TMCQ Wikipedia
The Mind’s Construction Quarterly was recently honoured with a beautiful little entry on Wikipedia. Whether it is deserved or not is separate question. The quality of the entry and the fact that it has nothing to do with my vanity will perhaps ensure its survival against overzealous moderators. For the truth is that some of the people who have got involved do nothing more than scout around looking for things to delete.
I had thought that we were living in an age of democratization, where human uniqueness and fundamental equality would be rewarded with its own acknowledgement. This, it seems, is not the case. Steve Pavlina, a ludicrous figure who completed three honours degrees in five days or something and sleeps for thirty minutes a night before penning his daily 4,000 words on personal growth, is a fascinating individual who is read by thousands, yet his Wikipedia entry suffered “speedy deletion”. Bloggers, despite providing the bulk of reading material for millions of nerds, aren’t generally worthy.
One accepts that limits are needed. The English wiki, sans images and sans page history, weighs in at over 20gb when decompressed. This is, I imagine, the equivalent of a book whose pages would use up all the trees in the Amazonian rainforest. Perhaps instead of trying to get all the world’s knowledge under one roof, editors should concentrate on improving what’s there. Indeed, Wikipedia styles itself on the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica, a work distinguished by being brilliantly written.