On 10 Apr 2007 at 19:17, "Daniel R. Tobias" dan@tobias.name wrote:
What would be the notability there? Merely entering (and even winning) a wet T-shirt competition doesn't seem to be sufficient notability to justify an article, since there are probably
thousands
of girls in a similar situation.
Precisely. If the encyclopedia allows such articles to be posted, then it opens the door wide open for abuse. Years later that woman or her husband may be standing for election or campaigning against environmental damage or fighting corruption or whatever. Her wealthy opponents can blackmail her into silence, and thereby badly damage democracy, by the use of Wikipedia. (Because, make no mistake, it's wealthy people who find ways to protect themselves from this stuff and dig it up against their opponents).
I'm not sure of the complete answer (and I'm sure there are others much better qualified to speak than me). But I'd have thought that, as a rule of thumb, only people truly notable, and in some "notorious" fashion, should have this kind of trivial material added to their biographies. In most cases if people ask to have their biographies taken down, or "titillating" material removed, then we should do so.
Otherwise, the likes of Daniel Brandt are indeed going to target people within Wikipedia, with equally unpredictable but harmful effects.
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On 4/13/07, andy.dyer9@tiscali.co.uk andy.dyer9@tiscali.co.uk wrote:
Precisely. If the encyclopedia allows such articles to be posted, then it opens the door wide open for abuse. Years later that woman or her husband may be standing for election or campaigning against environmental damage or fighting corruption or whatever. Her wealthy opponents can blackmail her into silence, and thereby badly damage democracy, by the use of Wikipedia.
Um, blackmail requires a SECRET. If it's posted to Wikipedia, it's pretty much by definition no longer a secret.
Besides, if Wikipedia finds out about it, it wasn't a secret anyway. Especially if it gets kept under our content policies, since we require reliable sources.
Keeping things off Wikipedia doesn't protect against this kind of stuff - a determined opponent digging dirt. The question is whether we should be protecting people against the casually inquisitive, not the determined.
-Matt