I've always thought of Wikipedia as a good source of information.  I feel it becomes more accurate over time as more people contribute and ideas evolve unhindered.  I learned today that I have been wrong.

My city, Lake Forest, California, has a very informative page on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Forest,_California. Well, informative up to the point of "Notable Residents."  Two people, Dan Huard and Armando Alvarez seem to be very proud of themselves.  Dan Huard feels he is notable because he works at Digg and Armando feels he is notable because he won an award for design.  Neither of them are any more notable than me or you to the public at large.  As a small protest about the stupidity of having these "Notable Residents," I decided to edit the page and add a friend of mine that I feel is Notable.  Some of his qualifications are as follows:

• Good person
• Hard worker
• Has a great family that he supports
• Has a beautiful daughter
• He bought a house in Foothill Ranch a year ago
• College graduate
• Winner of Red Robin's Valentine Day Engagement Story Competition
• As he jokingly says, "A friend first, entertainer second and father third".

To me, he's as notable as Dan and Armando.  I first edited that page to put him at the end of the list as "Scott Graveline, employee of Sage Software".  Milliseconds later I was notified that my post constituted vandalism and it was removed!  Vandalism??  I don't believe in giving up that easily so I added this: "Scott Graveline, Winner of Red Robin's Valentine Day Engagement Sotry Competition".  Again, removed in seconds!  Both times is was removed by some moderator in the UK that moderates indie bands.  This moderator felt that Scott's accomplishments constituted vandalism to the page and that Armando's "award" and Dan's place of employement were more important.

Wikipedia needs to protect their site from people that are really vandalising it.  However, they need to let information be posted for peer review and not just removed because Mr. UK Indie Band moderator likes Digg more than Sage.

UPDATE (9/24/2008 12:15PM):

I took Dan and Armando off of Wikipedia's page saying that a place of employeement and unkown award are not notable.  Mr. UK Indie Band wrote me to say that he agreed with Armando but that Dan is notable.  Note to self: Make sure you work at a "cool web 2.0" place in order to be notable to the world.

Here was my question to wikipedia:
I don't understand why my edits are considered vandalism. How are Dan's place of employeement and Armando's award (what award?) more important than my friend's place of employement or his award?

Armando Alvarez should not be included because there is nothing indicating he is notable, and I see you have already deleted that entry. Dan Huard is notable enough for a Wikipedia article, so that should stay. And your entry stating that a person is an "all around cool guy" does not fit in an encylopedia. Thanks, Alanraywiki (talk) 18:37, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I want to take back a little of my rant.  I'm impressed that Alanraywiki (Mr. UK Indie Band) took the time to respond and was reasonable. But, I still don't like that it's not peer edited as to who is notable and who isn't - this is the whole reason wikipedia was built and they have lost their mission.