[WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

Thu Nov 6 17:08:46 UTC 2003

Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> Gareth Owen wrote:
> > Now tell me, would you push for his inclusion if he'd survived 9/11? 
> 
> But if the answer is "no" what does that prove?  

Well, it pretty much proves that his only real claim to fame is the fact he
died on 9/11.  And it proves the only reason that Cunc is pushing for his
non-deletion is because he has a bee in his bonnet -- and has had for the best
part of the last 2 years -- about trying to make wikipedia.org a monument to
9/11.  Its not, or at least it shouldn't be.

> He *didn't* survive 9/11, and that's what makes him sufficiently noteworthy
> for someone to have bothered to write the entry in the first place.  

Does dying in 9/11 make you noteworthy.  
I don't think so.  Tragic, maybe.  Deserving of sympathy, certainly.
Noteworthy?  No, thats not a word I'd care to use.

Does dying at Ypres make you noteworthy?
Does dying in the Hundred Years War make you noteworthy?
Does dying in Auschwitz make you noteworthy?
Does dying in the 1918-1919 inflenza epidemic make you noteworthy?
Does dying of industrial related illnesses due to management incompetence in
     Welsh coal mines make you noteworthy? [0]

No, no, no and no.  All very tragic events -- and most of them of more
long-term significance than 9/11[1] -- but being caught up in a noteworthy
event doesn't make you noteworthy.

> I mean, I don't understand the point of the hypothetical.  You might
> as well ask "Would you push for having an article about Hitler if he
> had remained an obscure and failed artist?"  

But what Hitler went on to do changed the world.  
Thats why his article doesn't begin "Adolf Hitler, failed painter".  
Hitler has something else 

What the 9/11 victims went on to do is -- through not fault of their own --
nothing.

If we indiscriminately include 9/11 victims by virtue of their being 9/11
victims, then we might as well start including people whose sole claim to fame
is that they're failed painters.

(Daniel C. Boyer, at least will be buoyed by this news).

> I'm interested in hearing about just *why* you think such articles "have no
> place on Wikipedia".  What's the harm?  How does it negatively impact us?

It make us look like we can't distinguish people of note, and can't determine
what it means to be worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia.  

And because, basically, they're just post mortem vanity pages.

[0] Please say yes, I feel like my grandfather needs a write up.
    Please say no, I'd just like to see the reasons.

[1] (The WTC collapse killed 2,792 people in one day.
     The 1919 inflenza killed 22 million people in 18 months, or equivalent to
     10-15 9/11s, every day)
-- 
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)