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Call For Halt To Wikipedia Webcomic Deletions
ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "Howard Tayler, the webcomic artist of Schlock Mercenary fame, is calling on people not to donate money during the latest Wikimedia Foundation fund-raiser. This is to protest the 'notability purges' taking place throughout Wikipedia, where articles are being removed en-masse by what many see as overzealous admins. The webcomic community in particular has long felt slighted by the application of Wikipedia's contentious Notability policy. Wikinews reporters have recently begun investigating this issue, but are the admins listening?"
I would disagree actually. The only way to be eligible for that criteria would be for an article to say "Such and such is a web comic." and that's it. The criteria states the article "does not indicate the importance or significance of its subject." I'd say this is pretty fair.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It's kind of hard to find the full text of articles which were deleted to verify that they were more than just stubs, but here's at least one deletion citing CSD A7 as sufficient to speedily delete a webcomic article.
There are people who boost their ego by counting the pages they managed to wipe.
Considering that these people are permanent visitors to wikipedia, while those who could defend a page are not necessarily, this is a slightly uphill battle.
On the other hand, who said wikipedia must have an exhaustive list+synopsys of all webcomics, films, etc.
Maybe the problem is that it isn't clear what wikipedia must have.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
RTFA. And the comments, too.
It also seems you're ignoring a lot of votes in favor of keeping the webcomic articles. An example from the aforementioned comments: Checkerboard Nightmare's (though it didn't end up deleted since even after deleting over half of the keep votes, the keeps were still in majority). What the fuck is up with that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write-in_candidate (Insomnia strikes again!)
~ C.
He was expanding on the vote metaphor. You have essentially two "candidates" - Keep and Delete.
The "Write-ins" are alternatives like Merge and Cleanup - which are really other ways of saying "Keep" but do not actually seem to count as "Keep" votes, thus making it seem like there are fewer supporters of the Keep option when it might actually be what the majority wants, if only in spirit.
In other words, "Merge" and "Cleanup" should be counted as "Keep" for the purpose of those votes. If the admin only does a grep for "Keep" and "Delete" then he may be discarding a lot of votes that would otherwise preserve the article... you can't clean up an article that was deleted, after all...
=Smidge=
Well, then it's not really a valid example then. Since 2005, AFD has changed considerably. Firstly, in 2005 it was votes for deletion. However, now it is articles for deletion, and closing admins are no longer allowed to do straight "vote" counts. Those who say "keep" or "delete" are now either discounted, or given less weight than those who give detailed reasons.
The system has changed. The example given is no longer valid.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Just because someone, somewhere blogged about it doesn't make it notable. I've seen editors say text was copyrighted, when it was released under creative commons, and proof provided, still deleted. Content in the Wikipedia has to be licensable under the GFDL. Creative Commons licenses aren't necessarily compatible. So this is the right decision.
(Yeah, weasel-words, but I'm not a lawyer and don't want to try to definitively say anything about the licenses.)
Dang... to mod or to comment... to mod or to comment... well, let's clear this misconception that is so common for people who is not regular at Wikipedia. Deletion discussions, also known as XFD, aren't "votes" where simple majority wins. It is a search for consensus, where everyone states their opinion, and in the end the best argument is used to close the discussion.
It is the task of admins and other people in the discussion to reveal "single purpose accounts", accounts created just to stockpile in either side of the discussion. It is clear that, somehow, a user of the webcomic found the Wikipedia entry of the comic was being deleted, and "called to arms", posting in a forum or a comment in the webcomic asking others to come and "vote keep". For example, 216.134.160.149 faked a username, "Blackbyrd2". Other than his opinion about the AFD, he never contributed to Wikipedia afterwards. Same for 149.169.88.9, Captainhero, etc. Some become constructive members of the community, of course, but at the time of the discussion, they are considered SPA based on the duck test.
Now, you may ask whether the opinion of someone who arrives asked to stockpile is worth or not. Wikipedia welcomes all opinions, but for the sake of keeping the discussion clean, we mark these accounts with the {{spa}} template. The closing admin is asked to keep in mind these users don't know Wikipedia policies and guidelines for notability, that they are biased (either for the keep or delete side), and that it is possible they won't be able to defend their opinion because SPA don't usually go back to Wikipedia after the first opinion. The template {{afdanons}} is put at the top of these discussions to let them know about the basic rule of XFD: it is a discussion, not a vote. If the deletion reasoning is strong, unless there is a keep reasoning as strong as it, it will be deleted.
Jayjg was even banned from the Italian Wikipedia for abusively deleting edits. The problem on English Wikipedia is that it is the co- founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, himself who personally approved the controversial appointment of Jayjg to the powerful Oversight Committee for English Wikipedia despite numerous objections from other editors about Jayjg's abusive edit-warring. This is hardly surprising given that much of Wikimedia Foundation's funding comes as anonymous donations often from dubious political foundations.
Some very revealing studies of Wikipedia from the outside:
wikipediareview.com
wikitruth.info
antisocialmedia.net
Trivia to you may be critical information to someone else. Obscure facts are often important to someone, even if most people could do without them. It may do little good to keep it there, but it does NO good to take it away (and I'd suggest makes it worse, as people will often check WP first knowing that it'll have an article on even the most obscure things, only to find it's gone).
I'd read about all sorts of random internet subculture on Wikipedia some time ago, and when I went to pull it up again for whatever reason, the whole lot of it was gone. Not only did I never find the information a second time (I sure as hell can't be bothered to look through dozens of pages of revisions), but I wasted a lot of time clicking around and hoping I'd stumble across it as is so common on Wikipedia. Yes, it was trivia. No, it wasn't especially important information - but that's true of a ton of things. Nonetheless, I'd found it interesting, and wasted a bunch of time in vain trying to find it again. It might not have done me much good to find it, but I was worse off with it not being there thanks to all the wasted time looking.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Wikipedia seems to be having some issues with admins deleting articles in connection to their notability guidelines lately. PortableApps.com, the website that makes available portable software that runs from removable media (like a portable version of Firefox) was recently deleted under the notability guidelines with very little notice (aka speedy deletion). This despite the fact that it's the most popular portable platform (more popular than the commercial ones), in the top 10 on SourceForge, in the top 5,000 websites in the world and has been extensively covered in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times, PC Magazine, PC World, Wired, etc.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
- Wikipedia is not "run" by admins or by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is run by thousands upon thousands of users, all of whom have a voice. Since it is open for anyone to join, anyone having a problem with Wikipedia can influence Wikipedia policy by being directly involved. "Calling for policy change" from outside Wikipedia is pointless. Anthropomorphising Wikipedia is pointless, too. Wikipedia is you.
- Speedy deletion is reserved for special cases (patent nonsense, vandalism, experimentation gone wrong, etc). It is never used to enforce notability. Every case of something being considered non-notable goes through the full deletion process, and the decision on whether or not to delete is made by consensus following a lengthy (7-day) discussion. Articles are not suddenly deleted for not being noteworthy. If someone does speedy delete an article for this, it's a breach of policy and an admin can be contacted to sort it out.
- Even if it attempts to contain the totality of all human knowledge, Wikipedia has to have limits as to what gets included. Would you consider an article on each of your toe clippings from last week worthy of inclusion? The line has to be drawn somewhere. Where it gets drawn is a subject of constant debate and refinement. As per (1), you are welcome to engage in that debate.
- If you read the guideline for notability, you would see that it is strongly tied in to verifiability. If you add vast amounts of content to Wikipedia without bothering to reference any of it, don't be surprised or angry if it gets deleted. Without references, it is extremely difficult (and sometimes impossible) for other editors to verify that what you contributed is true, and this opens the way for the inclusion of false information.
As for your article, it doesn't cite a single source, and seems not to be anything other than a plot summary from the movie, so looks like it will probably be deleted. If you really want to save it, all you need to do is to put in some references to sources besides the movie itself, and call attention to that in the AfD discussion.It is certainly not the case that every porn star who has appeared in a single movie is considered worthy of a Wikipedia article. A section of the Wikipedia guideline on the notability of people ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people) ) reads:
* Pornographic actor:
**Has won or been a serious nominee for a well-known award, such as those listed in Category:Adult movie awards or Category:Film awards or from a major pornographic magazine, such as Penthouse, Playboy, or Playgirl, as well as their counterparts in other pornography genres.
** Has made unique contributions to a specific pornographic genre, such as beginning a trend in pornography, or starring in an iconic, groundbreaking or blockbuster feature.
** Has been featured multiple times in mainstream media.
I can give a valid example of overzealous deletion. I organize the group that builds the page on Alcoholism. There are about a half dozen notable, reputable organizations that provide counseling and services to alcoholics and their families. Most of them had established pages in Wikipedia, until someone went through and deleted the articles for #2, 3, and 4, leaving AA and a couple that probably were just overlooked by the admins. The reason give was "non-notability", although two of the three have national memberships in the thousands. Deletion reviews for those two were summarily dismissed by a different admin as "blatant copyright violations", even though the content specifically met Wikipedia's copyright guidelines (similar to existing material, but written by the same author). The admin responsible deleted my attempts to discuss it on his user page without a response. I'm very disappointed.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
There are people with 70 or so edits getting their votes deleted. Call me crazy, but I doubt that someone would go in and make 70 edits *just* so they can vote against deleting an article. Under three edits, maybe, but not 70 (unless they were all minor edits in a single day or something).
You're looking in the wrong place, the right place is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/{deleted page name}, in this case here.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Misconception #1: It's not a "vote". It's a debate. There's no tally of votes and plurality has no meaning. The arguments presented are what is supposed to have meaning. If there are 10 "deletes" with no justification and 1 "keep" with a well-detailed and sound argument, the "keep" may be considered worth more than the "deletes".
Misconception #2: It's not a democracy and users are not equal in standing. Arguments from well-established and respected users are weighted much more heavily than users with 1 or 2 edits. This is to prevent the kind of astroturfing that was done in the linked discussion. It was incredibly obvious that the vast majority those "keeps" were from people who ONLY came to WP to "vote". They were not interested in or participants of the project and several created their accounts for the sole purpose of "voting" in this one debate. These people's "votes" were summarily discounted.
It also seemed obvious to me that these guys posted somewhere "Hey! This article is about to be deleted. Everyone come vote to keep it!" bringing a bunch of people to flood the debate with "keeps" who otherwise would not participate in the project at all. The administrator caught on and called them on it. So they got mad that their free advertising got deleted despite their astroturfing, called the administrator abusive, and made a call to
The
I did some recreating of articles, got warned, but not banned, and warnings were retracted and other users restored articles back to the original form. They may be subject to deletion - but they will go through a more fair process to do so.
:)
Please DO NOT do a donation boycott. Things are getting more fair and balanced as a result of Slashdot's attention and my actions on Wikipedia. They need money to maintain their organization and servers and to do badly needed upgrades (especially with them getting linked to by Slashdot!
Work within the system (even though it may have taken some direct action), don't starve it for funds - it isn't the enemy - it just isn't the best it can be.
The same could be said even of Slashdot.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!