[WikiEN-l] Defamatory Biographies - another problem looming for Wikipedia?

Sun Dec 18 21:52:00 UTC 2005

Keith Old wrote:

We need to pay particular attention to the biographies of 
contemporarybiographies especially of controversial figures. In 
particular, we need to ensure that our articles are scrupulous in citing 
sources. We need to giveinstructions to recent changes patrollers to be 
on the lookout forbiographies making negative claims without proper 
sourcing.

>Regards
>Keith Old
>
    I agree. After the biography of David Hager was categorized as
    rapist in error, I began a _quick_ survey of crime related articles.
    I am looking for deliberate misclassification that might be called a
    hoax or grudge, as well as good faith misreads of the categorization
    criteria. I’ve given special attention to articles about living
    people and those with no obvious evidence of conviction. After about
    14 days, I’ve surveyed Category:Rapists, Category:Incest,
    Category:Child sexual offenders, Category:Cannibalism,
    Category:Executed murderers, Category:Child killers.

    On the whole, the quality of the crime articles are the same as
    other types of articles. Overall, I think it is reasonable to assume
    good faith. Some articles are part of projects and are above
    average. The biggest problem is lack of sources. I fixed some of the
    articles, but most I tagged as unreferenced. Some of the time, I put
    requests on User pages for sources, even stubs. So far, most of the
    tagged articles are still unverified. Nevertheless, I think this
    task is not futile because editors are responding to the tags and
    requests.

    Still many more crime categories to go. And all these articles need
    to be fact checked.

    Sydney