[WikiEN-l] BLP, medical information, and media controversy

[Ray Saintonge]

Nathan wrote:
> I think this might be one situation where our duty of care in
> biographies of living people is being overzealously observed, but its
> definitely a gray area and I'm not at all certain. It's jarring for me
> to see some obviously relevant information excluded from the article,
> particularly when its been reported in most major news venues in the
> world, but I do understand the desire to be above the gross
> speculation found in some outlets.
>
> Thoughts? Have we been so successful at permeating the community with
> care for BLPs that we need to start emphasizing the limits of that
> care more clearly?

The distinction to be made is between information about a person, and 
popularly reported claims about the person.  It needs to be made clear 
that reporting about a controversy is not identical to reporting about 
the person.  It's disingenuous to pretend that a very public controversy 
doesn't exist. Rather than suppressing anything about the controversy we 
would do better to find the appropriate language for discussing it 
neutrally.

It's much easier to permeate a community with a series of doctrinaire 
rules than with a grasp of the underlying principles.

Ec