Slashdot Mirror
Debating "Deletionism" At Wikipedia
Ian Lamont writes "In a strange turn of events, the Wikipedia entry for Deletionpedia — an online archive of deleted Wikipedia articles — is now being considered for deletion. The entry for Deletionpedia was created shortly after the publication of an Industry Standard article and a discussion on Slashdot this week. Almost immediately, it was nominated for deletion, which has sparked a running debate about the importance of the Wikipedia entry, Deletionpedia, and the sources that reference it. For the time being, you can read the current version of the Deletionpedia entry, while the Wikipedia editors carry on the debate."
Delete. But that is because he is that way. And no other. None at all.
So that's like... meta-deletion?
My mind is officially blown.
The politically correct term is "Intelligent Unpublishing".
The article on circular logic.
Is the website notable? Has the mainstream media reported on it? Does it meet the requirements listed in WP:WEB, the guideline for website notability?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(web)
This should be all anyone needs to know to !vote on the issue. There is no 'special pass' for things that have been on Slashdot, or are about Wikipedia.
To keep it in check. Maybe two or three.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
not a great loss, but I wonder if they're picking and choosing which articles to save, or if they're only doing stuff after a certain date.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
But what if an article should ever be deleted from Deletionpedia?
I sense the LHC is becoming redundant here!
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
So you're saying that all you have to do is pass some 'notability' threshold, or buy the necessary media coverage (don't bore me with claims of journalistic integrity), and you're done?
Great. We all know what kind of site Wikipedia has evolved into, we just haven't settled on the price.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I really love Wikipedia and I sure hope I'm wrong, but I think we've seen Wikipedia at it's peek. As with many ventures that become successful they move from innovation to stability and with that become widely popular which creates new pressures and brings in other interests, and then in turn leads to the degradation of the service as people squabble about how things should be done. I've seen this with special interest groups and clubs of all kinds. It can be particularly difficult to counter. An organisation either survives these things and becomes stronger for the learning the members have done, or else it succumbs to the storm of shite and fades into insignificance.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
It won't be deleted.
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
I just was too amused by the idea of an article on Deletionpedia, a listing of articles deleted from Wikipedia, in the Wikipedia
Although, actually, it really is notable enough to deserve an article.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
If the highlighted phrase is true, then it indicates that the high priests at Wikipedia are totally beyond control and beyond the pale.
There is no more important function in a community encyclopedia than self-criticism. It is part of its foundation, a self-referential examination of its integrity and transparency.
I am really hoping that that line from TFA is false, and that the discussion about deleting the Deletionpedia page from Wikipedia is unambiguously declared invalid by WP editors.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Deletionpedia is newsworthy, especially now that there's a controversy afloat. (See the Streisand Effect.) The appearance of impropriety is often worse than the scandal itself, so Wikipedia ought to just leave the entry be lest it be accused of censorship.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
It needs to be deleted, just to ensure that it ends up in Deletionpedia.
Wikipedia editors have also started deleted popular open source projects which don't have book or magazine articles by anyone aside from projects maintainers or contributors. This does not surprise me that they would be also be deleting other things that show their deletion records as well especially when they are going completely overboard with their deletions.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I don't think there is any value in deletionpedia or any similar repository. Just because you/anybody else/I have something to say does not make it relevant or useful. There is certainly an argument to be made regarding the meaningfulness of that statement when applied to a 'crowd-sourced' and moderated compendium of information. However I am far more comfortable with the idea of a for-the-most-part-ok yet flawed system rather than allow every idiot a soapbox. The latter seems to affect MSM in this country quite a bit and we all know how that is going.
...unavailable for comment
Wikipedia's notability guideline (note it's not actually an official policy) has all sorts of loopholes built in to it to allow a clique of editors to kill something they don't like. In this case, they would argue that Deletionpedia was not really notable in and of itself, but was only notable because of some notable incident which might be worthy of having a separate article (but that article would likely never be written, or would itself be deleted on some other grounds).
I'm getting sick of people trying to advertise their little project on Wikipedia then claiming that Wikipedians are a bunch of power hungry whatsits.
Seriously. It's ridiculous how many people think their little game or website deserves an article... a lot of people on /. have probably followed some kind of small FOSS project and now hold a disdain towards Wikipedia just because their little project couldn't get an article.
Blah.
One problem I feel is that a page should have considerable time of protection. As you can see, the buzz of deletionpedia is still growing, so it is actively becoming notable. If articles that were correct could have 30 days to build their cases that would at least be some improvement.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Just redirect it to here.
Make an Includopedia and a Deletepedia. That way everyone is happy.
The debate is over. The result of the discussion was keep. See talk page.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Since, if deleted, the Deletionpedia article on Wikipedia will be archived on Deletionpedia....
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
...is simple. There seem to be a plethora of users there who relish intellectual masturbation. I bet a lot of these folks would give God a "B" for creating the universe.
Don't even have to buy it. From doing a Google News search, it looks to me like the controversy over deleting the Deletionpedia entry is going to make it notable even if it didn't start out that way.
In fact, the fact that the controversy over deleting the deletionpedia page is itself notable makes me very tempted to write a Wikipedia article "Deletionpedia Deletion Controversy"...
On the other hand, I guess that might be pushing it a little too far, though.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It's a totally orthogonal issue. If you're suggesting that Wikipedia hides information critical of itself, that's not true, there are many examples in project space. For article space though, it's proper to stick to the same criteria that's used for every other article. Otherwise you're arguing that Star Wars should mention how much it sucked in the movie itself (i.e. in its primary product) rather than just discussing it in the DVD extras.
We apologise again for the fault in the deletion. Those articles mentioning the deletion of the articles that have just been deleted, have been deleted.
One thing I noticed in the AfD comments that seems like a pretty good idea was to have any Wikipedia articles that get deleted be instead transwikied to Deletionpedia.
Naturally, that's not as good as not deleting them from Wikipedia in the first place...but it seems to me that at least it solves the problem of the work being lost entirely when the AfD finishes and the article is sent into the aether.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
The problem with that is, what does that gain Wikipedia? Nothing. It loses facts. Granted, they might be badly written, or some might be poorly-researched, but deletion doesn't gain Wikipedia anything. Granted, deleting obvious spam written like an advertisement gains Wikipedia something, but deleting articles gains Wikipedia nothing
Ok, I'll admit, it might save them a few kilobytes of bandwidth or a gigabyte of storage, but honestly, bandwidth and storage are dirt cheap these days.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
If you saw some of the absolute crap that comes in as new articles on an hourly basis, you would quickly see the merit of deleting at least a few things. I've lost count of how many articles about garage bands that formed a month ago, childish "_____ is the coolest person ever!!!", vanity articles, and loony diatribes that I've marked for speedy deletion.
Well... it's not your statue, remember it.
Deletionist: "Bah, this statue you people created has too many rocks sticking out..."
*Snap*
Artist: "But... those were arms..."
Deletionist: "NO U SUXORS I MAKE BETTR."
It's not true. See the debate for yourself. The vast majority of the arguments have to do with the scarcity of reliable third-party sources discussing Deletionpedia. The only people who even mentioned intolerance of criticism are people against deletion of the article, using it as a strawman to undermine the opposing argument:
No one has a problem with criticism of Wikipedia; there is a massive article on that exact topic.
But see what happened? The author said it, you repeated it, now suddenly everyone's going to assume it's fact, without even looking at the discussion. The ability for one person's random opinion to become fact is exactly why Wikipedia is so insistent on reliable sources and citations.
The whole debate is caused - IMHO - by having a bad versioning system as the Wikipedia's backend. Deleting and undeleting whole articles should be as transparent and open as deleting and undeleting paragraphs within an article. The history feature provides such transparency. Currently, instead, deleted articles are zapped: inaccesible, unreadable, unrecoverable. Allowing history access (and an option in "advanced search") for deleted articles would make this issue a lot simpler.
Maybe it should just be redirected to the Russell's paradox page?
Yeah.. except that for an encyclopedia you don't start with a bunch of words and remove them until you have it just right. You start with nothing. You write something. You revise it. Maybe you do remove some. But then you write even more. It should be always growing. I think there should be a tendency to revise articles to get them up to encyclopedia standards, instead of just deleting them because they don't fit the standard yet.
I agree with you 100% that Wikipedia has peaked. The quality of most articles is dropping over time, because anybody halfway sane doesn't want to pore autistically over a watchlist of cherished articles to make sure they don't succumb to entropy.
On the other hand, that doesn't mean that every dispute on WP is pointless, or that either side could be right on every issue. One bogus argument that's always posed by people who don't want their articles deleted is that it's not a paper encyclopedia, so there's no reason to keep the whole thing under a certain page count. Well, suppose Fred creates an article on his high school band, Fredsband, which only actually consisted of himself and his golden retriever. Every single time a user searches for "golden retriever," one of the hits is going to be the article on Fredsband. Also, when you have an article that's non-notable, it tends not to be linked to any other articles, and you get these little disjoint subsets of WP that are unhealthy. They can become havens for crackpots, or honeypots for spam links.
Find free books.
I will end this post with a quote from George Orwell's Animal Farm
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
It's marked for deletion!
us: 1
deletionists: 9987687
we've a long way to go yet before we can really say this saga is over
A couple years ago a wiki page was created about a friend of mine who ran a website, in addition to a wiki page about the website itself. It appeared to have been made by some fan who never made themselves known.
It wasn't long of course before these deletion-happy admins nominated it for speedy deletion. The decision was proving to be unanimous. And, I for one didn't blame them. A wiki page for an administrator of a website seemed rather silly.
My friend agreed. He didn't feel that he really should be on the site and decided to go to the deletion page and weigh in on the issue. He told the wiki admins who he was and that he wanted the page deleted thinking this would solidify the consensus that had for the most part already been reached. I think the quote was something along the lines of "I don't want to be on your gay-ass site, so I'd appreciate it if you just hurried up and deleted it before I leave you all with a fist-sized, mushroom-shaped bruise on all of your faces."
Not surprisingly, all of the admins had a change of heart and all decided they wanted to keep the page.
I once got an article deleted that was fairly obscure, but relevant and worth a place in wikipedia nonetheless. After several months someone nominated it for speedy deletion, and it got deleted! I disputed the deletion with an explanation of why it was relevant, and got it reinstated; at the same time, I left a comment on the page's discussion (a reply back to the guy that deleted it) very professionally and unemotionally defending the article. Although I could tell he was a little peeved, he ended up letting it go and has since not tried to delete it or any other of my further articles.
Another reason for deletion is articles that constitute original research rather than encyclopedia articles. I have advocated the deletion of several articles that are really an original synthesis of ideas from unrelated sources. Such articles can be very interesting and perhaps there should be an originalresearchopedia for their bloody carcasses after a successful deletion, but they don't belong on an encyclopedia.
Liberal nazis who censor things by deleting them. Deleted Wikipedia articles usually end up on Uncyclopedia and get made into funny articles that are more factual than the articles on Wikipedia that are not deleted. No offense to modern liberals or classic liberals who are nothing like liberal nazis. Barack Obama is a John F. Kennedy modern liberal and not at all like the liberal nazis that hacked Sarah Palin's email, or liberal nazis on MSNBC, NPR, PBS, Moveon.org, or blogs that do personal attacks and political smears. Not all liberals are nazis, but some if not all of the admins on Wikipedia appear to be. Uncyclopedia is liberal nazi free, just modern liberals, classic liberals, anarchists, communists, libertarians, moderates, conservatives, neocons, independents, and others who join together to write funny, but not stupid, articles. Liberal nazis usually get banned at Uncyclopedia, or we make funny articles about them instead if they keep coming back with web proxies.
At least they aren't Conservapedia the Conservative Wiki that only Neocons can edit.
Read Wikitruth for the reasons why many of us don't want to use Wikipedia anymore. Even a humor Wiki like Uncyclopedia is managed way better than Wikipedia ever will be, and we are all volunteers who do work for free.
The Uncyclopedia article was deleted and put back many times as well on Wikipedia. Apparently Jimbo and the sockpuppet Admins think we aren't notable enough to have an article on us.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I guess deletionpedia suggested this to be deleted as an attempt to make a publicity stunt.
Well, it worked since slashdot is apparently full of morons who think that page actually got deleted - while in fact the discussion is over and it has been decided not to delete it, I for one I am tagging this 'getoverit'
Nonsense. You're honestly arguing that because someone, somewhere, spent the 10 seconds to 10 minutes required to put up a half-baked paragraph or two on wikipedia, it must be factual?
We all place entirely too much faith in Wikipedia's accuracy. And that, in a word, is what deleting half-baked articles gains Wikipedia. Accuracy.
Not that it could ever truly be accurate, but still, if there wasn't a focus on deletion of Wikipedia articles, Wikipedia would be about as informative as a straight text dump of every post on Slashdot with moderation info removed. (Actually, Slashdot might win out.)
I am definitely a deletionist at WP. I take a similar attitude to the sculptor that removes all the bits of stone that don't look like the statue... I remove all the bits of text that don't look like encyclopedia articles.
Perhaps you should instead approach each entry as an individual statue, and reshape them (as opposed to discarding them) if they're ugly and malformed.
In other words, improve the entries by making them look like proper encyclopedia articles instead of arbitrarily deleting them.
When "Articles for Deletion" discussions work the way they should be, editors delete, admins only implement the will of the people. The major exceptions are borderline cases and cases when there is very little discussion.
I'm not saying things always work the way they should, just that when Wikipedians follow their own rules, the admin that does the deleting rarely gets to be a party to the decision.
Sure, there is that grey area between "delete" and "no consensus" and the occasional discussion where the "!vote count" does not match the strength of the arguments and the closing admin has to make a real judgment call on the strength of the arguments for keep vs. delete in light of policies and guidelines. It's these cases that separate a so-so admin from a good admin: A good admin will explain why he is deleting or not deleting and do so in a way that leaves most people satisfied.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If things like original research, notability, etc. weren't grounds for deletion, then Wikipedia's quality would go downhill fast.
Probably the best thing that could happen to Wikipedia is if search engines would start rating each article page on its own merits. That would eliminate the major motivation to try load up "novelty bio crap" like a bio of my wife who teaches a freshman class at the local junior college as well as other "ooh look at me/my product" novelty pages.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The article is about a site that archives deleted Wikipedia articles. Amusingly, there's a discussion as to whether or not this is notable.
Yet the AfD/Speedy Delete discussion in the talk page is the PERFECT example of why Deletionpedia exists. This article is, appropriately, the poster child of its archived brethren who have passed into the Great Beyond (i.e. BALEETED).
You know, in all the time I've spent at Wikipedia, I've yet to see even one instance of this fabulous mythical beast, the "deletionist", whose identifying characteristic is that he wants things deleted for the sake of deletion.
Have I heard reports of deletionists at work? Why, of course I have! But like the reports of Bigfoot or the Mothman or the Jersey Devil, they never quite pan out. The "deletionist" is a vicious, self-important dictator, who wants to wipe out someone's hard work just to prove his own power. What always seems to be found at the site where the "deletionist" was supposedly sighted was an editor who thought the article was a hoax (frequently because none of Wikipedia's rules about PROVIDE YOUR DAMN SOURCES were paid attention to) or an editor who thinks the subject has failed to demonstrate encyclopedic notability (your favorite restaurant may be a great place, but Wikipedia can't afford to give an article to every single "great place" in the world; what makes this one merit an article?) or who had some other concern about the article.
In short, when editors suggest that an article should be deleted, they usually have article-specific reasons for thinking it should be deleted. Sometimes those reasons are wrong; I've seen those reasons be VERY wrong. But this stereotype of "the deletionist" is a straw man and the most frequent use of it I've seen has been by people who didn't know what they were actually doing on Wikipedia, trying to blame those who did know what they were doing for their failure to get their way.
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
Is either deleted or it's not.
I really hope that this /. article serves as a wakeup call to Wikipedian moderators.
Member of the 7 Digit UID Club
It gains a reputation as a professional, efficient information source. Or at least it may, if PR disasters like every Slashdot discussion on the topic of deletion were contained there.
From the POV of the average highly involved wikipedian all they are seeing here is a demonstration of a painful lack of knowledge about Wikipedia by the commentators. Heh even the choice of the word "moderators" is somewhat problematical.
Wikipedia editors, are they all wankers, or does it just seem that way?
Just registered deletionism.com, and then on second thought realize that deletionist.com was likely the far more valuable one...
"Deletionist" sounds like a new 21st century occupation, involving one or more of the following:
* Spam filtering and deletion
* Extranous information removal (ie. the wikipedia sections being discussed)
* Sanatizing information stores
* On-line reputation management
Regardless, IMHO, "Deletionist" is highly brandable - intiutive name for a website offering deletion related services. Welcome thoughts.
Ron
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 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.
A sprawling article of 350KB does no-one any good. Wikipedia articles should be concise summaries of the topic. Too many articles on WP are bullet point lists of referenced facts, with no overall narrative structure. Keeping a high signal-to-noise ratio requires filtering out all the noise. Too many wikipedians believe that a mention in a reliable source means something is notable. Newspaper quotes are the worst - newsworthy is not the same as noteworthy.
Folks like to blame the nebulous 'Admins' [high priests] for Wikipedia's problems, but there's no shortage of rank-and-file editors who've drunk deeply of the kool-aid. And that rank-and-file have long been willing to send anything that smacks of the Wikipedia criticism down the memory hole without any commandments from the high priests.
None of the community encyclopedia's to date exhibit that trait to any extent.
Leave those new band wikipedia entries alone.
I'm a music writer, and I'm also section editor of an online music/movie reivew website. The section I edit is the "new artist" section (we call it FIND).
My job is to find all the information I can about new bands. Here's the problem:
1. often press releases are insufficient or leave out pertinent, possibly negative information (understandable, that's what p.r. people are for)
2. band websites are often run by labels. labels don't give each artist the same ammount of attention, and often really good bands fall through the cracks because of it. many 'official' band websites are 'under construction' for years
3. myspace is unreliable...it's good to hear some tracks and keep up with show dates but like press release, sometimes important info that a journalist needs to know is left out
wikipedia is an invaluable starting point for the research I do...save the 'indie' band entries!
Thank you Dave Raggett
and the choice of the word "problematical" is...
Have you considered Transwikism?
I'm surprised someone hasn't attempted to make some sort of wikipedia-reader yet. It seems like you could have a firefox extension or seperate program or whatever that could merge articles between wikipedia, deletionpedia, that star wars opedia, conservapedia, whatever else you felt like was appropriate for your 'pedias that would bypass some of the deletion problems. It would probably get complicated as hell when dealing with identical pages and things like that but it would be interesting to see how it worked out,.
You're shirking your responsibility as an editor to actually edit pages, in favor of lazily deleting out of hand. That, right there, is what's wrong with the Wikipedia.
Yet, that massive article does not mention the existence of Deletionpedia at all, which is self-fulfilling since lack of citation contributes to the alleged "lack of notability" of Deletionpedia.
In any event, Deletionpedia is certainly notable now --- millions of clicks have ensured it.
And this attitude is why no one likes Wikipedia. Good job driving away the people you're "helping" with your deleting.
You make a good point. They should say in Star Wars movies how much Star Wars sucks. But it should go further. They should also put that warning into their posters, and their teevee advertisements. "Warning: Star Wars sucks! But you're such a weenie you're going to watch it anyway and enjoy it. But please remember, Star Wars sucks and normal people would rather pretend that it doesn't exist. So please shutup about it."
The limiting resource here is not disk space. It's administration.
Wikipedia needs to be administrated. The more articles, the harder it is to administrate. Thus, eliminating CRAP improves the content overall.
Additionally, Wikipedia needs to avoid being turned into an ad factory. Letting anyone put up an 'article' advertising their own pet project, if left unchecked, turns Wikipedia into an ad factory.
A list of articles deleted from Wikipedia is NOT AN ARTICLE! It's a list. Wikipedia is not a collection of lists.
paintball
The problem with that is, what does that gain Wikipedia? Nothing. It loses facts. Granted, they might be badly written, or some might be poorly-researched, but deletion doesn't gain Wikipedia anything. Granted, deleting obvious spam written like an advertisement gains Wikipedia something, but deleting articles gains Wikipedia nothing
Wikipedia's reputation suffers whenever articles have incorrect information. Articles on non-notable topics (i.e., those without other works written about them) tend to accumulate incorrect information, which can't be checked because of the lack of sources. It's best to delete articles that can't be fleshed out in a verifiable way, and restore them later if it becomes necessary, in order to protect the reliability of WP.
Which set is Deletionpedia going to belong to? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_paradox Well I know that we're not strictly talking about sets here, but it should still spark some debate. And what if the above page ends up in Deletionpedia? The paradox will become part of the paradox!
I've rarely run into problems like that when I wrote decent stubs (at least a few sentences, ideally, say, two paragraphs) with footnotes to the sources I used, which were things other than geocities websites; for example, publications of the local government, or books published by the local historical society, or articles in at least semi-mainstream media.
Even then you occasionally run into someone who wants to delete it, but it really is much less frequent if your articles are solidly sourced.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I believe Wikipedia needs more democracy in it's decision-making, that's it. They should get rid of that "this is not voting, but consensus making" line and "Wikipedia is not a democracy" mantra. Voting means clear rules about what the consensus actually is, and also that the things are decided, for better or worse. Unclear rules only favor people who seek power. It also needs things like admin recall, finer division of admin privileges, and so on.
Those who can, so. Those who can't delete. It's their way of feeling that they're "contributing", even if it is in fact in a negative way. I for one have long given up contributing anything to Wikipedia, because it's just too much of an uphill struggle to keep any article that I know anything about even remotely free from gradual erosion.
In the words of Monty Python: "Yes, well, that's the sort of blinkered philistine pig ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage. You sit there on your loathsome, spotty behinds, squeezing blackheads and not giving a tinker's cuss for us struggling artists. You excrement! You whining, hypocritical toadies with your color TV sets and your Tony Jacklin golf clubs. Well I wouldn't become a Freemason now if you got down on your lousy, stinking, purulent knees and begged me!"
This is where knol beats Wikipedia, your articles can't be deleted. They can be ignored if they're rubbish, but that's all.
I won't put my content on Wikipedia precisely because I don't want to have some bored kid editing it and messing things up, or having some mod who doesn't agree with what I say deciding to dispose of the information.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Illiad has a nice definition :)
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19980530&mode=classic
Kind of like something out of 1984. Wikipedia is supposed to be this massive work that people can only ADD to, meaning that if you edit something, the prior versions are still there for viewing. Well, this is only true until something is deleted. And that's simply not right. A central authority erasing text that doesn't meet their agenda is just what the Ministry of Information does in 1984.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
And that, in a word, is what deleting half-baked articles gains Wikipedia. Accuracy.
There is no proof, none, nada, that accurate articles are kept and inaccurate ones are deleted.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
10 WHY IS WIKIPEDIA SO INACCURATE
20 "Well, let me just delete all the unsourced material to leave it with a balanced summ-"
30 NO STOP DELETING STUFF KEEP IT IN I CANT BELIEVE YOU EVIL DELETIONISTS WANT TO DESTROY ALL MY HARD WORK
40 GOTO 10
I was an editor there for a while until I just couldn't deal with the constant rehashing of "these are the rules/guidelines, they are displayed prominently on all relevant pages" on every single AfD, as well as the stupid drama and the infinite patience the community had with clear vandals ("*USER* IS A FAGGOT NIGGER" = "Please do not make test edits outside of the sandbox"). Users whine about having their 5 page manuscript on their cat's behaviors deleted as a ten second destruction of all their hard work but show total disregard for the infinitely more people patrolling New Pages, AfD, PROD, etc's time being wasted. This is mostly because the system has been built up to have multiple levels of redundant band-aid processes. For example, there are three ways to delete an article:
If it meets certain criteria that apply to a lot of unsuitable pages, you can "speedy delete" it - since you're not supposed to tag anything if it doesn't clearly meet those criteria, deleting the tag itself is an act of vandalism, you're supposed to copy paste a {{hangon}} template and then justify your reasoning on the talk page. This never works: editors misapply the tag repeatedly, users don't bother to read the template or don't have enough time to write out anything detailed because the article will be deleted quickly.
Then you've got PROD, which is speedy-lite: you tag it, give a short justification, and if the thing isn't "challenged" by the article's creator or anyone else by removing it, it's deleted after a set period. If it is, you're supposed to always take it to AfD, but many people will just give up because nominating something for AfD is a 15 step process which involves collecting rare plants and taking them to seven pillars, then casting a spell and defeating a goblin in hand to hand combat. People don't browse the PROD queue, so the only people that end up taking off the tag are...surprise! The original creator of the article! PROD is essentially just a series of bets that the original creator won't delete the tag and take it to AfD before the time expires, and the admin isn't tired enough from deleting crap all day that they'll agree with the justification.
And then there's Articles for Deletion, which consists halfway of stuff that should be handled through either of the two above processes (if they worked properly), short vanity articles that end up having one or two "delete" comments and then are closed, or spiral into large debates in which each editor's opinion is supposed to not be a "vote", but if the closing admin rejects a pure tally, always seem to agree with toward the most simplified, spoon-fed argument. As mentioned above, nominating one is a rather tiring and complex set of edits which involves making three separate template changes on three separate pages, putting in a arbitrary "category" that is never useful to anyone, and writing a hopefully detailed summary of why it should go poof at the same time. This is "Web 2.0", right? Why can't I click a box or a dropdown? Is this a modified "security through obscurity" thing where deletionism is purposefully put through so many different steps that nominating a sequence of articles (never try to nominate more than once at a time, the syntax is a nightmare) is discouraged with the time-wasting complexity of it?
Plenty of this relies on templates and user-mediated process that would be made completely moot overnight if the MediaWiki developers got off their asses and started working on and implementing features that go beyond "flagged revisions" such as tagging articles for deletion via a tab and dropdown menu, then putting "speedy" articles in a queue where one or two other editors give it a check to make sure it's properly tagged and the article goes poof (without an administrator needin
Poor quality articles do no good for anyone. Wikipedia is, at its heart, darwinian. Good text will remain. Deleted text can be re-added with the click of a button. It only stays deleted if it deserves to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Isomorphic/Essays/Deletionism/ is a good essay on the subject.
been decided the article will remain.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bored housewives and the like are always successful at holding sites such as Wikipedia to ransom. People with lives have no hope of keeping up.
has become less important that those who administrate it on Wikipedia.
I threw in the towel last year, it really is more annoying to work on articles than rewarding.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Wikipedia is not an entertainment product, it's an encyclopedia project. At least, I hope so.
May the Maths Be with you!
There is a difference between editing and deleting. You can edit a page to remove original research and poor content, but then there is a history page so someone can see what the edit was (and, if you made a good comment, why you made it).
If you delete a page, it's gone. Only admins can see it. To everyone else, it looks like the page was never there. If a page is poor quality, then rewrite it, don't delete it. Deleting poor content is a lot easier than creating good content, but that doesn't make it a better choice.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Wikipedia has a long history of deleting links to websites that criticize Wikipedia. Because this would look bad as an explicit policy they do it under the guise of non-notability. This is nothing new.
While I agree that the Wikipedia editors don't always get things right, if you look through the articles on Deletionpedia for even a single day, you'll see that they clear out tons and tons of utterly worthless drivel.
I think they do a good job. If so much stuff wasn't deleted, every single high school, crappy teenage rock band, self-promoting looney and local newsletter would have an entry, not to mention the thousands of entries that kids add all the time saying "DAVE G. IS GAY LOLOLOL!!!!" and the whole thing would be overwhelmed by crap.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
The parent would appear to be correct. There was never mention of a 1997 date ever being in the article. GP needs to explain themselves, or retract their previous comment.
May the Maths Be with you!
Granted, deleting obvious spam written like an advertisement gains Wikipedia something, but deleting articles gains Wikipedia nothing
Actually, deleting non-notable, trivial and unimportant stuff gains them being an encyclopedia.
Back in the impressionist days in Paris, The Salon de Refuse was 10 times more popular than the salon for artwork. People are just fascinated to see what doesn't make the cut, since what does tends to look very self-similar because of the rules to "make the cut".
stuff |
...is simple. There seem to be a plethora of users there who relish intellectual masturbation. I bet a lot of these folks would give God a "B" for creating the universe.
Increasing entropy in a game "you can't win, you can't break even, you can't leave"? Mass suffering of billions, random rules of right and wrong, hundreds of religions where you have to pick "the right one" or go directly to Hell without passing go, without collecting 200 talents?
If there were a god (obviously, there isn't), I think a grade of B would be woefully over-generous. D- at best, more likely F, with a requirement to do the work over (and stop playing Doctor with Satan), on pain of getting a 0 for the entire course. I can think of half a dozen better designs, non involving the eternal circling of the entropy drain, and that's just on one lunch break.
Hell,
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
No proof?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4530930.stm
The problem with that is, what does that gain Wikipedia? Nothing. It loses facts. Granted, they might be badly written, or some might be poorly-researched, but deletion doesn't gain Wikipedia anything.
Here's the nub, and two salient points that people sometimes forget.
1) For those that claim that all information is important and worthwhile even if it's badly written and organised, they seem to forget that (a) we already have such a repository that can- and always will- beat Wikipedia hands down. It's the whole World Wide Web and a search engine!. Oh, and (b) this is where the vast majority of information on Wikipedia comes from anyway! Wikipedia's strength is that it organises information into a usable and readable form.
2) Wikipedia itself has *always* claimed that it's not meant to be an original source of information; therefore, its job is to collate and re-present information in a more useful format- see (1) above. Otherwise, what's the point?
I'm not a rabid deletionist by any means, but the problem with the more extreme "keep everything" viewpoints is that they're essentially trying to redo the whole web. I'll take a readable and useful WP article over one that's "complete" but no more useful than what I could find with Google anyday. It has nothing to do with saving a few pennies of space on a cheapass Seagate HDD.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The Wikipedia folks seem to be very self-involved. They actually seem to think they're on some grand crusade and are under attack. It's actually sad. Since keeping deleted articles on some alternative site calls into question whether or not it should have been deleted by one of their own, it's embarrassing to them. Sort of like their unwillingness to deal with a sock puppeteer when it's pointed out to them:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/19/wikipedia_civil_servant_scandal/
Most deletionists are female.
Most content is written by males.
http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Category:Deletionpedia:Pages_with_100_or_more_editors
I'd never known about this before. I checked it out just to see what subject areas were being deleted. I was really shocked that several warhammer entries were deleted. Damn, that's like deleting the entry on WOW or Starcraft. I'm more of the opinion that sort of crap needs to stay there, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
I'm really into webcomics. Wikipedia has already waged one war on webcomics. If you aren't sluggy or megatokyo then you aren't likely to stay there for long. If you want decent webcomic info you have to go else where.
This could have been read in the previous article's comment section, and that was enough.
So it isn't the software but the settings they're using? There is no way to read the contents of that deleted article.
If a paragraph has been removed in an article, I can still read it in the history. Even put it back, without even having an account. Wikipedia were the folks who dared to do that!
And yet they have this inconsistent policy of article removal, controlled by an elite who are the only ones who can touch it. It's just weird.
While we respect your right to talk about Star Wars, the rest of us are talking about Wikipedia, a community encyclopedia.
The overlap with your analogy of a private film is nil.
I just found out an article about comparison of Iraq war and Vietnam war got deleted because of "comparison of the war." I was wondering as a reason why it can't be there? Anyone?
This reminds me of that time you posted about how you don't like Wikipedia.
Maybe I'm just bitter and tired here on a Monday morning, but I'm confused as to why we care what Wikipedia does? It seems like there's always some news blurb about something going on over there, and I just don't understand why it gets so much attention.
I, like hundreds of thousands of others, use it for research on occasion. It's a great tool. It also has great tools internal to it for moderation and administration. So why do internal policies need to be debated on external sites?
Someone should nominate the deletion criteria pages for deletion. Let's delete anything that describes rules about what should be deleted.
Read the sentence again.
I had to call out one particular mod on his discussion page and on the Jonathan Ive page, because he considered my changing of the iMac's introduction from 1997 to 1998 "vandalism" (a change I had to make FIVE times), and it was FINALLY changed.
Where does it say that the changing of information was on the Johnathan Ive article? It says that the "mod" was called out on his discussion page and on the Jonathan Ive page. The call out was apparently there, not the original changing of dates. Unless I'm reading it horribly wrong, that's what the sentence says.
There were a bunch of entries I tried to add to Wikipedia. I went to repost the links to one of my projects (WiFiMaps.com) in the wardriving section, only to be deleted within seconds by some spam nazi. I tried to add an article about my grandfather (one of Duke Ellington's road managers), only to be deleted. Spelling corrections, link adjustments, and other edits quietly deleted, and my account being flagged as spam -- I've had accounts longer than some of these admins. They freaking deleted the article on spam nazis multiple times!
I am unable to contribute to Wikipedia because of this. Great idea, great resource, but it is no longer the Encyclopedia that Anyone can edit. I maybe have time and energy to do spelling corrections, fix links -- stuff like that. I don't' have the time and energy to fight some admin for weeks to have a link go to a (more appropriate) article, or add something that should already be up there. I don't bother anymore.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
It needn't take a lot of effort to promote self-criticism within Wikipedia though.
All one has to do is to add a note about self-criticism and self-reference to the definition of "notability".
Deletionpedia is very "meta" after all with respect to Wikipedia, ie. it's part of Wikipedia's self-referential habitat, just like Discussion pages are. Anything self-referential like that should not be treated uniformly with subjects that are not related to Wikipedia. In the latter case, Wikipedia is an objective observer, or attempts to be. In the case of self-referential elements though, it cannot be.
In other words, positive discrimination in recognition of the importance of self-criticism is what's needed. Self-criticism is a special case, and those who deny that it's a special case are rather clearly trying to make it go away instead of encouraging it, since it fails independent notability by definition. Self-referential articles are *always* notable in a sense: they are notable because they are part of the foundation for the WP policies that determine notability of all normal articles.
There are two reasons for someone deleting something:
1. He disagrees.
2. He thinks it's not relevant.
In both cases, they could create a common base by exchanging their knowledge, and then use the same rules of logic to come to the same solution.
But there are always ignorant and stubborn people that you can not reason with, because they ignore knowledge or the rules of logic, because it would endanger their reality too much, for them to cope with it. They base the rules for relevance an correctness solely on their own incomplete reality.
And don't be fooled by references. They do not guarantee correctness. They can only be used as a part of the knowledge base for reasoning. But they can be wrong too.
This means that we would have to enforce a graph of logical deduction for every statement in a Wikipedia article, and structure the whole documents and knowledge in that way.
Unfortunately this is impossible, for the obvious reason that we do not have such a complete knowledge. And even if we could create such a graph it would be incredibly much more work. (It would NOT even be a tree. It would be an ontologic net.)
But what's left if we do not try to create complete graphs?
Relative points of view, based on the state of the thinking entities, which is the result of their specific lives.
Notice the plural.
Here the solution is much more simple, and goes like this: :D)
- There are many versions of an article.
- A POV is defined by a specific choice for these versions,
- and if no choice is made, inherit it from another (base-)POV.
- A user can freely select a POV and create his own one.
- His view is created in the same way as cascading style sheets (CSS) select the rules: By cascadation until a version is found.
Of course, this is not an optimal solution. But I think it's the only realistic one. (If you have a better / more advanced one, *please* tell me!
Now there's an important thing that's playing in the background: ;).
This solution looks like it would support bullshit like creationism, because of course someone could create a POV for it.
But would disallowing it change their opinions? Very unlikely. So just let them do whatever they want. But keep them separate from you / your group / your POV.
This is exactly what my solution tries to do.
"I would even go as far" as to say that everyone has the right to think as he pleases, as long as he's not hurting someone (by the definition of that someone).
Unfortunately we live in a world, where it is expected that only one thing can be correct everywhere. Ignoring the relativity of things (the one men's hot it he other woman's cold
Hence the current structure and problems with Wikipedia.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Maybe after deletionpedia gets removed they could make a "deletionpedia 2" page and add the entry for deletionpedia getting deleted.
rm -rf sig
Circlejerking would have been a more suitable entry for whatever fancies slashdot these days.
The reason why the so-called "self-regulation" doesn't work among the admins on Wikipedia is very simple, to me: There's no punishment.
Imagine if every admin whose "speedy delete" was reverted say, on three seperate cases, would lose his admin status. Maybe just for a while. Say, one month per case, cumulative (4 months the next time, 5 months after that, etc.)
Don't you think they'd be a lot less trigger-happy?
Same for everyone else. Once you've brought your 100th bullshit AfD you should be - at least temporarily - banned from bringing more.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
HAy like why u guyz DELETED so much?? ~~Wiki uzor
UH, DUH!!! Because we are a SERIOUS encyclopedia, we don't just have stupid "articles" about crap on the "intertubez." ~~DAS editor
Uh, what about en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ? ~~UserName
I MOVE FOR DELETION OF THAT COMMENT ~~DAS editor
aka a Bit Bucket...
We oldtimers remember, yes sir, talking about them things...
What Would Happen, we asked the Universe, if a data-eating singularity came into being, the opposite of the self-intelligent computing singularity...
What if it came into existence first?
What if it ate all intelligence and information from the whole world?
What if it created time-loops, so it'd eat the intelligence that created it?
Would anyone hear it in the forest?
-nodding sagely, from one's rocker--- :)
So "Harmless" becomes "Mostly Harmless", as Earth is not notable enough to qualify for anything more important?
5-1/4 years and about a hundred demonstrated examples of its place in pop culture and why?...
Never mind that there were only two votes delete, two to redirect, and two to keep. The mentioned "Elvis Presley phenomenon" article contains a verrrry long list of singles that were released under his name till 30 years after his death including rereleases.
Unreal. Stifle, indeed.
Notmysig
One of the oft mentioned responses to deletionism-of-trivia is that a wikia project would be a better place for it. On some level it is, there is the Wookieepedia for Star Wars trivia in such detail that only the most dedicated of fans could appreciate. So theres the solution, all the unnotable Pokemon articles should go into the Pokemon wikia.
There is, however, another level to that argument. Wikia is run by a for-profit Delaware-based corporation. Wikimedia, which runs Wikipedia, is a non-profit charitable organization headed in San Francisco. Why is that relevant? When the question of hosting costs comes up for Wikipedia as they invariably do, advertisement always comes up, and has been shot down so far.
Theory goes, Jimmy Wales who founded both Wikia and Wikimedia would very much like to profit from Wikipedia, but due to the non-profit nature of Wikimedia is unable to as freely as he'd like. So how could you use Wikipedia to generate traffic for Wikia, a private hosting corporation which you own. Also keeping in mind that Wikipedia is by nature rather open about changes, "not-notable, make a Wikia project for it" does come up as a way to drive traffic, life-blood of our current internet age, and a nicely subtle one at that. Anyone looking for something more in depth about a subject than a footnote on a different page goes to the for-profit Wikia and while the text is most likely still free-as-in-speech (GFDL or CC-by-nc-sa), the ads are very much money-generating-as-in-doubleclick.net.
The Wikipedia article for Wikia does note this with cites by staff of both claiming this is inaccurate. However, this is the follow-the-money reason for the deletionism in a medium where new pages cost virtually nothing and anyone interested can get involved.
so why doesn`t someone write an app that combines the data from deletionpedia and wikipedia? (and any other "pedias" come to that), you could call it totalpedia or something, we have similar applications for finding different radio station websites and giving them a common interface, too hard to do for some reason?, or just nobody thought of it.
The claim is false. As one of the editors who argued strenuously for keeping the article I saw no evidence at all that those wishing to delete the article wished to do so due it being critical of Wikipedia. If one reads the deletion discussion one sees that claim being made repeatedly by people in favor of keeping it but no actual evidence. There were people both for and against keeping the article who had good faith reasons for their positions. Moreover, the notion that Wikipedia would delete something because it was seen as critical of Wikipedia is just silly. If that were the case, would itreally have an article with over a 150 footnotes titled Criticism of Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia ?
The problem with that is, 99% of the time the deletionist doesn't actually then proceed to make a better article. They just destroy. Easier than creating, I suppose.
If by good you mean on the good side of the admins, I'd agree.
How does the Internet Meme "Happycat" which was deleted despite being very notable qualify as not notable.
There is a huge subjective component to notability. Sure, "x is the coolest person" is probably a good candidate for deletion, but time and time again I've seen these barnstar toting clowns delete perfectly good articles because they have pull and they think something isn't notable due to their unfamiliarity with a subject.
The same deletionists often have strange pet subjects , eg, an obscure record label of music they like.
Its basic: when a deletion causes an uproar its probably a notable subject.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
(a) we already have such a repository that can- and always will- beat Wikipedia hands down. It's the whole World Wide Web and a search engine!
Ok, that's fine if you have ~3 hours searching through pages that take 15 minutes to load, others that are just copy and pastes of others, some which have layouts that make your eyes bleed, others which have enough annoying ads to make you pull your hair out and still others on which your browser freezes because some idiot webmaster decided to make the entire site in Flash. Most of us want one site to get information that doesn't use obscene amounts of JavaScript, Flash and bad design, while not taking forever to load.
Other than Wikipedia there is no site that holds a good amount of information on every topic while remaining free of ads, poor design and Flash.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Internet memes? Have you lost your fucking mind? A collection of the world's knowledge, NOT a college of the drooling retards that populate 4chan. THAT is what wikipedia should be. Take your happycat and get the hell out.
Ok, that's fine if you have ~3 hours searching through pages that take 15 minutes to load,
Not many unless you're looking at video or using a really slow connection, or something has gone wrong with the page.
others which have enough annoying ads to make you pull your hair out and still others on which your browser freezes because some idiot webmaster decided to make the entire site in Flash.
I use Flashblock, BTW. Actually, this makes sites that use separate Flash objects for every damn button worse, but overall it's very useful- simply click to activate any Flash object you *do* wish to use.
Most of us want one site to get information that doesn't use obscene amounts of JavaScript, Flash and bad design, while not taking forever to load.
So basically your expectations of Wikipedia are act as a de facto dump/transfer of content that's already available on the web, and present it without adverts, flash, etc.? That's not a bad thing in itself, but it's a pretty low ambition and I don't believe it's what WP ever *claimed* to be about nor what it should be about.
Other than Wikipedia there is no site that holds a good amount of information on every topic while remaining free of ads, poor design and Flash.
I wasn't discussing a *single* site anyway. Does it matter if it's on a single site if that site is so badly organised that you have to use Google or a similar search engine to get through it properly? You make it sound like you want to include everything in Wikipedia, regardless of the effect it would have on the organisation and readability, simply to get round some admittedly annoying sites. I'd rather people used browser plugins and the like to get round problems like that.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Play the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy card on me. ;)
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I'm sorry, but what? You're complaining that a large article with a 150 footnotes doesn't mention a minor website that isn't even explicitly a criticism by itself? And therefore this is somehow evidence of how Wikipedia is evil and not willing to pay attention to criticism? Heck, I'm in favor of keeping the article on Deletionpedia and it really isn't at all obvious to me that it should be mentioned in the main criticisms article. At most, it should be a see-also link. If you make an article on a major topic that has every little tiny thing thrown in you can possibly think of the article becomes unmanageable. And your sentence about it being some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy is borderline idiotic. Things are notable if there are reliable sources. Things end up getting such sources all the time after they've been deleted from Wikipedia. Then we undelete them or make new articles. This isn't any different than garage bands complaining that they can't get any recognition without a Wikipedia article. They shouldn't be trying to get recogniztion that way. They should be getting recognition by having decent music.
Not many unless you're looking at video or using a really slow connection, or something has gone wrong with the page.
Some pages get slow even after moderate amounts of traffic, others simply don't want to load. It could be many different problems, but to someone trying to get to the page, it won't load or it is slow.
I use Flashblock, BTW. Actually, this makes sites that use separate Flash objects for every damn button worse, but overall it's very useful- simply click to activate any Flash object you *do* wish to use.
Again, if the navigation of the site is in Flash (see Homestar Runner for an example) and if Flash by nature takes up insane amounts of CPU, just viewing the site will freeze your browser (Ok, so when you go to it, it won't, but if you try to actually do anything it will)
So basically your expectations of Wikipedia are act as a de facto dump/transfer of content that's already available on the web, and present it without adverts, flash, etc.? That's not a bad thing in itself, but it's a pretty low ambition and I don't believe it's what WP ever *claimed* to be about nor what it should be about.
More or less yes. Wikipeida should take the facts from the web, put it in somewhat of an order and present it with no annoyances. Much as how a paper encyclopedia sums up about one hundred books and makes it into a page long article without all the hunting for books and reading through them all. Wikipedia should be like Cliffnotes for the web, taking all the important info and organizing it, no matter how obscure the thing is. And sure, Wikipedia never *claimed* to be a gigantic mess with editors in edit wars constantly and average users getting called vandals for simple edits to pages. And sure, Wikipedia also *claimed* to be about the opinion of the masses, instead a few select editors seem to make all the decisions. And really, what is an encyclopedia other than a book of summaries of topics?
I wasn't discussing a *single* site anyway. Does it matter if it's on a single site if that site is so badly organised that you have to use Google or a similar search engine to get through it properly?
Again, it goes back to my argument that I don't have the time to check 20 different sites, I want only one or two to get all my info on.
You make it sound like you want to include everything in Wikipedia, regardless of the effect it would have on the organisation and readability, simply to get round some admittedly annoying sites. I'd rather people used browser plugins and the like to get round problems like that.
I believe that everything has its place for a Wikipedia article no matter how obscure with the exception of obvious spam, and by spam I mean things written like an advertisement, not just that someone has an article on some meaningless thing but it isn't written like an ad. And honestly, browser plugins are a bad thing, they end up making real browser problems hard to detect along with increase bloat and CPU/RAM usage.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
How does the Internet Meme "Happycat" which was deleted despite being very notable qualify as not notable.
There is a huge subjective component to notability. Sure, "x is the coolest person" is probably a good candidate for deletion, but time and time again I've seen these barnstar toting clowns delete perfectly good articles because they have pull and they think something isn't notable due to their unfamiliarity with a subject.
The same deletionists often have strange pet subjects , eg, an obscure record label of music they like.
Its basic: when a deletion causes an uproar its probably a notable subject.
A topic is considered notable if and only if it has non-trivial coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources.
Notability, by Wikipedia's definition, has nothing to do with "importance" or "uproar" or an editor's "familiarity" with a subject.
There are two reasons for someone deleting something:
1. He disagrees.
2. He thinks it's not relevant.
No, actually, there are two reasons for someone deleting something:
Pretty straightforward. The "solution" is to avoid letting your article fall under the two above categories.
Read the sentence again.
I had to call out one particular mod on his discussion page and on the Jonathan Ive page, because he considered my changing of the iMac's introduction from 1997 to 1998 "vandalism" (a change I had to make FIVE times), and it was FINALLY changed.
Where does it say that the changing of information was on the Johnathan Ive article? It says that the "mod" was called out on his discussion page and on the Jonathan Ive page. The call out was apparently there, not the original changing of dates. Unless I'm reading it horribly wrong, that's what the sentence says.
He used the phrase "Jonathan Ive page", of which there are two: the article itself, which contains absolutely no evidence of a dispute over the date of the iMac's introduction... and the article's talk page, which contains absolutely no evidence of a dispute over the date of the iMac's introduction. So why mention Ive at all? I've worked extensively on Wikipedia in the last three years, and have never, ever been witness to such a discussion being completely removed from the encyclopedia. Only 29 users have this capability (as of now; far fewer have had it in the past), several of whom are actually paid employees of Wikimedia, and none of them participate in the development of Apple-related articles. I can assure you that as an experienced "outsider" on Wikipedia (ie. I've no interest in being part of the "in crowd" there), the folks with the ability to remove arbitrary edits from article histories aren't going to be bothered with something as utterly trivial as what is being claimed here.
Now, for your interest, let's dig a little more. This "AtariKee" person did kick up a bit of a stink in August 2005 over an old-school Atari game called "Battlefield", where he did indeed have his edits reverted, once, as "apparent vandalism", but AtariKee did make a rather unusual and surprising claim in his edits that would require a source, then proceeded to argue about it, then apologised afterwards. The person he described as a "mod" was just another editor, named 2mcm, who has never been an administrator on Wikipedia. AtariKee has made no other edits using his named account on Wikipedia. (All this is a matter of public record, of course...)
I'm mentioning this because I've noticed in various forums (especially Slashdot) a pattern of gross exaggeration and misrepresentation of what actually happens at Wikipedia. This is happening everywhere, of course -- people say that Linux isn't "ready for the desktop", when we all plainly know that it is. People say that Barack Obama is a Muslim, when we all plainly know that he isn't. People say that Wikipedia's "mods" control all the content, when you can go look for yourself and plainly see that it isn't. People aren't interested in the simple, boring truth. I like to call it the John C. Dvorak Syndrome -- talk a load of shit loudly and authoritatively enough, and people will believe you know what you're talking about, even if it's plainly obvious to the clued-in that you don't.
'Notable' can not be well-defined as a global concept, only as a personal one, and therefore is maybe suitable to use in tagging, but never deletion.
After having authored 8 article on Wikipedia and submitted at least an equal number of edits and modifications, I've totally given up on Wikipedia. The administrator-editors are capricious, rude and self interested. (If this were a wikipedia article, I'd cite that fact, but it would be deleted within 24 hours.) I have never seen volunteer expertise and time so blatantly undervalued in an open source community by a select subset of empowered users. As more people realize how poorly managed Wikipedia is, fewer will rely rely on it. I no longer recognize its authority on any topic of import. Wikipedia now represents the opinions of a franchised minority with obvious self-interest. You're better off consulting Brittanica, unfortunately.
I've seen this behavior happen to posts I've made and others I tried to clean up. I've also noticed that a number of administrators (such as userj) have been carefully scrubbing any article or remark that is critical of anyone related to the McCain campaign.
I have a Control Systems wiki with a lot of content. Rather than copying my content to Wikipedia I made edits where things were in error or unclear and then linked to relevant pages on my site. A couple of users decided that my edits violated the linking policy. Which it did on second reading but I felt that deleting the links was counter productive. The content I was editting needed a subject matter expert. Also, my site has a lot of content not quite right for Wikipedia. My blog rant on my experiece is here.
Gabe My Blog
Not exactly. The people in charge of the servers can modify the database directly, obviously, but would likely be fired if caught doing that; ordinary administrators can delete revisions from history, but cannot create revisions with anyone's name but their own on, and aren't allowed to delete revisions if some text added there remains in the current version (for copyright reasons).
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
So, what? Wikipedia is not a criminal court! If something is deemed not notable for lack of evidence the worst thing that can happen is... the lack of a web page on some site on the intertubes. You make it sound like the thing gets nuked off the face of the earth. Besides, notability can always be established later. This actually happened with Deletionpedia: as the deletion of the article was being discussed, which normally last a week, more sites picked up the story, and the site *became* notable. So, I don't see what's broken here. Move along...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:DRV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiSpeak
Well said. Mod parent up. You should also consider that Wikipedia is not supposed to be the sum of all local newspapers.
1) I'd like to point out that there is "unlimited" space on Wikipedia
2) 4Chan: you mean the guys who do a lot of things that make the news?
3) No, you take your arrogant attitude and DIAF. I literally think that seeking revenge with real life consequences is justified, you best remain anonymous, as those who destroy information are very evil in my estimation.
4) The deletionists have not worked on raiding quality, they just delete. Articles should be worked up and "certified", dont waste time deleting thing you have a personal problem with.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Not, a topic is notable only if the Inner Circle Elite let it be notable.
Wikipedia has time and time again alienated even material experts.
Notability, the phrase "non-trivial coverage" and "multiple reliable secondary sources" is all subjective trash, and Wikipedia is a cabal of highfalutin assholes who run the place like a personal fiefdom.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi
QED.
I hope you can see the logical fallacy in maintaining a huge sub-tome of information Star Wars, more than Lucas even remembers thinking up, on a made-up religion from a movie of fiction. This is notable, yet "happycat" is not.
Its unbelievable the double standards going on at Wikipedia, and the best way to avoid being a flaming hypocrite is to save deletion for a smaller set of content. The more the deletionists delete, the more they are exposed to be the tyrant hypocrites that they are.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Ooh, an Internet Tough Guy. I'm shaking in my virtual boots.
1) Sure. Also, there's unlimited space for landfills. Want one in your front yard?
2) 4chan in the news. Are you aware there's a fairly detailed wikipedia page about 4chan? It details the various threats of violence, organized DDOS against other sites, and yes, some of the memes that have spread beyond 4chan. I think the wiki covers 4chan admirably well, you'll notice that the phrase "mouth-breathing drooling retard" doesn't appear on the page at any point.
3) Just so I'm sure I understand you; you're threatening violence, as in you come over here and beat me up or try to kill me? Alright, Internet tough guy. Send me a PM, I'll send you my address. We'll rock and roll. Yes, I am the AC you responded to.
4) Have you read deletionpedia? I suggest you do. Click random a few times. Do you know what you'll see? Trash that MySpace would delete. Unsourced biographies of stillborn babies, a page consisting only of the song lyrics to some rap, a 3-line spam "article" about a ringtone peddler, a one-line article consisting of nothing but a slam against "LMS". If you genuinely think wikipedia is enriched by enabling people to read about a half-started game on sourceforge, then you are seriously deluded as to what wikipedia is about.
The immense sense of entitlement you people have for your pet ideas...why should wikipedia host you? If you're the only person in the world who cares to even know the concept exists, DELETE IT. If your group can't make anybody in the media care enough to write about it, DELETE IT. It's a simple rule...if your meme has no impact on society, it doesn't belong on wikipedia.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Jedi, Jedi...let me think...
Oh wait, that's the new religion that enough people in Australia claimed that now it appears on census forms. Sounds pretty notable to me. I recall seeing that on CNN several times when they came out with that fact.
Where's the news coverage of happycat?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sifo-Dyas
You lose again, deletionist. Wikipedia is chock full of Sci-Fi trivia from fiction books.
QED, 2x, and double standard and too much of a fucking coward to go non-AC, because information wants to be free, and people dislike tyrants and YOU KNOW IT.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Ooh, an Internet Tough Guy. I'm shaking in my virtual boots.
Piss off. You anonymous tyrant fuckers wouldnt last very long in the real world analog. People **hate** deletionist assholes. Then again, you wouldnt act like this in public. Compensation for something?
Sure. Also, there's unlimited space for landfills. Want one in your front yard?
You, the fucking moron, cant think in the abstract apparently. A landfill takes up real space. Wikipedia's only technical excuse for not having a bunch of stuff would be search would get difficult. But wiki's search sucks shit, we all just use google anyway to find things there. site:wikipedia.org, anyone?
Are you aware there's a fairly detailed wikipedia page about 4chan?
Yes, but try adding things to it. Like memes they create. Deleted. This point #2 is fucking irrelevant to the topic of deletionism.
Just so I'm sure I understand you; you're threatening violence, as in you come over here and beat me up or try to kill me? Alright, Internet tough guy. Send me a PM, I'll send you my address. We'll rock and roll. Yes, I am the AC you responded to.
Nice try, DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker. Like that's going to happen. Pussies like yourself would simply forward the info along to some 3/4 latter agency. You need "the man" to protect you.
drivel snipped
You are a fucking tyrant. You abuse the public that supports the effort, you will twist any shit to justify your actions. You are hitler, you are staling, you are mao, you are a fucking deletionist. And the only things you know are extremes. There is no middle ground, no reasoning. You are a worthless fucking asshole and you steal from the public that supports wikipedia by running a fucking autocracy.
I hope you DIAF, and then in the burn ward get fucking prostate cancer.
Thats how much we hate you, FYI.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Some pages get slow even after moderate amounts of traffic, others simply don't want to load. It could be many different problems, but to someone trying to get to the page, it won't load or it is slow.
That jumps out at me as a technical issue, that could- or at least should- be solved by technical means, not a reason for WP to effectively act as a cache.
Again, if the navigation of the site is in Flash (see Homestar Runner for an example
Homestar Runner is flash-based anyway, isn't it? I don't see how that would fit into WP.
Again, that strikes me as a technical problem, one that would be best solved with automated tools and/or data format conversion.
More or less yes. Wikipeida should take the facts from the web, put it in somewhat of an order and present it with no annoyances. Much as how a paper encyclopedia sums up about one hundred books and makes it into a page long article without all the hunting for books and reading through them all. Wikipedia should be like Cliffnotes for the web, taking all the important info and organizing it, no matter how obscure the thing is.
BINGO! So we *are* in agreement after all.
What you want is essentially what I want- distillation and organisation of information in a usable manner, not just a straight dump of existing stuff.
I believe that everything has its place for a Wikipedia article no matter how obscure
As I said to one other guy, would you like an article on my toenail clippings, assuming it were verifiable? If not, why not?
Even if I accepted what you say about plugins, it sounds like what you want is something fundamentally different to what WP is currently trying to do- a tool or method to get round the technical problems of websites.
We can have both, it just seems pretty pointless to make WP into that.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I have nothing to say to this. You are literally not in the same reality as more rational people. I wish you all the happiness your twisted self-righteousness allows you.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Sifo-Dyas, hmm, hmm...oh yeah, a minor character in, what's that? A PUBLISHED BOOK. Not idiocy from a random webforum. Christ, why the hell does a picture of a cat deserve its own wiki page?