Steve Vertigo wrote:
Is there a distinction being made as far as calber
/rank in society, etc.. goes?
I'm not sure what you mean here, so I'll answer 'yes' and 'no'.
"No", not in the sense that we're making any global existential
comment on the value of any particular human life by including or
excluding them. That's not something that Wikipedia can or should do.
But "yes" in the sense that by insisting that we stick to confirmable
information, we do exclude a lot of true facts about individual people
who happen to have not made a wide impact on the world. I could write
a true biography of my grandmother, or a complete load of hogwash, and
virtually no one could edit the article to correct factual errors,
bias, etc.
So the point is that we aren't saying that making a wide impact on the
world makes anyone more important or more valuable -- even if that's
true, it isn't a claim for _Wikipedia_ to make. All we are saying is
that we're constrained to be encyclopedic, which means, in part, that
all of our information is confirmable.
It seems that there can legitimately be a rule that
says you cant
be both a contributor and a feature, but is this enforceable?
I think that having such a rule as a general social custom is a good
idea, but in terms of having it as a formal policy, I don't think so.
One reason is that I can easily imagine that lots of people who do or
might work on Wikipedia are worthy of a biographical entry. Anyone
who has published a book could ostensibly be worthy of a biographical
entry based on that fact alone.
Some current good friends of Wikipedia *are* famous people, worthy of
articles... For example, suppose Richard Stallman drops by to clarify
a page on the gnu project or the free software foundation? Suppose
Larry Lessig wants to work on an article about the history of
copyright law? We should welcome that, and not decide to delete the
encyclopedia articles about them on that basis alone.
In the year in the future when I win both the Nobel Peace Prize and
the Grammy for my a capella lipsynched rendition of old Milli Vanilli
classics, I will permit an article about me.
--Jimbo