[WikiEN-l] Office actions

[Jimmy Wales]

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> But...
> 
> We still have the odd cases like Gregory Lauder-Frost where the office
> action was the result of his legal advisors stating that we could not
> mention his conviction for fraud because of the UK's Rehabilitation of
> Offenders Act.  That demands actual legal advice.  As it happens, the
> Act only prevents "spent" convictions being mentioned in a defamatory
> way, there is no apparent restriction on coverage in a neutral,
> independent biography, and his friends did not help his case by
> initially including the case but claiming that he had been cleared on
> appeal - it was possible (though certainly not trivial) to verify that
> this was simply not true, and it was only when we included the
> citations to back up the conviction and failed appeal that they pulled
> the office stunt.
> 
> In these cases it is good to have feedback, even if the feedback is a
> weekly "sorry, no progress yet".  And it would be good to know if
> there is a particular issue which needs to be addressed.

Right, and that case WAS different, since we were (are?) unclear on 
exactly what the legal situation is.

Most of these cases don't involve such bizarre complexities though. 
They are about bios that have been wrecked by trolls who hate someone, 
and all that is needed is for someone good to go through and carefully 
write a sensible bio.

We do need to have a way of distinguishing these cases.