[WikiEN-l] Jimmy Wales should reconsider

[Ken Arromdee]

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007, Bryan Derksen wrote:
> But IMO it's not a "real solution" to delete an article that we would
> otherwise have if only the subject of the article hadn't asked us to
> delete it. Adding the exemption for biographies already in Britannica
> would just make Wikipedia's coverage even more nonsensical and
> arbitrary. There's nothing magical about Britannica's standards that
> makes biographies problem-free and it would introduce a whopping great
> systemic bias.

There is something magical about biographies in Britannica which makes
biographies a lot closer to problem-free, if not actually there:

If you have a biography in Britannica, you're probably notable in the
everyday non-Wikipedian sense: there are lot of sources and a lot of people
already talking about you, and anything that Wikipedia can say is a drop
in the bucket.  There's so much material about George W. Bush both on the
Internet and in print that a problem with the Bush article simply isn't going
to hurt Bush much, because the Wikipedia article is one out of millions
and doesn't have the influence.

If you don't have a biography in Britannica, your Wikipedia article is probably
the top source of information on the Internet about you, or close, and any
problems with that article loom large and can have a huge effect.  Even if
he leaves politics, nobody's going to deny George Bush a job because of
something they read in his Wikipedia article.  But they might to Joe Blow.