lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
Since you asked for references to specific pages, I went looking, and I'm now more ambivalent. I think what people have a problem with is pages like "William M. Feehan", which is just effusive praise and tearful reminiscence.
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/William_M._Feehan
You're description is accurate, but he's a famous enough person that gathering a real bio ought to be easy enough.
But then there are also pages like "Brady Howell", which is a perfectly ordinary biography that I'd have no problem with at all.
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Brady_Howell
I'm already on record that I support allowing biographies of anyone at all in Wikipedia, with no regard to whether their accomplishments or fame would merit their inclusion in a more traditional reference.
I agree, except that I can see some problems with disambiguation and namespace. Howell, for example, sounds like a wonderful person, but part of what makes his story poignant is that he was just a regular joe like any of us.
But I also think that some people used these pages not for "biography" but for "eulogy", and that's not appropriate here.
Seems easily fixable, if a bit "touchy".
Let's take an example sentence from the article you liked, Howell... "He worked with newspaper carriers in Smithfield and Hyde Park, who still remember him as a caring and fun-loving supervisor." This is a bit hagiographic, but presumably true, and deleting it seems pretty pointless, without any information or indication or suggestion that it might not be NPOV.
I have nothing against eulogy--I created http://www.piclab.com/sasha for a friend of mine, for example-- and I would like to see a biography of him here as well. But I wouldn't put the memorial comments from my site into the article.
Right.