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

[Rob]

On 6/28/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote: >
> So, when you said that "no one has yet to come up with anything
> resembling a reliable source" what you meant was that we've come up
> with lots of reliable sources, but that we haven't come up with what
> you would consider multiple encyclopedic reliable sources?

I'd say that's a fair assessment.

> > In short, a reliable source establishing why *this
> > particular* person should have an article, as opposed to all the other
> > essentially anonymous people on the sex offender list or in Ohio court
> > records.
> >
> The most reliable source for that is Google Trends.  This particular
> person should have an article because lots of people are searching for
> information about him.  If you want to call that "an internet meme",
> that's your terminology, not mine.

Okay, so you are saying (hopefully I have it right this time) not that
he should have an article because of specific kind of notability (like
a significant internet meme) but simply because people are looking for
info on him.  It doesn't matter if this demand is generated by general
internet interest, or just the population of Toledo, Ohio wondering
who that guy down the block is.

But, to me, the key question is : what are they finding?  If there are
no encyclopedic (in the sense that I discussed above) sources to
support an article, then we should not have an article regardless of
the demand.  It is the mission of journalists and historians to
satisfy that demand by creating secondary sources through synthesising
primary ones like court documents, not ours.  It is our mission to
write encyclopedia articles once those secondary sources exist.