I started trying to figure out how many people I knew who were at least mentioned in Wikipedia about two weeks ago, and have sadly discovered that I don’t know a lot of famous people. My criteria was that I had to know the person well, so even though I went to high school with Scott Savol of American Idol fame, and have joined Audrey and her friend Brian Kehew for drinks on several occasions, neither made the cut. As it stands now, I’ve found only two people that I know that have their very own articles:
- JB – The super-cool electric-Porsche-driving former roommate who is now the successful CTO of Tesla Motors. The article correctly notes JB’s penchant for eating cereal, but fails to mention that he is a two–time veteran of the “Active Galapagos” trips.
- Carter Bays – Of Shaker Heights and Plymouth Church fame, Carter has since been nominated for an Emmy for writing on Letterman is is a producer/writer of several television shows. He is best known, of course, for his harmonica work back in the days at Camp Fitch.
And there are only four folks I know with mentions in Wikipedia articles, and that’s only if you include a questionable mention for the author of JAMWiki:
- Audrey – My current roommate fails to get a mention for her Scare the Children work, but is mentioned for singing backup on a couple of Rob Zombie albums.
- Yours Truly – Who snuck in via work on JAMWiki thanks to Wikipedia editor “Khartlage” a couple of months ago.
- Felicia – A multiple national-champion fencer and two-time Olympian who shockingly doesn’t have her own Wikipedia article yet. Felicia and JB had the misfortune of having to deal with living under the same roof as me for several months back in 2003. For the record, Felicia is wicked awesome.
- Jerome Poncet – The memorable French captain who led the trip to South Georgia Island in 2004.
It’s been a rather fun time wasting exercise to see who shows up and who doesn’t – I was surprised that Rod wasn’t listed, and shocked that Felicia doesn’t have an article of her own. I’m sure I’ve probably missed a bunch, but since a bunch of friends read this journal hopefully the list can be expanded via the comments link. Extra points to anyone who knows more than five people with their own articles.
no wikipedia for me, but i would like someone to write me an entry in jamwiki someday.
i looked for you in wikipedia, but sadly “josh gallaway” is a combination of names that appears too often in an encyclopedia to identify any one individual. the mighty neil rubin eluded detection as well… someone from the old case crew must be in there, but it seems like it’s never the obvious folks who do something noteworthy – instead the wikipedia entries end up going to the random moroccan guy who loved george michael and wore moon boots around the dorm who no one knew much about. and i made him up. there was no moroccan guy who wore moon boots. in fact, i don’t even know how to spell “moroccan”.