Two celebrity deaths expose Wikipedia's sense of priorities

[CrowsNest]

This week, two minor UK sporting celebrities have died at a relatively young age - footballer Ray Wilkins and darts player Eric Bristow. Unsurprisingly, at time of death, both of their Wikipedia biographies were rubbish.

Football being more popular than darts means that Wilkins' biography was at least bashed into some kind of minimal quality, albeit with the characteristically choppy, overly dry and chronically recentist treatment Wikipedia specializes in. This was apparently enough to earn it a listing in the Main Page 'recent deaths' ticker, albeit only by the end of the day.

So we turn to Bristow. Within their respective sports, Wilkins was a mere footnote compared to Bristow, who is credited with playing a major part in the transformation of darts from obscure pub game to the stuff of arenas and razmattaz. And outside their respective career achievements, where Wilkins was universally praised as a man of character, Bristow was a 'character', if you get my meaning. With a capital C, as one obit put it.

Where Wilkins achieved a main page listing on the day of his death, albeit still much delayed, Bristow has already missed that mark (even accounting for the fact he died in the evening), and it looks like he might not even make it at all.

What's the reason for this disparity? Why should Wilkins be afforded greater effort and prominence, than Bristow? Given the almost identical manner of their death (cause and age).

And before you put it down to mere popularity, rest assured the level of coverage outside of Wikipedia, in both sports media and the news in general, has been the same for both, obviously because Bristow's individual achievements and character boosts his real world notability to being on a par with Wilkins, negating the clear difference in popularity of the sports themselves.

Wikipedia seems to lack that ability to factor out popularity in their operations. Why? Well, the first answer is that the people doing their editing aren't professional journalists or historians, but mere hobbyist volunteers. As such, they have poor analytical skills, they aren't really suited to the task of writing about something they didn't intrinsically care about, and even if they did care about it, real world interests easily get supplanted.

Add this to the mere fact that the forces of populism are at work in Wikipedia, where football in general gets far more attention than darts because the distribution of Wikipedia editors toward different topics simply tracks their general popularity in the real world (excepting nerdy topics like trains, although it has been speculated this holds here too in terms of sheer numbers of 'fans'), and you have your answer.

The sad reality is, Wikipedia isn't some fantastic knowledge resource staffed by diligent and committed volunteers dedicated to encyclopedic principles, it's just a website subject to the same forces of populism as the general public. And they do it in on a scale so small that if even one person clocks out of one minority area, it can have huge consequences. This would never happen in, say, the BBC, where you would be quite annoyed if their work on Bristow were put on hold because Barry from Barry had to pop out to the shops!

As a result, the quality and operation of Wikipedia is exactly what you would expect. It's not just a question of skills and abilities but priorities and dedication to your craft. Because we all know mere amateurism can play its part well in the field of knowledge if there's no profit to be made. Often organised exactly along the nonprofit lines Wikipedia claims to be using.

Wikipedia's priorities are manifestly not that of an encyclopedia nor a non-profit, and the sad tale of Wilkins and Bristow proves it.

[ericbarbour]

Wikipedia looooves football. So much it's embarrassing.

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