Talk:Peggy Willis-Aarnio

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Personal life information

On Wikipedia it's not always easy to describe someone's life, because we are strictly limited to using only information that has already been published; not only that, the material can only come from someone with a prior reputation for being a reliable publisher.

Part of what this means is that every piece of information known by the family has to be erased from Wikipedia, unless that information has also made it into a newspaper, magazine, book, well-known website, or other publication; ones that are not connected with the subject's friends or family. For example, in this article it said the subject's mother was a professional model, and readers were directed to her obituary for proof - but the obituary has no word of her being a model, so the article had to be changed to match what the obituary says. Similarly, the article gives specific information on the subject's father's employment history, but in the source that's used to support it, it only mentions his rank in the navy, and says nothing about his assignments or when he was transferred from one place to another.

Unfortunately, the information being true, and the family being willing to make it public, are not enough. There has to be proof for everything, and unfortunately "the family said so" isn't proof.

This does create a difficult barrier to getting the story across, but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a community history book. TooManyFingers (talk) 19:48, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]