The Bruce McMahan Dance goes on and on, Whitewashing incest of Rich & Powerful Options

[dogbiscuit]

Now srsly, NewYorkBrad. Does this mean WP has no accepted a new standard of notability? MR. McMahan is a very rich philanthropist who had a affair with his daughter and then married her in Westminster Abbey (or so I heard), and now is being sued by her in a somewhat...um... sordid case (DNA from vibrators -- am I mixed up again?). If he isn't notable enough for a WP BLP, then why is the goalie for every city soccer team in the U.K.? Or the professors at our local university, just by virtue of being professors (even if their teaching sucks and there's nothing else interesting about them).

I think the incontinence of Wikipedia is summed up by the Goalie Test.

It is common practice for the world and his wifeson to make lists of team members over time, American sport especially is dominated by statistics. So from that perspective having an entry about a player is perfectly reasonable. Where it crosses the line is having personal information.

To a sports almanac, there would be no issue - they determine the format of appropriate information, the fact that David Beckham is married to a supposedly fit bird, has no concept of how to appropriately name his kids, is reputed to have strayed from his marriage vows is not appropriate.

In Wikipedia, it is impossible to enforce a style guide so it is absolutely inevitable that what may start out as a genuine attempt at a worthy goal, a comprehensive sporting guide must degenerate into an opportunistic coat-rack for any gossip that happens to float by in the media.

It is a bit like sticks in a river, the media put out a here today gone tomorrow story and 10 years ago, though embarrassing, the story would fade, now we have Wikipedia being the overgrowths at the side of the river, gathering up every little stick. The difference is that in the real world, eventually it rots and gets washed away and is ignored or is removed by the council or volunteers if it is unsightly, in Wikipedia, it is the first thing you find on an Internet search, and volunteers protect it from washing away or degrading over time.

[SB_Johnny]

Where it crosses the line is having personal information.

That's something of a tall order for a culture obsessed with the dressing down of celebrities and reality TV. I wonder if Any Warhol would be horrified.

[dogbiscuit]

Where it crosses the line is having personal information.

That's something of a tall order for a culture obsessed with the dressing down of celebrities and reality TV. I wonder if Any Warhol would be horrified.

Absolutely.

I suppose in the end it is the difference between buying the EB and buying the Playboy Encyclopedia of Gossip and Innuendo (Oo-err Missus edition).

I was chatting to one of the editorial team at our local newspaper, and they were not covering a story on local corruption (head teacher having an affair with a senior local authority employee who had the potential to influence decisions in favour of the school, with some evidence that this had occurred) because it was too tacky for them to cover, too personal. So even though there was a public interest in the story, their editorial judgement was that the personal side of the story made it inappropriate. (A national paper did pick up the story and ran with it but they still refrained from using it locally).

I guess in the end, the fundamental objection returns to the misrepresentation of large proportions of the content as educational, and the instant availability of the information amongst the factual information. If they split off the entries into WikiGossip/WikiLibel/WikiLetsTryToDestroyTheirLives, then we'd all know where we stood.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

If we're going to base our decision about this on values, then it seems morally right to me to leave the personally involved to suffer through the grief of this as best they can without all of us here shining a spotlight their way. I realize that others may disagree in perfect good faith, of course, but that's my view of this matter. Best, – OhioStandard (talk) 14:51, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. Amazing. Makes me proud to be a Wikipedian.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:45, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I think the incontinence of Wikipedia is summed up by the Goalie Test.

I am not the kind of smart ass to [sic] on other people's writing ... but I genuinely like that. Incompetence would have been more usual construction but incontinence works for me too. A huge, obese incontinence beast haemorrhaging all sorts of unspeakable body fluids (with pictures too).

If someone wants to put these morally inconsistent individuals to test, this, I guess, is the scrubbed PR version, to which add this is the story. There are reliable more sources. I cant. I am blocked. This is an amazing story though.

The Disabled, the media, and the information age by Jack Adolph Nelson p. 25

In 1991 his Christina Foundation, which provided computers for disabled people, announced a new term to use to refer to handicapped or disabled people got into a widely discussed nationwide pickle.

He was on President Reagan's national Advisory Board on Technology and the Disabled which led him to getting chummy with the son of Deng Xiaoping

Inside Chinese Business: A Guide for Managers Worldwide By Ming-Jer Chen p 179
Information technology in business: principles, practices, and opportunities by James A. Senn - 1998

Wales could learn a trick or two from it. In 1988 he went to start up a Christina Foundation in China. In 1994, he took a comanager's role in a $333m power generation deal and made the inner circle of PRC capitalism.

A Chines Puzzle Mather, Philip. Investment Dealers Digest 15 Aug 1994

Forbes, Volume 154, Issues 11-14

Financier of numerous big tax break philanthropic projects. Father of award winning [url=http://www.alisonmcmahan.com]Alison McMahan, Ph.D., writer and filmmaker. Presidents Medal for Exemplary Service, trustee of the Phi Kappa Psi Foundation, on the board of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, His London-based Argent Financial Group Ltd. controls billions of investment dollars in the Middle East. According to Dr. Omar Bin Sulaiman, Argent Financial manages wealth-building funds, estimated at a whopping $1.9 trillion and lives on a man-made island once owned in part by Richard M. Nixon.

And then banged his "Yummy Puppy" daughter after having set her up in a $10,000 per month director's job in Bermuda based nonprofit foundation, which funds another daughter's film making activities ... a $230,000 Bentley Continental GT and a Versace Club membership

David, seen here with yet another attractive young woman, lives in Florida is apparently not notable for a Wikipedia page.

... all five lawsuits were settled on undisclosed terms. As part of the settlement, a federal judge in San Diego sealed the files of the California lawsuit and took the rare step of wiping out any record that the lawsuit had ever existed.

Through McMahan's L.A. public relations firm, the parties sent a statement to New Times, describing the matter as a mere "family dispute," and alluded to taking legal action if this newspaper published this article, which is drawn from the information in the court cases that McMahan has gone to such lengths to hide from public view.

This post has been edited by Cock-up-over-conspiracy: Tue 12th October 2010, 3:34pm

[A Horse With No Name]

I wonder if Any Warhol would be horrified.

Any and Every Warhol would be horrified!