[Foundation-l] Wikipedia articles based on Wikileaks material

Andreas Kolbe jayen466 at yahoo.com
Sun Dec 12 17:09:09 UTC 2010


Fred,

I agree. However, any [[WP:UNDUE]] argument of the kind you are making,

> Copying a list of potential military targets from a classified document 
> would seem out of bounds unless a source generally considered reliable 
> has widely distributed the list.

will not win the day. See the section "laughs maniacally" on the article's 
talk page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Critical_Foreign_Dependencies_Initiative#.2Alaughs_maniacally.2A

The editor "laughs maniacally" because they have found *one source*, i.e.
this news/blog site

http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-critical-foreign-dependencies-2010-12

that reproduces the Wikileaks list in full. Thereby, the reasoning goes,
it has been published by a secondary source, justifying its inclusion in
the article. Once included with a secondary source, it can and will 
thereafter be defended under [[WP:NOTCENSORED]].

This is a situation that occurs frequently. There may be 450 reputable news 
outlets that have taken an editorial decision not to publish something, for 
valid reasons, vs. one that has published it. Per [[WP:NOTCENSORED]], 
editors get to go with the one source that has. By and large, we have 
sacrificed editorial judgment, and the NPOV idea that we should reflect the 
editorial judgment of our best sources, to [[WP:NOTCENSORED]]. This applies
to articles of this sort as much as it does to the way we illustrate
articles on sexuality and pornography.

Andreas

--- On Sun, 12/12/10, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:

> From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia articles based on Wikileaks material
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Sunday, 12 December, 2010, 16:20
> We might suppress a leak made
> directly into Wikipedia, for example
> information about a troop movement, but once something has
> been published
> on a thousand mirrors there is little point. I don't think
> links on
> Wikipedia to documents which remain classified is a good
> idea. The
> disclosed primary documents will come under intense
> analysis in reliable
> sources; those analyses are notable and properly included
> in Wikipedia
> despite their source in classified primary documents.
> Copying a list of
> potential military targets from a classified document would
> seem out of
> bounds unless a source generally considered reliable has
> widely
> distributed the list.
> 
> Fred
> 
> User:Fred Bauder
> 
> > This might need some eyes and attention:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents&oldid=401953034#Creation_of_articles_from_leaked_classified_documents
> >
> > It concerns Wikipedia articles reproducing the content
> of the recent
> > Wikileaks releases, notably
> >
> > https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Critical_Foreign_Dependencies_Initiative
> >
> > Andreas
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> 


      




More information about the wikimedia-l mailing list