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User Name Thread Name Subject Posted
cnd Key folk figures absent from Wikipedia? (124* d) RE: Key folk figures absent from Wikipedia? 31 Mar 21


A few comments:

No encyclopedia can have everyone. I have in my possession Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History, a 10-volume set on US historical figures and events from 1492 to 1905 (when the series was published) and it discludes several impactful people -- some of whom even have Wiki pages! For example, North Carolina's controversial Civil War governor Zebulon Baird Vance was not mentioned in the encyclopedia. However, that does not make the encyclopedia 'unprofessional' -- it just means there's a limit to what can or can't be included and what is notable in a national sense. Nothing can ever be 'complete' in that way.

I will also add that the point of this thread is to ameliorate several of the complaints you're making... the whole point of this thread is that there are people missing from Wiki and that that should be fixed. That they're missing is a problem which is actively trying to be remedied.

Wikipedia has never attempted to pretend it's a professional service or anything other that a free, open-source assemblage of information. It even has a whole page about it, titled "Wikipedia is not a reliable source." It's goal is simply to make information more easily available to the general public, which I think, for the most part, it does a pretty good job of.

I will agree that Wiki moderators are a bit crazy at times. I used to contribute a great deal to WWII-history pages and made several pages about the US campaign in the Pacific. I created a page about the Japanese invasion of Batan Island, which was hastily deleted because a mod thought I was trying to talk about Bataan. However, thankfully, you can argue your point and a reasonable consensus can (generally) be reached.


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