http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifty_Henry

You alone can’t solve the problems with Wikipedia any more than you alone can solve the problems of, say, American sugar policy. However, when I saw that Wikipedia had no article on Shifty Henry (name-checked in Elvis’s “Jailhouse Rock”), I solved the problem of no Shifty Henry entry.

On the other hand, after 6000 or so contributions, many of them now labelled unsubstantiated, or eviscerated and deracinated by subsequent contributors, etc., my Wikipedia problem is that I just don’t have the stomach for it any more, much more fun in pioneer times, etc. . . .

For biography, it would be great if we could get some of the standard reference works (many of which were publicly funded) into the public domain. Their value would be greatly enhanced if the content was in Wikipedia, with the associated cross-referencing and so on.

The articles on the 1984 election don’t even give you more than the most basic summary of the primary campaign, basically stuff I knew already.

That said, the problem Harry signals is not unique to Wikipedia, but is a general internet problem. I’ve myself noticed it when looking for book reviews; reviews of books published before the mid-nineties are much rarer, especially when these are not books that have stayed in print.

With Wikipedia, the tendency is often to look for verification and noticability soley online, which again handicaps those people whose achievements happened before hand and are not so wellknown as to have a following online.

(Not from where I am now – though that would indeed be tough – but also from many parts of Leeds)

In case Dan Simon hasn’t got round to using the Google, and since Harry’s being a bit coy, the ‘scandal’ was that when he was Chief Education Officer for the British County of Oxfordshire, he sued the then Education secretary John Patten for saying of him in a speech to the Conservative party conference that education in Britain would always have problems ‘as long as we have nutters like Tim Brighouse hanging around and frightening the kids’(or words to that effect. But I’m fairly sure that the use of the word ‘nutter’ turned out to be legally significant). He won.

This will now no doubt derail the thread into a discussion of the American First Amendment vs British libel laws. Which is probably why Harry was being coy, on reflection. I on the other hand am teaching a course on ‘On Liberty’ this afternoon, and will find it useful preparation.

For twenty years, I have been visiting Wakefield and the Sculpture Park is always part of our activities (often on Boxing Day). It is wonderful to get a feel of individual scuptors and schools, and invention from seeing so much in one place. I think it helped developed my eye (if that doesn’t sound pretentious).

If you are near Leeds, arrange for 3 hours out to visit Bretton Hall. It offers stimulation and serenity. Let’s hope Wakefield council can maintain the high standard.

Since Wikipedians typically use Google as a primary research tool, people who died before the rise of the Web, but too recently to appear in public domain texts, tend to be under-represented.

@john emerson: if you’re not an established wikipedian, the best option is to irresponsibly start an entry, privacy and accuracy concerns be damned (most articles start out stupid). It might be deleted, but if not, you get two glorious options: 1)continuing hilarious (or possibly slanderous) inaccuracy, or 2)someone actually cleans it up.