It has been only a year or so since Kate Middleton walked down the aisle at Westminster Abbey and already her stunning wedding gown has snagged itself a place on the list of the world’s most memorable wedding dresses.
Yet, it seems, some of the folk at Wikipedia, mostly volunteer editors, believe it to be too trivial an item to deserve an entry on the world’s biggest encyclopedia.
The page, Wedding Dress of Kate Middleton, has come under criticism since it was created, on April 29, 2011, the day of the royal wedding.
Among the comments and requests that it be deleted are such complaints as “The fact that this article even exists is a slight indicator of wiki admin slacking” while another brazenly posts that Kate’s wedding dress was “frankly trivial” and not “notable enough to be on Wikipedia.”
An Italian user, Attilios, called the article “totally irrelevant” suggesting the entry took Wikipedia to its lowest point yet.
However, given there are posts on everything from Tankinis (bathing suits combined with tank tops) to bread clips (those little pieces of plastic that keep your bread packet airtight), his comments seem a little harsh, certainly heavy handed.
In fact, the debate around Kate’s hand-beaded lace gown has grown so fierce, it has even come to the attention of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales who believes the article offers plenty of merit.
At last week’s Wikimania 2012 conference in Washington D.C, Wales used the controversy to illustrate how so many users failed to see value in such female-friendly articles and topics.
Needless to say, the article will be staying up.
In fact, Wales even suggested there should be more articles on other famous dresses.
He’s got plenty of supporters, too, with one Wikipedia editor, Eric Cable, from Ohio, USA, writing, “Are you suggesting this article should not exist? That it does not meet notability standards? That is absurd. This dress will be remembered for decades. It will influence wedding dress designs for long, long time.”
Similarly, an English editor made an equally valid point, “There are hundreds or articles on characters in TV dramas, so why worry about ones on dresses? We are free to read the ones that interest us.”
Indeed.
In fact, Kate’s dress, created by British fashion designer Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, isn’t the only royal wedding dress to be graced with its own page on Wikipedia. An entry dedicated to the wedding gown of Kate’s late mother-in-law, Princess Diana, exists, as does one about Princess Grace (Grace Kelly) of Monaco’s wedding dress – and there isn’t a delete request or criticism to be found about either of those.
What do you think? Should Kate’s dress have its own Wikipedia page or is it “frankly trivial”? Please tell us in the box below.
