Wikipedia:BLP examples for discussion: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:25, 18 January 2010

Revision as of 23:41, 18 January 2010

Line 8:

One main thrust of the BLP policy is that in order to avoid the misuse of Wikipedia to spread false or defamatory information about living persons, all negative or contentious assertions regarding a living person must be well-supported by citations to reliable sources. Few people of good faith question the appropriateness of this requirement, although its interpretation can lead to dispute in individual cases.

However, according to some interpretations, the BLP policy and the philosphy behind it extends well beyond merely avoiding the inclusion of defamatory or unsourced negative material, as important as that of course is. Rather, it has been repeatedly observedargued that our norms and standards of appropriate behavior sometimes call for the exclusion of information from Wikipedia even where the information is undisputedly true, and even if it might otherwise be considered notable under our usual notability guidelines.

It is inevitable that Wikipedia editors will continue to debate how we apply BLP norms in these types of situation. Part of the background to this debate is the fact that Wikipedia's conduct and guidelines on these issues cannot be evaluated in the abstract, separate from the information propounded on the rest of the Internet. The author of this page ([[User:Newyorkbrad|Newyorkbrad]]) has discussed some of these issues at greater length, both on-wiki (starting [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Doc glasgow#Outside view by Newyorkbrad|here]] and [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/QZ Deletion dispute#Outside view by Newyorkbrad|here]]), in off-wiki writings such as [http://volokh.com/posts/1242270923.shtml this post] and [http://volokh.com/posts/1242179591.shtml this post] on [[The Volokh Conspiracy]], and in [http://www.archive.org/details/nywikiconf_newyorkbrad_26july2009 my speech at Wikiconference New York 2009].