[Foundation-l] Interesting legal action

[Thomas Morton]

I'm not so sure. As much as living persons have a history of
raising/catching important errors in their articles, they also take
exception to negative material.

I had one rather protracted issue with a BLP where the individual feels he
has been attacked by other parties and the media for a number of years. He
viewed the associated Wikipedia articles (which were reasonably balanced,
but did include negative information about him) as an extension of that
attack. His attempts to insert his version of "the truth" caused disruption,
but more importantly it really really upset him.

I can forsee this happening a lot more if we *tell* everyone they have a
biography :)

Sending something like that out is basically an invitation to edit their
biography; and the combination of being a WP newbie, and writing about
themselves is not usually a good one.

If we can address that issue at the same time, then sure, it's a good idea.

Tom

On 23 May 2011 14:28, FT2 <ft2.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> A specific email address isn't always available but virtually anyone
> notable
> will have a method of contact that can be found fairly quickly.
> Businesspeople have a business, academics have their university website,
> politicians and high ranking officials have a political website or
> governmental office, authors have a publisher, and a vast number of people
> have an easily located personal website, agent, or known organization they
> are closely affiliated with. Even alleged criminals have a lawyer or a
> means
> of contact. The kind of stuff needed for contact details is almost always
> noted in any "keepable" BLP, or a minute's web searching.
>
> A few may need Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, but I suspect not many.  Only a
> very small minority will not be easily identified with a means of email or
> other direct contact within a few minutes.
>
> Worth it, I think.
>
> FT2
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 2:02 PM, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> > On 5/23/11 1:40 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
> > > On 23 May 2011 00:03, FT2<ft2.wiki at gmail.com>  wrote:
> > >> Out of interest, when a BLP is created and not speedy deleted, could
> we
> > not
> > >> write a standard email to the subject stating that a biographical
> > article
> > >> has been created on them on the online encyclopedia "Wikipedia",
> > inviting
> > >> them to review it, explaining what it's about, and pointing them to
> > remedies
> > >> for fixing minor or major issues or requesting deletion? Hearing from
> us
> > >> might at the very least be seen as "us trying to do something right".
> > > I've not heard that idea before; I like it. We should do that. It
> > > wouldn't be difficult and would, as you say, show that we are at least
> > > trying to do the right thing. We would need to be prepared to deal
> > > with the increased traffic to OTRS that it would inevitably result in,
> > > but that's not too big a problem.
> >
> > I don't think it's impossible, but I think finding an email address for
> > the average person is going to be harder than you think. I do a good bit
> > of email-finding to contact journal-paper authors whose email address
> > has changed from the one published in the journal, but especially
> > outside of the sciences, this isn't particularly easy. Many professors
> > have no websites, and many who do don't have an email address on the
> > site. You end up having to dig up the university's "find person"
> > database and search, and sometimes that database isn't even publicly
> > available. And for celebrities, they actively go out of their way to
> > hide their email. CEOs and similar in the business world usually don't
> > have emails publicly listed either.
> >
> > At the very least, it'd be quite a bit of work, and would probably
> > require someone willing to use non-email communication channels, like
> > LinkedIn messaging or Twitter or something, to achieve reasonable
> > coverage. Might be an interesting experiment.
> >
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