Controversial Yale alum Hyder Akbar (or friends thereof) is infiltrating and undermining the cyber-symbiosis of Wikipedia.

According to a Wikipedia editor-turned-whistleblower, Hyder’s Wikipedia entry is being mysteriously and repeatedly cleansed of any reference to his unfortunate arson incident.

Usernames ‘Brucebruceemily1,’ Brucebruceemily12‘, ‘Brucebruceemily123,’ (points for variety), and ‘Okaythen1‘ have been particularly delete-key-happy, at all hours of the day and night. Their nemeses, the honest Wikipedian editors, are at their wits’ end. One of them, ‘Hellomontana‘, pleads to the censors:

Don’t take off this part, it’s well documented and relevant.

Thus ensues a repeated back-and-forth copy/pasting duel. All in all, the flag-burning incident has been deleted from the site over eight times. One Hyder-happy censor even replaced a sentence about the obviously-significant crime with a list of his literary accolades. (How helpful!) An editor of the embattled page, clearly frustrated, contacted us with the story.

Nothing warms our hearts more than finding out that our old friends are keeping busy: namely, by editing teh Internet and crafting misleading online articles in order to self-promote and dodge public responsibility for drunken disrespectfulness. But if you thought there was nothing less classy than creating and editing your own hagiographical Wikipedia page (or burning a flag during wartime), then check out Hyder’s own ironic, pretentious, anti-American, and yet hilarious words, along with the Yale connection. After the jump.

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A search for IvyGate’s sleek Wikipedia page now yields nothing. The page underwent a deletion review and was ruled undeserving of Wikipedia’s (apparently limited) real estate, for lack of notability. (To see the full details, click the image.)

The initial hater was Wikipedian “Biggspowd,” who argued on August 20 that “The references listed just mention the blog in passing, not on it’s own merit.” Two words, Biggspowd: New Yorker. That is a magazine of repute. You are not.

A talk ensued with Biggspowd’s Crabbe-and-Goyles “Corpx” and “Aarktica” questioning IG’s “long term historic notability.” I had been on Wikipedia when I first read this. At the time I was browsing through some of Jeopardy’s 5-day champions from the early ’90s, many of whom have their own pages. So. This. “Long term historic notability.” You decide.

The Pontius Pilate figure was admin CitiCat, who deleted the IvyGate page on August 27, the same day that “Image:Cher_in_hell_on_wheels.jpg” and “Tourettes Guy” underwent review and a day before “Rank insignia of the Galactic Empire” and “Croatophobia” sat in cyberrelevancy court.

Back to CitiCat, who sentenced our personal Jesus to death. The CitiCat admin page reveals the provincial governor’s felis sylvestris namesakes:

CitiCat calls these “two of the various fuzzy occupants at my home.” CitiCat has “been using the internet pretty much continuously since 1987.” CitiCat is a 38-year-old man. CitiCat kills dreams.

We want to know everyone’s opinions. Is IvyGate worthy of a Wikipedia page? Do our recent highlights–the L.A. mayor’s son’s confessing crimes, the early leak of the USN&WR rankings–make us as historically notable as Jerome Vered, who won a week’s worth of Jeopardy! in 1992? Why would the admins ever consider deleting Galactic Empire rank insignia? To whom would the Storm Troopers answer?!

Or is this some relic of the Jim Cro-atophobe Laws? Because we will play the Croatophobe card, you catfucking Cro-Magnon.

–JIM NEWELL (Remember me?)

P.S.: Someone make the new IvyGate Wikipedia page and fight out the historic notability there.

UPDATE 2:40 p.m. Thursday: The rumors on the comment boards are true. IvyGate’s Wikipedia page v1.2 returned in the wee hours of August 30. The hero was Wikipedia admin Wikidemo, famous for creating the Francis Ford Coppola, Redheaded Slut and–yes–”Impossible is Nothing” pages. Wikidemo, according to the IvyGate article’s history, restored and updated it to “overcome any ’single news event’ concerns.” It is much more thorough than the old article, devoting a long paragraph to Chris Beam’s dad.

CitiCat, meanwhile, has suffered his greatest defeat in 20 years of Internetting.