Re: [Gendergap] "anonymous (street meat)"

Michael, I think that response is overly harsh, even if it is true that Migdia's contributions were not appropriate for the encyclopedia. While there are certainly spammers who act in bad faith, often what Wikipedians see as self-promotion is not seen or intended that way by those who contribute it. In particular, when we are talking about biographical material and issues of notability, it is very easy for the issue to become personalized, and for the subject to feel like they are being persecuted on a personal level (being accused of "vanity," called not "notable"). I am not certain why Migdia says that the comments were gender-related, but the feeling of having been singled out and insulted is a common one for those who have had to go through the deletion process, and we hear it a lot. It is important to remember that Wikipedia's definition of terms like "notability" is jargon and confusing. To a normal person, being notable means you've done something important; to a Wikipedian, it means reporters or academics have written about you. In fact, it is quite possible to debate the merits of an article without accusing anyone of self-promotion, even if you believe it's true. The self-promotion issue is beside the point: in general, we delete articles if they fail our criteria for inclusion and we keep them if they meet them (self-authored or not). Dominic On 10/18/11 2:10 PM, Michael J. Lowrey wrote: