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

[Andreas Kolbe]

--- On Mon, 23/5/11, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> From: Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>

> > 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


We discussed this a couple of days ago at our meet-up. I agree with some of
the other comments made here that this blurs and crosses the line between
reporting and participation. 

I have no sympathy for Santorum or his views. But based on past experience,
I also have little confidence that the main author's motivation in expanding 
the article is anything other than political. They've created puff pieces on 
politicians before (as well as hatchet jobs), in the service of outside 
political agendas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Dickson (later deleted as a puff piece
of a non-notable politician, but only after the election, in which he was
said to have done surprisingly well)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Peralta

Andreas