Longtime readers of this — David Boles, Blogs — publication machine know I have always held a deep-rooted hatred of Wikipedia because of its provocative, and well-documented, willy-nilly publication history, and its ongoing stigma of defacing, and not defending, the public record; and now, after my page was recently deleted, my original notions about Wikipedia stand in even harder evidence today.


Even though my loathing of Wikipedia was well known, I was approached a few years ago about getting a Wikipedia page published about my career. I gave my approval to start the process — out of hope against reality, really — and I granted editorial permission to access my Boles.com website, archives, and media files and whatnot to begin the Wikipedia publication process.

I was the happy outsider, watching it all unfold from afar, and I think the editors did an excellent job capturing my writing, acting, directing, musical, and publishing work over the last 40 years — while not being advertorial about it — and still adhering to all the hoary, low-hanging, Wikipedia trip wires that can explode in your face two years after the fact of publication.

Blame the editor, punish the page!

I did not write my Wikipedia page, publish it, edit it, or link the page in any online promotional manner on a published page.

The question of “Notability” always arrives in any discussion of who and what belongs in Wikipedia — and while some may agree, or disagree, on a person’s notability — there is no doubt many Wikipedia pages that should never have witnessed the light of a published day, still survive on the site, even though my page was deleted.

My Wikipedia page was public, and live, for over two years on Wikipedia, and to have the page arbitrarily removed because of an editor I do not know, and did not meet, is purely puzzling.

Be wary of who edits your page, even though you have no control over who edits your page! There’s nothing quite like using a dull axe when it comes to surgical healing.

Is Wikipedia a body of record, or not?

Does Wikipedia censor pages, or not?

Is Wikipedia a reliable source of information, or is it not?

The Internet Archive has a lovely preservation of my dead Wikipedia page — so my originating provenance is still here, along with, at the time, the unsalted URL, and the history of that page is forever preserved for anyone to read, and to judge the conditions, and the procurements, of my notability — and, yet, alas, that page in infamy is no longer published on Wikipedia? So much for the experience of reflexive, encyclopedic, memory!

Here’s the .PDF version of my original Wikipedia page, and here’s another .PDF of the page directly downloaded from Wikipedia itself. This is a scraped, but credited, republication of my Wikipedia page! And so, despite of — in spite of! — Wikipedia’s attempt to remove me from their branded publication, I live. Alive! Living!

We are not lost; for that which is found, is merely made, memetic. The Us of Us!

If Wikipedia really portends to be — “The Free Encyclopedia” — then those who edit the encyclopedia need to stop removing truths of record, and trying to reverse time through deletion.

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