Visor Lady/Talk

This page is for discussing the content of the Visor Lady page.

There are a number of people who think that the Visor Lady page should be deleted because it is an invasion of her privacy. Here are the basic arguments.

The page is an invasion of her privacy and should be deleted.

Visor Lady is not a public figure in the sense that Rob Roy is a public figure, but everyone who has spent time in the Memorial Union has seen her at least once and has wondered who she is. The Wiki should have a simple, informational page about her, as it does about many town characters. See: Scooter Man, Hugging Guy, etc.

I don't think there was anything wrong about the page as it was (though it should be edited down considerably).
Newspapers "out" people all the time, and often in far less pleasant ways than this page. She is a public figure in that
nearly everyone here as seen her many times. Curiosity is natural. I think pages like this even work to people like Wanda's benefit -if more is known about her, people won't be suspicious of her, and this makes people treat her better.
At least here, there is community discussion, and even she herself could even chip in (ala Scooter Man). Neither of these is possible if you are unfortunate enough to wind up in the local newspaper in an unflattering way. I wish a journalism lawyer could comment on this. —SteveDavison

Has this person asked that this page be removed? If not, I think it should stay. —RyanCastellucci

Unlike the other 'characters', anyone who spends time near the MU has invariably seen her at least once. That's why there was such a huge number of comments about where people have seen her - she's very unique, very easily identifiable, and a very common sight. I've overheard people ask tour guides about her. She is without doubt a part of Davis. While I agree having 402049 entries about her whereabouts is unneccessary (hence, why I deleted them all (besides, most said the same thing)). I think the page absolutely should stay. And as she is such a public figure, and she is definitly not a minor, I don't really see any problem with a picture of her. I do think it was a bit one vs all in deleting her page tho Paul, especially when so many people said please stop. If it helps people's moral ideas of privacy, blur her face and put a picture or two back up. -ES

I'm not sure the discussion is really between "page goes" and "page stays", but what/how much to put on the page. I'm trying to balance the rights of the public (us) and our right to free discussion/information against her right to privacy (and we don't even know how she feels about this matter). (Perhaps someone should give her a copy of the page as of a few days ago.) In considering this, the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) may be helpful. —SteveDavison

1) She exists. 2) She's a great, unique addition to the city. 3) Mysterious people are interesting.

Therefore: the page should not be deleted. A few careful souls should integrate useful content and delete the boring paparazzi coverage. If she comes and deletes her own page, respect her wishes. (Yes, go tell her.) Even if she deletes the page, revert it with a simple picture and 1-2 sentence description. Nobody can deny existing. -MichaelGiardina

In general, I've always found the personal comments to be very invasive and very insensitive. People tend to treat her like she's Boo Radley or something. However, I think the general content is informative and should stay up. CraigBrozinsky

As for why people seem to be so fascinated to an almost-invasive level: It's partially the Martha Stewart effect (people are happy to see a little bit of invasiveness because of her reputation for a somewhat hostile demeanor as reported on the old page), but also because she holds herself out in a very attention-getting manner. On the other hand she is sort of an icon—a UCD rockstar: More recognizable to everyone on campus than virtually any professor, perhaps even the chancellor. Her ubiquitous presence and fashion statement somehow entices people to pay too much attention to her. I think it would solve many problems just to let this page clean itself up a bit, but one can understand why people are so enthralled by her. —jr

• The walk may have something to do with it too. She moves at a snails pace, and that invariably gathers attention as well.

Actually, I feel the question of whether she's a public figure is unimportant (as BrentLaabs also mentions.) By appearing in a public place, she gives up a certain expectation of privacy. —ct

These analyses of "public figure" status has more to do with a defense to defamation lawsuits. I don't think there's any defamation going on here. When it comes to non-public figures, if someone prints or speaks lies that hurt the non-public figure's reputation resulting in actual damages, you've pretty much sealed your defamation lawsuit. However, for public figures you have to prove an additional element: the person making the statement knew the statement to be false, or issued the statement with reckless disregard as to its truth. So we could continue the public figure discussion, but it's not really relevant. —jr

The question is what makes someone a "public figure". This is a legal question, and so I think we should turn to the Supreme Court's ruling. This is from John Dean, a former counsel to the President:

In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., the Supreme Court stated that "those who by reason of the notoriety of their achievements or the vigor and success with which they seek the public's attention" are classified as public figures under the First Amendment.

Finally, the Court indicated that "it may be possible for someone to become a public figure through no purposeful action of his own," but that "the instances of truly involuntary public figures must be exceedingly rare."

This "visor lady" can only be that "exceedingly rare" type of public figure, if she is one. Personally, I think the the "everybody's wondered about her" argument is a weak generalization. And I'd bet all the money in my pocket against all the money in your pocket that she doesn't wear the green visor to attract attention. As a matter of fact, she seems to be a very private person.

Secondly, is this "talk" page actually going to determine anything, or are we just jerking off? Is it like the Abortion/talk page? Or the ApolloStumpy/talk? Who decides who is right, and what changes should be made? Phil? Mike? Or just whoever has the most wiki edits?

Until a wiki moderator can make a decision (and accept the consequences if/when someone tells Wanda of this page's existance), I think the page should be deleted, as the "visor lady" must be proven to be a public figure. ==JesseSingh

Jesse, you are a wiki moderator. So am I. Trying to foist this upon Phil or Mike is truly a bad idea and contrary to the spirit of the wiki.

Okay, so the opinion of someone like Jabber, Arlen, Jack, or myself does tend to get more weight because we contribute a lot more. Honestly, I'm willing to manually revert or fight something as long as it takes to win. Most people lose interest before I will. Winning through deletion and destruction is not an option.

So truly, people need to be persuasive in their arguments. Jesse, I thank you for your research in this case. I do, however, feel as if she is an involuntary public figure. Most people I have talked to know who she is, and have seen her roaming places like the MU. I don't believe this is debated, but let me know if I'm wrong.

Secondly, we're always worried about libel. You can check out the page, but the short answer is: people don't have to be public figures to be talked about. They have to be public figures in order for you to defame them in public. The Visor Lady page does not defame; the most annoying it got was sightings of the woman. It may a minor violation of her privacy, but in the end it doesn't really matter.

If we're not going to allow people to be written about, then we might as well delete Rob Roy, Nathan Dodd, and Sean Davis. What a sad, lonely wiki that would be. The wiki exists to spread information about life in Davis, and Wanda is a part of that life for many people. —BrentLaabs


Good points, especially the part about foisting the burden on Mike and Phil— they've done an excellent job promoting a rulerless wiki, and we need to help them maintain that goal. Anyway, documenting facts about a person seems reasonable enough, and is fair game in a free speech arena like the wiki. She's probably aware that she attracts attention, and as long as the commentary isn't mean spirited, I suppose some commentary okay. I've reread the original version of her page and I think I need to lighten up a bit because all of the derisive things seems to be descriptive and accurate (e.g., she does waddle). But people should be careful— she's described as weird and a bit anti-social, and I fear that documenting her every move is going to reinforce those leanings were she to discover all those anecdotes. If this does happen, I'd like to coin the term the "Visor Lady Uncertainty Principle" to describe all instances where writing about things on the wiki alters their existence in the real world. CraigBrozinsky

I'm surprised this hasn't already come up (it might be a little known fact), but one of the main reasons for creating the wiki was to find out more info about Visor Lady —PaulIvanov —

Why do you keep singlehandedly trying to make it go your own way? You ignored the whole point of this page, only bothering to use it to complain that we're not all equal editors if a creator of the whole project can lock a page. It's pointless, and it'll go back and forth forever.
If you'd put just half the effort into discussing it, rather then repeatedly trying to edit it when you obviously know other people wont give up, I'd say at least some sort of compromise could be reached.

I have to admit I really don't understand any of this crazyness. Paul complains the Visor Lady page is an invasion of her privacy. But then he's behind renaming all references to her by her real name, Wanda Underhill, and Brent is reverting
all his pages back to the more anonymous Visor Lady. Then, Paul (apparently) asks to have his own page removed.
HUH? —SteveDavison

• Yeah. I mainly wanted discussion about it before massive name changes. See here. But he kind of didn't listen. It made Hats particularly silly. I didn't expect my comment about not being able to win an edit war against me to be prophetic. *Sigh* —BrentLaabs

Why not let Wanda choose. Let's create the medium page... print it out... hand her the paper with the URL with a little note that says "If you like this, don't do anything. If you don't like this, come and delete it or tell people what you think. Not like she has the final say in things... but she might as well have a say. That would be exciting.

If someone does show Wanda her page, they should show the page before the controversy, plus all the controversy, plus this talk page and all it's versions... :) (We're assuming she doesn't use computers much, and isn't aware of the Wiki, which may be untrue...) —SteveDavison

Handing her a page of "if you don't like this come participate" could be seen as vaguely threatening. She seems rather hermit-like, and may not want any of this beyond "Visor Lady is often seen in Griffin Lounge"; most of the detail in the interaction posts, IMO, has been excessive and celebrity-paparazzi-ish. —JudithTruman


That's hardly what I was suggesting. All I said was *if* someone does show her the page, they should show her all the stuff -not just a censored version of such. —SteveDavison

According to first hand interview, I ascertained this information:

Her favorite swimming stroke is... back stroke

Her sign is Pisces.

That is all for now, JoshuaHeller
_

Sorry for that invasion of privacy. JoshuaHeller

This page creeps me out and I want to delete it... I don't know why this lady is any different from the thousands of others in this town, and why she should have her own page. Besides that, nobody has even cared to gossip about her in over a year, so why don't we just let this fade into obscurity. —NickSchmalenberger

• I agree with you on this and, for the same reasons, about many other people that have been nailed as town "characters". If people look at the list of town characters, anybody could tell you that they're on the list because they would be easy targets for mockery by junior high-schoolers. The conspicuous absence of direct insults on these pages doesn't hide the intent behind the page's creation. It's just a way of lining people up for ridicule but skirting around culpability by claiming that it's part of the "collective voice" of the wiki.

• "any different" — she more or less lived in the MU every day for 15 years (or something like that). While this is clearly unfortunate, that doesn't mean it wasn't real and isn't worth documenting. —PhilipNeustrom
  

• She was a regular customer at the CoHo for years and always had some interesting to say when perusing the food choices. The folks that knew her and saw her, as far I could tell, looked at her more as another "uniqueness" of Davis and not as an object of ridicule. If the davis wiki is to document everything that makes or made Davis unique, this page should stay. -JamesSchwab

I agree with Nick Schmalenberger. This page is just plain rude, as are some of the other "town character" pages. Writing about elderly and mentally ill people because they are 'unique' or noticeable is in poor taste. DonShor

I'd like to invite you all to take this discussion over to Town Characters/Talk and work out not just how this one case will be handled, but how the issue of individuals who rise to collective awareness should be handled on the wiki. There are many more pages that this debate will be held over, we might as well try handling the issue rather than each one at a time. —JasonAller