[WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

[David Gerard]

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?


Who put that in, and what do they say?

(A lot of stupid stuff in the living bio and verification policies -
and in a lot of other policies - is because someone edit warred it in
and no-one could be bothered arguing in a querulous fashion. And then
it stays because it's POLICY rather than because it makes sense.)


- d.