[WikiEN-l] BLPs: Wikipedia entry nearly scuppers rugby player's career

[Sam Korn]

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 10:08 PM, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia)
<newyorkbrad at gmail.com> wrote:
> For context, your statement as quoted was: "The point of WP:BLP is (or
> should be) that our fundamental content rules NPOV, NOR, V are all that's
> needed - but we need to apply them very harshly and we really can't be
> eventualist about bad info in living bios."
>
> What about the advances we've made over the past two years in agreeing that
> the well-being of article subjects is also a legitimate consideration.  In
> Wikipedia jargon, I could simply say that "you left Notability off your
> list."  But it's a deeper sense of respect for our obligations, as reflected
> in such places as [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff]] and
> [[/Footnoted quotes]].  See also [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Doc
> glasgow#Outside view by Newyorkbrad]]; [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/QZ
> Deletion dispute#Outside view by Newyorkbrad]]; the DRV log for May 28, 2007
> (Hornbeck/Ownby); and the Shawn Hornbeck thread currently on ANI.
>
> There is plenty of accurate, neutral, fully sourceable material about living
> persons that still has no place in Wikipedia.  Or anywhere else on the
> Internet, really, but we can only control our own site.

I think the point David is making is that you don't justify removing
or adding content based on BLP.  It should be based entirely on our
normal content policies, strictly enforced.  Of course, "don't put
irrelevant material into articles" is a content policy, even if it's
so obvious that it doesn't need saying.

As an example, an article on London that talked exclusively about its
history during the Blitz or that detailed a well-sourced but
irrelevant mid-70s public health scandal would be completely
unacceptable.  The content rule "don't write about irrelevancies"
exists elsewhere; it is simply far more important when talking about
living people.

-- 
Sam
PGP public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sam_Korn/public_key