On Feb 23, 2006, at 6:27 PM, Peter Mackay wrote:
On sober reflection, unless we are publishing articles on ALL lowgrade sex offenders (and what Peppers is listed as doing seems to rank very low on the scale of such things) then by having an article on him, we are singling him out for demonisation and ridicule based on his looks.
Perhaps we're singling him out for neutral, unbiased coverage based upon the widespread ridicule he has already received based on his looks?
A funny-looking sex offender isn't notable. A gang of internet troglodytes pointing and laughing at a funny-looking sex offender very well may be. Being who and what they are, the troglodytes are unlikely to provide a fair accounting as to who Brian Peppers is and why they're making fun of him. That's supposed to be our job.
(I don't really care one way or another whether we have an article about him, I'm just bringing these points up in fairness.)
It's no great step to find his address on the Ohio database thing, and before we know it we have crowds of the Wikicurious lurking outside his house and dogging his steps when he goes shopping so as to get a photograph for GFDL uploading. "For the good of the encyclopaedia. We're here to write an encyclopaedia. Moral behaviour and civic responsibility take second place."
He's wheelchair-bound and lives in a nursing home.
Incidentally, I wish we did have mobs of Wikipedians out to take GFDL photographs of people we have articles on. It would save us from a lot of fair use problems.
Do we really want people to be Wikipediaed in much the same way as websites are routinely Slashdotted?
If by "Wikipediaed" you mean "having a fair and neutral biography about them written in a freely accessible online encyclopedia", absolutely!