On Feb 23, 2006, at 6:27 PM, Peter Mackay wrote:
On sober reflection, unless we are publishing articles
on ALL
lowgrade sex
offenders (and what Peppers is listed as doing seems to rank very
low on the
scale of such things) then by having an article on him, we are
singling him
out for demonisation and ridicule based on his looks.
Perhaps we're singling him out for neutral, unbiased coverage based
upon the widespread ridicule he has already received based on his looks?
A funny-looking sex offender isn't notable. A gang of internet
troglodytes pointing and laughing at a funny-looking sex offender
very well may be. Being who and what they are, the troglodytes are
unlikely to provide a fair accounting as to who Brian Peppers is and
why they're making fun of him. That's supposed to be our job.
(I don't really care one way or another whether we have an article
about him, I'm just bringing these points up in fairness.)
It's no great step to find his address on the Ohio
database thing, and
before we know it we have crowds of the Wikicurious lurking outside
his
house and dogging his steps when he goes shopping so as to get a
photograph
for GFDL uploading. "For the good of the encyclopaedia. We're here
to write
an encyclopaedia. Moral behaviour and civic responsibility take second
place."
He's wheelchair-bound and lives in a nursing home.
Incidentally, I wish we did have mobs of Wikipedians out to take GFDL
photographs of people we have articles on. It would save us from a
lot of fair use problems.
Do we really want people to be Wikipediaed in much the
same way as
websites
are routinely Slashdotted?
If by "Wikipediaed" you mean "having a fair and neutral biography
about them written in a freely accessible online encyclopedia",
absolutely!
--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch