[Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees: Davos

[Sage Ross]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 9:30 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
<cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sue Gardner wrote:
>> Interestingly, a number of people complained to me about their
>> articles being overly negative.  Obviously Jimmy gets this all the
>> time, but I was surprised how often it was the first thing a person
>> would say to me. All my conversations about Wikipedia were warm and
>> friendly and positive, with the exception of people's pain/anger about
>> BLP issues.
>>
>>
>
> What you need to remember is that all the people who are
> secretly satisfied their article is remarkably fair to them, or
> even greatly relieved how merciful their article is about their
> various foibles; never mind those who won't say publicly they
> think their article is even far too laudatory ... well, those
> people won't be the first in line to talk about it to you, will
> they. Try to focus on that; when you get in those situations.
>

>From my experience talking with people (mostly academics) who have
Wikipedia articles, they are often unhappy with their articles but
also either don't want to interfere in a community they aren't part
of, or don't want to be seen as complaining on their own behalf and
thus risk seeming vain.  Most often it's not that there is something
really wrong or negative, it's just that the article is so incomplete
or imbalanced that it gives a misleading impression of who they are
and what they do.  I'd go so far as to say that the significant
majority of BLPs for academics (at least) are not appreciated by their
subjects.

-Sage (User:Ragesoss)