Talk:Ginger Strand

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This page sucks[edit]

I am Ginger Strand and frankly, this page about me sucks. There are three irrefutable factual errors. No, I am not going to tell you what they are. Figuring that sort of stuff out is the job of encyclopedia authors. Or encyclopedia editors. Back in the nineties, when I used to be paid to write encyclopedia entries, fact-checking was the most exhausting and difficult part of the job. Of course, it was a job back then. I was paid for it, so I had to do it right.

In addition, there are several strange assertions on this page that any encyclopedia editor would have caught and questioned. One of them is labeling me an "amateur historian." By what crime have I earned the label "amateur?" I have written two books of general-audience history (and am under contract for a third). The most recent was published by a university press. But of course, you wouldn't know that, since that book is not even mentioned on your page. In fact, the whole page is hopelessly out of date, ignoring not only my most recent book but all of my magazine work. It seems to me that it was likely written by some undergraduate who was unhappy at having been assigned to read my novel, because it obsesses about that novel, and I'm sure any book reviewer would be happy to tell you that my novel is the book of mine least worthy of talking about.

I know the Wikipedia response would be that I should edit the page myself. Frankly that feels wrong to me. Subjects should not write their own encyclopedia, or even "encyclopedia" entries. Though it's clear to me, from looking at the self-aggrandizing biographical entries populating your highly-used "reference book", that self-aggrandizement and its nemesis, grudge-bearing, are the twin planets around which the Wikipedia moon revolves. I can't help thinking that's a sad sorry fact. Having subjects write about themselves is a recipe for non-objectivity. Call me a Luddite, but I continue to believe in objectivity. And before you point out that objectivity comes through crowdsourcing, I ask you, where is my crowd? Or for that matter, where is crowd for the Tuscarora Indians, also treated in a shamefully sorry way on Wikipedia? Because in the end, the very fact of a crowd is something less than objective, is it not?

Wikipedia, I'm not playing along. I'm not fixing this mess you have made, even though it burns me every time someone asks me, at a reading or in a class, if I consider myself an environmental writer or an "amateur historian." I know where they got that language. And it burns me because you see, I am a professional writer. Writing is my job. I am paid for it. I don't write for free, or just for the hell of it, or even just for the love of it. That, my encyclopedic friends, would be the definition of "amateur."

72.80.118.106 (talk) 03:48, 10 March 2013 (UTC)Ginger Strand, subject[reply]

I am a WP editor of no consequence, but I felt that you deserved an answer, since you were clearly offended. Please forgive the general ineptitude of the staff, which is pretty much an unpaid cross section of the population of humans who speak English (mostly). Complaints such as yours are generally not noticed when the article in question receives a relatively small amount of traffic, and isn't contentious. I noticed that a banner has recently been added to the article, flagging it for renovation. This may provide you some relief, if the erroneous facts can be verified as such by someone who has the time, willingness and energy to put into your BLP.
That said...Subjects of biographies are strongly discouraged from editing their biographies themselves. (I, personally, cringed watching Polanski's BLP crash and burn in 2009, and it had to be locked to keep it from starting with "is a pedophile rapist." Consider yourself lucky.) I am certain that you can understand why this policy was established; lesser people than yourself have claimed sainthood, plagiarized discoveries, and exaggerated their sexual prowess, and this, inevitably, causes causes back and forth editing wars. So you were wise to not do so, and are to be commended. (See also self-aggrandizing, in your 2nd paragraph.) You may want to take a stab at any you do feel are self-promoting, knowing you are well within your rights, as a WP editor, to chop them down to size; however, I strongly recommend that you hide your IP by making a screen name.
Some have suggested that WP is a MMORPG; there are certainly aspects of gaming, and having seen one or two long, and slightly vicious ARBCOM battles, I can assure you that there is plenty of drama to be had, if you choose to participate. Judging from your demeanor when writing the above, perhaps you would find this liberating. I, personally, stick to fixing the random syntax error, and not much more.
While it is possible that someone has singled you out for poor treatment in your BLP, I think it is more likely that an editor took a whack at an article and then got bored. I don't think that I have the time, as an amateur, to help fix this issue, and only looked at the talk page while considering if this BLP warranted being flagged for deletion. I'm a bit rusty with all of this, and have other things in my professional life which are more important than relearning wiki code. I would, however, say that it is better to be polite whenever possible, because what you put on Wikipedia...even on the talk page...will be here until the end of time. Oberonfitch (talk) 01:19, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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