Philip Roth's "Open Letter To Wikipedia," September 6, 2012

[Miles Archer]

An Open Letter to Wikipedia
By Philip RothSeptember 6, 2012

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/590953e66552fa0be682c89b/master/w_649,c_limit/philip-roth-af.jpg

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/an-open-letter-to-wikipedia

Dear Wikipedia,

I am Philip Roth. I had reason recently to read for the first time the Wikipedia entry discussing my novel “The Human Stain.” The entry contains a serious misstatement that I would like to ask to have removed. This item entered Wikipedia not from the world of truthfulness but from the babble of literary gossip—there is no truth in it at all.

Yet when, through an official interlocutor, I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete this misstatement, along with two others, my interlocutor was told by the “English Wikipedia Administrator”—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” writes the Wikipedia Administrator—“but we require secondary sources.”

Thus was created the occasion for this open letter. After failing to get a change made through the usual channels, I don’t know how else to proceed.

My novel “The Human Stain” was described in the entry as “allegedly inspired by the life of the writer Anatole Broyard.” (The precise language has since been altered by Wikipedia’s collaborative editing, but this falsity still stands.)

[TimeSnowDemos]

1. Wikipedia

is FULL of garbage...

I have personally checked multiple items (picked up a phone and called people) and found them to be untrue...

One thing was a page about a conspiracy theorist whose newsletter was supposedly subscribed to by all sorts of prestigious orgs, like the NY Fed. That claim was made in a book that had ZERO footnotes and was apparently completely unsourced... but because it was in a book it was more trustworthy than a phone call to the people who would know better....

And changes made to the page to highlight the other insane claims made by the conspiracy theorist - that Hank Paulson (I think) had been assassinated by a secret cabal for example - were promptly deleted.

The page is still a joke and full of lies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Story

Here's a review of the book it's based on, which highlights that it's essentially untrustworthy conspiracy garbage...

http://www.danielpipes.org/805/gideons-spies-the-secret-history-of-the-mossad

But it's a book, so as garbage as it is, it's more trustworthy than truth, if truth is unpublished.

Bleurgh

[dweller]

2. RIP Philip Roth

just heard the news this morning ☹️

he was one of my favorite authors, I've been collecting his books for years, and reread them often, many favorites, all gems

✌🏼️