User:Grace Note
BLP
This is just wrong in so many ways.
Foremost among them is that "notability" is a subjective measure, so a subject's judgement that they are not "notable" cannot be said to be inferior to Mr Herbert's view that they are. It's pure arrogance on our part to set ourselves up as arbiters of "notability".
Also important is that we base our work on sources, so we take to be notable that which others have considered notable. We rely heavily on newspapers. But newspapers consider bad news notable and good news not very notable at all. So articles on borderline subjects will be skewed to the bad, entirely unavoidably. The key notion here is that it is impossible to create a balanced portrait of people about whom not much has been written. Is this really not clear to the likes of Mr Herbert? We cannot fairly describe the "borderline notable" because they haven't had enough good press and we discount websites, personal testimony, anecdote and so on. The problem is not that what we say is not accurate. It's that what we say is nothing like the whole story.
The arrogance that informs this view runs deep. Have a look at the article on Jimmy Swaggart. Naturally, Mr Swaggart is noted for the scandals that humbled him. So editors with a particular view (one I share, I should note, broadly speaking) want to get as much in about his misdeeds as they can. It's all accurate and sourced, so pace Mr Herbert, there's no reason to question it. However, the article is not balanced. It's not a fair portrait of Mr Swaggart in the round. Few of our articles about those who have been involved in scandals are. Editors have to fight extremely hard to make these articles fair by any reasonable standard. Mr Swaggart's article should not be "A collection of the various misdeeds of Jimmy Swaggart". It should not be, in my view, something that he himself would consider fair. He might not like that his scandals are covered. If he wrote it himself, he might take them out altogether. But we can, and should, produce articles that he would agree were a fair portrait.
This should in every case be our standard. If the material does not exist to make the article that would meet it, we should strongly consider not having that article. This: "If the facts don't show a positive light on someone's life or activities, then that's their problem, not ours." is just ugly. We define the "facts" here. It may be a fact that Mr Swaggart is a good husband and a fine father, but we do not say so. It may be a fact that Daniel Brandt is/was nice to his mother, but we do not say so. Mr Herbert's contention would only hold if we admitted all facts about people, and not just those that have appeared in the mass media. In effect, Mr Herbert is saying "If what's been printed about you doesn't represent you fairly, well, tough shit."
Mr Herbert talks about our charter to be "neutral". But we are not, and don't try to be, neutral at all. At best, you could claim that our aim is to be dispassionate. But not neutral. Whatever the intention of the policy on NPOV, and I take it to be that we should be neutral, that is not its effect, when taken together with other policies. Instead of being balanced and fair, which would seem to be parts of being neutral, we tend to the salacious. We are more likely to post a list of gossip about the "borderline notable" than we are to present them fairly and fully.
I will not comment much on this: "We are, all things considered, probably uniquely the most reliable non-commercial source on the Internet." because it is so clearly a statement based entirely on fantasy. We would do much better to be extremely humble about what we have made here. No one should rely on Wikipedia. It's a useful tool for finding out about a thing, a launchpad, but it is not a resource in itself. I do not believe that as things stand, it ever will be.
Mr Herbert ends defiantly: "It would, in my humble opinion, be the end of Wikipedia to change into a WarmFuzzyPedia, and I will resist you to the last if you insist on going that direction."
I don't think I've ever seen a clearer statement of what's wrong with Wikipedian culture. It's simply indecent. It's not the statement of someone who is trying to achieve any of the goals Mr Herbert claims to aim at! As Doc Glasgow pointed out, echoing what some have been saying for some time, our structures do not permit the achievement of those aims. We simply cannot, as policy stands, fairly describe nobodies. We can only echo the shit that's been thrown at them. If we must be WarmFuzzyPedia to stop hurting people like that, then I embrace the warmfuzziness.
Above all, I urge no first bio and optouts for nobodies.
Harmful content
Any editor who posts defamation about another editor on or off site should be banned from this site. They should not be unblocked until they have removed the defamation and made reparation to the person they have harmed.
Why bother voting?
Why bother voting if our votes are just ignored by the powerful to give patronage to their friends?
Optouts
I strongly support optouts for nobodies
Old thoughts
Don't touch the KoolAid
"The term cult is now often used to refer to contemporary religious groups whose beliefs and practices depart from the conventional norms of society."
From Columbia, a proper encyclopaedia.
If you don't think this is a religious group, why do we all worship a bearded guy for no discernible reason?
Distinctive rituals and special beliefs make cults, not coercion.
On socking up for nefarious purposes
If I wanted to float policy ideas but did not want scrutiny from websites that cannot be linked to, I might set up a stalking horse. It would arouse suspicion from observers but they could not find a trail from it to me.
I haven't done it. I have nothing to lose by suggesting changes in policy myself. But, and I can't name names, someone has recently. I'm not an edit analyser but if I was, I daresay I would be able to find out who it was quite quickly. The picture is a fake, btw, and that might be a good place to look. But like I say, I'm not interested in the shell game here.