[WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale)

[Scott MacDonald]

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andreas Kolbe
Sent: 13 May 2011 06:58
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale)

>Scott's argument is that many press reports publish shite, and that as a
>result we have lots of shite in our BLPs. My argument is that much of that 
>shite is defended by editors saying, "A reliable source wrote about it, and
>you wanting to delete it violates WP:V, because you see, policy says it
does 
>not matter whether editors believe it is true or not."


>> If we can't use sources to judge truth, and we can't use
>>expert knowledge
>> without sources, what third option remains?


>Editorial judgment -- we have to be allowed to judge the reliability of 
>sources, and the quality of their research. Otherwise we're just 
>indiscriminate parrots, regurgitating a random mix of knowledge and crap.
>A. 

Bingo.

The problem is that Wikipedians like to make the complex world simple, in
order to create nice rules and pretend that what we do is objective and
editorial judgement and POV can be excluded. This is a myth and a dangerous
one.

We end up with people saying "well, is the NYT a reliable source or not?"
"Is the News of the World?". And then the argument goes "if you exclude
them, you can't report Michael Jackson's death until a book gets written"
(see earlier post)

Bollocks. You just need to use a little common sense.

If the NOTW or the Sun runs a headline saying "Michael Jackson is dead" - it
is highly unlikely to be wrong. And even if it is wrong, the error will soon
be news itself, and the Wikipedia article gets corrected. This is
verification enough.

However, if the NYT celebrity watch page on p37 mentions in passing that
"David Hasselhoff is known to have dated a host of celebrities including a,
b, c, d, and e." And on that basis someone adds to the biography of (fairly
minor) actress "d" that she once dated Hasselhoff, there is fair chance the
story is wrong, or that "known to" amounts to some internet rumour - or
tabloid crap story - or they were seen together once, there is also a fair
chance that even if bogus it will never be corrected, or no one will notice
the correction. All fine, as page 37 of the NYT is soon lining a drawer -
except now it is immortalised in Wikipedia, always verifiable, never
disputable. And that she dated Hasselhoff is certainly a notable part of d's
otherwise uneventful career.

Newspapers print celebrity hearsay - they do it regularly and on a sustained
basis, and where the hearsay is trivial it will rarely be corrected and
seldom be fact checked - and the same bit of crap will often be repeated in
various papers. We need editors to be wise to this. 

Another (current example) some adult film company has recently offered Kate
Middleton's sister $5milion to do porn. It is, naturally, a publicity stunt.
Someone wanted to include it as a verifiable fact on her BLP. Easily
excluded as trivia. However, now the Chicago Sun-Times and other sources is
reporting that according to a friend she is livid and seeking advice on her
future career from Buckingham Palace. Now, this is clearly hearsay - and
quite probably crap - but I've got people actually arguing that we now meet
[[WP:V]], because Chicago's second biggest paper is generally regarded as a
"Reliable Source". Maybe, but since when did it become an authoritative
source on British socialites?

The "is this a reliable source? yes/no" binary is simply an abrogation of
common sense.

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