--- On Mon, 23/5/11, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
From: Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]] To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@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