[WikiEN-l] Defamation of biographees

[Gwern Branwen]

On  0, Rolf Lampa <rolf.lampa at rilnet.com> scribbled:
> Hi all,
>
> I have a friend, Mats Molén, a creationist and a part time teacher in
> (public) school in Sweden, and also working in his own creation museum
> (and no, not the size of the creation museum in the US).  My errand is
> about an "invective" picture of Mats Molén (there's an article about
> Mats Molén in the Swedish WP since he's a well known author of a
> "classical" book (well, in Sweden) about the natural sciences which is
> critical about the evolution paradigm. Guess if Mats Molén is liked by
> all geologists and evolutionists in Sweden?!
>
> Mats has a very kind and compassionate personality though, but such
> doesn't "count" in all contexts... =). Mats actually taught evolution
> before writing the book. Not after, though.
>
> However, it seems like a young student found it being a great idea to
> take a not-so-perfect-photo of my otherwise not-so-bad-looking friend:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Mol_n.jpg
>
>  From the picture it looks like the picture is taken in a classroom in a
> school in Umeå, Sweden (link to map)
> <http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=sv&q=Ume%C3%A5,+Sweden&ie=UTF8&ll=71.357067,3.164063&spn=37.915819,105.644531&z=3&om=1>.
> This picture was once added to an article about MM in the Swedish WP as
> a, say, "complement" to the original picture in the article. May I
> suggest that this very picture isn't very "Informative"? Obviously the
> picture was added in order to make Mats look silly.
>
> I talked to the administrators of the Swedish Wikipedia about removing
> the picture from the article (this was now a while ago), and they did.
> Except for some misunderstanding of my intents they also found the
> reasons for publishing the picture in the article being... um,
> questionable.
>
> So, at last the picture was removed from the article. But long before
> that I had already requested that someone remove the picture from the
> archive, but I might have done something wrong in the request process
> (all those templates to create & confirm), because it hasn't been
> removed yet. The picture is still in the archive:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Mol_n.jpg
>
> (And yes, of course I can't resist mocking him for this silly picture! =)
>
> Mats Molén wrote to me today and was a bit sad (again) about this
> picture. It's still there, and it starts to feel kind of "sticky". I
> know that Mats sees no problem with being criticized for his views and
> claims, and he's of the kind of people which is prepared to publicly try
> to answer concrete criticism of his views and claims, simply because
> that's what he expects from others making bold claims.
>
> Both I and Mats Molén actually do appreciate Wikipedia, although not
> entirely without reservations (this may surprise some since we are what
> many of you would call fundamentalist Christians). We really do think
> that WP is in part useful. We don't like everything we see in it when
> browsing the articles, but we also see value in it.
>
> Now I ask of you in this group to help making the value in WP to appear
> better. It is not a good thing if biographies and media repositories in
> WP are used in hate campaigns against individuals. What makes WP unique
> in this respect is of course that people tend to perceive info in an
> encyclopedia as "facts". It really "clashes" with stupid pictures like
> the one at hand.  So, for WP's sake, and for my friend's sake, can you
> please assist me in removing the nonsense-picture* of Mats Molén from
> Wikimedia commons?
>
> Best regards,
>
> // Rolf Lampa, Sweden

And you don't think http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Mats_Molen.jpg isn't even more risible? When I went to the Swedish Wikipedia's article <http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mats_Mol%C3%A9n>, I had to stifle a snicker because he looked like a Nazi 'Sieg Heil!'ing. Honestly, the one you're complaining about looks better if only because he seems like a nice schoolteacher and not some sort of fascist geologist (or something like that).

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.