How entitled must one be to assume they are owed a page in Wikipedia?
FIFA Peace Prize level of entitled at least, it seems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie...
>Beginning February 2015,[286] there was an ongoing edit war over the image caption for Guy Standing's English Wikipedia article. The debate was over if the word "sitting" should be added to the caption, since he was sitting in the photo.[287] A screenshot of the caption describing him as "Guy Standing sitting" has become a viral internet meme.[286] At one point in the edit war, the caption read "Guy Standing on a chair."[288] As of 2026, the consensus is to exclude the word "sitting".[286][287] In May 2022, Standing was invited to the American podcast Reply All to discuss the "Guy Standing sitting" joke.[286]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie...
Only in uncontroversial cases. In most cases, there is a debate where consensus is formed on if there is enough information about a person / topic to warrant an encyclopedia article. Wikipedia is struggling as is with the amount of content. An article cannot be written for every person under the son.
> Wikipedia pages, for better or worse, matter to people. To be included is a validation of a life.
There are billionares without wikipedia articles. There are people who have saved thousands of people from death without wikipedia articles. The only thing that matters in getting a wikipedia article is sufficient coverage by reputable 3rd party sources, such that there is enough material to write an accurate, informative, and neutral article. You should not derive your worth by this metric.
Furthermore, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:An_article_about_you...
Thus, it draws the line at things and people that are notable.
Maybe you think it shouldn't be an encyclopedia, but should be some larger project that indexes every product UPC, every person born, and every website ever registered, but that's not what it is.
And the primary obstacle here isn't storage. It's quality. You need a sufficient number of eyeballs and editors per page to ensure that the crowdsourcing is actually passing a minimal quality bar. Millions of short, low-quality articles means millions of opportunity for spam, abuse, and other problems.
But if the pop culture lore has insane depth then it’s probably valuable enough to keep, yeah? If it has a few limited snippets and very few people writing about it as sources, then it’s a lot more questionable
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for Mr. Tik-tok from Oz to have his own Wikipedia page. He's less notable than, say, Knight Artorias, and I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue Knight Artorias deserves one.
Then again, neither does the Great Grey Wolf Sif, yet here we are.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, the only one left, and it gets to define what an encyclopedia will be to everyone from this day forward. Excuses for my it must limit itself are inane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_of_Caerbannog
The disambiguation page of "John Smith" already contains 287 people. You're looking for the John Smith who was a US Navy sailor and received the Medal of Honor in the second half of the 19th century? There's three of them with a page already, and they have to be distinguished by year of birth. No need to make that page hundreds of thousands of non-noteworthy people long, having to be distinguished by SSN.
Wikipedia would rather you create a blog post or any other method of getting information on the internet than to host unverifiable information under their trusted brand name.
We don't have a neat interwiki search yet that makes federation work well, but in time perhaps something like that will develop.
This is the discussion for the deletion of this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
Do you see any attempts at erasure here? It looks to me like the process of consensus working well. Original nominator makes a well reasoned but poorly researched claim, leading to article improvement, a clear establishment that Savannah is indeed notable enough for inclusion, and the original nominator learning something new about the deletions process.
> There is, when you look for it, a careless and cocky tone that can creep into the verdicts of Wikipedia editors who have been doing the job for a long time. “This guy is a nobody. Delete him.” “I’ve got more followers on Instagram than he does.” “All we have here are stand-up comedy, opinion columns, being a guest or collaborator on some non-notable podcasts … This is more or less every twentieth person who lives in NYC.”
This tone could be improved, however looking at the surrounding context, I imagine the editors participating in these discussions are frustrated by the hundreds of articles on obviously non-notable people made by themselves or their publicist with no regard for the notability policies. I do not have access to the deleted pages as I am not an admin, however I speak from experience participating in many many AfDs and everything I've seen described in this wired article is consistent with my experience. Here are the pertinent discussions that the author fails to link, perhaps because it undermines their point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Bio...
> One month after Simeonovski nominated Dimoska’s biography for deletion, he lost. The page was kept. “Given the bludgeoning, canvassing, and sockpuppetry evident here, this is a no consensus closure without prejudice against speedy renomination,” wrote an editor in a determination. “The arguments to delete here are stronger on the merits, but sufficient reasoned opposition exists that I do not see a consensus for deletion.” Obstinacy won the day, though Dimoska’s page now carries a disclaimer that it contains “promotional content.”
Again, seems as if the process is working as intended.