The author of the post-apocalyptic book "Station Eleven" had to go to great lengths to update her Wikipedia page to say that she was no longer married, but in the end, her efforts were successful.
Taking to Twitter over the weekend, Emily St. John Mandel explained that in order to update a Wikipedia page, she learned that a person needs to have certain information confirmed in an interview first — in this case, Mandel needed an interview in order to confirm her divorce.
"Friends, did you know that if you have a Wikipedia page and you get a divorce, the only way to update your Wikipedia is to say you're divorced in an interview?" she wrote in a Twitter thread.
"It sounds crazy, but wikipedia runs on citations!" she continued. "So anyway all I want for Christmas is for a journalist writing a story for publication (online-only is fine!) to ask me if I'm still married."
It was not long before her wish was granted in the form of an interview with Dan Kois at Slate Magazine which allowed Mandel to set the record straight regarding her marital status.
"So, are you married these days?" Kois asked, to which Mandel replied "No."
"The marriage ended the first week of April, after which I spent most of the rest of 2022 in divorce settlement negotiations and then received a judgment of divorce in November," she continued.
Mandel explained that several years ago she spoke about her marriage in an interview with another publication, which resulted in Wikipedia recognizing the information. However, after her split, Mandel struggled to get the website to change the information.
"According to a Wikipedia editor, I needed a comparable citation to get the change made on the page," she noted. "So my Wikipedia entry was essentially a time capsule. It bothered me that it was no longer accurate, but also it was kind of awkward for my girlfriend.
"I didn't love that if her friends looked me up, they'd think she was dating a married woman. I needed an interview, and I knew it would be hard for my publicists to make a story happen in the last week before Christmas, so I thought, 'maybe I'll try Twitter?' "
A spokesperson for Wikipedia operator Wikimedia told Insider in a statement that, in most cases, "self-published sources (ex. a personal website, blog, etc.) are not considered reliable because there isn't a standard of fact-checking that's applied as there would be through other sources, for example a peer-reviewed journal or a publication known for fact-checking and issuing corrections."
"There are some cases, however, where a self-published source is acceptable when the information is specifically about the individual themselves and is not related to a contentious or exceptional claim," they added. "This could include, for example, a social media post by an individual from a verified account.
"In this case, that's what a volunteer editor used to originally verify the marital status of Emily St. Mandel. The article was later updated to include a reference to the recently-published interview in Slate. Volunteers are continuing to discuss how relevant policies were and should be applied."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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