The Class of 1978

[rweba]

So one good thing about Wikipedia is that it is easy to place articles into "categories" which are kind of similar to "tags" on blog posts.

And then you can go to the category and quickly see all the other articles that are in the same category.

That is definitely something that would be difficult to implement in a paper encylopedia.

So one concrete category (there may be a mathematical pun there) is the category of "People Born in the Year xxxx", i.e it lists all the Wikipedia articles which have been marked as biographies of people born in year xxxx.

Of course not everyone who should be marked is actually marked for the appropriate year.

And the whole subject of who should even BE in Wikipedia is a bit fuzzy.

So with those caveats ... I decided to use this feature to look through the biographies of people born in different years.

This is roughly related to the question "Of the people who become famous really young, what are they famous for?"

The results, (which are not surprising at all):

Ages 0 - 10 : Royalty
Ages 10-30: Actors, Athletes, musicians.

I took a closer look at the year 1978 ( which just coincidentally happens to be the year I was born).

I was surprised by how MUCH "entertainers" dominated the "Notable people born in 1978" category.

Of the 4894 articles listed (at the time) I could only find a COUPLE of people who were legitimately famous but were not actors, athletes, musicians or otherwise involved in the Entertainment-Industrial Complex.

Methodology Used: I very quickly scanned through the pages trying to see if there were any names I recognized.

I also randomly clicked on some names I didn't recognize to identify their occupation.

Obviously I missed quite a few and also there is a significant bias but ... it was the best I could do.

People recognized: 42
Entertainers: 40

And so without further ado, I present the class of 1978:

Lauren Ambrose (Actress, Six Feet Under)

Erin Andrews (Journalist, ESPN)

LaVar Arrington (Athlete, NFL)

Shane Battier (Athlete, NBA)

Mike Bibby (Athlete, NBA)

Jason Biggs (Actor, American Pie)

Kobe Bryant (Athlete, NBA)

Steven Chen (Entrepreneur, Youtube)

Speedy Claxton (Athlete, NBA)

Eric Crouch (Athlete, NFL)

Jessica Cutler (Blogger, Scandalous)

Lara Dutta (Miss Universe)

Eve (Rapper)

Kevin Federline (Father, Rapper, Dancer)

Rio Ferdinand (Athlete, English Premier League)

Shandi Finnessey (Miss USA, Dancing with the Stars)

Foxy Brown (Rapper)

James Franco (Actor, Spiderman)

Nelly Furtado (Musician)

Tyrese Gibson (Musician)

Joey Harrington (Athlete, NFL)

Josh Hartnett (Actor, Pearl Harbor)

Tim Hasselbeck (Athlete, NFL)

Katherine Heigl (Actress, Grey's Anatomy)

Perez Hilton (Gossip, Blogger)

Edgerrin James (Athlete, NFL)

Chad Johnson (Athlete, NFL)

Princess Lalla Salma of Morocco(Royalty, Queen of Morocco)

Frank Lampard (Athlete, English Premier League)

Josie Maran (Model)

Jesse Metcalfe (Actor, Desperate Housewives)

Saira Mohan (Model, Actress)

Tia Mowry (Actress, Sister Sister)

Tamera Mowry (Actress, Sister Sister)

Becki Newton (Actress, Ugly Betty)

Jermaine O'Neal (Athlete, NBA)

Zoe Saldana (Actress, Drum Line)

Etan Thomas (Athlete, NBA)

Brian Urlacher (Athlete, NFL)

Usher (Musician)

Jessica Valenti (Blogger, Feminist)

Louise Woodward (convict)

Out of these I would say Steve Chen and Jessica Valenti are the ones who can claim to be "non-entertainers."

Some Possibilities:

1. Wikipedia is biased in favor of entertainers because more people know about them so they get more articles.
2. I was biased in my process and failed to recognize the many other worthy people among the thousands listed that year.
3. It is easier to reach great success at an early age in entertainment related fields than it is in more traditional areas like Law, Medicine, Business, Science, Politics, etc.

Probably all 3 factors play some role.