“An Open Letter to Wikipedia, In Re: Myself,” by David Guaspari

Nov 6th, 2024 | By | Category: Fake Nonfiction, Prose

Where to begin? With your relentless negativity? That snotty list of what Wikipedia is not? Not a dictionary, publisher of original thought, means of promotion, blog, memorial site, manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal. Not censored. (Sez who!?!) A nihilistic orgy of not-ness. Contributors (or, to use your cloying jargon, Wikipedians) are told to “Be bold!” Yet boldness, one soon learns, invites retaliation—with accusations and insults including, but hardly limited, to “blatant hoax” (Speedy Deletion Criterion G3) and “no indication of importance” (SDC A7).

True, I did not win the 1994 US Open. Good catch! And my bad: careless cutting-and-pasting from an old list of New Year’s resolutions. Also my bad luck that a six iron shanked off a sprinkler head prevented my qualifying for that tournament and thereby eliminated my chance at a sudden death playoff with Ernie Els.

I’ll give you that one. But the claim by “Wikpedian”/vigilante PhoolH8tr to know that I was never nominated for a Nobel Prize was not only insulting but self-refuting, as the Prize Committee has made clear: the names of all nominees are kept secret for 50 years [citation: nobelprize.org]. And the personal abuse that accompanies all of his/her/their attacks is unprofessional. The criteria for deletion of biographical pages make no reference to “morons,” “losers,” or being “like a persistent untreatable venereal disease.”

The root cause is your problematic, not to say prejudicial, concept of “notability” and the copious defamatory assertions of my lack of it. I am, it seems, not “worthy of notice” or of “note,” and am not “remarkable,” “significant, or interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded,” [citation: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)]—even though Mike the Headless Chicken [citation: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken], solely by being a beneficiary of inaccurate decapitation, manages to make the cut (as it were).

Let me be clear. My criticism cannot be dismissed as bigotry against the headless chicken community, with which I have demonstrated unflagging allyship. It’s an attack on double standards—or perhaps a single standard employing a secret annex to the list of nots that adds not me. Granting, arguendo, that Mike the Headless Chicken meets your “basic requirement” of achieving “coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject,” how could my ubiquity on the internet, in print, and IRL fail to do the same?

You want metrics? Try these.

Letters to the editor: Numbering in the hundreds, and wide-ranging in subject matter, mine include many anthologized classics, such as “Questionable Parking Meter Initiative,” “Hawking Radiation? Really? Gimme a Break,” and “Stay Off My Lawn: A Manifesto for the 21st Century.” They have stimulated robust and productive public debate, from which the semiliterate PhoolH8tr no doubt plagiarized the taunts “moron,” “loser,” and “like an untreatable venereal disease”—and, by so doing, inadvertently demonstrated his/her/their awareness of my eminence in this field.

Highways personally adopted: 5 [before and after photos available on request]. It’s a cause close to my heart and the inspiration behind the nationwide awareness campaign I began on behalf of Troubled Roads And Shabby Highways. I am proud and humbled to be the only two-time winner of its coveted Orange Vest award, known informally as the TRASHY.

Number of entries in the International Star Registry: 3, a pending world record (awaiting certification by the Guinness Book). In the heavens gleam stars bearing my legal name, my porn star name, and the pseudonym under which, for security reasons, my letters to the editor are now published. For comparison, Barack Obama and Elton John have accumulated a total of one star each.

Selected other awards and recognitions in fields ineligible for Nobel nominations: Who’s Who in Roadside Maintenance; Space Invaders 100,000 Point Club; Yelp Reviewer of the Year (2012); Perfect Attendance (Millard Fillmore Middle School, 1984–7).

Case, I daresay, closed.

Should G3, A7, or lack of notability continue to be alleged in a fraudulent and discriminatory manner, Wikipedia and PhoolH8tr can expect a combination legal action and Yelp-storm that will make Mike’s head spin (as it were).

cc: New York Times, Nobel Prize Committee, Fillmore Alumni Association, Shoulder & Median Illustrated

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David Guaspari was trained as a pure mathematician and considers himself to be, of all post-19th century mathematical logicians, the funniest. In addition to technical papers, he has published short fiction, essays, humor, travel, and reviews, and has had plays performed in states totaling 331 electoral votes as well as five foreign countries. A member of the Dramatists Guild, he lives in Ithaca, New York.

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