Let’s say Bob Bobsonberg, actor, sports star and scandal magnet, has an entry in Wikipedia. An editing dispute arises over some reports of his latest scandal.
Does Bobsonberg have any recourse to ensure the page is factually correct?
Would his contribution or opinion hold any sway?
Would he have to prove himself as the real deal?
Any real cases of such a scenario?
This is Wikipedia’s statement of its own policy in this regard.
One such incident involving incorrect information about a living person involved the American journalist John Seigenthaler. More incidents are described here.
This is driving me batty, because I can’t find the link to it, but I recall that Raymond Chen (famous Microsoft Windows developer) wrote an article talking about how there was some incorrect information about himself on Wikipedia, and he wasn’t allowed (at the time; it appears this is allowed now) to correct his own entry. He was sick of dealing with people who would ask him questions related to things on his Wikipedia page that weren’t true.
His solution was to ask Wikipedia administrators to delete his entry altogether. Now his name just links to the generic Microsoft Blogs entry.
I don’t have a personal Wikipedia page, but there is one covering one of my research results with my name in the title. I checked it out once and decided to never go back. People long ago made false assumptions about it, which got into text books and those are the “facts” now.
I could dispute stuff, go into the talk pages, etc. But I’d be seen as just another random contributor trying to insert “personal research” rather than actual facts.
Note that people have sued over factual information being posted about them. One case I love is Junie Hoang suing IMDb for posting her real age.
Without a prior contract, I don’t see how that can succeed.
It’s a mess for everybody involved.
I once attempted to correct a Wikipedia entry about me. Technically it was an article about a freeware program/project that I’d started, and there was an incorrect entry in it describing how I’d gotten the idea for the program in the first place.
Naive creature that I was, I simply edited that section to correct it. When I checked out the entry a couple of days later, that entire section of the article had been deleted “due to a discrepancy about the program’s origins”.
…which was actually the right thing for them to do, when you think about it. After all, how could they tell whether I was really me or just some hacker claiming to be me?
When I contacted the editor of that article, he told me that the entire section would remain deleted unless/until someone could provide documented proof for one side or the other.
Fortunately, after I contacted one of my fellow programmers he found excellent documentation as to how the program had gotten started. In a book. Which the two of us had written. And I’d forgotten all about doing so (writing that particular paragraph, not the entire book). That was kind of embarrassing.
With that reference the two of us were able to convince the editor of the true origins of the program and the missing section of the Wikipedia document has been restored with the book cited as a reference. All is well.
…although I’m not entirely certain that the editor is really convinced that I am really me. After all, I am a pretty disreputable character in general.