British actor Sir Ian McKellen has described his biography on Wikipedia as
"objectionable" in an interview with film magazine Empire (full quote at end of
mail).
There are several things that are interesting about this case
- The article used to be featured. Here is the featuring process:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Ian_McKe…. The
process was a complete failure as it concentrated almost exclusively on how to correctly
address him rather than the fact that article only had one source and that source was far
too much about Sir Ian's sexuality rather than a true biography.
- It recently got de-featured. Here is the de-featuring process:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_removal_candidates/….
Seems to be a success. Correctly identifying that biography was unbalanced and
out-of-date.
So we recognised that the article was poor but didn't fix it! Argh, wiki process
failing!
Now I see from the article talk page that we have had good correspondence with Sir
Ian's webmaster in the past. So here is my challenge: Get someone or a group of people
who know how to write and know about film to get the article back to Featured Status, and
then get in touch with the Sir Ian through the webmaster to get his feedback on the
improvements that have been made.
Anyone up for the challenge?
Pcb21, who will chip in where he can but can't help with the real meat of the article
Fair use quote follows:
"Empire: I looked you up on Wikipedia...
McKellan: I don't understand Wikipedia. I've looked myself up on it and it's
thoroughly objectionable. It's just taken, as the basis of my career, an article that
was written about five years ago, and why someone doesn't correct it.. is that how
it's done?
Empire: Pretty much. If you want to change something, you can go on and correct it
yourself.
McKellan: Oh... I suppose if you wanted to know someone's dates, or where they were
born, it would be quite useful."