On 6/3/07, AvB arie2@tien.biz wrote:
I found the first Google hit telling:
AvB
Well, the front-page interview with the Washington Post and the Fox News appeareance kind of pop that bubble of "do no harm." If she's trying to stay private, then... well... that's probably not the best strategy.
Anyway, don't you think it might be better to have a neutral, verifiable encyclopedia entry on her than whatever stalker site *does* pop up? ~~~~
On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 09:39:22 -0400, "Gabe Johnson" gjzilla@gmail.com wrote:
Well, the front-page interview with the Washington Post and the Fox News appeareance kind of pop that bubble of "do no harm." If she's trying to stay private, then... well... that's probably not the best strategy.
Do not confuse damage limitation with acceptance of unwelcome attention.
Guy (JzG)
On 6/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 09:39:22 -0400, "Gabe Johnson" gjzilla@gmail.com wrote:
Well, the front-page interview with the Washington Post and the Fox News appeareance kind of pop that bubble of "do no harm." If she's trying to stay private, then... well... that's probably not the best strategy.
Do not confuse damage limitation with acceptance of unwelcome attention.
Indeed, and furthermore do not confuse human interest news stories with genuine biographical writing.
On 6/3/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 09:39:22 -0400, "Gabe Johnson" gjzilla@gmail.com wrote:
Well, the front-page interview with the Washington Post and the Fox News appeareance kind of pop that bubble of "do no harm." If she's trying to stay private, then... well... that's probably not the best strategy.
Do not confuse damage limitation with acceptance of unwelcome attention.
Indeed, and furthermore do not confuse human interest news stories with genuine biographical writing.
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com
How is "Times Person of the Year" a human interest news story? They don't just pick anyone for such a thing.
On 03/06/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
How is "Times Person of the Year" a human interest news story? They don't just pick anyone for such a thing.
...what? Please explain.
I'm just repeating what the news item in the link of the first message of this thread said. http://sports.aol.com/fanhouse/2007/06/01/allison-stokkes-wikipedia-entry-ke... If what is in there is true, we should have an article on her and make an effort to protect it from vandals and the like.
Mgm
On 6/3/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 03/06/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
How is "Times Person of the Year" a human interest news story? They
don't
just pick anyone for such a thing.
...what? Please explain.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 03/06/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
I'm just repeating what the news item in the link of the first message of this thread said. http://sports.aol.com/fanhouse/2007/06/01/allison-stokkes-wikipedia-entry-ke... If what is in there is true, we should have an article on her and make an effort to protect it from vandals and the like.
Perhaps you should read it more carefully.
Famously, the Time "Person of the Year" was, well, "us", you and I, the Interwebnet communities, etc. It's a passing comment about, well, the powers of the internet.
The article is certainly not saying *she* was named it herself!
On 6/3/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/3/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 09:39:22 -0400, "Gabe Johnson" gjzilla@gmail.com wrote:
Well, the front-page interview with the Washington Post and the Fox News appeareance kind of pop that bubble of "do no harm." If she's trying to stay private, then... well... that's probably not the best strategy.
Do not confuse damage limitation with acceptance of unwelcome attention.
Indeed, and furthermore do not confuse human interest news stories with genuine biographical writing.
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com
How is "Times Person of the Year" a human interest news story? They don't just pick anyone for such a thing.
She ain't *that* notable. :-) ~~~~
On 6/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 09:39:22 -0400, "Gabe Johnson" gjzilla@gmail.com wrote:
Well, the front-page interview with the Washington Post and the Fox News appeareance kind of pop that bubble of "do no harm." If she's trying to stay private, then... well... that's probably not the best strategy.
Do not confuse damage limitation with acceptance of unwelcome attention.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
Please explain how an interview with the [[Washington Post]] is damage limitation.
Also, I still maintain that we are doing the subject something of a *service* by writing something *neutral* about this.
Anyway, did someone not say that there were already stories about her, even before the unfortunate events? ~~~~
Gabe Johnson wrote:
Anyway, did someone not say that there were already stories about her, even before the unfortunate events? ~~~~
Dozens. She even holds a national record for her age class.
-Jeff
On 03/06/07, Gabe Johnson gjzilla@gmail.com wrote:
Well, the front-page interview with the Washington Post and the Fox News appeareance kind of pop that bubble of "do no harm." If she's trying to stay private, then... well... that's probably not the best strategy.
Do not confuse damage limitation with acceptance of unwelcome attention.
Please explain how an interview with the [[Washington Post]] is damage limitation.
Herewith is a short parable demonstrating the innate moral ambiguities of the media...
Let us imagine you wake up to find innumerable people mocking you publicly around the world. A newspaper comes to you and says "would you like to put your side of the story forward"?
You can either a) hide and hope they decide to stop; or b) make the most of a bad thing, and try to divert the shittiness. Which would you do?
Taking the interview is b); it requires some guts and is a bit of a gamble, but if you can stay cool and handle yourself well in the glare then the entire thing will burn out pretty fast and you can go back to normality again. If you choose a), well, maybe it'll burn out. Maybe it won't. Maybe you'll just keep being hounded until you take b), and by then maybe you'll be in a worse position to fend off the wolves...
(Compare, eg, the occasional publicity blip of someone accused of having an affair with a major politician - they shoot to fame on the terms of a muckraker journalist, they take the interviews and explain patiently it's all nonsense, everyone loses interest and they return to private life)
Also, I still maintain that we are doing the subject something of a *service* by writing something *neutral* about this.
We are not. We are merely publicising her humiliation further. This is not helping *anyone*, least of all us - no matter how we posture here, we're not doing the right thing by continuing to publish a "neutral" account of how she became a sex object for the trivial amusement of the internet.
On 03/06/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Also, I still maintain that we are doing the subject something of a *service* by writing something *neutral* about this.
We are not. We are merely publicising her humiliation further. This is not helping *anyone*, least of all us - no matter how we posture here, we're not doing the right thing by continuing to publish a "neutral" account of how she became a sex object for the trivial amusement of the internet.
I think I want to discuss this a little further - it brings up a very interesting aspect of how we deal with people.
The Washington Post article is well written (with a couple of regrettably silly editorial glitches), tactfully executed, and touches on the interesting issues raised by this little frenzy. It's low-key; it's retroactively toned, presenting the story as the ongoing effects of a momentary burst of online idiocy. It's a human-interest story, and so is written from the victim's perspective, and as such gives her full and fair opportunity to pass comment, which she makes use of. It's a good example of how to write a story on this event - if you're going to suffer national press coverage, this is the least bad kind.
But it is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it remotely an appropriate topic for one. It's a passing news story about a passing Internet fad and its unwanted effects on the life of a *private individual*.
It is appropriate to cover as a human-interest news story. It is not appropriate to transform into a significant event in the historical literature, which is what we are effectively trying to do - it certainly isn't appropriate to do so whilst the proverbial ink is still wet.
If we have this article, we are asserting, like it or not: a) this person is of fundamental importance to human knowledge; b) because she's pretty. If she was famous in her own right, a clear public figure, it would be different, perhaps appropriate to mention it in passing (if done right). But she's not; she's an eighteen-year-old high school athlete who did pretty well, and got in the newspaper for other reasons.
[and let us now begin to generalise...]
----
The continuing inclusion/exclusion arguments have gone on for years and will continue to go on, and we keep asserting some fleeting way of defining "notability" - have they done this, scored so highly on that, published X many books or worked for Y organisation or won the Z Award? Taking no sides, it's not unreasonable to say that our average threshold for inclusion is gradually lowering over time with regards to individuals - if not in principle then certainly in practice, as we gradually "fill up" the lower-importance slots. We bicker about the line to draw, but the community is mostly accepting that "notability" is a critical pass-or-fail test involved in the editorial decision of whether or not to include an article.
Which is fair enough. I've written about a few semi-notable figures myself, and been quite pleased with the results. (Oddest hobby Wikipedia has driven me to: researching the lives of mid-ranking naval officers of the French Revolutionary Wars. They had such unusual careers...)
But somewhere along this line, we lost track of the concept of being a "public figure", someone whose life is accepted as being in the public gaze and who no longer has a reasonable expectation of absolute privacy. It's a legal term, but one with a pretty well-generalisable meaning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_figure - not the best of articles, but hey.
To be "traditionally encyclopedically notable", someone needed to be a president of somewhere or a major author or a great violinist or a renowned judge - a public figure virtually by definition. Even the intensely private ones of these Great Figures - the JD Salingers or Neil Armstrongs - have an undeniable public existence, it is just one they choose to strongly disassociate their personal life from (with or without success).
Then we came along, and created an encyclopedia with four hundred thousand.biographies - and if we were to "fill out" that, based on the various precedents we've set for what we consider a legitimate article subject, it would probably be an order of magnitude more. It's wonderful we have all these articles, wonderful that we can write encyclopedic material on people you wouldn't expect anyone to care about.
But there's a hidden bug. The threshold we have set ourselves for notability has now come so low, driven by this vast amount of biographical material, that we're on the public-figure divide. We are happily asserting people to be of "encyclopedic notability" who are not, by any reasonable definition, public figures - we never used to have to apply this test before, so we never thought to sit down and make it on a case-by-case basis.
So, this points up two things.
a) Should we start considering whether or not the subject is a public figure in deciding whether or not the article is appropriate? There is, of course, no clear bright line...
b) If not, why not? (Bonus points for giving an ethical argument)
I suspect a *lot* of our current problems with biographies of living people can be partially attributed to this - we're trying to apply a single test, "notability", when we really ought to be applying two. Comments, especially on the general case, appreciated - I think we might be on to something here.
Andrew Gray wrote:
a) Should we start considering whether or not the subject is a public figure in deciding whether or not the article is appropriate? There is, of course, no clear bright line...
b) If not, why not? (Bonus points for giving an ethical argument)
Because the line between "public" and "private" in non-legal purposes no longer exists. In the specific situation of Stokke, one could argue, for our purposes, that she's not a "private" person due to her competing in public events. Qian Zhijun was, by many probable definitions, a "private" person to begin with, but ceased becoming one as he took his notoriety in his own hands. Hell, even Brian Peppers stopped being a "private" individual when he was convicted.
You don't get to choose whether you're public or private is the greater point. It's sort of like "marginal" or "minimal" or "slightly" notability, or being "a little bit pregnant." You may not *want* to be noteworthy or public or known or pregnant, or want others to be, but it happens and that's that.
If we want to write a general interest encyclopedia, we need to be able to disconnect from our personal perspectives and situations and instead look at these issues dispassionately. I mean, the Elephant Man was a sideshow act who got some sympathy from royal nobility - should we cease to have an article on him even though his story isn't really all that different from what we're quibbling with?
We're losing focus.
-Jeff
On 6/3/07 10:00 AM, "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Because the line between "public" and "private" in non-legal purposes no longer exists. In the specific situation of Stokke, one could argue, for our purposes, that she's not a "private" person due to her competing in public events. Qian Zhijun was, by many probable definitions, a "private" person to begin with, but ceased becoming one as he took his notoriety in his own hands. Hell, even Brian Peppers stopped being a "private" individual when he was convicted.
You don't get to choose whether you're public or private is the greater point. It's sort of like "marginal" or "minimal" or "slightly" notability, or being "a little bit pregnant." You may not *want* to be noteworthy or public or known or pregnant, or want others to be, but it happens and that's that.
We're losing focus.
No, Jeff, we're gaining focus. We're focusing on the fact that these articles are not and never will be biographies. They're scandal sheets.
99 percent of people "in the news" will disappear from the news within a week. We will never find out who these people really are beyond the single newsworthy incident they happen to be involved in. There will never be any other information about their lives. This presents a major problem of undue weight.
If we allow the creation of Wikipedia articles on every single one of these people, then, what we get are not biographies, but instead out-of-context snapshots of a random moment in their lives which happened to intersect with media or public interest for however long it took them to change the channel on the television. That means that everyone who ever ends up in a newspaper will end up with that moment defining them for the rest of their lives on this encyclopedia, regardless of anything they may have done before or after.
There may never be a reliable source which tells us that after being the subject of a messy, expensive and tabloid-covered 10-year custody battle, little Jeff Doe goes on to have a successful career as a union carpenter, raising a family and living his life. Instead, for the rest of his life he'll be defined by Wikipedia as, "Jeff Doe is a man who was the subject of a massive custody battle in 1992."
Is that what Wikipedia is supposed to do? Define people forever by their single worst, most tragic, scandalous or Internet-memed moment? I don't think so.
If we cannot write a balanced, sourced biography on someone which goes beyond whatever 15 minutes of infamy they happened to be involved in, we should not write a biographical article on them at all.
Claiming that every single person ever mentioned in a newspaper article is now an "instant public figure" and should be documented on Wikipedia forever is a radical and completely unwarranted expansion of the idea of an encyclopedia.
-Travis
On 6/3/07, Travis Mason-Bushman travis@gpsports-eng.com wrote:
On 6/3/07 10:00 AM, "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Because the line between "public" and "private" in non-legal purposes no longer exists. In the specific situation of Stokke, one could argue, for our purposes, that she's not a "private" person due to her competing in public events. Qian Zhijun was, by many probable definitions, a "private" person to begin with, but ceased becoming one as he took his notoriety in his own hands. Hell, even Brian Peppers stopped being a "private" individual when he was convicted.
You don't get to choose whether you're public or private is the greater point. It's sort of like "marginal" or "minimal" or "slightly" notability, or being "a little bit pregnant." You may not *want* to be noteworthy or public or known or pregnant, or want others to be, but it happens and that's that.
We're losing focus.
No, Jeff, we're gaining focus. We're focusing on the fact that these articles are not and never will be biographies. They're scandal sheets.
99 percent of people "in the news" will disappear from the news within a week. We will never find out who these people really are beyond the single newsworthy incident they happen to be involved in. There will never be any other information about their lives. This presents a major problem of undue weight.
If we allow the creation of Wikipedia articles on every single one of these people, then, what we get are not biographies, but instead out-of-context snapshots of a random moment in their lives which happened to intersect with media or public interest for however long it took them to change the channel on the television. That means that everyone who ever ends up in a newspaper will end up with that moment defining them for the rest of their lives on this encyclopedia, regardless of anything they may have done before or after.
There may never be a reliable source which tells us that after being the subject of a messy, expensive and tabloid-covered 10-year custody battle, little Jeff Doe goes on to have a successful career as a union carpenter, raising a family and living his life. Instead, for the rest of his life he'll be defined by Wikipedia as, "Jeff Doe is a man who was the subject of a massive custody battle in 1992."
Is that what Wikipedia is supposed to do? Define people forever by their single worst, most tragic, scandalous or Internet-memed moment? I don't think so.
If we cannot write a balanced, sourced biography on someone which goes beyond whatever 15 minutes of infamy they happened to be involved in, we should not write a biographical article on them at all.
Claiming that every single person ever mentioned in a newspaper article is now an "instant public figure" and should be documented on Wikipedia forever is a radical and completely unwarranted expansion of the idea of an encyclopedia.
-Travis
Yes, but Stokke holds several world records for her age, even before the pictures spread. ~~~~
On 6/3/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Herewith is a short parable demonstrating the innate moral ambiguities of the media...
Let us imagine you wake up to find innumerable people mocking you publicly around the world. A newspaper comes to you and says "would you like to put your side of the story forward"?
You can either a) hide and hope they decide to stop; or b) make the most of a bad thing, and try to divert the shittiness. Which would you do?
Taking the interview is b); it requires some guts and is a bit of a gamble, but if you can stay cool and handle yourself well in the glare then the entire thing will burn out pretty fast and you can go back to normality again. If you choose a), well, maybe it'll burn out. Maybe it won't. Maybe you'll just keep being hounded until you take b), and by then maybe you'll be in a worse position to fend off the wolves...
(Compare, eg, the occasional publicity blip of someone accused of having an affair with a major politician - they shoot to fame on the terms of a muckraker journalist, they take the interviews and explain patiently it's all nonsense, everyone loses interest and they return to private life)
And then some buffoon accuses you of courting publicity. We're had a similar display of imbecility from people defending the production of a purported "biography" of QZ.
See the very intelligent blog post at: http://www.withleather.com/post.phtml?pk=2994
I would feel very very differently if it had been about something that would actually harm her, or if she had been a victim of a crime. If she does compete for Berkeley next year, the publicity will be unavoidable. DGG / David Goodman
On 6/3/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/3/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Herewith is a short parable demonstrating the innate moral ambiguities of the media...
Let us imagine you wake up to find innumerable people mocking you publicly around the world. A newspaper comes to you and says "would you like to put your side of the story forward"?
You can either a) hide and hope they decide to stop; or b) make the most of a bad thing, and try to divert the shittiness. Which would you do?
Taking the interview is b); it requires some guts and is a bit of a gamble, but if you can stay cool and handle yourself well in the glare then the entire thing will burn out pretty fast and you can go back to normality again. If you choose a), well, maybe it'll burn out. Maybe it won't. Maybe you'll just keep being hounded until you take b), and by then maybe you'll be in a worse position to fend off the wolves...
(Compare, eg, the occasional publicity blip of someone accused of having an affair with a major politician - they shoot to fame on the terms of a muckraker journalist, they take the interviews and explain patiently it's all nonsense, everyone loses interest and they return to private life)
And then some buffoon accuses you of courting publicity. We're had a similar display of imbecility from people defending the production of a purported "biography" of QZ.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Gabe Johnson wrote:
Anyway, don't you think it might be better to have a neutral, verifiable encyclopedia entry on her than whatever stalker site *does* pop up? ~~~~
Logically. But we threw logic out the window ages ago with situations like this.
-Jeff
On 6/3/07, AvB arie2@tien.biz wrote:
I found the first Google hit telling:
Take a look at that page before you say more.
The Mangoe the.mangoe@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/3/07, AvB arie2@tien.biz wrote:
I found the first Google hit telling:
Take a look at that page before you say more.
So Yossarian - more than just a hint of causality issues.
AvB