Gadgetopia

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion: Every couple of weeks, I go browse Wikipedia’s “Votes for Deletion” page, which is where veteran Wikipedians decide which articles stay and which go. You wouldn’t believe the things that people try to put up. You get a lot of comments like these on an entry for a band:

A vanity article about a non-notable singing group. There’s just no evidence that this group is notable outside of its immediate circle - no albums or even original songs are listed. […] Delete, definitely not notable, even among college singing groups […] weak keep apparently have produced an album Wolfman […] Keep. They are slightly more than three men in a garage, selling CD-RW discs (as one recent VfD candidate was).

They have to get to some things quickly, as the comments on the entry for “U.S. Nuclear Test Causes Tsumani” attest:

Tin-foil hat POV BS […] Speedily deleted as incoherent nonsense.

Or — here’s an odd one — some friends of some guy from Turkey posted a little obituary. Comments about the deletion were regretful:

A very sad memorial page for someone who sounds like a genuinely nice man who was, unfortunately, completely non-notable. I’m sure that his wife and friends still miss him, and I know that his friend had the best of intentions in putting up this page for him. But Wikipedia can’t have an entry for absolutely everybody ever.

And, finally, an article apparently used by someone to write a college paper. The title: “Class assignment for Gov 337 at Berry College in Rome Georgia.” Seriously.