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

[Carcharoth]

On 4/17/12, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

> The key problem here - IMHO - is not-sensitive editors interacting
> with sensitive BLP subjects.

That is not always the case.

What would *you* do if you cleaned up and expanded an article on a BLP
you had never heard of before (to 'do the right thing'), and did the
best job you could, but the subject of the article turned up on the
talk page of the article and objected to the rewrite and said they
didn't want an article on them (I'm talking in general here, not about
specific cases)?

To make it even harder, they are being reasonable about it, rather
than abusive, and you feel bad about how things turned out. What then?
You feel an obligation to keep an eye on an article that *you*
rewrote, but you know the subject objects to it. You are not getting
paid for this (you are 'only' a volunteer), yet you have found
yourself caught in this rather horrible situation that you would never
have found yourself in if you had been employed by a published
scholarly encyclopedia to write an article.

The conclusion I'm coming to is (as I've said, I've only seriously
edited 4-5 BLPs ever): only edit BLPs where there are sufficient
sources to write a proper article. Editing of borderline notable BLPs
is a thankless task that rewards no-one. Not the readers (they don't
get a proper article, only a stub), not the subjects (they mostly
don't want such articles or want to have inappropriate control), and
not the editors (they usually don't have the sources to write a proper
article).

That is largely why I've left my proposed rewrite on the radio
presenter on the talk page. I can't in good conscience put that in as
the actual article if the subject doesn't want an article at all.
There are far better things to do with my time than edit borderline
notable BLPs, which will all likely get deleted at some future point
anyway. Having huge numbers of BLPs is not a sustainable practice on
Wikipedia.

One more point. There was a Facebook thread and radio comments
mentioned at some point. I'm not on Facebook and I don't listen to the
radio. The question is, should I make myself aware of what is being
said in those media before editing such articles or their talk pages,
or not? If there is a need to follow 'responses' in other media, that
is not sustainable either.

Carcharoth