Wikipedia:BLP examples for discussion: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:26, 10 August 2010

Revision as of 14:26, 28 January 2012

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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 philosphyphilosophy 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 argued that norms and 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].

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Soon after the group fired the manager, their next album included a song attacking him. The song claims unsubtly that the manager is a crook and suggests among other things that he deserves to be imprisoned or even to die. Litigation between the group and the manager, including a defamation claim based on the song, ends inconclusively. There is no dispute that the song was intended to refer specifically to him. Any number of fan and other sites report without contradiction that the song was written as an angry attack on the manager's honesty and ethics.

The group is well-known and is mentioned in dozens of articles on Wikipedia. The song and the album are hits and also easily satisfy our notability guidelines for pop music articles. The business manager is reasonably well- known in Hollywood but would never have risen to the level of being mentioned on Wikipedia were it not for this song.

What, if anything, should Wikipedia report about this matter?

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=== Example 5: The Silly Video and the Internet Meme ===

One day a kid wanting to have some fun throws on an outfit from a favorite science fiction movie and carries on in a silly way for a few minutes, mimicking one of the characters. Someone films him doing this and posts the video to a site like YoutubeYouTube. In the unpredictable way that happens sometimes, the video becomes a wildly popular "Internet meme," spreading "virally" from one person to another. Within weeks, the video has hundreds of thousands of hits, and the kid's real name is plastered everywhere online, certainly to the point that the video or the incident has arguably become "notable." Of course, the boy had given no thought to the possibility this would happen—perhaps he did not even know a camera was running—and the absurd publicity given to a random moment of silliness is damaging his life.

What, if anything, should Wikipedia report about this matter? Should an effort be made to avoid mentioning the boy's name, even if it is widely known elsewhere?