The tragedy of losing your Wikipedia page
wired.com
wired.com
Only in uncontroversial cases. In most cases, there is a debate where consensus is formed on if there is enough information about a person / topic to warrant an encyclopedia article. Wikipedia is struggling as is with the amount of content. An article cannot be written for every person under the son.
> Wikipedia pages, for better or worse, matter to people. To be included is a validation of a life.
There are billionares without wikipedia articles. There are people who have saved thousands of people from death without wikipedia articles. The only thing that matters in getting a wikipedia article is sufficient coverage by reputable 3rd party sources, such that there is enough material to write an accurate, informative, and neutral article. You should not derive your worth by this metric.
Furthermore, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:An_article_about_you...
Thus, it draws the line at things and people that are notable.
Maybe you think it shouldn't be an encyclopedia, but should be some larger project that indexes every product UPC, every person born, and every website ever registered, but that's not what it is.
And the primary obstacle here isn't storage. It's quality. You need a sufficient number of eyeballs and editors per page to ensure that the crowdsourcing is actually passing a minimal quality bar. Millions of short, low-quality articles means millions of opportunity for spam, abuse, and other problems.
But if the pop culture lore has insane depth then it’s probably valuable enough to keep, yeah? If it has a few limited snippets and very few people writing about it as sources, then it’s a lot more questionable
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for Mr. Tik-tok from Oz to have his own Wikipedia page. He's less notable than, say, Knight Artorias, and I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue Knight Artorias deserves one.
Then again, neither does the Great Grey Wolf Sif, yet here we are.
A minor fun fact: Playing Tik-Tok on stage was one the early roles of James C. Morton, who appeared in a truly ridiculous number of comedy films from the 20s thorugh the 40s alongside the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, and others.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, the only one left, and it gets to define what an encyclopedia will be to everyone from this day forward. Excuses for my it must limit itself are inane.
Now there can be other relevant limitations, like physical constraints such as how much data storage is available, or social concerns like not divulging the physical address when some threats and hurts are very plausible consequences.
I would find an encyclopedia with exactly zero article about any individual biography far more ambitious than one that cover only some, provided it would explain everything in term of structuralist perspective and consider names of actual people involved as relevant as the names of cells in a macrosized living form.
Or indeed the other way around, covering every single individual with an equal level of details, should it be done with first hand done investigation.
The middle ground that let enter only articles about people whose personal information passed the selection bias of other institutions is the lowest ambition of them all.
He didn't have to tell anyone "Get as much stuff out of Wikipedia as possible so I can make money off it", that was just going to happen institutionally as a result of his clout and conflict of interest. People would obey in advance, and people without enough radar to realize they should would lose out against those who did.
Wikipedia is a mirror of the world, not an authority that defines it.
Can you point out where the parent (or anyone else on this thread) has suggested this? Or are you just using a cheap persuasion technique?
If you don't think that information about every UPC code or person who ever existed is fair game for inclusion in the Wikipedia it means you have some notion of notability. If so you should articulate it exactly and say, "this is what notability should be".
I have no interest in notability guidelines or in getting involved and proposing anything. But I would like some actual discussion about things that people say as opposed to wild claims about how every UPC should have a Wikipedia page. That is fucking insane… but if you impose insane arguments upon those you disagree with, you’re not engaging, you’re obfuscating.
I have nothing against you whatsoever, but are you sure you hit reply to the right comment?
Wikipedia can link to that stuff. Authority Control databases are mostly concerned with notable people and unique creative works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Authority_control
When disambiguation of "John Smith" fails, Authority Control is there to help!
Correct. In contrast stands the Internet Archive, whose mission has been described as "universal access to all human knowledge" [0].
[0] https://blog.archive.org/2016/02/24/fair-use-access-to-all-h...
I'd state that differently. The law is the limit on how bad you can act and get away with it. Wikipedia shouldn't be smearing people because it's an evil thing to do, not because its a potential tort.
This is particularly important because not libeling someone is not sufficient to prevent them from suing you anyways in any case. :) ... and focus on legal limits results in outcomes like telling people reporting serious crimes that you don't care because you're not obligated to under S230.
In any case compared to practically every other large internet site Wikipedia does a much better job behaving ethically. I've wasted weeks trying to get reddit to take down posts of hacked nudes on a subreddit specifically about posting hacked nudes and sending them to the victim's coworkers. Google does nothing about scam videos/adds reported to them, etc. With english wikipedia, you can hop into a chat channel or mailing list and reliably something which is obviously wildly inappropriate will be immediately handled. 95% of this is because whatever their flaws the site is operated by human beings that care about doing the right thing, rather than some accountability free corporate human-centipede. The remaining 5% is because Wikipedia Is An Encyclopedia, and so some of the free expression tradeoffs that might show up elsewhere just don't apply.
The disambiguation page of "John Smith" already contains 287 people. You're looking for the John Smith who was a US Navy sailor and received the Medal of Honor in the second half of the 19th century? There's three of them with a page already, and they have to be distinguished by year of birth. No need to make that page hundreds of thousands of non-noteworthy people long, having to be distinguished by SSN.
We don't have a neat interwiki search yet that makes federation work well, but in time perhaps something like that will develop.
Wikipedia would rather you create a blog post or any other method of getting information on the internet than to host unverifiable information under their trusted brand name.
I do see what is in it for the leadership, though, and I don't like what I see.
I think its important to remember that Wikipedia wasn't always the only game in town, it was just the one that won. Part of that comes down to the choice of caring about prestige and reputation. Other projects like everything2 did not; look where they are now.
This is the discussion for the deletion of this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
Do you see any attempts at erasure here? It looks to me like the process of consensus working well. Original nominator makes a well reasoned but poorly researched claim, leading to article improvement, a clear establishment that Savannah is indeed notable enough for inclusion, and the original nominator learning something new about the deletions process.
> There is, when you look for it, a careless and cocky tone that can creep into the verdicts of Wikipedia editors who have been doing the job for a long time. “This guy is a nobody. Delete him.” “I’ve got more followers on Instagram than he does.” “All we have here are stand-up comedy, opinion columns, being a guest or collaborator on some non-notable podcasts … This is more or less every twentieth person who lives in NYC.”
This tone could be improved, however looking at the surrounding context, I imagine the editors participating in these discussions are frustrated by the hundreds of articles on obviously non-notable people made by themselves or their publicist with no regard for the notability policies. I do not have access to the deleted pages as I am not an admin, however I speak from experience participating in many many AfDs and everything I've seen described in this wired article is consistent with my experience. Here are the pertinent discussions that the author fails to link, perhaps because it undermines their point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Bio...
> One month after Simeonovski nominated Dimoska’s biography for deletion, he lost. The page was kept. “Given the bludgeoning, canvassing, and sockpuppetry evident here, this is a no consensus closure without prejudice against speedy renomination,” wrote an editor in a determination. “The arguments to delete here are stronger on the merits, but sufficient reasoned opposition exists that I do not see a consensus for deletion.” Obstinacy won the day, though Dimoska’s page now carries a disclaimer that it contains “promotional content.”
Again, seems as if the process is working as intended.
Ted Bundy and Adolf Hitler are notable for the purposes of the Wikipedia. So, yeah ...
Also, another way to be notable enough for the Wikipedia is to end up in the "Notable Winners" section of this page:
How entitled must one be to assume they are owed a page in Wikipedia?
So, basically inconsequential stuff only the juvenile should worry about? Agreed.
FIFA Peace Prize level of entitled at least, it seems
but, if i did, that would be kind of cool! and then if it was later voted for deletion, i'd feel some things about it. having feelings doesn't automatically make you an entitled brat.
For many people no one cares about the page except some rando that has some grudge against you because you dated the girl they liked 30 years ago or even no reason at all-- some internet malcontent you've never met might just randomly decide that you're whats wrong with the world.
And because you're obscure there is nothing about you online except that one article they got their buddy to run about you in some obscure publication that implies you hate pets. So inevitably that's what the article will be-- Three sentences of biographic details and four paragraphs about how you hate pets.
This is generally a bias wikpedia has: 99% of the substance of a person isn't remarkable by the standards of the tabloids wikipedia counts on as the factual basis of most of its material-- your hopes, your dreams, most of your accomplishments, that time you helped a stranger change a tire,... almost everything that makes you who you are--, so it doesn't show up in any citations and has no chance of staying in an article if someone who knows the game wants it gone. But that one time you said something dumb on the internet-- it's notable specifically because it's unusual, it's well cited so good luck keeping it out if anyone wants it in. So that's what exists and that's what the article will be about at least as soon as a single person wants that. For truly famous people there are biographies and such, and those articles at least have a chance of being well rounded. For everyone else, a WP article about them is just a coat-rack for a piece of the most unusual part of their life that some hater could dig up, or at least one of those just waiting to happen.
It's like the Bill Murray quote: "I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it.". Having a WP article often turns out to have many of the downsides of being famous, without the upsides that normally come with other processes for being famous.
And of course "right" is very subjective, a function of the dominant culture, and of course Wikipedia has no bias at all in that department :) ... neither organic nor synthetic!
Fundamentally it's a flaw in Wikipedia's heavy reliance on media coverage which exhibits this bias most strongly. It's a total mismatch: the media is fixated on the unexpected and irregular, but an encyclopedia is about how things are-- not primarily about the exceptions.
Of course, Wikipedia is also perfectly happy to cite reference works ... but tabloid crap out volumes it be a huge factor and is also a lot less accessible.
I think sometimes about an alternative history where we prohibited newspapers and other current events media publications as citations for WP-- these problems would be diminished but I think the result would be a lot less good for the world.
It's okay that things are flawed... it's just important to be aware of the flaws. One of the ways Wikipedia deals with this is by having a higher bar for inclusion in pages about living people.
Here's an example of the tag the user has on their profile page to declare which pages they have been paid to write:
{{paid|employer=First Last|userbox=yes|article=[[First Last]]}}
When reading Wikipedia, it's a bit inconvenient — I like my reading to be leisurely! — but I always have to remind myself, okay, who is incentivized in me receiving this particular narrative, rather than a different one?
Wikipedia is, at best, a novelty for quick pop cult info, and as an adult I finally understand the horrors my middle school teachers warned me about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie...
>Beginning February 2015,[286] there was an ongoing edit war over the image caption for Guy Standing's English Wikipedia article. The debate was over if the word "sitting" should be added to the caption, since he was sitting in the photo.[287] A screenshot of the caption describing him as "Guy Standing sitting" has become a viral internet meme.[286] At one point in the edit war, the caption read "Guy Standing on a chair."[288] As of 2026, the consensus is to exclude the word "sitting".[286][287] In May 2022, Standing was invited to the American podcast Reply All to discuss the "Guy Standing sitting" joke.[286]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie...
I am also scared to see that the list is now full of photos, only one "cetacean needed" remains.
However, they’re doing useful work. Without that gatekeeping, Wikipedia would turn into a directory of self-promoted pages.
Besides that, there are dozens of other opportunities for a distinguished person to promote themselves. Not having a Wikipedia page doesn’t make anyone’s work less real. How about a simple personal site with a bio and links to your work? Does the job just fine, and you control it. 10 USD/year for a domain name and maybe even a free cloud hosting.
He worked as a film director decades ago and won prestigious awards. Today he works as a janitor, living out of the public eye and largely forgotten by it.
The page is like an echo from the past and includes private information he shared in an interview years ago. Still, he's deemed too relevant for it to be deleted.
https://wearebayleaf.com/honours-database/?view=single&id=37...
His personal Web site does suggest a certain self-confidence and concern for his public persona.
Sufficiently obscure pages are dumping ground for random defamation, delusions, and pranks. The flip side is that they turn into self-promotional orgies-- and fund the operation of PR firms shitting on the project's content to support their clients. None of it is good.