In Wikipedia, notability is a notable problem

The other day, I was contacted by novelist Jess C. Scott, whose e-book Wicked Lovely was removed in the Amazon incest cull we covered in 2010. Scott can’t seem to catch a break, as now her page on Wikipedia is under discussion for deletion.

Scott is up in arms over this, and has posted a brief history of her struggles to keep the page active. She writes:

Note how the reasons for deletion change throughout the discussion. The page was first nominated for deletion because of:

“No reliable sources, almost nothing in worldCat, promotional wording throughout. (~DGG)”

When the page was slightly cleaned up, the new reason for deletion was:

“There is nothing in the article that show that the subject meets WP:GNG in any way. (~Uncle Milty)”

WP:GNG is Wikipedia’s “General notability guideline,” and one of the major sources of contention in Wikipedia deletions over the years. It states, essentially, that the topic of an article must have “received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject” to be eligible for inclusion, though just because it has such coverage doesn’t mean it is automatically eligible.

One of the comments on the page’s deletion discussion points out that, though Scott may well be notable enough for inclusion, the article really only has one major “reliable source” which may not be enough to qualify it. “Typically what is needed for authors to meet GNG are two types of sources: interviews that talk about the author, and book reviews (in reliable sources). Are there any book reviews in Publishers Weekly?” (This is, of course, unlikely given that Scott is a self-publishing author and the major review sources do not tend to review self-published works.)

Of Cognitive Bias and Biased Editors

This is hardly the first time articles have been deleted from Wikipedia due to notability guidelines. Back in 2005, an editor took it upon himself to go through and delete Wikipedia entries on webcomics he considered to lack notability. My friend Eric Burns of Websnark wrote an excellent column on the matter at the time, noting that Wikipedia had discarded its ambition to be “comprehensive” and now just wanted to be “legitimate.” The problem is that the people who judge “legitimacy” frequently are not the people with the most knowledge about a subject, and there seems to be a pronounced culture of “anti-elitism,” or disrespect for expertise, in Wikipedia.

A cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger effect states that people who don’t know much about a subject nonetheless believe they know more than they do. And these are the people who decide what is “notable” or important on Wikipedia. And that’s not even taking into account the biases some editors have against particular subjects, which can culminate in things like the temporary deletion for “non-notability” of a Wikipedia article about Old Man Murray, one of the most influential video game web sites in the early 2000s.

Let’s not forget, there are plenty of non-notable articles on Wikipedia, and some of them several years old. For example, I was googling the anime Macross Frontier today, and happened to notice that the VF-25 Messiah fighter plane from it has its own Wikipedia page. [Update: Or, rather, it did at the time this article was written. Sometime since, it has been removed, though it can be found cached on archive.org from 2010.] This is something I would expect to see on a specialized anime or Macross wiki (or Macross Frontier Wiki), but not on Wikipedia—we don’t come to Wikipedia looking for that level of detail on any particular anime, and that fighter plane simply doesn’t have any importance or notability outside that particular work. And indeed, a box at the top of the article notes that it “may not meet Wikipedia’s general notability guideline,” among three other issues.

All four of those issues date from August 2009—fully four years ago—but nobody seems to have nominated the page for deletion yet. By comparison, Scott’s page was only created in “early 2012.” So, even assuming an article is eligible for deletion (on multiple counts!), when and whether it actually is nominated depends on an individual editor’s taste. Did someone read one of Ms. Scott’s books and not like it? Did they have some other grudge against her, or just think that erotica (or incest erotica) is yucky as a matter of principle? Or did they just happen to wikiwalk onto her page and decide it didn’t meet Wikipedia’s standards upon noticing it?

When you get right down to it, Wikipedia editors are human beings, with all the biases, prejudices, quirks, and foibles that implies. There will be a certain proportion of bad apples, just as there are in any major group of human beings, and there will be the attendant bureaucratic messes. Ms. Scott has a series of articles on her site, and a list of links to many external articles, pointing out the various problems with Wikipedia—issues of internal politics, gender inequality, and the like. (And we’ve covered a few of that kind of story ourselves, for that matter.) But what they all come down to is that Wikipedia is under the dominion of imperfect human beings.

I would imagine that most of the changes that happen in Wikipedia are due to people who feel strongly enough to keep pushing their own agendas far enough to overcome the inertia of everyone else. And some of those agendas may have to do with deleting articles they don’t happen to like.

I’ve pointed out in other posts that Wikipedia has outlasted every attempt at developing a competing “better” community-sourced general-purpose encyclopedia. While that means Wikipedia has had excellent staying power, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s perfect or even necessarily very good the way it is.

The Problem with Autobiography

That being said, there are problems with Ms. Scott’s page. For one thing, it reads more like a résumé than a Wikipedia page. The difference is subtle, but it’s important—a résumé is self-promotional material, intended to provide favorable information about you. (An early version of the page included links to Ms. Scott’s Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter pages, which were removed by another editor per Wikipedia’s policies.)

Wikipedia’s list of guidelines specifically states “
Do not use Wikipedia to promote yourself, your website, or your organization,” and that editors should “Avoid writing or editing an article about yourself, other than to correct unambiguous errors of fact.” The entry on autobiography notes that “Writing autobiographies is discouraged because it is difficult to write a neutral, verifiable autobiography, and there are many pitfalls.”

Looking at the history of the Jess C. Scott page, Scott created it herself under her own “Elfpunk” Wikipedia ID, and the majority of the edits to it were by her. While that might not be enough to disqualify it by itself (the guidelines say it’s “discouraged,” not “prohibited”), it is nonetheless a thumb on the scales. And it does look like the article is meant at least in part as self-promotion. (Which is understandable, because self-promotion is important for self-publishing writers. I imagine if I self-published, I’d want to get into Wikipedia myself somehow.)

While I sympathize with Ms. Scott—it’s indeed annoying to put so much hard work into something and then be told months later that it doesn’t pass muster, and of course she sees the page as important to how she earns her living—I’m afraid I can’t fully support her in this. Nobody is entitled to their own Wikipedia page, no matter how helpful it would be for them personally. (I don’t have one myself, for all that I’ve been cited several times as a source in Wikipedia articles.)

There are requirements to meet to be eligible for a Wikipedia article, as there are requirements for many other benefits. If Ms. Scott wished to join the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, for example, she must have published at least one book or three short fiction works through a qualifying professional market. Other pro writing organizations have similar requirements. If she wants a page on Wikipedia, she needs to have more mentions in notable sources. And if she’s going to write her page herself, she will face a higher bar than if she doesn’t.

In 2005, the webcomics creators whose works were deleted from Wikipedia found their own solution—they went off and founded Comixpedia, a webcomics wiki that grew to over 4,600 articles. The site seems to be defunct now (its most recent Archive.org snapshot was on May 8, 2013), but the principle is sound. Thanks to sites like Wikia and the easy availability of wiki and other content management system source code packages, anyone can go off and create a wiki about anything they want. There are many specialized wikis about particular TV shows, book series, and other fandoms that cover them in too fine a level of detail to be welcome on Wikipedia. There are even at least two different self-publishing wikis, though neither of them seems to have much content yet.

It’s even arguable that a page on Wikipedia isn’t strictly necessary in this age of search engine and social media. Helpful, yes, but hardly a requirement. Other forms of self-promotion will still be equally as effective (if not more; it’s hard to imagine many people look for their next author to read on Wikipedia).

Nonetheless, I wish Ms. Scott good luck in finding the additional notability she needs to keep (or down the road restore) her Wikipedia page. I’m just afraid I can’t support it in its current state.