Marie Anne Lenormand (reference article)

The Wikipedia article on Marie Anne Lenormand is a community edited encyclopedic account of the French professional card reader active in Napoleonic era Paris, whose name was later attached, after her death, to the Lenormand oracle card system that bears little direct connection to any deck she is actually known to have used or designed herself. Its strength is that a well developed Wikipedia biography of a documented historical figure typically draws together period sources on her actual clientele and reputation, useful for the kind of stable biographical fact, dates, documented clients, contemporary reputation, that changes little between editors. Its limit is that Wikipedia is a continuously and anonymously editable reference rather than a peer reviewed biography, and the gap between the historical Lenormand and the later card system named for her is exactly the kind of contested attribution point where a specialist history of cartomancy, not an encyclopedia entry, should be the final word.