Jimmy Wales wrote:
tarquin wrote:
Do any UK writers wish to create articles on [[Milly Downling]], or the [[Soham girls]]? Both those cases got plenty of media coverage here.
I, for one, would be fascinated to read such an article.
Perhaps it's very uncool to not look down my nose at media sensations, but I found the Elizabeth Smart case to be fascinating from many perspectives, and followed it quite avidly at the time. Learning more about similar cases in other countries (even if the similarity is primarily in the media sensationalism) would be valuable to me.
I didn't pay any attention at all to the Elizabeth Smart case when it was happening. But just because I wasn't interested in it doesn't mean that others aren't. Occasional UK cases do get mentioned; the one a few years ago (Bolger?) where two 11-year olds kidnapped and killed a 4-year old received a lot of mention in the news.
At other times a true sordid affair gets turned into a popular movie like "Chicago", and it is gown completely out of proportion.
Clifford Olson was from the Vancouver area, and known for having kidnapped and murdered some 10 kids. I heard of his arrest on a TV news report while visiting in the Philiippines.
My point is that lots and lots of things are interesting to only a small number of people. Wikipedia need not avoid those things, so long as there is confirmability.
With many of the things that we are taliking about now, confirmability is not a big problem. The sensational crimes get more than their share of media reporting.
Now, later on, when there's a formal 'drive to 1.0', some of those things may need to be left out, assuming that there are space constraints on 1.0 (for print).
This is where the idea of "Wikipedia is not paper" comes in, or in other words, "Wikipedia is not a static medium." With 1.0, whether on paper or CD, we will be producing something on a static medium.
Ec