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

[Gwern Branwen]

On  0, Blu Aardvark <jeffrey.latham at gmail.com> scribbled:
> Why does Wikipedia have to have an entry on everything that is reported
> by some media source or other?
>
> Yes, the event was covered by a few reliable sources, but it didn't take
> long for the media to forget all about it. And nobody will even give a
> rat's behind about the Essjay Controversy in five, ten years, except for
> maybe a few Wikipedia users who were affected by it. Just because a
> person or event made some headlines doesn't necessarily mean that that
> person or event is notable. Oh, it's *verifiable*, to be sure, but
> verifiability is not the same as notability, or else Wikipedia would
> have articles on anyone who has ever made their local rag. (Nobody is
> arguing for that. At least, I hope nobody is...)
...

You know, people made the exact same argument against having the Seigenthaler mess be covered in an article. Yet it is even now, 3(?) years later a staple of articles (both journalistic and scholarly) on Wikipedia and even mentioned in the EB article on Wikipedia. Why should we believe that this argument would be valid for the case of Essjay when it was not for Seigenthaler?

--
gwern
HAHO FKS 868 GCHQ DITSA SORT AMEMB NSG HIC EDI benelux SAS SBS SAW UDT EODC GOE
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