[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...

[Andrew Turvey]

What do we do about well-sourced information which turns out to be incorrect? I don't think policies cover this area particularly well, but the commonsense view is to word it something along the lines of: 

"A national newspaper in 2007 reported that celebrity x had been arrested for taking drugs<ref> </ref>; however this was later shown to be untrue <ref> </ref>" 

If it's not that important you can always include the details in a footnote: 

"Joe Blow (b. 15.1.74) <ref>Note the New York Times stated he was born on January 14 - (ref). However, this source shows the actual date to be 14 Jan </ref> 

The added advantage is it means editors don't add the incorrect information in again at a later date. 


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ken Arromdee" <arromdee at rahul.net> 
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org> 
Sent: Thursday, 23 April, 2009 01:11:39 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal 
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l... 

On Wed, 22 Apr 2009 WJhonson at aol.com wrote: 
> > You're arguing for a policy that says that 
> > someone without a source can't correct errors about himself *at 
> > all*--whether 
> > you looked up the official site for his radio station or not. Verifying 
> > his 
> > identity is, in fact, completely irrelevant to this policy.>> 
> ---------- 
> No Ken. Because we do not require sources for non-controversial points in 
> the first place. 

If he's correcting an error, another person disagrees with him, so it's by 
definition controversial to some degree. 

Also, remember that we're talking about BLPs. BLP subjects may be unfamiliar 
with Wikipedia and do things like publically complain--and once they do that, 
it's guaranteed that if they try fixing the article, someone will remember 
their complaint and automatically treat the change as controversial. 

> WHEN a statement is fact-tagged, then a source should be provided. 

That doesn't work too well when the source is wrong. 

Remember that "verifiability, not truth" means that sometimes it will be 
verifiable, but not true. 

> The sole place where the subject may have a special position, is in 
> providing a response to a well-sourced negative statement. 

What if it's a well-sourced non-negative, but false, statement? 

> If we have a statement 
> like "Britney Spears stabbed her husband and was arrested" (L.A. Times, 12 
> Oct 2007), then she is quite welcome to provide an alternate version such as 
> "she stabbed him, but it was with a nail file and the skin wasn't even 
> broken, he's just a big cry baby bitch." (Britneyspears.com, "Why I was arrested 
> last week") 

If it's not Britney SWpears, but the guy whose radio station you looked up, 
why should we require him to create "guywithradiostation.com" before he can 
correct facts? 

> However, this does not mean that we remove the L A Times reference. That 
> would be whitewashing the article. We are here to provide the reading public 
> with the most consistent, neutral, inclusive view of pop culture. That 
> isn't simply the glamour magazines, it has to include as well the news articles 
> that have negative material. 

Ah. "Joe Blow claims he was born on January 15, but the New York Times 
says he was born on January 14. Joe Blow insists this is a mistake." 


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