[WikiEN-l] Daily Mail article on Sam Blacketer case

[Ken Arromdee]

On Mon, 8 Jun 2009, Harry Willis wrote:
> To borrow WP:COI, I
> can hardly see that advancing outside interests was more important than
> advancing the aims of Wikipedia in this case.

This isn't very related to your issue, but if WP:COI says this (and it seems
to) it's very easy to interpret as "forget about most of the BLP policy".
For instance, the BLP policy says that we should take into consideration how
our articles affect the subjects' lives.  Our subjects' lives are outside
interests and therefore should be ignored according to COI.

And I'm not just nitpicking over wording, either--this exact issue (though
maybe not the specific line from COI) is the main cause of all the backlash
against attempts to protect living people.  Users are told time and time
again that the only thing to consider in writing on Wikipedia is how it
advances the aims of Wikipedia, and that it is never appropriate to take
into consideration any other factor.  And some of them start to believe it.