[WikiEN-l] English Wikipedia Policy as sovereign law

[David Gerard]

2008/4/22 Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com>:

>  If the article is properly sourced then all of the opinions and facts
>  expressed in the article are derived from outside sources so they are
>  not being harmed by unique information in wikipedia, just their
>  perception of wikipedia being more influential than scattered news
>  articles and books. If wikipedia doesn't say anything new any harm due
>  to the compilation of facts is immaterial IMO. Unless a court rules
>  that random facts can't be combined in properly sourced
>  secondary/tertiary sources due to the effect of the combination alone
>  then they have no case.


For the usual case, it's not so much "they have no case" as "that's
not such a good article, and while being firm in our neutrality we
shouldn't be dicks about it." Hence the WP:BLP rule about the facts
being of note themselves. (e.g. minorly-notable physicist who had a
messy divorce - messy divorce details may be documentable, but they're
not relevant to what he's famous for and no reader would care, unless
the messy divorce itself was notable.) We get too many BLPs where
someone mistakes Wikipedia for a repository of investigative
journalism and throws in material that really doesn't belong in a good
article.


- d.