Jimmy Wales wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
I don't even see what's so undignified
about this particular incident
that anyone would argue it on that basis in the first place. Everyone
does boneheaded things from time to time.
Yes, but usually they do not end up being permanently presented in what
is arguably the most important encyclopedic record of our time.
Usually, such things come and go, a little blip in the news.
If the event in question is just a "little blip in the news", then we
would already reject an article about it based on existing notability
guidelines.
This was really a bad example to discuss this issue based on, IMO. I had
to assume for sake of argument that there was something significant
about the 911 call case to make it worth having an article about in the
first place, but now the incident's triviality is brought up again to
modify the "human dignity" matter. This example makes it impossible to
reasonably address the real issue in isolation.
Even
today, when tons of information does get archived on the Internet, the
power of wikipedia, and the breadth of it, means that for many
borderline or non-notable people the #1 hit in google is going to be to
the Wikipedia article.
http://www.google.com/search?q=brian+chase&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rl…
Why is this not a good thing? Our articles are NPOV and verifiable, and
easily corrected should errors in them be found. What would be a better
site to have as the #1 hit?