[WikiEN-l] BLP, and admin role in overriding community review

[Fred Bauder]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Fred Bauder [mailto:fredbaud at waterwiki.info]
>Sent: Friday, May 25, 2007 10:28 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] BLP, and admin role in overriding community review
>
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Marc Riddell [mailto:michaeldavid86 at comcast.net]
>>Sent: Friday, May 25, 2007 10:26 AM
>>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] BLP, and admin role in overriding community review
>>
>>on 5/25/07 12:22 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert at gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>> Šif the only things which are verifyably
>>> known about someone are in the context of a notable event which
>>> included them, perhaps as a rule the person is not themselves notable,
>>> and should only be covered in the article about the event.
>>
>>George,
>>
>>I believe this is an excellent idea.
>>
>>Marc Riddell
>
>The exception would be someone like Monica Lewinsky who successfully parlays their 15 minutes of negative fame into a more well rounded notability.
>
>Fred

The Rachel Marsden article is good example of this problem. The article as now constituted

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rachel_Marsden&oldid=132306894

is a product of long debate regarding such issues. There was great deal of press coverage regarding an incident early in her life, but the coverage of her current situation was rather thin. A long article about her which focused on the earlier situation was a rather nasty piece of work and did not present of fair picture of this person who had moved on long ago from the earlier troubles. I also think some editors were sticking their oar in because they did not like her politics.

There was an arbitration:

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Rachel Marsden

Here is the basic principle applied: 'Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons requires that information which concerns living subjects be verifiable and that biographies "should be written responsibly, conservatively, and in a neutral, encyclopedic tone."'

Fred