I’ve been deleted from Wikipedia

February 6, 2007, 11:44 pm Pacific Time


This page was deleted from Wikipedia, either because an administrator believed a consensus was reached among editors that it is unsuitable as an encyclopedia entry, or because an administrator felt it met one or more conditions for speedy deletion. However, an appeal has been made at Wikipedia:Deletion review to restore the page. To facilitate that discussion, this page has been temporarily restored and protected with this message in place. If you would like to see the article that was deleted, please check its history. You may wish to contribute to the discussion at Deletion review following your inspection. If there seems likely to be a strong consensus to undelete and you wish to improve this article meanwhile, you may wish to make a request for the unprotection of this article on Wikipedia:Requests for page protection.

Apparently Ryan Block suffered the same fate recently as well.

Ah well, so it goes.

Posted in Wikipedia Weirdness | 3 Comments »

4th VfD on Wikipedia?

February 1, 2007, 2:11 am Pacific Time

Yep, someone’s taken up the task yet again.

Seriously guys, didn’t we settle this, I don’t know, three times in the last 22 months?

Posted in Wikipedia Weirdness | 1 Comment »

The Atlantic on Wikipedia

August 13, 2006, 6:47 pm Pacific Time

The Atlantic, September 2006:

Several months ago, I discovered that I was being “considered for deletion.” Or rather, the entry on me in the Internet behemoth that is Wikipedia was.

For those of you who are (as uncharitableWikipedians sometimes say) “clueless newbies,” Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. But it is like no encyclopedia Diderot could have imagined. Instead of relying on experts to write articles according to their expertise, Wikipedia lets anyone write about anything. You, I, and any wired-up fool can add entries, change entries, even propose that entries be deleted. For reasons I’d rather not share outside of therapy, I created a one-line biographical entry on “Marshall Poe.” It didn’t take long for my tiny article to come to the attention of Wikipedia’s self-appointed guardians. Within a week, a very active—and by most accounts responsible—Scottish Wikipedian named “Alai” decided that … well, that I wasn’t worth knowing about. Why? “No real evidence of notability,” Alai cruelly but accurately wrote, “beyond the proverbial average college professor.”

Dude, get over yourself. I’ve been nominated for deletion three times, ok? ;-) Seriously, though, it’s a good article.

Posted in Journalism, Wikipedia Weirdness | No Comments »

The New Yorker on Wikipedia

July 27, 2006, 11:50 am Pacific Time


The bulk of Wikipedia’s content originates not in the stacks but on the Web, which offers up everything from breaking news, spin, and gossip to proof that the moon landings never took place. Glaring errors jostle quiet omissions. Wales, in his public speeches, cites the Google test: “If it isn’t on Google, it doesn’t exist.” This position poses another difficulty: on Wikipedia, the present takes precedent over the past. The (generally good) entry on St. Augustine is shorter than the one on Britney Spears. The article on Nietzsche has been modified incessantly, yielding five archived talk pages. But the debate is largely over Nietzsche’s politics; taken as a whole, the entry is inferior to the essay in the current Britannica, a model of its form. (From Wikipedia: “Nietzsche also owned a copy of Philipp Mainländer’s ‘Die Philosophie der Erlösung,’ a work which, like Schopenhauer’s philosophy, expressed pessimism.”)

– The New Yorker; July 24, 2006

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Third Time’s a Charm?

June 26, 2006, 11:45 am Pacific Time

Apparently, I’m not good enough for Wikipedia anymore.

Round 1 (Concluded : April 14, 2005)
Round 2 (Concluded : August 6, 2005)

Posted in I Love the Internet, Wikipedia Weirdness | 2 Comments »

Slate/Wikipedia Saga, Day 2

August 2, 2005, 11:44 am Pacific Time

Before I get to the fan mail, I find it even more amusing that Jimmy Wales himself has gotten involved.

And if this further drives my “egomaniac” tendencies, so be it.

Best article I’ve read in a while. Brilliant!

The toothing hoax was so good that not only didn’t I know that it was a hoax, but CSI Miami Season 3 Episode 20 “Killer Date” was specifically about “toothing” and the consequences of it (in this case a cop loses his badge while humping around and the woman he was with pockets it, hoping that it will be more than a one night stand, but instead her criminal brother uses it to commit crimes.)

Is there any place that one could look up internet hoaxes?

Cheers
Sebastien Laroque

Cyrus,

Add me to the list of those who found your blog via Slate/Wikipedia. I hope they keep your entry!

Carina Dillon
Tooele, Utah

Cyrus,

I just wanted to share my disgust with what is happening on your
wikipedia entry. Whether someone believes your page should be removed
or not, it should not grant anyone the right to vandalize your page.
I am sure that this will blow over soon.

Regards,

Matt
(slate reader)

Posted in Fan Mail, I Love the Internet, Wikipedia Weirdness | No Comments »

I’ve reached Wikipedia nirvana! My entry has been locked!

August 1, 2005, 7:24 pm Pacific Time

Yipee!

Cyrus Farivar (born April 20, 1982 in Santa Monica, California) is an assistant editor at Macworld magazine and is a freelance technology journalist living in the city of Compton, CA.

He has a B.A. in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wired, Wired News, Slate, Mobile magazine, Playlist Magazine, Oakland City Magazine, Business 2.0, The San Mateo Daily Journal, MacAddict, The Age (Australia), and The Daily Californian. He was one of the first journalists to cover the concept of Podcasting in the New York Post.

Farivar gained some small degree of Internet infamy in August 2005 from a piece in the online magazine Slate in which he details his own participation in debunking an Internet-based prank that attempted to fool the mass media into covering a fictitious practice called “greenlighting.” In the article he also boasted about creating this entry about himself on Wikipedia (“Yes, I added an entry on myself to Wikipedia. Why haven’t you?”).

These guys are super creative, let me tell you. Because clearly changing my birthday from January 2 to April 20 is a low blow. And ouch, I live in Compton now, not in Oakland? Yikes. Oh, and The New York Times was changed to — gasp! — the New York Post!

If there’s anything that this whole fiasco proves, it’s that people on the Internet have way too much time on their hands.

And honestly, guys, go ahead, delete my entry. Watch me not care. Then see how much of an “egomaniac” I am.

Posted in I Love the Internet, Wikipedia Weirdness | No Comments »

I’m on the Wikipedia: Vandalism in progess page

August 1, 2005, 4:59 pm Pacific Time

Check it:

Cyrus Farivar

* Journalist’s article is getting vandalized in a variety of ways by multiple users for exposing an Internet hoax (“greenlighting”). –Tysto 23:09, 2005 August 1 (UTC)

Posted in I Love the Internet, Wikipedia Weirdness | 2 Comments »

Wikipedia: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime

August 1, 2005, 1:00 pm Pacific Time

My Wikipedia entry now says that I’m Arnold Schoenberg.

Posted in I Love the Internet, Wikipedia Weirdness | No Comments »

They’re trying to delete me again!

August 1, 2005, 12:25 pm Pacific Time

So a new round of Wikipedia “Vote for Deletion” has been added to my entry:

I’ve currently got support from Adrian Lamo and Jason Snell!

Voting currently stands at 3 to keep and 2 to delete.

This whole thing is really hilarious.

For more on this, see the comments from the last entry.

This pretty much sums up how I feel about this:

I understand your concern, I just happen to disagree with it. If my entry were guilty of being a vanity page and worthy of deletion, wouldn’t it have not survived the vote that happened on that subject earlier this year? Clearly someone else thinks that it should exist. Frankly, I don’t care either way. I find all of this rather amusing. If my Wikipedia entry were to disappear tomorrow, it honestly wouldn’t bother me at all.

Posted in I Love the Internet, Wikipedia Weirdness | No Comments »

Ah, the joys of Wikipedia

August 1, 2005, 11:34 am Pacific Time

So my Slate article, not surprisingly, has drawn new attention to my Wikipedia entry, which had lay quiet for awhile. Vandalism returned, and the Wiki vigilantes have come to my rescue, and I’ve popped in to edit my own entry once or twice.

I’ve drawn the attention of a few people, including one Todd Morman, who wrote in from North Carolina to say that I’d violated the Wikipedia policy of vanity pages.

My response is as follows:

Todd,

Thanks so much for your email. I did look at that URL and found this
section:

“An article should not be dismissed as “vanity” simply because the subject is not famous. There is presently no consensus about what degree of recognition is required for a page to be included in Wikipedia (although consensus exists regarding particular kinds of article, for instance see WP:MUSIC). Lack of fame is not the same as vanity.

Furthermore, an article is not “vanity” simply because it was written by its subject. Articles about existing books, movies, games, and businesses are not “vanity” so long as the content is kept to salient
material and not overtly promotional.”

So by that definition, it would seem that I would be ok.

Furthermore, there does exist a mechanism by which Wikipedia and its band of merry vigilantes vets Wikipedia of unwanted pages and libelous/outrageous/offensive material. There is a vote for deletion policy. My entry survived that policy earlier this year.

So, what exactly is the problem?

-C

Beyond that, h4×0r extraordinaire Adrian Lamo wrote me to say that “it’s a bit gauche to be unduly interested in your own Wikipedia entry.”

I apologize for being so gauche. :)

Posted in I Love the Internet, Wikipedia Weirdness | 4 Comments »