Talk:Jumaane Williams/Archive 1

Archive 1

BLP violation?

@Pharos: Four years ago, you added a categorisation of this article, indicating that Williams suffer from a certain illness. However, this was and is not supported by the text. I'm not sure this is in accordance with WP:BLP, since either this statement about a living person is something he himself openly has referred to in a sufficiently interesting context, or others have done the same with rather strong relevance for the activities for which he is known (and then this ought to be mentioned and well sourced in the article); or there is no strong public disclosure of this kind. In the latter case, I think that the categorisation should not have been made (whether or not the statement is true).

Do you agree; and, if so, can you rectify this? JoergenB (talk) 18:43, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

I have removed the category as unreferenced. This is a WP:BLP. Feel free to restore it if you provide a WP:RS reference.Dialectric (talk) 19:40, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@JesseRafe: Thanks for adding information about why this is relevant, together with relevant and reliable sources! You showed that it is relevant in the article, and therefore also for a categorisation. @Dialectric: Since your conditions were fulfilled, I put back the category.

JesseRafe, to answer your criticism in an edit summary, note first that for several years the category was there without any explanation why it was relevant or any sources — and IMHO both ought to have been provided before or together with the category, by the editors then working with the article. Secondly, not all can access or know how to collect and access these sources easily. I came to this article, since I'm working a little with various ombudsman related articles and categories. I'm a Swede, live in Stockholm, and do not subscribe the New York Times, just to mention some of the reasons why I could not easily have found these references.

I think that WP:BLP is rather important (and actually in the first place from an ethical point of view, not only to avoid the wikipedia project being sunk by some billion dollars indemnity costs). We should not sneak in irrelevant personal informations in our articles (about e. g. a persons illnesses, confession, or unrelated earlier trouble with the justice), not even when they are true and sourseable, by peripheral mentioning them, or, as here, only by categorising.

In this case, JesseRafe, you did not just validate the facts about Tourette's syndrom (and e. g. Williams' Baptist faith). You did something much more important. You showed that these facts were highly relevant for the public activities which make Williams noteworthy. In particular, in my opinion, you substantially improved this article. The fact that the category now can be put back is not as important as the fact that the article now is much improved, with much better explanations of the interaction between 'Williams the private man' and 'Williams the politician'. Thanks, again! JoergenB (talk) 18:35, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I agree with the peripheral "drive by" mentions, thus took the time to make it a reasonable section. I'm also almost certain it was in the main body and later removed, but the only mention I can find of it using edit summaries is its initial category addition in 2015, by Pharos, a venerable and respected NYC-focused editor. For those in NYC, and attuned to cit politics, Williams's Tourette's is basically a given, and it's front and center on his own about page. But thanks again for your attentiveness and concern about an unfamiliar subject! JesseRafe (talk) 19:16, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Well, thanks to you, not only New Yorkers but all us other enwiki readers now may read about these facts here.

I didn't check the net for sources; but I did search samples of historical versions of the article for the word Tourette. I found none, except the category (after it was added). You may be right, but, if so, I think the material had been removed at least for a couple of years, before Pharos added the category. (Of course, if there indeed used to be such text, Pharos may yet have been convinced that there still was some text about this in the main body.) JoergenB (talk) 20:14, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you both, there is certainly a substantial improvement and helpful contextualization of the article.--Pharos (talk) 11:09, 24 August 2019 (UTC)