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Saving Geek Lore and Other Wikipedia Castoffs
Ian Lamont notes an Industry Standard feature on Deletionpedia — a collection of 63,559 deleted Wikipedia pages that range from "vanity entries" or obscure points of reference to heavily edited topics that Wikipedia editors eventually deemed fan fiction, inadequately sourced, or otherwise lacking. Looking through the collection of removed articles, it's apparent that entertaining minutiae are often the target of Wikipedia editors: "Geek lore seems to be a particular target for deletion, with the deleted page of the month a comprehensive guide to 'Weapons of the Imperium (Warhammer 40,000)'. Deletionpedia provides links back to the Wikipedia deletion discussions, which are a lesson in magnification of minutiae; the Warhammer page was removed due to philosophical disagreements over what can be considered credible source material, while a page listing every chalkboard gag in The Simpsons opening credits spent 691 days on the site before being deleted as 'fancruft.'" Note that while Deletionpedia uses MediaWiki, it doesn't have wiki functionality — readers can't alter or update archived entries.
if it uses mediawiki, it has wiki functionality. just not for you
also. i think it's slashdotted.
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@deletionpedia.dbatley.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
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There, fixed that for you.
I honestly don't get the whole hate that Wikipedia seems to have against sci-fi and geeky topics... I think it's an attack by people who figure that if they have too much of it that Wikipedia won't resemble an old media encylopedia. This argument is pretty stupid, given the nigh-unlimited space in their database (Wikipedia themselves have said not to worry about performance).
Somoene's going to come in here and say that the problem isn't the topic, it's that the articles are either original research, aren't verifiable, or aren't "notable" (the latter is the worst argument I've heard), but IMNSHO there is a definite bias, especially among admins, against these types of articles.
Oh, and tell the Wikitruth.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I'm certain there is quite a bit of interesting information that's been excised from still-existing topics that should also be explored.
Where's the site that has the stuff deleted from Deletionpedia? I guess it'll be Turtles All the Way Down from there...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Slashdotted. Apparently the best way to finally delete the deleted.
Wikipedia is the worst example of an open-source project in the world.
Don't you just love the smell of a burning web page after it's been slashdotted?
Makes one thing of Napalm.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
a page listing every chalkboard gag in The Simpsons opening credits
Sad, that's actually a useful list! And surely socially and culturally relevant too.
I find it childish of Wikipedia to actually delete articles that would be interesting to some people at least.
There used to be an article on the notable unix programmer Norman Waslh before they deleted it. They also deleted the article about "Rubbish, King of the Jumble" as not notable despite being a popular cartoon on CITV in the 1990s. If you want your knowledge to stay, use inclusionist wikis instead. I like websites such as Wikia because they have a lot of articles about what Wikipedia calls cruft and also many independant wikis such as mariowiki and bulbapedia. Remember that all Wikipedia articles have been licenced under the GFDL so transwiki as many articles as you can, exploiting the streisand effect.
I have also been blocked from Wikipedia for a year because of a vandal sharing my IP address and the admins won't unblock.
Take a look at this article. Half of those lodges get articles deleted all the time and that article itself gets nominated for deletion all the time. Yet articles about Penny Arcade while a very funny cartoon I enjoy stays? WTF, there notion of notable is quite honestly fucked. Yes there is a general article about Freemasonry but each state's Grand Lodge have a long history that is often interlinked to the founding of that state. My own state of Utah has a very long history with freemasons and the Grand Lodge of Utah has a very interesting histroy that can be verified quite easily. So a Lodge with 100+ years of history isn't notable but a comic strip is? Sorry but PA isn't Garfield or Peanuts. It's nothing but a popularity contest and the people with the most amount of time to waste win the notable contest unless and admin (biased quite heavily) does something.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
They're about to hit 65536 articles.
Another project that's related to Wikipedia through the founder Jimmy Wales is Wikia http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia
There are wiki's on many topics and I don't think they kill any submitted pages/wikis/ etc. If you think it's important enough to record, put it up.
Something that I find as particularly interesting is the "open source" search that they're building there. http://re.search.wikia.com/index.html
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
Notable online videos such as YuGiOh the abridged series and "Retarded Animal Babies" have been deleted as a not notable. The adbridged series even parodied it by starting one of its episodes as "according to Wikipedia, we do not exist.
Wikipedia was supposed to be the free encyclopedia, but until wikipedia gets the "notabillity" policy removed (as it has happened on its rival Citizendium), it will be only a small subset of what a free encyclopedia really is supposed to be.
That's a surprisingly low number. I think it's out by at least an order of magnitude. These guys need to try a lot harder. So, so many more pages to delete...
You can start with almost every single music entry -- virtually all are spam or fansites to some degree.
An ugly secret of the Internet is that most females are males pretending to be females.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Although only administrators can actually delete articles, contested deletions are decided on the basis of a discussion/vote that anyone with at least a semi-established account, admin or not, can participate in. Some of the more aggressive pro-deletion nominators/voters aren't actually admins at all, in fact.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
What about Mel's Hole? Is it there?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Your mom isn't a large enough sample size to support that statement (but she's close).
63,559? 9? What a waste of a perfectly good bit.
I wonder how much carbon was emitted making the power to get computers to process that extra bit for the sake of three articles?
Not as much as it took for me to post this, no doubt. But hey... they provoked me...
This is not a normal encyclopedia where having an entry takes up literal space on a page, and technically slows you down when finding the article you're actually looking for. This is the internet, where if you don't care about the many variations on the RX-78 Gundam, you don't have to ever see them. Unless wikipedia is running their fucking site off of an old 20 gig IDE hard drive, there's no reason to be deleting entries that are well-written and useful to someone.
Deletionism is just one big stupid power trip.
Your mom isn't a large enough sample size to support that statement (but she's close).
Understanding biology FAIL.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
A focus.
Smaller wikis tend to have a very specific focus and, thus, rational reasons to keep or delete. I work on the Battlestar Wiki, which obviously needs an article on Commander Adama but wouldn't keep articles on James Kirk on it...that's the Memory Alpha wiki's job.
Even Deletionpedia focuses on one thing...and does it so well, it doesn't need editing!
Wikipedia is trying to catalog the world as a general encyclopedia. But paradoxically they edit out things from the world.
The result? A reason to post elsewhere.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
I think WP needs to stop calling itself an "encyclopedia" and just come to terms with the fact that they are nothing more than an enormous repository of pop culture knowledge, with a decent but not impressive (volume-wise) level of actual encyclopedic knowledge.
That doesn't detract from its value, far from it. But they take themselves way too seriously in some cases.
What's the difference if there are 65K more articles? I'm all for removing vanity entries and truly useless crap, but "fancruft" tends to be a rather slippery thing to define.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
The author Nicholson Baker wrote an interesting piece on the Deleteopedia earlier this year:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/apr/10/wikipedia.internet
Worth a read if you've not seen it.
2^16 = 65536, not 63556.
Given that the GNAA is the most well-known deletion debated on Wikipedia, having been deleted, restored, and deleted again at least seven times, with huge discussions every time, I'm surprised that it's not there.
was: I honestly don't get the whole hate that Wikipedia seems to have against sci-fi and geeky topics...
should be:
I honestly don't get the whole justified hate that Wikipedia seems to have against lame sci-fi and moronic topics...
I think you answered your own question!
If not wikipedia, where can I go for geek lore and fancruft? Is there a true "Geek Encyclopedia" out there?
In fact, over 59,000 words have gone into the deletion discussions alone. That's over one tenth of Atlas Shrugged! This doesn't include the several discussions that led to it being undeleted, likely bringing the wordcount to nearly double that.
P2P Wiki technology can be developed such that the power to reside with the whole, and not any one group of people.
Here is a good writeup on a much needed P2P version of Wikipedia
Wikipedia didn't invent wiki. It's just the most popular. If you don't agree with the administrators start you own wiki.
Wikipedia was started with a certain idealistic standard. Still I hear people talking about not everything you read on wiki is the truth. I've personally have read a lot of crap on wiki and I think more should be deleted.
It's cool that someone has archived the delete articles though. I think it would also be cool if continued work on the articles could bring it up to wikipedia's standards and then it could be resurrected as a wiki article with the improvments.
Other than attacks, racism, unverifiable information and such (which are already banned under other Wikipedia guidelines), what real effect would it have on the encyclopedia other than another record in the database that nobody other than the author would ever access?
For one thing, giving too many details about fiction may infringe the copyright in said fiction. Rowling v. RDR Books.
Indeed, the most irritating thing about Wikipedia is the whole "notable" requirement that the Powers that Be seem to take very seriously.
The "notable" requirement didn't come about on it's own. It's a corollary of the "verifiable" requirement. By definition, a non-notable subject won't have enough claims about it that are verifiable in reliable third-party sources to make an article anyway.
That's what Wikia is for - to hold all the fancruft. Wikia hosts the Star [Wars|Gate|Trek|Craft] fancruft. It's almost all popular culture. It's become Wikipedia's slush pile. Wikia takes advertising, but since its demographic lives in their parents' basement, the ads aren't worth much.
Personally, I'd like to kick most of the popular culture out of Wikipedia, because Wikipedia isn't very good at it. Wikipedia is worse at movies than IMDB. It's worse at music than Gracenote. It's worse at fancruft than Wikia. Export the articles for each Pokemon to Wikia and be done with it.
but until wikipedia gets the "notabillity" policy removed (as it has happened on its rival Citizendium), it will be only a small subset of what a free encyclopedia really is supposed to be.
I answered this in another comment.
Don't know if this is in this archive, but some not entirely together person (I don't think he understands that Star Trek is fiction) wrote a really good timeline of the Mirror Universe, going all the way back to the 20th century and Prince Clinton's assassination of Emperor Reagan. I was participating in Wikipedia deletion discussions at the time, and there was a unanimous vote to delete it, for obvious reasons. But I think everybody who voted felt bad about doing it, it was so carefully thought out.
They should have a "layered" model, where the default impression of Wikipedia appears as it would do after all these deletions. Then they should keep mostly everything, (perhaps unavoidable that some things must go into the black hole,) and then people who are specifically interested in the "extended" versions could just select that option and get the whole shebang. (i.e. 'browse at -1 / browse at +11(!111),' like on /.
It shouldn't be so hard to make almost everyone happy, and to provide a central place for all kinds of interest groups to gather around the same base of material. - I'm sure there's alot of "Warhammer" contributions that benefit the general public, too, if only on a fragmentary basis.
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
Often it boils down to "I don't know much about this topic and I don't care about it, thus it's irrelevant". Thus you end up with entire fields of topics automatically getting marked for deletion - as happened to webcomics a couple months ago, with some fairly well-known comics getting tossed out for being not notable, while a page about the TV station the main character of a short-lived 80s TV series worked for survived more than thirty revisions over five years. I agree that Max Headroom was cool, but Network 23 didn't really have that big an impact in our culture, even the popular one.
The problem is that the Wikipedia editors and admins are still human beings with imperfect knowledge and opinions and while some people would say that The Simpsons or Schlock Mercenary have or had actual cultural impact* others would note that they only read SciFi books for entertainment and they had a perfectly fine childhood without ever telling someone to have bovines. Thus that article about neologisms coined by The Simpsons is only relevant to some fans and not notable -- but nobody dare touching that alphabetical listing of all characters found in the Foundation series! And then it devolves into a discussion over who has the bigger, er, childhood and thus gets to be right.
I have no idea to improve upon this situation. Correctly judging what's notable and what isn't requires superhuman wisdom and cultural insight. And the wisdom of the crowds only gets you so far, especially with a small crowd.
* E.g. The Simpsons by inventing new - although often short-lived - slang and Schlock Mercenary through the rules found in the in-universe book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates, some of which have since found their way into the wild.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
How about suggesting an off site link for fan cruft?
Add an "other wiki" link to the subject page, point it at the sites that want to be registered to it. If link whoring is a problem, just make it plain text, unlinked.
People who want to know how much more damage the plasma pistol did in tier 3 vs tier 2 at patch level 1.05 in Dawn of War can then find it there.
Better yet, make it a "thisisnot.wikipedia" page. That way you can just flag something as an active wikipedia "sanctioned" (monitored) article and filter non sanctioned links from the "Real wiki" pages.
I'm amazed that so many people have responded to the OP without even glancing at any of Wikipedia's policies. They are very, very clear and explicit about just what policies are in place and why.
Wikipedia's notability guideline:
So, here are my questions for all of the poor, oppressed sci-fi trivia cataloguers out there, so mercilessly attacked by the cruel deletion fanatics:
Let's look at the OP's article, "Weapons of the Imperium (Warhammer 40,000)".
This leaves 1 source, in the entire article, which meets the "independent of the subject" guideline. It, however, is a commercial web site, dedicated to the sale of Warhammer 40,000 models, with dubious editorial control.
This article, despite its massive breadth and deep emotional investment, did not contain one single citation to a reliable source that was independent of the subject. That is why it was deleted.
The onus of explanation is not on Wikipedia's administrators, who are following very simple guidelines. It is up to the creators of this article, who failed to find one - one - reliable source about the topic, who clearly did not even attempt to read the requirements for inclusion on Wikipedia, to explain why the creators of Wikipedia should simply stand back and let people decide their rules for them.
Wikipedia is revolutionary. No site of its calibur of innovation has ever existed. It is supremely boneheaded to decide that just becaus
What I don't get is.. why aren't there simply categories to deal with the 'mess' that would 'otherwise' exist?
I put 'mess' in quotes because, thanks to search engines, there is no such thing as a real mess.
I put 'otherwise' in quotes because 'minor trivia' still co-exists with main articles as it is.
For example, try "Quark" at Wikipedia.
The main article is about the particle. Fair enough.
But then there's also "Quark (TV Series)", "Quark (Star Trek)". Why isn't the latter in e.g. "star_trek.en.wikipedia.org/Quark"? Or at "en.wikipedia.org/Star_Trek/Quark".
Similarly, why are there separate topics for "Top Quark", "Charm Quark", "Up Quark" and so forth - when these are really just different types of Quarks? Why aren't they simply sections in the main Quark article? Or, as per categories, why isn't there "en.wikipedia.org/Quark/Top_Quark".
That would be a lot more organized (although how to organize things may become a matter of debate) -and- would allow for everybody to put up their 'trivia' pages in whatever (sub)category would be appropriate. If somebody wants to devote pages to the various beverages of Star Trek, that can simply be tossed into the Star Trek/Drinks/ category, instead of making a 'mess' of the main Wikipedia space.
I am fully aware that, at least Star Trek, has its own dedicated Wikis - Memory Alpha being an excellent one - but these were borne out of necessities (such as the articles being prone to deletion, but admittedly also technical and political issues) that shouldn't have existed in the first place.
Am I the only one that wishes they had waited until they could rescue 65,536 articles instead of 63,559?
So close... and yet so far away.
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
See if that doesn't convince you of the soundness of Wikipedia's judgments (which, perhaps I should say, are not made by administrators, but hashed out in group discussions to which all Wikipedia editors may contribute).
"Sean Cragg is the coolest dude alive. he thinks. And he sneezes like he is Vomiting :P"
"Normo: A derogatory term to refer a person (Normal) who fears people with mental disabilities"
"Josh Himberg the man. He runs the NHS like its his bisnuss."
These are buried treasure?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a directory of everything.
If you want a directory of everything, try here:
No deletionism!
paintball
For example, I wrote an article about a band. This band has appeared on the cover of thrasher magazine, made music vidoes, and appeared in compilations with other notable bands. But, the same lame editor keeps deleting the article. "not notable enough"
Bah wikipedia.
Wikipedia only retains its value if it is reliable, unlike most of the nonsense that is posted on the web. The virtually unlimited amount of data that may be stored online is irrelevant as an argument for an all-inclusive policy by Wikipedia, if a large percentage of what is there is garbage. I support the deletion policy. If people want to put this stuff somewhere else, then that is fine.
What really gets me about wikipedia is stuff like I Am Rich. Nominated for deletion, the consensus wound up being to keep it. Not to redirect it but to keep it. Then, the nominator, having failed in his attempt to delete it, merges it, despite consensus to the contrary, into App Store. Later, another user comes along and deletes it, saying it's not important".
But wait - it gets better! The same guy nominates Heavy Metal (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) for deletion and fails in his attempt. So what does he do? Merges every episode, save that one, into Talk:List of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles episodes. You see - this user knows he couldn't get consensus by an AfD so he engages in backroom deals to gain support.
Of course, none of this tops Torchic. A front page featured article with 20 paragraphs and 46 citations now reduced to redirecting to a list of pokemon, with 2-3 paragraphs (depending on whether or not a one sentence paragraph counts) and no citations. Amazing stuff.
Basically, the admins of Wikipedia are trying to make WP into a 'legitimate' encyclopedia. Unfortunately, no high school or college prof in their right mind is ever, ever going to allow Wikipedia as a source in any sort of assignment. WP is useful for a quick lookup of something but considering it's about as reliable as Tom Cruise's sanity, anyone who relies on it is getting what they asked for.
So all these attempts to make Wikipedia a 'legitimate' information source are hilarious at best and sad at worst. Being a 'wikipedia admin' is not going to give you academia cred, ever, and it's not going to make for any sort of remotely useful e-peen. These deletions are just people trying, desperately, to make Wiki into something it never will be.
Whatever happened to Wikipedia being 'Everything about Everything?'
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
Better check it fast, though-- within one minute of writing it, I notice it's tagged for Speedy deletion!
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
My article, "List of delta encoding software" was deleted. I am glad somebody saved it.
http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=List_of_delta_encoding_software_(deleted_27_Jun_2008_at_16:47)
Thanks,
-John
I'd much rather see a Vulvapedia! :]
Just remember, wood is a hard, fibrous material found in many plants.
Though called as such for semantic ease, there's really no such thing as an editor who believes in deletion as a rule. Obviously that would leave you with nothing. The actual divide within the Wikipedia community is between:
1. People who believe that articles of encyclopedic quality, or articles that reasonably *could* be of encyclopedic quality, should remain on Wikipedia. This isn't just about article pages but article content as well -- bs shouldn't be allowed in an encyclopedia, period. This is what others like to paint as a "deletionist". This is the inclusionists' way of implying that these people have an agenda to delete articles, when in fact:
2. People who believe that every article written, save for redundancy, vandalism, or other technicalities, should be kept, regardless of whether claims are true or could even be proven. These are inclusionists, and their stated agenda is to keep everything.
From the false dichotomy of "inclusionist vs deletionist" you might assume that inclusionists are more open-minded or democratic. However, the reason why the WP community has sidelined inclusionism (yes, the *entire* community, not just mythological delete-crazy admins) is because it's a terrible policy. Inclusionists vote to keep an article no matter how poorly defined the scope is, no matter unremarkable its subject is, no matter how unverifiable its content is. More often than not, the article in question is written by a spammer, self-promoter, fanboy, or other form of advertiser. These are the issues where the debate heats up, because people advocating delete see the obvious attempt to use WP as an advertising vehicle, while inclusionists, being of a fanboy nature, want to act as roadies for whatever company or product is being promoted. If inclusionists had real power on WP, the encyclopedia would already have degenerated into Myspace.
I suspect most discussion of this issue outside WP isn't from WP regulars and they (i.e., maybe you) don't really understand the real issues involved. Inclusionists are the single most counterproductive force on Wikipedia. It's because of inclusionistic policies that WP's reputation as a trustworthy information source has been hampered. Simply ask yourself, what good is a wealth of data if you can't believe any of it? That's what the web is, and Wikipedia is not the web, it's an encyclopedia. Without the "deletionists" to keep the content in check, you wouldn't go to Wikipedia to get a list of Simpsons chalkboard quotes anyway, because half of them would be made up and by now, you'd know that half of everything on the site would just be complete bs.
It's always funny to me when people complain that an article was speedy-deleted by some allegedly power-hungry admin. First of all, in order to qualify for speedy deletion, your article has to be completely incomprehensible, nauseatingly ad-like, or a work of fiction (in any sense of the word). Secondly, anyone can take down a speedy deletion request. So if the article is deleted, that means not only did passing readers not object to the speedy deletion, it means that you yourself did not check in with the article to remove the tag. Please don't take a shit on WP and expect others to wipe your ass for you. If you didn't submit a proper article in the first place and didn't care enough to maintain it, you have no right to complain about that piece of crap getting deleted. Next time, at least pretend to write a real article.
Most of you never seen the policies on Original research/reliable sources/citations in action:they shape the content of most articles.Alot of useful/interesting stuff get lost just becuase bureaucrats don't like the sources.
Basically everything needs to cited inside reliable,open sites which are "credible" enough(e.g. New York Times).
If anyone would have a sane look at what wikipedia does to your information they would stay the fuck away and start their own site/wiki.
This kind of archive should be - and should have been from the start - an integral part of Wikipedia.
You just can't have any amount of deletions on a wiki and still call it a wiki. Deletes are everything that a wiki isn't - they are not undoable, they are not visible, transparent, attributable and they don't have a history. "Delete" on a wiki is originally a hack to solve technical problems. It should have been removed a long time ago, and replaced with something like "move to archive" or even "move to trashcan", as long as it stays and is still available for those who know where to look.
That would solve the whole deletionism war.
Well, the rational part of it. A lot of what that's really about is power and feeling important.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Well, so basically it should only contain the list of Britney Spears and Back Street Boys songs, plus the quick answers to high school tests? That's what the general audience is interested in.
Is quantum physics supposed to even be there, if we're talking about general audiences? As someone who had a genuine passion for physics, I can tell you that that shit is hard. It's abstract thinking at its finest. You can imagine bodies sliding down slopes in your head, or gases expanding in tubes, you can even picture relativistic stuff, but quantum mechanics pretty much requires you to not even try. Any kind of RL intuition you might apply to it is actually _the_ source of misunderstandings and getting it wrong.
So how many people genuinely need that on Wikipedia? For 99% of the population it's something they'll never really need, and would need more effort to understand than they're willing to put into anything. Some people probably aren't even wired to ever understand it. And I don't even necessarily mean that in an elitist or demeaning way, they're just wired for a whole other class of endeavours.
And whoever really needs to understand Hawking radiation, already has better sources than that. (And isn't that the mantra anyway? It's not a primary source, you need to check everything you read on Wikipedia.)
So is it a kind of geek masturbatory exercise too? It's most definitely _not_ for a general audience.
Seems to me like there isn't that much difference. If you don't want to read something, be it quantum stuff or the list of everything Bart wrote on the blackboard, don't look at those pages, right? It's not like someone drags you kicking and screaming to those pages.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Then, there were the waves of self-appointed petty tyrants who would delete your material or tell you what you were doing wrong, kind of like the petty tyrants who spring to life in every subdivision with a Home Owners Association.
Now there are entire armies of bots devoted to dissing and pissing on your original material that you put time, thought, and energy into. Who needs that shit.
Jamendo is one of the leading websites for creative commons licensed music. It is eminently notable... we need to remind these wiki twonks that wikipedia is the people's encyclopedia... written by the people, for the people...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I just went there to look for the snoopy calendar article and . . . the motherfucking cocksucking douchebags DELETED IT!!!!!!!!
SARAVA!
I think a good 90% of the articles I look up on wikipedia are of content which is slowly getting banned from there.
More and more I need to go on dedicated wikisites to find the information I'm looking for and it seems silly to me. I'm by no means a technology wiz in terms of how much server capacity an article like "the weapons of warhammer" eats up, but does it really hurt them to the point of deleting elaborate articles like that?
I can see how geeklore could hurt in a youtube "related" sort of system where you constantly get spammed with links to stuff you don't want. But wiki doesn't do that, so whats the problem?
There's not even a compelling bandwidth argument. The notion of whether something is encyclopedic might make sense when drawing a cut line for a print edition, but sending an elaborate 404 page isn't much different than sending a narrow-interest article in terms of bandwidth.
Granted, the supporting media isn't a limiting factor on on-line encyclopaedia like it is on dead-tree version. *but* there is still a limiting resource : netizens with enough interests to maintain the article.
I don't see what Wikipedia loses by keeping around narrow-interest articles as long as they're factual and neutral. If I happen to catalog all of the chalkboard gags, that takes nothing away from anything else. {...} Wikipedia does lose when there's a large number of truly worthless or misleading articles. Those should get the axe. But those are worthless or misleading because their data is absent or inaccurate.
Well, that's exactly where there's a conflict.
If you're the only single person interested in writing a list of chalkboard gags for wikipedia, chance are there won't be anyone else to maintain it and make sure it stay accurate and correct.
When a subjet is *definitely* too narrow, it's best to only leave in wikipedia itself a short summary (as a standalone article or a section in the Simpson's article) explain *what* these gags are, and then reference this list through a link pointing a separate wiki which is specialised in Simpson (I'm not sure but there's bound to be one somewhere).
That's already the case for lots of other stuff, StarWars universe is only described superficially in wikipedia and everything more detailed goes in Wookipedia. Star Trek doesn't need a full standalone page for every single minor caracter ever mentioned in the show : those usually are better living on Memory Alpha.
Even "House M.D." episode are shortly summarized with links to external blog which go into deep exhaustive details criticizing the medical accuracy for absolutely every detail.
Writing an article that mostly nobody does give a damn about doesn't stop at the writing. There's a lot of subsequent maintenance that needs to be done : fixing vandalism, removing spam, keeping it up-to-dat, correcting mistake, etc.
If a subject isn't popular enough, the article is going to rot.
There are already thousand of ultra specialised wikis out-there maintained by hard-core fans that are suffisently dedicated and no-lifers to attend correctly to such article as those articles deserve.
That's also why Deletionpedia plays a capital role : as a temporary graveyard where to store such kind of too much specialised lists, which are too much details and not enough interest for wikipedia. But don't have yet an actively maintained copy somewhere on some hardcore-fan wiki.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Id bet that they never got the 'Aerodynamic properties of fruit'
Time flies like a bannana....
I understand why I am marginalized, indeed I am into some pretty obscure shit, but I really felt insulted and dis served when I discovered the "Bill Dakota" page had been deleted. He has a place in history and certainly belongs in Wikipedia. When Deletionpedia gets done being slashdotted, I'm looking forward to a visit.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I'm a wikipedian, and a large portion of my contributions are on Wikipedia's articles for deletion page exactly because of this sort of behavior. The way I see it, Wikipedia has two issues at odds with one another:
1) All articles need to be verifiable. There is an overwhelming consensus that Wikipedia is not a repository of original thought, and everything needs to be sourced.
2) We should not bite the newcomers. As many other posters have mentioned above, when someone spends hours on an article only to see it deleted it is very frustrating, and this drives many editors away before they've had the chance to become useful contributors.
What I've been advocating for a while now is called the "pure wiki deletion system". Essentially, it proposes that instead of most deletions, we instead turn the article into a redirect or a 404 without removing the article history from public view. Deletionpedia works towards this goal and I approve of it, but really Wikipedia should be doing this itself. We need an end to the inclusionist/deletionist "us versus them" mentality and actually work towards consensus, not have an upperclass making rulings on our behalf. Sorry Jimbo, but being an administrator really is a big deal.
All it does is occupy a url harming nobody. If there is something more worthy of being at that url create a disambiguation page.
Wikipedia does what an encyclopedia does and it has 'pedia' in it's name, but it can do so much more without harming it's ability to function as an encyclopedia. It's like deleting the ability of a VCR to play videotapes because it's supposed to be a video cassete RECORDER.
Sewer rejects. Ha! I'm going to plagerize that....
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_curse_words :-( no sign of it, and it was geeky and great.
Hate, hate, hate the memory hole that Wikipedia throws deleted articles into. Kill the article if you must but leave some way to its history...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
I found a page on wikipedia referencing where I have worked for a long time. The page had alot of information that was incorrect, and lacked alot of information aswel. Please note that all our national competitors also have their own wiki pages.
So, I edited the page to corrospond to the truth in an unbiased fashion. I did not try to advertise" my company (believe me I am not the biggest fan of our co.). Needless to say the page was deleted because I was a "conflict of interest" since
I work here.
After that I stopped helping wikipedia with my volunteer work. It is retarded to think that correcting infactual information in a unbiased volunteer manner contributes to some sort of conflict of interest while the original page had sit for years exhibiting incorrect information. Yes, I am a conflict of interest and that does go against their norm-al rules, but none the less.. I mean.. own a IRC channel if you really need to get your rocks off banning things.
Whenever I see someone mention "fancruft" in an deletion debate, I respond back at them with Cruftcruft.
Or maybe some of the mods think you're trolling.
Convince them otherwise. If it is, in fact, unfair, it will be metamodded as such and the unfair moderations will disappear.
I doubt they will though.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Oh, the irony:
A Catch 22 for Wikipedia: Should Deletionpedia entry be deleted?
The Slashdot thread is referenced in both the article and the Wikipedia talk page.
Ian Lamont
The Industry Standard
In my experience at Slashdot (and I have quite a bit, if you look at my user summary... I think I started in 2001 or 2002), if you present an argument against the general consensus in a way that is thought-out, well-spoken, and most importantly not insulting , you'll get modded up.
Here, though, I think you're missing the point, and that is that I posted in several threads, if not my initial comment (I was the OP), that a) there is a bias in what administrators will vote to delete even if they find other policy reasons to do so, and b) that verifiability itself needs to be opened up so that first-party sources like the ones in the Warhammer article are accepted as sources in certain circumstances.
Let's take a look at what you said.
Your first line exclaimed your shock that many people did not look at (or possibly even know about) Wikipedia policies, and were thus simply going along with the "Slashdot flow". You then proceeded to beat us over the head with it by copying in place the notability guideline.
I made it very clear in my initial comment that I knew about Wikipedia policies (by mentioning three of the most common reasons for deletion); I've also been a Wikipedia contributor for a long time, though not nearly as much as a Slashdot user. I'm fully aware of the varying guidelines that Wikipedia has in place. You made the assumption that I, and those who agreed with me, did not know about the guideline you posted.
This, in itself, is insulting, and probably why those who modded you down did so.
You then proceeded to call those interested in such 'fancruft' topics "poor, oppressed sci-fi trivia cataloguers."
You then went on for a while about how Wikipedia was the be-all and end-all of websites, and how dare we think differently from their policies? (Of course, you shaded this by making the straw man that we want Wikipedia to accept everything we type into it, which nobody in this discussion has said.)
And to finish up, you claimed that "the sobbing ignorance on this whole page is depressing," again insulting those who would argue with Wikipedia guidelines.
I never directly insulted anyone in my initial post, and made my assumption in a positive direction -- that most people reading this article already have a basic grasp of Wikipedia policies, and, like I do, may disagree with them.
In summary, when debating, if you want to win minds over, do not:
If you avoid these things, and present a well thought-out idea (which, if you had written things differently, your initial post could have been), the idea might actually contribute to the discussion, rather than being mixed in with insults and assumptions about those with whom it disagrees.
You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
The whole point of moderation is to keep a certain non-negative tone of discussion on Slashdot, which, IMHO, is why people keep coming back. For all its faults, the moderation system brings interesting, insightful posts to the forefront while keeping those posts that have degenerated into immature arguments from being seen. This is what has happened to you here.
(PS: It looks like your default posting karma has been taken down to -1. You could probably make a new account if you want to start posting at 1 again.)
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I, the sarcastic bastard with the only contrary opinion on the whole site, backing it up with quotations, analysis, and incredibly detailed and well-supported explanations of my opinion, get a 1 and "10% Troll".
well see, your post was marked for speedy negative moderation (the marking is hidden so it only shows up to people with mod points) due to it's lack of notability and lack of reliable references (wikipedia is hardly reliable, it's run by powertripping wankers), and then all the powertripping mods here jumped on the modding you down bandwagon without really considering whether your post was notable or not, and ignoring the fact that even if it wasnt notable it wasnt really harming anyone to have it there. there was one or two people who tried to defend you but they were outnumbered by the powertripping mods.
ironic that it's the exact same behaviour that goes on at wikipedia that you were defending, but now that your on the pointy end of the stick it's a bad thing
in it's name
harming it's ability
"its".
the mods on wikipedia and the assholes are not like the real contributors, those with loud mouths are trying to censor and deleate everything that they didn't write because they are jealous and enjoys the attention they get when they turn to draconian ideas, the sad thing is that there are so many of these type of people (jimbo whales included) that wikipedia turns into this bureaucratic nightmare.