Steve pointed yesterday to a page on Wikipedia that listed 200 American bloggers. I found it interesting that Wikipedia allowed these pages to remain up – not because they’re bad pages but because I’ve seen numerous bloggers complain about other bloggers pages being deleted.
I don’t know what the rules are for moderation on Wikipedia but I do know of at least 10 bloggers who had pages about them on Wikipedia deleted.
One of these pages was my own. 6 or so months back a reader of ProBlogger put up the page from what I could tell and sent me an email to let me know – but within a week it was down again.
Of course there could be numerous reasons for this. Perhaps the content wasn’t written in the right format, perhaps it wasn’t accurate (although I was thought it all seemed pretty accurate and well written), perhaps I’m not deemed as being important enough for a wikipedia page (quite likely) or perhaps some moderator was in a bad mood when they saw my page.
Not sure what the reason is (and I’m not overly concerned that I’m a Wikipedia reject) but it’s interesting to see them allowing so many bloggers in these days.
To be honest I’m not even convinced that bloggers should be in it at all – I guess some bloggers have done things that are encyclopedia-worthy but I’m not sure about most of us.
Are you in Wikipedia? Do you think bloggers should be featured there? If so – on what criteria?
Hi Darren,
I’m not in Wikipedia.
I don’t think a criteria needs to be set whether someone ‘deserves’ to be in wikipedia. simple because the project seems to be a democratic media, under the auspices of ‘copyleft’. as stated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About
I see Wikipedia as a communal reference.
if you’d like to find out more about the bag lady who lives down the street from you, she’d has as much right to have her info in the Wikipedia as anyone else.
If we’re going along the lines of a meritocratic hierarchy to being included in Wikipedia, we might as well adopt the standard of the ‘Who’s who in america’ compendiums and use some non-comprehensible metrics to evalute who’s ‘worthy’.
As to your being unceremoniously removed, that’s a pity. I’ve heard similar stories of people spending lots of time researching something, filing it in the Wikipedia, only to have it removed a few days later.
It sounds like there are censorship nazis afoot.
At the end of the day, as ‘open source’ a resource as wiki is intended ot be (and i do use it for my research), it can best complement established authorities like the encyclopeida brittanica.
and as always, if possible use a two or three-source validation rule when putting something out on the net (not just copy and paste from google news)
Andrew Wee
http://www.WhoIsAndrewWee.com
Strangely enough I am in the Wikipedia but not as a blogger. One of the people I interviewed on my morning radio programme a couple of years back, Simon Johnson, has a list of media hits on his entry. Half way down the list it says “Sonshine FM morning show with Rodney Olsen. September 30, 2004”. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Johnson)
I’m also ‘kind of’ mentioned in another entry. Under a listing for Rev. Dr Ross Clifford it says, “Clifford is interviewed once a week by the Western Australian radio station Sonshine-FM.” That refers to my weekly chat with Ross about matters of spirituality and belief. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Clifford)
I have a mention in Wikipedia, but not as a blogger. Its in the Vacuum Cleaner entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_cleaners) – last paragraph under the Recent Developments section you’ll find: “In 2005, Scott English was first thought to have coined the phrase “Indoor Mowing”, as a humorous reference to the process of using a vacuum cleaner.”
I know, that’s really something to show off to the girls ain’t it?
When I parse the Wikipedia address to show the Canadian Bloggers category, the 47 listed seem to have some type of media/celebrity connection: journalists, actors, musicians, etc. Nothing in the way of what I might term a rank-and-file blogger.
BTW: the Australian Bloggers category lists 12, none of whom are named Darren. ;)
I’ve seen quite a few websites with entries in wikipedia. About a year ago, a friend of mine thought it would be cool to make an entry for one of our sites, along with one of his own. Our entry was up for a month or so before being removed.
We never saw any traffic from the entry, but it is sad that some average sites get to keep their Wikipedia status, while others don’t make the cut. I have no problem with the fact that “newsworthy blogs” have entries, but if they are going to let some sites have entries, they need to let them all have entries.
Wikipedia is certainly no democracy!
I am working on collaborating the wikipedia entry for the 2,996 project where 2,996 volunteer bloggers remebered each casualty of 9/11 with a personal tribute on their blog. Instead of remembering the names of the attackers, whe have chosen to remember the names of those that paid the ultimate price of freedom.
If there was ever a blog worthy of encyclopedia mention it is this one:
http://project2996.com/
If anyone has any experience writing wiki entries, please contact me.
Christina Nenno, Creator of Kristonia Ink!
I think putting bloggers on the wiki is just asking for trouble. Really? Bloggers? Why? Just because they’re a blogger? That’s not notable at all. That’s like being back in 1996 and having a list of all the email addresses or web sites in the world. Yahoo! started out that way, but now there’s better methods – search. Having a directory of bloggers is stupid unless there’s some criteria for the list, like the above project2996. That makes sense.
It’s asking for trouble because (I’m sure this has already been done, hence the rabid deletions) it just becomes a whore of a directory for traffic. Nothing more, nothing less. And for that, just use Technorati or Google blog search or something like that.
And for the record, no, I’m not listed either, even though I was the first person to ever create keyword filtered RSS feeds. Whoopie doo.
All you would have to do is add some of the wiki code to your own entry, like this:
[[Category:American bloggers|Atrios]]
Well, for you, it’d be…
[[Category:Australian bloggers|ProBlogger]] or [[Category:Australian bloggers|Darren Rowse]]
I just happened to open one of the pages, and that’s the code that was in the one I found, and I adapted it. You want to be as accurate as possible, so I say that any blogger that has over 1,000 hits a day should pay attention to what’s written about them on Wikipedia.
And, just to say it again, anybody can create a page, and anybody can delete it. The big problem’s been vandalism (see the France entry’s history).
Notability guidelines are at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability
Everybody and his dog has a blog nowadays. The idea is that only the most notable bloggers would have an article. Notability is established by articles in other primary sources. An article in the New York Times or a profile on a national news magazine, for instance. For actual blogs, they may be notable in and of themselves (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_%28web%29 ) but the author(s) may not.
The question of “notability” is an ongoing discussion amongst the Wikipedian community.
That’ll never fly, although it’s an argument put forth often by people who think Wikipedia is free advertising. I’m sorry that your site didn’t make the cut, but I’m more interested in those “average” sites that you say still have entries. They should be removed too.
A few months ago I added an article on my site called “Unique Ideas For Asking Friends To Be A Bridesmaid Or Matron of Honor” to the Bridesmaid page at Wikipedia as an external link. I was encouraged to do this because I saw another external link that in my humble opinion was inferior to my own! I thought it was worth a try, especially as the page wasn’t that extensive and I was adding some value.
The link remained live for about 10 weeks and bought in on average 3 visitors a day. It has now been removed and I guess it never met their criteria.
I’m not too worried about it and I’m certainly not going to try to add the link again.
My main goal is to be accepted into Dmoz.org, which is proving difficult at the moment.
Heck, I think everybody should get a wikipedia entry. That’s the democracy of it. If someone’s not that important, then no one visits their page. No worries. I know for a fact that wikipedia editors can get pretty cranky and territorial.
Someone (don’t know who) mentioned one of my blogs on Wikipedia. It’s since been removed.
According to the talk page, it was deleted because my IP address is in California, and so was the person who wrote the entry about my blog.
And as we all know I am the only person in all of California with internet access.
To have an article on wikipedia a blogger has ot have done something the community feels should be acknowledged. So if you have done interviews with important people, written articles that have been mentioned in the news, or started a major contoversy, or all three, you may end up there and the article might just stay.
Here is the funny part though. Wikipedia rules make it clear that blogs are not reliable resources to cite. So even if you quote a blogger who has been deemed notable by Wikipedia chances are other editors will not allow the quote to remain.
So bloggers can be good enough to have an entry but can rarely be used as a source. If an article about you survives a deletion debate it is pretty much set in stone. If it survives two it will be harder than hell for people to have it deleted.