User:Geo Swan/opinion/When BLP protection backfires

When BLP privacy protection backfires

The wikipedia's policy on WP:Biographies of living persons contains provision to protect the privacy and dignity of individuals -- which sometimes backfire.

BLP was made a policy in 2007. Prior to that time the wikipedia had no formal protection for the privacy and dignity of individuals -- beyond commons sense. The WP:BLP1E clause states that it is intended to protect individuals who never sought fame or notoriety, who nevertheless passed the cusp of WP:Notability (people), due to their involvement in a single event. The policy recommends that such individuals' roles should be covered in articles about the events, not in a biographical articles named after them.

When an event triggers a formerly non-notable person to become an advocate

BLP1E allows exceptions -- articles about individual known largely or solely for a single event, whe the event is significant enough, or when the individual's role is central enough. In my opinion it is unfortunate that this clause is routinely ignored, or argued against as inapplicable.

In particular, we have covered individuals, who never set out to be famous or notorious, had fame/notoriety forced upon them by events -- who then choose to become advocates for reforming public policy around the kind of events that made them famous/notorious. When that event pushes such individuals past the cusp of notability, applying BLP1E's ambiguous suggestion that they should be covered in an article on the event, hinders their cause.

A wikipedia BLP should be neither a reward not a punishment

Individuals who want to be a spokesperson for a cause are not entitled to a wikipedia BLP, solely on that basis. Wikipedia articles are not supposed to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. The wikipedia's role is not advocacy, but neutrality. Individual who are spokespersons should only be covered if they measure up to the criteria for GNG, or some other special purpose notability guideline.

Instances when claims to protect individuals actually hurt them

Some years ago Arkansas had some surprisingly draconian laws on the books on "sexual offenders". All sexual offenders were listed on a public list. All sexual offenders were subjected to draconian restrictions on where they could live -- intended to protect children, even when the nature of their offense meant that they weren't a threat to children.

I learned of these laws when I came across a shocking AFD, where the nominator argued that BLP required the deletion of an article about a grandmother who was a listed as being convicted of a sexual offense in in Arkansas. The nomination claimed BLP required deletion of the article in order to protect the grandmother's privacy.

What the nomination failed to mention was that this grandmother had made the decision, years earlier, that she was the target of a bad law, and this had triggered her to sacrifice her privacy so she could advocate for reform of this law.

We are supposed to aim for neutrality. If the grandmother's attempts to advocate for reform had only gotten her interviewed on her local cable access show, or in her church's monthly newsletter, she'd fall way short the requirement for substantial coverage. However, over the years, she had been interviewed on some nation-wide PBS shows, and had been interviewed by the Economist magazine -- the UK's equivalent to Time or Newsweek. So, she would have sailed through GNG.

While I a am not to accuse the nominator, or those who voiced delete opinions of bad faith, I think it has to be said that the nomination's claim to be protecting the privacy of this advocate for reform could have been seen as an attempt to subvert the wikipedia's policies to further punish her.

What the grandmother did to get listed as a sexual offender was to allow her daughter's boyfriend to move in to her house, after her daughter got pregnant. Her daughter was under the legal age to legally give consent. She told the grandmother her boyfriend loved her, and wanted to marry her, and raise their child together. The grandmother's crime was knowlingly allowing her underage pregnant daughter to continue to have sexual relations with the fiance who got her pregnant.

A successful deletion in this AFD could have looked like the wikipedia had allowed extreme advocates for teen sexual abstinence to punish those who had sex before marriage, and punish the family members who allowed this.

Sexual assault of Savannah Dietrich

I first read about Savannah Dietrich today. My personal opinion, after reading the profile of her in Newsweek, is that she was a young woman who was the target of a sexual assault, who wanted to try to fight being made the on-going victim of sexual assault. Boys who took