> On 23/05/2011 03:56, geni wrote: >> On 23 May 2011 02:24, Brian J Mingus<brian.min...@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 > > Charles
This seems to combine malice and political purpose. Really it is stuff that belonged on Encyclopedia Dramatica. Fred _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l