On 4/21/07, Dick Clark crotalus@gmail.com wrote:
Where you say that you aren't sure that there are any Wikipedians who could write a neutral article about Brandt... I think that you are vastly overestimating the number of Wikipedians who even keep up with the whole Brandt/WR saga. Don't get me wrong, I think lots of Wikipedians know about it, I just think that most don't really care.
Well, what I said was that I don't think Wikipedians [as a group] can write a neutral article about Brandt. I do think some individual Wikipedians could probably do so.
I frankly have no opinion one way or the other on the guy. I think that the people who attack Brandt because they think they have a right to privacy or confidentiality are deceiving themselves, since editing what is essentially a public document sort of makes each Wikipedian a public figure, if only in a microscopic way.
In any event, I am sure there are plenty of editors who could do the research, interpret the sources, and render a pretty reasonably accurate bio of Brandt. Do you really think that every Wikipedian is following this story?
No, I don't, but I think any bio of Brandt is going to include significant references to Wikipedia. Right now Wikipedia is mentioned in the very first line. I suppose it'd be possible to write a decent bio which didn't mention Wikipedia, but maintaining it on a wiki would be a nightmare.
Anthony