I'm sorry for my part in the flame war, too. And I really appreciate that you took the effort to work this out.
Thank you. And again, it's very gracious of you to say this. You were owed an apology, so the effort only cost
me some stupid pride. The benefit has been getting my peace of mind back.
I appreciate the clarifications, and want to point out that I don't hold
ill will against you at all for stating your opinions. The tone of our
previous discussion led a certain way. While I can certainly flame and
be flamed and take it in good sport, this is a subject that does merit
serious and civil discussion.
After I made the post, I checked out your website to find out who I was apologizing to.
It stung a bit that you're more than a decade younger than me, but then that's just
stupid pride. Your above statement is a credit to you, and I predict much success
in your life that you can accept an apology with such graciousness.
In the almost 20 years I've been on the Internet,
I can only remember 7 big flame wars I've been in. This one has been the worst in terms of size and my behavior,
and the first that I originated.(I ranted about this elsewhere, but
it was among other angry inclusionists so no fighting ensued.) To help you understand why I'm so crazy, 3 other fights
occurred on Wikipedia between me and deletionists within a 1 year period, and civility was hanging by a thread
near the end.
And lost in all the drama is the fact that I'm a very strong deletionist
when it comes to minor public figures who request to
be removed. Privacy concerns and all that. This is just as contentious, and I
should have remembered that about myself.
I also want to add that I've been unfair to Wikipedia in seemingly changing the rules as they go.
When you begin a huge project like this, you don't know how a mass of people will collaborate,
so you have no idea what the rules should be. The rules come as the articles begin to settle into
a general format, common problems are identified, and some sort of consensus can be reached.
Your point about trivia and Musharraf is well taken, and the solution of making a separate site is probably best.
I will begin advocating this as the best compromise.
Your statement before about Jimbo Whales being more of a figurehead is something I agree with, although I
still took his Mzoli's Meats article as a strong policy endorsement of inclusionism. I say this now to make the larger
point that I think we need someone to be more than a figurehead, the "benevolent dictator" who can make absolute
pronouncements and take the heat for it so the co-workers won't fight over who gets the cubical by the
window. Right now, it sometimes feels like a committee decreed that all bathroom breaks must be between 10:00 - 10:15
and 3:00-3:15, and I'll have to attend 3 meetings a week from now on to get this changed. Of course, this is just my perception
and there's 100 things wrong with the analogy(e.g. Notability standards aren't arbitrary).
Anyway, these are just thoughts that have been going through my head as I wonder how I got caught up in all this insanity.
Bottom line, there's no dictator so community consensus is the rule of the day. That's all there is to it.
So I'll let you younger folks with all the energy work it out.
Finally, I want to offer you one more apology and this one is for wasting your time.
(Yeah, after making you go through yet another endless post.) Your response hammers the point that
I could have saved us both a lot of time and stress had I simply
remembered those lessons about anger I learned before. And probably have to learn again someday.
Above this post, there is a thread between me and The One and Only which got incredibly
nasty. This made me rethink my opinions about Wikipedia, my original post, and everything I've said since
then. So here's what I need to add to this discussion.
1) I was absolutely wrong to use such inflammatory language in my original post. As someone who decries
the polarizing nature of our current political culture, I truly regret being so reckless in saying what I did.
These kinds of statements needlessly puts the opposition on the defensive, and no common ground can
be found in such a climate. I had been associating with/reading the postings of like minded
people in this debate, and this is always a mistake is it got my blood boiling on this topic.
2) Related to the above, this carried through in the responses I made to deletionists. I continued to use
the inflammatory language of "asshole", and this continued to push and antagonize people. This I am deeply
sorry for, because it wasn't just a rant to the world, but a direct response to someone.
3) I am also guilty of interpreting deletionists responses in the most offensive way. With an open mind,
I could have asked, "So are you saying XYZ about my postition?" in the debate, and clarification may have been provided that
would have cooled me off. As I've often said but regretfully forgotten, when you're looking for offense, you'll
probably find it.
So had I the chance to say it all again, it would have been worded as:
**
I think right now, Wikipedia is going through this(the Failure Cascade) as it relates to good editors being driven
away by deletionism. There's a real anger out there with people getting frustrated by their good work(well referenced,
neutral point of view) which usually represents hundreds of hours of labor being removed based on incorrect accusations self
promotion, company propaganda, or the current, excessively restrictive, and unfairly applied criteria of non-notability.
This isn't just happening to new articles, but older ones which have already had a lot of work done on them. And retroactively
removing someone's hard work(and this includes trivia sections which
many readers like , plot synopses) with a few 3 letter acronyms
(e.g. WP:NOT, WP:NOTE) leads to a feeling of being cheated out of those hours.
This is a very big problem because people take pride in their work, and that's good and absolutely necessary.
It means they will watch for vandalism, update their articles when necessary, and maintain the articles' overall quality
and accuracy. Wikipedia
greatly benefits from this, so to remove work in a way which I think is often done thoughtlessly, corruptly (there are
examples
of keep votes being tossed that are questionable), and too quickly leaves a bitterness in the minds of the
content creators who acted in good faith but now feel they've been scammed by the invitation of Wikipedia
to add their knowledge to its pages. It's even worse when you consider that the same person who wrote
an article on some obscure topic that got deleted may have written a big part of the C++ article. The latter definitely
will be kept, but that's one less good editor to watch over it if he leaves the project.
Volunteer projects survive when they acknowledge the hard work of the volunteers. These volunteers provide the labor,
and oftentimes the money. Right now, Wikipedia can only achieve 1/4 of their
fundraising goal, and I interpret that as angry content creators
taking both their time and money with them. I am among this group, and I feel sad about it because I had really liked
the idea of a free encyclopedia. Although their fundraisin
It has nothing to do about my reading comprehension. It has to do with
you being a liar. To quote from earlier: I simply will no longer donate
time or money to Wikipedia and discourage others from doing so by warning
them of what happens to their contributions. Please do, if it will stem
the crapflood Wikipedia has to deal with already.
You might not have noticed a little word there: "if". You might consider
whether or not your contributions, or those of your friends, are really
even needed or welcome, and if you don't think they will be, I urge you
to carry on in encouraging them not to offer them. Again the point about
reading comprehension.
So I guess "if" you're retarded, then I shouldn't hold it against you.
But I admit, I still will "if" you're simply an asshole deletionist.
Why don't you simply own up to your incivility? You can
even give one of those asshole non-apologies, "Well, I'm sorry you're
offended and that you missinterpreted my comments."
Actually, I went and read that remark in its full context, and he wasn't
angry at deletionists for being deletionists. His full remark was as
follows: "You can dispute the article on the merits of the notability
(though not successfully, I think), but the assumptions of bad faith in
this argument are just shocking. Some people should excuse themselves
from the project and find a new hobby." So there it is--incivility out,
good-faith concerns about notability in.
He was frustrated by how deletionism is being practiced-beginning with the presumption of bad faith, unfair accusations,
both resulting in the loss of good content. And if bad faith is even being assumed
on the part of the founder, than even some proven editor who submitted this article
would probably have no chance at all. Bottom line, this article would not have survived had it been anyone
else.
The same policy we've always had.
The request for civility policy has always been in place. The notability policy has changed, and
Jimbo was almost a victim of it, but being Jimbo, was saved. That's exactly what this
article proves.
Since I feel the voting process has been corrupted, with include votes
cast aside and ballot stuffing the other way, I no longer have faith
that the spirit of this principal is being applied. Now, I do think this
is true the majority of the time, but I also think corrupt voting now
happens to an extent that it has become a problem. And to save us some
time, this is my belief and not true in your experience.
You could substantiate your opinion here with some examples. But that's
too good for you. Rather wallow in ignorance I gather.
I've already provided an example of keep votes being tossed based on accusations
of socks.
Here's one where someone did an experiment showing that delete puppets aren't questioned.
But go ahead an ignore them. You have shown an impressive capacity to ignore
dismiss, and diminish evidence you don't like:
Me and many of the others in the
Webcomics Slashdot story -
People with hurt feelings, laziness and complacence.
Andrew Lih , an administrator, someone who has made his career studying media and is writing a book on Wikipedia -
I was never highly impressed with Fuzheado's credentials as an administrator"
And now a founder, Jimbo Whales -
He's more of a financier and public figurehead, and doesn't keep terribly in the loop
Someone needs to give you a job in the Bush administration.
It's recently (as of 2007 or so) become standard practice to personally
notify the creator of a page that's put up for deletion so they can say
their piece. (Most such
Since I'm not defending "the company shill, the teenagers screwing
around, the garage band," I don't need it explained to me why some
things get deleted.
I'm not explaining to you why some things get deleted, you illiterate
prick. I'm explaining the formative experiences of "asshole
deletionists"--the experiences that form Wikipedia editors into that
given viewpoint on the project.
And what relevance do these experiences have to me other than how they manifest
in the application deletions. Are you saying their viewpoint is screwed up
because they deal with so much crap everyday that a lot of good content is deleted
and they can't see that? Are you apologizing for them? If not, then why does this
even need mentioning. Either the deletes of the articles I'm talking about are
good or they aren't. The psychological frustration of the deletionist are a separate issue,
but a tangent to what this thread is about.
Oh wait I see. Here, let me say it all again:
I think deletionists have hurt Wikipedia. Some of them no doubt have had to deal with
so much crap coming in that this has unfortunately caused them to have itchy trigger fingers in terms
of removing content, sometimes coming across as thoughtless and unfair. Wikipedia needs to
do something to remedy this, because to content creators, they come across as assholes
and these very content creators may very well be financial contributors as well, so this
will be a critical problem in terms of raising funds.
While I think many are simply assholes, it would be unfair to paint them all with such a broad
brush because many are also doing the important janitorial work that is absolutely necessary to
keep wikipedia running. So somehow, we need to deal with the problem of contentious work getting
deleted without it leading to the antagonism between deletionists and creators of what I think is
legitimate content.
I truly hope the fundamental problem isn't that the only way someone can do the janitorial work
is by adopting the harshest attitudes towards content. If this is the case, it bodes ill for
projects like Wikipedia in the future.
So I guess I painted with too broad a brush. I should have considered
that many who consider themselves deletionists and may even include/exclude based on the same standards that I have(NOT YOU),
are working in the trenches, have gotten so much shit thrown at them by garage bands
and self-promoting companies, that they now self-identify as deletionists and were offended with my
lumping all of them together as "asshole deletionists".
Is that your point?
And how about the "crapflood" accusation. That uncivil statement was
unquestionably directed at me.
Given that it's taken three incidences of repeating myself to explain
the above point to you, you're probably not at the level of reading
comprehension for me to attempt any further clarification. Please tell
me English isn't your native language.
It has nothing to do about my reading comprehension. It has to do with you being
a liar. To quote from earlier:
I simply will no longer donate time or money to Wikipedia and
discourage others from doing so by warning them of what happens to
their contributions.
Please do, if it will stem the crapflood Wikipedia has to deal with
already.
This has nothing to do with your attempt to explain the "the formative experiences of "asshole
deletionists"". This was an uncivil attack on my contributions as being part of the "crapflood", despite your attempts to
rationalize that away. You made a DIRECT response to my statement and I interpreted it as a response
to me. Anyone else on who speaks English as their native language would interpret it EXACTLY as I
did.
In terms of outsiders at Wikipedia, I guess it depends on what you
consider an outsider. Someone who reads and is a fan of a webcomic
but doesn't edit may be considered an outsider to you,
Again that's your opinion. You interpret it your way and I'll interpret
it as people who really like the trivia sections and absolutely DO NOT
want them removed. Not all of us aspire to having a "Featured Article".
Given that my opinion is based on experience and that yours is based on
furthering your own ignorant point, I'll choose mine.
Of course you'll choose yours. That's what asshole deletionist do. But I'll go
with my own experience as well as the majority of those who commented in that
thread as well as the rest of the article.
Yeah, how strange of me to think that you and I are having a conversation
but that in reality, you are talking to some hypothetical inclusionists
that apparently wants everything in. And don't even pretend that your
statement about "crapflood" wasn't directed at me. If you are no longer
addressing me, please tell me now. So I won't have to worry about how
you once heard that inclusionists support the killing of puppies and
that they hate rainbows. Because for the record, I love rainbows and am
against killing puppies.
My examples were given with the purpose of explaining where the
deletionist viewpoint comes from. And on many of the issues you point out
(webcomics for instance), the skepticism that comes from this experience
is exactly what causes the deletionist reaction you complain about.
Since I'm not defending "the company shill, the teenagers screwing around, the garage
band," I don't need it explained to me why some things get deleted. I have already
said:
Just because I think more should be included doesn't mean I want some
teenager making the autobiographical stub entry, "I'm John Smith and I love Coldplay" to be allowed.
My line for deleting material is different from yours, but that doesn't mean I have no line.
I've watched the new article page on occasion and seen
what gets created like the proverbial teenager making the autobiographical
stub entry, "I'm John Smith and I love Coldplay". This needs to be deleted
along with "I'm in Band X, and we'll be playing at the pub tonite. Check us
out!" But there is a lot of good stuff that does gets deleted (or has to
fight deletion) that shouldn't have to.
By bringing it up, you are setting up straw men or having a conversation with someone
else. And how about the "crapflood" accusation. That uncivil statement was
unquestionably directed at me.
When it comes to open source, Wikipedia, or donating blood, I am fully
aware that there is a great deal of possible rejection or modification
involved that are beyond my control. The Blood Bank has very strict rules
on who can donate and there's about 30 questions and many additional tests
that may get you excluded. Those rules are fair, protect the blood supply,
and are made clear to everyone before the first drop is extracted. But
if one day, they were to say to me, "We don't want the blood of Colored
people anymore, but please keep donating money," you can be assured this
would be the last time I gave them either blood or money.
I would think, with all your railing against straw men fallacies, that
you wouldn't commit one now. Wikipedia has never discriminated against
contributors based upon their race.
And how convenient that you don't finish the entire quote which says:
Now you obviously think that the rules of Wikipedia that got my work and that of others trashed
were fair and reasonable and aren't like the ugly example I just gave relating
to the blood bank. I don't. I find them elitist, inconsistently applied, and
not presented at the beginning so people like me now feel betrayed.
Pay attention to the line "were fair and reasonable and aren't like the ugly example I just gave"
That's pretty intellectually dishonest of you, asshole.
But when it gets deleted, there is only one possible interpretation. "Your
work doesn't belong here. It's not worthy of our project." Well,
Actually, in the beginning trivia sections were rather rare--they
only became prominent long after I joined, quite to the disdain of the
"old school". You mention the Arthur C. Clarke article--the reason such
things are tagged is because, as I said, it's usually best to expand the
article's prose sections and work the more notable bits of the trivia
section into that, rather than delete the section outright. You know,
keeping, modifying, and building upon poorly-formatted contributions?
It is your opinion that the page is "poorly-formatted". I and others
in that thread disagree.
So, over nearly six months none of the people who have an actual
interest in the Arthur C. Clarke article have been motivated to remove,
merge, or rewrite the trivia section in a form acceptable to the policy
police. That's a fact. It shows that the "consensus" is a myth.
Or that laziness and complacence is the order of the day. It's a lot
easier to tag something as problematic than to fix it, and without a
focused effort like a Featured Article push, that kind of work doesn't
get done because it's hard.
Again that's your opinion. You interpret it your way and I'll interpret
it as people who really like the trivia sections and absolutely DO NOT
want them removed. Not all of us aspire to having a "Featured Article".
And now you pull the civility card. Why don't we drop that pretense
because we are way past that. Let's look at some of your previous quotes:...I think there's too much deletion. Then I must be a spammer or company
shill. Despite the fact that I gave examples which represented neither,
you make this insinuation anyway. How civil.Or maybe I'm a "nutcase", or
I'm too sensitive and got my "feelings hurt", that I have "some made-up
religious movement" or represent "astroturfers". Nice way to bring in
straw men rather than address the examples I gave.
They aren't straw men--those are actual issues we had to deal with
during the time I was heavily involved with the project. Those are the
exact concerns that have given lots of people a very skeptical attitude
towards pages they aren't too sure about.
They are straw men. You bring up the most indefensible examples of inclusionism-
companies or garage bands marketing and self promoting, fanfiction, nutcases trying to push
some made-up religious movement-things that I certainly don't want in, and
you ignore(or de-emphasize) the examples I gave. This is EXACTLY what it means to have straw men.
Why you chose to interpret it as a personal attack is your problem, because I didn't mean it as
such. If it makes you feel better to assume bad faith on my part then to
think rational people could ever disagree with you, however, go to hell.
Yeah, how strange of me to think that you and I are having a conversation
but that in reality, you are talking to some hypothetical inclusionists
that apparently wants everything in. And don't even pretend that your statement
about "crapflood" wasn't directed at me.
If you are no longer addressing me,
please tell me now. So I won't have to worry about how you once heard that
inclusionists support the killing of puppies and that they hate rainbows.
Because for the record, I love rainbows and am against killing puppies.
Do you see NO DIFFERENCE between between having an article deleted and
having it kept, modified and built upon? Really?
No, my point was this--contribute anything to Wikipedia and you don't own
it anymore. Technically, neither do we--it belongs to the world now--but
if we're perfectly free to stop hosting it, or to edit it beyond your
comprehension, or to completely replace it with something better, and if
you're offended by such things than maybe you're a bit too possessive
about your work to contribute it to Wikipedia. Just like you shouldn't
contribute code to open source projects if you don't want to see strangers
refactor it, or if you don't want to s
That's your opinion of what's "the best solution (in terms of both style
and substance)". I like them. They are important and interesting to me
and many were referenced. This thread in another Slashdot article tells
me others cared about them too.
There is no shortage of trivia websites on the internet, nor is there
anything stopping you from starting your own. Wikipedia is a community-run
website that has a specific focus--and while that community is open to
newcomers and outside contributors, it is what it is and the consensus
of that community won't change without a long-term influx of people
who think differently. And that's an issue of social dynamics beyond
either my or your ability to change. I increasingly think now that my
WikiTrivia project would have been the best solution, but on the other
hand it doesn't make sense to me to criticize Wikipedia because it
prefers to focus on non-trivial information. (I'm sure if I went to the
Battlestar Galactica Wiki [battlestarwiki.org] and contributed a bunch
of content about some guy's immensely famous and popular BSG fanfiction,
they'd do the same thing.)
There is no shortage of anything on the Internet. We already addressed this point
earlier and it sums up as, "If you don't like what Wikipedia has become, get the hell out."
I wish I knew this would be what Wikipedia would become before my time and the time of others was wasted. That's the
main reason why there is so much anger now. It's not as if this policy were in
at the beginning, and all of us trivia lovers came in trying to force trivia sections
into articles. This decision came later on from the bureaucracy and I HIGHLY QUESTION whether
it represents the community. I will quote from the
thread in another Slashdot article
that I gave earlier that has brilliant analysis and evidence gathering by hucke (55628):
According to the history page for that article, the article was tagged
with the {{trivia}} template on 10 May 2007. That was nearly six months
ago. It was a "drive-by" edit; the user who put in the {{trivia}} box
has made no edits to [[Arthur C. Clarke]] before or since.
Since the article was thus tagged, there have been over 130 edits to
the page. At least five of those edits were in the trivia section -
plus one edit to remove the nag-box, followed immediately by another
edit to put it back in.
So, over nearly six months none of the people who have an actual interest
in the Arthur C. Clarke article have been motivated to remove, merge,
or rewrite the trivia section in a form acceptable to the policy police.
That's a fact. It shows that the "consensus" is a myth.
I suggest you go through the entire thread.
It looks like you see no difference between having an article deleted
and having it kept, modified and built upon. I do see the difference
and have no problem with the latter. So either you're an idiot or you
like to set up straw men.
It looks like you don't know how to have a civil disagreement with
someone. Go to hell.
And now you pull the civility card. Why don't we drop that pretense because
we are way past that. Let's look at some of your previous quotes:
When an article about a company or commercial product is written in an
overly positive tone, or with lots of meaningless buzzword-laden prose,
you have to assume it's marketing crap, and if an article is written by
the company or individual it purports to be about, that alone is reason
to delete it and, if necessary, allow someone else to start over.
I think there's too much deletion. Then I must be a spammer or company shill. Despite the fact
that I gave examples which represented neither, you make this insinuation anyway. How civil.
The main issue here is that certain individuals (mostly th
I accuse Fuzheado of nothing--I was speaking in general terms. But now
that you ask, I was never highly impressed with Fuzheado's credentials as
an administrator. I knew of him but I was involved with Wikipedia nearly
as long as he, and many administrators had more experience and have, in
my opinion, more salient criticisms of Wikipedia to make. Kelly Martin,
for instance.
Well now, at least we can say deletion is more than just about companies trying
to promote themselves or some attempt at spam. So let's now focus more on the
examples of bad deletions I'm giving rather these companies with clear conflicts
of interest. While you were "never highly impressed with Fuzheado's credentials",
we can agree he is part of this debate and cannot be dismissed
as a company shill or an ignorant outsider wanting to snipe at Wikipedia.
In terms of other criticisms, I'm quite aware
of them such as the cabals and secret lists and bannings, but those are other
topics for another time and ones which I don't have enough personal experience with.
Just because there are other problems doesn't mean this one isn't significant as well as
affecting a lot more people.
The webcomics thing was years ago--it couldn't have been after 2006 and
I'm fairly sure it was in 2005.
So it was in 2005. So what? The debate continues in 2007, as well as the
call for boycott , so it's an ongoing problem.
It's difficult to judge the notability
of webcomics since just about anyone can start one and ask all their
friends to write a Wikipedia article about it.
If those friends and readers add up to hundreds of thousands or even millions
and there are references in prominent websites dealing with webcomics, then
I'd say keep. Read more below for my answer of how I would change
notability guidelines.
It's also interesting that you don't mention the high schools deletion debates, which were of
similar vintage but were resolved in favor of the inclusionists.
What is there to say? That sometimes obscure subjects get included. How about you not mentioning
anything about Mzoli's Meats,
an example of an article that is only kept because Jimbo was the author. Maybe
this is the whole point. Rules aren't being applied fairly and consistently. Which matters
a lot when you have a many people getting their work trashed.
As for the trivia sections, trivia is by definition "information of
little importance or value"--and given that most trivia sections are
indeed filled with trivial and unreferenced facts, the best solution
(in terms of both style and substance) is to merge the less trivial bits
into the prose of the article and delete the rest.
That's your opinion of what's "the best solution (in terms of both style and substance)".
I like them. They are important and interesting to me and many were referenced. This
thread in another Slashdot article
tells me others cared about them too.
"Articles for deletion" discussions are not supposed to be votes
anyway. Slim majorities in favor of deletion are by policy and tradition
closed with the result of keeping the article due to "no consensus",
and it's generally required now to provide a cogent argument to the
discussion instead of just stating whether you believe the article
should be kept or deleted. Furthermore, the process is intended to
gauge consensus within the Wikipedia community. If we allowed one-use
IP addresses and newly-created accounts to influence these things, they
would cease to be a useful gauge of consensus. They would simply become
an exercise in stuffing the ballot box.
No, it says a lot about how Wikipedia has evolved as a project and had
to adapt to its growing success and popularity. You have absolutely no
idea how much Wikipedia is used for advertising.
No I do know. I've watched the new article page on occasion and seen
what gets created like the proverbial teenager making the autobiographical
stub entry, "I'm John Smith and I love Coldplay". This needs to be deleted
along with "I'm in Band X, and we'll be playing at the pub tonite. Check us
out!" But there is a lot of good stuff that does gets deleted (or has to
fight deletion) that shouldn't have to. Again, I'll quote from a another post I made:
Here are 2 examples of articles that had to fight off deletionists. They aren't self serving and provide
unique and interesting information that I couldn't EASILY find anywhere else:
1) Shock_sites - Internet websites like goatse.cx
are described here so that people can get a description of what they are without actually visiting
the site.
2) Chris Crocker - Internet meme for his
famous "Leave Britney Alone" youtube video. Despite being extensively referenced, it also had to
fight deletion as can be seen on the talk pages. Someone studying the
phenomena of Internet celebrity would find it very interesting.
I don't think everyone who worked on the above articles(maybe none) were
trying to advertise for goatse.cx or Chris Crocker.
When an article about a company or commercial product is written in an
overly positive tone, or with lots of meaningless buzzword-laden prose,
you have to assume it's marketing crap, and if an article is written by
the company or individual it purports to be about, that alone is reason
to delete it and, if necessary, allow someone else to start over.
Are you accusing Andrew Lih of working for the company Pownce? Do you
think that he, one of the most prominent Wikipedians doesn't understand
the policy
Wikipedia:Conflict of interest ?
I think I'll put my trust in someone who's both been with Wikipedia longer than
you have and "taught at the University of Hong Kong, where he studied
participatory journalism in the form of blogs and wikis, and at
Columbia University where he helped start the new media program." And did I mention
he's also writing a book on Wikipedia? I don't know if these credentials mean
anything to you, but I'll leave them here because I suspect they'll be important
to anyone else following this thread.
And the simple matter of fact is this--if something is really notable
enough to deserve an encyclopedia article, someone will eventually write
that article and defend it, and it will be included.
This is not true. Many of the webcomics were written by fans of those comics and not
the author. But it got deleted anyway under the pretense of non-notability and self-advertisement.
Many tried to defend it but under the new system of deletion that's now been corrupted
by the deletionists, but their votes are tossed aside under false pretenses such as
sock puppet, new account, and other such garbage. The fact is, there are lots of
articles that were written by a 3rd party with nothing
to gain, were defended by other editors, and still got hit with the deletion
club. And we haven't even talked about the mass removal of work in terms of trivia
sections.
For all the whining about "asshole deletionists", there are still
individual Wikipedia articles for each episode of South Park, The
Simpsons, and Star Trek: The Next Generation--although there is no longer
an article for the GNAA, and instead of having an individual article for
each Pokemon we now have them merged together. By any standards of an
encyclopedia, we are inclusionary to a fault. Wikipedia is trying to build an encyclopedia.
I'm going to have to disagree. This is based on personal experience and the recent
anger I'm seeing by others who have had their work deleted on a massive scale. Here's
a quote from an article in the
UK Telegraph by Andrew Lih. He's been around since at least 2003, and is
probably one of the most committed Wikipedians in terms of studying the nature
of Wikipedia as well as media in general. He's been an administrator since
October 2003, and hosts
WikipediaWeekly.
You can see his
user page . Here's what
he had to say:
Andrew Lih was a well-known deletionist until recently when he became
embroiled in the row over the entry for Pownce, a messaging and
bookmarking website from Kevin Rose, the founder of the popular site
Digg.com. The entry for Pownce, which had been written up in Business
Week, was deleted as advertising until Lih resurrected it. He wrote
about the row on his blog and has become a de facto spokesman for the
inclusionists, and says he feels like an old hand.
"The old timers remember the early days when we used to say 'ignore all
rules' and 'assume good faith', but people tend not to emphasise that
now. The third or fourth generation of Wikipedians has only heard Jimmy
Wales talk about the problems.
"So now, mixed in with the euphoria and positive energy it's a lot of
cutting, fighting, referencing, cutting back while leaving the good stuff
in. New priorities are arriving. Newer folks feel like they're wielding
a machete, not planting new trees.
"A lot of the veterans see established articles nominated for
deletion. They try not to be arrogant, try to be inclusive, but it's
tedious after six, seven or eight times."
That says a lot about how Wikipedia has recently been taken over by asshole deletionists.
Since I commented here, I can't mod you up, but I want to say this is one of the best
analysis I've read about what's happening. And you've certainly expressed yourself
with much more civility than I have. Unless you object, I think I'll be quoting
you when I encounter this topic again here or other places around the web. With
attribution of course.
Just because I think more should be included doesn't mean I want some
teenager making the autobiographical stub entry, "I'm John Smith and I love Coldplay" to be allowed.
My line for deleting material is different from yours, but that doesn't mean I have no line.
The webcomics removal is a perfect example of the deletionism that causes so much resentment.
Again, I point to the example of Mzoli's Meats,
which is only still around because it was created by Jimbo. It certainly isn't more notable than
many of the individual webcomics that were removed.
Here are 2 examples of articles that had to fight off deletionists. They aren't self serving and provide
unique and interesting information that I couldn't EASILY find anywhere else:
1) Shock_sites - Internet websites like goatse.cx
are described here so that people can get a description of what they are without actually visiting
the site.
2) Chris Crocker - Became an Internet meme for his
famous "Leave Britney Alone" youtube video. Despite being extensively referenced, it also had to
fight deletion as can be seen on the talk pages. Someone studying the
phenomena of Internet celebrity would find it very interesting.
In the case of the latter, as I watched its deletion being debated, the elitism of the deletionists was pretty
offensive. Then there's the issue of making a blanket rule to remove trivia sections because they're
unencyclopedic. This also has resulted in the removal of a lot of useful or interesting information.
I find the work done on all these pages to be extensive, thorough, and valuable and am angry for the authors
who had to waste their time defending them to asshole deletionists.
The worst part is that Jimbo Whales himself was hit by a
speedy delete for the article Mzoli's Meats.
But rather than make a change of policy, editors added material to this non-notable butcher shop, and
Jimbo is saved from feeling the bitterness of having work you invested a lot of time in get trashed.
Here's the big question. When exactly did these policies about deleting
based on notability, trivia, plot synopses, fair use images, come about,
and how much work was done before said policies were implemented with
such force? Because if a lot of people put in a lot of work only to
lose it in the great content razing of 2005-2007, then Wikipedia acted
in ABSOLUTE BAD FAITH based on what their starting principals were, and
former editors justifiably feel betrayed for having their time wasted.
I think Wikipedia is a prominent example of this. Assholes(deletionists) are driving away the
people who made it great in the first place(content creators) with their elitism and petty
power grabs. And now, Wikimedia is only able
to achieve 1/4 of their fundraising goal
because a lot of the content creators were probably money contributors as well.
Congratulations asshole deletionists. You may finally achieve the ultimate deletion-the
entire encyclopedia.
My friend who used to contribute a lot in terms of articles and even money decided to stop
because the deletionist assholes made it such a pain for him that he now
despises the site. And although almost none of his contributions were deleted, he hated the
way half his time was spent arguing with deletors about his work.
Even Jimbo Whales has experienced this. He started an article on
Mzoli's Meats , a butcher shop and restaurant in South Africa.
When it was almost speedily deleted, he told the deletors to
"excuse themselves from the project and find a new hobby.". In other words, get a life and stop ruining the project.
Unfortunately, a bunch of editors added information to the article so it's now kept, and
Jimbo doesn't have to confront either the bitterness many have felt in getting their work destroyed or remaking
policy so that people like my friend would continue contributing.
These asshole admins are really making Wikipedia a crappy site, and their effect on valuable editors is worse
than what any nasty vandal might do since admins are part of the power hierarchy. This is another valuable
lesson in what happens when you give thoughtless small minded people a little power. They make their pronouncements
and mass annihilations without any consideration on what the effect might be on a person who has spent sometimes
hundreds of man hours creating, maintaining, and protecting his/her articles. They dismiss people by spouting some
arbitrary interpretation of policy backed up by their cabals, while those who have better things to do like actually
create content get fucked over. James Derk of The Daily Southtown wrote an
article
where he talks about having a similar experience.
Also, here's a good Slashdot
thread illustrating the intellectual dishonesty of the deletionist admins. It is part of the Slashdot story
Call For Halt To Wikipedia Webcomic Deletions
which is filled with former contributors testifying to their own treatment at the hands of these assholes.
It's sad how some people seem to really get off on destroying the work of others.
I think it's interesting how when I don't know about a subject, editing an article on it would be considered
vandalism. But it's perfectly OK for the deletors to destroy work relating to things they often know nothing
about. Sometimes they even use their very ignorance as justification.
I think it's interesting how when I don't know about a subject, editing an
article on it would be considered vandalism. But it's perfectly OK for
the deletors to destroy work relating to things they often know nothing
about. Sometimes they even use their very ignorance as justification.
I think Wikipedia has a choice right now. Allow a lot more in than they are currently doing and piss off the
deletionists, or let these deletionists have their way and piss off the content creators(And I should add, it's
not only deleted articles that are targeted, but plot synopses, trivia sections, clearly permissible images,
etc. have all succumbed to the slash and burn mentality of these deletionists.). So Jimbo, who would you
rather keep around?
I hope you are a Wikipedia editor. You made a perfect assessment of how supposedly factual
information can really be opinion. If Wikipedia is making more people think like this, then
they're really doing something great in addition to everything else. The neutral language
part of Wikipedia's articles is something I think they do amazingly well.
Slashdoters often complain about the "gold diggers" who went into
CS only for the money, but then when we hear about people majoring
in art history or Medieval literature, say how they better learn the
phrase, "Do you want fries with that?" when they enter the job market.
So which is it? Should they be derided for studying what they love, or
attacked as mercenaries who consider financial viability when deciding on
a major?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry for my part in the flame war, too. And I really appreciate that you took the effort to work this out.
Thank you. And again, it's very gracious of you to say this. You were owed an apology, so the effort only cost me some stupid pride. The benefit has been getting my peace of mind back.
I appreciate the clarifications, and want to point out that I don't hold ill will against you at all for stating your opinions. The tone of our previous discussion led a certain way. While I can certainly flame and be flamed and take it in good sport, this is a subject that does merit serious and civil discussion.
After I made the post, I checked out your website to find out who I was apologizing to. It stung a bit that you're more than a decade younger than me, but then that's just stupid pride. Your above statement is a credit to you, and I predict much success in your life that you can accept an apology with such graciousness.
In the almost 20 years I've been on the Internet, I can only remember 7 big flame wars I've been in. This one has been the worst in terms of size and my behavior, and the first that I originated.(I ranted about this elsewhere, but it was among other angry inclusionists so no fighting ensued.) To help you understand why I'm so crazy, 3 other fights occurred on Wikipedia between me and deletionists within a 1 year period, and civility was hanging by a thread near the end.
And lost in all the drama is the fact that I'm a very strong deletionist when it comes to minor public figures who request to be removed. Privacy concerns and all that. This is just as contentious, and I should have remembered that about myself.
I also want to add that I've been unfair to Wikipedia in seemingly changing the rules as they go. When you begin a huge project like this, you don't know how a mass of people will collaborate, so you have no idea what the rules should be. The rules come as the articles begin to settle into a general format, common problems are identified, and some sort of consensus can be reached.
Your point about trivia and Musharraf is well taken, and the solution of making a separate site is probably best. I will begin advocating this as the best compromise.
Your statement before about Jimbo Whales being more of a figurehead is something I agree with, although I still took his Mzoli's Meats article as a strong policy endorsement of inclusionism. I say this now to make the larger point that I think we need someone to be more than a figurehead, the "benevolent dictator" who can make absolute pronouncements and take the heat for it so the co-workers won't fight over who gets the cubical by the window. Right now, it sometimes feels like a committee decreed that all bathroom breaks must be between 10:00 - 10:15 and 3:00-3:15, and I'll have to attend 3 meetings a week from now on to get this changed. Of course, this is just my perception and there's 100 things wrong with the analogy(e.g. Notability standards aren't arbitrary). Anyway, these are just thoughts that have been going through my head as I wonder how I got caught up in all this insanity.
Bottom line, there's no dictator so community consensus is the rule of the day. That's all there is to it. So I'll let you younger folks with all the energy work it out.
Finally, I want to offer you one more apology and this one is for wasting your time. (Yeah, after making you go through yet another endless post.) Your response hammers the point that I could have saved us both a lot of time and stress had I simply remembered those lessons about anger I learned before. And probably have to learn again someday.
Peace.
I've made a post as a reply to my original that I ask you to read. It may change nothing about how you feel, but anyway, there it is.
Above this post, there is a thread between me and The One and Only which got incredibly nasty. This made me rethink my opinions about Wikipedia, my original post, and everything I've said since then. So here's what I need to add to this discussion.
1) I was absolutely wrong to use such inflammatory language in my original post. As someone who decries the polarizing nature of our current political culture, I truly regret being so reckless in saying what I did. These kinds of statements needlessly puts the opposition on the defensive, and no common ground can be found in such a climate. I had been associating with/reading the postings of like minded people in this debate, and this is always a mistake is it got my blood boiling on this topic.
2) Related to the above, this carried through in the responses I made to deletionists. I continued to use the inflammatory language of "asshole", and this continued to push and antagonize people. This I am deeply sorry for, because it wasn't just a rant to the world, but a direct response to someone.
3) I am also guilty of interpreting deletionists responses in the most offensive way. With an open mind, I could have asked, "So are you saying XYZ about my postition?" in the debate, and clarification may have been provided that would have cooled me off. As I've often said but regretfully forgotten, when you're looking for offense, you'll probably find it.
So had I the chance to say it all again, it would have been worded as:
**
I think right now, Wikipedia is going through this(the Failure Cascade) as it relates to good editors being driven away by deletionism. There's a real anger out there with people getting frustrated by their good work(well referenced, neutral point of view) which usually represents hundreds of hours of labor being removed based on incorrect accusations self promotion, company propaganda, or the current, excessively restrictive, and unfairly applied criteria of non-notability.
This isn't just happening to new articles, but older ones which have already had a lot of work done on them. And retroactively removing someone's hard work(and this includes trivia sections which many readers like , plot synopses) with a few 3 letter acronyms (e.g. WP:NOT, WP:NOTE) leads to a feeling of being cheated out of those hours.
This is a very big problem because people take pride in their work, and that's good and absolutely necessary. It means they will watch for vandalism, update their articles when necessary, and maintain the articles' overall quality and accuracy. Wikipedia greatly benefits from this, so to remove work in a way which I think is often done thoughtlessly, corruptly (there are examples of keep votes being tossed that are questionable), and too quickly leaves a bitterness in the minds of the content creators who acted in good faith but now feel they've been scammed by the invitation of Wikipedia to add their knowledge to its pages. It's even worse when you consider that the same person who wrote an article on some obscure topic that got deleted may have written a big part of the C++ article. The latter definitely will be kept, but that's one less good editor to watch over it if he leaves the project.
Volunteer projects survive when they acknowledge the hard work of the volunteers. These volunteers provide the labor, and oftentimes the money. Right now, Wikipedia can only achieve 1/4 of their fundraising goal, and I interpret that as angry content creators taking both their time and money with them. I am among this group, and I feel sad about it because I had really liked the idea of a free encyclopedia. Although their fundraisin
It has nothing to do about my reading comprehension. It has to do with you being a liar. To quote from earlier: I simply will no longer donate time or money to Wikipedia and discourage others from doing so by warning them of what happens to their contributions. Please do, if it will stem the crapflood Wikipedia has to deal with already.
You might not have noticed a little word there: "if". You might consider whether or not your contributions, or those of your friends, are really even needed or welcome, and if you don't think they will be, I urge you to carry on in encouraging them not to offer them. Again the point about reading comprehension.
So I guess "if" you're retarded, then I shouldn't hold it against you. But I admit, I still will "if" you're simply an asshole deletionist. Why don't you simply own up to your incivility? You can even give one of those asshole non-apologies, "Well, I'm sorry you're offended and that you missinterpreted my comments."
Actually, I went and read that remark in its full context, and he wasn't angry at deletionists for being deletionists. His full remark was as follows: "You can dispute the article on the merits of the notability (though not successfully, I think), but the assumptions of bad faith in this argument are just shocking. Some people should excuse themselves from the project and find a new hobby." So there it is--incivility out, good-faith concerns about notability in.
He was frustrated by how deletionism is being practiced-beginning with the presumption of bad faith, unfair accusations, both resulting in the loss of good content. And if bad faith is even being assumed on the part of the founder, than even some proven editor who submitted this article would probably have no chance at all. Bottom line, this article would not have survived had it been anyone else.
The same policy we've always had.
The request for civility policy has always been in place. The notability policy has changed, and Jimbo was almost a victim of it, but being Jimbo, was saved. That's exactly what this article proves.
Since I feel the voting process has been corrupted, with include votes cast aside and ballot stuffing the other way, I no longer have faith that the spirit of this principal is being applied. Now, I do think this is true the majority of the time, but I also think corrupt voting now happens to an extent that it has become a problem. And to save us some time, this is my belief and not true in your experience.
You could substantiate your opinion here with some examples. But that's too good for you. Rather wallow in ignorance I gather.
I've already provided an example of keep votes being tossed based on accusations of socks. Here's one where someone did an experiment showing that delete puppets aren't questioned.
But go ahead an ignore them. You have shown an impressive capacity to ignore dismiss, and diminish evidence you don't like:
Me and many of the others in the Webcomics Slashdot story - People with hurt feelings, laziness and complacence.
Andrew Lih , an administrator, someone who has made his career studying media and is writing a book on Wikipedia - I was never highly impressed with Fuzheado's credentials as an administrator"
And now a founder, Jimbo Whales - He's more of a financier and public figurehead, and doesn't keep terribly in the loop
Someone needs to give you a job in the Bush administration.
It's recently (as of 2007 or so) become standard practice to personally notify the creator of a page that's put up for deletion so they can say their piece. (Most such
Since I'm not defending "the company shill, the teenagers screwing around, the garage band," I don't need it explained to me why some things get deleted.
I'm not explaining to you why some things get deleted, you illiterate prick. I'm explaining the formative experiences of "asshole deletionists"--the experiences that form Wikipedia editors into that given viewpoint on the project.
And what relevance do these experiences have to me other than how they manifest in the application deletions. Are you saying their viewpoint is screwed up because they deal with so much crap everyday that a lot of good content is deleted and they can't see that? Are you apologizing for them? If not, then why does this even need mentioning. Either the deletes of the articles I'm talking about are good or they aren't. The psychological frustration of the deletionist are a separate issue, but a tangent to what this thread is about.
Oh wait I see. Here, let me say it all again:
I think deletionists have hurt Wikipedia. Some of them no doubt have had to deal with so much crap coming in that this has unfortunately caused them to have itchy trigger fingers in terms of removing content, sometimes coming across as thoughtless and unfair. Wikipedia needs to do something to remedy this, because to content creators, they come across as assholes and these very content creators may very well be financial contributors as well, so this will be a critical problem in terms of raising funds.
While I think many are simply assholes, it would be unfair to paint them all with such a broad brush because many are also doing the important janitorial work that is absolutely necessary to keep wikipedia running. So somehow, we need to deal with the problem of contentious work getting deleted without it leading to the antagonism between deletionists and creators of what I think is legitimate content.
I truly hope the fundamental problem isn't that the only way someone can do the janitorial work is by adopting the harshest attitudes towards content. If this is the case, it bodes ill for projects like Wikipedia in the future.
So I guess I painted with too broad a brush. I should have considered that many who consider themselves deletionists and may even include/exclude based on the same standards that I have(NOT YOU), are working in the trenches, have gotten so much shit thrown at them by garage bands and self-promoting companies, that they now self-identify as deletionists and were offended with my lumping all of them together as "asshole deletionists".
Is that your point?
And how about the "crapflood" accusation. That uncivil statement was unquestionably directed at me.
Given that it's taken three incidences of repeating myself to explain the above point to you, you're probably not at the level of reading comprehension for me to attempt any further clarification. Please tell me English isn't your native language.
It has nothing to do about my reading comprehension. It has to do with you being a liar. To quote from earlier:
I simply will no longer donate time or money to Wikipedia and discourage others from doing so by warning them of what happens to their contributions.
Please do, if it will stem the crapflood Wikipedia has to deal with already.
This has nothing to do with your attempt to explain the "the formative experiences of "asshole deletionists"". This was an uncivil attack on my contributions as being part of the "crapflood", despite your attempts to rationalize that away. You made a DIRECT response to my statement and I interpreted it as a response to me. Anyone else on who speaks English as their native language would interpret it EXACTLY as I did.
In terms of outsiders at Wikipedia, I guess it depends on what you consider an outsider. Someone who reads and is a fan of a webcomic but doesn't edit may be considered an outsider to you,
Again that's your opinion. You interpret it your way and I'll interpret it as people who really like the trivia sections and absolutely DO NOT want them removed. Not all of us aspire to having a "Featured Article".
Given that my opinion is based on experience and that yours is based on furthering your own ignorant point, I'll choose mine.
Of course you'll choose yours. That's what asshole deletionist do. But I'll go with my own experience as well as the majority of those who commented in that thread as well as the rest of the article.
Yeah, how strange of me to think that you and I are having a conversation but that in reality, you are talking to some hypothetical inclusionists that apparently wants everything in. And don't even pretend that your statement about "crapflood" wasn't directed at me. If you are no longer addressing me, please tell me now. So I won't have to worry about how you once heard that inclusionists support the killing of puppies and that they hate rainbows. Because for the record, I love rainbows and am against killing puppies.
My examples were given with the purpose of explaining where the deletionist viewpoint comes from. And on many of the issues you point out (webcomics for instance), the skepticism that comes from this experience is exactly what causes the deletionist reaction you complain about.
Since I'm not defending "the company shill, the teenagers screwing around, the garage band," I don't need it explained to me why some things get deleted. I have already said:
Just because I think more should be included doesn't mean I want some teenager making the autobiographical stub entry, "I'm John Smith and I love Coldplay" to be allowed. My line for deleting material is different from yours, but that doesn't mean I have no line.
I've watched the new article page on occasion and seen what gets created like the proverbial teenager making the autobiographical stub entry, "I'm John Smith and I love Coldplay". This needs to be deleted along with "I'm in Band X, and we'll be playing at the pub tonite. Check us out!" But there is a lot of good stuff that does gets deleted (or has to fight deletion) that shouldn't have to.
By bringing it up, you are setting up straw men or having a conversation with someone else. And how about the "crapflood" accusation. That uncivil statement was unquestionably directed at me.
When it comes to open source, Wikipedia, or donating blood, I am fully aware that there is a great deal of possible rejection or modification involved that are beyond my control. The Blood Bank has very strict rules on who can donate and there's about 30 questions and many additional tests that may get you excluded. Those rules are fair, protect the blood supply, and are made clear to everyone before the first drop is extracted. But if one day, they were to say to me, "We don't want the blood of Colored people anymore, but please keep donating money," you can be assured this would be the last time I gave them either blood or money.
I would think, with all your railing against straw men fallacies, that you wouldn't commit one now. Wikipedia has never discriminated against contributors based upon their race.
And how convenient that you don't finish the entire quote which says:
Now you obviously think that the rules of Wikipedia that got my work and that of others trashed were fair and reasonable and aren't like the ugly example I just gave relating to the blood bank. I don't. I find them elitist, inconsistently applied, and not presented at the beginning so people like me now feel betrayed.
Pay attention to the line "were fair and reasonable and aren't like the ugly example I just gave" That's pretty intellectually dishonest of you, asshole.
But when it gets deleted, there is only one possible interpretation. "Your work doesn't belong here. It's not worthy of our project." Well,
Actually, in the beginning trivia sections were rather rare--they only became prominent long after I joined, quite to the disdain of the "old school". You mention the Arthur C. Clarke article--the reason such things are tagged is because, as I said, it's usually best to expand the article's prose sections and work the more notable bits of the trivia section into that, rather than delete the section outright. You know, keeping, modifying, and building upon poorly-formatted contributions?
...I think there's too much deletion. Then I must be a spammer or company
shill. Despite the fact that I gave examples which represented neither,
you make this insinuation anyway. How civil.Or maybe I'm a "nutcase", or
I'm too sensitive and got my "feelings hurt", that I have "some made-up
religious movement" or represent "astroturfers". Nice way to bring in
straw men rather than address the examples I gave.
It is your opinion that the page is "poorly-formatted". I and others in that thread disagree.
So, over nearly six months none of the people who have an actual interest in the Arthur C. Clarke article have been motivated to remove, merge, or rewrite the trivia section in a form acceptable to the policy police. That's a fact. It shows that the "consensus" is a myth.
Or that laziness and complacence is the order of the day. It's a lot easier to tag something as problematic than to fix it, and without a focused effort like a Featured Article push, that kind of work doesn't get done because it's hard.
Again that's your opinion. You interpret it your way and I'll interpret it as people who really like the trivia sections and absolutely DO NOT want them removed. Not all of us aspire to having a "Featured Article".
And now you pull the civility card. Why don't we drop that pretense because we are way past that. Let's look at some of your previous quotes:
They aren't straw men--those are actual issues we had to deal with during the time I was heavily involved with the project. Those are the exact concerns that have given lots of people a very skeptical attitude towards pages they aren't too sure about.
They are straw men. You bring up the most indefensible examples of inclusionism- companies or garage bands marketing and self promoting, fanfiction, nutcases trying to push some made-up religious movement-things that I certainly don't want in, and you ignore(or de-emphasize) the examples I gave. This is EXACTLY what it means to have straw men.
Why you chose to interpret it as a personal attack is your problem, because I didn't mean it as such. If it makes you feel better to assume bad faith on my part then to think rational people could ever disagree with you, however, go to hell.
Yeah, how strange of me to think that you and I are having a conversation but that in reality, you are talking to some hypothetical inclusionists that apparently wants everything in. And don't even pretend that your statement about "crapflood" wasn't directed at me. If you are no longer addressing me, please tell me now. So I won't have to worry about how you once heard that inclusionists support the killing of puppies and that they hate rainbows. Because for the record, I love rainbows and am against killing puppies.
Do you see NO DIFFERENCE between between having an article deleted and having it kept, modified and built upon? Really?
No, my point was this--contribute anything to Wikipedia and you don't own it anymore. Technically, neither do we--it belongs to the world now--but if we're perfectly free to stop hosting it, or to edit it beyond your comprehension, or to completely replace it with something better, and if you're offended by such things than maybe you're a bit too possessive about your work to contribute it to Wikipedia. Just like you shouldn't contribute code to open source projects if you don't want to see strangers refactor it, or if you don't want to s
That's your opinion of what's "the best solution (in terms of both style and substance)". I like them. They are important and interesting to me and many were referenced. This thread in another Slashdot article tells me others cared about them too.
There is no shortage of trivia websites on the internet, nor is there anything stopping you from starting your own. Wikipedia is a community-run website that has a specific focus--and while that community is open to newcomers and outside contributors, it is what it is and the consensus of that community won't change without a long-term influx of people who think differently. And that's an issue of social dynamics beyond either my or your ability to change. I increasingly think now that my WikiTrivia project would have been the best solution, but on the other hand it doesn't make sense to me to criticize Wikipedia because it prefers to focus on non-trivial information. (I'm sure if I went to the Battlestar Galactica Wiki [battlestarwiki.org] and contributed a bunch of content about some guy's immensely famous and popular BSG fanfiction, they'd do the same thing.)
There is no shortage of anything on the Internet. We already addressed this point earlier and it sums up as, "If you don't like what Wikipedia has become, get the hell out." I wish I knew this would be what Wikipedia would become before my time and the time of others was wasted. That's the main reason why there is so much anger now. It's not as if this policy were in at the beginning, and all of us trivia lovers came in trying to force trivia sections into articles. This decision came later on from the bureaucracy and I HIGHLY QUESTION whether it represents the community. I will quote from the thread in another Slashdot article that I gave earlier that has brilliant analysis and evidence gathering by hucke (55628):
According to the history page for that article, the article was tagged with the {{trivia}} template on 10 May 2007. That was nearly six months ago. It was a "drive-by" edit; the user who put in the {{trivia}} box has made no edits to [[Arthur C. Clarke]] before or since.
Since the article was thus tagged, there have been over 130 edits to the page. At least five of those edits were in the trivia section - plus one edit to remove the nag-box, followed immediately by another edit to put it back in.
So, over nearly six months none of the people who have an actual interest in the Arthur C. Clarke article have been motivated to remove, merge, or rewrite the trivia section in a form acceptable to the policy police.
That's a fact. It shows that the "consensus" is a myth.
I suggest you go through the entire thread.
It looks like you see no difference between having an article deleted and having it kept, modified and built upon. I do see the difference and have no problem with the latter. So either you're an idiot or you like to set up straw men.
It looks like you don't know how to have a civil disagreement with someone. Go to hell.
And now you pull the civility card. Why don't we drop that pretense because we are way past that. Let's look at some of your previous quotes:
When an article about a company or commercial product is written in an overly positive tone, or with lots of meaningless buzzword-laden prose, you have to assume it's marketing crap, and if an article is written by the company or individual it purports to be about, that alone is reason to delete it and, if necessary, allow someone else to start over.
I think there's too much deletion. Then I must be a spammer or company shill. Despite the fact that I gave examples which represented neither, you make this insinuation anyway. How civil.
The main issue here is that certain individuals (mostly th
I accuse Fuzheado of nothing--I was speaking in general terms. But now that you ask, I was never highly impressed with Fuzheado's credentials as an administrator. I knew of him but I was involved with Wikipedia nearly as long as he, and many administrators had more experience and have, in my opinion, more salient criticisms of Wikipedia to make. Kelly Martin, for instance.
Well now, at least we can say deletion is more than just about companies trying to promote themselves or some attempt at spam. So let's now focus more on the examples of bad deletions I'm giving rather these companies with clear conflicts of interest. While you were "never highly impressed with Fuzheado's credentials", we can agree he is part of this debate and cannot be dismissed as a company shill or an ignorant outsider wanting to snipe at Wikipedia.
In terms of other criticisms, I'm quite aware of them such as the cabals and secret lists and bannings, but those are other topics for another time and ones which I don't have enough personal experience with. Just because there are other problems doesn't mean this one isn't significant as well as affecting a lot more people.
The webcomics thing was years ago--it couldn't have been after 2006 and I'm fairly sure it was in 2005.
So it was in 2005. So what? The debate continues in 2007, as well as the call for boycott , so it's an ongoing problem.
It's difficult to judge the notability of webcomics since just about anyone can start one and ask all their friends to write a Wikipedia article about it.
If those friends and readers add up to hundreds of thousands or even millions and there are references in prominent websites dealing with webcomics, then I'd say keep. Read more below for my answer of how I would change notability guidelines.
It's also interesting that you don't mention the high schools deletion debates, which were of similar vintage but were resolved in favor of the inclusionists.
What is there to say? That sometimes obscure subjects get included. How about you not mentioning anything about Mzoli's Meats, an example of an article that is only kept because Jimbo was the author. Maybe this is the whole point. Rules aren't being applied fairly and consistently. Which matters a lot when you have a many people getting their work trashed.
As for the trivia sections, trivia is by definition "information of little importance or value"--and given that most trivia sections are indeed filled with trivial and unreferenced facts, the best solution (in terms of both style and substance) is to merge the less trivial bits into the prose of the article and delete the rest.
That's your opinion of what's "the best solution (in terms of both style and substance)". I like them. They are important and interesting to me and many were referenced. This thread in another Slashdot article tells me others cared about them too.
"Articles for deletion" discussions are not supposed to be votes anyway. Slim majorities in favor of deletion are by policy and tradition closed with the result of keeping the article due to "no consensus", and it's generally required now to provide a cogent argument to the discussion instead of just stating whether you believe the article should be kept or deleted. Furthermore, the process is intended to gauge consensus within the Wikipedia community. If we allowed one-use IP addresses and newly-created accounts to influence these things, they would cease to be a useful gauge of consensus. They would simply become an exercise in stuffing the ballot box.
I disagree
No, it says a lot about how Wikipedia has evolved as a project and had to adapt to its growing success and popularity. You have absolutely no idea how much Wikipedia is used for advertising.
No I do know. I've watched the new article page on occasion and seen what gets created like the proverbial teenager making the autobiographical stub entry, "I'm John Smith and I love Coldplay". This needs to be deleted along with "I'm in Band X, and we'll be playing at the pub tonite. Check us out!" But there is a lot of good stuff that does gets deleted (or has to fight deletion) that shouldn't have to. Again, I'll quote from a another post I made:
Here are 2 examples of articles that had to fight off deletionists. They aren't self serving and provide unique and interesting information that I couldn't EASILY find anywhere else:
1) Shock_sites - Internet websites like goatse.cx are described here so that people can get a description of what they are without actually visiting the site.
2) Chris Crocker - Internet meme for his famous "Leave Britney Alone" youtube video. Despite being extensively referenced, it also had to fight deletion as can be seen on the talk pages. Someone studying the phenomena of Internet celebrity would find it very interesting.
I don't think everyone who worked on the above articles(maybe none) were trying to advertise for goatse.cx or Chris Crocker.
When an article about a company or commercial product is written in an overly positive tone, or with lots of meaningless buzzword-laden prose, you have to assume it's marketing crap, and if an article is written by the company or individual it purports to be about, that alone is reason to delete it and, if necessary, allow someone else to start over.
Are you accusing Andrew Lih of working for the company Pownce? Do you think that he, one of the most prominent Wikipedians doesn't understand the policy Wikipedia:Conflict of interest ? I think I'll put my trust in someone who's both been with Wikipedia longer than you have and "taught at the University of Hong Kong, where he studied participatory journalism in the form of blogs and wikis, and at Columbia University where he helped start the new media program." And did I mention he's also writing a book on Wikipedia? I don't know if these credentials mean anything to you, but I'll leave them here because I suspect they'll be important to anyone else following this thread.
And the simple matter of fact is this--if something is really notable enough to deserve an encyclopedia article, someone will eventually write that article and defend it, and it will be included.
This is not true. Many of the webcomics were written by fans of those comics and not the author. But it got deleted anyway under the pretense of non-notability and self-advertisement. Many tried to defend it but under the new system of deletion that's now been corrupted by the deletionists, but their votes are tossed aside under false pretenses such as sock puppet, new account, and other such garbage. The fact is, there are lots of articles that were written by a 3rd party with nothing to gain, were defended by other editors, and still got hit with the deletion club. And we haven't even talked about the mass removal of work in terms of trivia sections.
For all the whining about "asshole deletionists", there are still individual Wikipedia articles for each episode of South Park, The Simpsons, and Star Trek: The Next Generation--although there is no longer an article for the GNAA, and instead of having an individual article for each Pokemon we now have them merged together. By any standards of an encyclopedia, we are inclusionary to a fault. Wikipedia is trying to build an encyclopedia.
I see
I'm going to have to disagree. This is based on personal experience and the recent anger I'm seeing by others who have had their work deleted on a massive scale. Here's a quote from an article in the UK Telegraph by Andrew Lih. He's been around since at least 2003, and is probably one of the most committed Wikipedians in terms of studying the nature of Wikipedia as well as media in general. He's been an administrator since October 2003, and hosts WikipediaWeekly. You can see his user page . Here's what he had to say:
Andrew Lih was a well-known deletionist until recently when he became embroiled in the row over the entry for Pownce, a messaging and bookmarking website from Kevin Rose, the founder of the popular site Digg.com. The entry for Pownce, which had been written up in Business Week, was deleted as advertising until Lih resurrected it. He wrote about the row on his blog and has become a de facto spokesman for the inclusionists, and says he feels like an old hand.
"The old timers remember the early days when we used to say 'ignore all rules' and 'assume good faith', but people tend not to emphasise that now. The third or fourth generation of Wikipedians has only heard Jimmy Wales talk about the problems.
"So now, mixed in with the euphoria and positive energy it's a lot of cutting, fighting, referencing, cutting back while leaving the good stuff in. New priorities are arriving. Newer folks feel like they're wielding a machete, not planting new trees.
"A lot of the veterans see established articles nominated for deletion. They try not to be arrogant, try to be inclusive, but it's tedious after six, seven or eight times."
That says a lot about how Wikipedia has recently been taken over by asshole deletionists.
Since I commented here, I can't mod you up, but I want to say this is one of the best analysis I've read about what's happening. And you've certainly expressed yourself with much more civility than I have. Unless you object, I think I'll be quoting you when I encounter this topic again here or other places around the web. With attribution of course.
Many thanks.
Just because I think more should be included doesn't mean I want some teenager making the autobiographical stub entry, "I'm John Smith and I love Coldplay" to be allowed. My line for deleting material is different from yours, but that doesn't mean I have no line. The webcomics removal is a perfect example of the deletionism that causes so much resentment. Again, I point to the example of Mzoli's Meats, which is only still around because it was created by Jimbo. It certainly isn't more notable than many of the individual webcomics that were removed.
Here are 2 examples of articles that had to fight off deletionists. They aren't self serving and provide unique and interesting information that I couldn't EASILY find anywhere else:
1) Shock_sites - Internet websites like goatse.cx are described here so that people can get a description of what they are without actually visiting the site.
2) Chris Crocker - Became an Internet meme for his famous "Leave Britney Alone" youtube video. Despite being extensively referenced, it also had to fight deletion as can be seen on the talk pages. Someone studying the phenomena of Internet celebrity would find it very interesting.
In the case of the latter, as I watched its deletion being debated, the elitism of the deletionists was pretty offensive. Then there's the issue of making a blanket rule to remove trivia sections because they're unencyclopedic. This also has resulted in the removal of a lot of useful or interesting information. I find the work done on all these pages to be extensive, thorough, and valuable and am angry for the authors who had to waste their time defending them to asshole deletionists.
The worst part is that Jimbo Whales himself was hit by a speedy delete for the article Mzoli's Meats. But rather than make a change of policy, editors added material to this non-notable butcher shop, and Jimbo is saved from feeling the bitterness of having work you invested a lot of time in get trashed.
Here's the big question. When exactly did these policies about deleting based on notability, trivia, plot synopses, fair use images, come about, and how much work was done before said policies were implemented with such force? Because if a lot of people put in a lot of work only to lose it in the great content razing of 2005-2007, then Wikipedia acted in ABSOLUTE BAD FAITH based on what their starting principals were, and former editors justifiably feel betrayed for having their time wasted.
I think Wikipedia is a prominent example of this. Assholes(deletionists) are driving away the people who made it great in the first place(content creators) with their elitism and petty power grabs. And now, Wikimedia is only able to achieve 1/4 of their fundraising goal because a lot of the content creators were probably money contributors as well.
Congratulations asshole deletionists. You may finally achieve the ultimate deletion-the entire encyclopedia.
My friend who used to contribute a lot in terms of articles and even money decided to stop because the deletionist assholes made it such a pain for him that he now despises the site. And although almost none of his contributions were deleted, he hated the way half his time was spent arguing with deletors about his work.
Even Jimbo Whales has experienced this. He started an article on Mzoli's Meats , a butcher shop and restaurant in South Africa. When it was almost speedily deleted, he told the deletors to "excuse themselves from the project and find a new hobby.". In other words, get a life and stop ruining the project. Unfortunately, a bunch of editors added information to the article so it's now kept, and Jimbo doesn't have to confront either the bitterness many have felt in getting their work destroyed or remaking policy so that people like my friend would continue contributing.
These asshole admins are really making Wikipedia a crappy site, and their effect on valuable editors is worse than what any nasty vandal might do since admins are part of the power hierarchy. This is another valuable lesson in what happens when you give thoughtless small minded people a little power. They make their pronouncements and mass annihilations without any consideration on what the effect might be on a person who has spent sometimes hundreds of man hours creating, maintaining, and protecting his/her articles. They dismiss people by spouting some arbitrary interpretation of policy backed up by their cabals, while those who have better things to do like actually create content get fucked over. James Derk of The Daily Southtown wrote an article where he talks about having a similar experience.
Also, here's a good Slashdot thread illustrating the intellectual dishonesty of the deletionist admins. It is part of the Slashdot story Call For Halt To Wikipedia Webcomic Deletions which is filled with former contributors testifying to their own treatment at the hands of these assholes. It's sad how some people seem to really get off on destroying the work of others.
I think it's interesting how when I don't know about a subject, editing an article on it would be considered vandalism. But it's perfectly OK for the deletors to destroy work relating to things they often know nothing about. Sometimes they even use their very ignorance as justification.
I think it's interesting how when I don't know about a subject, editing an article on it would be considered vandalism. But it's perfectly OK for the deletors to destroy work relating to things they often know nothing about. Sometimes they even use their very ignorance as justification.
I think Wikipedia has a choice right now. Allow a lot more in than they are currently doing and piss off the deletionists, or let these deletionists have their way and piss off the content creators(And I should add, it's not only deleted articles that are targeted, but plot synopses, trivia sections, clearly permissible images, etc. have all succumbed to the slash and burn mentality of these deletionists.). So Jimbo, who would you rather keep around?
>[citation needed]
>>{{fact|date=October, 2007}}
[original research]
Whoops. My mistake. It was 20% of the respondents rather than 20% less sex. Got to read more carefully.
It wouldn't be negative.
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for x = 0.0.
They thought they'd be greeted as liberators.
Don't bother. Ran for govenor of California didn't do much for my resume.
Here are some images of the original Ubuntu risque wallpaper they are making fun of:
r t.html
http://www.prodigyweb.net.mx/espinomiguel/ubuntua
GuloGulo
I hope you are a Wikipedia editor. You made a perfect assessment of how supposedly factual information can really be opinion. If Wikipedia is making more people think like this, then they're really doing something great in addition to everything else. The neutral language part of Wikipedia's articles is something I think they do amazingly well.
Slashdoters often complain about the "gold diggers" who went into CS only for the money, but then when we hear about people majoring in art history or Medieval literature, say how they better learn the phrase, "Do you want fries with that?" when they enter the job market.
So which is it? Should they be derided for studying what they love, or attacked as mercenaries who consider financial viability when deciding on a major?