[WikiEN-l] "Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement"

[George Herbert]

BLP is a good idea and we got it for good reasons.  These recent developments, however, forget that we are *an encyclopedia*. It's into barking mad territory.

No. We will not go to removing bios on demand on my watch. 


George William Herbert
Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 4, 2012, at 5:27, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:

> I noticed a thread on Jimbo's talk page that is partly related to this.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#A_radical_idea.3B_BLP_opt-out_for_all
> 
> Tarc suggested:
> 
> "Any living person, subject to identity verification via OTRS, may
> request the deletion of their article. No discussion, no AfD, just
> *poof*. In its place is a simple template explaining why there is no
> longer an article there, and a pointer to where the reader can find
> information on the subject, a link similar to Template:Find sources at
> the top of every AfD."
> 
> What people there seem to be missing is that the template would
> explicitly say "article removed at subject's request". The point being
> that this could well result in a big PR stink for either Wikipedia
> ("the article was rubbish and rightly removed") or for the subject
> ("they are (wrongly) trying to control what is said about them").
> 
> [This is why it relates to the topic of this thread]
> 
> This is why such a proposal might actually work.
> 
> I am rather surprised at why some people miss that this is about
> living people though. BWilkins said:
> 
> "You can't very well tear out "Mussolini" from every copy of EB ever
> printed, can you?"
> 
> Obviously, for those who are dead, this proposed policy would no
> longer apply, and you default back to the usual arguments about
> notability and so on. And I still maintain that notability cannot be
> properly assessed until someone's life or career has finished. The
> whole "notability is not temporary" thing needs serious
> re-examination.
> 
> Carcharoth
> 
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