[WikiEN-l] Human dignity

[geni]

On 7/17/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Stephen Bain wrote:
> > On 7/15/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> 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.
> >
> > This particular incident may only be embarrassing; what is undignified
> > is AP's reportage using a full name. What would likewise be
> > undignified would be the immortalisation of this in a biography,
> > forever linking this person's name with this event and this event
> > alone (there is no other biographical information available), as if
> > that was the sum total of their life.
>
> Exactly.  Perhaps I am surprisingly old-fashioned, but it seems to me
> that the news reporting in this case would have been _better_ had they
> simply used initials or some other literary device.
>
> For me, the amusement at the cute story (woman calls 911 to ask for a
> date) was seriously impaired by my distaste for the fact that this poor
> woman's name was being brought into the matter globally and on the
> Internet and against her will, in a way that makes it somewhat likely
> that future googling on her name for the next 30 years will bring this
> incident, and only this incident, to the forefront.
>
> --Jimbo

That may have been the point. I know that in the UK at least there has
been talk of "naming and shaming" people who missuse emergency
phonelines.


-- 
geni