[WikiEN-l] Re: Proposed policy on biographies: input sought

Mon Dec 19 16:17:20 UTC 2005

"David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote in 
message news:fbad4e140512190755y2b5766e3heb00ce715a733fd3 at mail.gmail.com...
> I wrote:
> >SlimVirgin wrote:
> >>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_on_living_persons_deserve_a_special_sensitivity
> >>It deals with the need to be respectful of subjects, which policies
> >It reads too much like an attempt to invalidate Neutral Point Of View
> >and instead install Sympathetic Point Of View for living subjects.
> And I see someone on the talk page already thinks this is a cue to abandon 
> NPOV.

If that's a reference to my comment, I'm not advocating any such thing. I 
merely want to make sure that the risks of harming an innocent third party 
should be carefully considered.

OTOH, if it's the section further down commenced by [[en:user:Stevage]], 
then I take your point: ".placating potentially injured parties, even if 
that involves a minor violation of NPOV" is a slippery slope we should not 
be allowing anywhere near us. If it's been published in a newspaper, then 
the facts themselves are fair game, even if the subject is not: I would have 
thought that a biography stating "X was the subject of a malicious 
allegation of misbehaviour in Y newspaper which turned out to be fabricatory 
cobblers" might actually be doing the subject a favour...neutrally of course 
:-).

HTH HAND
-- 
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]] 