The only ones we do block are what are considered time wasters (games, chat rooms, etc).
Oh yes, the great illusion that you can do anything to prevent people from taking a break when they feel like it. Management has felt that responsibility and illusionary power for a century or so. Everyone else either laughs at it or sighs about it, because it simply doesn't work. The most you'll ever get is to shift people to other time wasters. So they'll be at the coffee machine more often, or reading allowed sites, or smoking more, or just sitting there starring at the wall.
People are people and if you think you can change them by silly things like website blacklists, you need a reality check.
I can see adult sites, but only for one reason: Liability. Aside from that, my personal opinion is that it doesn't matter to me whether a co-worker spends his break on slashdot or sexysluts.
We block certain website groups (adult, gambling, games, etc) by default and everyone must go through our proxy to the outside world. Web logs are checked throughout the day and those who try 30 different ways to get to boobsgonewild.com are reported.
Well, you can argue about that, but you can hardly claim that that's a security feature.
Most people have only User permissions so they can't install something and we regularly do sweeps of unapproved software on those people who do have admin privileges. I'm the one who generally gets the call to remove the software. We also check for firewalls on PCs and other software which can potentially bypass our firewall or hide the user.
That's not a security feature, either, it's a security workaround. Most harmful software doesn't need to be installed in order to root the machine, it just needs to be executed, from anywhere. Preventing execution of non-approved binaries (i.e. mount everything noexec for a start) would be closer.
Not sure what the big deal is. These are just basic network security measures which any decent admin should do and have set up.
Proper "network security" doesn't rely on the end-user machine being safe. The network should still be secure even if John Badguy plugs the ethernet cable into his own notebook.
None of the above has anything to do with security. Except for one thing: It does make damn certain that users will continue to see "security" as a hassle and a burden.
So I can't put my preferred ergonomic mouse on your machine because you disabled the USB ports? Great security feature.
We need more people like you, who solve technical problems by technical means, instead of "HR methods".
People use stuff because it gives them and advantage. Often, that's an advantage to the company as well. The amount of time and money I've saved the company by finding stuff on Usenet, for example, probably outweighs the yearly salary of the IT guy whose job is the futile attempt of trying to stop me.
I've seen the daily work of entire departments depend on "half-official" networks with relaxed policies, because they just couldn't get any work done on the official internal network (software developers and admin-type people, mostly).
That's how you make friends and teach people to trust you. A guy wants to help out and you punish him, instead of treating him like the friend of law enforcement that he wants to be.
I know here sits a customer they just lost. I'm sick and tired of tie-ins like that where for no good reason they try to force me into signing up for some unrelated service that I otherwise had no interest in.
Technologically? No, in that sense it's more or less the same thing.
But products aren't about technology alone. Wasn't there a study just these days that a third of the iPhone customers bought it for its looks alone? Design is a major feature of products. As is the support chain.
Apple decided to keep central control of the app repository. Love it or hate it, that's how it is. As I pointed out, that's not an Apple invention, all game consoles work the same.
So in the product-as-a-whole view, yes the iPhone differs in some important details from the majority of other smartphones.
Maybe that's news to you, but not everything that has a CPU in it and runs an operating system is a general-purpose computer in the sense of arbitrary reprogramming.
ATM machines over here run OS/2, for example. Your washing machine probably has more computing power than your first computer had. A normal (non-smart) phone... and so on.
Other sites report the incident differently. The main point being that it appears to be a clarification of the NDA that developers already agreed upon, and not an additional restriction.
Compared to game consoles, Apple's requirements are very tame, but you don't hear much complaints about the rejections that Nintendo regularily sends out.
What it does do, however, is make it clear (again), that the iPhone is not a general-purpose computer, but a device.
That's not true. If a game developer's business side determines that [lost sales from piracy] would be less than [lost sales from DRM disgruntlement], they would release their game without DRM.
It ain't happening, which is good evidence that there's something wrong with that reasoning.
I figure it is that they never actually make that calculation, and for good reasons: It can't be made without relying too much on guesswork. There is no objective way to know "lost sales from piracy". The PR department might claim every download is a lost sale, but someone who actually calculates a number wouldn't assume that. Likewise, there is no way to know "lost sales from DRM disgruntlement" because what happened with Spore is a first. Usually, these are silent losses. Even with Amazon reviews in the thousands, you can not figure out how many people really did not buy because of the DRM. It could be lower than the Amazon count (people like to complain and buy anyways) or it could be way higher (people who decided not to buy because of the DRM, but without leaving a review).
It's absolutely a shot in the dark, and if I were the board, I'd ask hard questions of a CEO who makes decisions based on what's basically just a hunch.
Doesn't matter though, PC games will follow the same path as the music industry, they are just behind a few years. We'll get massive piracy, an unwillingness to have online distribution, then an acceptance of DRM in order to get our games cheaply and easily (a la iTunes).
Very unlikely. Games and music are different in crucial aspects. One is that people are much more likely to be fans of a music band or singer, and buy their stuff no matter what. Very few people are fans of specific designers or developers to the point of buying their next game unseen. But then again, in games you have sequels, something that's very, very rare in the music business. More importantly, however, games are software while CDs are not. It is easier to load them with DRM, which is why it's being done. Most important, however, gaming is moving into online gaming a lot. That opens up new business models. MMORPGs don't have a piracy problem. Expect more games to be online games for that reason alone.
The only lesson learned from this fiasco will be to have less intrusive DRM on games... it's not going away. What the game execs are hearing is "I won't buy it because the DRM is a PITA". They are not hearing "I won't buy it because I don't like DRM".
I totally agree.
More, even, that is the message that customers are sending. I don't think there would've been a comparable uprising if the DRM had been a simple CD check, or something like it.
Economy 101: Boycotts do not work in a monopoly or oligopoly market.
That's why boycotts on oil companies never worked and never changed anything - you can't just go and buy something else instead.
If your options were "Spore with DRM" and "Spore without DRM", it would be easy to vote with your dollars. But your choice is "Spore with DRM" and "no Spore", which leaves you no choice that transports a message, because "no purchase" is not an event and thus does not trigger a response. Publicly saying you "would have bought, but reconsidered" as happens on Amazon, is the closest you get.
As a matter of fact, several social scientists are proposing exactly that. It has various names and methods of implementation.
The funny thing is - most of those scientists have worked out a scheme where giving everyone a guaranteed income independent of work (though not $50k, more like $15k) would be cheaper than our current system, due to removed complexity and less options to game the system.
Nintendo has very smart HID people working for them, who can actually design an interface that is so dead easy to use, someone like the little girl you describe can do it. And old, half-blind people can do it, too. Which means everyone can do it.
Meanwhile, your average windos installation is "useable" only by techies or those daring enough to play one at their own risk.
I agree this is a problem - but hey, now you can give me the Deletionpedia link:)
I would, if I could. Deletionpedia was started a while after I cared about Wikipedia's Deletionism. I used to be a regular on the AfD discussions, in order to provide some counterweight. Then I realized that it really didn't matter, the same article would come up again a week or two later (which happened quite often) for a second AfD, and it would require constant, careful work to keep the Deletionism freaks in line. Wikipedia simply isn't that important.
Wikipedia obviously need to flesh out their own meaning of encyclopedia, and this does not have to mean "including every possible thing ever". Every other encyclopedia publisher does the same.
Correct. But other encyclopedias work under space and time restrictions. Wikipedia doesn't. It has way too many authors for time to be a factor, and it has essentially unlimited space. It could include everything. Whether or not that's a good idea is a different question.
The problem with "notability" is that you have to draw a line, somewhere. There have been some attempts, but they don't work. I, for example, would say the subject should have been mentioned in at least one other independent source, by name. But then you get into the whole problem of verification. If you were named in ten local newspapers, none of them with online editions, how can I possibly check?
If instead we require 3rd party reliable sources (which is important, due to verifiability), then that would implicitly cut away nonsense that people write about themselves, or some idea they thought up one day.
That's where we agree. I would abandon "Notability" entirely, due to its inherently subjective nature. However, a strict application of a "must contain sources" rule would also eliminate most of the stuff that really isn't notable. Problems remain, see above.
How long should such articles stay up - considering how eager people are to criticise Wikipedia for its reliability? It'll become a laughing stock if all the newly created crap that people make is allowed to stay up for a period of time.
Again, the solution would be to have a seperate space. A solution like Citizendium applies it: Articles can be in "draft" state for a time, during which sources, etc. are not strictly required. However, to be "finished", they need to comply with a set of rules, like having sources listed.
Then, when I search for a topic, it could tell me there is no finished article, but there is an article in draft, and whether I'd like to see that.
Doing it this way would also give Wikipedia a lot more credibility with the more academic folks, and would make it easier for teachers, etc. to deal with it, by the simple requirement of saying that Wikipedia articles are only acceptable if they aren't in draft.
I am in full agreement - the article should still be accessible, with history and talk pages, it just wouldn't be editable, and obviously not part of the main encyclopedia space. But many people here seem to think that articles shouldn't even be "deleted" in this sense.
I've been running an online game for almost 8 years. I do appreciate the positive effect of cleaning out the database.:-)
"delete" in the sense of "out of the main space" is fine with me. "delete" in the (current) sense of "unrecoverable destruction with no trace, as if it never existed" is what I'm against.
the students seemed to find any dialog box a distraction from their assigned task; nearly half said that all they cared about was getting rid of these dialogs. The results suggest that a familiarity with Windows dialogs have bred a degree of contempt and that users simply don't care what the boxes say anymore.
No surprise. Most people dealing with security from a HID perspective knew that long before UAC put the final nail in the coffin.
Popup dialogs are dead. Anyone who uses them is an idiot.
"Truth" is a broken concept, because you can not falsify it. You can not prove that something is not true. You can only prove that it is true by citing evidence. But absence of evidence isn't proof of non-truth.
Wrong. Of course you can prove that something is not true. If you claim that the sky is green I can look outside and see that it is not. If you claim that stones falls upwards, I can drop a stone and see that it is not. If you claim that 1+1=3 I can dig out the textbook and prove that it is not.
Quite on the contrary, proving that something is true is often more difficult than proving it is not.
Look, Wikipedia's policy is "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be notable." That's been the policy since day one. It's a completely reasonable requirement.
And I and everyone who is against deletionism knows lots of articles that met those criteria and were still deleted. If you quote secondary sources, those sources are put in doubt. If your sources are not available online, they don't count because other people can't verify them easily. If they are online they don't count because "everyone can start a website". And so on. Been there, had the discussion.
If you really want to write about something, you realize you can start your own web site, right?
Never occured to me. I created my own half dozen or so sites in my sleep. Why do you ask?
Wikipedia's not the web, it's one site with one purpose
You sure about that? The Wikipedia entry on "Wikipedia" doesn't contain a purpose. It talks at length about history, but not about goals. The "About" page links to that entry.
So, what is the purpose of Wikipedia? Don't say "to be an encyclopedia". That's a form, not a goal.
Wikipedia is a microcosm of the Internet with editorial controls. That's what makes it useful. If it was just anarchy, how would it be any different from Usenet?
You're probably right. There's absolutely no difference worth mentioning between a news channel and a Wiki. None at all. It's all the same. Good thing that Wiki has moderators and Usenet doesn't. Wait. Uh, nevermind.
Do you have an example of an article of yours that was unfairly deleted?
Two or three, yes. Unfortunately, a delete also means the destruction of the edit history and talk page, otherwise I'd link to them and you could check for yourself whether or not you agree.,-)
An encyclopedia is especially where being notable is important,
Says who? Merriam Webster says:
Main Entry:
encyclopedia Listen to the pronunciation of encyclopedia Pronunciation:
\in-s-kl-p-d-\ Function:
noun Etymology:
Medieval Latin encyclopaedia course of general education, from Greek enkyklios + paideia education, child rearing, from paid-, pais child -- more at few Date:
1644
: a work that contains information on all branches of knowledge or treats comprehensively a particular branch of knowledge usually in articles arranged alphabetically often by subject
Nothing about "notable" in there.
I'm know that some such unfairly deleted articles exist as the system isn't perfect, I agree, but I'm curious what sort of articles you are talking about? Can you give me examples?
What's your solution to fix the problem?
I do agree in general that some articles need to be deleted. I do think that "notability" shouldn't even be on the list of reasons. Valid reasons are: Obvious, undisputed total bullshit ("I rock" article with the sole content of "I rock"), spam in the strict sense, duplications (merge and redirect, which is not strictly delete, if you like) and such cases.
I'm willing to discuss articles with no citations or sources. If, even after the "source this" notice and some time, there are still no sources, one should question the validity of the article and maybe delete it. There might be better solutions, though.
My solution is simple. Add a namespace, of-shot, whatever you want, where you move articles that are "not notable" or for any not purely objective, editorial reason marked for deletion. Move them with their entire history and everything. Leave a link in the Wikipedia database.
Essentially, I would want the Wiki concept to be extended to deletion. Why is deletion totally non-wiki? It can't be reversed, it can't be traced, there's no edit history, nothing.
If for whatever reason, I look up some obscure thing in Wikipedia, why does it not tell me that there used to be an article on that, that it was deleted for reason X, and that I can find the history over (link) here?
Tell me that the article was deleted for lack of sources and give it to me anyways. I'm a thinking being, I can make up my own mind. Tell me that the article subject wasn't "notable", but give it to me anyways. Maybe I still care for it, even if it wasn't?
Who are you to judge? That's what it boils down to.
A lot of deletion discussions are a bunch of unemployed americans with nothing better to do discussing whether or not some monument, palace or person in some country they wouldn't find on a map, is "notable" or not.
And that's mostly because most of the adults don't chime in on a topic they know absolutely nothing about, so the whole "delete" supporters who essentially say "never heard of it, not notable" just in slightly veiled words, are the only voice speaking up.
"Notability" is a broken concept, because you can not falsify it. You can not prove that something is not notable. You can only prove that it is notable by citing evidence. But absence of evidence isn't proof of non-notability. Just because nobody who happened to stumble upon the AfD page in that particular week lives in Peru doesn't mean that the topic in question isn't on TV in Peru regularily, for example.
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.
Been there, seen it. There will likely be another AfD soon or not so soon, depending on the patience of the guy who wants it gone. I've seen articles live through two AfDs with "keep" as the result (for this one, it was "no consensus, not "keep"!) and yet be deleted in the third AfD. I've seen articles being "trimmed down" by the same guy who made a (failed) AfD and then made another AfD after he had removed considerable amount of content from the article, claiming that there wasn't enough stuff left to justify one.
Whatever you can imagine in trickery and outright lies, during a deletion discussion on Wikipedia, expect it all.
Ok, lots of people already pointed out the obvious: Sleep mode. For the record: I use a Mac, and it is back up and usable before I'm done opening the lid.
I'd like to point out something even more obvious: Pen & Paper. Seriously. I'm a techie as much as anyone here, but at work, which is the place where I most often have to take small notes, quickly, and have them handy for reference, I carry a stack of blank index cards and a pen with me. By my estimate it will be 10 more years before something electronic beats that.
If you absolutely need it digital, throw them on a scanner.
If you really, really need them in text format, it isn't that much additional work to just copy them down in a text editor whenever startup time isn't the crucial factor.
I strongly suggest you research the topic first before speaking up. Ekman has been doing this work for decades, and it has been intensely peer-reviewed. Call me a sceptic, but for some obscure reason I don't think a bunch of random slashdotters carry more credibility than the entire body of scientists in this specific field.
Read his books, really. We are talking thousands. And we are talking about a scientist. You know, someone who - among other things - knows about statistics and sample sizes.
Slashdot Mirror
The only ones we do block are what are considered time wasters (games, chat rooms, etc).
Oh yes, the great illusion that you can do anything to prevent people from taking a break when they feel like it. Management has felt that responsibility and illusionary power for a century or so. Everyone else either laughs at it or sighs about it, because it simply doesn't work. The most you'll ever get is to shift people to other time wasters. So they'll be at the coffee machine more often, or reading allowed sites, or smoking more, or just sitting there starring at the wall.
People are people and if you think you can change them by silly things like website blacklists, you need a reality check.
I can see adult sites, but only for one reason: Liability. Aside from that, my personal opinion is that it doesn't matter to me whether a co-worker spends his break on slashdot or sexysluts.
We block certain website groups (adult, gambling, games, etc) by default and everyone must go through our proxy to the outside world. Web logs are checked throughout the day and those who try 30 different ways to get to boobsgonewild.com are reported.
Well, you can argue about that, but you can hardly claim that that's a security feature.
Most people have only User permissions so they can't install something and we regularly do sweeps of unapproved software on those people who do have admin privileges. I'm the one who generally gets the call to remove the software. We also check for firewalls on PCs and other software which can potentially bypass our firewall or hide the user.
That's not a security feature, either, it's a security workaround.
Most harmful software doesn't need to be installed in order to root the machine, it just needs to be executed, from anywhere. Preventing execution of non-approved binaries (i.e. mount everything noexec for a start) would be closer.
Not sure what the big deal is. These are just basic network security measures which any decent admin should do and have set up.
Proper "network security" doesn't rely on the end-user machine being safe. The network should still be secure even if John Badguy plugs the ethernet cable into his own notebook.
None of the above has anything to do with security. Except for one thing: It does make damn certain that users will continue to see "security" as a hassle and a burden.
So I can't put my preferred ergonomic mouse on your machine because you disabled the USB ports? Great security feature.
Thanks.
We need more people like you, who solve technical problems by technical means, instead of "HR methods".
People use stuff because it gives them and advantage. Often, that's an advantage to the company as well. The amount of time and money I've saved the company by finding stuff on Usenet, for example, probably outweighs the yearly salary of the IT guy whose job is the futile attempt of trying to stop me.
I've seen the daily work of entire departments depend on "half-official" networks with relaxed policies, because they just couldn't get any work done on the official internal network (software developers and admin-type people, mostly).
That's how you make friends and teach people to trust you. A guy wants to help out and you punish him, instead of treating him like the friend of law enforcement that he wants to be.
It also might reduce sales numbers for GTA4.
I know here sits a customer they just lost. I'm sick and tired of tie-ins like that where for no good reason they try to force me into signing up for some unrelated service that I otherwise had no interest in.
TFA is about restrictions on developers, not customers.
Speaking in which sense?
Technologically? No, in that sense it's more or less the same thing.
But products aren't about technology alone. Wasn't there a study just these days that a third of the iPhone customers bought it for its looks alone? Design is a major feature of products. As is the support chain.
Apple decided to keep central control of the app repository. Love it or hate it, that's how it is. As I pointed out, that's not an Apple invention, all game consoles work the same.
So in the product-as-a-whole view, yes the iPhone differs in some important details from the majority of other smartphones.
Maybe that's news to you, but not everything that has a CPU in it and runs an operating system is a general-purpose computer in the sense of arbitrary reprogramming.
ATM machines over here run OS/2, for example. Your washing machine probably has more computing power than your first computer had. A normal (non-smart) phone... and so on.
Other sites report the incident differently. The main point being that it appears to be a clarification of the NDA that developers already agreed upon, and not an additional restriction.
Compared to game consoles, Apple's requirements are very tame, but you don't hear much complaints about the rejections that Nintendo regularily sends out.
What it does do, however, is make it clear (again), that the iPhone is not a general-purpose computer, but a device.
That's not true. If a game developer's business side determines that [lost sales from piracy] would be less than [lost sales from DRM disgruntlement], they would release their game without DRM.
It ain't happening, which is good evidence that there's something wrong with that reasoning.
I figure it is that they never actually make that calculation, and for good reasons: It can't be made without relying too much on guesswork. There is no objective way to know "lost sales from piracy". The PR department might claim every download is a lost sale, but someone who actually calculates a number wouldn't assume that. Likewise, there is no way to know "lost sales from DRM disgruntlement" because what happened with Spore is a first. Usually, these are silent losses. Even with Amazon reviews in the thousands, you can not figure out how many people really did not buy because of the DRM. It could be lower than the Amazon count (people like to complain and buy anyways) or it could be way higher (people who decided not to buy because of the DRM, but without leaving a review).
It's absolutely a shot in the dark, and if I were the board, I'd ask hard questions of a CEO who makes decisions based on what's basically just a hunch.
Doesn't matter though, PC games will follow the same path as the music industry, they are just behind a few years. We'll get massive piracy, an unwillingness to have online distribution, then an acceptance of DRM in order to get our games cheaply and easily (a la iTunes).
Very unlikely. Games and music are different in crucial aspects. One is that people are much more likely to be fans of a music band or singer, and buy their stuff no matter what. Very few people are fans of specific designers or developers to the point of buying their next game unseen. But then again, in games you have sequels, something that's very, very rare in the music business.
More importantly, however, games are software while CDs are not. It is easier to load them with DRM, which is why it's being done.
Most important, however, gaming is moving into online gaming a lot. That opens up new business models. MMORPGs don't have a piracy problem. Expect more games to be online games for that reason alone.
The only lesson learned from this fiasco will be to have less intrusive DRM on games... it's not going away. What the game execs are hearing is "I won't buy it because the DRM is a PITA". They are not hearing "I won't buy it because I don't like DRM".
I totally agree.
More, even, that is the message that customers are sending. I don't think there would've been a comparable uprising if the DRM had been a simple CD check, or something like it.
Economy 101: Boycotts do not work in a monopoly or oligopoly market.
That's why boycotts on oil companies never worked and never changed anything - you can't just go and buy something else instead.
If your options were "Spore with DRM" and "Spore without DRM", it would be easy to vote with your dollars. But your choice is "Spore with DRM" and "no Spore", which leaves you no choice that transports a message, because "no purchase" is not an event and thus does not trigger a response. Publicly saying you "would have bought, but reconsidered" as happens on Amazon, is the closest you get.
As a matter of fact, several social scientists are proposing exactly that. It has various names and methods of implementation.
The funny thing is - most of those scientists have worked out a scheme where giving everyone a guaranteed income independent of work (though not $50k, more like $15k) would be cheaper than our current system, due to removed complexity and less options to game the system.
No, we should expect better from computers.
Nintendo has very smart HID people working for them, who can actually design an interface that is so dead easy to use, someone like the little girl you describe can do it. And old, half-blind people can do it, too. Which means everyone can do it.
Meanwhile, your average windos installation is "useable" only by techies or those daring enough to play one at their own risk.
I agree this is a problem - but hey, now you can give me the Deletionpedia link :)
I would, if I could. Deletionpedia was started a while after I cared about Wikipedia's Deletionism. I used to be a regular on the AfD discussions, in order to provide some counterweight. Then I realized that it really didn't matter, the same article would come up again a week or two later (which happened quite often) for a second AfD, and it would require constant, careful work to keep the Deletionism freaks in line. Wikipedia simply isn't that important.
Wikipedia obviously need to flesh out their own meaning of encyclopedia, and this does not have to mean "including every possible thing ever". Every other encyclopedia publisher does the same.
Correct. But other encyclopedias work under space and time restrictions. Wikipedia doesn't. It has way too many authors for time to be a factor, and it has essentially unlimited space. It could include everything. Whether or not that's a good idea is a different question.
The problem with "notability" is that you have to draw a line, somewhere. There have been some attempts, but they don't work. I, for example, would say the subject should have been mentioned in at least one other independent source, by name. But then you get into the whole problem of verification. If you were named in ten local newspapers, none of them with online editions, how can I possibly check?
If instead we require 3rd party reliable sources (which is important, due to verifiability), then that would implicitly cut away nonsense that people write about themselves, or some idea they thought up one day.
That's where we agree. I would abandon "Notability" entirely, due to its inherently subjective nature. However, a strict application of a "must contain sources" rule would also eliminate most of the stuff that really isn't notable. Problems remain, see above.
How long should such articles stay up - considering how eager people are to criticise Wikipedia for its reliability? It'll become a laughing stock if all the newly created crap that people make is allowed to stay up for a period of time.
Again, the solution would be to have a seperate space. A solution like Citizendium applies it: Articles can be in "draft" state for a time, during which sources, etc. are not strictly required. However, to be "finished", they need to comply with a set of rules, like having sources listed.
Then, when I search for a topic, it could tell me there is no finished article, but there is an article in draft, and whether I'd like to see that.
Doing it this way would also give Wikipedia a lot more credibility with the more academic folks, and would make it easier for teachers, etc. to deal with it, by the simple requirement of saying that Wikipedia articles are only acceptable if they aren't in draft.
I am in full agreement - the article should still be accessible, with history and talk pages, it just wouldn't be editable, and obviously not part of the main encyclopedia space. But many people here seem to think that articles shouldn't even be "deleted" in this sense.
I've been running an online game for almost 8 years. I do appreciate the positive effect of cleaning out the database. :-)
"delete" in the sense of "out of the main space" is fine with me. "delete" in the (current) sense of "unrecoverable destruction with no trace, as if it never existed" is what I'm against.
Go back and re-read my original post.
The problem isn't "something missing from the Web". The problem is work, frustration, accountability, community and more soft-facts like these.
the students seemed to find any dialog box a distraction from their assigned task; nearly half said that all they cared about was getting rid of these dialogs. The results suggest that a familiarity with Windows dialogs have bred a degree of contempt and that users simply don't care what the boxes say anymore.
No surprise. Most people dealing with security from a HID perspective knew that long before UAC put the final nail in the coffin.
Popup dialogs are dead. Anyone who uses them is an idiot.
"Truth" is a broken concept, because you can not falsify it. You can not prove that something is not true. You can only prove that it is true by citing evidence. But absence of evidence isn't proof of non-truth.
Wrong. Of course you can prove that something is not true. If you claim that the sky is green I can look outside and see that it is not. If you claim that stones falls upwards, I can drop a stone and see that it is not. If you claim that 1+1=3 I can dig out the textbook and prove that it is not.
Quite on the contrary, proving that something is true is often more difficult than proving it is not.
Look, Wikipedia's policy is "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be notable." That's been the policy since day one. It's a completely reasonable requirement.
And I and everyone who is against deletionism knows lots of articles that met those criteria and were still deleted. If you quote secondary sources, those sources are put in doubt. If your sources are not available online, they don't count because other people can't verify them easily. If they are online they don't count because "everyone can start a website". And so on. Been there, had the discussion.
If you really want to write about something, you realize you can start your own web site, right?
Never occured to me. I created my own half dozen or so sites in my sleep. Why do you ask?
Wikipedia's not the web, it's one site with one purpose
You sure about that? The Wikipedia entry on "Wikipedia" doesn't contain a purpose. It talks at length about history, but not about goals. The "About" page links to that entry.
So, what is the purpose of Wikipedia? Don't say "to be an encyclopedia". That's a form, not a goal.
Wikipedia is a microcosm of the Internet with editorial controls. That's what makes it useful. If it was just anarchy, how would it be any different from Usenet?
You're probably right. There's absolutely no difference worth mentioning between a news channel and a Wiki. None at all. It's all the same. Good thing that Wiki has moderators and Usenet doesn't. Wait. Uh, nevermind.
Do you have an example of an article of yours that was unfairly deleted?
Two or three, yes. Unfortunately, a delete also means the destruction of the edit history and talk page, otherwise I'd link to them and you could check for yourself whether or not you agree. ,-)
An encyclopedia is especially where being notable is important,
Says who?
Merriam Webster says:
Main Entry:
encyclopedia Listen to the pronunciation of encyclopedia
Pronunciation:
\in-s-kl-p-d-\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Medieval Latin encyclopaedia course of general education, from Greek enkyklios + paideia education, child rearing, from paid-, pais child -- more at few
Date:
1644
: a work that contains information on all branches of knowledge or treats comprehensively a particular branch of knowledge usually in articles arranged alphabetically often by subject
Nothing about "notable" in there.
I'm know that some such unfairly deleted articles exist as the system isn't perfect, I agree, but I'm curious what sort of articles you are talking about? Can you give me examples?
What's your solution to fix the problem?
I do agree in general that some articles need to be deleted. I do think that "notability" shouldn't even be on the list of reasons. Valid reasons are: Obvious, undisputed total bullshit ("I rock" article with the sole content of "I rock"), spam in the strict sense, duplications (merge and redirect, which is not strictly delete, if you like) and such cases.
I'm willing to discuss articles with no citations or sources. If, even after the "source this" notice and some time, there are still no sources, one should question the validity of the article and maybe delete it. There might be better solutions, though.
My solution is simple. Add a namespace, of-shot, whatever you want, where you move articles that are "not notable" or for any not purely objective, editorial reason marked for deletion. Move them with their entire history and everything. Leave a link in the Wikipedia database.
Essentially, I would want the Wiki concept to be extended to deletion. Why is deletion totally non-wiki? It can't be reversed, it can't be traced, there's no edit history, nothing.
If for whatever reason, I look up some obscure thing in Wikipedia, why does it not tell me that there used to be an article on that, that it was deleted for reason X, and that I can find the history over (link) here?
Tell me that the article was deleted for lack of sources and give it to me anyways. I'm a thinking being, I can make up my own mind. Tell me that the article subject wasn't "notable", but give it to me anyways. Maybe I still care for it, even if it wasn't?
Who are you to judge? That's what it boils down to.
Exactly.
A lot of deletion discussions are a bunch of unemployed americans with nothing better to do discussing whether or not some monument, palace or person in some country they wouldn't find on a map, is "notable" or not.
And that's mostly because most of the adults don't chime in on a topic they know absolutely nothing about, so the whole "delete" supporters who essentially say "never heard of it, not notable" just in slightly veiled words, are the only voice speaking up.
"Notability" is a broken concept, because you can not falsify it. You can not prove that something is not notable. You can only prove that it is notable by citing evidence. But absence of evidence isn't proof of non-notability. Just because nobody who happened to stumble upon the AfD page in that particular week lives in Peru doesn't mean that the topic in question isn't on TV in Peru regularily, for example.
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.
Which means nothing.
Been there, seen it. There will likely be another AfD soon or not so soon, depending on the patience of the guy who wants it gone. I've seen articles live through two AfDs with "keep" as the result (for this one, it was "no consensus, not "keep"!) and yet be deleted in the third AfD. I've seen articles being "trimmed down" by the same guy who made a (failed) AfD and then made another AfD after he had removed considerable amount of content from the article, claiming that there wasn't enough stuff left to justify one.
Whatever you can imagine in trickery and outright lies, during a deletion discussion on Wikipedia, expect it all.
Ok, lots of people already pointed out the obvious: Sleep mode. For the record: I use a Mac, and it is back up and usable before I'm done opening the lid.
I'd like to point out something even more obvious: Pen & Paper.
Seriously. I'm a techie as much as anyone here, but at work, which is the place where I most often have to take small notes, quickly, and have them handy for reference, I carry a stack of blank index cards and a pen with me. By my estimate it will be 10 more years before something electronic beats that.
If you absolutely need it digital, throw them on a scanner.
If you really, really need them in text format, it isn't that much additional work to just copy them down in a text editor whenever startup time isn't the crucial factor.
I strongly suggest you research the topic first before speaking up. Ekman has been doing this work for decades, and it has been intensely peer-reviewed. Call me a sceptic, but for some obscure reason I don't think a bunch of random slashdotters carry more credibility than the entire body of scientists in this specific field.
Read his books, really. We are talking thousands. And we are talking about a scientist. You know, someone who - among other things - knows about statistics and sample sizes.