Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
The place went down while the story was still in the firehose.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Wikipedia has the problem that ... well, tons of things have both virtual and real:
It's a lot easier to delete work than to create it.
I mean, it took God-knows how many dozens of people to write that Warhammer guide after God-knows how many man-hours of work researching, typing, and editing it all. And it takes an editor 30 seconds to delete it all, poof, gone.
And of course, there are lots of a-holes who basically get their only joy in life from deleting somebody else's work; there's more than a little truth in those BOFH jokes. Some of those a-holes are Wikipedia editors, alas.
If I were Wikipedia, I'd solve this one of two ways:
1) Nothing gets *really* deleted; instead you can put Wikipedia accounts into "deleted articles mode" where it'll let you browse things that anonymous viewers don't see. This could be off by default, but it should definitely exist.
2) Deleting an article should require as much work as creating it in the first place. I don't know how this would be implemented.
Anyway, I don't contribute to Wikipedia anymore unless I'm working on an article that basically has absolutely no reason to be deleted. I don't create new articles as much, because I'm deathly afraid that the hours I put into writing it would disappear in seconds if some a-hole didn't like that I, for example, referenced the online version of a media source instead of digging through the library stacks.
Comment of the year
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.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a directory of everything.
If you want a directory of everything, try here:
No deletionism!
paintball
Thousands of people around he world doing charitable work over hundreds of years... not notable compared to an upstart webcomic charity that happens to be run by gamers? Your lack of knowledge about what freemasons do and stand for could be easily rectified by a well-written wiki article.
He didn't say freemasons aren't notable, he said Penny-Arcade is.