Wikipedia:BLP examples for discussion: Difference between revisions

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== Background ==

Over the course of the past severalfew years, conscientious Wikipedians have developed and made increased efforts to enforce our policy on [[WP:BLP|biographies of living persons]]. Without seeking to recapitulate the substantial amount that has been written on this subject, theThis policy attempts to addressis theespecially factimportant thatbecause as Wikipedia pages have become ever more readily accessibleprominent in Internet searches, what we write about living individuals may have real impact on their lives.

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. FewAlmost peopleall ofeditors goodnow faithagree questionon the appropriatenessneed offor this requirement, although its interpretation can lead to dispute in individual cases.

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

ItEditors iswill inevitable that Wikipedia editors willinevitably 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 propoundedfound 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].

This page provides some examples of the types of more nuanced BLP problems that arise. There are no clear-cut right and wrong answers to these scenarios. Often the right way to handle these situations is not clear, because the right way for the Internet and the Press and Society as a whole to handle these situations is not clear either. The hypotheticals are designed for discussion either on-wiki and also as an aide to discussion of the problem at meet-ups where there is a session scheduled on BLP issues.

Each of these examples has been inspired by one or more specific real-world examples, but the purpose of this page is to allow discussion in the abstract, without fear that in discussing the examples we are disseminating questionable information regarding the people involved in the issues, and without inviting lobbying by partisans in the underlying dispute that inspired the examples. Most BLP discussions on-wiki are either highly abstract and difficult to channel into practical decision-making, on the one hand, or highly focused on a pending dispute about a particular article, on the other. These examples are intended to be somewhere in between.

Comments on these examples are welcome on the talkpage.

All manner of comments on these examples are welcome on the talkpage. I'll weigh in with my own thoughts, if there are any that don't get expressed in the discussions, in a couple of weeks. I may also add more examples in days and weeks to come.

== Sample problems ==