https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =&limit=50
His creation in September 2007 of an article for the Cape Town restaurant Mzoli's was a famous example of the sheer hostility, rampant deletionism and general bureaucratic bullshit that was already afflicting Wikipedia as the sheer number of users made the project totally ungovernable.
It was no longer acceptable for the Founder of Wikipedia to make the following statement....
....and for Wikipedia Administrators to just show a tiny bit of common sense and basic decency.I had lunch in this place and it is apparently quite notable locally and known internationally. Mention was made of press coverage.
The article was wiped out in seconds, only to be recreated shortly after, and inevitably more has been written about the Wikipedia editor's sheer assholery and the ensuing Wikipedia edit wars, than was ever written about the restaurant.
Good luck figuring out if the restaurant was ever notable under the standards of the day or if it meets the even higher bar of today. I don't think anyone gave a flying fuck, then or now. It might be accurate to say Jimmy Wales was and still might be the only person in the world who thinks Wikipedia should have pages on internationally known South African eateries if they're black owned and owe their existence to post-apartheid economic stimulus.
No doubt that doesn't excite the typical demographic of Wikipedia, whose number no doubt includes obsessives who happily document the every fart of Michelin star chefs, especially if they choose to honour the southern hemisphere with their gracious presence.
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His June 2011 creation of an article on a 2010 documentary film The Lazarus Project saw Jimmy undergo a similar nightmare, but one that showed where Wikipedia was heading from its 2007 bureaucratic argumentative hostility (spoiler alert: more of all three).
He got his first taste of the horrific Articles for Creation process, where quite literally all the burden of writing an article to the required standard is inexcusably placed on the newcomer, who has to piss around in draft space, like some digital spitwad, unworthy of the great honour of being a Wikipedia editor, waiting for the approval of his betters.
It of course didn't really matter that Jimmy had picked a worthy topic, perhaps simply by using his common sense. It may not be an accident that Wikipedia editors had yet again taken an extreme dislike to a topic about the benefits of free healthcare for Africans with AIDs.
Whatever it was that gave Jimmy the creative bug this time, to his progeny, he wasn't thinking like the new breed of Wikipedia editor. He didn't tick the right boxes. His submission was rejected on sight. Showing his immense capacity for good grace, he persisted, and ticked the required boxes, although rather obviously it is far more likely that the Founder would be prepared to do this. Genuine newcomers, not so much.
In a hilarious example of absolute fuckwittery, having been imprisoned in draft space for all of a day, not even being accepted as a proper article was enough to save it from the bullshit Wikipedia bureaucracy. First there was the ludicrous sight of the person who had declined the submission, then accepted it, going on to work on improving it a week later.
Two months later, one of the other editors (not Jimmy) who had worked on it, nominated it for deletion. Their seemingly solid certainty this article was not notable enough for Wikipedia for box tickery reasons, was quickly exploded as people came forward with source after source, all dating from when you would expect, 2010.
The article survived, but one suspects it probably wouldn't have if it hadn't been for Jimmy's incredible patience and enormous capacity for good faith. Something other people are unlikely to posses for Wikipedia editors.
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By the time of his September 2017 creation of a biography of Mike Brown, the manager of London's transport system, things had clearly changed. For a start, Jimmy was trusted to create his own articles. Yay! Second, Wikipedia's hostility and rush to delete things were gone.
Well, not quite. The article was tagged for {notability} on that first day, the sole edit of a passing male editor, who declined to give specific details, either in their edit summary or a talk page comment. But it doesn't appear to have dampened Jimmy's day, as he just carried on editing his new baby with the help of a companion. It is perhaps relevant that this was a woman.
A relatively peaceful experience, after Mzoli's and Lazarus Project. But of course, that might only be because this topic had nothing to do with Africa. It's about a white man with a powerful job in London. If this was the equivalent article for Johannesburg or Lagos, I think everyone knows there would have been a similar story to the above.
Even so, Jimmy had shown another glaring flaw of Wikipedia. Even though Wikipedia is crammed full of transport obsessives, not even they had noticed this particular gap in Wikipedia's coverage. The man had been in post since September 2015.
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Jimmy's most recent creation shows the Jess Wade effect in action. A July 2021 creation of a biography for an early twentieth Century American psychiatric nurse, Agnes Richards.
Wikipedia hasn't changed for attempts to create pages for restaurants or films or white dudes, only getting worse in fact, but as this episode showed, as long as you're creating an article that documents a forgotten women who did good things for women and If this woman and the things happened in a way that looking back, white western people can feel good about their belated act of recognition, then holy shit, it won't matter how poor your effort or how out of touch you are with the current requirements of the Wikipedia bureaucracy.
Even so, it was still quite funny to see Jimmy didn't quite trust the Wikipedians not to repeat the mistakes of 2007.....
That's fear.I've just learned about Agnes Richards from someone on twitter - I'm currently in the process of looking for sources. It would probably be great if this page isn't nominated for deletion right away, ok?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:12, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
He had no cause to worry. He had doubly protected himself. He was the Founder but he was also invoking the Jess Wade card. Guaranteed immunity.
You can create a one line article with a single source that may be a credible claim of importance.....
.....or may just be a classic case of assuming someone being the Founder of something important is inherently notable, but without further investigation you will never know.Agnes Richards was the founder of [[Rockhaven Sanitarium]] [1].
None of this matters. Nobody will shout at you, tag your article for notability or try to delete it, or put you through bureaucratic hoops. Quite the reverse. An Administrator no less will jump right in and do all the work for you, fully expanding the article and resolving the tags which, while not speaking to notability, do speak to your inability to do the things a non-n00b should be doing as standard, such as categories.
All in all, a pretty good micro study of the nightmare that is Wikipedia, post peak, for newcomers. Except Princess Wade and those who flatter her through immitation.
In 2010 when they voted to remove Jimbo's "Founder flag", Chzz was one of the loudest voices calling for removal. He was finally blocked in 2018 by Courcelles and then Bbb23, because "User has indicated off-wiki they will repeat the behaviour that led to the block." I suspect Chzz was fighting with people on IRC. And