![]() In the parlance of Wikipedia, "revenge edits" are modifications to a Wikipedia page motivated by anger. ![]() In my piece, I called out two disturbing outbursts made by Qworty in different Wikipedia discussion forums, cries of rage that revealed a level of high emotion one does not normally associate with sober encyclopedia writing. Qworty's edits were an obvious act of retaliation. Filipacchi had made a big splash with her widely read New York Times op-ed identifying a pattern of sexist editing at the online encyclopedia. Qworty first came to my attention in late April, when I discovered that he was responsible for a series of "revenge edits" to Wikipedia pages associated with the writer Amanda Filipacchi. And Qworty, as the record will show, is not to be trusted. Qworty alone, by his own account, has made 13,000 edits to Wikipedia. Qworty's edits prove that Wikipedia's content can be shaped by people settling grudges and acting out of spite and envy. Qworty's edits undermine our faith in this great project. Just create an account and start messing around! It is created from the bottom up, a crowd-sourced labor of love by people who require no compensation for their work but also don't need to jump through any qualifying hoops. Wikipedia is one of the jewels in the Internet's crown, an amazing collective achievement, a mighty stab at realizing an awesome dream: a constantly updated repository for all human knowledge. The late night Wikipedia edits are certainly not the first time that a writer's ego has led to mischief. The answer to this question is on the one hand simple, almost trivial: Qworty turned out to be another author who had a long history of resenting Hannah. But why? Who was Qworty and what axe did he have to grind with Hannah? Taken all together, the edits strongly suggest a focused attempt to diminish Hannah's legacy. (Another editor later removed the alcoholism edit.) " And he changed the cause of Hannah's death from "natural causes" to "alcoholism." But Hannah's obituaries stated that he had died of a heart attack and been clean and sober for years before his death, while his role as a mentor was testified to in numerous memorials. Qworty excised the phrase "and was regarded as a good mentor" from a sentence that started: "Hannah taught creative writing for 28 years at the University of Mississippi, where he was director of its M.F.A. He cut out a list of literary prizes Hannah had won. He removed 20 links to interviews, obituaries and reminiscences concerning Hannah. Qworty cut paragraphs that included quotes from Hannah's work. In the wee hours of the morning of January 27, 2013, a Wikipedia editor named "Qworty" made a series of 14 separate edits to the Wikipedia page for the late writer Barry Hannah, a well-regarded Southern author with a taste for the Gothic and absurd.
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