On 6/25/07, Anirudh anirudhsbh@gmail.com wrote:
the media coverage was because Wikipedia is a famous website, Essjay was not, is not. He came into limelight only because of the controversy created on the website.
Would this piece be of any value after 10 years? I think not.
It is a serious BLP violation and should be deleted. Imagine something like this having repercussions for the rest of your life for something which you did in your teens.
Sir Nicholas
I think two statements are true:
1) An incident which has coverage (in some cases front-page) in most major US newspapers and newsmagazines rises to the level of notability under any rational interpretation of the word.
2) This sucks for Essjay.
BLP doesn't mean we won't cover something because it involves a friend or aquaintence of ours who has been put in a terrible situation.
I understand the desire to save Essjay the ongoing embarrassment. I sympathize with it. But that doesn't override (1) above. He managed to make himself notable in the real world press.
If you're going to propose that we really should delete the article, then don't cloak it in BLP. There is no BLP policy violation. There is an arguable human dignity issue, but that's not strictly a BLP policy issue. If you want to argue for one of the special-case human dignity exceptions to be made, then argue for that, not that this falls under BLP policy.