A specific email address isn't always available but virtually anyone notable will have a method of contact that can be found fairly quickly. Businesspeople have a business, academics have their university website, politicians and high ranking officials have a political website or governmental office, authors have a publisher, and a vast number of people have an easily located personal website, agent, or known organization they are closely affiliated with. Even alleged criminals have a lawyer or a means of contact. The kind of stuff needed for contact details is almost always noted in any "keepable" BLP, or a minute's web searching.
A few may need Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, but I suspect not many. Only a very small minority will not be easily identified with a means of email or other direct contact within a few minutes. Worth it, I think. FT2 On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 2:02 PM, Delirium <delir...@hackish.org> wrote: > 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. > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
