Wikipedia and Neal Schon: Who’s Sorry Now?

Who Are Neal Schon’s Ex-wives?
By [insert clever pseudonym here]

English Wikipedia contains close to 2 million biographies. That’s a lot. In fact, roughly one of out every three Wikipedia articles is a biography. Wikipedia even has special rules for “biographies of living people.” So you might assume that Wikipedia’s biographies are pretty good. Well, they’re not.

I’m going to use the Wikipedia biography of guitarist Neal Schon from the band Journey to illustrate some typical Wikipedia failings. Why Neal Schon? I just happened to be reading Schon’s article and spotted some things, but I could have picked just about any biography.

Arrival

I will be basing my comments on this version of Neal Schon’s Wikipedia biography. The first thing you notice when you look at it is a big ugly warning that “some of this article’s listed sources may not be reliable.” That warning has been there since 2013. For ten years, this biography about a famous musician has had potentially unreliable sources and no one has bothered to deal with it. Or, if they did, they thought the warning was pretty, so they just left it there.

In the section about Schon’s early life, it says his full name is Neal George Joseph Schon. It isn’t. It’s just Neal Joseph Schon. No George. There’s a source given for this, a 2011 book called Don’t Stop Believin’: The Untold Story of Journey by Neil Daniels. That’s not where the “George” comes from, though — it’s not even in the book. The “George” was added by an anonymous IP editor in 2011. The other edits by the IP were of similar quality — as Wikipedians would say, “vandalism.”

It’s very easy to correct the Wikipedia article, but good luck getting the “George” off the other websites who foolishly relied on Wikipedia to provide correct information.

Next

Schon married Michaele Salahi in 2013. The wedding was available as a live pay-per-view broadcast for $14.95. According to Wikipedia, it was Schon’s fifth marriage. Who are his previous four wives? It doesn’t say. (Spouses and children are a standard thing to include in a biography.)

Luckily, it’s not hard to find this information. Here’s a nice concise paragraph from Fox News’ coverage of Journey’s 50th anniversary:

Schon was previously married to Tena Austin from 1976 to 1986. He was then married to Beth Buckley from 1987 to 1992, and had two children with her, Miles and Elizabeth, before splitting up. He then married Dina Gioeli from 1993 to 1999, and then Amber Kozan (from 2001-2008), with whom he has two children, Aja and Sophia. He also has a daughter named Sarah.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/journey-celebrates-50th-anniversary-rock-band-members-then-now

I don’t know if Wikipedia should include former Playboy Playmate of the Month Ava Fabian in that list — although they apparently held a commitment ceremony of sorts in Paris and she was referred to as his wife in the press, they may not have been legally married. After Schon married Salahi, Fabian sued him for violation of their “express oral non-marital relationship agreement,” though they later settled out of court. (Her Wikipedia article mentions this, but his doesn’t.)

Evolution

While writing this, I discovered a few things that I will add here in case some Wikipedia editor might make use of them. Schon’s current wife, Michaele Salahi, has multiple sclerosis. This was revealed in a book about Salahi published in 2010, but it does not appear in her Wikipedia article. That seems like a very serious thing to leave out.

One of the places that uses “Neal George Joseph Schon” is Wikidata. On the same page, it says that Schon is married to German politician Michaele Sojka, whom Schon has probably never met, or even heard of.

Departure

I don’t really want to get into the rest of the biography because, frankly, it’s not good. Especially for a famous musician. I just wanted to look at some very basic biographical information. At least now there’s a chance that Wikipedia will correct Schon’s full name after ten years of having it wrong, and possibly include some information about his wives and children.