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

[Alphax (Wikipedia email)]

Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
<snip>
> 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.
> 

The potential for damage is greater than the amount of information we
have lost. If someone really wants to find out about the guy, they can
use Google. I see this as a page which if it were recreated, would most
likely have to be permanantly protected to prevent the reinsertion of
the material which caused it's removal in the first place.

-- 
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
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