Getting kicked off of Wikipedia for “not being notable”

lol. Wikipedia. Even the goatse page has a Wikipedia page. lol again.

While I see your points, I'm going to have to go with Wikipedia on this one, because the whole "let's give everyone a page" idea has been tried, and it's called urbandictionary.com *shudder*

what the hell?
get a life and stop complaing about being blocked from wiki, its really really sad that you care so much! and why the hell do you have a quote from the incredibles on this site? grow up and get a life! what is this 'freds bio thing anyway? I think wikipedia is great so stop being such arseholes.

I hope they don't delete Ze Frank.

http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/12/05/on-wiki...

Recently I just finished my first book (by recent I mean yesterday) and I always went to wiki first. Not because its so accurate but because the quick synopsis it provides at times really is enough (imagine if you knew all the general info of wiki!!!) & they give AMAZING links to other sources that are garanteed to be what your looking for. Often those links have lead me to others and others etc.
At McGill University, I noticed that the porfessors there turn to the site a lot which suprised me. ESPECIALLY the science department. Saying that it was a great first step to gather the necessary vocab to properly serch the term elsewhere.
It's a little lame that they would dump off Fred's bio though. If their intention is to be information gatherers then they should be content with HAVING the information available. Once, I looked up Max Stern and was so suprised that they actually had something on the guy! That was the moment they got my loyalty - they'll be losing some others for that. Sorry to hear it.

vgiovanna@gmail.com
brainwashcafe.blogspot.com

I think that the elitism and filtering itself is a more important cultural artifact than any particular entry, so for that reason alone it should trump individuals. And yes, Robert, you are much more notable than Fred (sorry, Fred). I'm as far from a geek as it is possible to get, but even I have heard of you. I never heard of Fred before I came across the controversy of him not being notable enough for Wikipedia.

I would certainly automatically disallow (if such a thing were possible) entries about people posted by themselves. If you cannot inspire or convince one person on Earth to write about you, you really don't have any pull at all.

Consiser wikipedia as a resource for what it is -- a simple resource NOT A DESTINATION like they would have us believe. There are better and more substantial places on the Net to be noted by. Personally, in my circles the wikepedia is one of the LAST places we refer or point others to for reference.

I once written an article about a topic in my blog and in the WIki page on that topic, on the external link, I included a link to my entry which was. Then it was removed by an editor who has no track record about that field. This is perhaps one of the reasons why Wikipedia has not become credible.

We can solve all the world problems if we do away with sarcasm and hypocrisy.

Wikipedia's double standards.
Why don't they just seek donations only from 'notable' people?

On this topic.. create at your will!

"everyone should have a Wikipedia page"

At least some search engines could increase their index size in a truly manner. 6 billion docs is pretty good.

Hey, I enjoy Fred's blog... it's interesting and he has great taste in music. But he's not notable. Frankly, very few bloggers are... notorious, maybe, notable? Not so much.

That's why one has a user page over at Wikipedia. :)

I agree with comment #28 up there. It does also seem like folks have different views of the rules, especially with external links. While fansites for something like a television show aren't allowed on certain pages, they are for others.

I gave up on them a long time ago. I run my own copy of Wikipedia (and DMOZ, another site with mucked up rules) and edit it to my hearts content.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bullshit

Haha.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit

Glad to see they have an entry for that.

if Wikipedia took all criteria out, what would we be left with? - a google search. If someone wants to know about you, they'll google you. I've edited at least three Wiki articles because they were just WRONG and was able to link to a "real" encyclopedia or the OED to prove it. Of what use will wiki be if it becomes even more unreliable? There's enough misinformation presented by the media already and i am inclined to congratulate the wikipedians for having standards. Who's project is it anyways? If you don't like it - DON'T USE IT!

Wikipedia is run by a bunch of egotistical morons who take great delight in deleting pages people have spent a long time on. Their greatest achievement is stating that they don't need to reply to reasoning on why a page shouldn't be deleted. I congratulate that. I know many people who've tried wikipedia and then left because they were either called a "sock puppet", told their article was not notable and a myriad of other trivial reasons. They gave up after that. It seems, to have an article accepted you need to make about 1000+ minor edits and then they'll let you into their group of Wikipedians.

Imagine if search engines deleted web sites because they weren't notable. That would be lame.

This is lame too.

God saw fit to infest wikipedia with idiots, but then again there ARE alot of idiots in the world.

i figured that since there were multiple Wikipedia entries with my name in them that linked to a politician in Ontario, i should correct that with a page about me.

but i am fine with wikipedia taking my page down. it's their sandbox, not mine.

Some Asshat VC :)

Hey, they have guidelines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notabili...

It states:
This guideline is not Wikipedia policy (and indeed the whole concept of notability is contentious). However, it is the opinion of many Wikipedians that these criteria are a fair test of whether a person has sufficient external notice to ensure that they can be covered from a neutral point of view based on verifiable information from reliable sources, without straying into original research (all of which are formal policies). Failure to meet these criteria does not mean that a subject must not be included, meeting one or more does not mean that a subject must be included. Many Wikipedians oppose the use of this guideline.

so its a difficult subject, even to wikipedians.

Then again, I don't see why some asshat VC should have his own page, or why everyone on the planet should have one.

Yeah I was also removed from Wikipedia for the same reason. Imagine that? -Sebastian Prooth

What everyone? All 6 billion+ of us? Jeez, that sounds a like a bit of a tall order to me :)

Cheers,
Gary
http://www.garyshort.org/

Maybe Fred isn't notable. And maybe you aren't. But at least you did make BBC headline news. Fred didn't - that I am aware of. Maybe he really isn't noteable? Could it really be? Reading his re-added entry, I would certainly agree with the Wikipedia editors.

I think the world would be a much better place if everybody was a little more critical of themselves and stopped thinking they were so very important. 99% of the people who say it of themselves really are not.

Where does Wikipedia get off? I mean, My mom always told me I was important. And my grandma alway told me I could be anything I wanted to be. Leave it to the folks at Wikipedia to shatter people's dreams

I got kicked off Wikipedia too. This whole "notable" distinction is a relic of limited-space paper encyclopedias, incompatible with Long Tail thinking.

I have twice written an entry on the company I started and sold to Vodafone on wikipedia's english edition. It has twice been removed. This was a big sale to the world's largest mobile provider (8 digit € amount).

It is not me tooting me own horn -- I didn't even mention my name in the article.

If it's the "Encyclopedia Galactica" they are trying to create at Wikipedia, they really ought to have a page for everyone on the planet. What's notable to a handful of elitists actively maintaining Wikipedia is hardly a representation of worth across the broad swath of the world population. Someone's small contribution to a local community might have a far reaching impact if it was documented in a place like Wikipedia where other people could find and learn from it.

Darn, Anonymouse1, you beat me to it. :-)

And I know I don't rate a Wikipedia article, so I'm not even going to bother trying. :-) Heck, I have enough trouble making famous people look notable, never mind myself.

i dont get the fascination with Wikipedia.. i really dont. especially when anyone else can go and edit your page to put false info on it..

wikipedia is like post counts; neither of them mean a damn thing, but there is that certain group of people who thinks they are better than everyone else cause they have an entry on wikipedia and 60,000 posts on the Tivo forum .. and then call everyone else a "noob" ...
strange...

Notability is hardly a 'new bar' - the first revision of the notability guidelines for people is from August 2003 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notabili... ). And everybody _can_ have a page on Wikipedia - register an account and create a user page. The article namespace is (and should remain) for notable subjects.

Once I try to create mine as well. Was deleted in less than 1 hour. I am therefore no important :-(

Is this Fred Wilson? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Wilson_%28Blo...

Some communists even removed the link to our commercial CMS from the CMS overview page.

Wikipedia seems to get/be the place for people that fought against each other on the Usenet in good old days.

You're getting more and more boring by the minute Robert...

I've never really understood the need for a notability requirement on Wikipedia. Without the size constraints of a paper encyclopaedia, surely there's no problem with anybody being profiled on there? If somebody isn't notable, they won't get linked from any other page and won't get searched for. And if they suddenly become notable for some reason, the content is there.

Seems like old media thinking.

I think its because he created the original content himself. Robert, why dont you create a wikipedia page for him? I like the idea of a who's who wiki a lot.

wikipedia has a challenge to protect its content from being diluted, manipulated, kidnapped, etc. but i don't think Fred Wilson falls into any of these categories.

i guess they should enable a mechanism to allow for multiple wikipedia pages for the same term, and then just display the most popular/high rated item by default.

this will let Fred keep his page and help his hurt ego.

You're right on the mark there Robert! He who is important today might not be tomorrow; but that's the beauty of the age we're living. Progress is made by small steps taken by a multitude of individuals. Our evolutionary path is not steered by a few colossal corporates anymore - it pushes incrementally forward from the contributions made by everyone involved - that's you and me and him and her. Can wiki run out of space? Should wiki ebb and flow or should it forever expand to tell the full, unabridged story of our time?

BTW, good luck with the new venture. Change is good - and necessary.

All the best

Tom

Everybody can have a Wikipedia page: it's called My Space.

Everyone is important? Hmmm... seems to contradicts your recent posts about how you are important while others just need to know how important you are...

I guess one has to die to become notable. Michael Bartosh had a page constructed the day after he fell off a balcony to his sudden death. There was a similar discussion about his page being deleted for notability. His was "voted" to stay.

I am so glad he stayed.

"...and when everyone is Super, no one will be." --The Incredibles.

I think a threshold of press/blog coverage should apply for Wikipedia inclusion. Biographical articles about people who fall below a threshold should move to a sister "Who's who" sort of site.

(There's already a similar movement to move articles that are basically definitions of obscure terms to the dictionary sister-site, Wiktionary.)