Friday, September 07, 2012

Ars Technica: Wikipedia told Philip Roth he's not "credible source" on book he wrote

Roth tried to fix the error that his novel was "allegedly inspired by the life of the writer Anatole Broyard.” [...]

When Roth tried to give Wikipedia the true origins of the novel, he says he was told by a Wikipedia administrator on Aug. 26 "that I, Roth, was not a credible source."

“I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work, but we require secondary sources," were the exact words of the Wikipedia administrator, according to Roth.

Yep, that sounds about right. One of the many annoyances of trying to contribute anything to Wikipedia these days is facing the mods. Wikipedia entries are ridiculously hard to change sometimes, and most people at Librivox have basically given up trying.

One must remember that Wikipedia's motto is "Verifiability, not truth", so one just has to live with it.

XKCD has something about that:

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