Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons 

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Is the following potentially libelous

here's a situation I'm wondering about.

Person A publishes an article in which they quote a statement from Person B, the negative statement is about a conversation Person B had with Person C. The statement made by person B can be construed negatively about Person C. We know that Person A's publisher contacted Person B to ensure that Person B said what they said. We also know that they did not contact Person C to verify their side of the conversation.

Is the statement from Person B appropriate in an article about Person C or does it violate the living people policies?

My thought is that possibly not, since Person C is living, the statement is negative and possibly damaging and we know that the publisher did not contact Person C to verify that the conversation between them and Person B took place.

Thanks.

This is a sourced statement of Person B's opinion of Person C. Whether it is reliably sourced depends on the reputation of Person A's publisher; are we talking about some blog? Weekly World News? If not, we should not second-guess A's publisher's judgment; but if C denies that B said it, that's relevant commentary.
The real question is: would we include B's opinion of C, if he had published it through the most reliable source in the world? Lots of people have opinions on Bush; but we keep most of them out of his article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:59, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually I wasn't speaking of opinion. Here's a more appropriate analogy. In an article, Mary claims that she told her boss John that Robert (a coworker) had sexually harassed her and that John did nothing about it. The article does not mention any response from John, nor mention that the author contacted John to ensure that the conversation took place. Is this appropriate for an article about John? My thinking would be only if the author of the article mentions that they contacted John to verify the conversation. It's slightly different than the case of one person stating their opinion about another.TheRingess (talk) 22:10, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
You are advocating that we ignore what Mary is reliably reported to have said, on the basis of an argument from silence. This is suppressing a POV on the basis of original research - or rather original speculation - about what a reporter did not do. For all we know, John was on vacation - or growled "No comment" and hung up.
There may well be other reasons not to include the statement: neutrality, irrelevance, WP:FRINGE (if Mary claims Robert showed her he was a Martian, say), but this is not one.
If we do include it, we must make clear that it is Mary's position, of course. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:27, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

BLP and foreign privacy standards

Over the weekend, an issue came up in the article for Serious (TV series) regarding publication of minors' last name. In that case, it was clear that the privacy of their names should be honored under BLP and WP:V; the British standards for publication were not an issue in that discussion, other than them being the first matter brought up in the discussion.

An item was just posted at WP:BLP/N about the Richardson family murders. In that case, the name of a minor was published, but subsequent publication ceased in the Canadian press after she was charged, in accordance with Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act. This one is murkier: sources are still available that show her name in its original, pre-charges context. [1] However, inclusion in the Wikipedia article is after the fact of the charges.

I didn't find anything in BLP that immediately addressed this issue. Is there general guidance for these types of issues, or does this need to be handled on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the circumstances and types of verifiable sources? —C.Fred (talk) 22:46, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you asking as a matter of law, or of decency? If the first, you should ask the Foundation's lawyer; but I doubt we are subject to Canadian law. If this is a decency question, what is the case to omit? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:50, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't think the foreign law is, in and of itself, sufficient reason to omit information. However, I do think it's the kind of thing where we stop and think "okay, here's a liberal democracy with constitutionally-protected freedom of speech saying, that in the interests of decency towards a living person, something cannot legally be published. That sounds like pretty strong evidence that we shouldn't, from a human decency standpoint, publish it either." Sarcasticidealist (talk) 22:58, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


Wikipedia is governed by US and Florida law - so privacy laws in other jurisdictions do not apply to wikipedia (although they may theoretically apply to users editing in those jurisdictions). So, this is not a legal issue, but rather a matter of how we apply our "do no harm" principle. A blanket rule that said "we will always respect foreign privacy laws" would be no good: Iranian Law might prevent publishing details about financial scandals concerning Iranian politicians - we would hardly wish to bind ourselves, would we? I'd suggest the following rule of thumb:

Whilst Wikipedia is legally limited only by the laws of Florida and the United States of America, given that Wikipedia is "published" globally, thought should always be given to privacy laws in other jurisdictions, where the effect of ignoring such laws may do harm to living persons. a) Whilst Wikipedia does not wish to self-censor information otherwise widely available, there should be a presumption that we would respect legal principles designed to protect minors, victims and other vulnerable people. b) In other cases, it will be necessary to weigh the importance of the information to the reader's understanding of the subject against any possible harm to the subject.

The second clause means that we DO include information about the pending fraud case against a French politician, regardless of French law, whilst if the detail excluded is basically trivial (a date of birth, an address) we should probably not publish.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 01:10, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

"Privacy of limited public figures" supra contains some salient discussion. Collect (talk) 01:19, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

If a minor's name has not been widely distributed and it does not add much to the article we don't need to include it (I'm personally divided on whether we should given WP:NOTCENSOR ) but if a name has been widely reported then there's really no good argument to not put the name here. JoshuaZ (talk) 05:59, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

It's worth noting that any proper article on this topic violates Canadian rules. Canadian newspapers can cover the story, only because they divide the facts into separate articles. Some articles report who the victims are, but conceal the girl is their daughter, and don't give any clue of motive (implying a stranger killing). Some mention the girl being a daughter of the victims, but give no clue who the victims are (preventing a full discussion of the victims' background). I'm fine with removal of the girl's first name and picture, but let's all be clear here: this article is not and should not conform to Canadian standards. I don't want anybody to use the case in future as a precedent of us following the Canadian standards. If you wish to follow Canadian standards, deletion is the only option (which was rejected at DRV). --Rob (talk) 07:19, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Scott MacDonald's proposal above makes considerable sense. Protecting the privacy of minors, victims, and other vulnerable people when there is little to no benefit to the reader's understanding of the article is entirely sensible, wise, and in line with online privacy laws. DoubleBlue (talk) 02:58, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Category

BLP says: Category tags regarding religious beliefs and sexual orientation should not be used unless two criteria are met:

I want to know what self-identifying means. If I am give interviews in which I talk about my relationships with men and women, is that enough to allow identification as bisexual? Or does the word have to be used? If I, a woman novelist, say "All my relationships have been with women", without using the l-word, can the category "lesbian writers" be applied? In short: do I have to use the very word or is enough to have identified my orientation publicly? JenAW (talk) 21:26, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Complex question. In sexuality, it's quite common that a person will have specific types of relationship, but may or may not identify with the matching label. Thus there are men who have sex with men, but do not "identify" as gay or bi -- in fact they may very strongly reject that label. There are people who have one partner or even none, and yet identify as polyamorous (inclined to multiple long term parallel relationships). There are myriad teenagers who have had no partners or intimate relationships at all, and yet will readily identify with a sexuality they have never physically explored - straight, gay, whatever. So it cannot be assumed a person "identifies as X" because they have had a relationship of the expected type (or vice versa). It's possible, and in some cases likely, but be aware it's not necessarily so, and some people will reject the presumption - very strongly, and as being grossly mistaken. Even a woman who says she only has relationships with other women, may feel offended at being categorized as a lesbian in some cases, even if that is in fact a neutral description of her relational orientation.
Where that leaves us is, be cautious, and be prepared to check and not assume. As with many encyclopedic matters, we're a bit caught between what's verifiably so, and what people subjectively feel. Do we go by what the subject says, what reliable sources say, or by whether a dictionary definition is met? Tricky call. Generally the more evidence there is that this is a genuine lifestyle choice, the more likely the label will be sensible; if it's not, then it may not be.
One major trap to avoid in this area: "ownership" issues, whereby (for example) a bi activist might look for anyone who's had one partner at least of each gender and feels that "makes them" bi (the same can happen for any issue - sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, even clothing .....). FT2 (Talk | email) 00:00, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Requests to remove public information

A question that sometimes comes up at BLP goes a bit like this: Some information is public and available from reliable sources, and it's also of a kind that would quite usually be appropriately included in an article for quality - not anything especially unusual at all. However the person it applies to asks that we not include it anyway, basically because it isn't in that many sources and for whatever personal reasons they'd like it excluded.

The closest I could find to a communal view on this (apart from the very general WP:NOT#CENSORED) was the proposal rejection at Wikipedia:Obscure public information, based on which I added this:

A 2008 proposal covering requests for removal of encyclopedic information available in reliable sources but not "readily available", where the information was of a kind that would usually be included in an article, was rejected by the community.

The issue needs a mention in BLP, and lacking any better consensus this looks like the most applicable we have. Subject to improved drafting, should we note this? It's not that uncommon a question. Thoughts?

FT2 (Talk | email) 23:44, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

The proposed inclusion is unhelpful for a variety of reasons; it is unclear, community consensus is always a moving target, editorial judgement and individual case characteristics are critical for this decision. On the whole, let's just label this as instruction creep and move on. WAS 4.250 (talk) 10:13, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
Tricky grey areas should generally not be codified in single sentences. Let people handle these on a case by case basis, don't imply there's some sort of "correct precedent". WilyD 12:33, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
There was a case discussed here a few months ago of a former adult entertainer/porn actress who asked that the information identifying her as such be removed because it may "harm her future prospects and/or cause social embarrasment". IIRC the consensus reached was to reject her request as the information that she was an adult entertainer was widely published and in fact some of her films are still available. ( I can't remember when the topic was current but looking through the recent archives will turn it up. Roger (talk) 18:52, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
An adult female model who posed in low end nude venues under at least 3 different stage names had her business manager/publicist ask us to delete the entry/article even tho the information is widely available elsewhere on the net and the reason given was that the model was now working as a nude model for a higher class magazine (Maxim) and she thought it would improve here ability to get higher paying nude modeling jobs. Request rejected. For a different current case in the news see http://news.google.com/news?&rls=en&q=%22Crystal%20Gunns%22 It will be interesting see how we handle this. Some sources are now claiming she is still currently employed as a nude model while also employed working with children. Will she be fired? Stay tuned for real world drama. WAS 4.250 (talk) 20:13, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, although the community (quite appropriately) rejected the Maxim model's request, a single self-appointed administrator overruled the community and deleted the article without consensus support. The Enchantress Of Florence (talk) 13:42, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Strengthening the concept of "conservatively written"

The political "silly season" is supposed to be behind us. Alas, we have an unending supply of editwarriors. One way of reducing the problem would be to establish:

BLP guidelines should be associated not just with the single biography article, but with all articles whose existence is clearly a result of the biography.

BLP guidelines should apply to dead people whose current notableness is related to the notability of a living person (extension of the suggestion above).

Contentious material (specifically material added to provide a negative view of a living person or their views) whether or not it has "reliable sources" should have to meet a higher standard. That is, it must be chosen in a manner which would be clearly relevant in the distant future. To maintain such material in an article should require a very strong consensus, not just a marginal one. If this means WP reads like a dry tome at times, fine. Better that than be the National Enquirer of the Web.

Once consensus has been reached on disallowing such material, that fact should be noted on the article Talk page as a procedural effort to prevent the topic being raised ad nauseam. And hopefully reducing editwars substantially. Collect (talk) 13:04, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

A policy that inherently tends to suppress critical material more than other material would seem to run counter to WP:NPOV. BLP guidelines already provide strong protections against unfounded criticism, libel, etc, and provides strong requirements on the sourcing for all material, not just critical material. Factchecker atyourservice (talk) 18:47, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
The BLP policy is weak and weakly enforced. For too many people it's just about sourcing. NPOV, as it is currently applied, means that "Criticism" and "Controversy" sections are a common sight and that we prefer the latest tabloid muckraking over the long-term historical view. Anything with even the merest whiff of the promotional is crushed mercilessly and blocks handed out liberally (this is as it should be) but you can pretty much push a negative slant with impunity; if anyone objects then it's obviously "suppression" and/or "censorship" (or, my favorites, "removal of sourced info" or "deletionism").
Collect is basically correct but the problem will not be solved here nor will it be solved quickly. I think the core of it is the ascendancy of verifiability over NPOV and the tendency for us to be reflective of journalism rather than scholarship. CIreland (talk) 19:08, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Assuming for the sake of argument that your assessment is unconditionally accurate, nevertheless Collect's suggestion re: "contentious material" would make it a trivial matter to exclude critical material and thus compromise the underlying purpose of NPOV. Additionally, the scope of scholarship is vastly narrower than the scope of journalism. A great many notable topics, which are not the subject of any scholarship whatever, could not be discussed at all without relying on journalism. Factchecker atyourservice (talk) 19:43, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
You're completely right about the relative scope of journalism and scholarship and I have no problem with (most) journalism based sources. The problem is that journalism has a clear tendency to favour negative material (colloquially: dirt sells) and whilst we can and should use journalism as sources, we do not have to reflect that tendency. At the moment there seems to be an argument I see in a lot debates that goes something like "The news media has given this aspect of the topic a certain weight and we should mirror that". This argument assumes that because news reporting is factual it is also fair when, in fact, the news media are far prone to recentism than even we are.
I don't necessarily endorse the measures Collect proposes but I do endorse his/her diagnosis of part of the problem: That we too often fail to take a long-term/historical perspective. CIreland (talk) 20:00, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
I was under the impression that policy expressly states in at least a few places that treatment of subtopics pertaining to a topic should mirror the weight given in the sources. If we were to do otherwise, in absence of any more authoritative source or guide which undermines the treatment given in journalistic sources, wouldn't we simply be engaged in our own original analysis of published thought? And is there any indication Wikipedia editors are qualified to engage in such analysis and then proffer it to readers? I thought a central point of Verifiability + NPOV was that we leave analysis to professional journalists and academics, since we essentially have no credentials, and since Wikipedia is intended not to be a platform for original thought?
A commenter in another thread put it in a particular perspective which I found compelling: scholarly discussion is obviously superior to journalism, but until and unless the article topic receives attention in scholarly circles, journalism on the subject tends to be the best available source and should be reflected more or less at face value (within the existing bounds of policy, of course).
For my part, I became interested in editing Wikipedia when I stumbled upon a few articles that were using Wikipedia as a platform not just for shameless promotion, but also to spread actual lies. It occurred to me that people who are personally invested in a particular subject will always have a much stronger incentive to work on its Wikipedia entry than any disinterested party. Because of this, I believe the editor attention paid towards subjects in general slants towards the positive, and given that there is no real way to change that, the goals of NPOV demand that the bar for critical material be no higher than the bar for "positive" material. Factchecker atyourservice (talk) 20:17, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Again, I basically agree: That is what policy says. I am saying that policy is wrong because it is predicated on the assumption that the sources give a neutral treatment to the subject. If the subject is an individual in the news, the journalistic sources almost never give a neutral treatment; this is particularly the case for politicians. As a result we have, for example, a bunch of "Criticism of...." attack subarticles but no "Praise of......" counterpoints. NPOV based on weighting in sources works well for, say, Aristotle or Roman Empire or Electromagnetism, it is malfunctioning for BLPs. CIreland (talk) 22:07, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your agreement. Right now what I call "campaign pamphleteering" rules too many articles. The current BLP does not address the problem, and I would hope my proposal would cut down on the obvious acrimony engendered by the current system. All anyone needs to do is look at the number of edits on contentious articles to see why the change in policy is warranted. Collect (talk) 23:32, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
I think that the suggestion to take a long-term perspective is good, and likely true on both sides. There seems to be an equivalent shout of "HARM!" when something which is of long-term relevancy, even core items such as names of those involved, are discarded in favor of short-term considerations (which, generally, are often illusory anyway, if information has already been published in reliable secondary sources, there is no "privacy" to protect in any case). I'm generally in favor of combatting recentism and keeping out trivia and garbage while leaving in long-term relevant information, but I think the idea should be wider than just BLPs and not only focus on "Keep out anything that might hurt someone's feewings!" We've already done more than enough of that, it's time to also consider that sometimes, material that might upset someone might nonetheless be appropriate for an article and need to remain. Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:46, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Hence the proposed reliance on a strong consensus for contentious material. Right now, where there is a close stasis, the editwarriors turn out in force, especially on contentious material which, according to the BLP, should require more than just "last one to edit" as a standard. Now -- that appears to be the standard. I would trust that a strong consensus more often than not would reach a sage decision, and by being a strong consensus would stop any prospect of editwars. Collect (talk) 23:52, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
The problem with "strong consensus" is that opinion trumps policy and the concept refers merely to a multitude of user accounts, which themselves have no accountability tied to them, and a guarantee of neither the intelligence or credentials of a single user, nor that any single user operates only a single account rather than numerous accounts. Thus it is a democracy of fictitious persons without respect to policy, as any user account may make a "vote" against policy, yet have it counted irrespective of fitness simply due to a vote-counting tendency. Typing a bunch of words, even nonsense, is taken as evidence of thoughtfulness when really it is only evidence of dedication. All in all, your suggestion amounts to requiring a higher bar for inclusion of critical material in an environment in which the majority of persons editing an article have a favorable opinion of the subject. Even in an environment of even parity there would be no real rationale for an aversion to criticism. It's a bad suggestion. Factchecker atyourservice (talk) 04:02, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your iterated input. "Opinion trumps policy" is not true. No consensus can have, for example, material contrary to law on WP. In fact, there are a huge number of exceptions to your dicta. And where policy would say "strong consensus" that would be enforceable easily. The main purpose, moreover, is to stop editwars and stop people iterating their positions at length in order to achieve results by assertion and not by any other reasoning. Thank you again for re-adding your position. Collect (talk) 12:52, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
I didn't say policy says opinion trumps policy. That would be an oxymoron. I am stating my opinion that in actual practice, opinion trumps policy. And please note that you've stated your own opinions and assertions repeatedly, sometimes elaborating, sometimes not. Case in point, you close your above comment by re-iterating the effect you say your policy would have. Again, I'll state my opinion that your suggestion would have the effect of requiring a higher standard for inclusion of critical material, despite (my opinion) that the majority of people working on a given article usually have a favorable opinion of the article subject -- in turn, causing the articles to be overwhelmingly positive rather than neutral. Factchecker atyourservice (talk) 21:24, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Waylon Jennings is alive

How do you have Waylon jennings as no longer with us? How could he have passed away in 2002, as Wikipedia states... when it was just in the news that he lost his arm to cancer recently (2008)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.74.123.241 (talk) 14:02, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Waylon Jennings is still dead. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 22:26, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Need Template for Unsourced Lists of People

I see a lot of political articles that list 3-10 or more people as being adherents to various ideologies without sourcing. Depending on my mood, sometimes I just delete them; other I times like to give them a warning with a template, instead of putting a Fact tag by every individual on longer lists. I need a better template than {BLPunsourced} which I just put on Separatist_feminism#Noteworthy_separatist_feminists. One that says something like "Sources about statements on these living individuals needed". Anyone want to help? Thanks. CarolMooreDC (talk) 15:47, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Someone help, please

There is a weird, slightly annoying edit war brewing on Rich Rodriguez. Rodriguez has long talked about being a native of Grant Town, West Virginia... however, a recent interview with a University of Michigan alumni magazine he spoke about being born in Chicago. The Chicago claim is reiterated in Michigan's official game program and the author of the interview (a New York times bestselling author named John U. Bacon) responded to corrections by saying he spoke to Rodriguez' parents and they both confirmed the story he gave. We have a direct conflict between third party sources (a lot of which are simple profiles that probably used Wikipedia as a source) against official information. Can anyone help? -MichiganCharms (talk) 14:20, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Importance level? Many people speak of a "hometown" other than the town they were actually born in. Not exactly high level stuff. Grant Town has a population of just over six hundred, and (I suspect) does not have a major hospital (nearest one is in Fairmont). Collect (talk) 18:41, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
"Being a native of ..." and "being born in .." are very different things. If he was indeed born in a Chicago hospital because there wasn't one in Grant Town, he would still be a "native of Grant Town" if that's where his family home was. Spoken interviews aren't a particularly reliable source, anyway ... if someone asks me where I was born, I'll answer "Tokyo", "Tachikawa", "Iruma", or "Johnson Air Force Base". It all depends on how familiar I think the listener is with Japanese geography and American military history. I expect most "small-town-engulfed-in-the-ambiguous-mass-named-Chicago"-born people do the same thing.—Kww(talk) 19:00, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
There is a discussion of this matter on the Rodriguez talk page, but that hardly equates to an edit war. In any event, the article's talk page is the proper place to seek consensus on content, not here. Cmichael (talk) 03:29, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Current legal cases

Note: this discussion is based on the recent Peter Tobin dispute summarized at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Summary_of_discussion

Some articles come under the idea of sub judice, where information that is both factual and verifiable may prejudice a court case. How, in general, should Wikipedia approach these cases? If we publish the information, innocent people may be convicted and guilty people may go free (since their defense could point to our article as part of an appeal). However, if we do not publish the information this would be allowing non-US laws to influence our content. Tim Vickers (talk) 21:53, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

The legal and jurisdictional issue is a red herring. It's relevant for editors from the state in question (and also for the Foundation when the state is the US) but in terms of article content and policy etc. arguing about whether we should respect the judicial decisions of another country is missing (deliberately, sometimes, maybe) the point. The issue in terms of general content policy is purely ethical: it is unethical to prejudice a trial. No ifs, no buts, no "I am not a lawyer", no "it's not in my country", it is simply wrong. The tricky part is determining whether a particular article on Wikipedia plausibly could prejudice a court case; to decide that we may have to rely on the opinions of those more closely connected to the real world issue. CIreland (talk) 22:04, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
So you would agree with the idea that we should stubbify BLP articles on request? Who do you think should we accept such request from and who should make the decision, a community discussion or a OTRS-based system? Tim Vickers (talk) 22:08, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
But who's request? Let's say someone in Zimbabwe (who's concept of SJ is based on UK law) is up on trial and the Zimbabwe police contact us and say "please pull this article as it breaches SJ" - are we going to pull it? or are we going to say "no way man, your system is bent!" - Let's take another example - the Shannon Mathews article has lots of material about the defendant that could show them in a bad light - shouldn't we pull that? Where do we stop? Are we going to honour requests from some legal systems and not others? Is it the offence and the possible sentence that triggers the process? Once we go down this road I don't see anything but confusion and strife. --Cameron Scott (talk) 22:11, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
On the other hand Cameron, if we publish this material, with our high world-wide profile we may cause miscarriages of justice or give guilty people a way to appeal their sentences. Do you think such consequences are something me should ignore? Tim Vickers (talk) 22:14, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
I have absolutely no idea - within the UK, the BBC has an equally high profile than us and they don't pull this of material (for example, the case that kicked this off, all of the previous convictions are still there on the BBC news site) - and I would guess they give the matter quite a bit of consideration as well. If it was this easy to trigger those miscarriages then we'd have seen some by now - the only cases I can find are where high profile local media sources have been involved. I cannot find any examples of people making a successful claim using overseas internet sources. --Cameron Scott (talk) 22:20, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
The BBC did not pull old stories from their site, but they did not link to them or refer to them in their reporting of the current case. Is that an approach you think we could adopt? Tim Vickers (talk) 22:23, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure how we'd do that - if you search the bbc site for the name, the articles pop straight up - I don't see how we would be able to cover up such material without removal - because of the ways that we have individual articles on subjects not a series of articles over time. --Cameron Scott (talk) 22:26, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Indeed. Where there is actualy a court order (Baby P is the obvious case) the BBC does remove the name from their site.Geni 02:40, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I strongly agree with CIreland. This is a point I raised on the AN thread ... there is strong moral consideration, independent of anything else. Morally, I don't think our pedia's aims are noble enough for us to be frivolous with state justice and punishment. This to me argues that we should play on the side of caution, recognizing that our pedia is open access and that editors cannot be trusted or empowered with such responsibility. Realistically, I don't see that we are likely to be that effective at derailing or misdirecting the course of justice, but given the stakes and how little there is to lose a big hammer is prolly ok here. This is not very specific, I'm afraid, but is an important statement of principle. Legally, though I'm no lawyer, the bottom line umbrella protection is that all non-cited material related to a "sub judice" case (though necessarily the history of a defendant or witness) should be banned in principle. We probably do need some way of identifying and marking articles related to sub judice cases, at least for, even if for no other reason at all, encouraging more serious editors to monitor how they are edited. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 22:17, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
So we stub any BLP article where there are previous convictions or other information that could sway a jury? because I don't see how we can (unless some of us are on the jury) make those determinations on a case by case basis. --Cameron Scott (talk) 22:22, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
All non-cited material should be removed from BLPs anyway, the question here is if we should remove entirely factual and verifiable material. Tim Vickers (talk) 22:23, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I was asked to comment here. I think we should ignore all such requests, and just make sure BLPs adhere closely to our policy. If we get a request from the legal team of a BLP, and they explain that our article is causing problems for the subject, we should always err on the side of caution in favour of the BLP, but we should do that regardless of any court cases.

One of the things that made me uneasy about the case that triggered this discussion is that it was the police who requested that the WP article be taken down i.e. the prosecution. Not the court, not the BLP subject, not the subject's lawyers. And it was just an informal request to an admin, not a formal request to the Foundation, so was it really that problematic anyway?

If we wouldn't act on a request like that from Iran or China, we shouldn't do it with one from Scotland. In any event, I think it would be extraordinarily easy to find a jury in Scotland of non-Wikipedia readers. SlimVirgin talk|edits 22:24, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I would like to know if it was someone working for the individual prosecutor or Procurator Fiscal who sent the e-mail (they are not the police, which is what was stated!)... that would be kinda strange and worrying. That aside, refusing to distinguish between say Scotland, and Iran or China, isn't very reasonable as in Scotland, the court cases are generally thought to proceed with the good-faith intent of determining fact and law (just don't mention Lockerbie!), and if nothing else it is at least an English-speaking country with juries expected to act without prejudice, so there is actually a chance wikipedia's articles could have an effect. Matters concerning trials are morally more significant than normal BLP issues because during the trials a bunch of potentially fickle and impressionable people are charged and empowered with determining, based on things asserted to be facts, whether someone's life should be ruined or not. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 22:33, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
I totally agree with your last point. My worry is simply that we're not competent to judge which facts a jury should or should not have put before them (because, let's face it, we're also a bunch of potentially fickle and impressionable people, and I include myself in that, of course). So we should have a really good BLP policy, and then we should stick to it, always willing to err on the side of caution in favour of the BLP. But to have the authorities of any given country (e.g. police or prosecution) ask us to remove material, and not the BLP or his legal team — that worries me a great deal. SlimVirgin talk|edits 22:41, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
It is of equal concern if guilty people were to use our articles to escape justice (where the authorities could complain) or if innocent people were to be convicted (where their legal team might complain). I think if we heed complaints from one, we would have to give equal weight to the other. Tim Vickers (talk) 22:45, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
We should bear in mind when saying "removal of content", we're talking about removal for a few weeks, not permanent removal. I also don't see why we should treat with more scepticism requests from the "authorities" compared with requests from article subjects. CIreland (talk) 22:47, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
We don't. A request for deletion of an obviously notable BLP is sent to AfD. Usually they are deleted, but they are often not. Protonk (talk) 22:57, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
I understand that Protonk but SV, above, was suggesting we should (unless I have misinterpreted her). Also, AfD is appropriate if we are seeking to permanently delete, when in fact we are only really talking about temporary changes - the long-term content of the article should, in theory, be unaffected. CIreland (talk) 23:01, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
My point is that we should always be willing to listen to complaints from the person who feels they're being harmed. I'm less certain that we should listen to complaints from the government of a country, or its representatives, saying they are being harmed in some way by information in a Wikipedia BLP, information that is widely available in reliable sources, so far as I know. That's why I compare Scotland to Iran or China or anywhere else. If reliable sources publish something, I don't like the idea of governments asking us to remove it for any reason. SlimVirgin talk|edits 00:24, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I don't think there should be a provision for "temporary deletion". If there is, I think that AfD is an appropriate forum--I'm sure we can word the nomination in such a fashion as to make that clear. Insofar as I've misinterpreted your other claims, I'm sorry. Protonk (talk) 23:05, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
As a US-based website we cannot legally be prevented from publishing.
But just as with copyright, the question we should be asking is not "Can we get away with it?" Rather, as a community, the question we need to ask is "What is the right thing to do?" The bottom line is that people deserve a fair trial. That is the BLP issue here. People on trial should have their fate decided on the basis of the evidence that has been presented in Court, that both the prosecution and defence have had a chance to present and to respond to. Cases should not be decided by issues that have not been cross-examined.
That is not going to be such an issue with U.S. trials, because speculation, inference and commentary are so widespread in the media that (i) Wikipedia is a drop in the ocean, and (ii) the trial system is adjusted to that media environment, and people in the system know how to adapt to reduce its worst effects.
On the other hand, U.S.-based editors need to realise that in other countries, things may be very different. In some counties, once somebody has been charged, there will be no inference speculation or commentary in the media - only strictly direct reporting of what has been produced in court. And some issues - eg past convictions - may be deliberately excluded, even from the court proceedings. In such a case, there is a possibility that a factual WP article could prejudice a fair trial, by giving credible information (or hearsay, or speculation, or random anon edits) that the jury may find compelling, without either the defence or the prosecution having been able to put their point of view. If we are warned that there may be a serious risk of that, it is a responsibility we need to consider very seriously. Jheald (talk) 23:12, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Considering we failed to effectively resolve this issue even in the very specific and real setting of the Peter Tobin case, I don't think we'll be able to reach rapid consensus on a general principle. It may be most appropriate to consider these articles on a case-by-case basis, with some guidance from a guideline or essay discussing the issues involved. Dcoetzee 23:16, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

While I believe that we can't be held responsible for prejudicing a jury, you also have to consider this if requests come to clear out material per sub judice--the nature of the legal system in the country in question. Zimbabwe, for instance, has the same rules--but unless I'm very wrong here, the perception is that their justice system isn't as fair as the UK or Canada (if only because of politically motivated trials). So while I support stubbing articles in principle when sub judice issues are involved, we should give substantially less weight to requests from countries where the justice system isn't perceived as fair or democratic. Blueboy96 23:30, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

What's the concern? That a current or prospective jury member is going to read the Wikipedia article? That's what voir dire is for. Conveniently, the question about whether we republish damaging information about living people that could prejudice a jury against them overlaps neatly with the existing BLP policy about "doing no harm", particularly to individuals who are not WP:WELLKNOWN. Prior convictions or other negative material would not normally be discussed on Wikipedia unless it is cited to strong secondary sources, of sufficient number and weight relative to the importance of the subject to establish WP:WEIGHT concerns. Thus, anything we reprint here is likely all over the web already and readily accessible via google. Court cases often work in alternate realities where very relevant, notable information is withheld from the jury over (very legitimate) concerns about the decisionmakign process. That is fine, but that essentially requires the court to withhold the truth from the jury, by sequestering them, demanding that they not read the news, filtering out those who have, and in rare cases placing "gag orders" restricting the press and parties from talking about the case. While it's certainly legitimate to keep twelve jurors (plus alternates, depending on the trial) in the dark so that a trial may proceed fairly, there is a much higher threshold before rewriting history to withhold the truth from the six billion people outside of the jury. I agree we and the Foundation should look at these requests one case at a time, but I would be very skeptical about them. Wikidemon (talk) 23:37, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Note that the voir dire juror interview is very much a U.S. thing -- it doesn't happen in English or Scots courts. Jheald (talk) 01:06, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
That could be a workable solution - per WP:V Wikipedia should reflect the viewpoint of the majority of reliable sources that deal with a case. However, how do you deal with historical sources using this principle? The BBC, for example, reported on prior convictions before the new case, but removed them from current reports. Should we follow the lead of the old reports, or the new ones? Tim Vickers (talk) 23:43, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
We have no problem with citeing older sources. I've used sources dateing back to 1901.Geni 03:06, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

We cannot do this, The Zimbabwe hypothetical makes the problem clear. To distinguish between Scotland and Zimbabwe would be the essence of introducting our POV about these countries into the matter. Moreover, the moral claim is extremely weak given that many countries such as the United States and most European countries function just fine without any sub judice restrictions. The probability that we will create an actual problem is miniscule and all the more so when the information in our articles are easily accessible elsewhere anyways. JoshuaZ (talk) 00:20, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

The difference is that here we have been asked to hold off on information because it might potentially unfairly weight a juror against the defendant. That's very different from being asked to suppress something because a state like Singapore or Zimbabwe wants it suppressed for the state's own ends. Note also that most European trials are not before juries. Jheald (talk) 01:25, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


The basic principle here is that we are an encyclopedia devoted to accurate NPOV presentation of sourced material, in accord with verifiability; we do not aim at truth. We rely only on other published material, we do not report or interpret. Much less do we judge. The BLP prohibition are aimed at ensuring even more than for other articles this NPOV and nonjudgmental presentation of matters affecting living people, especially in critical situations. Our job is to do the articles right. What the world does with them is not our concern. There is an exception: "do not harm," which in general means we will not make minor negative matters more prominent than they would be otherwise--this limitation is necessary because of the extent that WP is noticeable. This does not apply when we properly cover widespread public reports from good news sources, while it does were we to further disseminate irresponsible tabloid gossip, Additionally, we consequently apply do not harm most stringently in matters involving children.
that's the principles here. How do they apply? Each jurisdiction has its own rules for how court proceedings are to be conducted and what is admissible, and how the objectivity of juries and other hearing bodies is to be ensured. Sometimes this involves news blackouts before or during the trial. Such limitations can obviously apply only to media within their jurisdiction. As legal requirements they would only apply to us if matters of US law applicable in Florida, and then the legal advice of the WMG is relevant and binding. Otherwise, its our judgment. By the standards of most people not accustomed to the UK restrictions, trying to prevent a jury from knowing about the prior convictions in this case would seem a quixotic enterprise, bound to fail, and the contribution that WP could make to such knowledge would be insignificant. It may not be seen this way in the UK. Do we then let each community limit us in reporting according to local mores and regulations? By tradition, other language WPs do sometimes try to observe the customs of their primary area, but for the English WP we are cosmopolitan and more bound than any other WP to adopt a global view. Considering the possibilities for censorship, I think we need to hold to that position. If court orders are isued, then it is a matter for the WMF. If not, they wisely choose to leave it in our hands. I think there is only one consistent way of proceeding compatible with NPOV: to follow our own rules, regardless of the requests of local authorities. Those requests can be seen as dictates, and our objectivity is then at their mercy. In particular, no one administrator has any business making exceptions to this. As a consensus of our very cosmopolitan nature, there is no time of the day or night where some attempt at consensus can not be asked. In the absence of such consensus, or in a situation so extreme as to make such consensus totally predictable, such actions are unequivocally wrong and amount to the imposition of private standards on the encyclopedia. DGG (talk) 02:09, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Posting this after conflicting with DGG, but that post reminds me of the difficulties between worldwide communities and local concepts of obscenity or decency. Good points. Now, on with the original post...

Those are some excellent points, Protonk; JoshuaZ's concerns above bring up a similar question: if we're not going to treat all government requests equally, how do we justify that in a way that doesn't introduce a serious systemic bias? My initial gut reaction was that we should follow the lead of reliable sources. Tim's pointed out that the BBC has omitted the convictions from new reports, without editing old reports... but given we only have the one article to work with, I'm not sure if we can follow an equivalent method very easily.

If this information is already readily available from a single Google search, are we simply fooling ourselves to think we're an important factor in this equation?

On the whole, I'm very nervous about giving outside groups the authority to decide our content, but I can see that there are some compelling issues here. One potentially useful question we haven't covered so much: assuming we agree to blank articles in these circumstances, what prompts that blanking? Request from the subject? Request from a participating attorney? Request from the court hearing the case? Our own initiative? Foundation decision? What constitutes a risk/problem of this sort, and who gets to decide? How do we set up a reasonable framework to keep ourselves from falling down a slippery slope? I worry that today we're blanking an article to avoid prejudicing a trial, and tomorrow we'll be blanking John McCain and Barack Obama to avoid prejudicing voters during an election. (yeah, I know that election's passed, but you catch the drift) – Luna Santin (talk) 02:23, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

But we already have a perfectly functional way to deal with requests to change content equally. We tell them to go to hell and ensure that our content decisions are made in accordance with our content guidelines. This has the advantage of already being policy. I don't mean to be glib, but that's a simple solution that doesn't endanger our core principles or force us to decide which government requests to honor. Protonk (talk) 02:30, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I should say that I don't mean requests for OVERSIGHT or requests to delete marginal BLPs or courtesy blank non-articles. There are human beings out there and this is just a website. But when people ask for an article to be deleted (As was discussed above), the right answer is to send it to AfD--the community seems to be pretty good at weighing subject requests against the article itself. Protonk (talk) 02:32, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
That's the way I'm leaning, actually. :) I suppose you could say my question above has two potential goals, either of which I think I'd be happy to see realized: (1) it becomes clear that there's consensus regarding specific circumstances in which we should swiftly remove otherwise sourced and valid content to avoid undesirably impacting ongoing legal proceedings, and we move on from there, or (2) it becomes clear there is no objective way to describe such circumstances and responses in a way that would reliably fix the problem (and, therefore, that we'd risk damaging the encyclopedia for no real benefit). Obviously this is an area where we should be careful, but I don't think blanking an article and running away from it should necessarily be called "careful." – Luna Santin (talk) 02:43, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
We cannot and should not be held responsible for information already existing in the public sphere. If the legal authorities in Scotland are afraid of already published information, which had already existed in the public sphere before this trial started, might taint the jury, it is their responsibility to deal with it, not ours. The jury can be sequestered, or enjoined from accessing any media, or any number of things, but at any given time there are likely thousands of ongoing criminal trials, and a number of them may involve people who had Wikipedia articles before said trial existed. It is not our responsibility to take these articles down because some judge feels the information that existed before his trial started may or may not influence his trial. Doing so is both impractical as a general policy, and unneccessary as we are not an arm of the government, and we are not responsible for these matters. It is a Scottish legal system problem, let the Scottish legal system figure out how to deal with this case. There should be no general policy dealing with these issues; and there should be no specific action in this case. The article should be restored, and treated under the standard protections of WP:BLP and nothing else... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 03:54, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I have served on a jury in a felony case in the U.S. The jury was instructed not to read any press accounts about the crime or the accused. I suggest that this is what the judge in Scotland (or China, or Iran, or North Korea, or Zimbabwe) should do rather than demanding that NPOV, well referenced facts about the crime or the accused be "temporarily" removed from Wikipedia. We should ourselves, on an ongoing basis, keep every article NPOV and well referenced, and in compliance with WP:BLP. Can the judge remove all information about the accused, the victim and the crime from Google News Archive, from Google Books, from Proquest, and from Newspaperarchive.com, which are the typical sources for the Wikipedia article? I do not think that is possible. Instead, any judge should be able to instruct the jury not to visit the crime scene to do his own Crime Scene Investigation, not to do his own interviews of witnesses, not to talk to people about the trial, and not to read about the trial, the crime, or the accused. Has there ever, in the history of Wikipedia, been a case where a conviction was overturned on appeal because there was well sourced information related to it in Wikipedia? Has there ever been a case where a conviction was overturned because of biased press reports, which are a far bigger problem? We should not take one word out of any article on the supposition that someone MIGHT read the truth and it MIGHT influence his vote on someone's guilt or innocence. I submit that information in Wikipedia articles should only be suppressed when it is unavoidable as an office action in response to a formal process delivered to the Wikimedia Foundation. It is an issue for Mike Godwin and the Foundation, not for us, and not for those seeking some advantage for the defense or the prosecution in some case, at whatever cost to intellectual freedom of an encyclopedia. I see no logical, moral or legal basis for a "courtesy coverup" in which BBC articles about previous convictions are kept out of an article. Mike Godwin is welcome to weigh in with his views as the Foundation's attorney. I agree with Jayron32. Edison (talk) 05:16, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Isn't this discussion already over? - take the Tobin case that kicked this off - that is now being edited according to the law in scotland on reporting - and the talkpage tells you that will be enforced. It's a complete joke - if I add sourced material to that article - what policy or guideline am I breaching - none, but I will still be blocked --Cameron Scott (talk) 12:20, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

This [2] may be pertinent. "Update: Mike Godwin replied to my email. His response is below. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 17:18, 26 October 2008 (UTC) "The Foundation's official position is that we are subject to American law, including the state and Constitutional law doctrines governing defamation in the United States. The Foundation would oppose any BLP policy that recognized and attempted to adapt to the defamation laws of any other jurisdiction. We are of course aware that some individuals may attempt to sue is in a foreign jurisdiction and attempt to enforce such a judgment in the United States. We have prepared for that possibility.

"Under no circumstances should the BLP policy be altered as a reaction to perceptions of the risk of defamation liability in non-U.S. jurisdictions."

Which rather strongly implies that BLP policies are not to use any consideration other than US and Florida law, and theat there should be no BLP policy trying to address any other laws concerning defamation. Collect (talk)

This isn't about defamation. And it is not about us being forced to do anything. This is about us trying to do the right thing, and to not prejudice an individual from getting a fair trial. Jheald (talk) 12:46, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Well get blanking them - I can point you in the direction of over a 100 cases - when do you want to get started? or do you want to make the case for *this* being a special case? and how do you plan to write it into BLP policy --Cameron Scott (talk) 12:49, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
100 articles about cases currently between charge and trial, in jurisdictions with sub judice rules, where we have been specifically advised that historical material in our article might be prejudicial? Are you sure? Jheald (talk) 13:01, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
So we are now getting somewhere - so it requires that a) the country asking has SJ laws and b) that a direct request is made? is that your position? --Cameron Scott (talk) 13:08, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
In a country without sub judice rules, the WP article is likely to be a drop in the ocean compared to other media discussion which is already available. But in a country with sub judice rules, the effect of a WP article may be much more significant. Secondly, most trials won't be particularly sensitive to material that might be in an article. But this one is, and we have specifically been told that. Jheald (talk) 13:19, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I normally support removing material that might harm a BLP, but I feel this case is absurd. Here is an article about this person elsewhere, but our version has been reduced to a stub at the request of a Scottish police officer? It's pointless censorship given how easy it is to find the information elsewhere; even the BBC refers to some of it. [3] WP really shouldn't facilitate nanny statism — it's the opposite of everything I thought we stood for. SlimVirgin talk|edits 13:25, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, the BBC link outlining his previous crimes is the second link on google - the BBC being far more significant and trustworthy in a uk context than us. --Cameron Scott (talk) 13:34, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Note that the BBC article was published immediately after the verdict in the Angelina Kluk case. The BBC did not publish it when the Kluk case was ongoing, nor when this case was ongoing.
The old version of our article is well written, well sourced, direct and powerful. And that's exactly what makes it so potentially prejudical to a jury which is supposed to be studying the facts of this case and only this case. Jheald (talk) 13:36, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

After reading Edison's perspective as a juror, I find myself agreeing with him for the most part. We absolutely cannot be held responsible for prejudicing a trial, but measures such as what AlisonW took should only be used as a last resort. The question now, as I see it, is whether extraordinary circumstances existed that deleting and stubbing was the only way to go. Could measures have been taken within the ordinary sphere of things? Blueboy96 13:37, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

It is still unclear to me if we need to keep the Tobin information unpublished, why details of his history still remain in the articles Angelika Kluk murder case.
I am also curious why it is the Scottish police who contacted us. In the U.S., wouldn't that be done by the District Attorney? Can someone explain the Scottish chain of command? Kingturtle (talk) 13:40, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
There is not a scottish police force as such - there are a number of forces that cover different geographical areas - one of those forces would have contacted us. What's confusing to me is that an earlier version of the tale was that the police had contacted us before contacting the court - in a later version, they contacted us on behalf of the court. So what's actually gone on here is as clear as mud. --Cameron Scott (talk) 13:45, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
The Scottish equivalent of the DA is usually a regional procurator fiscal, but for the more "serious" crimes I think generally it is the Lord Advocate or a deputy who prosecutes, either an advocate-depute or the Solicitor General for Scotland. Frank Mulholland is the prosecutor in this case, and he is the Solicitor General. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 14:32, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Policies such as NPOV and NOR are apply to direct statements in articles. They don't apply to editorial decisions made about article content. Saying that it's a POV to listen to Scotland but not to China is like saying that it's a POV to decide that the Weekly World News is a less reliable source than the New York Times--in some literal sense it's a point of view, but it's not what the rules about POVs refer to.

The point is that we should exclude information because it's the right thing to do. Deciding that something is the right thing to do inherently involves human judgment, and can't be reduced to rules. You actually have to argue that China is less trustworthy than Scotland, without being able to point to a rule which distinguishes those cases. For some reason, this scares people who thinks that acceptable behavior is completely outlined by rules and nothing else. But it must be done.

I mean, really, if the jurors don't take their own responsibility as jurors seriously enough to not do independent research, there's nothing Wikipedia can do about that.

Yes, there is. We can stop being an enabler for bad jurors. Just because the jurors, by being bad, are partly responsible doesn't mean we aren't partly responsible too. Ken Arromdee (talk) 22:17, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Does this logic apply to all articles on Wikipedia? Because the simple truth is that almost all information can be used for "bad" purposes. We've got an article on cyanide that someone could use to synthesize it and use it to poison someone. Would that make Wikipedia an "enabler" for that activity? Of course not. How people use the information that we provide is not our concern. Our purpose is merely to provide the information in an encyclopedic manner. -Chunky Rice (talk) 22:30, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
The logic does apply to all articles on Wikipedia, including the cyanide article--but then, the logic is "we have to make judgment calls on an individual basis, rather than using a blanket rule". There's no reason to expect that the judgment calls here and there would produce the same result.
And it's not a question of whether something could happen, but of how likely it is to happen. If you were seriously suggesting editing the cyanide article that way I would just reply that I don't think that harm is as likely from the cyanide article as from this one. Ken Arromdee (talk) 21:57, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

And then we can take out articles on all major laws because jurors might pay attention to our articles instead of instructions from judges. Moreover, trying to distinguish between which countries have acceptable forms of censorship and which don't is not at all the same as deciding which sources are reliable and which are not. Reliable sources have clear objective standards that everyone agrees upon. There may be some borderline cases but they aren't that major in general. In contrast, deciding which countries are democratic enough or have a trustworthy enough judicial system allows massive POV injection (including the implicit POV that there is something inherently better about judicial systems with checks and balances and transparency) JoshuaZ (talk) 22:33, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Proposed guidance

Reading carefully through the arguments above I think I'm persuaded that we should not blank articles in response to requests from either the legal team defending an accused, or the prosecuting lawyers. Such requests should be raised on the BLP noticeboard and the article carefully examined for verifiability and NPOV. I do think we need to be very cautions, so stubbifying or deleting biased articles is entirely acceptable - as the policy already states. Overall, I think BLPs on people accused of crimes need to be treated like we treat politicians' biographies during elections, as articles where we need to be extremely careful about what we publish, but not as candidates for automatic deletion. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:44, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Agreed in principle, but here we have a situation where persons unknown contatcted Alison who took the cautious step in light of the request of blanking the page, effectively for the duration of the trial. We're still left guessing if this is an aspect of Scots law, and also English law, that requires removal of information to avoid tainting a jury trial. My suggestion would be for Mike Godwin as the Foundation's attorney to investigate this in principle with the relevant authorities, presumably the the Lord Advocate or the Solicitor General for Scotland, to establish if there is a problem and if we should do anything about it beyond taking particular care to achieve high BLP standards in such cases. . . dave souza, talk 17:47, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
(ec)....but Mike was asked and he kicked the question back the the community. Let's assume for a minute that Allison correctly verified the identity of the person asking (I believe she did). Let's also assume that all english common law countries share this SJ principle and that it is within the legal rights of those governments to demand that properly published materials about those cases be taken down within their border (in other words, the Times of London will have to take down a non-libelous article upon receiving a SJ request). Let us further assume that those same governments have the power to restrain future publication of material for the duration of the case. Given that those might all be true (in some varying degrees I believe they are), the question then becomes: what do we do when we receive a good faith request that we take content down from an English common law government? And I'm being perpetually shocked that the unanimous answer from wikipedians isn't "do nothing except ensure that we have the most accurate and fair article possible". Protonk (talk) 17:57, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
When contacted, he said it was a community matter and nothing to do with the WMF. --Cameron Scott (talk) 17:53, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Mike passed on it. Ergo, it's our call, and I see no obstacle to pursuing the proposed course, whereby we all stop jumping at shadows, restore the article minus any statements that don't pass BLP, and go back to building an encyclopedia. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 18:06, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
oh and can we make it requirement that if an admin deletes an article and replaces it with a legal notice that they report it somewhere? --Cameron Scott (talk) 18:35, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
The case has closed with Peter Tobin being convicted as charged, the question now is whether the next case of a defendant with previous convictions means that we can or should be requested to blank the article, or delete specific information that is sub judice and could taint a jury. . . dave souza, talk 18:38, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
From my reading of this thread Protonk, SlimVirgin, DGG and some others have the right idea:
1. We should absolutely not censor verifiable material at the request of authorities (what part of WP:NOTCENSORED is unclear?).
2. Although we should try to be ethical, it is not our responsibility to ensure someone gets a fair trial, but the responsibility of the justice system in a particular community. In fact it is unethical of a government to try to offload its responsibility onto others inside (and outside) of its jurisdiction, and we should not countenance such behavior. Granted, the internet creates tricky problems for a justice system, but the justice system must find ways to deal with it. It is fundamentally not our problem, and it is unethical of us to deprive people of information simply because a justice system doesn't want to deal with the issue by adequately screening or educating jurors. Indeed, if there is some non-trivial chance that a murderer will go free because some anonymous strangers somewhere put up a web page, then the idea of "justice" is rather a moot point in that country.
3. It's completely unworkable to have a list of BADSTATES with which we decide to ignore censorship requests (such as China, Zimbabwe), while honoring those from states not on the list. This would fuel nationalistic fires and complicate editing where "good" states have differences.
4. We should keep in mind censorship should be vigorously resisted especially where a "reasonable" case can be made for it -- where the free exchange of information might conceivably do some harm. This is how freedom is attacked in modern democracies, not by canceling elections and jailing the opposition, but by gradually squeezing at the edge cases where freedom is harder to defend, and then, when people get used to a little reasonable censorship for the public good, squeezing some more.
5. We should stick to our BLP policy to remove false and potentially libelous material, but basically give the finger to authorities attempting to suppress accurate information.--Fletcher (talk) 19:19, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I think there are credible differences between a request from China to pull all material on a subject, or to make an article conform to their request, and a request to temporarily pull information from an article during a trial. We should deal with this issue sensitively and with wikilove especially to the families of the victims.

  1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and does not need to have all information at all times. There is no censorship where the information remains easily available in the history and where the information will be restored promptly.
  2. We should do no harm and the release of a guilty child abuser (with recidivism so high with that crime) would do tremendous harm to future victims
    I personally believe that we can balance our encyclopedic goals and do no harm by taking the very minor step of withdrawing information from the article for a few weeks (or at most months)
  3. We have a responsibility we wouldn't have had several years ago because Wikipedia is a high profile website that comes up high in search results
  4. Finally, we should have more than a stub article - an article that covers the current event and some biographical information about the accused without links to past acts (it is much easier to keep reading on the same page than to search for it or to go through references). However, a notice that past acts have been removed pending the resolution of the current matter seems reasonable.

Yes Wikipedia is not censored but it is also not a soapbox. I fear that it becomes one when we include such information without regard to the potential harmful effects. --Trödel 19:51, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Most of what you say is sensible but this - We should do no harm and the release of a guilty child abuser (with recidivism so high with that crime) would do tremendous harm to future victims is just emotional blackmail of the lowest order. --Cameron Scott (talk) 20:02, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm confused why you consider it emotional blackmail. I see this as being fully informed of the possible consequences of each decision (and in fact the article that generated this discussion was about a child molester who demonstrates significant recidivism). Whether (release of the accused) is a likely consequence or not I'm not sure - IANA"UK"L. However, I do think it would be irresponsible to not discuss the possible effects of the policy on which we seek consensus. As a person who is generally against setting general rules based on fringe possibilities, I would be happy with a general policy that differed from the an acknowledged exception for child molester cases (if we determine that this particular example is an unlikely outlier compared to the vast majority of articles that this policy would impact). --Trödel 20:20, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
It should be clear why it is emotional blackmail. Let's say the scottish police came to us and said "We have a trial of someone who evaded their taxes" or "we have a trial of someone who drove on a suspended license" and we would like you to take down info about this person based on SJ. That is emotionally very different from "here is the trial of this child rapist". Of course it is easy to say yes to helping the authorities with child rapists. Who wants to be "pro-child rapist"? This is the same reason internet data collection and anonymity laws in the US are almost always presented from the viewpoint of stopping the spread of child pornography. If you vote against it the attack ads write themselves. What Cameron is saying is that we shouldn't infect this discussion with vague assertions to "do no harm" and then allude to child rape. The implied connection is that malfeasance (or inaction) on our part would directly result in something as horrific as child rape or more generally result in a child rapist being set free. If I'm considering the net benefit and I have that in my mind, what am I going to do? When speaking in terms of developing a general principle it is dishonest (intentionally or not) to appeal to the most extreme possible case. Protonk (talk) 00:07, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
I agree that your example ie we were asked because of taxes and if I made an argument supported by the child rapist then it could well be and emotionally charged argument; however, that is not the case - the article in question was about a child rapist - so it is relevant. I know of no other times wherein an editor removed text from an article as a result of a request by police - the only one where an editor thought that it was prudent to remove the text was where the accused was a child rapist and murderer. So I think our policies are, in general, working just fine - an editor made a hard decision and it can be supported either way and now we should discuss what we should do as a community should this issue come before us again (and "this issue" is what we can define as we reach consensus.
We should not, however, just say "WP:CENSOR says we don't have to do what the policeman asked." I am not arguing that Wikipedia has a legal obligation to do what the policeman asked, I am saying that we should do good, we should be helpful while reporting/editing things. --Trödel 00:40, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
I disagree strongly that CENSOR says "we don't have to". The law says we don't have to. CENSOR says there is a moral imperative and a community practice in refusing to do so. "doing good" could mean editing the Tienanmen square article to support the desires of the chinese government. "Doing good" could mean removing verifiable, neutrally reported facts about the war in iraq because the presence of those facts may dampen public enthusiasm for that war. "Doing good" could mean any of those. I'm saying, and have been saying this whole time, that Wikipedia should not honor those requests on the basis of implied need or some sense of civic duty. If, in the future, something like this comes up, the article can be sent to AfD. If in the most implausible case, some government says "Wikipedia article XYZ represents a clear threat to public safety, please remove it" then it could be removed and sent immediately to DRV (I can't think of any possible case where an article on wikipedia that meets BLP/NOT/NOR/V/NPOV would run into that situation). Doing anything more than that shirks our responsibility to build a free and neutral encyclopedia. Protonk (talk) 01:02, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand how you could possibly see any comparable moral/ethical equivalence between deciding how to honor a request to delay the inclusion of information during a trial to permanently editing articles to push a specific point-of-view proposed by the chinese govt, war supports, etc. --Trödel 01:24, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
There isn't. We aren't relying on my moral compass. I could be a child molester. I could be the pope. I could have worked for the FBI under Hoover. Who knows what my mores are? Especially with regard to administrator tools, it is absolutely the wrong thing for me to make a moral judgment before I delete/protect something. What if I support Chinese dissidents? It is the "right thing" for me to delete/remove information that favors the chinese government? Of course not. We have a chauvinistic and anglocentric perspective if we think that doing the bidding of the UK government is clearly correct and doing the bidding of the chinese government is beyond the pale. WP:NPOV and WP:CENSOR avoid that concern entirely. We don't do the bidding of either. If a government says "we have rules about exposing our citizens to information and therefore need you to remove information on wikipedia" the answer is always no. What would we do if the UK government sent us a DA-Notice? Protonk (talk) 01:35, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
ahh - so now the request of a democratic govt to prevent the possible release of information that could effect the outcome of a criminal trial is the same as supressing Chinese dissidents.
To see that there is a difference is not anglocentric and chauvinistic but a common-sense judgment that reflects not an individuals specific ethics/morality - but the community's ethics/morality. If individual admins make decisions that you are worried about the community will respond and they will either come in line with the community's standards (i.e. not delete things because of there personal POV) or they will do acts - like overturning consensus, reverting, abusing their admin tools, etc. that will result in them losing there status and possible rights to edit based on those actions and not on their point of view. --Trödel 01:44, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
I guess I'll be blunt. Policy on this wiki (as it has been for a long, long time) says we should not respond to requests to take down content from individuals or government outside our normal content policies. I see no reason why "but it is a good reason" or "it is from a common law country" present sufficient force of persuasion to overcome that hump. Further, we do this because we DONT have to rely on your opinion about the chinese government. Or mine. Or our opinion about the american government. Or the british. We don't need to make value judgments about countries in order to do policy. We just say "no". Back to my last question, if the UK government is so sensible, what do we say to a DA notice? Protonk (talk) 01:55, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
DA-Notice - we don't just dismiss it because it came from the UK but we consider the content of the request and compare that to our policies as you advocate'
  • Does it ask for the removal of personal information of a undercover agent - then we may comply including oversight since it may not be from a RS - if it is from a RS then we advise the requestor that is widely known and they should get that agent out quickly.
  • Is it to remove information critical of the UK govt that was published in a dissident magazine out of reach of the UK legal system - then we tell them no
I think we are closer to agreement that it may at first seem --Trödel 02:01, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
I know you are leaving so we will see this tomorrow. I think that the solution (like I said below) is just to send it to AfD. We receive a message from someone to take down a page that meets our content guideline, we send it to the community. If a community discussion agrees that balancing this external request ag