From Mindspillage
Various blather about Wikipedia, Wikimedia, and its functioning. Most of this was posted elsewhere first, though some has been refactored. Some of it is seriously uninteresting unless you're already heavily involved with the projects, and some of it is still seriously interesting even if you are.
If you're even more of a masochist, thoughts on Wikipedia administration have their own page.
Current events
Despite their being a huge part of Wikipedia's draw I'm not a fan of current events articles, because people get too wrapped up in what is recent without a sense of perspective. But it's nearly impossible to argue on Wikipedia that a subject of current news interest is simply not that encyclopedic, no matter how minor the interest. There are a lot more easily-accessible news sources now than there used to be, which is generally a good thing, but it also means that no matter how minor the topic many have probably covered it.
What's more, something that may only ever have been of local interest previously can reach a large audience, through this ease of access— more people hearing of an incident making it "something everyone's heard of". And the more people hear it, the more people insist that it is newsworthy, or even worth preserving.
If there is no information available about a person other than the one minor scandal, how notable is s/he really? People commit crimes of similar magnitude every day. [The example being discussed] happens to be related to a topic that is of political interest that will draw viewers to the news, so the news reports on it.
But there's no interest in this woman for who she is and the full context of her life; the interest is only in the incident. It's a stupid and hateful incident, but it's one incident, and I don't think the harshest of us would argue that it should forever be the first hit on Google for her name, and have harmful effects on her life. And in this type of case, a biographical article is out of place. (I see it isn't one anymore; her name redirects to an article on the incident, which isn't that much better.)
If I ruled the universe, I would maybe give it a brief mention as an example of gay bashing, putting it in the larger context of this type of occurrence, as one of many examples of the problem and how society reacts.
But an individual article? That's what Wikinews is for, giving recent happenings prominence because it is of current interest, and writing coverage in detail of those individual events. I'd love to see more people interested in current events writing for Wikinews, and then saving that research to apply to an encyclopedic article as things fall into perspective.
Free content
Yes, the creation of free images is a core goal of Wikipedia. It even says so in the mission statement on wikimediafoundation.org: "The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content..." Images are content, too, and judging by the debate over this I'd say it's considered a fairly important part of it!
There are plenty of reference materials on the web available at no cost to view; what makes Wikipedia's mission different and important is its being free-as-in-speech rather than simply at no charge.
I don't propose that we get rid of *all* unfree or insufficiently-free content; there are cases where our use is legitimately fair. But we do use it far more than we ought to, without sufficient justification, and I think it hurts the goal of "growth, development, and distribution" of truly free content to use it where a replacement could reasonably be found. (I know at least a few people who are not motivated to take their own photos for an article if they see the article has one already; do you check the copyright status of images every time you browse to see if one may be something you ought to replace?)
We don't just use *text* on subjects that are hard to research from accessible sources, even should they give permission to reprint on Wikipedia or noncommercial use only. Why don't we, if our goal really is simply a steady supply of articles? I can only say that it isn't. We quote fairly from works where we need to in order to write about them, but otherwise are strictly free content.
Being free of immediate legal concerns is a bare minimum, but if that's all we're doing I think we're failing at our mission.