On Mon, 23 Apr 2007, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
The thing is, if you are mainly known for something negative, that's going to be the focus of the bio.
If you shoplifted something 20 years ago and are known for that, and are not known for anything else, you're only known for something negative--but it's still balanced. Because the negative and the positive are still pretty close. The positive is not known at all, and the negative is only known a tiny bit, and "nothing" is close to "a tiny bit".
By creating an article about the shoplifting incident, Wikipedia magnifies the difference. Now the negatives and positives are no longer close.