Steve Vertigo wrote:
Is there a distinction being made as far as calber /rank in society, etc.. goes?
I'm not sure what you mean here, so I'll answer 'yes' and 'no'.
"No", not in the sense that we're making any global existential comment on the value of any particular human life by including or excluding them. That's not something that Wikipedia can or should do.
But "yes" in the sense that by insisting that we stick to confirmable information, we do exclude a lot of true facts about individual people who happen to have not made a wide impact on the world. I could write a true biography of my grandmother, or a complete load of hogwash, and virtually no one could edit the article to correct factual errors, bias, etc.
So the point is that we aren't saying that making a wide impact on the world makes anyone more important or more valuable -- even if that's true, it isn't a claim for _Wikipedia_ to make. All we are saying is that we're constrained to be encyclopedic, which means, in part, that all of our information is confirmable.
It seems that there can legitimately be a rule that says you cant be both a contributor and a feature, but is this enforceable?
I think that having such a rule as a general social custom is a good idea, but in terms of having it as a formal policy, I don't think so.
One reason is that I can easily imagine that lots of people who do or might work on Wikipedia are worthy of a biographical entry. Anyone who has published a book could ostensibly be worthy of a biographical entry based on that fact alone.
Some current good friends of Wikipedia *are* famous people, worthy of articles... For example, suppose Richard Stallman drops by to clarify a page on the gnu project or the free software foundation? Suppose Larry Lessig wants to work on an article about the history of copyright law? We should welcome that, and not decide to delete the encyclopedia articles about them on that basis alone.
In the year in the future when I win both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Grammy for my a capella lipsynched rendition of old Milli Vanilli classics, I will permit an article about me.
--Jimbo