[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's destiny

[Fred Bauder]

Brian Peppers is a pitiful person we should not be making fun of  
(using our "power"). There is no legal problem, but not the point.  
Harry Reid will likely be Majority leader of the Senate. I have not  
followed any controversy regarding his article, but some attention  
needs to be paid to the quality of the article.

Fred

On Feb 21, 2006, at 8:08 PM, Delirium wrote:

> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>