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

[Gregory Kohs]

>>>>>
From: "White Cat" <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com>

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.

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 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?"

   - White Cat
>>>>>
As long as there are proper citations of all facts from reliable sources,
and that the subjects of these articles are welcome to contribute statements
of their own (or point out other reliable sources) on the Discussion page
-- and that these would be fairly considered by the community in the
article's content, the article should stay.  If not satisfactory to the
subject, he or she should be able to request the article's removal, too --
but only a truly impartial committee (preferably EXTERNAL to Wikipedia, and
using standard tests of notability) should judge whether the BLP is of
"note" or not.  The "Essjay controversy" is no different than:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Edmondson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_O'Leary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Deutsch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Troupe

One would rightly argue that these four all held more notable positions than
Ryan Jordan, but the moment Jimmy Wales (the sole-/co-founder of a Top 10
website) made public record and comment about Jordan in a venerable
publication like New Yorker, that made the whole affair worthy of inclusion
in any encyclopedia that seeks to have 2 million or more articles.

A Google search of 'Wales Jordan Wikipedia Essjay' returns 39,000 pages.
You can't put the genie back in the bottle.  By comparison, a search for
'Quincy Troupe California laureate' returns "only" 10,100 pages; a search
for 'David Edmondson Radio Shack Pacific' returns "only" 13,200 pages.

If anyone needs to be blamed for the [[Essjay controversy]] article being in
Wikipedia, it's Jimmy Wales.  He's the one who made all of the
publicity-drawing decisions that escalated this incident (elevating someone
he knew -- or should have known -- to have inauthentic credentials to the
Arbitration Committee, hiring the same person to his for-profit firm Wikia,
and commenting that he didn't "really have a problem with it"), other than
Jordan's initial untruth itself.  Wales eventually sincerely apologized for
his mistakes.  I commend that.  But, it's another thing altogether to
suggest that the next remedy is to remove the article.  If there are 39,000
pages floating around on the web about this topic, then clearly citizens of
the world will seek out Wikipedia for the encyclopedia's version of the
story, for years to come.  What would it say to have nothing there, and a
ban on recreating the article?

-- 
Gregory Kohs
Cell: 302.463.1354