[WikiEN-l] Tightening the "do no harm" screws.

[C.J. Croy]

On 6/7/07, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi at gmail.com> wrote:
> BLP idea:
>
> Negative or contentious facts should not be in a BLP article unless more
> than one unrelated source covers it.
> Good idea, or bad?

The 'negative' part has little merit.  The 'contentious' and
'unrelated' parts are article-destroying.

"It's contentious!  You need TWO cites for that!"
"Why is it contentious?"
"Because I'm disputing it, so it's contentious."
*A little while later*
"I added a cite for the Wall Street Journal in addition to the New York Times."
"The New York Times clearly used the WSJ article as a source!
Therefore, they're related and the source cannot be used."

There's also the workload to bring existing articles into compliance.
Consider for a moment our article on [[Tony Blair]].  It's safe to
assume that everything in the Criticism section is contentious or
negative.  Someone would need to sit down and find 26 more citations
just to satisfy this rule and not have the article degenerate.  That's
at least two hours of work that doesn't actually accomplish anything.

There's a possibility this rule would help for a few cases where
untrue information is added from a single other-wise reliable source.
There's a much stronger possibility it would just cause a lot of work
and become yet another way to remove correct information.

-Chris Croy.