[Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

[Delirium]

David Gerard wrote:
> 2009/3/3 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com>:
>
>   
>> Sure, the persons themselves can not be harmed, but our
>> deep understanding of the forces of history, and what force
>> personality, heredity, cultural context and up-bringing play
>> within it, is immeasurably impoverished by getting a view that
>> is faulty.
>>     
>
>
> In which case it's an important issue, but it's not *this* important
> issue. At all. Even a bit.
>   
I'd argue that they're actually pretty closely interwtined issues--- 
incorrect information in a Wikipedia article harming actual, currently 
living people. There are some areas where this is very unlikely, and 
other areas where it's more likely, and I agree with many that we ought 
to have better policies on the areas where it's more likely. But I think 
we do somewhat a disservice to the overall mission by splitting off BLPs 
into separate policies and treat them as if they're some unique category 
unto themselves. Rather, I'd gather together "negative information about 
living people", "inflammatory information about ongoing conflicts", 
"poorly source information relating to current elections", and similar 
categories into a tier of information that has particularly stringent 
application of the verification and NPOV policies.

-Mark