R J Ellory has said that he ‘felt confused about [Wikipedia’s] policy’ and he pointed out that in his entry ‘the representation of his life to the wider world was not biased, inappropriate, incorrect or false.’

Neither, it follows, was the information that the author, Jim Perrin, had five other children. There could have been no privacy issue, nor was it ‘inappropriate’, as he himself had already recorded just one of his children: one  of his sons, who as it happened was also a talented climber…  or had sanctioned that entry. Posted on 24/1/2011 it remained for nearly two years; there is little likelihood that Jim Perrin would have been unaware, as he is frequently tinkering with his Wikipedia page, yet all details of this eldest son along with the mention, which later had been added, of the rest of his children (and it may be presumed not posted by himself) were speedily deleted by him on 15/11/2012. Possibly he felt that the extra information about those other children (that is, each by a different mother) might reflect unfavourably on his character — on his carefully constructed image — and his way around the ‘difficulty’ was to remove completely that part of the entry which dealt with all his children; to remove them from the record. If one reads Jim Perrin’s Wikipedia page and visits ‘view history’ all the many changes can be seen. Continue reading →