[WikiEN-l] IAR

[Ian Woollard]

On 02/10/2009, Surreptitiousness
<surreptitious.wikipedian at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Ken Arromdee wrote:
>> The result is people
>> constantly claiming that you can't ignore rules for BLP or privacy
>> concerns,
>> since helping the BLP subject is not a form of improving the encyclopedia.
>>
> Hang on, you've set up a straw man there.  You haven't shown how
> "helping the BLP subject is not a form of improving the encyclopedia" is
> actually true.

> Which is wrong, because there are instances where
> helping the BLP subject does improve the encyclopedia.

Sure, but what about the instances where it *doesn't* help the subject
but *does* improve the encyclopedia? There's bound to be some.

As a recent example, the journalists that were kidnapped; if the
wikipedia had covered that, then the wikipedia would have been
improved, but I'm pretty sure that in practice the consensus would not
have supported IARing it in.

But the IAR policy is clear, if ANY policy, including BLP stops you
improving the wikipedia then you can override it.

But that's not consensus-in practice I don't think you can IAR over
BLP issues; that seems to be a mistake in the policy.

-- 
-Ian Woollard