On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 9:30 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
<cimonavaro(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Sue Gardner wrote:
Interestingly, a number of people complained to
me about their
articles being overly negative. Obviously Jimmy gets this all the
time, but I was surprised how often it was the first thing a person
would say to me. All my conversations about Wikipedia were warm and
friendly and positive, with the exception of people's pain/anger about
BLP issues.
What you need to remember is that all the people who are
secretly satisfied their article is remarkably fair to them, or
even greatly relieved how merciful their article is about their
various foibles; never mind those who won't say publicly they
think their article is even far too laudatory ... well, those
people won't be the first in line to talk about it to you, will
they. Try to focus on that; when you get in those situations.
From my experience talking with people (mostly
academics) who have
Wikipedia articles, they are often unhappy with their articles
but
also either don't want to interfere in a community they aren't part
of, or don't want to be seen as complaining on their own behalf and
thus risk seeming vain. Most often it's not that there is something
really wrong or negative, it's just that the article is so incomplete
or imbalanced that it gives a misleading impression of who they are
and what they do. I'd go so far as to say that the significant
majority of BLPs for academics (at least) are not appreciated by their
subjects.
-Sage (User:Ragesoss)