User talk:QTJ/Archive/OnBiographies

The following arguments are just a starting point for discussion and are in no way an attempt at formal logic. (Arguments are given unique names in bold simply so they be referenced without need for full explanations later.) This is not meant to be an intellectual exercise in logic -- real people are put into distress by inclusion against their wishes. Please respect that.

Arguments "for" Inclusion

 * Cost-Benefit: The social benefit of providing information on notable people outweighs the potential harm those people might endure.
 * Hypothetical-vs-Tangible: The potential (and to date hypothetical) social benefit of providing biographical information on those who do not wish to be listed is being counted as having more value than the tangible distress those people express.
 * Cost-Shifting: See this counter-argument in the Arguments "against" Inclusion section below.
 * Teleological-Ethics: The end does not always justify the means. Good-via-harm?
 * Assumption-of-Harm: This implies harm, which is Hypothetical-vs-Tangible. Prove harm.
 * Assumption-of-Good-Faith: Some subjects of biographies express distress. (See Assumption-of-Good-Faith in the Arguments "against" Inclusion section below.) Expression of distress by the subject of such a biography is a tangible showing of harm. (See above for that.)
 * Slippery-Slope: If we allow X to self-veto inclusion of his/her bio, then we'll be opening up process for everyone (such as the infamous Y) to do the same.
 * Assumption-to-the-Precedent: The hypothesis that Y will cite the self-veto of X as precedent is hypothetical.
 * Assumption-of-Equal-Resilience: This argument assumes that X and Y are both equally potentially harmed and have equal abilities to mitigate that harm.
 * Just-as-Much-Right-to-Comment: The subject of every biography of a living person has just as much right (but not more) to comment during a deletion debate as anyone else.
 * Assumption-of-Desire: Not everyone desires to get involved in debate, even in those topics they feel strongly about.
 * Assumption-of-Ability: Not everyone has the natural or learned ability to debate cogently.
 * Assumption-of-Equal-Access: Not everyone has the resources to commit to debating.
 * Requirement-to-Belittle-Oneself: In order to prove a sufficient lack of notability, the subject of a bio would be required (were he or she to enter such a debate) to prove him or herself lacking notability. This presents a counter-intuitive situation: he or she must self-deprecate, in public, and show reasons why he or she is not notable. Speaking up against one's own self is demeaning.
 * Nobody's-Asking-Them-To-Get-Involved: Nobody demands they get involved and start belittling themselves.
 * Just-as-Much-Right-To-Comment: Then having just as much right to comment as anyone else would require them to comment how? This counter-argument enters an endless loop.
 * Mountain-out-of-a-Molehill: This doesn't happen often enough to form an official policy. It's too isolated.
 * Undue-Weight-by-Count: How many times did the X edit his own biography before it was newsworthy? Often? No. What was the impact of those few incidents? How many times did the Titanic sink? Once, and yet we still know about it.
 * The-Public-Not-the-Subject: The public, not the subject, determines who and who is not notable.
 * Generalization: While the public may determine who is notable (or at least the Internet using public), Wikipedians (through the debate process) determine whose bio is to stay, and whose is to go.
 * It-Ain't-Broke-So-Why-Fix-It: But that has worked for umpteen thousand biographies!
 * Counterexamples-Exist: And it has failed (at the human cost of misery) in some notable cases.
 * Only-a-Few: But only in a few notable cases has the bio caused ....
 * Undue-Weight-by-Count: See above.
 * Fame-is-Just-Like-That: If you dance with the devil, you gonna get burned: those who put themselves in the public fora by writing papers, web pages, and so on, risk becoming notable enough to be commented upon.
 * Byline-not-an-Invitation: A byline on a paper or webpage is not an invitation to reveal someone's birthday (if one can find it somewhere) in an encyclopedic context, nor is it an invitation to present a graffiti wall to Joe Random Vandal to smear the author attached to that byline. A byline on a paper or article is a claim to authorship.
 * Most-People-Would: Most people who fight over their own biographies fight to keep them up when someone asserts they're not notable. Many such bios get deleted. Most people would consider having their bio stay up after a debate a flattering honor.
 * The-Proverbial-Lake: If most people go jump in a proverbial lake, would you? Just because most people want their bios to remain (let's just assume this is true, it may not be), doesn't mean that those who categorically ask for them to be removed wish the same thing. They obviously don't, and have said so.
 * After-the-Fact: They say so after it becomes unflattering.
 * Undue-Weight-by-Count: Some say they don't want it from the get-go. See above for more on this counter-argument.
 * Lack-of-Distance: A biography's subject is to close to the subject (him or herself) and should not be permitted to throw a spanner into the works, since he or she cannot be objective about it.
 * This-Ain't-StarTrek: The real world is not Star Trek, and real humans aren't Spock (an entity able to look even at himself with total lack of feeling). While it sometimes helps to de-personalize an argument, this doesn't necessarily mean one should de-humanize it: the subject of a biography should not be expected to be distant-from-him/herself in order that his or her concerns about listing be heeded.
 * Goals-and-Ambitions: It is a goal of Wikipedia to [insert goal that supports any of the "pro" arguments here], and the desire to not be listed, while noted, is counter to this goal.
 * Anthropomorphization: Humans have goals. Wikipedia, while ultimately powered by humans, is not human, or any living entity. It is a technology. Technologies are telesis-neutral: they are tools. The subjects of such unwanted biographies, however, are human. They not only have goals, they have feelings. Wikipedia has no feelings to be hurt or disappointment to be felt if its goals are not reached.
 * Concensus-of-Purpose: True, but it is the concensus that formed those goals, and the concensus is made up of humans.
 * Anthropomorphization: Again ... consensus is not a human who has feelings to be hurt if the consensus goal is not reached. Consensus is a principle, not a principal.
 * The-Proverbial-Lake: (See above.)

Arguments "against" Inclusion

 * Cost-Shifting: Those who benefit (the public at large) do not pay the cost (the subject of the biography does).
 * Army-of-Editors: On Wikipedia, an army of admins and biography patrollers mitigate the cost to the subject by maintaining the biography's neutrality and reliance on reliable sources.
 * Trust-in-Unknowns: This requires those who do not necessarily agree to abide by the notion of the assumption of good faith to trust an unknown. Not every subject of every such biography is Wikipedia-aware enough to understand the processes behind such things: distress is not mitigated.
 * Assumption-of-Cost: Cost-shifting assumes the subject is paying a negative cost.
 * Assumption-of-Good-Faith: The principle of the assumption of good faith would tend towards this interpretation: if a biography's subject states there is a negative cost, there is, and only that subject is really qualified to make this determination about his or her own life.
 * Little-Cost: How much discomfort does a biography on Wikipedia really cause? (variation adding the Cost-Benefit clause: It's nothing compared to the benefit.)
 * Quantifying-an-Intangible: What unit is human discomfort measured in? Ughs? What unit is benefit measured in? Ahs? What is the acceptable $$Ah \over Ugh$$ ratio? Or is it more like the Pythagorean Theorem? $$Acceptability^2 = Ah^2+Ugh^2$$. C'mon ... we're talking about human discomfort here, not units on a line.
 * Lightning Rod: Biographies create an attractive nuisance, acting as lightening rods for vandals.
 * Army-of-Editors: As per above.
 * Already-Public: Nobody's biography stays for Wikipedia for long if they aren't already public figures in some way.
 * High-Threshold: While the name is public (due to a byline, which see the Byline-not-an-Invitation argument above), the person may not be. At least in the US (the jurisdiction of Wikipedia) a high threshold of public activity is required to elevate someone to the status of "public figure".
 * Limited-Purpose-Public-Figure: But that definition also lists the limited purpose public figure who thrusts him or herself into the limelight of certain limited issues.
 * Quid-pro-Quo: Are the biographies of limited purpose public figures also limited purpose biographies? For instance, does some limited purpose public figure X in field Y only get note for his or her contributions in field Y on Wikipedia biographies? Why post photographs and speculate or research the birthdays of such limited purpose figures? Is general public knowledge of the birthday of such a person notable, or just curiosity fulfillment?
 * Self-Selection-of-Venue: Limited public figures select the venues in which they are known (which is what "thrust themselves into ... particular public controversies" means) for a particular purpose (which is what "to influence the resolution of the issues involved" means). Wikipedia is a general repository of information that crosses venues. Some limited public figure X in venue Y may lose his or her right to self-selection of venue if dragged involuntarily into a more general venue by general exposure.
 * The-Public-Not-the-Subject: But the public not the subject gets to decide, once the genie is out of the bottle, whether or not the subject of a biography is a general public figure rather than a limited public figure. (See above section for counter-arguments.)