Ousted from Wikipedia. A few years ago, in Googling my name (in quotes), "Craig Schoonmaker", I discovered that someone had written an article about me for Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. Alrite, I thought. That's fine, even tho it was slitely negative. I won't trouble to challenge the negative take on my work, but will let it ride.
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Perhaps a year and a half ago, someone sent me email to alert me to the fact that there was then a discussion underway about removing my entry from the encyclopedia, and gave me the URL to the discussion page. I read thru it and was ticked-off. Some spelling reformer who disagreed with some of my decisions as to spelling simplification spent several hundred words castigating me for my choices, and used that disagreement to say that I should not be recognized as a spelling reformer in Wikipedia.
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Others challenged, without any contrary information whatsoever, my "claim" to have originated, in 1970, the term "Gay Pride" as it is now used, when I was a member of the Committee that put together the first March to commemorate the Stonewall Riots that later came to be known as Gay Pride Day/Week/Month (thanks to me).
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I was irritated, and added my own brief comments to say (a) the mere fact that some people may disagree with my views on simplifying the spelling of English in no way diminishes my extensive and well-recognized work on systematic spelling reform (morever, disrespecting that work as unimportant insults spelling reformers generally); (b) my "claim" to have originated the term "Gay Pride" has in fact been recognized, without qualifying language, in various places, including a website in Italy, in Italian; (c) I have been included in Who's Who in American Politics (Bowker, 1987) and am presently in Marquis's Who's Who in America; and (d) a Google (or other search-engine) search will show hundreds of hits for "L. Craig Schoonmaker" (Google: 1,170), and for "Craig Schoonmaker" will show thousands, most of which are indeed for me (there is, however, one other "Craig Schoonmaker" who pops up). I concluded by saying that if I have to choose between Who's Who in America, issued (I did not say expressly but implied) by a publisher that is paid for its content (unlike Wikipedia, which is offered free — "You get what you pay for"?), and Wikipedia, I guess I shall just have to try to content myself with Who's Who in America
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After that reply, someone at Wikipedia apparently did some searches and saw that to be true, and the first challenge to my inclusion in Wikipedia ended.
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My enemies were apparently livid at being defeated and my remaining in Wikipedia, so mounted a second challenge. That, too, was apparently turned back, even tho I didn't hear of it and didn't respond to whatever new objection might have been mounted.
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So, my enemies mounted a THIRD attack, to which even fewer people were alert, probably since they, like me, assumed that the issue had been settled — twice. And this time they succeeded.
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I am "not notable", Wikipedia has ruled, even tho I am mentioned thousands of times on the Internet (not counting porn sites; see below), have been on the Chris Rock Show on cable TV, the Canadian one-hour public-affairs program The Great Debate; have been on Canadian national TV several times; have been the subject of front-page articles in various major newspapers in Canada and the United States, and a half-page feature in "Canada's National Newspaper", The Globe and Mail. I was indeed the subject of an editorial cartoon in The Globe and Mail. Moreover, I have two regularly updated blogs and over 135 webpages that have been accessed by hundreds of thousands of visitors.
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The Wiki managers claim that "the consensus" was to delete the article about me. I suppose that depends upon whether you define "consensus" to mean "majority" or "general agreement". The discussion I looked in on — the THIRD such on deleting me from Wiki — had dissenters. I had NOT been informed of that discussion (even tho they must have had my email address on file) so did not know to challenge it.
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The two main 'justifications' in the discussion about removing the article about me from Wikipedia are (1) I am "not notable" by some undisclosed standard, even tho I have been included in Who's Who in American Politics and Who's Who in America for the past three or four years; and (2) my 'claim' to have originated the term "Gay Pride", which everyone concedes would, if true, warrant my inclusion in Wikipedia, is 'unverified'. One commentator, hiding behind an Internet pseudonym, as all the others hid behind such lie-names (whereas I am always out-front with my real name), "Oh Crap", said, "Many people could equally have claimed to have invented the term gay pride." (That user was immediately thereafter suspended from editing Wikipedia because of an "inappropriate user name", but that does not seem to have prevented his comment from being weighed in the balance to find me wanting.)
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Oh yes, many people might make that claim. But no one has!
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I made the 'claim' to having coined "Gay Pride" for events surrounding the commemoration of the Stonewall Riots, in March 1971. That is 35 years ago. That newsletter went out to a couple of hundred gay organizations across the country at the time, and to several libraries and archives, where it surely resides to this day. On March 3, 2001, I uploaded onto the Internet the April-May 1971 issue of Homosexuals Intransigent! Newsletter, which contains that assertion, in the form of a graphic scan of the relevant passage.
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In the 35 years since I made the claim in print, and 5 1/2 years since I put it onto the Internet, no one on Earth has challenged it. No one on Earth has offered a different name as the person who coined the term. No one on Earth in 35 years.
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How long does an assertion have to be public and uncontested before Wikipedia will accept it as authentic?
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I also discovered, just today, that somehow my name has been intruded into a number of pornographic websites, in nonsense-text, verbiage that does not form actual sentences nor convey sense. How flattering. Alas, they aren't even all gay porn sites.
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So I no longer have an article with my own name in Wikipedia. Boo. Also hoo. Big friggin' deal. I didn't ask to be included, and don't hugely care if I'm included. I do, however, deeply resent any suggestion that I did not coin the term "Gay Pride" as it is now used. For 35 years, no one has challenged my claim, but now, when people might think I'm dead, since 1970 is a long time ago, people are mounting a challenge to that credit? How dare they?
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Most of us 'old-timers' have indeed died by now, but a few of us are still around. As I told a friend and fellow old-time activist (whose name I will not mention here, lest another cabal of anonymous snipers act to remove his article from Wikipedia too):

I repeat that we ought to try to establish, before they/we are all dead, some kind of organization for pre- and circum-Stonewall activists to ensure that our roles are not denied, and to impart to today's benighted youth what we knew then and have learned since. I saw a discussion on PBS (Dennis Wholey's America) last nite in which a black activist from the 60s was saddened more than appalled and indignant, that younger people have forgotten that they stand on the shoulders of giants. You and I are, in gay terms, such giants of the gay-rights and gay-self-esteem movements, and we deserve credit. We have things to teach, still, and there are lots of young gay men who need to learn what we, the writers of Fag Rag, and all kinds of activists from various groups and cities at that time, sorted out fresh then, but which have been forgotten now.

The other offensive assertion is that the Expansionist Party of the United States (XP), which I head, is a 'one-person' political party. XP has never been a "one-person party". I only co-founded it, with (the late) Stanley Hauser, a second gay man in a second boro of New York City, in 1979. I readily and unabashedly concede that XP has not caught on as we had hoped, but our website shows plainly that there's more than one person involved, inasmuch as authors from Canada, Britain, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Taiwan appear there, plus approving comments from other people in various countries, beyond the many XP webpages I have written.
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XP is indeed, to date, a failure as a mass movement. I concede that readily, if unhappily. Its purposes are the devotion, at present, of only a small number of people, scattered among various organizations and websites in a number of different countries, but unified under the umbrella of the alliance "United States International". That website contains full names, addresses, and telephone numbers for coordinators in both the U.S. and Britain. I am offended, for everyone working in all those organizations, by Wikipedia's attack on me as regards my Expansionist activities.
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Will XP ever become a politically significant movement? Who can say? Christianity started as one leader and a measly 12 followers. That leader and one of the followers were dead within a couple of years, but Christianity did not die with them. As Alexander Pope observed in 1733, "Hope springs eternal".
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Whether Wikipedia recognizes me or not is beside the point. The same day I discovered Wikipedia's perfidy, I got an email that included this advice:

Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.

I'm that nut.
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I have, heretofore, often cited to articles in Wikipedia. Never again. If Wikipedia regards me as unworthy of note, then I must regard Wikipedia as unworthy of note. There are many other sources of information on the Internet. There is only one, irreplaceable, L. Craig Schoonmaker. I work on the many things I do for the work: because I have to, not because people praise me (or even recognize me) for them (tho my Newark fotoblog has won a lot of praise recently). There are times when one must be a pachyderm: super-thickskinned. I'm no Republican, but their icon, elephant, has the right idea. Be content in your own strength, do your own work, and let the mosquitoes of envy frustrate themselves in trying to draw blood whereas the worst they can ever do is blunt their snout.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,700 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:18 PM