NP: but petty literary backstabbing on Wikipedia

[Robert Mahnke]

I wouldn't label that "NP," since P does make an appearance:

The most hilarious Qworty-Young conflict-of-interest incident involves the
writer Thomas Pynchon. In January 2007, a Wikipedia editor named
“Mangawood” — again, an account that only made one edit, ever, to Wikipedia
— added the following
paragraph<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Pynchon&diff=prev&oldid=100916321>
to
Thomas Pynchon’s page:

In the late 1980s, author Robert Clark Young prevailed upon his father, an
employee of the California Department of Motor Vehicles, to look up
Pynchon’s driving record, using Pynchon’s full name and known birthdate.
The results showed that Pynchon was living at the time in Aptos,
California, and was driving a Datsun. Young reported the episode in his
essay “One Writer’s Big Innings,” published in the Black Warrior Review and
reprinted in the AWP Chronicle.

Two days later, another editor changed the last
sentence<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Pynchon&diff=prev&oldid=101264358>
to,
“The improperly-obtained cancelled licence subsequently found its way into
the hands of at least two academics publishing scholarly work on Pynchon.”

Three years later, Qworty deleted the
words<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Pynchon&diff=361276929&oldid=361207852>
“improperly-obtained”
from the sentence. No detail involving Robert Clark Young was too small for
Qworty/Young to attend to.

There were moments during the reporting of this story that felt like I had
become a character in a Thomas Pynchon novel. Then Pynchon made a cameo
appearance. Could the story get any deliciously weirder? Yes, it could.


On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 7:30 AM, Laura Kelber <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

>
> An interesting article.
>
> LK
>
>
>
> *Revenge, ego and the corruption of Wikipedia*
>
> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/17/revenge_ego_and_the_corruption_of_wikipedia/
>
> ---
> Sent from Zite <http://www.zite.com/?ref=email>, available for free in
> the App Store<http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=419752338&mt=8>
> .
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
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