--- On Mon, 23/5/11, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote:
From: Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Monday, 23 May, 2011, 21:56
I'm skeptical that we should have an
article.
The reason: Wikipedia is on the Internet. If
Wikipedia has an article
about something whose promoter specifically intends to
spread it on the
Internet, it is impossible to separate reporting from
participation. It's
a loophole in the definition of neutrality that doing
things which help
one side of a dispute doesn't break neutrality, simply
because our
intentions are neutral--even though our effects are not.
This brings to mind GNAA. GNAA is a troll group who
intentionally gave
themselves an offensive name so that even mentioning them
helped them troll.
Wikipedia had a hard time getting rid of the article about
them, because
we can't say "by using their name, we're helping their
goals" in deciding
whether to have an article. It was finally deleted by
stretching the
notability rules instead.
And in a related question, I'd ask: Should we have an
article "Richard Gere
gerbil rumor"? (As long as our article describes the
rumor as debunked, of
course--otherwise we would be directly violating BLP.) Some
of the
justifications for that and for this sound similar.
It's a good comparison. There are plenty of "reliable sources" to satisfy
notability:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=…
We could summarise all of these, neutrally, in an article, quoting four
dozen journalists on the controversy.
However, we shouldn't. (No doubt someone will start an article now, and
knowing Wikipedia, it will probably make DYK and GA. Ah well.)
Interested readers are directed to:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/celebrities/a/richard_gere.htm
As well as our very own:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerbilling
Andreas