[sethg]

It's a shame that the Times framed this as a Times editor's personal intercession to help a journalist, rather than as an application of Wikipedia's "Biographies of living persons" policy:

"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid paper; it is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives. The possibility of harm to living subjects is one of the important factors to be considered when exercising editorial judgment." [emphasis added]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biographies_of_living_persons

[tokenadult]

"The possibility of harm to living subjects is one of the important factors to be considered when exercising editorial judgment."

Thanks for pointing directly to Wikipedia's stated editorial policies. That makes clear how Wikipedia had already announced it would resolve such trade-offs.

[basugasubaku]

Wikipedia is not a single entity that can simply announce how "it" will resolve such a thing. The idea that a perfect consensus can be reached on any given issue among the myriad of interested parties (including among the administrators and other higher-ups themselves) is simply naive.

In particular the BLP policy has likely been the center of the most controversy and debate of any policy (using this in the official meta-Wikipedia term for policy). Most of this debate surrounds over how far the interests of the subject should be respected over the truth, particularly when the truth is reported in what Wikipedia considers reliable sources. As Jimbo Wales himself states in that article, HAD this incident been reported in such a source, it would have been much more difficult to deal with.

Frankly, when BLP was drafted and discussed, no one foresaw an event like this occurring. This was the first time a subject was actually in real-time danger and any edit could literally damage his well-being. The events that BLP had in mind were things like libel (google for daniel brandt), unsubstantiated celebrity gossip, invasion of privacy (Allison Stokke, the star wars kid), misinformation (sinbad's death).

What's interesting is that Wikipedia has a culture of decision/discussion transparency that is at odds with protecting privacy in this situation. This could not have been discussed on the typical Wikipedia boards without totally giving up privacy. It's amazing they were able to keep this under wraps as they did.