[WikiEN-l] Dealing with people who object to articles on themselves
Daniel R. Tobias
dan at tobias.name
Mon Nov 14 01:52:42 UTC 2005
I've been following a number of these disputes, where somebody
objects either to the very fact of Wikipedia having an article on
them, or to the content of the article, or to the fact that they
don't have absolute veto power over it, or to basic aspects of the
structure of Wikipedia (e.g., that anybody can come in and edit any
article, and sometimes they may insert nasty, unjustified comments
which stick around until somebody else removes them, and could be
indexed or cached by search engines or scraped by mirror sites in the
meantime). While these people may have some philosophical points
worth consideration, their method of pursuing them, by coming in and
vandalizing their own article, making unreasonable demands that go
against Wikipedia policy, and making legal threats, understandably
leads to antagonistic battles.
Through all of this, our Fearless Leader Jimbo has taken a consistent
position of being friendly and reasonable with all of these people,
even if they don't act the same way to us. He aims to convince them
that their goals and ours are not irreconcilable, and we can all be
better off with cooperation instead of warfare. He's a better man
than I; my emotional reaction to each of these cases has always been
to feel like, "If that guy wants war, then war is what he should
get!", and to want to get my adrenaline up and fight back as fiercely
as the other guy, or fiercer.
With some reflection, once I'm calmed down, I see that Jimbo's
position is actually not just good for his own karma; it really does
work. If you look over the articles involved in such controversies,
they are almost without exception better off now than they were
before the fighting started. The assertions made in the articles are
carefully sourced and referenced, the NPOV policy is scrupulously
followed, and the articles are vigorously patrolled for vandalism,
whether by the article subject and his/her friends, or by malicious
enemies. All of this is consistent with what Jimbo urges we all do
with such articles; actually, it's what we should do with *all*
articles, but it's urged in a particularly strong way for disputed
ones such as these. And, once people here get tired of feuding over
the articles and get to work improving them, the result is a better
encyclopedia.
But beyond this, in at least some of the cases, this method of
dealing with them has actually brought the controversy to an end. I
observe at least one of the formerly hostile article subjects
participating constructively in Wikipedia since his last block was
lifted. True, he's sometimes editing his own article, something
generally frowned upon, but the edits have been reasonable,
consisting of adding or modifying a source reference for greater
accuracy. He's no longer trying to delete all criticism or insert
unsourced grandiose claims of his own feats, or to get the article
deleted, or threatening legal action. Hence, there seems to be a win-
win situation there; we've got a better article and one fewer people
fighting us, while he's got a better article about himself that he is
apparently satisfied with.
Some of the other cases don't have as satisfactory a resolution; some
of their subjects remain blocked or banned for their activity, and/or
are continuing to agitate against Wikipedia on outside sites.
However, as far as I am aware, none of their legal threats has
resulted in any actual legal action (perhaps Jimbo can correct me on
this if I'm wrong), and all the articles seem reasonable and often
quite favorable to their subjects, even if the subjects themselves
still aren't happy about them.
So we seem to be doing something right; we should all try to stay
calm and follow Jimbo's example.
There *are* some genuine legal, moral, and philosophical issues
raised by these disputes; if something truly harmful (libel, slander,
defamation, invasion of privacy) got into an article (perhaps by a
vandal) and caused actual harm to somebody (not just the mostly
hypothetical scenarios which tend to be spun by our attackers), then
who, if anybody, would be held responsible? How would such a thing
be dealt with, without changing our site's very nature?
--
== Dan ==
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