This morning, just before I woke up, I had a dream that my Wikipedia page was up for deletion, and that I was making the case for keeping it by saying that 83 pages had linked to it and that it's bad form to wilfully rot links.
I woke up somewhat bemused by my dream, but couldn't resist checking to see if my Wikipedia page is still there. It is, but only just – it's been marked for deletion, you see. (And it only has about six pages linking to it. I just had to check that, too.)
I don't see anything psychic in this as it was marked for deletion – or, as they put it, merging with the Open Rights Group page – on 17 August but my psyche never bothered to mention it until this morning. Maybe the ether's got really bad latency. Anyway, Betsy Devine spoke up on my behalf saying that the stub should be retained, and now a couple of other people have too, which is nice.
I have always felt a bit strange about my Wikipedia entry. On the one hand, if it had never been put up, I never would have said that there was any need to create it – I'm not convinved that I'm that notable a person, except in the areas of British digital rights activism and social software/blogging, where I would like to think I have made a positive contribution. On the other hand, now that I have a Wikipedia page, I'd be sad to see it go. That's human nature I think – having something taken away is worse than not being given it in the first place.
Later… It has come to my attention that my pages is being edited a bit now, with some more information being put up, which is nice. I could have done that myself, but Wikipedia policy is that you're not allowed to edit your own pages, so I've stayed well clear. But whether it stays, or whether it gets deleted still, only time will tell.
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