[WikiEN-l] Borderline notable bios (yes, again)

Sun Jul 16 18:52:41 UTC 2006

Keith Old wrote:
> On 7/14/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>
>>The simplest answer to why is that there are a lot of people who want
>>to know about him.  Also, there is a lot of misinformation going
>>around.
> 
> Where is the evidence that a lot of people want to know about him?

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22brian+peppers%22

For some comparisons:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22brian+peppers%22%2C%22linus+torvalds%22
http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22brian+peppers%22%2C%22ghyslain+raza%22
http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22brian+peppers%22%2C%22jimmy+wales%22%2C%22john+seigenthaler%22

As it happens, we do have a fairly reasonable entry on Peppers in [[List 
of Internet phenomena]]; it says:

"Brian Peppers — An Ohio sex offender with a facial malformity whose 
photo in the Ohio eSORN (Electronic Sex Offender Registration and 
Notification) database became widespread. Snopes has since confirmed the 
photograph to be real [8]"

I think much of the perpetual debate surrounding the issue could be 
alleviated simply by replacing the "this page is deleted" notice 
currently at [[Brian Peppers]] with a redirect to [[List of Internet 
phenomena]].  That way, we wouldn't be telling every single person who 
googles for the name that "HEY, LOOK, WIKIPEDIA USED TO HAVE AN ARTICLE 
ABOUT THIS GUY BUT IT WAS DELETED BECAUSE JIMBO SAID SO! SEE!"

Of course, the other alternative would be to fix MediaWiki so that we 
can _actually_ protect a deleted page, rather than having to fake it 
with a template saying, in effect, "This page is intentionally blank." 
This would be a desirable feature in general, and I hope to see it 
implemented some day in any case, whether by me or by someone else. 
It's not even particularly complicated, it just happens to require some 
significant changes to the database schema.

(I'm cc'ing this directly to Jimbo, since I'd like to hear his personal 
opinion on this.  Of course, I could just be bold and make the page a 
redirect myself, but in my experience this is one of the situations 
where such a change, if done unilaterally, would be likely to be quickly 
reverted with the summary "no, Jimbo decreed this" regardless of its 
actual merit or lack thereof.)

-- 
Ilmari Karonen