[WikiEN-l] Biography of Living persons

[Ken Arromdee]

On Fri, 2 Jan 2009, toddmallen wrote:
> Actually, I do see it as a false dichotomy. We're presenting it as
> "rights" against publication of verifiable, reliable,
> already-published material. These rights do not exist. I do not have a
> right to tell you that you may not talk about me or publish
> information about me, provided what you say is true.

"Having a right" and "doing what is right" are not the same thing.

> How do we avoid neutrality violations? We follow, rather than
> second-guess, reliable sources. In every case, every time. That's what
> NPOV means. Imposing our own viewpoint, including "They SHOULDN'T have
> published that!", is the very definition of a violation of NPOV.

I'm going to bring up spoiler warnings again, because this is an abuse of
NPOV, in the same way that saying "we don't have a source which declares that
that is a spoiler" is an abuse of NOR or NPOV.  All editorial decisions are
viewpoints; NPOV doesn't apply to them.  It's our viewpoint that a person is
notable, or that a source is unreliable, or that it's wrong to publish
something.  We don't go around saying "you can't call that non-notable!
If you do you're imposing our viewpoint that it's non-notable!".

The reason this abuse happens is that NPOV is supposed to take precedence
over everything else and leaves no room for discretion.  If it violates NPOV,
you can't include it, period.  This absolute nature makes it very inviting
to win an argument by squeezing everything and anything into NPOV (or NOR)
regardless of whether it really fits.

I've seen this particular abuse enough times that we really ought to have
something in the rules specifically to prevent it.  Of course, there's no
way to do that....