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

[Ray Saintonge]

Michael Snow wrote:

>Jeff Raymond wrote:
>  
>
>>The problem is BLP
>>being used as a bludgeon to get rid of well-sourced, verifiable, NPOV
>>information because the neutral point of view is negative.
>>    
>>
>How can the neutral point of view be negative? That's a contradiction in 
>terms. An article may contain negative information, but the presentation 
>must still be neutral. The notion that if only negative information is 
>available, this excuses making the "neutral" point of view negative, is 
>at the root of many of these problems. It seems that very few of our 
>contributors have the skill and judgment needed to translate highly 
>unfavorable source material into neutral prose.
>
It's not a contradiction at all, no more so than a neutral point of view 
that is positive.  An article that contains ALL negative information can 
still be presented neutrally.  If we are writing about an infamous 
serial killer where no favorable information is available at all 
neutrality is achieved by not saying things that are unverifiable.  The 
result will likely be that he will appear less evil than the public may 
want, but the overall result will remain that he is a bad person..  
There is no question of "making excuses".  If we only have negative 
information we are not "making" the neutral point of view negative.

Let's not confuse absolute and relative information.  Absolute 
information is what is out there; it may or may not be negative.  
Relative information strives to find the centre of gravity of that 
information, and thus arrives at a neutral point of view.  The neutral 
point of view is also the result of a collective effort that balances 
the various interests.  Any article that has only one contributor is 
technically always neutral, because it is the synthesis of all opinions 
already expressed.  When we see it as something that is not neutral we 
are really comparing it with facts that are not in evidence.  The 
neutrality is rebuttable, but has not yet been rebutted.  In the context 
of a trial it is at the point where the prosecution has presented its 
evidence, and the defence remains to be heard.  When a second 
substantive opinion is presented in an article by an other editor there 
will most often be a significant shift in the placement of that ever 
theoritical neutral point of view.  This does not mean that NPOV has 
been achieved; most likely it hasn't.  Ideally that second opinion has 
set in motion the beginnings of a collaborative effort to synthesize NPOV.

To be sure, your lest sentence is correct, but that is a characteristic 
of the editors involved, and not of the material that we have been 
provided to work with.  Prejudging whether the editors involved will 
have the requisite skill and judgement is itself a failure of skill and 
judgement.  There is certasinly material which should not remain for 
long, but there are better criteria available for working through these 
problems than the impatience of some administrators.

Ec