4 ms·
Wikipedia will happily include every obscure city, animal and flower species on Earth (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizothorax_yunnanensis_yunnan... http:
by hugh3 16y ago
Wikipedia will happily include every obscure city, animal and flower species on Earth (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizothorax_yunnanensis_yunnan... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizothorax_yunnanensis_yunnan...), but will try to delete articles on bloggers and singers that are very well known within their niche.
The standards for articles on bloggers and singers have to be high, because there's a huge number of bloggers and singers out there trying to promote themselves by writing on wikipedia about how awesome they are. Since nobody has the time or the inclination to police the article on Joe Blogg's Blog when it claims that "this is the awesomest blog on Earth", wikipedia tries to limit the number of articles on subjects where the article's editors are likely to have a strongly vested interest in the subject of the article.
Another reason: every obscure animal and flower species on Earth has been around for millions of years, and most of them will (I hope) be around in another million years. Towns usually have lives measured in centuries. The average blog will be forgotten (even by its author) in a few years.
- pierrefar 16y agoThe standards for articles on bloggers and singers have to be high If they're not high quality, said famous people are likely to sue or otherwise cause hassle for Wikipedia. That's something a rare flower is not likely to do.
- hugh3 16y agoI've never heard of that ever happening, and I doubt it's a serious concern for them (for starters, they don't have enough money to be worth suing). The closest it's ever come was this incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_biography_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_biography_controversy where some guy's article stated for years that he was a suspect in the Kennedy assassination. He never tried to sue wikipedia, though he did complain a lot. Incidentally, though, this shows another reason why wikipedia articles on borderline-notable people are bad: the fewer people look at an article the more likely it is that crazy non-facts will persist in the article.
- mukyu 16y agoYou clearly have never seen the OTRS queue if you think Seigenthaler is the closest to a suit. There have been over a handful of cases (against the WMF or Wikipedia editors themselves) and some even received media coverage, though Bauer [1] is the one that comes to mind at the moment but it certainly isn't the only one. [2] [1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/dumb-idea-suing-wikipedia-for-calling-you-dumb.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/dumb-idea-su... [2] http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/american-academy-anti-aging-medicine-v-wikimedia http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/american-academy-anti-agi...