[WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale)

[Scott MacDonald]

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of geni

>Firstly lets not forget this is all in reaction to the
>[[Pippa Middleton]] article which is based on a wider range of sources
>over a longer period of time and who quite clearly exists. In any case
>Britain has royal watchers in much the same way it has train spotters
>so sourcing is not much of a concern.

Existence is not really the point. The point is that reliance on newspaper
sources is incredibly dangerous - even when a wide range is used. For
example, on Pippa Middleton, see my critique of this section, which was a
careless pastiche of terrible newspaper stories. http://tinyurl.com/5s6hoxa

The problem is that our metric for keeping an article is that multiple
sources exist. No one ever seems to consider whether the sources are
adequate for a reliable biography, but once the article exists people need
the need to fill it out, and so they use google to find every passing
mention and make as much of each as they can. 

>Secondly if you think that this is limited to BLPs and newspapers you are
sadly mistaken.

Nothing is ever limited to anything. But the use of newspapers to write bios
of celebrities, where no proper biographical sources exist is particularly
pernicious. 

>The difference is I'm able to document this without a WP:POINT violation.

Writing an essay to make a point is not a violation of WP:POINT - although
I'll admit creating this as an article at the start was a little silly.

Scott