[WikiEN-l] Cluesticks needed regarding WP:BLP and WP:RS

[Rob]

Of course I fully support the spirit and motives behind BLP and
obviously I see the urgent need to make sure serious allegations
against living people are fully and reliably sourced.  But people are
stretching BLP far beyond what it should be used to combat - unsourced
and unreliable assertions.  Now people are using it to remove all
sorts of critical information that would reasonably be included and to
further their own ideological agendas.  Some examples, all typed in
with presumably a straight face.

* A man who posted nude pictures of himself on websites whose domains
he registered advertising himself as a $200-an-hour gay prostitute can
not be identified as a prostitute.
* The Financial Times cannot be used as a source in an article about a
journalist because they "report on finances issues" and thus are
"unreliable" when it comes to other matters.
* The Columbia Journalism Review is a reliable source.  A blog run by
the Columbia Journalism Review on the website of the Columbia
Journalism Review is not.
* The New Republic, among other reputable, long-standing publications,
cannot be used as a source because they are "too partisan".
* Partisan organizations and publications, even long-standing and
reputable ones, cannot be used in an article at all, even to
substantiate the fact that there is partisan criticism of the subject
of the article.  I'm not taking about someone objecting to "John Doe
did this bad thing", I'm talking about people objecting to the article
saying "X, Y, and Z criticize John Doe, saying this thing he did may
have been bad."

In addition to well-intentioned people wildly misapplying BLP and RS,
we may have handed a powerful new weapon to POV warriors, who wish to
sanitize all the articles about their ideological fellow travelers.  A
well-meaning user has created the "Libel Protection Unit", but this is
the same person who thinks that you are libeling someone by quoting
something said by the "unreliable" Financial Times, and among the
people he's unwittingly recruited for his new group and have eagerly
signed up are some notorious POV warriors and at least one certified
troll.  I realize that what I'm writing may not show much good faith,
but based on what I've seen from some of these folks and the
statements I've noted above, I fear that this LPU will do much to
remove legitimate material from the encyclopedia and do little to
protect us from actual libel.  Some people have weighed in with
sensible remarks, like Jmabel at [[Wikipedia talk:Libel-Protection
Unit]], but I think more people should do so before this gets out of
hand.