Wikipedia, What Does Judith Newman Have to Do to Get a Page?
So this is how it begins. One day you’re perfectly content with your lot in life. The next, you’re browsing Wikipediaand thinking: Wait, how exactly did heget in there? Is he that much more noteworthy than I am? Paul Jolley, who finished ninth on “American Idol” last season with his rendition of “Eleanor Rigby,” has a page. Really?
You do not begrudge the pages of the obviously prominent, the notorious or the unknowns who have nevertheless contributed so much to our society. (I’m looking at you, George de Mestral, the inventor of Velcro.) But when you start to notice your colleagues have pages, and you don’t — pages you know full well were submitted by their spouses or mothers, as Wikipedia prohibits you from writing your own — you begin to get a little bitter. And by “you,” I mean me.