[WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

[Steve Bennett]

So our "living persons" banner contains the following text:

"This article is about or directly concerns one or more living people
and therefore must adhere to the biographies of living persons policy.
Specifically, unsourced or poorly sourced negative material about
living persons should not be posted to this article *or its talk
page(s)*. Such material must be removed without hesitation. "
(emphasis in original)

I'm particularly concerned about the "or its talk page" bit. Is
someone just confused, or should we actually *not* move material from
the talk page like this:

I have removed the following text because it sounds defamatory and
probably isn't true: "John B Smith was busted twice for frequenting
prostitutes in the 1970s". Anyone have a source?

How can we realistically work with potentially defamatory statements -
eg, requesting sources for them - if we can't even repeat them on talk
pages?

Steve