[WikiEN-l] News agencies are not RSs

[Michael Peel]

On 29 Jun 2009, at 22:40, George Herbert wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 11:49 AM, <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
>> So instead what we did, instead of merely reporting it and moving  
>> on, is to
>> make it into another front-page example of Wikipedia censorship,  
>> so it can
>> go around the world in the opposite direction as well.  And for  
>> twice as
>> long.
>>
>> Smart thinking.  Let's raise the profile by trying to suppress it.
>> Has.. that.. ever... worked... before?
>> No it hasn't.
>
> It seems to have worked just fine in this case, actually.

In this case, it didn't matter that his profile was raised instantly  
to whatever level after his release - the important period was when  
he was held captive. It was more delay than suppression.

I've been feeling a bit uneasy about this whole issue since I first  
heard about it (this morning); it was obviously the best real-life  
approach to deal with this, but the top-down approach within  
Wikipedia (i.e. coming from Jimmy) was worrying. I can understand why  
it was top-down, and can't think of a better way that it could have  
been done, but I'm still not too keen on it. If it had involved  
reliable references, then I'd be a lot more worried if it had still  
played out in the same fashion.

Mike