[WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

[Ron Ritzman]

On 3/31/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> However, being realistic, our community is too large and impersonal for
> us to be in the business of reforming people - all we can do is change
> policies. But I get yelled at every time I suggest that.

Outside of the current issue of BLBs, the three best "policies" I see
are summed up in this userbox... User:Lawilkin/UBX/Trifecta

It's really pretty simple
-mind NPOV-
-don't be a dick-
-ignore all rules-

<semi flip flop on my part>
Unfortunately, on the issue of BLPs it's just too easy to insert
plausible sounding bullshit into articles about real living people and
such bullshit can potentially hurt them in meatspace. Therefore it
looks like you are right that we have to get Nazi about anything
unsourced in BLPs even if we ourselves are 99% certain such "facts"
are correct.

One example of this is a few months ago, I added "Mr. T" to the list
of people who are afraid to fly because I "knew" he himself, and not
just his character on "A Team", was afraid to fly. The problem was
that even though this was common knowledge back in the 80s, there are
really no good citable sources for it so it was removed as it should
have been. Other editors might not be so understanding about this and
they get really miffed when you take out stuff that they just "know"
is the truth.