[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's destiny

[Delirium]

Joshua Griisser wrote:

>I'm almost speechless with rage at Jimbo's unilateral deletion of the encyclopedia article [[Brian Peppers]] - not to mention his locking (via [[User:Danny]] and [[WP:OFFICE]]) of [[Harry Reid]] for *five days*.
>  
>
I'm very confused by this one.  I wrote a one-sentence, factual, 
verifiable, referenced stub reading something like the following (from 
memory):

---
'''Brian Peppers''' is the subject of an [[internet fad]] due to his 
unusual appearance in a police [[mug shot]] photograph.

==References==
* [[Urban Legends Reference Pages]] (snopes.com). 
[http://www.snopes.com/photos/people/peppers.asp "Who's a Pepper?"]. 
Accessed February 17, 2006.
---

I fail to see how this could possibly be legally problematic.  What's 
more, deleting it from the encyclopedia reduces our coverage of internet 
culture, which is currently an active area of academic research.

There are some books on internet fads currently in press, scheduled to 
appear within the next year.  If one of them mentions Brian Peppers, 
will we still prohibit an article in Wikipedia about it?

I can see arguments against using Wikipedia to *create* fads, but that 
is clearly not the case here.  Are we going to delete [[Star Wars kid]] 
if his family complains, too?  After all, he too is famous against his 
own will, and in that case the famous video was even leaked onto the 
internet illegally (while in Brian Peppers case the famous photograph 
was officially posted by the State of Ohio on its website in accordance 
with state law).

-Mark