[WikiEN-l] Eternal Ephemeral

Thu Oct 30 22:43:15 UTC 2003

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>tarquin wrote:
>
>>Do any UK writers wish to create articles on [[Milly Downling]], or the 
>>[[Soham girls]]? Both those cases got plenty of media coverage here.
>>
>I, for one, would be fascinated to read such an article.
>
>Perhaps it's very uncool to not look down my nose at media sensations,
>but I found the Elizabeth Smart case to be fascinating from many
>perspectives, and followed it quite avidly at the time.  Learning more
>about similar cases in other countries (even if the similarity is
>primarily in the media sensationalism) would be valuable to me.
>
I didn't pay any attention at all to the Elizabeth Smart case when it 
was happening.  But just because I wasn't interested in it doesn't mean 
that others aren't.  Occasional UK cases do get mentioned; the one a few 
years ago (Bolger?) where two 11-year olds kidnapped and killed a 4-year 
old received a lot of mention in the news.

At other times a true sordid affair gets turned into a popular movie 
like "Chicago", and it is gown completely out of proportion.

Clifford Olson was from the Vancouver area, and known for having 
kidnapped and murdered some 10 kids.  I heard of his arrest on a TV news 
report while visiting in the Philiippines.

>My point is that lots and lots of things are interesting to only a
>small number of people.  Wikipedia need not avoid those things, so
>long as there is confirmability.
>
With many of the things that we are taliking about now, confirmability 
is not a big problem.  The sensational crimes get more than their share 
of media reporting.  

>Now, later on, when there's a formal 'drive to 1.0', some of those
>things may need to be left out, assuming that there are space
>constraints on 1.0 (for print).
>
This is where the idea of "Wikipedia is not paper" comes in, or in other 
words, "Wikipedia is not a static medium."  With 1.0, whether on paper 
or CD, we will be producing something on a static medium.

Ec