[Wikipedia-l] Who is welcome?

[Jimmy Wales]

Fred Bauder wrote:
> >Okay, some novelist did some superficial research, and now he claims that
> >Eisenhower killed 6 million Germans. So what? Just say "Novelist XYZ
> >claims in Book B that blah, blah, blah."
> 
> Why? What is the point of including outrageous, obvious false material?

Well, if the novelist is famous, or if his ideas are having impact,
then the fact that he says these things raises them to the level
of encyclopedic interest.

For example, a Frenchman wrote a book, very popular in France, I hear,
claiming that the Sept. 11 attacks were faked, that no plane crashed
into the Pentagon, and so on.  This is outrageous nonsense, of course,
but since the author is famous and the book was popular, it's of
interest.

Difficulty arises when we have to determine whether some person or
group is noteworthy enough, even as a fringe person or group, for us
to take notice.  There are plenty of cranks in the world, some with
voluminous websites, and we needn't treat them all as equivalent to
each other.

> >* "All but a handful of historians dismiss Holocaust Denial as utterly
> >absurd."
> 
> A false statement in itself, I know of no historian who accepts holocaust
> denial.

Right, well, Ed acknowledged that his statements could stand some
editing.  His point, though, was that statements can be rendered NPOV.

Some people are holocaust deniers.  They have, in some subcultures,
had some influence.  All of this is worthy of reporting in the
encyclopedia, but none of this justifies treating their ideas as
equally respectable to the broad (unanimous) consensus of real
historians.

> I don't think false information is welcome or people who persist in either
> putting false information into articles or creating a false impression by
> selective presentation of facts.  How it is to be decided when this is
> happening may be difficult but I think it's good policy.

Now here, we agree, and I think Ed agrees too.

--Jimbo