[WikiEN-l] Changing the AfD process (Was: Re: [[Daniel Brandt]] is gone again)

[Anthony]

On 6/21/07, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/22/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 6/21/07, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 6/21/07, Todd Allen <toddmallen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > What -is- the ethical
> > > > question? The information is already easily available to anyone who
> > > > wishes to find it, so right-to-privacy doesn't hold.
> > >
> > >
> > > Actually, it does.  We are not a newspaper archive and our standards
> > > are not theirs.  If we do not need to use the names of living private
> > > individuals, we should not do so, because *every* publication of
> > > information about a private individual diminishes his privacy, and
> > > while we are not in a position to control the contents of many
> > > newspaper archives, we certainly are in complete control of one of the
> > > most popular information sources on the planet.  We should not
> > > needlessly compromise privacy.
> > >
> > I can only agree with that for some value of "needlessly".  While
> > there are some cases where there's absolutely no benefit to adding a
> > name to an article, and other cases where there's absolutely no point
> > in having an article without having a name, it's those in-between
> > cases that are the ones where we have to make a judgment.
> >
>
> Absolutely.  The key is that we should always ask ourselves if
> including the names of private individuals is necessary for
> completeness.  Usually it isn't.
>
When dealing with information which has already been published
elsewhere, I put the balancing question closer to whether or not
including the name of the individual makes a better encyclopedia
article.  Usually it does.