Wiki-famous friends

[dougo]

One concrete measure of fame is whether a person has a page in Wikipedia. This is a somewhat arbitrary measure; the Notability criteria guideline and the deletion policy determine when someone is not famous enough to have a Wikipedia page, but there might be famous people who don't have a page yet because no one has bothered to make one. Still, it's interesting to count how many wiki-famous acquaintances I have. In descending order of familiarity:

Andrew Plotkin, aka zarf. I met him through cthulhia and prog, and I hang out with him often, generally at board game gatherings or other social functions. Probably the only wiki-famous person who I can comfortably call a friend, though I've really only known him for about a year.
Karl Lieberherr, my PhD advisor.
Matthias Felleisen was on my thesis proposal committee.
Reed Hastings, the founder and CEO of Pure Software and Netflix. He hired me at Pure (I was employee #18) and I worked there for 3 years. I haven't seen him in 11 years and I'm not sure he'd remember me now.
Phil McMullen, creator of the Ptolemaic Terrascope music fanzine and the Terrastock music festivals. We've interacted on various email forums and have hung out at Terrastocks.
Francis Heaney, aka lunchboy. I've corresponded with him via email and IM, but we haven't actually met in person, so he's more of a friend-of-friends. (There are 4 LiveJournal users who are mutual friends with both him and me.)
Mark Jason Dominus, aka markdominus. Solidly into "fan" territory here, but we've corresponded via email a few times.
James Urbaniak, aka urbaniak. He's, you know, commented on comments I've posted. OK, this is a stretch.

Other people I know who are probably qualified to have a Wikipedia page: prog (he meets the "published author" requirement!), Jon Bernhardt (WMBR DJ since 1984, and founder of The Lothars), Greg Lam (game designer and publisher), Mitch Wand, Will Clinger, Brian Harvey. I'm probably forgetting some.

Edit: I should just make a real page for this list, but for now I'll just add people to this post: Jonathan Blow, Ned Raggett, Richard Fateman, William Kahan, Randy Katz, Robert Solovay

Comments

[urbaniak.livejournal.com]

That's what she said.

[nosrialleon.livejournal.com]