Good, someone's making this point! I'd argue that it's specifically "modern fiction" that made Wikipedia hard to take seriously in the early years (was it that

Good, someone's making this point! I'd argue that it's specifically "modern fiction" that made Wikipedia hard to take seriously in the early years (was it that they had a biography of Pikachu but not of Charles XII of Sweden?), and that a hard line on fancruft but lenience in other areas would make sense. On the other hand, I hadn't known about the PR issue, and I think I now understand why Wikipedia is so unforgiving towards Mittelstand businesses. If the only information you can get about the second-largest sprocket-maker in Topeka was written by the second-largest sproket-maker in Topeka, it might indeed be better to leave them off the site entirely...