I have to say that I think a topic such as Imlay, with literally centuries of scholarship is not really comparable to the recentism that is an article on a Twitter account, whether Bieber's or Gaga's.
LadyofShalott/ Aleta Turner
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Nathan <nawrich@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 3:32 PM, Laura Hale <laura@fanhistory.com> wrote:
Been there. Done that. It isn't only women's topics. Because Justin Bieber is unpopular and actively disliked by some people, (Though I guess you could argue this example relates to a topic of interest to many young girls) there was an attempt to merge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Bieber_on_Twitter in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Bieber , with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Justin_Bieber#Merger_proposal making it clear the reason is "I don't like this." The article had about 100 sources around the time the article was nominated for merge. Lady Gaga, the most followed person on Twitter and woo hoo female to boot! has had other people ask why the article isn't deleted. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lady_Gaga_on_Twitter#Request_for_deletion:_Is_this_page_really_relevant.3F . I have another topic I wrote on where the regional women's stuff should be generic to all women playing the sport or to the region. If neither article currently exist, [[WP:SOFIXIT]] by creating the new and relevant articles.
Information is power and what is on Wikipedia has the potential to shape greater understanding around issues. Thus, a battle for what should and should not be there.
Wow, YMMV, but I think it's really odd to have whole long articles devoted to a Twitter account. What is and isn't broken out from "main topic" articles is often controversial, whether criticism sections or detailed information on specifically consequential periods, but an article on a Twitter account is an outlier in my reading experience.
One of the arguments on the talk page for Fanny Imlay was that the sources cited included information about her only incidentally in the course of covering other people, as opposed to being primarily about her (presumably with the exception of the biography). I don't know enough about the subject or the sources to know if this is the case, but it's an argument that might apply to "Justin Bieber on Twitter." The articles discussing his Twitter usage are really about Justin Bieber and his behavior, not his Twitter account. See for example[1], a short mention in Ashton Kutcher's bio about his Twitter use. Kutcher is also among the most prominent users of that service in its history, but there is no article devoted to it. Rather than seeing the merge proposal as an example of "I don't like it," I think the fact that it failed demonstrates the power of a gigantic fanbase to distort normal practice on a wiki.
~Nathan
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashton_Kutcher#Twitter_presence
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