User talk:Superluser/Reliable Sources for Biographies of Living People

It's a toughy! I'll be thinking about this in class today. Thanks for asking for my input. --Rebent

And thanks for inviting me from our discussion on the Todd Goldman talk page. I will recapitulate my argument for new readers:

[Regarding the use of links to blog-type sites], Wikipedia opens itself to (in my opinion well-founded) criticism for double standards if well-off American businessmen like Todd Goldman are treated significantly differently than foreigners like Adnan Hajj.


 * Both Goldman and Hajj have been accused of undue and possibly criminal image manipulation
 * Both Goldman and Hajj have made partial admissions and lost an important source of income as a consequence
 * Both cases have been reported in major media
 * Both Goldman and Hajj were first exposed by bloggers, who provide ample pictorial evidence
 * Only Hajj's Wikipedia article has links to those blogs.

Your argument is "this is not a biography of a living person. It's not about Adnan Hajj, it's about the Adnan Hajj photographs controversy. Which is totally different. I guess". The simple rebuttal would be, "Fine, would it be acceptable to put up a Todd Goldman plagiarism controversy article?"

If the answer is no, that further strengthens my argument that Wikipedia may rightly be accused of double standards. MeteorMaker 11:24, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

It's totally different. I guess.
MeteorMaker has picked up on a point that I apparently didn't make clear enough. How, exactly, is an article about the Adnan Hajj photographs controversy different from an article about Adnan Hajj, especially when the article in question has no implications for anyone other than Hajj?

I don't think there is a difference, and I think that most people would agree. So whatever is permissible under Adnan Hajj photographs controversy should be permissible under Adnan Hajj, in my opinion. It's really silly to read that sort of article differently from a biographical article, but I'll bet that some people do.

I don't think that people would let you make a Todd Goldman plagiarism controversy article, since it would be extremely short, and would wind up getting merged back into Todd Goldman.

As for the Hajj article, I'm going to look into it and make a few changes. superlusertc 2007 July 11, 18:47 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I agree that the difference between Adnan Hajj and Adnan Hajj photographs controversy is minimal - particularly since, as you have pointed out, Adnan Hajj redirects to Adnan Hajj photographs controversy. To give you my best answer to your question, the Adnan Hajj article does indeed have implications for others than Hajj: Wikipedia itself, as I have warned, appears to violate its own stated policies (WP:NPOV, WP:RS) by applying different sets of rules to different people - whether of different nationality, ethnicity, or propensity for suing is irrelevant. This, in my opinion, is potentially a huge credibility issue.


 * Re the hypothetical Todd Goldman plagiarism controversy article, far from being "extremely short", it would in fact be longer than the remaining material in the Todd Goldman article if the existing "Accusations of plagiarism" section were given its own article. And that is even before the material is put back that had to be edited out in order to comply with WP:BLP, including links to numerous blogs (with higher credibility, I might add, than the notoriously partisan and, in one case, demonstrably incorrect blog pages that still remain linked to in the Hajj article).


 * However, I doubt such a page would last long. I have suggested it on the talk:Todd Goldman page and I am currently awaiting reactions.
 * MeteorMaker 21:12, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

"Foreigners"
As to the foreigners issue, Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia. The only people whom it is foreign to are those without access to the internet. Again citing Ernst Zündel, I don't think that he has any blogs against him, and in fact, he has some links to sites of questionable authority that support him. Zündel, a German Holocaust denier, anti-semite and Nazi sympathizer, is about as much of a "dirty foreigner" as you can get.

I don't think it's an issue of bias against foreigners, just a flawed policy that's being inconsistently applied. Goldman's article gets a bit of kid gloves treatment because he actually threatened to sue the Wikimedia Foundation. That's a double standard, and probably a bad one at that, but that's why some people are acting the way they are. superlusertc 2007 July 11, 19:00 (UTC)