On Tue, 11 Sep 2012, Charles Matthews wrote:
The Roth situation was WP between a rock (celeb culture with its ohmigod you dissed X) and a hard place (academic credibility requires that, yes, you do require verifiable additions and don't accept argument from authority). It would tend to illustrate that celeb power can potentially be deployed against serious discourse. Countervailing "admin power" is always a questionable analysis.
If someone who could reasonably be seen as speaking for Wikipedia told him that Wikipedia needed secondary sources for his claim, they are wrong, and Wikipedia failed.
It completely misses the point to explain how Wikipedia's actual policies are reasonable. The policy that Roth was told about is not reasonable; if it doesn't match Wikipedia's actual policy, he shouldn't be expected to figure that out.
It has nothing to do with celebrity power, except that when celebrities run into bad admins, people learn about it.