Longreads

How "revenge edits" and the case of a Wikipedia editor named "Qworty" raise questions about how much we should trust the site:

"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 writer with a taste for the Gothic and absurd.

"Qworty cut paragraphs that included quotes from Hannah’s work. He removed 20 links to interviews, obituaries and reminiscences concerning Hannah. He cut out a list of literary prizes Hannah had won. "Two edits stand out. 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. program …' And he changed the cause of Hannah’s death from 'natural causes' to 'alcoholism.'"

Back in the USSR in the 1980s, my schoolteacher warned me that if I didn’t study hard, I’d get drafted into the army and sent to die in Afghanistan. I studied hard. I moved to America.…

Editors’ Note: this is a companion piece to the Darts & Laurels column that appears in the September/October 2011 issue of CJR, and that will be available at cjr.org on September 22.…

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