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

[Ken Arromdee]

On Tue, 24 May 2011, Tom Morris wrote:
>> The reason: Wikipedia is on the Internet.  If Wikipedia has an article
>> about something whose promoter specifically intends to spread it on the
>> Internet, it is impossible to separate reporting from participation.  It's
>> a loophole in the definition of neutrality that doing things which help
>> one side of a dispute doesn't break neutrality, simply because our
>> intentions are neutral--even though our effects are not.
> Using that logic, we should probably shut down every page on WP about
> politics, religion, alternative medicine and anything even vaguely
> controversial.

There's a difference between helping someone who happens to find some publicity
useful, and helping something that is mainly a publicity campaign.  There's
also a difference between spreading facts that are incidentally used in a
publicity campaign but are independent of it, and spreading the campaign itself.

If there weren't any anti-scientology campaigners spreading the word about
Xenu, we'd still have a reason to have an article about Xenu.  If there was no
anti-Santorum campaign, we'd have no reason for the article--its entire
existence depends directly on that campaign.