[WikiEN-l] An example of a bad biography

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 1:16 PM,  <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> Saying that things in BLPs "hurts people" only furthers the idea that that
>  is what we're avoiding.  It's a simplistic approach to a complex  issue.
[snip]

You're correct that the goal is to be neutral and that neutrality
sometimes makes people unhappy.... But neutrality goes beyond being
simply factual: having a big high profile article about some trivial
gaff that would be soon forgotten without WP's help is not neutrality.
 Neutrality is more nuanced that the impression people put off when
they make the "they screwed up, it's their problem" argument.   ...
and in this and many many other cases, there really isn't an argument
the the subject screwed up and somehow deserves the embarrassment of
having the truth told.

In any case, the reason for emphasizing the 'hurting people' is that
the classic Wikipedian counter to evidence of grevious error in
Wikipedia is something like Mark's  "We've got 2 million articles,
this is to be expected".   Expected or not, it's not acceptable.  It
would be unacceptable if no one were hurt, but it's doubly so because
people can be and are.

 ... and most importantly, we should consider it unacceptable because
this sort of harm is a direct result of Wikipedia policies and
procedures, and is most likely completely avoidable without
compromising on neutrality.