[WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

[Steve Bennett]

On 8/18/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> In the context of WP:OFFICE, as well as more recently, Jimbo and others have
> written somethings about "hurt feelings," as if it was a policy ( WP:CODDLE
> maybe) which could circumvent even important policy ( WP:NPOV maybe). Could
> you explain this?

Here's my attempt to reconcile things:
We all have different experiences at Wikipedia and think various
things are more or less important depending on what part of the system
we're in contact with. Some of us think fighting vandalism is very
important because we see a lot of it. Some of us think it's really
important to reduce bias in articles regarding the Middle East. Some
of us think it's really important to avoid hurting the feelings of
people who might be written about in Wikipedia.

However: Some things are so important that everyone needs to take them
seriously, whether you find them personally interesting or not.
Concrete legal advice like "do not allow unsourced defamatory
statements about living individuals to remain or we will get our arses
sued off" are like that.

Steve