Wiki-pedia or Wiki-Fiction?

A question by a reader on the Readerswrite page led me to take a dekho at the Wikipedia page titled ‘Ashok Banker’. I was more than a little taken aback at what I found there.

As you probably know, Wikipedia is an open encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, add to, or revise. It’s been accused more than once of providing a forum for net-savvy people to promote themselves and/or their businesses–as is evident from the sheer excess of information about virtually unknown individuals (including most Wikepedia editors and contributors, please note) and an utter paucity of information on many famous and important personalities. Even so, I often use Wikipedia myself to check a quick fact or two, and tend to trust their information usually. At least, I did trust it. Until I read what they had to say about ‘Ashok Banker’.

For starters, the section called ‘Biography’ consists of a single line stating when I was born. In 43 years and a long career as a professional journalist, advertising copywriter, scriptwriter, and author, I’ve certainly done a lot more than just been born! You can find a lot more than that at History: A Life in Progress or my Official Bio on this website. But even if Wikipedia didn’t want to believe my version of my story (every detail of which is verifiable, by the way), well, there are any number of respectable media publications that have profiled me over the years, and it would be easy enough to cull hard, verified facts from those publications and websites. So it’s very odd to summarize my entire life with just a single line stating when I was born! Apparently that’s what constitutes a ‘biography’ on Wikipedia.

But that’s not all…

The ‘Bibliography’ lists several titles that are not published books by me. The Ramayana series listing contains a fourth hardcover omnibus that neither I nor my publishers know about and which isn’t contracted yet, nor submitted or even discussed, let alone published. Even if the hardcover is supposed to contain my unsubmitted manuscripts Vengeance of Ravana and Sons of Sita as the listing claims, how did they come up with a title for the hardcover omnibus? Even I haven’t thought of a title for the hardcover yet–and my publishers don’t even know that these books exist! There are also mentions of other stories and even a TV serial I wrote the script for, all listed as part of my published books. It’s really bad fact-checking on their part.

There are also several mentions of other projects that I’ve discussed on forums, as well as an alleged dispute over a comic that, again, I have no knowledge of. I was never supposed to write any comic based on my “Devi� stories for Virgin Comics–you can verify that by asking Virgin Comics if you like. If Wikipedia is referring to my “Kali� comic for Vertigo Comics–Vertigo, not Virgin, please note–then again, I don’t know how they could make such a ludicrious mistake. And what’s this legal notice they’re talking about? The people at Vertigo and I are on the best of terms and as far as Virgin Comics goes, they’re not publishing any comic by me, and all I’ve written for them is a couple of issues of a comic titled ‘Sadhu’. I can only suppose that some bright phan editing the Wikipedia page on me confused Virgin with Vertigo, “Devi� with “Kali� and someone else’s legal dispute with the whole mishmash.

There are several more obvious errors in their brief and unsourced text about me, and I noted that none of the statements had links to any sources, reliable or otherwise, nor did they offer any verification. Very disappointing, considering that even though I don’t do interviews anymore, there have been, at a conservative estimate, several hundred articles and profiles written about me in almost every major publication in India. Even a few minutes browsing on media websites–easily found through a Google search on my name–could have yielded more reliable facts than the oddball mishmash of fiction and tripe that Wikipedia has on me. I guess that’s the pitfall of having an open website that any Tom, Dirk, and Hari can edit.

My only suggestion is to ignore their page completely. Instead, check out the bio and life-story I provide on this website–every detail of which is verifiable through reliable, respectable sources, by the way. In any case, at the bottom of their page about me, Wikipedia lists only two links: One is to my Epic India website and the other is to this very website! So, you’re already in the right place, getting it all straight from the horse’s mouth–or, in this case, the Banker’s mouth.

UPDATE: After I posted the above, apparently Wikipedia has marked the ‘Ashok Banker’ page as needing references and citations. Someone has also removed mention of the fourth Ramayana hardcover omnibus. Hopefully, they will see fit to correct the rest of the glaring errors and either rebuild a factually accurate page based on verifiable sources–and those sources should consist of more than just my own website!–or consider deleting the so-called ‘profile’ on me altogether. Meanwhile, I browsed through a few other Wikipedia pages and was dismayed to see how much of idle gossip and completely unverified rumours are passed off as fact on the Wikipedia site, particularly with regard to film/media personalities. The sheer number of ‘crystal ball gazing’ pages and mentions remind me of the gossip pages in Bollywood film magazines–is this really supposed to be the most reliable online encyclopaedia?