Wiki-is-truth

Consensus reality

The truth is...

• what the majority of people think it is
• what Wikipedia's manipulable content policies allow you to present it as

Wikipedia, Value and Neutrality

Wikipedia is unreliable as a serious reference work since it is manipulable by those with a partisan approach. Since apparently uncontentious articles generate edit wars, what happens with more controversial subjects is hardly surprising.

Wikipedia, Sex Offenders and Neutrality

In 2003 Pete Townshend was arrested and ultimately cautioned for "accessing a child porn website". This means that, in England, he is a "registered sex offender" (which is shorthand for "subject to the notification requirements of Part 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003"). At one time, Wikipedia had a category of "Child sex offender", into which Townshend was comfortably slotted. This enraged various people who set about altering the category so that it became impossible to include Townshend in it by making the category one for "Convicted child sex offenders". Townshend, of course, precluded a conviction by accepting a police caution. By virtue of "this legal technicality", it is impossible to reflect the objectively verifiable fact that Townshend is a "registered sex offender" using a Wikipedia tool that (if it should be used at all), should be used to reflect fact and not opinion.

Townshend claimed to have acted as he did for "research" purposes, and this has allowed some people to come to the opinion that he did no wrong, was "merely" "caught up" in Operation Ore and was included on the "sex offenders register" as a result of a mere technicality. In editing the article on Townshend to remove this bias and stick only to objective verifiable fact, I was told that my edits were "low-quality" and "opinion-driven". Furthermore, I was told that I was "gaming the system" by "changing the wording to make someone sound more vile than our cited sources do". I simply made a change of emphasis to make it clear that Townshend's minimising "research" justification was precisely that and not an objectively verifiable fact. If it had been objectively verifiable that Townshend was carrying out research, he ought to have been able to avail himself of the legitimate reason defence.

NPOV

Today I made these edits to the infamous Townshend article. They were more-or-less immediately undone by user User:Wiki libs

Let's address those changes:

• "Legal matters" to "Criminal investigation": "Legal matters" is pure spin. While it is generally correct that Townshend was caught up in "Legal Matters", it is rather like saying that Charlie Manson was a Beatles fan who infringed the law. It is true, but it reduces the seriousness of the matter, which is why it is used. Spin.
• "As a result of the Operation Ore investigations" to "As part of the Operation Ore investigations": Townshend was cautioned because of Operation Ore, not as part of them. It is a minor change.
• "after acknowledging a credit card access in 1999 to the Landslide website alleged to advertise child pornography":
  • Landslide was not a child porn website, it was a portal site that facilitated access to independent websites, some of which offered child porn. So it should be "a website", or arguably (and more dubiously) "a Landslide website". To say "the Landslide website" is a definite error.
  • "alleged to advertise child porn": so the police said to Townshend "we can prove that you accessed a website that is alledged to advertise child porn"? No. It's easy enough to prove that he accessed A website. What is important is that the website advertised child porn, and that Townshend responded to the advert. Townshend admitted guilt to this allegation, and hence we must assume that it is true. Therefore it is pure spin to prioritise the word of a journalist over the words of the person involved.
• "the police offered a caution rather than pressing charges": again, this is true. But they offered it to him? "Would you like a caution Mr Townshend?" "Oh yes, that would be much less tedious than going to court. Why thanks!" Again, it is pure spin, and the ore simple and less wordy "the police cautioned him" exhibits less spin (i.e. POV) and is equally accurate (and shorter).
• "After four months of investigation by officers from Scotland Yard's child protection group, it was established that Mr Townshend was not in possession of any downloaded child abuse images": this says EXACTLY the same as the sentence that precedes it. Neither is sourced, so there is no justification for prefering one to the other, but normal English stylistic conventions say that we should avoid unwarranted repetition.
• "As a statutory consequence of accepting the caution, Townshend was entered on the Violent and Sex Offender Register for five years": now this is PLAIN WRONG. VISOR is a system operated by the authorities for their own convenience. There is no statutory requirement for Townshend to be entered on it, the police do that for their own purposes. Townshend's only obligation is to inform the police of certain details about himself. What the police then do with it is up to them - they can shred it if they so choose, although that would probably amount to negligence. Certainly Home Office (or League of Justice) circulars do not amount to statutory requirements. The statutory consequence is that Townshend becomes subject to the notification requirements - nothing to do with VISOR.
• "This would normally prevent travel abroad, but in Townshend's case such restrictions have been waived, making possible his numerous concert performances with and without The Who since receiving the caution": I have yet to see a more perfect example of spin (nee POV).
  • it is WRONG. Any sex offender is free to travel abroad unless a travel order has been obtained against him.
  • the restrictions were waived? What is the source for this? Who waived the restrictions? Was it that famously music loving President Bill Clinton? Oh wait, he was dreaming about the days when he used to have interns by that time. So who was it? We do not know. We do not know if the restrictions were "waived" or if Townshend Aliens was eligible for a waiver of ineligibility under the US Immigration Act. So to have it as "in Townshend's case such restrictions have been waived" is spin, pure and simple. We know he has been to the USA, but we don't know under what authority he did it. It is unsourced and blatantly wishful thinking.

So, in reverting these edits, both User:Wiki libs and User:Sssoul were concerned merely with the removal of errors, POV and meeting the Wikipedia requirements for biography? The BLP policy says:

We must get the article right. Be very firm about the use of high quality references. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons — whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable — should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion, from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, user pages, and project space. Wiki-is-truth (talk) 15:43, 9 October 2008 (UTC)