No More Wikipedia

Jessica Smith's Wikipedia page was deleted today. Due to the comments in the deletion log (mostly, 'Wait until she's reviewed by major poetry magazines') -- and in the previous discussion of the deletion review, which it survived -- and this, and this, and the clear ageism of editors, and it generally being a facilitator in perpetuating predominant fallacies as fact, etc, i'm no longer editing at Wikipedia.

I sent Jessica an e-mail before, saying,

...i didn't have to read the discussion to know that part of the reason it was up for deletion was because the article said you were young; and that the person who wrote it could've been more crafty (i.e., not say the words 'young' or 'blog'). That's just one unfair bias i resent at Wikipedia, which is why i fed that guy his tie by quoting the creator of the place. As a tangent, they need to put down their large brush of generalisation and realise that blogs can be accurate and reputable, and non-blog websites can be inaccurate and disreputable.

This 'every blog is disreputable' bullshit has to stop. So has the bias against young people, and not only because it defies Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales's own ethos ('To me the key thing is getting it right. And if a person's really smart and they're doing fantastic work, I don't care if they're a high school kid or a Harvard professor; it's the work that matters.'). One editor made a fuss about how she is 'under 25', misinterpreting the word 'young': Jessica is 28 years old.

Wikipedia need to calculate and assign levels of reputability to blogs according to a) whether or not the writer/s real name/s are used; b) the credentials of the writer/s and thus their knowledge of or experience in the specialist area; c) the prominence or authority of the blog: are many people frequenting it and using it (i.e., linking to it) as a source of information; d) whether or not what they write is reliable (as in, is it violently biased and non-factual?).

Until Wikipedia sorts itself out, i'm no longer editing there or creating articles.

2/11/07: There are a few places linking to this (thanks), so i'm going to elaborate on what i hope is already obvious. Wikipedia can't use the same brush of 'notability' for every area of everything in life. Poets don't get 'reviewed by major poetry magazines', though that doesn't necessarily mean they're not notable, not doing work that contributes to poetry, not worthy of mentioning. I think that due to the nature of poetry, self-publishing is more so needed than it is in, say, fiction, and is therefore not viewed as disgusting a practise as it is in other areas of writing. Many reputable poets, many with Wikipedia pages, have self-published.

Wikipedia needs to create more applicable and practical parameters for the creation of articles on poets, as well as other fields of practice. (Or maybe someone should create a 'Poetedia'?)