[WikiEN-l] Legal threats

[Keith Old]

On 7/14/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > How does Wikipedia not benefit from including the information?  If
> > Wikipedia biographies are to be accurate articles, they should not
> > selectively exclude facts deemed inconvenient.
> >
> We don't benefit because he's a very minor figure, arguably not
> someone who should have an article in the first place, and it wasn't a
> good article anyway. So for the sake of upholding some unwritten
> principle of completeness (i.e. for the sake of ideology), we're
> prepared to harm an individual's real life, someone who has done
> nothing to any of us, to ensure that this incident will continue to
> haunt him, whereas he thought he had put it behind him.
>
> My argument is that it's neither fair nor rational to do that, and we
> ought always to be both fair and rational when dealing with people who
> are, in a very real sense, at Wikipedia's mercy.
>
> Sarah
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

We should always give due consideration to the impact on someone's private
life versus the competing consideration of having a balanced article on the
person. In this particular case, there are arguments running both ways.

On a higher level, we need to make sure that our policies on sourcing are
particularly rigorous when it comes to biographies especially of living
people.

Our article on the late Red Buttons (as of today) contained a claim that his
third wife had had an affair. There was no source provided for the claim. I
have removed it with a note on the talk page not to restore it unless we
have information from a reliable source confirming it.

Wikipedia is arguably the leading source of biographical information
available over the Internet. That gives us an extra responsibility to make
sure we get it right.

Regards


Keith Old