To delete Wikipedia entry or not to delete?

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"The 'professor test'...does not apply to this guy, as his main publications are news articles, quite different from academic publications," Wickethewok argued. "I disagree with your notion that he's more notable than an average college professor. There are no independent articles on him."

I decided to take a step back and look at who else among the journalists I know has personal Wikipedia entries. And of course, while CNET News.com is a reasonably well-known publication, it is only mentioned in Wikipedia as part of the larger entry on CNET Networks, the site's publisher.

Among my News.com colleagues, only fellow reporters Declan McCullagh and Ina Fried have their own articles. And both are much better known than I am.

A few other CNET writers, from our CNET.com department, do have articles. Among them are Molly Wood, Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt. But all three are part of the company's television operations and are therefore personally in the public eye.

So, in all fairness, the question of why Jeff G. wrote an article about me is a valid one. I have written for a number of prominent publications beyond CNET News.com. And I am one of the more prolific writers about subjects like virtual worlds, Burning Man and even Wikipedia. But, as Wickethewok pointed out, there has been little written in the mainstream media about me, and my tens of thousands of Google and Yahoo hits stem from the fact that I write a lot of articles.

The Wikipedia entry does begin with the fact that I am an "award-winning journalist." But in truth, it was an award I shared with several colleagues and was given by a local branch of the Society of Professional Journalists. It was hardly a Pulitzer.

Why now?

I asked a friend, Business 2.0 magazine senior editor Chris Taylor, about his Wikipedia entry, which was created in 2005 when he wrote about Wikipedia for Time magazine.

"It didn't take long to realize why the entry had been made--and the timing, right after my authorship of the first Time story on Wikipedia, made sense," Taylor said. "So after the initial feelings of flattery and suspicion, I was like, Oh, OK, this is my 'reward' from the Wiki geeks. I wrote about their baby, so I've arrived."

Fair enough.

Murray, meanwhile, was asking for my help in verifying much of the information that was in the original version of my article. So, over two days, I spent hours tracking down links to stories, confirming questions and otherwise assisting my Wikipedia guardian angel.

It was weird, because it seemed like the article might soon disappear into a puff of ones and zeroes, and that the work would therefore be wasted.

But Murray was standing up for me in the administrators' delete-or-not thread, arguing that I am, in fact, notable for my work and my place among journalists covering tech culture.

"This subject has won an award for his journalism, is a recognized expert who is invited to speak at high-tech conferences, moderates panels," he wrote, "and has developed a second source of notability as an author and expert on the Burning Man festival."

But another, clearly well-meaning, administrator, hedged.

"Journalists are governed by the base WP:BIO, which requires, roughly, multiple independent coverage of the person's work," Serpent's Choice wrote January 8. "Terdiman is a prolific journalist and seems very likely to be the kind of person who will eventually meet the standards but doesn't yet."

Thank you, Serpent's Choice. I think.

On Wednesday, I was told that the final decision on whether to keep the article would likely come in a day or two. Things were looking good. A couple more administrators posted their support for the article. And on Thursday morning, the consensus was to keep it up.

I was prepared, though, to live up to Serpent's Choice's faith in me.