[WikiEN-l] Borderline notable bios (yes, again)

[Brian Salter-Duke]

On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 11:21:21PM +0100, Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 12/07/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> 
> >There is a problem with two relatively tiny groups of people that should
> >be at least mentioned here.
> >
> >First, there are the Wikipedia lovers who insist that everything about
> >Wikipedia is super duper important and who love to fill Wikipedia with
> >Wikipedia fan cruft *and* to work really hard to look up negative
> >information about anyone who has ever been hostile to Wikipedia. ...
> 
> "It's true so we should have it in and who are you to say otherwise
> and you're just deleting information and... they *asked* for deletion?
> OMG CENSORSHIP"
> 
> This is a slightly hyperbolic paraphrase, but a true one. People get
> insanely twitchy if they think something is removed by request; they
> *asked* us to remove it? that means they don't want people to know it!
> it must be important! we must fight to keep it!
> 
> I've encountered this quite a few times. It seems to be a cultural
> thing - I don't think I'd be wrong to guess it's a much more common
> attitude among Americans than Europeans, and among a certain type of
> them. There's not much we can do except be tactful and occasionally
> wield the Big Stick Of Editorial Common Sense.

Maybe that explains why I'm puzzled by this discussion, being a Brit now
in Australia. We are not trying to write an encyclopedia overnight. If
someone does not want an article on them, then I think we should be
inclined to delete it. The times when we do not delete should be where
the person has put themselves into the public limelight and people will
want to know about them. We do not therefore delete [[George W. Bush]] 
or any politician. However people who found businesses or are VPs of
businesses are entitled to privacy. Our readers do not have to be able
to find information about them on WP.

Having meet Angela at a couple of Melbourne meetups, although we have
not discussed her article, I understand why she wants it to go. I'm
about to move over to Afd to state my opinion.
 
> "No, the names of his four-year-old twin daughters are not notable.
> Yes, they're verifiable if you go and... oh, you did go and look up
> the county registers did you? That's nice. But it's not important. It
> causes the guy undue distress, and our readers don't need to know it."
> 
> I mean, trivia stuff. I've seen a few requests on OTRS from people
> saying things like "I guess you have an article on me, and that's
> fair, but can you take out the fact that I was born on September 2nd
> and just have it say 1958?" Or the seemingly inexhaustible list of
> minor porn starlets who, quite justifiably, write to us and say "your
> article on me has my real name! take it out! I'm scared!"... Articles
> are filling up with information that is, at best, borderline trivia
> (and at worst actively stupid), and we have a (default?) culture that
> seems to encourage adding it.
> 
> There are times that I think adopting the rule jp.wiki has on
> biographies would be a damn good idea...

Could you tell us what this rule is or where to find it written in
english?
 
> -- 
> - Andrew Gray
>  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> 
> 
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> End of WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 36, Issue 32
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-- 
          Brian Salter-Duke            b_duke at bigpond.net.au  
               [[User:Bduke]]  mainly on en:Wikipedia.
 Also on fr: Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki, WikiNews, WikiBooks and Commons