A Dispatch from the Wikipedia Waiting Room
"Insufficient evidence of notability. We need significant coverage in reliable sources independent of the subject."
The following was submitted to A. C. Rosenthal by a reader who wished to share his experience. We are platforming it here, fully aware of the self-serving nature of doing so, which is itself part of the point.
“My name on Wikipedia is Mithridates. I created the account in May of 2013. I have been a quiet presence on the platform for nearly thirteen years, drawn there by the same things that draw most honest contributors: a love of history, a respect for careful sourcing, and a belief that accurate information presented in good faith is worth the effort it takes to maintain.
I am not a prolific editor. I do not have a crusade. I show up occasionally, read carefully, and try to leave things slightly more accurate than I found them. Wikipedia has always struck me as a genuinely noble project operating on a genuinely impractical epistemology, and I have made my peace with that tension for over a decade.
Until recently.
Some months ago I attempted to create a Wikipedia draft page for an author whose work I had discovered. The author writes under the name A. C. Rosenthal. The books are serious. The research is primary-source driven. The arguments are documented and structured. This is not a vanity project dressed up as scholarship. I have read enough of both to know the difference. But this writer was unrepresented on Wikipedia! So i got excited at the opportunity to launch my first full Wikipedia post, no longer will i be commenting on the posts of others but i would become a next level contributor. So i gave it a go and crossed my fingers.
Wikipedia declined the draft.
The reason given was insufficient evidence of notability. The sources I cited were deemed inadequate to establish that the subject warranted an encyclopedic entry. As if they didn’t exist?
I want to describe what I cited, so that you can assess the inadequacy for yourself.
At the time of submission there were two published books available on Amazon with verified listings. There was an Amazon author page. There were two independent blog reviews. And two book reviews on Amazon. Wikipedia looked at this and said: not enough. We need significant coverage in reliable sources independent of the subject. Even though the subject was reviewed by others, through the two blog posts and the book reviews. As if a writer doesn’t exist even after publishing their second book.
Fair enough, I thought. The standard is the standard. I will wait, Perhaps a 3rd book will tip the scale.
I waited. The author did not stand still. This is the additional information i supplied to Wikipedia.
There is now a Substack publication at acrosenthal.substack.com with twenty-six published posts, eighteen scheduled, and a thirty-day open rate of 48.77%.
There is a website at acrosenthal.com.
There is a Facebook authors page established ten days ago that is already the single largest source of traffic to the Substack, accounting for nearly forty percent of unique visitors.
There is a LinkedIn account.
There is a Booklinker account.
There is a Draft2Digital account with the first book now distributed across Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble, and library catalog systems through OverDrive.
There is an IngramSpark account.
There are active Discord presences across multiple servers with documented engagement.
There are comments in the Acts 17 Apologetics comment ecosystem.
There are restacks and shares across other Substack publications with followings of their own.
There are multiple posts in the comment sections of the Ideological Defense Initiative.
There is also, and I want to be precise about this, a 4-course academic curriculum on Thinkific derived from the books, live, and two more 4-course curriculums under construction. The curriculums has three levels and well over 100 sessions.
And there is a third book with a completed manuscript currently in KDP preparation.
I resubmitted the draft.
Wikipedia declined it again.
The reason was the same. Insufficient evidence of notability. We need significant coverage in reliable sources independent of the subject. And here i thought that every bit of coverage that did not originate from the subject was independent of the subject by definition.
I have been sitting with this for some time now, trying to formulate a response that does not simply consist of staring at the wall. I want to be able to say that I contributed to the knowledge base of Wikepedia in a more meaningful way then commenting on the work of others. Why must Wikipedia vex me like this. Imagine Sheldon cooper cursing Will Wheaten from the precipice, or Kurt screaming “Khan”, and that’s not far off the mark.
Here is what I have arrived at.
Wikipedia’s notability standard is not designed to measure whether something exists, or whether it matters, or whether it has demonstrably affected the world around it. It is designed to measure whether a specific class of institutional gatekeepers has noticed it and written about it in publications that Wikipedia has pre-approved as reliable. The thing itself is invisible to the instrument. Only the reflection of the thing in an approved mirror counts.
This is an elegant solution to certain problems. It is a clumsy solution to others.
What it cannot account for is a world in which the verified, documented, measurable digital footprint of an author, twenty-six Substack posts with a 48% open rate, a curriculum with active students, a distribution network spanning every major non-Amazon retail channel, engagement across multiple platforms with real named participants in real ongoing discussions, constitutes less evidence of existence than a single paragraph in a publication Wikipedia has decided to trust.
I am aware that I am writing this on a platform provided by the subject of my complaint. I am aware that this creates an appearance of bias that Wikipedia would, with some justice, use as a further reason to discount what I am saying.
I am also aware that this circularity is not my invention. It is the system’s.
The author exists. The work exists. The audience exists. The curriculum exists. The footprint is real, documented, and growing.
I will resubmit when a review appears in a publication Wikipedia cannot ignore. I expect that to happen. I expect that when it does, the draft will be approved promptly, and Wikipedia will add the page to its database as though the author came into existence the moment a recognized institution decided to notice.
The Eiffel Tower, I am told, cannot be confirmed missing until Reuters says so.
I will keep watching the wire.
Mithridates Wikipedia contributor since May 2013 Occasionally right. Perpetually patient.
It’s kinda “funny” that protection against bias is second- and third- level references/ corroborations/endorsements, arms-length enough away to ensure neutrality and peer review, yet when those are amply available for something like, say, supporting the veracity of the Tanakh and New Covenant scriptures, to the tune of 10,000(?) supporting documents, it suddenly becomes, “Oh well, how do you know that’s what he really said, or meant? Maybe he was misheard or misunderstood or mistranslated, or maybe mistakes crept in over so many copyings.”
It's all too clear that Wikipedia is agenda-driven, and that its principal agenda is not actually anything to do with making us better informed.