Y'know, I never thought I'd end up making a statement like this, but this is just such an obvious case, and somebody has to say it.
A long time ago, before I was a member here, there was a big brouhaha because two or three people - I think Lir was one of them, in fact - suggested that physically unattractive people can sometimes become unusually abusive online, more so than might otherwise be considered typical, as a form of subconscious retaliation for their feeling unwanted or unpopular. Needless to say, a lot of people felt this was insensitive and unfair, and indeed it was. But how can you look past something like
this? It is, quite simply, a perfectly legitmate and logical explanation for his apparent
near-hatred of well-known, successful people.
JoshuaZ has, on multiple occasions, stated that those whom "Wikipedia" considers "notable" not only deserve to be profiled in WP, they actually
forfeit their rights to privacy if they became notable because of their own activities. Putting aside the obvious question of whether this means that
the Wikipedians themselves therefore forfeit these same rights, one has to consider the chilling effect this might have on individuals who have socially beneficial ideas, but who might from now on keep those ideas to themselves - because they value their privacy too much to let it fall into the hands of a website full of anonymous goons with "Edit" buttons.
This statement, posted during the Angela Beesley DRV, showed up only a week ago (boldface mine):
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=176902386QUOTE(JoshuaZ @ 01:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC))
I'd rather not have this DRV now but if we're going to have it now overturn. I continue to maintain my position that courtesy deletion for people who are ''willing public figures'' is uncalled for and almost ridiculous. I understand cases like Brian Peppers where the person in question has become notable in a completely unwilling fashion, but
people who are notable precisely because they have injected themselves into public sphere simply do not have the same rights. Furthermore, in such cases we as a whole owe our readers to have articles about them. I find this particular disturbing in a case where the subject of the article has
a website devoted to promoting herself.
Note the term "injected themselves into," which he added later when correcting a typo. It originally said "taken actions in." (They also would have added the word "the," of course.) Most people would use a term like "promoted themselves in," or simply "entered," but Josh here apparently sees the attainment of personal success and notoriety to be almost a form of parasitism.
(Even so, Angela Beesley hasn't "injected herself into the public sphere" in a
personal sense. She was involved in the founding of a major website, sure, but that was hardly self-promotion. She also has a site of her own, but in a culture that values "transparency" as highly as Wikimedia does, she'd probably be considered suspect if she didn't maintain such a site.)
The idea that people like Joshua Zelinsky can make value judgements about a person's motivations in doing things that make him or her a public figure, deliberately or not, represents an extremely dangerous proposition. And even if we give JoshuaZ the benefit of the doubt on any given case,
which I don't, the question of "willing notoriety" is beside the point. The point is that special considerations have to be made for a website that anyone can anonymously edit, which is run by people who are often prone to personal vendettas and revenge fantasies, and which has a near-ubiquitous presence on most major search engines.
But it seems as though he totally refuses to accept that one simple principle, no matter how often it's repeated - and not just by us, but by well-meaning, decent people on Wikipedia as well.
Joshua Zelinsky: The Video, How the heck did we miss this?
