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.

Comments

wiki functionality

[yincrash]

if it uses mediawiki, it has wiki functionality. just not for you

also. i think it's slashdotted.

Re:wiki functionality

[omeomi]

Yup, it's slashdotted. I think this is a fantastic idea, though. As someone who has added a few pages to Wikipedia over the years, and who's had to try to get some page deletions overturned, I can tell you it's a huge pain when some overzealous admin comes along and speedy deletes a page that multiple people have worked on, and has been online for over a year. Wikipedia needs a better deletion review policy. Maybe this site will help illustrate that.

Re:wiki functionality

[WNight]

No, just that many "Wikipedia Admins" (as opposed to active editors who don't seek special status) are sewer rejects who flock to Wikipedia because it lets them abuse power. Deletionists especially are a fucking retarded subclass of the rest, whose sole contribution to society is deleting something someone else did.

Wikipedia rocks. It's too bad so many people are dedicated to pissing all over it.

Re:wiki functionality

[Tom]

Wikipedia rocks. It's too bad so many people are dedicated to pissing all over it.

The concept rocks.

The actual implementation leaves a lot to be desired. The simple fact that Deletionism has been a hot subject for debate for at least two years (probably longer) and they still haven't implemented a solution, where it took other wikis (say, Citizendium) about three months to do so, is testament to that.

I stand by my journal entry. As long as any random fucktard can come over and get my article, and thus possibly hours of work, deleted for no good reason, I see no reason to contribute those hours.

Re:wiki functionality

[Mr Z]

I stand by my journal entry. As long as any random fucktard can come over and get my article, and thus possibly hours of work, deleted for no good reason, I see no reason to contribute those hours.

I am inclined to agree. I'd rather have too much stuff and the problem of organizing it than too little. I find Wikipedia's standard of relevance occasionally capricious and arbitrary.

I'd rather that data that has a narrow and specific audience get factored into subarticles rather than deleted. After all, someone worked to bring the data into a presentable format. Deletion serves nobody except the lazy and uninterested. A "see also" type link which points to the true esoteric information would serve the hard-core.

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.

I guess what I am getting at is that filtering for quality is often more likely to be objective than subjective, filtering for relevance is sometimes a bit subjective, and filtering for appeal is much more so. High quality contributions are valuable, regardless of the broadness of their appeal. There are media for which it makes sense to draw a cut line, but a search driven electronic format isn't so constrained.

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. Sure, it won't be a featured article of the day. So what?

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. I imagine sheer peer recognition of their crumminess would force them out of commission.

Fancruft

[TheSpoom]

a collection of 63,559 deleted Wikipedia pages that range from "vanity entries" or obscure points of reference to heavily edited topics that Wikipedia administrators eventually deemed fan fiction

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.

Re:Fancruft

[mqduck]

Indeed, the most irritating thing about Wikipedia is the whole "notable" requirement that the Powers that Be seem to take very seriously. I can't understand someone who would want to restrict the amount of information available.

Re:Fancruft

[gad_zuki!]

The problem is that all the articles become unnavigable messses of shit trivia and geek mastubatry nonsense. The idea is that this should be a usable reference for a general audience, not a competition against other nerds to crap up articles.

Dont like it? Start your own wiki. Thats the real beauty of the internet. These guys did it and thank god that junk isnt crowding all the pages on wikipedia.

Also, im just sick of reading a general topic, something unrelated to sci-fi and then seeing links like "He also shares the name of a popular Anime character" or "Nuclear aggression was also a topic on this episode of Star Trek."

The deletion policies have really saved wikipedia from becoming a horrible testament to nerd memorization skills and boredom.

Re:Fancruft

[TheSpoom]

So here's a question. 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?

Remember, anyone could take an irrelevant link to the article out of other, more accessed articles where it doesn't belong, so the chances of someone seeing it would be next to nil with the exception of the Random Page button (which itself could weight pages by the number of accesses they've had already, or possibly number of incoming links a page has, in order to make the chances of finding such useless pages next to nil as well).

Besides, something as personal as a "daily morning routine" would be a perfect candidate to be moved to userspace... they could leave a redirect if you like.

Re:Fancruft

[TheSpoom]

So you don't like it, then?

Re:Fancruft

[TheSpoom]

Except you are not Wikipedia's users. I am not Wikipedia's users. I am one of them, but I don't deign to control what those users write. I don't think admins should be in that position either. If you want to create more mainstream articles, try to get people interested in creating them, not deleting other articles so that the mainstream ones have a larger overall ratio.

Re:Fancruft

[TheSpoom]

How does it detract? Again, the fact that articles are in the database doesn't make it any slower for you to find the article you're actually interested in. And if something is irrelevant to an article, the link inside that article can be deleted.

Basically, I'm saying that you should orphan where appropriate, but not delete. That keeps those who are looking for the "fancruft" you're not happy while still leaving the mainstream articles you want unmolested.

Re:Fancruft

[STrinity]

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"

A couple weeks back, someone went through and deleted all the cultural references for Venture Bros. episodes on the grounds that they were all original research and didn't include any quotes from the creators showing that the references were intentional. The deleted references included things like explaining that when a character says, "Like Patty Smyth before me, I am a warrior," he's referencing the hit song "The Warrior" by the band Scandal, of which Patty Smyth was the lead singer. When this was pointed out to him, he said that the episode wasn't a valid source.

Someone needs to create a new Wikipedia that's more Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy than Encyclopedia Galactica.

Nazi moderation at WikiPaedia

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Deletionism is bullshit

[deathtopaulw]

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.

Re:This is unbelievable.

[chromatic]

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.

Dismissing all primary sources as unreliable a priori would be silly, if it weren't so intellectually bankrupt.

Try ten clicks on the "random page" button.

[dpbsmith]

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?

Wikipedia Is Trying To Be 'Legit'

[Caraig]

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?'

Wikipedia page added

[Geoffrey.landis]

Well, it seems Deletionpedia is notable, so I wrote a Wikipedia page for it.

Better check it fast, though-- within one minute of writing it, I notice it's tagged for Speedy deletion!

Re:This is unbelievable.

[Xolotl]

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.

Which in this case is ridiculuous, Games Workshop created the Warhammer universe and retain creative control over it. It is thus impossible for an authoritative source listing the 'Weapons of the Imperium' to exist independently of GW; in fact, it is precisely the 27 books published by GW which should be considered the reliable source, and anything else is potentially unreliable.

To do otherwise is the same as deleting any entry about Harry Potter because the only source is the author, J K Rowling, or any entry about Star Wars which is based on the 6 movies, since that would not be 'independent' of George Lucas, leaving only the non-Lucas stuff. Clearly mad.

Specialized wikis

[DrYak]

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.