Relevance and the Swedish Wikipedia

This is getting to be kind of repetitive. I was in Sweden over the holidays and was reading through the Aftonbladet about a Swedish blogger, Sanna Lundell, who is currently under attack by people putting up hate comments on her blog. She happens to be the daughter-of a famous author and musician and a sambo-of [that is Swedish for "life partner you are not officially married to", meaning literally living-together] a famous Swedish actor.

I wanted to know more about her, and started my search at the Swedish Wikipedia, which now has about 300.000 entries. Nada. Zilch. Hmm. I googled a bit, and found out that she is a free-lance writer and that her blog, a blog about being a mother which was awarded the blog-of-the-year award by one of the women's magazines, pulls in 30.000 page impressions a week. Wow!

So feeling especially virtuous and wanting to contribute to the knowledge of the world, I started the Swedish article on her. Except that there had once been an entry on her, and it was deleted. Why? Well, because she is daughter-of and sambo-of.

Hey, guys! What do women have to do in order to be "relevant"? Other than be porn stars, that is. Here we have a journalist who has studied theology, written for numerous journals, and is currently an acclaimed blogger. Sure, she's not president of a company (very few women in Sweden are) or a well-known politician (Sweden has a few). But she has worked hard to come out of the -of shadow. And she even went to work for a daily newspaper that had been doggedly trying to get photos of her with her (at that time new) boyfriend. She just said in an interview that she would not be reporting on him.

I put a request for restoration on the discussion page of the admin who had deleted the page. The answer was quick: No.

Excuse me? Like, you don't have reasons in Sweden? No, you won't because it is against your religion, or no, you can't because your arms are in a cast, or what? I protested.

Another admin gave the the link to the place where you can officially make a restoration request. I noted that I read and speak Swedish, but my written Swedish sucks, so I had written in English. This nice admin said: English is no problem.

So I duly submitted my restoration request, and was told to WRITE IN SWEDISH. And another said: there was nothing in the article of value. Sigh. I wrote, politely, that I was hoping that at least her birth date and place and such would be in that article. Finally, some other admin took pity on me, and restored the article.

While I was on the boat home, a request for deletion was entered. Daughter-of and sambo-of = not relevant. Ach ja. At least the Swedes have an orderly sort of deletion request page. There is a discussion part and a voting part. I've put in my vote and my discussion, and at the moment, the keepers are in the lead. While the article is open, I've added a few more tidbits of information (such as her mother's name, strange that people have two parents...) I gleaned from the media reports published when her blog was given the award in November. Neither she nor her mother were listed on the Wikipedia entry on her father, so I ended up adding that section as well. We'll see how long that lasts.

I am getting more and more concerned about the so-called "relevance" discussions deleting information that could be useful to others. For example, Sannas birthdate given in the original (and deleted) entry was wrong, but has been quoted in numerous articles about her. I checked the Swedish person database (everything is online) and was able to correct it. I've spent an hour doing so - why should others have to do this work again? Sure, if they want to verify the fact, they should. Otherwise: why delete?