[worik]

Pedantically:

"In another bizarre case, an editor at Wikipedia told Philip Roth, “one of the most awarded American authors of his generation” (according to Wikipedia) that he was not a reliable source on the subject of Philip Roth."

Philip Roth is not an authoritative source on Philip Roth. I would have thought that was obvious.

[leijurv]

Some mistake or miscommunication happened there, as Wikipedia does have a policy that people can be cited for information about themselves, the policy is called SELFSOURCE. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SELFSOURCE

Perhaps the issue was that Philip Roth was unable to sufficiently demonstrate his identity? Of course, Wikipedia can't take a random editor's word when they say "I am this person and this is the truth", then anyone could say anything. There has to be some citation, for example I've seen someone cite a tweet for simple biographical information (e.g. "today is my birthday").

[defen]

How does laundering the info through The New Yorker make it authoritative? Any putative fact checking for the article itself would necessarily entail asking him "Hey Phil, that article you just wrote for us about the inspiration for your best-selling, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel - was that true or were you just having a giggle?"

[googlryas]

Philip Roth was the authoritative source on Philip Roth. In fact, he wrote a whole book about him called The Facts.