[WikiEN-l] BLPs--some ideas

[Kat Walsh]

On 4/21/07, Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com> wrote:
> On 4/20/07 10:35 PM, "Michael Snow" <wikipedia at att.net> wrote:
>
> > Which goes to the
> > point of Wikipedia's oft-cited ability to respond quickly to topics of
> > current interest.
>
> This also has a tendency to be one of our greatest failings. By throwing up
> "encyclopedia articles" as quickly as possible about people and issues of
> which little notice has been previously taken and of which we know little
> beyond the "topic of current interest," we are unable to look at these
> issues neutrally or report on people of limited notability with any sense of
> encyclopedic perspective and time. They're very easily taken over by people
> with a clear POV (usually negative) they and end up being bias-fests.
>
> For example, until I moved it, we had a "biography" of [[Tiffany Adler]],
> the entire contents of which were essentially that she was a woman from
> [[Pacifica, California]] who had been arrested and charged with a
> misdemeanor which happened to make it into a couple local newspapers. There
> was nothing about the rest of her life, nothing about who she was, what
> she's done other than that - so readers were left with an
> entirely-unbalanced, biased and completely-out-of-perspective "biography"
> which purported to say that this woman's entire life consisted of being
> arrested. Even as it stands, the article lacks any sense of encyclopedic
> perspective, and basically belongs in WikiNews, not Wikipedia. But there's a
> couple editors who believe that the whole world needs to forever know that
> this person has been accused of this crime, and that it should be the
> person's first hit on Google. "Objectivity" is not the first word that comes
> to mind.
>
> We can no longer discount Wikipedia's status as a de-facto scandal sheet for
> everyday occurrences, serving as a permanent record of anything bad or
> remotely controversial that anyone ever did, no matter how minor in the
> grand scheme of things, as long as it ended up with a three-paragraph blurb
> in a local paper. We need to, I think, think about that effect. Is that a
> good thing, and where does it stop? Should a kid who gets expelled from high
> school for carrying a knife (an article on which ends up in the local
> fishwrap) then carry around a Wikipedia biography stating such for the rest
> of their natural life?
>
> That "oft-cited ability to respond quickly" too often means that we respond
> with haste, without perspective and without objectivity.

I agree with this post.

Despite their being a huge part of Wikipedia's draw I'm not a fan of
current events articles, because people get too wrapped up in what is
recent without a sense of perspective. But it's nearly impossible to
argue on Wikipedia that a subject of current news interest is simply
not that encyclopedic, no matter how minor the interest. There are a
lot more easily-accessible news sources now than there used to be,
which is generally a good thing, but it also means that no matter how
minor the topic many have probably covered it.

What's more, something that may only ever have been of local interest
previously can reach a large audience, through this ease of access --
more people hearing of an incident making it "something everyone's
heard of". And the more people hear it, the more people insist that it
is newsworthy, or even worth preserving.

If there is no information available about a person other than the one
minor scandal, how notable is s/he really? Going back to Travis's
[[Tiffany Adler]] example, people commit crimes of similar magnitude
every day. This one happens to be related to a topic that is of
political interest that will draw viewers to the news, so the news
reports on it.

But there's no interest in this woman for who she is and the full
context of her life; the interest is only in the incident. It's a
stupid and hateful incident, but it's one incident, and I don't think
the harshest of us would argue that it should forever be the first hit
on Google for her name, and have harmful effects on her life. And in
this type of case, a biographical article is out of place. (I see it
isn't one anymore; her name redirects to an article on the incident,
which isn't that much better.)

If I were ruler of the universe, I would maybe give it a brief mention
as an example of [[gay bashing]], putting it in the larger context of
this type of occurrence, as one of many examples of the problem and
how society reacts.

But an individual article? That's what Wikinews is for, giving recent
happenings prominence because it is of current interest, and writing
coverage in detail of those individual events. I'd love to see more
people interested in current events writing for Wikinews, and then
saving that research to apply to an encyclopedic article as things
fall into perspective.

-Kat

-- 
Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
* *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone