Jimmy Wales wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
I don't even see what's so undignified about this particular incident that anyone would argue it on that basis in the first place. Everyone does boneheaded things from time to time.
Yes, but usually they do not end up being permanently presented in what is arguably the most important encyclopedic record of our time. Usually, such things come and go, a little blip in the news.
If the event in question is just a "little blip in the news", then we would already reject an article about it based on existing notability guidelines.
This was really a bad example to discuss this issue based on, IMO. I had to assume for sake of argument that there was something significant about the 911 call case to make it worth having an article about in the first place, but now the incident's triviality is brought up again to modify the "human dignity" matter. This example makes it impossible to reasonably address the real issue in isolation.
Even today, when tons of information does get archived on the Internet, the power of wikipedia, and the breadth of it, means that for many borderline or non-notable people the #1 hit in google is going to be to the Wikipedia article.
http://www.google.com/search?q=brian+chase&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls...
Why is this not a good thing? Our articles are NPOV and verifiable, and easily corrected should errors in them be found. What would be a better site to have as the #1 hit?