Talk:Elon Musk/FAQ

A1: No. The "Talk:Elon Musk" page is not for writing messages to Musk. It is only for discussing changes to the Wikipedia article about him. Writing a message to Musk here is pointless and disruptive, and such messages will be removed as an improper use of the page.

A2: No. Musk once suggested in an interview that his Wikipedia article be changed to describe him as a "business magnet." The tone of that interview was not very serious; he also claimed to be an alien.^[1] Wikipedia doesn't have to do what Musk says, and this request has been made and declined dozens of times already. New requests may be removed without a response so that other discussions are not disrupted.

A3: Musk is a US citizen (since 2002) born and raised in South Africa, and also acquired Canadian citizenship via his mother. Including these nationalities in the opening sentence in a balanced way would be complex, and the consensus is that they should instead be explained later in the lead.

A4: No, because he is still CEO according to company records and that is a common corporate title that readers will understand, while "Technoking" is a vanity term. The goal of the article is to inform people, and not to raise a technicality that would confuse them.

A5: Both Elon and Errol have said as much in the past but recently changed their stories, leaving the facts murky. In terms of prior confirmation, journalists with access to them have reported it as part of Elon's background. Specifically, a 2014 report originally printed in the San Jose Mercury News (and cited in the article) stated that Errol Musk had "a stake in" a mine. Elon affirmed his father's mine involvement in an interview with Jim Clash, a career interviewer of public figures, that was published by Forbes and withdrawn without explanation a few months later. Elon biographer Ashlee Vance likewise confirmed Errol's mining interest, with Elon's objections but not denials, in a 2020 interview report with Elon.

While today Elon Musk disputes almost everything about the story, Errol Musk has confirmed that he received hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of emeralds from his dealings.

A6: No. Although it may seem counterintuitive, "Bachelor of Arts in Physics" is the degree that the University of Pennsylvania (among other schools) awards.

A7: Wikipedia policy on requires that negative information about a person must be attributed to reliable published sources, and excludes both self-published sources (e.g. Twitter threads) and court trial records. The article states that sources disagree about when Musk obtained bachelor degrees, and that he did not attend Stanford for any significant amount of time. Any doubts beyond this require appropriate sources.

A8: Musk is chief engineer of SpaceX, a title that applies within the company and that the press regularly mentions. He is not a .

A10: Musk is criticized/praised a lot in many reliable sources, and as such we need to talk about these criticisms and praise. To quote from Wikipedia's policy on a neutral point of view, articles must represent "fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic."

A11: "Good article" on Wikipedia refers to the way the article is written, not what kind of person Musk is. Good articles have been found to satisfy Wikipedia editorial standards for accuracy, verifiability and balanced presentation.

A12: African Americans are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. Musk does not have ancestry from the Black racial groups of Africa; his ancestry is European.