[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]

[Fred Bauder]

> On 23/05/2011 03:56, geni wrote:
>> On 23 May 2011 02:24, Brian J Mingus<brian.mingus at colorado.edu>  wrote:
>>> When you Google for Santorum's last name this Wikipedia article is the
>>> second result. This means that people who are looking for legitimate
>>> information about him are not going to find it right away - instead we
>>> are
>>> going to feed them information about a biased smear campaign rather
>>> than the
>>> former Senators BLP.
>> Google's search results are entirely their business.
>>
> Yes, I agree with that comment. As Google are aware, people try to game
> their "algorithm"; and their business model requires them to take action
> on that. Not our problem at all.
>
> The business of neologisms on WP was actually put into "How Wikipedia
> Works" (Chapter 7, "A Deletion Case Study"). At that time the example to
> hand was of the buzzword type, and the question was apparently whether
> WP's duty was to keep people informed of new jargon, or to be more
> distanced and only include a new term when it was clearly well
> established.
>
> To be a bit more nuanced about this instance: if there is a dimension in
> that article of a BLP, certain things follow at least at the margin
> about use of sources. And NPOV clearly requires that a successful
> campaign to "discredit" someone is reported in those terms. Here there
> is a fine line between "mockery" and "smear", and saying the latter by
> default omits the element of satire. In other words, there are people
> who take US domestic politics very seriously, and media stories very
> seriously (I think enWP tends to take the media as a whole too
> seriously, BTW, which is the media's estimation of itself) , and regard
> Google now as part of the media, and so come to the sort of conclusion
> that Brian does.
>
> OTOH we have our mission, and our policies, and should do our job. I'm
> prepared to take the flak if our pages contribute to information  (i.e.
> report within NPOV) on a "biased smear campaign" (or satirical
> googlebombing, whatever you prefer); as long as our article is not
> biased, and is not campaigning. Bear in mind that the COI is supposed to
> limit the use of enWP for activism of certain kinds. We do have the
> policies to prevent misuse of our pages.
>
> Charles
>
> Charles

This seems to combine malice and political purpose. Really it is stuff
that belonged on Encyclopedia Dramatica.

Fred