Yes, boys and girls, you too can created an article for the purpose of harming a Living Person whom you dislike. This tactic has evolved as a way to disguise a POV content fork and make it relatively invulnerable to merging or deletion. The trick is to find an individual who is connected in press accounts to your POV target in a way that is unflattering. Then you may craft a Wikipedia article around this otherwise non-notable individual, knowing that the only mentions of him or her in the press are going to be those that harm your target. Editors with an opposing POV are going to be stymied, because they will find a paucity of balancing information in Reliable Sourcesâ„¢, because there is enough press coverage to satisfy WP:N, and because merging is likely to be blocked on the grounds that it is ostensibly a biographical article.



Here are some COATRACK articles which have been mentioned lately here at the Review:

• Jeremiah Duggan (T-H-L-K-D)
• Jennifer Fitzgerald (T-H-L-K-D)
• Gennifer Flowers (T-H-L-K-D)
• Death of Ian Tomlinson (T-H-L-K-D)
• Kenneth Kronberg (T-H-L-K-D)

I see that one of my favorite nefarious editors, John Nevard (T-C-L-K-R-D) , hit three of these in rapid succession today.

Nevard, like Crum375, is one of those editors who follows snuffling after SlimVirgin, in somewhat the manner of Nazgûl in Tolkein. A sort of puppy-cabal.

Here are the articles edited by Crum375, SlimVirgin, and John Nevard:

#1 The_Holocaust - edited by 3 of 3 users
#2 People_for_the_Ethical_Treatment_of_Animals - edited by 3 of 3 users
#3 Louise_Lind-af-Hageby - edited by 3 of 3 users
#4 Justice_Department_(animal_rights) - edited by 3 of 3 users
#5 Jimmy_Wales - edited by 3 of 3 users
#6 Ingrid_Newkirk - edited by 3 of 3 users
#7 Female_genital_cutting - edited by 3 of 3 users
#8 Criticism_of_Wikipedia - edited by 3 of 3 users
#9 Chip_Berlet - edited by 3 of 3 users
#10 Brown_Dog_affair - edited by 3 of 3 users
#11 Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II - edited by 3 of 3 users
#12 Bill_White_(neo-Nazi) - edited by 3 of 3 users
#13 Animal_Liberation_Front - edited by 3 of 3 users

If you add Jayjg to this mix to see where all 4 have been, and test for Israel lobbying, you merely lose the animal-rights lobbying, as expected.

#1 The_Holocaust - edited by 4 of 4 users
#2 Female_genital_cutting - edited by 4 of 4 users
#3 Criticism_of_Wikipedia - edited by 4 of 4 users
#4 Chip_Berlet - edited by 4 of 4 users
#5 Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II - edited by 4 of 4 users
#6 Bill_White_(neo-Nazi) - edited by 4 of 4 users

Gee, all four have an intense interest in the bio of Chip Berlet. Lucky man. The only other bio that all 4 have edited is Bill White (neo-Nazi)

That doesn't surprise me. But what's with the Female Genital Cutting?

That was way back in 2005, looks like. No real evidence of collusion there, and even so, you can hardly blame them for opposing such practices - just the opposite, they should be commended. Even if their underlying purpose is to make African Muslims look bad for condoning such things.

Back to the COATRACK problem -- how can it be combatted? It looks to me like anything that appears in a newspaper now satisfies WP:N, and if the individual is notable only in connection with damaging gossip about an actually notable Living Person, you have the perfect POV fork, one for which the only available information is that which fits your POV.

not all are BLPs, but I see your point. I recently saw a school article where the only reason it existed was to claim the school promoted PAYED - OH - FILL - EE - YAH. The evidence? Some articles from the 90s saying one of the teachers there has abused students.

So really, it didn't belong on the website. But since there are articles about a scandal, the article on the school has to stay. Nevermind that it was being used as a coatrack to slime a living person.

I know there is the saying "...in Rome do as the Romans do."

When I was pretty new to wikipedia I remembered someone who I'd heard on the radio that was pretty interesting. I didn't agree with everything he said but thought I could start a wiki bio on him and thinking of "eventualism" maybe the bio could improve over time. However, the only info I could find was the subjects own website and articles by someone else that were critical of this subject. The critcal articles were written by a one Chip Berlet. I had nothing against this subject but was hoping that maybe I could start an article and see what happens. The subject wanted the Berlet material out obviously but also wanted the article to be an extension of his website. The bio went through afd and was kept but ultimately deleted by a crat saying this was an "attack page." It kinda made sense to me that this was probably the right thing to do but I saw similar articles all over the place and had a "monkey see, monkey do" approach at the time. The 'crat basically told me "we don't do that here" which had me perplexed since wp had a ton of "we don't do that here's" all over the place. I spent time trying to address this inconsistency but really got nowhere since I'm really no one special in wikiland.

There is another source that has a similar affect as Chip Berlet to me. It's been a godsend for liberal POV pushers(I'm speaking in American context right now ). If there is a counterpart for the conservative POV pushers it hasn't taken too well. It's called Media Matters for America. If you want to criticize any of those big, bad conservatives this is your go to place. I'm not sympathetic to conservative politics so I'm not personally affected by this but it gave me the impression that going around finding bad things about people was an ok thing to do and can even justify one's notability.