We needn't anticipate anything, given the coverage of the gossip and its fallout has already been discussed in reliable sources: USA Today, The Seattle Times (originally published by Mercury News), Harper's Bazaar, etc. Heck, the Archbishop of Canterbury commented on the matter. This is a notable incident with widespread, reliable coverage. ~ Pbritti (talk) 22:45, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
You get to the point you genuinely wonder what this person would say if the quote had been......Wikipedia wrote:Days before the announcement, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, criticised the spread of conspiracy theories, arguing that people should be able to "live their lives in peace without everyone demanding that they prove something every other day". He also likened the spread to "village gossip".[111]
The irony of course is that all the newspapers gleefully ran with this quote to build yet more articles about this "frenzy". Which they are quite happy to pretend, it seems, that they too are not part of the frenzy, feeding it, they are merely documenting it. That's forgivable in a way. They're newspapers. It will fade in time, if not really quite quickly.We are obsessed with conspiracy and we have little sense of the humanity of those who are caught in the glare of the news......It doesn’t matter who it is, people should be allowed to be ill, have an operation, whatever it is, and to live their lives in peace without everyone demanding that they prove something every other day.......It’s the web that has made these conspiracy theories, for all kinds of people, run riot........It’s extremely unhealthy. It’s just old-fashioned village gossip that can now go round the world in seconds. We have to turn away from that. Gossiping in that way is wrong.
It is also wrong to pretend there is anything deep and meaningful about this latest example of our capacity for inhumanity, so it can be documented and dissected as a lasting monument.
Wikipedia does not. Wikipedia has the power (and the clear eyed intent) to preserve such first hand accounts for all time, as references. They honestly won't care if better, more distant, sources emerge, these will still be retained, because you must keep proving "notability is not temporary". Like nobody else on Wikipedia has ever hear that phrase.
I'm really starting to think there has been a major brain drain from Wikipedia, potentiallly years in the making, and nobody has quite noticed yet. The good old boiling frog.
