American novelist Philip Roth is so famous that there's a Wikipedia page about his life and numerous Wikipedia articles about individual books he's written. But by the sometimes strict editing process enforced at the collaboratively edited online encyclopedia, Roth himself was recently unable to fix what he calls a glaring error in the Wikipedia page about his novel The Human Stain.

Roth's complaint was detailed by Roth himself today in "An open letter to Wikipedia" published by The New Yorker (a sister publication of Ars). Roth tried to fix the error that his novel was "allegedly inspired by the life of the writer Anatole Broyard.” In reality, Roth explains, the book's story was inspired by an event in the life of Roth's friend, Princeton professor Melvin Tumin. Tumin was trying to track down a couple of students who had never attended class, and asked if they were "spooks." The two students were black, leading to accusations of racism against Tumin.

When Roth tried to give Wikipedia the true origins of the novel, he says he was told by a Wikipedia administrator on Aug. 26 "that I, Roth, was not a credible source."

“I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work, but we require secondary sources," were the exact words of the Wikipedia administrator, according to Roth.

Wikipedia's rules, of course, are intended to prevent people from excising uncomfortable yet true facts from their articles. All facts must be backed up by references to specific sources. As it turns out, the open letter Roth wrote today seems to count as a secondary source. Edits made to the article today add a reference to his open letter, including the explanation that Tumin's problem inspired the book.

A further series of edits have decreased references to Anatole Broyard, although the article does still contain a statement that "critics saw parallels in the book to the life of Anatole Broyard." Broyard was a literary critic and editor for The New York Times. Roth notes that since he barely knew Broyard when he wrote The Human Stain, there was no way he could have inspired the novel.

Roth notes in his New Yorker piece that "[t]he precise language has since been altered by Wikipedia’s collaborative editing, but this falsity still stands." The further edits made today, we think, should fix things for good.