Category talk:Voluntarily excluded people

See also: Exclusion policy, and the proposed expanded personal information policy.

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Just a thought...shouldn't people in this category be listed in the 'people' category too, since that's where they really belong, even if they are protected? Rama 13:13, 24 Aug 2005 (UTC)

The purpose of this category I think is to ensure they have as little presence on the wiki is possible. However, we should maybe list this category as a sub-category of People. -Nidonocu - talk 13:22, 24 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, I understand the reasoning behind the exclusion of people by their request, but I strongly disagree with it. If this wiki is to be a body of knowledge about the fandom, it seems that some well known people would be left out of this by their request, reducing the usefulness and interlinking of the whole knowledgebase. I think if people don't like the text associated with them, they should update it, NPOV it, and get it locked if necessary. But I don't think we should just pretend they don't really exist without providing commonly-known information. Anyway, any Google search will likely reveal LJ entries or other information sources with similar information, so I don't think these people are protected at all by such censorship. I respect how the admins are going about this (and of course I won't fight against it), but I want to register at least one objection to this methodology. BlueOtter 22:26, 24 Aug 2005 (UTC)

The balance between privacy and accountability and knowledge and compassion is a hard one. Ideally, everything would be listed on here. In practice, some things that are true probably should not be put here, for their own safety (in some cases) and privacy (in other cases). for some people, any level of informatiton is too much. For some, they would allow a certain level of information, but no more . . . but is that fair to people who would add more, but cannot? Should the person concerned be allowed selective prior restraint?

The current policy allows for an all-or-nothing approach. In part, this is to dissuade people who might wish to use WikiFur to present only their side of things - if they are adamant about factual edits not going in, their only resort is to remove all information. It may be a good idea to adjust that to allow specific information. It may not be. It will probably become clearer as time goes on. Right now, we have to ensure that people that really do not want to be listed are not listed. We can perhaps relax things after that. --GreenReaper^(talk) 04:39, 25 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Sadness

This category makes me very sad. -- Siege 03:25, 26 Nov 2005 (UTC)

Care to elaborate why? --Dmuth 05:12, 26 Nov 2005 (UTC)

Because these people are avoiding what is both true and public about them. I would rather have one well-written article containing accurate information than a dozen rumors, each with half a grain of truth and a pack of lies. And besides, I can't heap praise on the people who deserve it, who have chosen to remove themselves from discussion. -- Siege 06:41, 26 Nov 2005 (UTC)

Well, you can always use the discussion pages . . .

Yes, it is unfortunate. But is the alternative worth the pain, both for the person involved, and for us? Many people just want to leave and never come back. Ultimately, the persistence of the Internet and the wiki format means that it is technically impossible for a person to remove (most) true statements about them from public view. At that point it comes down to whether they should be allowed to "make a clean break" - a moral judgement, which is why it's so tricky. In most cases, I cannot in good conscience say that they should not be allowed to do that. True, it is a slight affront to the purity of historical record - but there are plenty of things that are more important than that, like the thousands of other interesting topics to be recorded.

Moreover, I have come to understand that what people who care about such things really do not want is this information in their faces. They don't want it coming up on google. They don't want their friends finding out they had a secret life as a furry. Given this view, I've started not actually deleting articles at this point, and just blanking and protecting unless history removal is specifically requested. People who really care enough can go back into the history and see the article. It's just not in people's faces, which is what they get so annoyed about. --GreenReaper^(talk) 09:36, 26 Nov 2005 (UTC)

I found wikifur by seeing an incomplete and partly outdated article about myself, so i edited it. Normally whenever i start a new article about the person, i tell that one about it and invite it to edit its article. I think that we should all do this, if the person is reachable, which is a bit difficult with all those who left at some point. --Unci 14:04, 26 Nov 2005 (UTC)