On 5/23/11 1:40 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote: > On 23 May 2011 00:03, FT2<ft2.w...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Out of interest, when a BLP is created and not speedy deleted, could we not >> write a standard email to the subject stating that a biographical article >> has been created on them on the online encyclopedia "Wikipedia", inviting >> them to review it, explaining what it's about, and pointing them to remedies >> for fixing minor or major issues or requesting deletion? Hearing from us >> might at the very least be seen as "us trying to do something right". > I've not heard that idea before; I like it. We should do that. It > wouldn't be difficult and would, as you say, show that we are at least > trying to do the right thing. We would need to be prepared to deal > with the increased traffic to OTRS that it would inevitably result in, > but that's not too big a problem.
I don't think it's impossible, but I think finding an email address for the average person is going to be harder than you think. I do a good bit of email-finding to contact journal-paper authors whose email address has changed from the one published in the journal, but especially outside of the sciences, this isn't particularly easy. Many professors have no websites, and many who do don't have an email address on the site. You end up having to dig up the university's "find person" database and search, and sometimes that database isn't even publicly available. And for celebrities, they actively go out of their way to hide their email. CEOs and similar in the business world usually don't have emails publicly listed either. At the very least, it'd be quite a bit of work, and would probably require someone willing to use non-email communication channels, like LinkedIn messaging or Twitter or something, to achieve reasonable coverage. Might be an interesting experiment. -Mark _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
