--- title: The tragedy of losing your Wikipedia page | daily.dev description: Wikipedia deletes biographies daily when editors judge subjects aren't 'notable' enough, a standard separate from whether facts are true. The piece follows... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-tragedy-of-losing-your-wikipedia-page-kxsojjf1d twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The tragedy of losing your Wikipedia page | daily.dev og:description: Wikipedia deletes biographies daily when editors judge subjects aren't 'notable' enough, a standard separate from whether facts are true. The piece follows... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-tragedy-of-losing-your-wikipedia-page-kxsojjf1d og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/KXsOjJf1d.png og:image:alt: The tragedy of losing your Wikipedia page og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The tragedy of losing your Wikipedia page **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 18 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Wikipedia deletes biographies daily when editors judge subjects aren't 'notable' enough, a standard separate from whether facts are true. The piece follows several people who lost their pages, including analog astronaut Martina Dimoska, whose biography was contested for weeks by editor Kiril Simeonovski, who turned out to know her personally. Despite sockpuppet accounts and accusations of promotional content, Dimoska's page was ultimately kept with a disclaimer, while others, like orthopedist Matthew Songer and artist Sophie Aston, were deleted. Wikipedia hosts over 7 million English-language articles but relies on volunteer editors to police notability. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is the difference between 'verifiable' and 'true' on Wikipedia's editorial standards? Wikipedia editors prioritize verifiability over truth: a claim can be removed even if not proven false, simply because no reliable source supports it. For example, a claim that Civil War officer Nathaniel Lyon drank mustard during battle stayed in his biography for 17 years before being removed, not because it was disproven, but because no reliable evidence backed it. _Developers researching how large volunteer-run systems enforce editorial standards can track deep dives like this on daily.dev._ ### Can someone get their own Wikipedia page removed just by asking? No, a subject's request alone is not grounds for deletion, though it can tip the balance when there's no clear consensus among editors. British artist Sophie Aston asked for her page to be deleted after retraining as a psychotherapist, and editors agreed to delete it, but explicitly stated her request itself was 'not relevant' to their notability assessment. _Anyone curious how community governance handles individual requests can follow stories like this on daily.dev._ ### What happens when Wikipedia editors disagree about whether to delete a biography page? When there's no consensus, the page is kept by default, even if the arguments to delete are judged stronger on the merits. In one case involving analog astronaut Martina Dimoska, an editor closed the debate as 'no consensus' due to 'bludgeoning, canvassing, and sockpuppetry,' keeping the page but adding a disclaimer that it contained promotional content. _Readers tracking how online platforms resolve contested moderation calls can follow similar cases on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 95 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-30). **TL;DR:** Commenters largely defend Wikipedia's notability gatekeeping as necessary to keep quality and signal-to-noise high, while sharing personal anecdotes about the pettiness, inconsistency, and ego-driven disputes the deletion process can produce. **Sentiment:** 10% positive · 35% mixed · 55% skeptical **The case for** - Notability requirements prevent Wikipedia from becoming a directory of self-promotional or unverifiable pages. - Deletion debates, though messy, are seen by some as a working consensus process rather than true erasure. - Having a personal page can be more of a liability than a benefit, since it invites defamation, pranks, or unwanted scrutiny. **The pushback** - The process can be inconsistent — some articles survive weeks of debate while others are speedily deleted within seconds. - Editors can be gatekeepers who are petty, careless, or dismissive toward subjects and good-faith contributors. - Wikipedia's reliance on media coverage biases articles toward scandal or trivia rather than a person's substantive accomplishments. - PR firms and paid editors can game the system to get or keep promotional pages, undermining the fairness of notability standards. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Most defend strict notability standards as essential for quality and against self-promotion, but many also share stories of arbitrary, inconsistent, or ego-driven editorial behavior. **Hottest debate:** Whether Wikipedia should remain a narrowly curated encyclopedia limited by notability, or aim to be a more expansive repository of knowledge about every person and topic. **Open questions** - Is there a better process than consensus-based deletion debates that avoids clique-like decision-making? - How should Wikipedia handle factual corrections from people with direct, unpublished knowledge of a topic? - Should less notable topics be redirected to other wikis instead of deleted outright? **Highlights** > having one is truly bad news for a lot of people. For many people no one cares about the page except some rando that has some grudge against you because you dated the girl they liked 30 years ago or even no reason at all-- some internet malcontent you've never met might just randomly decide that you're whats wrong with the world. And because you're obscure there is nothing about you online except that one article they got their buddy to run about you in some obscure publication that implies you hate pets. So inevitably that's what the article will be-- Three sentences of biographic details and four paragraphs about how you hate pets. This is generally a bias wikpedia has: 99% of the substance of a person isn't remarkable by the standards of the tabloids wikipedia counts on as the factual basis of most of its material-- your hopes, your dreams, most of your accomplishments, that time you helped a stranger change a tire,... almost everything that makes you who you are--, so it doesn't show up in any citations and has no chance of staying in an article if someone who knows the game wants it gone. But that one time you said something dumb on the internet-- it's notable specifically because it's unusual, it's well cited so good luck keeping it out if anyone wants it in. So that's what exists and that's what the article will be about at least as soon as a single person wants that. For truly famous people there are biographies and such, and those articles at least have a chance of being well rounded. For everyone else, a WP article about them is just a coat-rack for a piece of the most unusual part of their life that some hater could dig up, or at least one of those just waiting to happen. It's like the Bill Murray quote: "I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it.". Having a WP article often turns out to have many of the downsides of being famous, without the upsides that normally come with other processes for being famous. > — [nullc on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50296055) > I can confirm this. I am not proud of it because, not only does it break Wikipedia policy but was unethical and done for an unethical person, but one of the first tasks I was given at my first salaried job was to make a wikipedia page for the boss (he said that his publicist told him to get one done). The safeguards at Wikipedia almost held, but he had me battle the editors for weeks until it finally got done. I left a couple months later because he kept doing (and asking me do) unethical things, and wish I had the wisdom and courage then to have said no and quit on day one. > — [beedeebeedee on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50281032) > My dad has the opposite problem: he wants his German Wikipedia page deleted, but he's considered too relevant. He worked as a film director decades ago and won prestigious awards. Today he works as a janitor, living out of the public eye and largely forgotten by it. The page is like an echo from the past and includes private information he shared in an interview years ago. Still, he's deemed too relevant for it to be deleted. > — [schnuri on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50299961) > I often find pages that used to be up, and were then deleted. I read them thru the web archive (so it would be nice if wikipedia would let me read it thru their own UI, instead of relying on fragile 3rd party infra), or very often, the version on French Wikipedia is still online (who apparently have less strict notability criteria!), and then I put it in Google Translate... it would be funny, if it weren't so dumb. > — [andai on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50296581) > I'd hate to be the last Guy Standing on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie... >Beginning February 2015,[286] there was an ongoing edit war over the image caption for Guy Standing's English Wikipedia article. The debate was over if the word "sitting" should be added to the caption, since he was sitting in the photo.[287] A screenshot of the caption describing him as "Guy Standing sitting" has become a viral internet meme.[286] At one point in the edit war, the caption read "Guy Standing on a chair."[288] As of 2026, the consensus is to exclude the word "sitting".[286][287] In May 2022, Standing was invited to the American podcast Reply All to discuss the "Guy Standing sitting" joke.[286] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie... > — [DonHopkins on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50281305) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50247342) · 40 points · 95 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Academics have a duty to defend open knowledge systems like Wikipedia](https://daily.dev/posts/academics-have-a-duty-to-defend-open-knowledge-systems-like-wikipedia-ehhp5dams) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Russia Poisons Wikipedia](https://daily.dev/posts/russia-poisons-wikipedia-ghmng2vq3) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 1 comments - [Wkipedia Co-Founder Has Been Banned From Editing the Site](https://daily.dev/posts/wkipedia-co-founder-has-been-banned-from-editing-the-site-hbqlmymi5) · 80 LEVEL · 3 upvotes · 3 comments - [The inner workings of Wikipedia with long-time Wikipedian, Bill Buetler \(Changelog Interviews \#668\)](https://daily.dev/posts/the-inner-workings-of-wikipedia-with-long-time-wikipedian-bill-buetler-changelog-interviews-668--gwvqpb6gm) · Changelog · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#community](https://daily.dev/tags/community) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-tragedy-of-losing-your-wikipedia-page-kxsojjf1d) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The tragedy of losing your Wikipedia page","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-tragedy-of-losing-your-wikipedia-page-kxsojjf1d","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-tragedy-of-losing-your-wikipedia-page-kxsojjf1d"},"datePublished":"2026-10-29T19:57:18.336Z","dateModified":"2026-10-30T05:36:20.447Z","description":"Wikipedia deletes biographies daily when editors judge subjects aren't 'notable' enough, a standard separate from whether facts are true. 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For example, a claim that Civil War officer Nathaniel Lyon drank mustard during battle stayed in his biography for 17 years before being removed, not because it was disproven, but because no reliable evidence backed it. Developers researching how large volunteer-run systems enforce editorial standards can track deep dives like this on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Can someone get their own Wikipedia page removed just by asking?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"No, a subject's request alone is not grounds for deletion, though it can tip the balance when there's no clear consensus among editors. British artist Sophie Aston asked for her page to be deleted after retraining as a psychotherapist, and editors agreed to delete it, but explicitly stated her request itself was 'not relevant' to their notability assessment. Anyone curious how community governance handles individual requests can follow stories like this on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What happens when Wikipedia editors disagree about whether to delete a biography page?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"When there's no consensus, the page is kept by default, even if the arguments to delete are judged stronger on the merits. In one case involving analog astronaut Martina Dimoska, an editor closed the debate as 'no consensus' due to 'bludgeoning, canvassing, and sockpuppetry,' keeping the page but adding a disclaimer that it contained promotional content. Readers tracking how online platforms resolve contested moderation calls can follow similar cases on daily.dev."}}]} ```