Britney Spears: Love or Hate Her
When I began reading the discussion page on Wikipedia for Britney Spear’s the first thing I noticed was the policy on biographies of living persons and how important it is to cite factual information from reliable sources and beware of an libelous content that could be posted to the site, but I wasn’t really surprised when I found misinformation that needed to be removed because the information was sourced from tabloids. The editors seem to monitor that heavily so I don’t think there’s a big problem of rumors in the article.
The main problems that I see developing on the discussion page is that some feel that the article has an overall negative slant towards Britney Spears. A user who posted that the article can have negative reviews of Britney, but should have equally positive things to say about her. The editor responded by saying that
“the reality of the matter is that its far easier to find negative criticism of Spears than it is to find positive. She is probably one of the most severely negatively received artists of her time and the article has to give accurate representation of the WP:WEIGHT of negative reception versus positive.”
I’m not really sure what I think of this statement by the editor. I think it’s too much of a generalization that I don’t see any real evidence to prove that assumption. Plus, it comes across that he has a negative view of Britney Spears and therefore, defends criticism without encouraging contributors to find sources with a balance of opinions. If she really is the “most severely negatively received artists of her time” he should provide evidence of that. As far as I know, that’s just the opinion of the editor and that could influence his judgment in moderating the article.
Another user points out that a review listed on the website is just an attack on Britney Spears and could not be considered a professional review. The editor defends the review by saying that the author of it is professional and that sometimes artists will get bad reviews. Overall, it seems that there is a negative slant towards Britney Spears by the article and that is the main topic of the discussion page.
On the discussion page someone submitted that there should be a subject entitled “Praise and Criticism” which would help this controversy over whether or not the article is too negative. Contributors could list information on both sides and maintain quality by citing reputable sources. I think this would help the article immensely and give a greater scope to the artist.
