Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au): [...]
One thing that's always annoying is when people make wild claims offering no evidence at all and then criticise people who reference Wikipedia.
Classic confirmation bias. Obligatory Wikipedia link follows. ;-> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias I am still wary about openly editing Wikipedia because of several examples I've seen in the past of well-known open source figure X making Wikipedia edits that then not only were reverted by pseudonymous Wikipedia regulars but then resulted in scurrilous personal attacks carried out by those pseudonymous editors _within_ the pages of Wikipedia upon well-known open source figure X. (The worst case I'm aware of was the really rather vicious lashback against Eric Raymond.) FWIW, when someone created a Wikipedia page about me a few years ago, I marked the article with the Wikipedia:Proposed deletion template (the process for deletion that seemed least likely to raise a backlash of resistance), and put the following note on the Talk page: I am the subject of this article: Rick Moen, rick@linuxmafia.com, tel. +1 (1) 650-283-7902. Although not personally a Wikipedian, I'm a friendly observer and frequent user. I'm proposing article deletion through the "Wikipedia:Proposed deletion" process for uncontroversial candidates, for deletion after five days if nobody objects, on WP:N grounds. 1. The data cited in the article do not constitute encyclopaedic notability, as they do not show the "significant coverage in reliable sources" required by WP:N to establish general notability. Within the rather narrow publicity circle of Linux and open source, the article subject (yr. humble servant) has had coverage, but not the _significant_ coverage required. 2. The data cited are severely compromised by transgressing the "independent of the subject" clause of WP:N's general notability guideline, as substantively all of the works cited were not only "produced by those affiliated with the subject", but were written by the subject himself. 3. One of the major data cited is inaccurate in the direction of exaggeration: Yr. humble servant did not "contribute the Linux User Group HOWTO to the Linux Documentation Project", but rather merely assumed maintenance of that document when its actual creator, Kendall Clark, no longer could do so. -- Rick M. On the bright side, subsequent to 2008, it really _does_ seem as if Wikipedia has cracked down quite a bit on abuse of pages to attack living persons. It used to be a big risk, and maybe not so much any more.