[apologies to Steve, who gets this twice]
On 19/08/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/19/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps a corrolary is "if the Wikipedia article can significantly influence its subject compared to anything else written about them, should we have it?"
If a Wikipedia article can't influence the public's perception of a subject, why bother having it?
Ah, now, I didn't say that. Note "compared to anything else written about them". We should have good, informative articles; so should the newspaper which mentions the organisation, or the biographical dictionary which has a paragraph on the person.
But we shouldn't be the only ones publishing the story about so-and-so's messy divorce. We shouldn't be the only ones pulling together this court record and that advertisment and another press release to say that the company has systematically defrauded its customers.
If we can influence people to think, that's good. But if we can influence them to think where no other published source would influence them to think... are we really being an encyclopedia, republishing knowledge, or is this a sign we're getting into original research?
It applies disproportionately to less-notable people, and I feel it ought to. Just because we can write a factual article doesn't mean we *should*...