Last week I pointed out a promising development at Wikipedia — that at least one law professor is assigning his students to write entries for the online encyclopedia — and wondered if anybody would report on the fact. After all, the press Wikipedia gets tends to be skeptical at best.
I see nothing yet, but for the time being I will certainly settle for the article in today’s Washington Post by staff writer (and JewsRock.org co-founder) David Segal:
Casual readers might assume that Wikipedia’s goal is a complete account of all earthly knowledge, but the site maintains a rather elaborate set of criteria for admission. The several thousand unpaid volunteers who write and edit Wikipedia spend a lot of energy ensuring that people, bands, companies, and everything else meet what it calls “notability guidelines.” …
Wikipedia jettisons more than 100 entries every day, many of them from people who posted autobiographies after registering on the site. (Writing your own entry, as we will see, is “strongly discouraged.”) The list of nominated rejects is posted each day on a page titled “articles for deletion,” and because all of Wikipedia is transparent and public, anyone can watch the editors’ votes roll in, and witness those ultimately deemed non-notable slink away, in real time, after getting cyber-gonged off the stage. Type “wikipedia deletion log” into Google for a peek at the latest.
Standards? Who knew?! Thanks to Mr. Segal, a few more Washingtonians than yesterday. Being primarily a music writer, Segal focuses on some of the bands and artists who didn’t make the cut:
The thumbs-up-or-down debates can rivet those in danger of Wiki deletion. Chicago composer and writer Matthew Dallman noticed last week that the fate of a biographical entry about him, which he says he didn’t write, was being debated and on Wednesday, it was gone. On Thursday, it was back.
“It looks like the votes are running five to three in favor of deletion,” he said on the phone from his home in Chicago. “I’ve been watching for a few days and I’ve got to say, it’s really perplexing and very surreal. There’s this debate going on about me, but Wikipedia seems to dislike self-promotion, so saying anything on my own behalf would probably undermine my cause. It’s like I’m on trial and I can’t testify.”
It’s an interesting process to watch, as the votes trickle in and administrators state their reasons. To my knowledge, my only friend with a Wikipedia entry is policy maven, entrepreneur and columnist Phil Kerpen. His page just barely survived a deletion debate this summer, and is still the locus of an ongoing edit war.
Dallman, however, may not get the chance. Also this morning, he’s commented on the story at his own blog:
It looks like the page is going to be deleted. Oh well. The argument that my work hasn’t achieved recognition in the wider world, when compared to many, many other figures on Wikipedia, certainly isn’t wrong. As someone else in the Post article is quoted, its their site and they have their rules. The silver lining is that my take-away is the reminder, that if I do my work, and get it out there, then things like having a page on Wikipedia will take care of themselves.
Which is exactly the right attitude to have about it — and that ones’ own Wikipedia page is considered a status symbol at all is an interesting development. Maybe society can acclimate to something as apparently confusing as Wikipedia.