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

[Carl (CBM)]

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 3:26 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Part of the process of improving articles involves editing them, and
> that includes removing stuff as well as adding stuff. There are many
> cases of articles at the featured article process (and sometimes at
> the good article level as well) where excessive detail is removed. The
> specific arguments for carrying out such editing on this article
> belong on the article talk page.

As I understand it (not having participated) the idea of reducing the
article to a stub was proposed on the talk page and rejected. I'm sure
that everyone accepts the general principle that some articles are too
long, but this thread is about a particular article.

One argument in that section of the talk page is the following:

: BLP basically means "cover it sanely and safely", not "don't cover
it at all".
: The ongoing reliable source interest in the phenomenon means that the
: horse has already well and truly bolted. We Wikipedians can't change the
: course of history, we can only report on it.

Now the implicit claim in that quote that we can act publicly without
affecting society is arguably incorrect; of course we change the
course of history by participating in society. But we have often been
willing to be involved in the very early development of a public
conception (e.g. articles on Michael Jackson's death and other
events).

I think that any arguments about this article are going to have to be
specific for the topic at hand, rather than trying to espouse general
principles. In other words they have to distinguish between this event
and others. I am not sure how strong those arguments are yet, which is
why I am posting in this thread.

- Carl