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List:       wikien-l
Subject:    Re: [WikiEN-l] Libel chill
From:       Gallagher Mark George <m.g.gallagher () student ! canberra ! edu ! au>
Date:       2006-04-21 9:03:59
Message-ID: 1f18721ed2a7.1ed2a71f1872 () student ! canberra ! edu ! au
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G'day Steve,

> On 21/04/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > First of all, a neutral encyclopedia article is not an 
> unrestrained free
> > speech zone, and I think the rhetoric of someone's freedom of speech
> > being chilled is out of place to begin with. Second of all, it is
> > entirely consistent with our mission to seek to "chill" content 
> that is
> > decidedly non-neutral and in most cases fails to provide verifiable,
> > reputable sources for its assertions besides. Finally, in terms of
> 
> I would be curious to know - not necessarily with examples - whether
> we have had legal threats related to articles that did meet WP:V. That
> is, we published something which was by all accounts true, and had
> verifiable sources to back it up - and yet was deemed offensive by
> some miffed party.

It's not *exactly* what you're asking for, but ...

A while back soufron appeared on IRC asking for Australian editors to check up on our \
article on Piers Akerman, which had been the subject of a legal complaint.  I had a \
dekko, and it appeared that Mr Akerman was a South African who left to protest the \
end of apartheid and came to Australia, where he immediately began to indulge in a \
life of debauchery and drug use.  Or something like that.  Now, as any Aussie not too \
busy braiding their armpit hair could tell you, this is about as far from the life \
story of Mr Akerman as one could get.

I went in and found some sources and re-wrote the article.  My source was 11 years \
old, so I had to make some changes after he helpfully pointed out that, for example, \
he doesn't live in Melbourne anymore.  He was still unhappy about one thing: the \
article claimed that he'd quarrelled with his school headmaster and failed to \
complete his exams, whereas Mr Akerman says nothing of the sort happened.  Seeing as \
he didn't provide a source, I went with "/The Age/ says blah blah blah, but Mr \
Akerman denies this."  So far he seems to be happy with that arrangement, at least, I \
believe the Lawyer Cabal (TM) haven't received further complaints.

-- 
Mark Gallagher




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