[WikiEN-l] Living bios - "negative" or "controversial"?

[Guettarda]

On 10/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> See [[WT:BLP]]. I've been changing "negative" to "controversial",
> since controversy is the problem as I see it, and using the word
> "negative" is blatantly throwing NPOV out the window.
>
> Our pop culture articles are a wasteland of fan-maintained hagiography
> anyway. Do we need to throw NPOV out for those? See e.g.
> http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/05/what-bears-do-on-lawn.html


While it's obvious that we shouldn't leave out negative information just
because it's negative, we need to be especially careful with negative
information.  Hagiography is an article-quality issue - we aren't going to
get sued and we aren't going to damage someone's career if hagiography
stands in an article for a few days or weeks.  More importantly, hagiography
isn't different for the living or the dead defamation is.  What's unique
about Living people is that they can be harmed by what is said about them in
an article far more than dead people or mountain ranges.  So there's a very
realy reason to focus BLP on negative or potentially damaging information.

I think the best conception of BLP is "make sure that information content
clearly outweighs the harm done", not "make sure than the information is
accurate".  I'm not aware of anyone who ever lost their job because people
said nice things about them.

Ian

There's also a fair bit of Jimbomancy going on, which doesn't help.
>
>
> - d.
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