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Susette's avatar

Thank you for this information. I'm especially curious how these editors decide who gets a Wikipedia page.

For example, a movie producer told me that every time someone made a Wikipedia page for Michael Harris-- the Death Row Records founder whom Trump eventually pardoned-- it would get deleted. This was years before the pardon

The reason this mattered was the producer was trying to interest studios in a project relating to Harris and not having him be "Wikipedia worthy" made it a hard sell.

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Kathleen McCook's avatar

There are a lot of rules about "Notability" and they are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability

The hardest rule is that someone from a "reliable source" has to write about them first. If they haven't had an article written about them Notability usually gets vetoed. Also, you can't say someone won an award unless the award has been written about in what they call a reliable source. And the articles have to be organic. You can't be paid to write them, you can't write about someone you are close to or work with.

One I created was for the Atlanta Braves organist who I never met only heard at ball games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Kaminski_(musician)

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Mike Stone's avatar

Reliable = Leftist

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Kathleen McCook's avatar

Very astute. The "Reliable sources" accepted are mainly MSM. And that list is the absolute arbiter. The page history on acceptable "reliable sources" is telling.

However, for smaller spheres like "Book History" they do accept citations from scholarly sources w/in the field.

If you have made 500 edits you can access the Wikipedia Library which gives you a way to go behind paywalls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Library

I work at a university so have that access in my work.

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Mike Stone's avatar

"Reliable" can also mean "dependable", as in "You can depend on XXX to toe the Party Line.".

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Glitterpuppy's avatar

Just looked that up. Interesting

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