A fact from Mortgage Specialists, Inc. v. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries, Inc. appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 March 2012 (
check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that a
New Hampshire Supreme Courtdecision allowed an online publisher to protect the identity of an anonymous user, just like print publishers have the right to protect their sources?
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Add a “Significance” section: why this case is important with cites to authorities (the Harvard law article talks about this)
Add a “Further reading” section (checklist #7)
“What links here” – need to find relevant articles and link to your article, e.g. Shield Law, First Amendment, anonymity (checklist #5)
Need to add categories (checklist #10)
Add holding and judges names to Infobox (checklist #14)
Need to add “education assignment” to talk page (checklist #15)
Writing Style
Watch out for verb tense, e.g. “Implode was a website that reports on…” (checklist #9)
Language can be more concise. (checklist #8) Replace passive sentences with active tense. E.g. you can rewrite “From the court proceedings, it was determined that Implode…” to “The Court decided that Implode…”
Try to avoid writing long sentences. (checklist #8) Break it into short sentences. E.g. you can replace “In addition to the loan figures, an anonymous poster acting under the pseudonym Brianbattersby posted two comments about Mortgage Specialists, which Mortgage Specialists alleged were defamatory in nature” with “An anonymous poster posted two comments about Mortgage Specialists. The poster made the alleged defamatory comments under the pseudonym Brianbattersby.”
"Summary" section
Should state that it is a decision by New Hampshire Supreme Court
Can be more specific when you say “legal rights of online media,” e.g. “First amendment rights of online publishers.” In general, I would like to see more discussions on First amendment rights
"Background" section
Should describe what happened at the trial court and appellate court.
"Court Findings" section
Provide wiki link to “shield law” in this section
Newsgathering Privileges for Online Publishers
You may want to add the reason why the Court holds that Implode is a reporter, e.g. “Implode’s website serves an informative function and contributes to the flow of information to the public.”
Also, the Harvard article nicely puts this holding in prospective, it said, “legal protection should be linked to the function of journalism, not to any particular medium.”
Add wiki links to “freedom of press”
Defamation and Anonymous Speech
Add wiki links to “pseudonym,” “defamation,” “first amendment”
"References" section
Reference 3 is broken.
Reference 2 and 3 need proper formatting. (Checklist #13)
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