On 18/08/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@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.