Columns

I wrote a roughly 100-word potted history of this 75-year-old periodical, mentioning that early contributors included Leon Trotsky and Benito Mussolini. Sure enough, within five minutes I received a message to the effect that this entry has no content, is only about my friends (some friends!), lacks citations or corroboration and has been put up for "express deletion".

I was permitted an appeal, but it was disposed of in about two minutes and then the piece was gone. The executioner's online name is provided; following that up merely revealed that he runs a blog about baseball. So Baker's concerns would appear to be merited: "There are some people on Wikipedia now who are just bullies, who take pleasure in wrecking and mocking people's work - even to the point of laughing at non-standard 'Engrish'. They poke articles full of warnings and citation-needed notes and deletion prods till the topics go away." It seems Wikipedia has completed the journey by arriving at an online equivalent of the midnight door-knock and the book bonfire...