[WikiEN-l] "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit?

[Greg Sabino Mullane]

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> 2) Wikipedia is still an encyclopedia, isn't it? Surely you can have
> an encyclopedia without an article on Brian Peppers in it. Many other
> encyclopedias get by without such an article.

Nice straw man. Let's make that a new CSD while we're at it - "This
article not covered in other encyclopedias."

> 3) Anyone can still edit Wikipedia, can't they?

Not regarding Brian Peppers, apparently.

What really worries me is the bad precedent this sets. The (very condensed)
facts are:

1) This article survived its last AfD. Some people voted delete, but
it survived.

2) A short time later, a phony email was sent to wikipedia by someone
*claiming* to be a relative of Brian Pepper. The article was immediately
deleted. It was later shown that this almost undoubtedly was not sent
by a relative, but by someone sending fake notes to Wikipedia and to
other sites.

3) DR, AFD, mailing list arguments, wheel warring, and finally a deus
ex machina ends with the article, for all practical purposes, being
even more deleted than at the end of step 2.

I know there is a lot of middle stuff in part 3, and the arguments expanded
well beyond the legal worries raised in 2 (although quite a few people
calling for deletion continued to cite them), but it is really disheartening
to to note that, in effect, a prankster just succeeded in having an article
removed from Wikipedia.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg at turnstep.com
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