[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's destiny

[Jimmy Wales]

Delirium wrote
> 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.

I don't think it's legally problematic.  It's morally deeply
problematic, but that's a different question altogether.

The issue is that it was a recreation of already AfD'd content.

> 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).

I don't know anything about this case, but in general, I would say that
a thoughtful approach to our astounding global power to hurt people
deeply by having inappropriate articles on people who are not famous
through any fault or merit of their own will may lead us to respectfully
decline to have abusive articles about such people.

This is why I merged the culprit in the Siegenthaler case into the
Siegenthaler page.  It is just deeply inappropriate when the #2 hit in
google is to this poor fellow who made one simple stupid mistake in his
life (which is made, we know, by dozens of people daily who are trolling
wikipedia) and accidentally got famous because of it.

--Jimbo



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