In defence of Wikipedia

Even permission marketing guru Seth Godin is moaning about Wikipedia. In Wikipedia gets fictional, he complains that the Wikipedia bio of Seinfeld's George Constanza is five times as long as that of Web 2.0 visionary Tim O'Reilly, who Godin describes as "one of the great thinkers of our time". But I think Godin is wrong here. He is confusing fact with fiction. Constanza is actually a lot more real than O'Reilly. Thus his longer bio on Wikipedia.

I have to confess, however, that I do rather like some of the entries on fictional characters in Wikipedia. The entry, for  example, on one my fictional heroes, George Smiley, the sad little man at the heart of John Le Carre's best novels, is excellent and it actually is little bit longer in length than the entry about Le Carre himself. This is appropriate. Artists are generally much less interesting than their art and I'm delighted that the wise crowd of editors at Wikipedia recognizes this.

And if you really want to read about O'Reilly, then read his novels. There's an appropriately long entry on Web 2.0 -- O'Reilly's latest and greatest work of fiction.

Comments

[thesuckersthepikerstheoneswhomighthavebeen]

I notice how in synopsis of television shows on wikipedia they write in the gags, as part of what happened. Homer Simpson tried to open his mailbox but he failed. Later that day,