In a message dated 4/22/2008 11:32:12 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, saintonge@telus.net writes:

WJhonson@aol.com wrote:

So we collect together details like Jimmy dumped his girlfriend over the internet, Jimmy was born in Alabama and Jimmy ran a porn site and voila

we've

done additional harm that any individual source did not do.

I'm amused by the suggestion that stating that someone was born in Alabama somehow does harm. It's been a long time since 1865. :-)

------------------------------ My point isn't the individual atomic details. It's the collection of details in one article. Knowing that Jimmy was born in Alabama and that he ran porn site x and now is the "at-least-nominal" head of Wikipedia, *could* be used to do further research, for example one could find a picture of him in his high school yearbook right? Once you find that detail, can a person then argue against it's inclusion? It is relevant to a biography to know where someone went to High School or that they were arrested at age 15 for shop-lifting or that they won the blue ribbon for the biggest hog at the County Fair.

We create the situation from where you can further that sort of research. That very situation, that we create, and that has not previously existed, is what people are arguing against.

That is, to wit, *if* we find details from the newspaper about Jimmy's early life, that we can't include them, simply because they don't exist already somewhere ....else. That position is exactly the argument used on the article about Genie feral child, and so far I am the sole voice of reason *imho* to argue that it's a ridiculous argument.

Will Johnson

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