[WikiEN-l] Verifiability

Thu Dec 15 17:04:56 UTC 2005

On 12/15/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> No libels or slurs are welcome on Wikipedia.  That said, the risk of
> blandness in dealing with live people is very real.  We _must not_ give
> people the right of approval on what WP writes about them.
>
I agree that people shouldn't have the right of approval over their WP
pages, but equally we shouldn't adopt a belligerent
published-and-be-damned position either. Waking up one morning to find
a Wikipedia article exists about you, one that anyone can edit, must
be a horrible experience quite frankly. We should be respectful to
people who are worried about it, and we should always err on the side
of caution and kindness, in my view. An aggressive journalistic stance
isn't appropriate, because we have no fact-checking process, no
public-interest claims, no teams of lawyers and publishers overseeing
publication. And, most importantly, we have no fixed, final version
where the thing is finally put to bed.

I'm in touch with one man who feels he was defamed in an article. The
information was removed after he contacted Jimbo, but he writes that
he has to check every day to make sure it hasn't been added again.  In
other words, we've changed this man's life, and yet he's not
particularly notable, the people who keep adding the information are
mischief-making, and the claims that were made about him weren't in
any sense newsworthy.

We need to sort out our publishing philosophy when it comes to the
biographies of living people, or claims about living people in other
articles. Errors in other kinds of articles are annoying, but errors
about living people are potentially cruel and very damaging, even if
they don't reach the level of an actionable libel. We need to start
thinking not only in terms of accuracy and verifiability, but also in
terms of *fairness*.

Sarah