[WikiEN-l] Bans and online/offline reputation (was Re: Follow-up on my Ban from Wikipedia (part 3))

[Thomas Dalton]

> > But isn't that where original research comes into play?  What is the
> > purpose of quoting ken's claim about Dalton eating hobbits?  If it's
> > in an article on Dalton, in an effort to show that Dalton might
> > actually eat hobbits, then the problem is it's a fringe theory,
> > because Ken isn't an authoritative source.  If it's in an article on
> > Ken, to show how dumb Ken is for thinking Dalton eats hobbits, then
> > it's original research.  Don't quote Ken to make Ken look dumb, quote
> > an expert who talks about how dumb Ken is.
>
> [...]
>
> It's a reliable source for the claim that the action happened, but not a
> reliable source for the truth of any of the allegations made during that
> action.  And it's *definitely* not a reliable source for the allegations'
> *notability*.

That's the key point. Stating Ken's claim about me eating hobbits is
fine from a reliability point of view, but if Ken isn't some kind of
expert on either me or hobbits, then his claim isn't notable and
shouldn't be included for that reason, and that reason alone. If Ken
was an expert on people eating hobbits then his claim would be notable
and it should be included in any article on me.

Of course, we're not actually talking about articles, so we've ended
up a little off-topic. People need to stop applying Wikipedia's
policies about articles to everything else - they don't apply. Perhaps
the problem is our overuse of acronyms - people end up forgetting what
they actually stand for. The B in BLP stands for "Biographies". The
policy is about biographies, that means articles about people,
articles go in the main namespace. The BLP policy does not apply to
the rest of Wikipedia. Some of the reasoning behind it does, but not
all.