct this we need to trust him in the absence of
reason for the contrary, and we need somehow to credit him as the source
of that information. To question this without reason presumes bad faith.
This is not unexceptionally accurate. There are many details
of biographical articles where it is not even close to presuming
bad faith on the person in question to assume they might out
of a perfectly natural human foible (a foible is not even close
to bad faith) wish to gild the lily or embellish, or even retouch
a blemish. I certainly know I have fallen for that in many
instances, when telling tales of my deeds, and know many
people who probably remember events I have personally
witnessed wholly sane, sober and of sound mind with a vivid
memory, but they remember what happened to their own benefit,
quite naturally and non-bad-faith.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen