[WikiEN-l] Defamation policy hypothetical

[Steve Bennett]

On 8/21/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ah, now, I didn't say that. Note "compared to anything else written
> about them". We should have good, informative articles; so should the
> newspaper which mentions the organisation, or the biographical
> dictionary which has a paragraph on the person.
>
> But we shouldn't be the only ones publishing the story about
> so-and-so's messy divorce. We shouldn't be the only ones pulling
> together this court record and that advertisment and another press
> release to say that the company has systematically defrauded its
> customers.
>
> If we can influence people to think, that's good. But if we can
> influence them to think where no other published source would
> influence them to think... are we really being an encyclopedia,
> republishing knowledge, or is this a sign we're getting into original
> research?

Oh, sorry, looks like I did distort your meaning a bit. Yes, I agree
with all that - we should not be too far out of line from other
sources. We can definitely achieve things by bringing together
material that two different types of publications would publish - in
fact, that's probably one of our major strengths, the fact that we
shamelessly quote from scientific journals, popular magazines,
blogs[1] and newspapers in the same article.

Steve
[1] Yeah, yeah, some people think blogs are uncitable.