[WikiEN-l] Legal threats

Sarah slimvirgin at gmail.com
Thu Jul 13 19:25:38 UTC 2006


On 7/13/06, David Boothroyd <david at election.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In my view the
> principle is clear: if a person meets notability for a biographical
> article, then the whole of their life is notable even if on its own
> it would not qualify them. For example, Bill Clinton is not a notable
> saxophone player - he would not qualify for an article based on
> having played the saxophone - but it is reasonable to mention this
> fact in his article because it is a significant part of how he was
> perceived.
>
The difference between Clinton's saxaphone playing and this situation
is that the mention of the former is not harmful to Clinton; and the
difference between a politician whose career is ruined by a scandal is
that it'll have attached itself to his name, whereas in GLF's case,
that appears not to be the case.

Wikipedia doesn't benefit from including the information about GLF,
but he will be harmed if we do. Therefore, we ought not to. Fairness
is as important as accuracy when writing about living people, if not
more so.

Sarah



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