[WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

[Andrew Gray]

On 18/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?

The problem is, even though we consider it an "internal page", it's
still visible to the public as a whole and people are just as able to
read it and get upset. Writing around the claim is probably a good way
to mark it as disbelieved, though, or you could go with something like
"I've removed an unsourced claim about involvement with prostitution
from the text - does anyone have a source for this? It seems
unlikely..."

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk