--- On Mon, 23/5/11, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
On 23 May 2011
02:24, Brian J Mingus<brian.mingus(a)colorado.edu>
wrote:
> When you Google for Santorum's last name
this
Wikipedia article is the
> second result. This means that people who are
looking for legitimate
> information about him are not going to find
it
right away - instead we are
> going to feed them information about a biased
smear campaign rather than the
former
Senators BLP.
Google's search results are entirely their business.
Yes, I agree with that comment. As Google are aware, people
try to game
their "algorithm"; and their business model requires them
to take action
on that. Not our problem at all.
The business of neologisms on WP was actually put into "How
Wikipedia
Works" (Chapter 7, "A Deletion Case Study"). At that time
the example to
hand was of the buzzword type, and the question was
apparently whether
WP's duty was to keep people informed of new jargon, or to
be more
distanced and only include a new term when it was clearly
well established.
To be a bit more nuanced about this instance: if there is a
dimension in
that article of a BLP, certain things follow at least at
the margin
about use of sources. And NPOV clearly requires that a
successful
campaign to "discredit" someone is reported in those terms.
Here there
is a fine line between "mockery" and "smear", and saying
the latter by
default omits the element of satire. In other words, there
are people
who take US domestic politics very seriously, and media
stories very
seriously (I think enWP tends to take the media as a whole
too
seriously, BTW, which is the media's estimation of itself)
, and regard
Google now as part of the media, and so come to the sort of
conclusion
that Brian does.
OTOH we have our mission, and our policies, and should do
our job. I'm
prepared to take the flak if our pages contribute to
information (i.e.
report within NPOV) on a "biased smear campaign" (or
satirical
googlebombing, whatever you prefer); as long as our article
is not
biased, and is not campaigning. Bear in mind that the COI
is supposed to
limit the use of enWP for activism of certain kinds. We do
have the
policies to prevent misuse of our pages.
Charles
We discussed this a couple of days ago at our meet-up. I agree with some of
the other comments made here that this blurs and crosses the line between
reporting and participation.
I have no sympathy for Santorum or his views. But based on past experience,
I also have little confidence that the main author's motivation in expanding
the article is anything other than political. They've created puff pieces on
politicians before (as well as hatchet jobs), in the service of outside
political agendas.
(later deleted as a puff piece
of a non-notable politician, but only after the election, in which he was
said to have done surprisingly well)