If your Wikipedia page is deleted, does that mean that you no longer matter?
Nimrod Kämer, the Israeli prankster currently living in London, is facing this tough question right now.
When Wikipedia first opened voting to decide whether to delete Kämer’s page, he was distraught, accusing Wikipedia moderators of having a “vendetta” against him. He called their tactics a punishment for embarrassing the web’s “free encyclopedia.”
Kämer’s latest project, which involved extorting celebrities like Kanye West for money for Wikipedia edits, appears to have prompted Wikipedia staff to put his personal page up for a deletion vote.
Wikipedia staff reached an agreement over the weekend, and deleted Kämer’s page on the grounds that it did not meet criteria for notability or for influence as a creative professional. Wikipedia staff also believe Kämer to be responsible for the majority of contributions and edits to his page, through the use of various accounts and pseudonyms. Kämer has denied writing and editing his own page, saying he’s only tweaked the entry.
“With over 20 million articles in 282 languages you can expect deletion discussions are underway every day,” wrote Jay Walsh, the head of Communications at Wikipedia, in response to inquiries about the deletion.
Walsh explained most deleted articles get reduced to a stub, “a short line or two”, though that was not the case with Kämer’s page, which was scrubbed from the site.
“There may be thousands of articles being reviewed for deletion but in English Wikipedia the number of deletions a day is probably not huge, maybe a hundred,” said Walsh.
Kämer, reduced to a statistic? Don’t tell the performance artist such a thing.
“It’s much more interesting than my actual page was to be honest,” said Kämer, of his lingering deletion page. Ironically, and not lost on Kämer, that deletion page will stay on the site “for good.”
Photo via Nimrod Kämer