Who writes for Wikipedia? Walter Isaacson. And he THROWS DOWN.

Walter Isaacson, who techie readers will recognize as the author of the Steve Jobs biography (and normal people will recognize as the author of Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, and more), has a new book out about the history of tech.

It’s called The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. I am currently reading Nicholas Carr’s The Glass Cage, but this is next up. Straight to the top of the queue.

Isaacson wrote the piece I’m responding to, which is probably a 300 minute read, so you might have missed this little story towards the bottom of his post. Turns out Isaacson, one of the best biographers of our age, writes for Wikipedia. TIL!

AND, he worked against the forces of evil in a behind-the-scenes Wikipedia battle royale. TRUTH TRIUMPHED.

I had done a book about Albert Einstein and noticed that the Wikipedia entry on him claimed that he had traveled to Albania in 1935 so that King Zog could help him escape the Nazis by getting him a visa to the United States. This was completely untrue, even though the passage included citations to obscure Albanian websites where this was proudly proclaimed, usually based on some third-hand series of recollections about what someone’s uncle once said a friend had told him. I deleted the assertion from the article, only to watch it reappear.

It gets better:

On the discussion page, I provided sources for where Einstein actually was during the time in question (Princeton) and what passport he was using (Swiss). But tenacious Albanian partisans kept reinserting the claim. The Einstein-in-Albania tug-of-war lasted weeks. I became worried that the obstinacy of a few passionate advocates could undermine Wikipedia’s reliance on the wisdom of crowds. But after a while, the edit wars ended, and the article no longer had Einstein going to Albania.

Go Walter Isaacson, you get an honorary cape of intellectual truth and freedom!