[WikiEN-l] BLP conundrum

[Erik Moeller]

On 4/26/07, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why is "criticisms of Uri Geller" (or whoever) a valid encyclopedic
> subject?  Would we accept an article called "instances of undiluted
> praise of Uri Geller"?

It has always been policy that NPOV does not imply giving equal weight
to all opinions, no matter how uninformed. What do people who have
studied Geller's work in detail and published about it in reputable
publications say?

If the predominant view on a given subject by those who know something
about it is negative, then I see no problem with a section titled
"Criticism". In Geller's case, his own rebuttals and lawsuits, as well
as the surprisingly large number of intelligent people who are fooled
by stage tricks posing as special powers, would make such a title
one-sided. But the actual relevant top level section in the article is
called "Criticism and controversy", which seems fair.

The view that positive & negative views should always be incorporated
into a neat biographical narrative is unrealistic in practice. Often,
it is a specific pattern of behavior in a person that is the subject
of intense debate and criticism. Typically, that pattern of behavior
occurs at a certain point in time of the person's life. Incorporating
the criticism in a linear fashion means, then, that the narrative is
suddenly broken by a back & forth of arguments. It may be preferable
to have a simplified narrative, and to isolate the pattern of behavior
that is being criticized into its own section.

I therefore do not think we can make an a priori assumption that
anything called "Criticism" in a BLP or indeed any article is
inherently POV, at least not from my understanding of the purpose of
NPOV. There are, in my view, a few things we can avoid though:

* splitting away the criticisms to a separate page to hide them from
view -- this should never be done selectively, only if the overall
article gets too large
* affording extraordinary amounts of space to criticisms that have
never been the subject of serious debate among people who study the
topic (one blogger, one isolated publication, a single newspaper
column)
* researching only the side of things we happen to agree with.

We cannot avoid that contributors write about what they know & care
about, but in a BLP we should at the very least add POV tags if
criticism sections are clearly based on one-sided research and out of
proportion. This, by the way, is a shift in policy -- we used to say
that starting a stub with a lot of one-sided provocative information
is a good idea to get people to start writing about a topic. ;-)

-- 
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic