On Thu, 16 Apr 2009, James Farrar wrote:
(b) Sanger didn't post to the list to
improve Wikipedia; he posted here to bitch about Wikipedia and Jimbo
Wales, not necessarily in that order.
The same can be said of an ordinary BLP
question. Most people who want to
correct BLPs about themselves don't want to improve the encyclopedia; they
just want to protect their own interests. We listen to them anyway.
But
correcting a falsehood does improve the encyclopedia (even if
that's not the "ordinary BLP" complainant's motivation).
That's true if the BLP complaint is factual, but there are BLP rules beyond
that (like the one about not disparaging our subjects). Of course, you
can say that anything which follows a Wikipedia rule must of necessity
improve the encyclopedia, or else we wouldn't have the rule, but that makes
the phrase merely a tautology.
I don't believe Sanger truly cares how Wikipedia
describes him with
respect to its foundation. He just wants to bitch. There's a big
difference between your "ordinary BLP question" and this case.
He obviously is claiming that things which we say are true, aren't. Even in
the non-article case, where he objects to the factual content of proclamations
by us instead of articles by us, this is something we should pay attention
to.