[WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

Fri May 6 19:18:41 UTC 2005

slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

> [...]
>
> What's wrong with being decent all of a sudden?
>
>
Isn't that against policy?

:-)

More seriously, I think this guy's case is difficult because
it's right at the edge of what we consider valid WP content.
He doesn't have any notability outside the Usenet connection,
and yet it would be somewhat contorted to explain "Kook of
the Millennium" without naming names.

To take an example from other encyclopedias, Britannica,
Oxford Classical Dictionary, etc, have a number of short
articles on various obscure disreputable figures of ancient
Rome. They are included not because they have accomplishments
of their own, but because notable authors will make casual
references to them ("as smelly as Acilius"), and the puzzled
reader needs a reference work to explain that, say, this
Acilius was an annoying beggar in the Forum, and not
evidence that the consul of the same name had a BO problem.

So I guess that means that we can include the astrologer's
name if he's alluded to in a Philip Roth novel...

Stan