[WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny

[Steve Bennett]

On 3/11/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> What we should do, of course, is what we always do.  Someone should tell
> us *what* the complaints are, and we should fix the article.  Blanking
> and deleting the article should only be the done in the most extreme
> cases where there is absolutely nothing useful or salvageable about it.

That's not a reasonable request. The Jack Thomspon email is pretty
instructive. Seems like the story goes like this:

1. Wikipedia community writes an article on famous person X
2. X's lawyers write to the Wikimedia foundation, citing vague
"errors" and "defamatory material", and threatening to sue the arse
off it if the article is not deleted instantly.
3. Wikimedia foundation is supposed to cite the specific errors in the
article, so they can be edited out, and thus play chicken with X's
lawyers?

The point is: you delete the page, the problem goes away. Any other
solution, and the problem - X's lawyers - is still there. You can
argue that your page is NPOV and not defamatory. But you won't be
doing it in court - the Wikimedia Foundation will be. So, from that
point of view, it's totally their call what to do about it.

> I feel the current policy is striking a strong bias against criticism of
> political figures in proportion to how much money and time they have to
> get staff to complain to us.

Sure, but that's life. There is a lot of stuff to write about in
Wikipedia. If some articles about living people with lawyers are kept
a bit shorter and less comprehensive, well it's not a great loss, in
perspective...

Steve