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points by pwdisswordfishq 1 day ago | 0 comments

> Every day, Wikipedia biographies of living people are flagged for deletion because the subjects are not “notable” enough. How do these poor souls take the news?

How entitled must one be to assume they are owed a page in Wikipedia?

[–] Whoppertime 1 day ago

I'm not sure it's coming from entitlement. It's like your highschool having a wall of notable graduates, and having your likeness taken down while you are still alive. It's a negative insulting signal

[–] caaqil 1 day ago

> It's like your highschool having a wall of notable graduates, and having your likeness taken down

So, basically inconsequential stuff only the juvenile should worry about? Agreed.

[–] andai 8 hours ago

Wait til you hear about the rest of human psychology...

[–] qingcharles 9 hours ago

I know a certain Hollywood fellow who paid to get his page written, massaged and inserted when he was up-and-coming. I didn't know that was a thing, but apparently some of the more well-regarded editors on Wikipedia take paid gigs. It's right there on their profile pages. I think some even list the pages they were paid to write. They're not technically doing anything wrong, they just know how to write the article and know all the rules for getting it through the editorial process without a hitch.

Here's an example of the tag the user has on their profile page to declare which pages they have been paid to write:

[–] andai 8 hours ago

There are groups that brag about controlling the narrative for their cause on Wikipedia, including for having articles removed, using techniques like "not notable enough" as a cover.

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?

[–] tourmalinetaco 3 hours ago

It’s especially bad when you look at the sources, and realize so many “high quality” sources have no concrete information to their claims, and there aren’t additional sources backing them because Wikipedia is not meant for “independent research”.

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.

[–] john_strinlai 10 hours ago

i dont have a wikipedia page, and dont feel like i should.

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.

[–] nullc 9 hours ago

having one is truly bad news for a lot of people.

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.

[–] andai 8 hours ago

Sounds like this deserves a Law... it's much easier to be notable for doing something wrong, than for doing something right.

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!

[–] nullc 5 hours ago

Notable means unusual/unexpected. The engineer(s) that invented the energy absorptive highway railing has probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives-- but finding their name(s) would be a serious research task, they were just doing their jobs. The man who bites a dog is an irrelevant trivia that has no consequence outside of himself and the dog's owner-- but there will be a hundred stories on it.

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.

[–] CookieCrisp 1 day ago

I don't think it has to be entitlement. It could be a sign that you were "up and coming" and now you're not. I can see how that'd still sting a bit even to have external validation of your own anxieties.

[–] internetter 1 day ago

"up and coming" does not exist. you either meet the wikipedia notability criteria or you do not.

[–] andai 8 hours ago

That's true, but also, either there are people willing to defend the article's deletion, or there are not.

[–] pvaldes 1 day ago

> How entitled must one be to assume they are owed a page in Wikipedia?

FIFA Peace Prize level of entitled at least, it seems

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premio_de_la_Paz_de_la_FIFA