Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Rachel Marsden/Workshop

Question for the clerk
Are people other than arbitrators allowed to add to the proposed principles? Geedubber 21:33, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, the workshop subpage is the place for proposals. Anyone can make suggestions and comments. --FloNight 21:38, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Looking through recently closed arbitration case can help you find principles that apply to your case. --FloNight 21:41, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Things in wrong sections
I think some people are confused with how to use this page. For example, "The CBC documentary 'Sticks and Stones' stuff should go" should be a proposed remedy not a proposed principle. And "Wikipedia's policy regarding biographies of living persons should trump the three revert rule" should be a proposed principle not a proposed remedy. Geedubber 20:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

If a biography of a living person contains only negative information that article and its talk page may be reduced to a stub

 * If a biography of a living person contains only negative information that article and its talk page may be reduced to a stub

Doesn't this go too far? (To be clear, I have no interest in particular in Canadian politics or former politicians' aides-turned-columnists, and while I am generally conservative I think Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly are blowhards.) I can see that the Marsden article is significantly slanted. However, some people only generate coverage in reliable source media by doing bad things. If this principle is broadly adopted we will have to stub or delete all sorts of articles on notable criminals (at a rough start) because we can't find a reliable source that has written something nice about them. BLP is an important and powerful principle but we don't want to cripple ourselves, do we? Thatcher131 17:45, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

question about intermediate sources
If another editor confirms the original source, can/would the intermediate source citation be removed? Geedubber 03:44, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Original research
Under No original research 4: selective exclusion, Bucketsofg writes, "Selectively excluding material may result in a new synthesis and therefore be inconsistent with WP:NOR." That is a fair point. I would not want BLP to be misused by the supporters of fringe theories. We should not let them use us to legitimize their guru by suppressing negative information. The answer may be that there are just some people for whom we cannot maintin a biography that satisfies our policies. Maybe we need to raise the threshold of notability. Tom Harrison Talk 17:47, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
 * You raise another point here, Tom, that strikes me as quite important: notability. There are guidelines, of course, about when a subject is notable enough for an article.  But once an article exists, how do we decide what stays in and what goes?  My own criteria has been that, in a sense, these decisions were off-loaded to verifiability: that if something is important enough to make it in main-stream, reputable news media, it's probably worth including in an article.  But this criterion has  rejected by several people whom I respect, as wella as, I suppose, putting me in the uncomfortable spot in which I now find myself.


 * I think another important point needs raising. At least part of the question of notability seems to resolve to the question "notable-for-what?".  In his recent edit, Thatcher rejected and down-played some sourced material on the grounds that it was irrelevant to Marsden as a columnist/pundit.   But for some Canadians, especially from Vancouver and BC, Marsden's name is associated with a series of scandal stories in which (rightly or wrongly) she ended up looking like the guilty party: Donnelly in mid-1997, O'Hagan in late 1997 (part of the aftermath of Donnelly), Boyd in 2000, Morgan in 2002, Grewal (part of the aftermath of Morgan) in 2004.  To them, she is someone associated with the scandals who happened to become a columnist.   To Thatcher (e.g.), most of these controversies are not relevant or only barely relevant to her career as a pundit; to the others, the controversies are what they know and the columnist-punditry is almost part of "whatever-happened-to-x?".   Buck  ets  ofg  19:35, 21 October 2006 (UTC)