Official Luthiers Forum!

John Hall recently opened a thread looking to expand the membership (and particularly, the young membership) of ASIA.
viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=52739
He received several suggestions for how ASIA should change its goals to meet the changing world. That wasn't exactly what he'd asked for, so I won't add to the list. Consider this a potential goal for a hypothetical organization, small group, or crazed individual: a presence on Wikipedia.

I often go to Wikipedia for a first glimpse at the history of anything I'm interested in. They mostly do a pretty good job--less so when it comes to guitar builders and repairman. Here's a brief list of prominent luthiers/repairmen who have been active professionally for over 50 years, and have no Wikipedia entry:

Don Teeter
Yuris Zeltins
Manouk Papazian
Gallagher Guitars
Frank Ford
Richard Brune
Dan Erlewine
German Vazquez Rubio

I'll add my friend, Francisco Hernandez, but I'm sure I've left off dozens of influential builders and repairmen--many of whom did unrecognized work for famous names. These were just some of the first that came to mind.

Obviously, a "Wikipedia" entry is no sort of judgement on anyone's historical merit. A google search of any of these names would turn up plenty of information. And many more recent builders deserve recognition--I set 50 years as an arbitrary benchmark. Still, it would be nice if some group (maybe a sub-committee of the OLF?) had the energy to make these names more widely known. I would do it myself, but I'm lazy.