The Tragedy of Losing Your Wikipedia Page

All three have had a biography on Wikipedia; all three of those biographies were considered for deletion this year on the grounds that the subjects were not notable enough to warrant a biography at all. Every day, dozens, sometimes hundreds, of Wikipedia biographies—of child actors turned LA realtors, retired ambassadors, soccer players who have played less than 10 minutes of professional soccer—are purged from the world’s free encyclopedia. It’s not as though Wikipedia, which hosts over 7 million articles in the English language, doesn’t have the space. But Wikipedia has only so many volunteers to monitor its contents. To this day, Wikipedia editors are discovering hoaxes that have gone undetected for decades. The time it takes to verify the release dates of Xav’s three singles is better spent—the logic goes—by asking whether the American Civil War officer Nathaniel Lyon really drank mustard during battle, as was claimed in his Wikipedia biography for 17 years. Wikipedia removed the mustard claim, not because it was proven wrong, but because there was no reliable evidence for it. “We’re not really looking for what’s true,” Britta Gustafson, who has been editing Wikipedia since 2001, told me. “We’re looking for what’s verifiable.” Wikipedia editors do not themselves decide that a person is not notable, only that there is a lack of reliable evidence to support the claim. One person who recently lost her Wikipedia biography on notability grounds is Kimberly Small, the CEO of a Nevada nonprofit that supports survivors of sexual assault. The debate occurred in a public page on Wikipedia itself; it’s in that space that the really tricky decisions about what is and what isn’t good enough for the encyclopedia are made. One editor raised a question: “How should we judge not-for-profit executives? By the nature of their job, the focus is, as it should be, on the organization and the work the organization does, not them.” Another editor replied: “I don’t think there is anything wrong with not-for-profit executives being less often individually notable. Wikipedia coverage is not a prize.” Is it not? “Having an article says something,” Gustafson admitted. “It implies something.” For six weeks over April and May, I reached out to hundreds of people who were about to lose their Wikipedia page, almost all of whom were learning that information from me. “If you want to write something to save the page, I would appreciate it,” a Spanish filmmaker told me. A biography on Wikipedia might not be intended as a prize, but nobody knows its value like the people who’ve had one and then lost it.

On April 29, Dimoska posted on Facebook, “Wait … I’m on Wikipedia now???” She went on: “A few years ago, building a career in space from the Balkans felt impossible. And now … somehow, that journey is part of the public record. I’m incredibly grateful that [the biography] is there … My hope is that through my journey, I will help a new generation to begin to see space as accessible, not distant.” The next day, Dimoska’s page was nominated for deletion.

The other taboo is editing information about yourself. You can’t do that—even if the existing facts about you are wrong—without disclosing a conflict of interest. Even then, it’s strongly discouraged. Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia, has been caught editing his own Wikipedia biography multiple times; that he did so is now part of his Wikipedia biography. In 2022, the novelist Emily St. John Mandel, unable to update her biography to reflect her recent divorce, sat for an interview solely to create a secondary source for that information. Some high-profile Wikipedia editors and volunteers have bio pages about themselves. Clin is occasionally asked if she would want one. She doesn’t merely refuse; she actively sabotages the possibility. “You cannot write a proper biographical article about me, because I don’t give out enough personal information to do that,” she said. “Absolutely not. Absolutely not.”

A Wikipedia editor can tag an article for deletion, and unless satisfactory edits are made within a certain timeframe, the page will disappear. Simeonovski didn’t do this—he referred the article for debate among his fellow editors. Arguing the case for deletion, Simeonovski described the Dimoska biography as “merely [a] chronology of overhyped personal achievements,” each meticulously deflated by Simeonovski, that did not credibly establish Dimoska as a notable individual. More damningly, in his argument, was the timing of Dimoska’s Facebook post, coming “shortly after the article was approved.” To him, this was a smoking gun as much as anything. How could she have so promptly promoted the page if she were not somehow connected to it?

Matthew Songer, a Michigan orthopedist with three decades of experience, had his biography flagged for deletion (“Unlikely to be notable”) in April. Songer was among the 1 percent of respondees. He told me it’s not for vanity that he needs that page. He is often enlisted as an expert witness in trials, he said, because of the extra imprimatur of being on Wikipedia. The page “is a good reference for attorneys.” Maneli Mirkhan, a French-Iranian adviser on international affairs, agreed that having a Wikipedia biography inspires confidence in her services. Her biography was called out by Wikipedia editors for reading like a résumé. The biography of Andrew Wyant, a Phoenix-area executive who works in fitness and nutrition, was also deemed insufficiently notable, due to a lack of coverage from secondary sources. Wyant said he blamed himself for failing to “feed” his public persona through self-promotion. “What I know to be true is that I am largely responsible for the growth of the profession of personal trainers and fitness coaches by building the entire category over the last decade,” he told me. “I feel my accomplishments and impact are notable, but I don’t feel the need to promote them in media so I can have a Wikipedia page.” Wyant’s biography was deleted. Songer’s biography was deleted. Mirkhan’s biography was deleted. Of those, only Mirkahn’s reappeared, rewritten and with new sources, a few days later. I asked Mirkhan if she had been involved in re-creating the page. No, she said, but she wasn’t surprised. Mirkhan had been, and continues to be, sought out by the French media to comment on events in Iran, and more coverage means more demonstrations of notability. But there’s always that chicken-and-egg problem: Mirkhan thinks that what gave the media confidence in choosing her as a commentator was not just her career and her expertise. It was the fact that she was on Wikipedia.

To Simeonovski, self-promotion like this suggested that the case for Dimoska’s notability was regularly oversold by Dimoska herself. Though he could not prove a connection, it was difficult to imagine the Wikipedia biography as anything but an extension of that project. That afternoon, a new Wikipedia user added comments to Simeonovski’s public arraignment, noting three existing articles about other individual analog astronauts. A fair contribution, tempered by a shot across the bow at Simeonovski: The user’s name was “Kiril’s mom.” The user was not Simeonovski’s mom, and the account was subsequently blocked. Hours later, another new user asked Simeonovski, rhetorically, “If I publish a blog post about someone and he finds it amazing and celebrates it does that mean that he/she created it?” Their username was a coded reference to the actual name of Simeonovski’s mother. They also got blocked. Nine days later, another anonymous user—whose IP address, according to Simeonovski, placed them in Skopje, North Macedonia—said Dimoska’s biography had improved “considerably,” with new sourcing from publications like The Telegraph. The revised article, the user claimed, was superior to “85%” of Wikipedia articles about living Macedonians. Three days later, Simeonovski dismantled each of the 32 new sources in turn. It wasn’t really the British newspaper The Telegraph that had been cited, for instance, but the Albanian news website Telegrafi. “I fail to find a single independent and reputable English-language source,” he later wrote. The next day, the anonymous user rebutted Simeonovski point by point. They said it was “strange” that Simeonovski could not seem to find a single appropriate source for Dimoska’s biography but had found “10 sources from non-independent websites” when he wrote an article about the former governor of the National Bank of North Macedonia. The National Bank of North Macedonia, the user added to Simeonovski: Isn’t that where you work? At one point, Simeonovski said he would report his detractor to the Wikimedia Foundation legal department.

A little rudeness is unavoidable in this line of work. Sonia Jones, a Welsh singer best known for the theme song from the 1979 film Monty Python’s Life of Brian, is indeed best known for the theme song from Monty Python’s Life of Brian; therefore, Wikipedia editors decided that her Wikipedia biography should be deleted and henceforth redirect to the article about the song. Jones, when I asked her for a comment, did not agree that her achievements since 1979 do not merit documentation. “No, I do not want them to remove my page,” she said. “Why would they?” “Canada has a national dodgeball team? Who would have thought?” wrote one editor in their case to delete the biography of Savannah Burton, the first transgender athlete to compete for Canada’s national dodgeball team. “Even though dodgeball is not considered a mainstream sport, competing at the highest level in any sport is a significant accomplishment,” Burton told me. “Given the ongoing attempts to erase transgender people, along with infringements on our rights and our ability to live normal lives, this action is not surprising.” There is, when you look for it, a careless and cocky tone that can creep into the verdicts of Wikipedia editors who have been doing the job for a long time. “This guy is a nobody. Delete him.” “I’ve got more followers on Instagram than he does.” “All we have here are stand-up comedy, opinion columns, being a guest or collaborator on some non-notable podcasts … This is more or less every twentieth person who lives in NYC.” Rosemary Bush’s biography was deleted. Sonia Jones’ biography was deleted. Savannah Burton’s biography was retained. “It was easy to find more sources,” wrote an editor who came to the page’s rescue. Editors’ participation in this process is not mandatory. Articles, once marked for death, can be deleted simply because nobody showed up to debate the matter. That anyone would volunteer their time to save an undeserving article from oblivion is a kindness: a good deed in a rude world.

Per her Wikipedia page, Dimoska’s achievements included the command of two analog astronaut missions in Poland, but Simeonovski argued that while this information was verifiable, the missions themselves did not meet the threshold of notability and therefore neither did Dimoska. The anonymous user pointed to Dimoska’s inclusion in a Macedonian book for schoolchildren about 50 Macedonian women: “The book was subsequently recommended by the Bureau for Development of Education as optional reading material for ninth-grade students nationwide, which gives the subject recurring exposure within the educational system rather than temporary media attention.” “You’ve apparently regressed to using children’s books to support the notability of the person we’re discussing,” said Simeonovski. “I expect [you] to continue gaslighting with multi-paragraph comments, but that won’t change the observation that the person isn’t notable [enough] for a Wikipedia article.” “Count your words and then mine … and see who is the one gaslighting with multi-paragraph comments.” “You seem to mix up ‘prominence’ and ‘notability.’” “Your argument relies heavily on personal anecdotes and assumptions about how Macedonian media operates.” Other editors wit