[WikiEN-l] Attack Site Wars, Episode VII... The Return of the Essjay

[Anthony]

On 6/27/07, White Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> Headline on CNN right now is "Poll: War support at new low" do we have an
> article of this poll? We write articles on events unless they are notable
> enough for the entire year rather than day.
>
I assume that last line was meant to be prescriptive rather than descriptive.

The way I see it, the whole fiasco over Essjay was a much much bigger
story than a single poll over the war.  It's still being talked about
today, see for instance
http://p10.tech.mud.yahoo.com/blogs/raskin/10963.  It also involves
many more facts which cannot be succinctly summarized like a war poll.

> A notable event would be Jimbo deciding to shut down the site (wikipedia)
> for example which would IMHO only be notable enough to be mentioned on the
> article on [[Wikipedia]]. Probably the coverage would be one or two lines,
> max a paragraph. Not a full article, that can be on wikinews (maybe). Essjay
> incident however isn't even worth a single line mention on article
> namespace.
>
I don't see a purpose to setting an artificial limit on how much to
cover such an incident.  If all we know is that Jimbo shut down the
site, and not much else, one or two lines would be enough.  If, on the
other hand, there is a lot more detail to the story, then we should
take as much room as it requires to explain what happened, splitting
out to a full article if necessary.

Looking at the [[Essjay incident]], the section on ==Reaction== does
seem to be poorly organized if not fluff.  But the rest of the article
seems necessary for providing a complete account of what happened.
The title is poor, but that's because we as a group have realized it's
bad taste to write about someone like Essjay but haven't yet decided
that writing an article on the only incident someone is known for is
basically the same thing.

> I also think that Essjay article is in violation of the spirit of "right to
> vanish". I do not particularly ''like'' Essjay but this mocking of him even
> bothers me. I ask myself this question: "will I be mistreated like him if
> circumstances are right?"
>
I really don't think Wikipedians have adopted the spirit of "right to vanish".

Whether or not to destroy the historical accounts of the Essjay
controversy is a difficult question because the facts go beyond
Essjay.  Why didn't Jimmy Wales do something sooner?  Doesn't the New
Yorker do *any* background checks on people?  I guess these facts
could remain without mentioning real names, but finding out Essjay's
real name would be trivial to do.

Ultimately I think the best argument for deletion is that Wikipedia is
not a good place for an article which is essentially about itself.
Maybe back before semi-protection and username blocks and 3RR
enforcement you could have something there which resembled a neutral
article, but those days are gone forever.