[Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people

[Jane Darnell]

Thanks for that link, Phoebe!

I am concerned about the issue surrounding the comment "the real BLP
problems happen when heavyweight (in edit count terms) Wikipedia users
swing their weight around"

Maybe such Wikipedians have a problem with the BLP person in real
life, or is closely related to some person who has a problem with the
BLP person, and maybe it is just some stubborn Wikipedian sticking to
the WP guidelines and policies. In the words of Emerson, "A foolish
consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers."

Whatever the reason, the result is always the same: the BLP person
feels helpless and abandoned to the whims and fancies of the
Wikipedian in question. Most times they don't even know enough to see
that it is just one person behind their reverts, and see the problem
as "Wikipedia, a bad place to have a page on".

The problem has accelerated since this discussion in 2010, however,
because with all the cutbacks in journalism, Wikipedia has become the
go-to place for information about such BLP's, unfortunately for them.

2013/12/14, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com>:
> On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 4:23 PM, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk>
> wrote:
>> On 12 December 2013 19:40, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> With a nod to Andy's comment, as a
>>> community I think we may want to review our progress in the last few
>>> years on the BLP issue, and have a broad community consultation about
>>> where we are still falling short and ideas for going forward, given
>>> our constraints and changing environment of readers and editors.
>>
>> I didn't make a comment; I requested information:
>>
>>     "Please also provide a link to the consultation you carried out
>>      with the community, before making this change. I seem to have
>>      missed it."
>>
>> Oddly, I seem to have missed the response, also.
>
> Well, with such a pointed comment, I assumed you were trying to make a
> point about the value of community consultations, so that's what I
> responded to.
>
> As Maria noted, this was prompted by a community request on the board
> noticeboard, which of course anyone is welcome to participate in. And
> as I noted, we saw a need to clarify what we intended in the earlier
> resolution -- not something that can really be determined by community
> consensus. So no, we didn't have a broad community consultation on
> this particular amendment, though I also don't think it was out of the
> blue; there have been many related discussions on Commons and
> Wikipedia over the years.
>
> I was recently reminded by someone that we *did* have a general
> community consultation on the BLP issue as part of the strategy
> project -- there's still good info (and some broad recommendations to
> the board) here, which are worth reviewing if the topic is of
> interest: https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Living_People
>
> best,
> Phoebe
>
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