Ian Woollard wrote:
2008/6/22 WJhonson@aol.com:
"Naming" someone is not harassment, it is reporting. If you think it is, name one case, any case at all, where this theory has been successful in a finalized court proceeding. In the US.
I'm not sure it would apply to the Star Wars Boy, but the libel laws in Britain are quite interesting though, with truth not necessarily being a perfect defence. 'Mere' reporting *has* been construed as libel. And there's privacy laws in other countries, I think France also. The servers are in the US, but not necessarily all assets are.
And in certain countries "defaming Islam" or "defaming the Communist Party" and so forth are against the law, too. Attempting to make Wikipedia compliant with every legal regime on Earth would be impossible, and quite counterproductive.
I'm particularly tired of the appeal to British libel law. If they're really so cucko-bananas about this sort of thing probably the only truly safe course of action is to pull Wikimedia's assets out of that country, running around and trying to quash anything that might conceivably be sued over is bound to fail eventually.
The bottom line is that anybody who thinks that this guys name needs to go in the article for 'NPOV' reasons needs to look at why that is. Ultimately it's similar logic to a lynching- if everybody else is punching the guy, is the neutral point of view necessarily more punching?
This is a silly analogy, and makes rather nasty implications about the motives of those who are arguing to include the name. Do you really think we want to "punch" this guy? Why?