Who really controls Wikipedia? In this Grammarpalooza bonus episode, Wikipedia expert Jonathan Rick shares some of the wildest stories from his years consulting on Wikipedia pages—including high-profile disputes, celebrity edits gone wrong, and the hidden rules that determine what stays and what gets deleted. He also explains why Wikipedia editors have a reputation for being ruthless, how some pages get locked, and why patience is key if you're trying to make a change.
Who really controls Wikipedia? In this Grammarpalooza bonus episode, Wikipedia expert Jonathan Rick shares some of the wildest stories from his years consulting on Wikipedia pages—including high-profile disputes, celebrity edits gone wrong, and the hidden rules that determine what stays and what gets deleted. He also explains why Wikipedia editors have a reputation for being ruthless, how some pages get locked, and why patience is key if you're trying to make a change.
Jonathan Rick helps people make sense of — and profit from — business communication. Whether through ghostwriting, speaking, or marketing, he helps clients engender buzz, shape public opinion, and become thought leaders.
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MIGNON: Greetings, Grammarpaloozians. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm here today with Jonathan Rick, who is a Wikipedia expert. If you missed the main show, you really should go back and listen to it because we talked all about what it takes to get a page on Wikipedia, what makes Wikipedia a credible resource, and how you might get started writing or editing on Wikipedia yourself. But here with Jonathan, who is a ghostwriter. He has gotten his work placed in all the big publications: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and so on. But what interests me about what he does is he does consulting, helping people spruce up their Wikipedia pages. Jonathan, welcome to this bonus segment.
JONATHAN: Delighted to be here. Thank you so much.
MIGNON: Thank you so much. So I would just love to hear all the wild stories you have about things that have gone on as you have tried to get information put on Wikipedia or working with people who want things on there that don't make sense.
JONATHAN: I have so many stories, and I'm going to try to obscure the identifying details for anonymity.
MIGNON: Yes, absolutely.
JONATHAN: I had a...
MIGNON: Actually, let's start with a famous one, because I've heard you talk about this before. There is a famous writer, I believe it's Philip Roth.
JONATHAN: Oh, that's the famous example.
MIGNON: Yeah, got in a big fight with Wikipedia. Yeah.
JONATHAN: Oh, yes. I forget the details, but basically he said the year of my birth isn't correct, and he went and corrected it himself. The editors slapped his wrist and said, "No, you can't do that. You can't serve as a primary source. It has to be published in a high-authority, independent outlet."
He said, "Okay, I'll write for the New Yorker." And so he—I think he wrote an article in which he—and I'm getting the details wrong, but he basically wrote like Bart Simpson: "I was born in 1963. I was born in 1963. I was born in 1963." And, John, there are plenty of other examples where high-profile people get upset because their Wikipedia page is factually inaccurate. There are different ways to correct that, but you've got to do it in the right way. Elon Musk, a couple of years ago, sent what was then called a tweet, I believe, saying, "My Wikipedia page says I'm an investor and I haven't invested in years." There was a whole big debate about Musk regarding whether he was actually still an investor.
A couple of stories from my own life: a client hired me to improve their page. They were deemed the Hitler of academia, and I don't want to give the exact wording away, but they were dubbed the worst ex in the university's history. Under whose criteria? What are we talking about?
And this was inflammatory, beyond being inaccurate. By what, how do you measure that? So we were able to get that reverted by following the appropriate COI (conflict of interest) process pretty quickly. Another client, this was years ago, had raised a boatload of money. They were a startup, a private startup.
And the metric, as any reader of TechCrunch can tell you, by which private startups are measured is how much they've raised, and they had raised, I think, more than half a billion dollars. And that is not a verbal typo; more than 500 million. And technically, according to the rules of Wikipedia, fundraising, which this is considered a routine event.
In other words, to the reader in Idaho, 10 years from now, do they really need to know that, I'm just making this up, Uber raised 600 million dollars in 2002? No, they don't. And yet, many companies that have a Wikipedia page, that are private, startups that are private, want to publicize the fact that they raised 500 million from investors like Ashton Kutcher and Google Ventures and all sorts of other things.
You can't do that according to the rules. And yet there are many pages that do this. So how do you square those two things? It's complicated. I'll give you one more story, and this one comes from this morning. I get this question once a week. A client said, this is the CEO of a company, and he wants a Wikipedia page.
He doesn't meet the notability threshold, the general notability guideline. And the PR person today on our call said, one of our colleagues, another employee, a high-ranking executive at the company, has their own page. You're telling me our CEO and founder doesn't qualify for his own page?
Basically, why does somebody I know have a page, but I don't? And the answer is tricky. Number one, it turns out that the colleague's page is flagged not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. This guy's page is flagged. It actually should be removed because in no way does it meet the threshold.
Somehow it slipped in, and that's the second point. The rules of Wikipedia are not enforced uniformly. That's what happens with a volunteer-led crowdsourced initiative. You get many cases where violations of the rules, even blatant violations, occur. That's what happens with an initiative this vast.
And unfortunately, pointing out this discrepancy has never, in my 20 years, had the effect of changing the rules. The final point is that enforcement has been stepped up in recent years, so it's harder than ever to sneak things past the Wikipedia's hall monitors.
MIGNON: Interesting. So what are some other, do you have any other stories?
JONATHAN: Other stories. Let's see. Sometimes the wait sucks. I'll elaborate. There's a policy, as we talked about earlier, called "there are no deadlines," which is a camouflage for saying we'll get back to you whenever we damn well feel like it. And that's a legitimate point.
These are volunteers who are not getting paid, and my emergency is not their problem. So they'll get back to me when they want, and that's perfectly okay. I know that's tough for a client to hear when their reputation is being misrepresented, but I think in one case it took six months, maybe, for a client's request.
I don't remember whether it was an edit or the creation of a new page to get addressed, and there are all sorts of problems in following up. You don't want to be seen as lobbying. You don't want to be seen as pestering people. In fact, I have a colleague who was just slapped on the wrist for corralling sympathetic editors to his case to say, "Hey, Bob, I have a request here that's been sitting in the queue for a couple of weeks.
Would you mind taking a look?" He was slapped on the wrist, and that's not necessarily bad because he's doing things in an above-board, transparent way, but patience, and maximum patience, in my view, is always the best strategy. And that can be tough when your reputation is being misrepresented.
MIGNON: Yeah. Wow, that's really a cultural thing, because in other scenarios, I can imagine that would be perfectly acceptable to reach out to someone that you might think would be sympathetic to your cause.
JONATHAN: Yeah, exactly. The term is you don't want to be seen as lobbying, and editors are. They have a built-in bias against people like me, people like you, who have a vested or financial interest in the issue at hand. Whether that's right or wrong, we can discuss, but you have to step on eggshells. If you treat editors with respect, understand the rules, don’t pester them, follow up politely and patiently, respect their time, and hit them with a laundry list of edits, you do them. You present your request piecemeal; you don't ask them all at once. You're succinct. You're as clear as crystal. To that extent, you'll succeed. And to the extent that you make requests that ignore sourcing, are full of typos, and are patently
unfamiliar with the pertinent policies, you'll suffer.
MIGNON: It seems like it's a real, specific culture. And that makes me believe that there's probably also a community. Do they have a conference for Wikipedia editors and things like that? Do they hang out together?
JONATHAN: They were on the internet, so they do get together IRL (in real life). There are Wikipedia conferences where you can actually put a face with a username. Some people declare their real identities, even online. Yes, people do get together in real life, in person, to discuss these things, to bat around ideas, and to propose new suggestions.
There's even a Wall Street Journal article from a number of years ago about the Arbitration Committee. That is basically the Supreme Court of Wikipedia. I think it consists of like a dozen people, and they meet maybe, I don't know, I think a dozen times a year. It's like the Supreme Court; they kick back most disputes to the lower levels.
But yeah, people do get together in real life every once in a while.
MIGNON: Yeah, that's great. Yeah, let's move on. I want to wrap up; we'll get your three book recommendations. I just love hearing what people— the way I frame it is, what books would you recommend to a friend? I am now your friend.
The listeners are all your friends. What book should we read? The
JONATHAN: Kidding. I'm just kidding. I had to say that. Three books. Yeah, my all-time favorite is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. This, for my money, pound for pound, is the single greatest investment you can make, not only in business but also in life to advance your career.
It's just, it's like my Bible. I reread it every few years, and it's that powerful. Second, I'm going to recommend a book by my best friend, Michael E. Long. He wrote it with a colleague, Dan or Daniel Lieberman. It's called The Molecule of More. It's about dopamine, and it's a fascinating read.
It's as entertaining as it is enlightening. Mike just wrote a follow-up book. I think it's due out in April called Taming the Molecule of More. Fantastic read.
MIGNON: Molecule of More, M O R E.
JONATHAN: Exactly, yes, the molecule of more, which refers to dopamine. And we all have dopaminergic personalities. We always want more.
We're restless. We're never satisfied. And Mike explains, I think the subtitle of the book is something like how a single molecule in the brain explains chemistry and life and the secret to success.
MIGNON: Oh, fascinating.
JONATHAN: Oh, and then the third book is my favorite novel. My mother was a high school English teacher.
She read to me a lot. She encouraged reading at home. This was one of her favorite books. And I think it's the reason that I fell in love with words: Sophie's Choice by William Styron. Just a chilling but beautiful book. Chilling plot, beautifully written.
MIGNON: Yeah. And also a movie.
JONATHAN: With Kevin Costner and Meryl Streep. One of my all-time favorite lines in the book is inappropriate to say now, but I will paraphrase. It involves what's called a seersucker suit, and Sophie, who's Polish, doesn't quite— the translation doesn't quite work for her, and so she says to Stingo, the protagonist, "Oh, Stingo, you are wearing your..." She doesn't call it a seersucker.
She calls it something else.
MIGNON: Something else. And you think of that now whenever you see that kind of suit?
JONATHAN: Yeah, it's burned in my mind. And of course, I don't think of the word in the novel. I think of Meryl Streep's pronunciation of it.
MIGNON: Wonderful. Those are great recommendations, Jonathan. Thank you so much. Jonathan, Rick, where can people find you?
JONATHAN: I made an error. It's not Kevin Costner. It's Kevin Klein in Sophie's Choice.
MIGNON: Oh, yeah. Okay. Do it again. I haven't seen it, but I knew Meryl Streep. So let's see. And I'll say, and a movie.
JONATHAN: And a movie, yes, it stars Meryl Streep and Kevin Klein, and it is indelible.
MIGNON: Oh, great. And then you told me there's a line about a seersucker suit that now you think of every time you see someone wearing one.
JONATHAN: Oh, yes, it's—I, Meryl Streep, whose first language is Polish, has some trouble translating, and so she sees Stingo, the main character—I think his name is Stingo—wearing a seersucker suit. And she says, "Stingo, you are wearing your..." She doesn't use the term seersucker; she uses something else.
And it's just priceless in her affected Polish accent.
MIGNON: It's okay. Wonderful. Those are great book recommendations. Jonathan, Rick, thank you so much for being here with us. Where can people find you?
JONATHAN: Mignon, the pleasure was all mine. This has been so exciting; I really appreciate the opportunity. If anyone wants to learn more about Wikipedia and how I can help, the best place to consult is my website, wikipediahelp.com. That's wikipediahelp.com. I offer all prospective clients a free consult.
MIGNON: Great. And we'll put that in the show notes too for people who maybe can't remember. So Wikipedia Help, Jonathan Rick, thank you so much.
JONATHAN: Thank you, Mignon. Pleasure. Thank you so much.