On 2/24/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
I don't have any particular investment in the article (I think I voted in an AfD on it), but what you just wrote here seems to me to be similar to saying "there is no legitimate reason for an article on Mr. Peppers other than the legitimate reason there's an article on him." It may not be _nice_ to make fun of someone based on their appearance, but if it's happening enough it becomes a valid subject for an article IMO. As someone else pointed out there's an article on Ghyslain Raza as another example of fame through mockery making a person notable.
Yes to all that. But there's a bit of a curious circularity now that we've become very very big and very very powerful. *If* something has become notable enough *outside wikipedia* then yes, we can and should have an article about it. But we should be very extreme in our caution that a Wikipedia entry not be used to *drive* the very notability upon which the entry is supposed to *depend*.
I think it is safe to say that snopes will do a good enough job of driving it's notability along with various other less solid reference works around the web.
-- geni