No more screen names! No more anonymity! We could make the online world into a stalkers' paradise! Thanks, Virgil Griffith.

I know Wikipedia is different than the net at large, because of corporate users distorting their entries. But just as the solution for the problem of free speech is more speech, perhaps the problem of Wiki-bias is more bias.

The strange thing about Wikipedia is how little some entries are patrolled, but how heavily others are. I have a bad habit of editing articles about people I know, both to screen out some details that might be too useful to stalkers (the first name of someone's wife, which is immaterial to his career and—given the minor nature of his celebrity—unnecessary) and to add juicy little tidbits that I find interesting. Of course, finding published sources to back this information up isn't always easy, or possible. Sometimes my helpful additions get tagged as "unsourced," which is vaguely irritating: if I had time to write full-on biographies of these people, would I be noodling around on Wikipedia? There are only so many hours in a day, and there's the laundry to be done.

I'm particularly amused by how vigorously people patrol Adam Carolla's article on Wikipedia. I had placed a sentence in the "personal" section of his entry about how he likes pie, and prefers it to cake on his birthdays. This notation was removed within a few days. I asked the editor why he'd taken it out, and was told that since the factoid was "unsourced," it seemed like it might constitute "vandalism."

It occurred to me to just say "ask anyone—ask any of his friends. Ask Adam. He's into pie. He just is." But I didn't happen to care enough, and I let the edit stand. But I'm still enchanted by the idea that suggesting that someone prefers pie to cake is libelous. Didn't Oscar Wilde once sue someone for accusing him of liking pastries that featured fruity fillings? Maybe I'm confused on that score.

Another piece of my "vandalism" on Carolla's entry that was removed immediately had to do with the fact that when he and my husband were roommates (for about a month, in the 1990s), they had a big Moe head in the living room (one of the Pep Boys: you know—Manny, Moe, and Jack). I had thought that was safely in the public realm, because my niece tells me Adam has discussed living with my husband, and their having that Moe bust, on the air. But that datum was also taken out, perhaps because of the totalitarian overtones of the Pep Boys. How is it, I've always wondered, that they know what I'm after? Are they like Santa Claus, creeping around in my mind, determining if I'm naughty or nice? Who are St. Nick, Manny, Moe, or Jack to judge me, after all?

Of course, it may be that neither any of the Pep Boys nor Santa Claus know me as well as Virgil Griffith does. He might be the scariest figure of them all.

Wiki-hacker link via Glenn Reynolds, who may have more on people than Griffith himself. Those two could put together a nice little blackmail business together, come to think of it; the very idea makes me shiver.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:06 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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