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 7 hours ago
[–] nullc 5 hours ago
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.
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!