[WikiEN-l] Saucy Sources, reliable and re : libel.

[William Pietri]

Fred Bauder wrote:
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri/Legaldispute
>>>       
>
> which contains the language:
>
> "Content has been removed from this article because of a dispute over the
> legality of its inclusion, and so the article may not meet normal
> Wikipedia standards.
> Please see the discussion on the talk page."
>
> Raises some interesting questions. "Normal Wikipedia standards" permit
> violations of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons? Do not take malice
> into account? I don't think so.
>
> Focus on that word "malice"; that is the legal black hole which will
> produce serious liability.
>   

I completely agree that no editor should act maliciously or repeat 
malicious accusations as if they were fact, and so material like that 
would presumably fail a host of standards, like NPOV, UNDUE, and BLP. We 
shouldn't rely on BLP alone for that, of course. We may or may not be 
less concerned about injuring a corporate or governmental reputation, 
but those people can still cause us plenty of legal trouble.

I believe we should use some sort of warning template when we think an 
article is missing otherwise good material just because we've been 
scared by threat of legal action. It is part of our duty to readers to 
let them know that an article is compromised. It sounds like that's 
happening on Giovanni di Stefano, and it definitely happened on Gregory 
Lauder-Frost. I'm not particularly attached to that wording, though; 
feel free to tinker.

William
-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri