Hagiography

A hagiography is defined as: "a book about someone's life that makes it seem better than it really is or was" and "a biography that praises someone too much" by Merriam-Webster online,[1] and Wiktionary (the dictionary version of Wikipedia) defines the term as: "A biography which is uncritically supportive of its subject, often including embellishments or propaganda."[2]

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The original term specifically referred to the writings of saints, ecclesiastical leaders etc., and comes from the Greek ἁγιογραφία ("hagiographia"), from ἅγιος ("agios; 'holy' or 'saint'"), and γράφειν (graphein; "to write").[3]

Hagiographies on Wikipedia

This list is incomplete; you can help RationalWiki by adding bullshit to it.

“”Many people create articles that are overly promotional in tone: about themselves, people they admire, or those they are paid to represent. These are not neutral, and have no place in our projects. Generally, the Wikimedia community protects the projects well against this common problem by deleting or improving hagiographies. Or so we claim...
—The Wikimedia Foundation's policy on hagiographies.[4]

Various articles have been defined by various Wikipedians as hagiographic at various times, including:

  • Wikipedia's article on Peter Tatchell ("Is this an article, or autobiographical hagiography? Its length is far disproportionate to its subject's importance and it is permeated with what is obviously Tatchell's POVFile:Wikipedia's W.svg on himself.");[5]
  • Wikipedia's article on Gandhi (which had/has "a minuscule criticism section").[6]
For more information, see: Bias in Wikipedia

Hagiographies on Metapedia

Metapedia's article on Hitler could be considered a hagiography, as "a word-for-word comparison suggests that a Metapedia editor or editors might indeed have copied Wikipedia's original article and then modified it to create a text far more sympathetic to Hitler than was the original text."[7]

gollark: No, I mean how are they relevant?
gollark: What images are you saying are relevant to this?
gollark: I also don't see how some sort of cosmological theory would reasonably predict the results of a probe interacting with a comet.
gollark: So... crater.
gollark: > The impact generated an unexpectedly large and bright dust cloud, obscuring the view of the impact crater. according to the Wikipedia article.

References
  1. "Hagiography definition(s)". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 4 June 2015.
  2. "Definition of Hagiography". Wiktionary. Retrieved 4 June 2015.
  3. See the Wikipedia article on Hagiography.
  4. "Wikimedia Foundation: Resolution on media about living people". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 4 June 2015.
  5. "Talk:Peter Tatchell". Retrieved 4 June 2015.
  6. "Talk:Mahatma Gandhi/Archive 4". Retrieved 4 June 2015.
  7. Even Conservapedia can be right, once in a while... (Stopped clock)
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