Dear Wikipedia,

I am Philip Roth. I had reason recently to read for the first time the Wikipedia entry discussing my novel “The Human Stain.” The entry contains a serious misstatement that I would like to ask to have removed. This item entered Wikipedia not from the world of truthfulness but from the babble of literary gossip—there is no truth in it at all.

Yet when, through an official interlocutor, I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete this misstatement, along with two others, my interlocutor was told by the “English Wikipedia Administrator”—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” writes the Wikipedia Administrator—“but we require secondary sources.”

Thus was created the occasion for this open letter. After failing to get a change made through the usual channels, I don’t know how else to proceed.

My novel “The Human Stain” was described in the entry as “allegedly inspired by the life of the writer Anatole Broyard.” (The precise language has since been altered by Wikipedia’s collaborative editing, but this falsity still stands.)

This alleged allegation is in no way substantiated by fact. “The Human Stain” was inspired, rather, by an unhappy event in the life of my late friend Melvin Tumin, professor of sociology at Princeton for some thirty years. One day in the fall of 1985, while Mel, who was meticulous in all things large and small, was meticulously taking the roll in a sociology class, he noted that two of his students had as yet not attended a single class session or attempted to meet with him to explain their failure to appear, though it was by then the middle of the semester. (...)

Wikipedia is launching another massive photo contest to boost the number of free photos visible in WikiMedia Commonsand available for illustrating Wikipedia stories.

The contest is Wiki Loves Monuments 2012, and is focused on photos of historic sites around the world. Last year’s contest saw 168,000 pictures uploaded by more than 5000 photographers from 18 European nations. This year volunteers in more than 30 countries, including the U.S., will join in as organizers attempt to surpass that total.

The Wikipedia Commons is already one of the world’s largest repositories of freely usable image, with  13.6 million media files. But there are substantial gaps in the database, according to Lodewijk Gelauff, one of the organizers of the first Wiki Loves Photos contest in 2010. No freely usable pictures exist of many world heritage sites, culturally significant monuments, and notable buildings around the world.

“Wiki Loves Monuments is an important way for volunteers around the world to showcase the cultural heritage in their countries and share these images with everyone through Wikipedia,” Gelauff said in a Wikimedia Foundation blog post.

All submitted photos will be added to the Commons, which means that anyone can use them for any purpose, as long as the photographer is credited. Ten finalists and one grand prize winner will be announced in December, and the winner will receive a trip to Hong Kong to shoot a photo tour in conjunction with Wikimania 2013.

“By uploading your photos you are sharing our national heritage with everybody in America and in the rest of the world. The photos will be free to use, and free of cost, forever,” said the national coordinator for the U.S. contest, Peter Ekman.

A Wikimedia app is available on Google Play that contestants can use to both locate monuments of interest and enter photographs into the contest, directly from their Android smartphones.

Participating countries include India, Russia, South Africa Argentina, the Phillipines, and Brazil, plus all of North America and almost all of Europe.

Americans can contribute here, and international contributors can submit photos at wikilovesmonuments.org.