Talk:Sharyn O'Halloran

BLP issues

This article has been incorrectly marked for speedy deletion. Sharyn O'Halloran is a major academic figure, having published the leading articles on the political economy of US trade policy and minority voting rights. She is also a professor and major administrator at Columbia University and plays a key role in their expansion efforts. Therefore this page should not be deleted. David.l.epstein 18:04, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Are you not the husband (or former husband) or Ms. O’Halloran, Mr. Epstein? Nicmart (talk) 00:36, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

No outing or personal attacks here, please. Ray^Talk 03:14, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

There are no personal attacks. I fully documented the addition I made to Ms. O’Halloran’s entry about her husband (or ex-husband) and frequent professional collaborator being arrested for alleged incest. It is not gossip, it is an arrest, and I posted only information that is on the public record. I used credible sources for each statement of fact. This should not be censored. In addition, I noted that Mr. Epstein, who commented here, is apparently the man who is her husband, and should not be making recommendations about his wife’s entry without acknowledging his relationship with her. Nicmart (talk) 14:19, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I have posted a request for assistance on this contention to Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests. Before my additions are again deleted, it should be discussed there and here. Nicmart (talk) 14:47, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't see that this charge is relevant to the notability of the article subject, so I've removed the material again, per WP:BLP and WP:UNDUE. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 15:02, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Support the removal. Slander by association is not appropriate. Any actions he may have committed are not rel to this article. Active Banana (^bananaphone 15:04, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Dr. O’Halloran is, of course, discussed in every article about this arrest. You misunderstand slander laws, which do not pertain to the reporting of an arrest. Where do Wikipedia rules state that arrests should not be mentioned prior to conviction? Nicmart (talk) 15:11, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Nicmart. Material is relevant, well sourced, and does not carry undue weight, as it is just a sentence or two at end of the bio. "Slander" consists of a false statement, whereas the assertion Epstein was arrested and charged appears to be correct and verified by the sources. I think what we are seeing here and elsewhere is a philosophical battle whether Wikipedia bios should be equivalent to sanitized "Who's Who" entries or should be encyclopedia articles reporting relevant, if negative or disturbing, information. Jonathanwallace (talk) 15:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Please see (and read) WP:NPF. It applies here several times over, and I don't mean regarding the possibility of a defamation action (which I am happy to admit seems very unlikely.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 15:33, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Riddle me this: should we not delete from the Henry Adams bio any reference to the suicide of his wife, Clover? It has nothing to do with the things he is notable for (such as writing "The Education of Henry Adams" which does not mention her). Or does our delicacy about mentioning truthful, accurately sourced but distressing matters only extend to the protection of living people? Jonathanwallace (talk) 17:16, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

We do indeed treat living people (and people presumed to be living) differently from people known to be dead (and those assumed to be dead). However, we also make some allowances for recently deceased people. WP:BLP has some further details and relevant links. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 17:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Note that user betseythedevine has now deleted the entire "Personal Life" section without even deigning to comment here. Jonathanwallace (talk) 18:14, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

(restart indents) My apologies, but my computer "loaded" the edit before I had even finished writing an edit summary. I suggest discussing this at Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard where people are more familiar with the issues involved, especially in a case like this of WP:NPF. betsythedevine (talk) 18:20, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

This is not an issue of trying to WP:CENSOR relevant information. Wikipedia policy treats the biographies of living people with care. Wikipedia is not a wall of shame for "outing" people who like Professor O'Halloran are relatively unknown--as per WP:NPF: "Wikipedia contains biographical material on people who, while notable enough for an entry, are not generally well known. In such cases, exercise restraint and include only material relevant to their notability... Material that may adversely affect a person's reputation should be treated with special care; in many jurisdictions, repeating a defamatory claim is actionable, and there is additional protection for subjects who are not public figures." betsythedevine (talk) 19:00, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Betsy: I have been to your user page and am actually a little bit in awe of you....so I hope nothing I am saying here will get me into your bad graces. I am a newbie trying to make sense of Wikipedia BLP policy, and I can't....I interpret the WP:NPF para you cite as protecting Wikpedia(ns), not biographical subjects. If we repeat negative, untrue, unsourced material, we can all get sued for libel, and get in a world of hurt. This danger is more acute under applicable Supreme Court precedent for subjects who are not "public figures". However, it seems clear and not disputed that the information here is accurate (that the spouse was arrested and accused of incest, not that he committed it obviously). So there is no libel issue. Interpreting this rather loosely drafted paragraph to say that we shouldn't report truthful information pertaining to "just barely notable" people puts us on a real slippery slope as to who is "just barely notable" vs. "somewhat" vs. "very" vs. "extremely". As I mentioned on the BLP noticeboard, the Mia Farrow article mentions Woody Allen's affair with Soon Yi. I find it hard to formulate any rigorous rule that permits that mention, yet rejects the mention of the arrest of Dr. O'Halloran's spouse. At least Dr. O'Halloran is apparently an innocent bystander to the mess we are discussing; but please see my BLP noticeboard post on Charles Rackoff, a Canadian who had a Ward Churchill-like foot in mouth moment, which we are Not Permitted to Mention because he is (Not Very) Notable for Something Else. Anyway, I'm going to try not to post on this issue any more, at least here; I have no interest in editing Dr. O'Halloran's bio, but am simply struggling to understand the rules for creating and editing bios of living persons. All the best, Jonathanwallace (talk) 22:24, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

This article is about Sharyn O'Halloran. Period. We do not pull her or any other living persons article into "scandals" just because they are know someone who may have committed a crime. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, NOT a gossip mongering scandal sheet providing titalating looks under collatoral victims sheets. Active Banana (^bananaphone 14:30, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Active Banana: I am breaking my resolution not to post here any more because your words come across as rather angry. If you look at my user contributions page, you will see I spend most of my time these days editing pages like Religious Toleration and Liturgy (ancient Greece). By contrast, I have not made ANY edits or reverts to this page or Charles Rackoff. I am merely trying to derive some consistent rules. I really can't rephrase your "gossip mongering scandal sheet" comment into a rule which explains why its OK to mention Woody Allen and Soon Yi in the Mia Farrow article but not mention Dr. O'Halloran's spouse here. On the whole, I am finding a widespread belief that we are guardians of reputation and protectors against hurt, which I think is a misunderstanding of WP:NPF, a section IMHO probably created to protect Wikipedia against libel lawsuits. It also leads to a potential NPOV violation if we are more devoted to protecting subjects than we are to completeness and truth of bios. I am far more concerned about the results in the Charles Rackoff dispute, where a controversial utterance he made and defended publicly has been deleted on the grounds it is not relevant to his career as a professor of cryptography. However, this is a low stakes matter for me, with no edits or reverts at stake, and its fine if we simply agree to disagree. Jonathanwallace (talk) 15:21, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Something for you to think about. What is the difference between a widespread belief about how editors should act in a particular topic area, and a concensus about how that topic area should be handled? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 15:29, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Demiurge. I had not seen WP:CONSENSUS before. I don't think there is a consensus here because no compromise solution was reached. I am not the only editor who believes the content should have been included. Secondly, the guideline says "in articles consensus is typically used to try to establish and ensure neutrality and verifiability." I think the deletion of accurate and reliably sourced material from articles because it is hurtful or disturbing, actually violates neutrality. Finally, as I explained above, I think its all based on a misinterpretation of WP:NPF anyway. Some day soon, I will probably post something on the BLP noticeboard raising these issues. I will be sure to bring my umbrella. Jonathanwallace (talk) 15:48, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

(restart indents) The difference between Mia Farrow and Sharyn O'Halloran is that one is a public figure and the other is not. The BLP Noticeboard would be a good place to decide the question if for some hypothetical bio subject it was hard to tell whether or not WP:NPF applied. The law accords more privacy rights to non-public-figures, and so does Wikipedia.

Would articles be more WP:NPOV if we always included/archived/kept Googlable all news stories mentioning the subject? Only if events worthy of admiration generated as much news and interest as shock-and-shame pieces. "Consensus" on an article talk page does not mean a compromise between following policy and not following policy. You can try to change policy by getting consensus on the policy talk page. betsythedevine (talk) 16:07, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Betsy: Precisely. The issue of affording more privacy to non-public figures is derived from libel laws. What the law says is that falehoods uttered about public figures may not be actionable. In a debate about accurate well-sourced information, libel issues do not arise (truth is an absolute defense). Therefore, I think it is a misinterpretation of WP:NPF to say that "private" figures should be shielded against the inclusion of truthful information that otherwise meets standards such as RS, weight, etc. (Relevant though not crucial is the fact that Dr. O'Halloran may very well be a "public figure" under applicable laws. I assume for this discussion she is not.) This has been very helpful for me in refining the ideas I will eventually present on the BLP noticeboard. The question I will present (phrased as if for a moot court competition) is something along the lines of "Under what circumstances does WP:NPF require the deletion of accurate, reliably sourced information about the subject?" The answers I am getting so far don't really support the derivation of any general rules. I am going to leave the house for a few hours now and will try as hard as I can not to keep debating this here. Note to self: you don't always have to have the last word. Respectfully, Jonathanwallace (talk) 16:23, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Jonathan, no problem with debating things here. When people get tired, they leave for a while :) The wonderful benefit of the Internet is it's a conversation where nobody's obliged to stay - in fact, you can step out without anybody being the wiser, much less offended. So long as you're interested, I think you'll find people who are too.

I think it would be more accurate to say that the idea of affording more privacy to non-public figures springs from the same sources and concerns as libel laws. We emulate certain aspects of the law because we share the concern from which libel law springs, not only out of fear of breaking it. We share the law's interest in seeing that ordinary people are not hurt by the spreading of rumors or facts that have little or nothing to do with their lives. But the law is constrained by the awful nature of the force it embodies and the need to restrain that force in order to protect liberty. The law is also setting up rules for general discussion in public, where heated discussion and questioning must take place. In these respects, Wikipedia differs a good deal: the punishments we offer for undesired speech here are much less harmful (anybody who dislikes something being censored here can go get a blog), and our rules are designed to create a reasonably neutral encyclopedia, chronicling the important aspects of human knowledge that will be of enduring interest to posterity. Or, to put it another way, the First Amendment says you may say something, but allows you to exercise discretion in when to shut up. We're telling our editors that things that are hurtful and irrelevant to the purpose of the article do not belong.

I think that, as far as clear rules go, WP:NPF is one of our better ones (we have some really murky and vague ones). The editors are asked to consider whether the subject is mostly a private figure, and if yes, determine the primary ways the subject is notable (whether as an academic, a filmmaker, a tabloid personality, etc.), and, finally, decide if the information under discussion is relevant to the subject's notability. Obviously those questions can be mushy and require a good bit of judgment. But both here and on the other case you have discussed at BLPN, I think it was pretty easy for those of us who follow these things to come to a decision. Ray^Talk 17:05, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Jonathan, it may be that the planet's varied libel laws and Wikipedia's policy all derive from the "widespread belief" that human beings deserve some privacy--a right to keep to ourselves many things that other people would love to know and discuss -- our salaries, what we look like with no clothes on, random things that make us blush when we think about them. We accord others a "right" to privacy as the best way to secure the similar right for ourselves. Becoming a public figure means losing some privacy rights--perhaps because the public figure invites and profits from public exposure. That loss of rights should really only occur for very unusual people, in my opinion. betsythedevine (talk) 17:32, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) 1) Just because content is available in reliable sources does not mean that it is appropriate for inclusion in a Wikipedia article WP:IINFO.

2) Related to the points made by RayAYang, the BLP policy is not in existance to protect Wikipedia from libel lawsuits. It is in existance because content on Wikipedia has real life consequences for real life people. In this instance a criminal charge against another person does NOTHING to help the reader understand THIS person and their impact in the world. Active Banana (^bananaphone 17:35, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

notable?

I get the feeling this living person isn't noteworthy enough to warrant a BLP on wikipedia, please point me to reports independent in quality external sources that assert this person should have an article that people will be looking for? Off2riorob (talk) 20:41, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Under what wikipedia guideline is she notable? I am looking for reasons to keep this article as is is has become a magnet for users wanting to coatrack her husbands charges onto. Off2riorob (talk) 20:43, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Her work seems to be pretty widely published [1] but not finding anything about her as an individual. Does WP:ACADEMIC apply? Active Banana (^bananaphone 20:52, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi, ActiveB, I imagine WP:Academic is the wiki note claim, does she qualify?

! - The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources. - I don't think she meets this.. ..perhaps she meets WP:AUTHOR

2 - The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level....?

3 - The person is or has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g. a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a Fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor (e.g. the IEEE)  ??Off2riorob (talk) 21:11, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't see her qualifying for those three.. Off2riorob (talk) 21:17, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

You haven't quoted them in their entirety, though...

"Examples may include certain awards, honors and prizes of notable academic societies, of notable foundations and trusts (e.g. the Guggenheim Fellowship, Linguapax Prize), etc. Significant academic awards and honors can also be used to partially satisfy Criterion 1 (see item 4 above in this section)." --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:19, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Can we please note the irony of the process here? First we had a fight over whether to mention something in a section entitled "Personal Life". Then an experienced editor responded by deleting the entire section. Because the debate continues, another experienced editor is proposing deleting the article. Follow that to its inevitable logic conclusion and.....never mind, off to propose Sarah Palin for deletion :-) Jonathanwallace (talk) 21:25, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Straightforward pass of WP:PROF criterion 5: "The person holds or has held a named chair appointment or "Distinguished Professor" appointment at a major institution of higher education and research." Ray^Talk 21:27, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Ray, 5 - If an academic/professor meets any one of the following conditions, as substantiated through reliable sources, they are notable, seems a bit all inclusive, but .. is there a independent reliable citation to support the claim? Off2riorob (talk) 21:34, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I just referenced the faculty profile page on the Columbia website. Cheers, Ray^Talk 21:47, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for looking at that Ray, nice one. Off2riorob (talk) 21:55, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

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