Debating "Deletionism" At Wikipedia 484
Ian Lamont writes "In a strange turn of events, the Wikipedia entry for Deletionpedia — an online archive of deleted Wikipedia articles — is now being considered for deletion. The entry for Deletionpedia was created shortly after the publication of an Industry Standard article and a discussion on Slashdot this week. Almost immediately, it was nominated for deletion, which has sparked a running debate about the importance of the Wikipedia entry, Deletionpedia, and the sources that reference it. For the time being, you can read the current version of the Deletionpedia entry, while the Wikipedia editors carry on the debate."
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
After that ridiculous incident, I stopped relying on Wikipedia for anything substantive. Its accuracy can not be assured due to the bureaucratic toolboxes that moderate the site.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
The neutrality [slashdot.org] of this section is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page [slashdot.org].
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've learned the best thing to do with Wikipedia is use it to get a general idea about something, and use that to find the facts yourself elsewhere.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, if you go back far enough: "This site under construction".
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
After that ridiculous incident, I stopped relying on Wikipedia for anything substantive. Its accuracy can not be assured due to the bureaucratic toolboxes that moderate the site.
We really do need that perfectly moderated and unbiased information website which provides you with the complete truth and is never wrong. I hear the Chinese government is working on one, but in the meantime there's this news channel called Fox which is fair and balanced. I mean, that's their catchphrase, so you know it's true!
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to agree with you and the GP poster. Although it would be opposed by most, possibly even including myself, it might do good to have one's record of deletion/non-deletion votes in previous battles be indicated.
As, as I've already said on Slashdot, I can't understand the thinking of someone who would want to limit the amount available.
Further, Wikipedia has decided to prefer the bias of Western media over a search for the truth - including from 0those I agree with (eg the President of Cuba) and from those I disagree with (eg the President of Iran).
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Informative)
I had to call out one particular mod on his discussion page and on the Jonathan Ive page, because he considered my changing of the iMac's introduction from 1997 to 1998 "vandalism" (a change I had to make FIVE times), and it was FINALLY changed.
You know... you /say/ that here in a Slashdot comment, and have been rewarded a (5, Insightful) for it, but there's a bit of a fact shortage. The complete history of changes to the Jonathan Ive article [wikipedia.org], as well as the article's talk page [wikipedia.org] (and its history) are publicly viewable to the world, and the events you described did not occur. At no time has the Jonathan Ive article claimed that the iMac was introduced in 1997 -- the fact that it was introduced in 1998 was added to the article in June 2005 and has remained there, uncontested, ever since. I'm not just some random person telling you this, either -- I've been monitoring the article on my watch list for two and a half years, and I would have noticed (and put a stop to) any sort of edit war over this.
So, AtariKee, my question to you is this: Are you intentionally lying for the sake of discrediting something you don't like, or are you merely confused about what you were doing on Wikipedia?
Also, there are no "mods" on Wikipedia. There are Administrators, but they don't moderate content except in very unusual circumstances -- that's everybody's collective responsibility.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Article history and talk page history are oddly prone to being reset. Particularly by petty admins. Or, let's be honest, moderators.
>Also, there are no "mods" on Wikipedia. There are Administrators, but they don't moderate content except in very unusual circumstances
Read it. Then think about what you just wrote. You know, there is a reason why GP got a +5 and you rate at most a +3.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
I probably wouldn't have minded it that much if I hadn't used a photograph of the actual document and the transcript from the National Archives as the reference. When something can get marked as vandalism, and you are tidying up an entry and using the freaking original in the Archives as a source... just pissed me off.
Same here, pissed off. (Score:4, Insightful)
I am unable to contribute to Wikipedia because of this. Great idea, great resource, but it is no longer the Encyclopedia that Anyone can edit. I maybe have time and energy to do spelling corrections, fix links -- stuff like that. I don't' have the time and energy to fight some admin for weeks to have a link go to a (more appropriate) article, or add something that should already be up there. I don't bother anymore.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Though I generally agree, I feel that the notability guidelines are broken for other reasons.
Consider, for instance, a Wikipedia article on basically any random public high school. As long as there is a website, you can make a reasonable (and arguably useful) article, with lots of information regarding classes offered, policies, etc. A public high school is usually going to be the only school in the town, maybe one of a few. The result of this is that the town newspaper is going to mention it. Most towns have newspapers, and as long as it's not *too* rural of a town, the newspaper will be online. That basically meets the criteria (it's mentioned in a printed source, which everyone has access to, and facts included are verifiable).
Is some random high school notable? I'd say not. Now, one can make the other argument that it doesn't matter, because the point is to be a useful source of information. I'd agree with that -- the information is of limited use, but it's going to be useful to the population of that town, which, if only numbering in the couple of thousand, is still substantial. However, it's certainly not "notable".
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Notable to you no. Notable to someone who lives in the town, yes. Wikipedia isn't to be judged by how it relates to your own small world. If it is irrelevant to you then leave well alone, rather than trying to force others to conform to your own standards.
If the size of Wikipedia reduces it usefulness to you then the problem is that the search engine you are using is broken. Don't fix a broken search engine by slashing and burning the target of the search until it fits within the engine's limitations. Fix the search algorithm instead.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think he agrees with you, in that the notability guidelines are next to useless. If a perfectly useful and valid in all other respects page can be made, who cares if it is notable at all? One could argue that anything meeting the requirements for a source is notable, as the source proves someone somewhere finds it a topic worthy of being notable.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe that there is a reason why what you say is more important than you know. Wikipedia gives a rough uniformity to the presentation of information. Using that and a few software tools, it's possible to glean more information than simply what was put into the wiki page. Deleting information too briskly will lead to a diminution of the value of both the wiki page information, reference veracity of the site, and the value of any information based on combinatorial information.
Using an example offered by someone else, if it is known that there are 123,000 high schools in the USA, and 75% of them are listed on Wikipedia. You can draw some reasonably credible information about high schools in the USA from scanning the wiki pages. Yes, Google indexes the Internet/www but the trouble is that information on the Internet is hardly presented in conformal manner. That is one of the benefits of Wikipedia, or could be.
There are lots of ideas about how to best organize the information on the Internet, but all of the require voluntary compliance by the authors of the information. That is the one very cool thing about Wikipedia. Perhaps, someone will suggest a semantic web version of how to publish pages of information on the Internet so that the combined reality of such pages IS a living encyclopedia. Using something like the single sign-on and security schemes, it is possible for vetted reviewers to rate each such site so that when you view it in your browser, those ratings are available for you to see. If the information on the site you are viewing is only rated 2 out of 10, then you know whether it is trustworthy information and whether you need to seek corroboration.
This deletion thing is sad in the respect of what it means, of what will not happen. Wikipedia is a good thing as an idea. It is even more valuable as a information repository or data warehouse. At least it could be... sigh
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
There seems to be a group of folks who like to "purify" a community website, and to be honest I don't even know what makes these kind of folks tick.
I tend to be an inclusionist/separatist in my attitude toward wiki projects and content. By this I mean that content ought to be given time to develop, even if it seems crazy and off the wall. By being a separatist, I think the mergist viewpoint is full of logical errors and that most calls to merge two articles together are mainly a variant of deletionists who think that such petty articles about obscure topics need to go... but with the "good vibes" that somehow the topic will be covered in some huge all-encompassing article.
There are some things that do need to go on occasion, but I've also seen some of the most creative applications of Wiki technology get developed when somebody pushes the edge of a project and develops something way out of bounds. Indeed some of these extreme projects have become out right independent Wikimedia projects of their own, including things like Wikibooks, Wikinews, and even Wiktionary that all had their origins on Wikipedia until some deletionist decided to kick them off.
This phenomena unfortunately isn't even limited to Wikipedia and the WMF sister projects either, but is widespread in nearly any wiki project I've been involved with. Indeed, I've found that the relatively flat peer-editing model of Wikipedia tends to keep the worst of these issues in check as opposed to much worse sorts of community editing models like the Open Directory Project.
Funny Story... (Score:5, Funny)
It wasn't long of course before these deletion-happy admins nominated it for speedy deletion. The decision was proving to be unanimous. And, I for one didn't blame them. A wiki page for an administrator of a website seemed rather silly.
My friend agreed. He didn't feel that he really should be on the site and decided to go to the deletion page and weigh in on the issue. He told the wiki admins who he was and that he wanted the page deleted thinking this would solidify the consensus that had for the most part already been reached. I think the quote was something along the lines of "I don't want to be on your gay-ass site, so I'd appreciate it if you just hurried up and deleted it before I leave you all with a fist-sized, mushroom-shaped bruise on all of your faces."
Not surprisingly, all of the admins had a change of heart and all decided they wanted to keep the page.
Re:Funny Story... (Score:5, Funny)
"A couple years ago a wiki page was created about a friend of mine who ran a website, in addition to a wiki page about the website itself. It appeared to have been made by some fan who never made themselves known.
It wasn't long of course before these deletion-happy admins nominated it for speedy deletion. The decision was proving to be unanimous. And, I for one didn't blame them. A wiki page for an administrator of a website seemed rather silly.
My friend agreed. He didn't feel that he really should be on the site and decided to go to the deletion page and weigh in on the issue. He told the wiki admins who he was and that he wanted the page deleted thinking this would solidify the consensus that had for the most part already been reached. I think the quote was something along the lines of "I don't want to be on your gay-ass site, so I'd appreciate it if you just hurried up and deleted it before I leave you all with a fist-sized, mushroom-shaped bruise on all of your faces."
Not surprisingly, all of the admins had a change of heart and all decided they wanted to keep the page."
[citation needed]
Re:Funny Story... (Score:5, Funny)
1. ^ "A couple years ago a wiki page was created about a friend of mine who ran a website" [slashdot.org]. Rutefoot, 2008
In effect, editors delete (Score:3, Insightful)
When "Articles for Deletion" discussions work the way they should be, editors delete, admins only implement the will of the people. The major exceptions are borderline cases and cases when there is very little discussion.
I'm not saying things always work the way they should, just that when Wikipedians follow their own rules, the admin that does the deleting rarely gets to be a party to the decision.
Sure, there is that grey area between "delete" and "no consensus" and the occasional discussion where the "!v
Re:Deleting ANYTHING? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
If you saw some of the absolute crap that comes in as new articles on an hourly basis, you would quickly see the merit of deleting at least a few things. I've lost count of how many articles about garage bands that formed a month ago, childish "_____ is the coolest person ever!!!", vanity articles, and loony diatribes that I've marked for speedy deletion.
"garage bands" (Score:5, Insightful)
Leave those new band wikipedia entries alone.
I'm a music writer, and I'm also section editor of an online music/movie reivew website. The section I edit is the "new artist" section (we call it FIND).
My job is to find all the information I can about new bands. Here's the problem:
1. often press releases are insufficient or leave out pertinent, possibly negative information (understandable, that's what p.r. people are for)
2. band websites are often run by labels. labels don't give each artist the same ammount of attention, and often really good bands fall through the cracks because of it. many 'official' band websites are 'under construction' for years
3. myspace is unreliable...it's good to hear some tracks and keep up with show dates but like press release, sometimes important info that a journalist needs to know is left out
wikipedia is an invaluable starting point for the research I do...save the 'indie' band entries!
Re:"garage bands" (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia is not a repository of things that are useful
Why not? In a paper encyclopedia, there must be some criteria to keep the size down, but Wikipedia doesn't need such restrictions. If a page is well written and accurate, who cares if it meets some notability criteria - it's probably useful to someone, even if it it isn't useful to you.
I'm afraid I've seen far too many really useful pages be blown away for being "non-notable" over the years - so much so that I don't bother to contribute to Wikipedia these days. Why should I spend the time contributing to improve the articles and make them really useful if someone who isn't interested in the subject matter is just going to declare them to be non-notable and blow them away?
My experiences of AfDs is that the only people who participate in the discussions are the deletionists, the people who wrote the article and *very occasionally* a few of the readers of the article. The views of the people who wrote the article are usually swiftly discounted because they are seen as having a vested interest in keeping it around and the readers of the article are usually called out as sock-puppets, because as readers, rather than contributors, they usually have very little edit history.
Wikipedia was a nice idea, but it is slowly being destroyed by petty politics and posturing.
Re:Deleting ANYTHING? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
How does the Internet Meme "Happycat" which was deleted despite being very notable qualify as not notable.
There is a huge subjective component to notability. Sure, "x is the coolest person" is probably a good candidate for deletion, but time and time again I've seen these barnstar toting clowns delete perfectly good articles because they have pull and they think something isn't notable due to their unfamiliarity with a subject.
The same deletionists often have strange pet subjects , eg, an obscure record label of music they like.
Its basic: when a deletion causes an uproar its probably a notable subject.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Deleting ANYTHING from wikipedia is stupid. If something is PROVEN to be inaccurate, then that's another story.
Prove it's true. Otherwise it gets deleted. That's not deletionism, that's not fanaticism, it's intellectual honesty. If it's good enough for the last two centuries of scientific and historical academia, it's good enough for me. I don't want an article on how the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe just because no one can prove it's not true.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've written a couple of articles about places of interest in a notable city in England. They've been deleted each time as the "moderators" don't know the city and think the places are of little note. Talk to the residents and visitors though and it's a different story. While there are submissions worthy of deletion it should *not* be up to the elite, and quite often uninformed, few to judge this.
you'll have better luck if you cite them (Score:4, Informative)
I've rarely run into problems like that when I wrote decent stubs (at least a few sentences, ideally, say, two paragraphs) with footnotes to the sources I used, which were things other than geocities websites; for example, publications of the local government, or books published by the local historical society, or articles in at least semi-mainstream media.
Even then you occasionally run into someone who wants to delete it, but it really is much less frequent if your articles are solidly sourced.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Funny)
I don't want an article on how the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe just because no one can prove it's not true.
And I don't want all the bloody articles on the bible, but if they stay I'll be eaten by a grue before I let someone remove the FSM pages without a fight.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I suspect that parent was saying the burden of proof must be on the editor who posts the article, otherwise we'll have articles for both jesus and the flying spaghetti monster, each stating as fact that the deity of choice created the universe in a fit of pique after di
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
It wouldn't make sense except that, once they have an article they can slap links to it on the articles of things which are vaguely similar and people actually care about. Perhaps nobody will stumble across your crappy band's article on it's own, but if you then list your band as being heavily influenced by, say Bad Religion, people reading that article might find you.
Of course, what this doesn't explain is why it's anything more than a nuisance, let alone why Wikipedia moderators are getting delete happy.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Informative)
Why does anyone even bother with wikipedia? No controls (except for a few politically driven, control freak, admins).
It is essentially an encyclopedia created and sustained through mob rule. Most universities won't allow it to be cited and woe be upon the scientist that cites it in a scientific paper. I suspect if anyone were to rely on it for business decisions, they'd be fired.
Just out of curiousity, were you citing any other Encyclopedias (Britannica, Colliers, Encarta) in your university papers? If so, please let me know where you went, so I can avoid sending any of my children there. Even in the tiny state school I went to, I'd have been laughed out of class if I cited encyclopedias. Encyclopedias aren't primary or secondary sources, they're tertiary sources. They're just summaries of other sources, sources you should find and read yourself.
Wikipedia is better than many encyclopedias in current or esoteric subjects, but beyond finding some links to real material, I wouldn't consider it useful in real research. But I doubt any cosmologists are looking up Hawking Radiation in Britannica, either.
Deletionism? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't think the word "intelligent" means what you think it means. It is the last word that could ever be applied to the actions (or reactions, in fact) of wikipedia's admins.
Book burning by any other name.
Re:Deletionism? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not taking that analogy literally enough. Think of the point behind book burnings - to destroy and censor information deemed unfit to be in print or published. Deleting web pages fits this perfectly.
Easy. (Score:5, Informative)
Is the website notable? Has the mainstream media reported on it? Does it meet the requirements listed in WP:WEB, the guideline for website notability?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(web) [wikipedia.org]
This should be all anyone needs to know to !vote on the issue. There is no 'special pass' for things that have been on Slashdot, or are about Wikipedia.
Easy...to game (Score:5, Interesting)
Great. We all know what kind of site Wikipedia has evolved into, we just haven't settled on the price.
Re:Easy...to game (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't even have to buy it. From doing a Google News search, it looks to me like the controversy over deleting the Deletionpedia entry is going to make it notable even if it didn't start out that way.
Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia's notability guideline (note it's not actually an official policy) has all sorts of loopholes built in to it to allow a clique of editors to kill something they don't like. In this case, they would argue that Deletionpedia was not really notable in and of itself, but was only notable because of some notable incident which might be worthy of having a separate article (but that article would likely never be written, or would itself be deleted on some other grounds).
Re:Nope. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)
i actually find all this scorn for Wikipedia and its mods/admins quite amusing.
there are lots of accusations of personal biases, clique-mentality, elitism, and other very human traits. but i wonder if those making these complaints ever bothered to ask themselves whether these problems are endemic to the Wikipedia community or if they're problems which are inherent with any editorial process and that it's only because of Wikipedia's community-driven nature that these problems of objectivity are actually exposed and open to public scrutiny & debate.
i guess with any kind of progressive movement there will be rearguard reactions to oppose it. however, in this case i think that the complaints being leveled are actually quite valid. it's just that Wikipedia is being unfairly singled out simply because of its open/collaborative nature.
if you only have 20-30 person conventional editorial staff these problems would be a non-issue simply because the people who disagree with the company's official editorial opinion would simply be fired or probably just would not have been hired in the first place. all of the editorial politics are handled behind closed doors and any issues would be solved by a simple executive decision from the chief editor.
but once you involve the public in the editorial process then you're opening it to infinitely many viewpoints and a greater diversity of opinions. this invites open discussion and eliminates the risk of corporate politics influencing editorial decisions. but the same virtues that make Wikipedia a great alternative to the largely consolidated mainstream media also give rise to controversy as its open nature is more likely to draw public criticism.
the more people that take part in a debate, the more disagreements will arise, and the harder it will be to satisfy everyone involved. but i don't see this as a flaw with collaborative publishing. it reveals an often missed (or concealed) dimension to print publishing, particularly that of reference works.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a huge difference between editing some online thing like Wikipedia in your spare time and paying for the roof over your head and food on your table with your job editing lexica.
Also; Wikipedia admins carry quite a lot of power, usually changing the history of a country was reserved to the ruling elite - now it can be accomplished by a disgruntled admin.
Re:Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also true that that sort of thing is present in all editorial processes.
My biggest complaint with Wikipedia(aside from the fact that there seems to be no official method of discouraging the worst of this behavior) is really that there seems to be a core group of Wikipedians who have a vision for what they think Wikipedia ought to be, and that this vision is completely at odds with what people actually use Wikipedia for.
Wikipedia is never going to be an on-line version of Britannica. This is mostly because the world doesn't need an on-line version of Britannica, and that if it did, Britannica would be perfectly capable of doing it themselves.
What the world needs is a place where you can look up all the stuff that doesn't get into encyclopaedia's. A lot of this stuff is trivial and non-notable, and of course there's some issues with reliability and truth, but that's what the citation system is for.
Wikipedia can be that place where you can find out all the alternate points of view, look at what they use as citations(if anything) and judge them. It can do this because realistically it doesn't cost them anything to host information no one looks at and any information people are interested in is fundamentally notable by the very definition of the word.
Wikipedia can, and should, host pages on pretty much everything that can't be proven false. Anything that also can't be proven true, should be marked as such, but there is no harm, and possible a lot of good in it being there.
Certainly some things ought to be deleted, or at least sidelined, but that should mostly be about crap writing as opposed to something not being important. If someone sends something in which is totally unreadable, and no one is sufficiently interested in updating it, by all means delete it, but if someone puts together a well written, well thought out article about something that you think doesn't matter, let it lie.
Re:Nope. (Score:5, Interesting)
really a social experiment that's going into uncharted territory
What part of basic organizational behavior do you find so uncharted?
An orthodoxy evolves, controlled by a core group, and heretics are pilloried.
Deleting Deletionpedia... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't even have to buy it. From doing a Google News search, it looks to me like the controversy over deleting the Deletionpedia entry is going to make it notable even if it didn't start out that way.
In fact, the fact that the controversy over deleting the deletionpedia page is itself notable makes me very tempted to write a Wikipedia article "Deletionpedia Deletion Controversy"...
On the other hand, I guess that might be pushing it a little too far, though.
Re:Deleting Deletionpedia... (Score:5, Funny)
This just in: New Wikipedia 'Deletionpedia Deletion Contorversy' deletion controversy erupts as the Wikipedia Deletionpedia Deletion description is nominated for deletion. Delegates describe dangerous double dealings during dastardly deceptive deletions.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess if you can buy the necessary media coverage you are notable enough, seems OK to me.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Are we allowed to chuckle at the drift away from Wikipedia's original, relatively anarchist philosophy?
Re:Easy...to game (Score:4, Interesting)
Are we allowed to chuckle at the drift away from Wikipedia's original, relatively anarchist philosophy?
I've always found anarchists to be a bit naive about the way the world works. Historically the state of anarchy in countries has been the excuse some 'strong leader' needed to take over, or have turned into mob rule or domination by an abusive oligarchy.
If you look at the founders of the US, the reason for all the rules and checks and balances was to try to stop this happening. They, quite rightly, knew that 'mere democracy' was a dangerous thing.
speed deleting (Score:4, Interesting)
One problem I feel is that a page should have considerable time of protection. As you can see, the buzz of deletionpedia is still growing, so it is actively becoming notable. If articles that were correct could have 30 days to build their cases that would at least be some improvement.
Sounds like Wikipedia needs competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Do you mean like forks like Wikinfo [wikinfo.org], or unrelated, but similar, sites like Everything2 [everything2.com], h2g2 [bbc.co.uk] and Knol [google.com]?
Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs competition (Score:5, Insightful)
In most cases there are better quality pages available, however the Wikipedia page will be in the top 10 of search results, no matter how good or bad it is.
It's Google that needs competition. That will stop monopolies in a number of areas -- not just Wikipedia.
Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs competition (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs competition (Score:5, Interesting)
I had high hopes for Citizendium, but wikis thrive on drive-by editing, and I don't think Citizendium allows that. It sure hasn't gotten anywhere much in the year it's been running, and it's woefully incomplete.
Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs competition (Score:4, Informative)
The sole reference is to "Answers in Genesis", a creation "science" organization. Wow. Just... wow, that's just sad.
Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - you couldn't design a site to spam Google better than Wikipedia. Lots of offsite links, rapid updates, constant changes, and highly internally linked via keywords.
Even if, according to Google itself, the page isn't linked to from offsite - it still receives a high PageRank score.
Paradox! (Score:5, Interesting)
I sense the LHC is becoming redundant here!
Unfortunately Wikipedia is going to the dogs (Score:5, Insightful)
I really love Wikipedia and I sure hope I'm wrong, but I think we've seen Wikipedia at it's peek. As with many ventures that become successful they move from innovation to stability and with that become widely popular which creates new pressures and brings in other interests, and then in turn leads to the degradation of the service as people squabble about how things should be done. I've seen this with special interest groups and clubs of all kinds. It can be particularly difficult to counter. An organisation either survives these things and becomes stronger for the learning the members have done, or else it succumbs to the storm of shite and fades into insignificance.
entropy (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you 100% that Wikipedia has peaked. The quality of most articles is dropping over time, because anybody halfway sane doesn't want to pore autistically over a watchlist of cherished articles to make sure they don't succumb to entropy.
On the other hand, that doesn't mean that every dispute on WP is pointless, or that either side could be right on every issue. One bogus argument that's always posed by people who don't want their articles deleted is that it's not a paper encyclopedia, so there's no reason to keep the whole thing under a certain page count. Well, suppose Fred creates an article on his high school band, Fredsband, which only actually consisted of himself and his golden retriever. Every single time a user searches for "golden retriever," one of the hits is going to be the article on Fredsband. Also, when you have an article that's non-notable, it tends not to be linked to any other articles, and you get these little disjoint subsets of WP that are unhealthy. They can become havens for crackpots, or honeypots for spam links.
Re:entropy (Score:5, Insightful)
But! Say the council of Anytown decides to compile a local encyclopedia. Fred may well make it in, being of local interest.
For both the Britannica and the Anytown-pedia, space was a limiting issue. What made Wikipedia so promising was the idea that it didn't have such space limitations- you could include articles on anything. Sadly, they seem to have decided that some objective standard of notability exists, and define it rather narrowly at that.
Re:Unfortunately Wikipedia is going to the dogs (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, the English Wikipedia does appear to be just past it's growth peak [wikipedia.org] right now.
Self-criticism essential in community encyclopedia (Score:5, Insightful)
If the highlighted phrase is true, then it indicates that the high priests at Wikipedia are totally beyond control and beyond the pale.
There is no more important function in a community encyclopedia than self-criticism. It is part of its foundation, a self-referential examination of its integrity and transparency.
I am really hoping that that line from TFA is false, and that the discussion about deleting the Deletionpedia page from Wikipedia is unambiguously declared invalid by WP editors.
Re:Self-criticism essential in community encyclope (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a totally orthogonal issue. If you're suggesting that Wikipedia hides information critical of itself, that's not true, there are many examples in project space [wikipedia.org]. For article space though, it's proper to stick to the same criteria that's used for every other article. Otherwise you're arguing that Star Wars should mention how much it sucked in the movie itself (i.e. in its primary product) rather than just discussing it in the DVD extras.
Delete it (Score:5, Funny)
Wikipedia editors deleting open source projects (Score:4, Interesting)
Better solution... (Score:4, Funny)
Why not fork it? (Score:5, Funny)
Make an Includopedia and a Deletepedia. That way everyone is happy.
The debate is over, article will not be deleted (Score:5, Informative)
The debate is over. The result of the discussion was keep. See talk page [wikipedia.org].
Re:The debate is over, article will not be deleted (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is bullshit, when you look at the actual votes. (Or "non-votes", as I'm sure someone will bring up.)
It should have been given a "keep".
Those articles have been deleted... (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting suggestion in the AfD comments (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing I noticed in the AfD comments that seems like a pretty good idea was to have any Wikipedia articles that get deleted be instead transwikied to Deletionpedia.
Naturally, that's not as good as not deleting them from Wikipedia in the first place...but it seems to me that at least it solves the problem of the work being lost entirely when the AfD finishes and the article is sent into the aether.
Dan Aris
A good wiki with a bad version control system (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole debate is caused - IMHO - by having a bad versioning system as the Wikipedia's backend. Deleting and undeleting whole articles should be as transparent and open as deleting and undeleting paragraphs within an article. The history feature provides such transparency. Currently, instead, deleted articles are zapped: inaccesible, unreadable, unrecoverable. Allowing history access (and an option in "advanced search") for deleted articles would make this issue a lot simpler.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhm, I've not dealt with a deleted article on Wikipedia, but we use media wiki on our intranet site and accessing a deleted article will allow you to view its history and restore it with little effort.
I used that feature just a few days ago to restore an article on our Intranet that I had previously deleted.
For example the deletion log for a page I created and deleted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=A_Deleted_Article_Example [wikipedia.org]
You'll have to wait for an editor to come alon
There was once a time... (Score:5, Insightful)
I will end this post with a quote from George Orwell's Animal Farm
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Your grandiosity aside, professors laughed at wikipedia because of credibility issues citing random sources.
And they are quite right.
Re:There was once a time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This doesn't even have anything to do with professors being accurate and honest. The simple fact is is that the peer reviews on a wikipedia page may also include weirdos with no scientific knowledge whatsoever. Having once edited wikipedia I saw that firsthand, too.
Mike Wooten (Score:4, Interesting)
It's marked for deletion!
Re:Mike Wooten (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think the Deletionpedia article should be deleted, but in this case, I think it's okay (although maybe an article merge would be a more accurate description of what should be done.)
Deletionist - a new 21st century occupation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just registered deletionism.com, and then on second thought realize that deletionist.com was likely the far more valuable one...
"Deletionist" sounds like a new 21st century occupation, involving one or more of the following:
* Spam filtering and deletion
* Extranous information removal (ie. the wikipedia sections being discussed)
* Sanatizing information stores
* On-line reputation management
Regardless, IMHO, "Deletionist" is highly brandable - intiutive name for a website offering deletion related services. Welcome thoughts.
Ron
the problem with wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)
What really gets me about wikipedia is stuff like I Am Rich [wikipedia.org]. Nominated for deletion, the consensus wound up being to keep it. Not to redirect it but to keep it. Then, the nominator, having failed in his attempt to delete it, merges it, despite consensus to the contrary, into App Store [wikipedia.org]. Later, another user comes along and deletes it, saying it's "not important [wikipedia.org]".
But wait - it gets better! The same guy nominates Heavy Metal (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) [wikipedia.org] for deletion and fails in his attempt. So what does he do? Merges every episode, save that one, into List of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles episodes [wikipedia.org]. You see - this user knows he couldn't get consensus by an AfD so he engages in backroom deals to gain support.
Of course, none of this tops Torchic [wikipedia.org]. A front page featured article with 20 paragraphs and 46 citations now reduced to redirecting to a list of pokemon, with 2-3 paragraphs (depending on whether or not a one sentence paragraph counts) and no citations. Amazing stuff.
Public narrative on Wikipedia: always the same (Score:5, Insightful)
10 WHY IS WIKIPEDIA SO INACCURATE
20 "Well, let me just delete all the unsourced material to leave it with a balanced summ-"
30 NO STOP DELETING STUFF KEEP IT IN I CANT BELIEVE YOU EVIL DELETIONISTS WANT TO DESTROY ALL MY HARD WORK
40 GOTO 10
I was an editor there for a while until I just couldn't deal with the constant rehashing of "these are the rules/guidelines, they are displayed prominently on all relevant pages" on every single AfD, as well as the stupid drama and the infinite patience the community had with clear vandals ("*USER* IS A FAGGOT NIGGER" = "Please do not make test edits outside of the sandbox"). Users whine about having their 5 page manuscript on their cat's behaviors deleted as a ten second destruction of all their hard work but show total disregard for the infinitely more people patrolling New Pages, AfD, PROD, etc's time being wasted. This is mostly because the system has been built up to have multiple levels of redundant band-aid processes. For example, there are three ways to delete an article:
If it meets certain criteria that apply to a lot of unsuitable pages, you can "speedy delete" it - since you're not supposed to tag anything if it doesn't clearly meet those criteria, deleting the tag itself is an act of vandalism, you're supposed to copy paste a {{hangon}} template and then justify your reasoning on the talk page. This never works: editors misapply the tag repeatedly, users don't bother to read the template or don't have enough time to write out anything detailed because the article will be deleted quickly.
Then you've got PROD, which is speedy-lite: you tag it, give a short justification, and if the thing isn't "challenged" by the article's creator or anyone else by removing it, it's deleted after a set period. If it is, you're supposed to always take it to AfD, but many people will just give up because nominating something for AfD is a 15 step process which involves collecting rare plants and taking them to seven pillars, then casting a spell and defeating a goblin in hand to hand combat. People don't browse the PROD queue, so the only people that end up taking off the tag are...surprise! The original creator of the article! PROD is essentially just a series of bets that the original creator won't delete the tag and take it to AfD before the time expires, and the admin isn't tired enough from deleting crap all day that they'll agree with the justification.
And then there's Articles for Deletion, which consists halfway of stuff that should be handled through either of the two above processes (if they worked properly), short vanity articles that end up having one or two "delete" comments and then are closed, or spiral into large debates in which each editor's opinion is supposed to not be a "vote", but if the closing admin rejects a pure tally, always seem to agree with toward the most simplified, spoon-fed argument. As mentioned above, nominating one is a rather tiring and complex set of edits which involves making three separate template changes on three separate pages, putting in a arbitrary "category" that is never useful to anyone, and writing a hopefully detailed summary of why it should go poof at the same time. This is "Web 2.0", right? Why can't I click a box or a dropdown? Is this a modified "security through obscurity" thing where deletionism is purposefully put through so many different steps that nominating a sequence of articles (never try to nominate more than once at a time, the syntax is a nightmare) is discouraged with the time-wasting complexity of it?
Plenty of this relies on templates and user-mediated process that would be made completely moot overnight if the MediaWiki developers got off their asses and started working on and implementing features that go beyond "flagged revisions" such as tagging articles for deletion via a tab and dropdown menu, then putting "speedy" articles in a queue where one or two other editors give it a check to make sure it's properly tagged and the article goes poof (without an administrator needin
I did that (Score:4, Interesting)
I just was too amused by the idea of an article on Deletionpedia, a listing of articles deleted from Wikipedia, in the Wikipedia
Although, actually, it really is notable enough to deserve an article.
Re:Ugh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why doesn't it? The WP administration has said that space is not a concern, so what's the harm?
Re:Ugh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:something to say != something relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
People like you are why Wikipedia is a failure if what it had intended to be.
How many people have to find something relevant or useful in order to stop it from being deleted from Wikipedia?
A hundered? A thousand? A million?
Nothing like that. Wikipedia is controlled by those what get off on deleting the work of other's, ignoring 'notability' or 'value' or 'usefulness' or 'relevance' entirely. If these few high priests of Wikipedia deem an article, whether it's about Pokemon or CNN, to be something they have a personal bias against, it will be deleted.
Frankly, it seems like Wikipedia has about as much credibility these days as Fox News.
So, that might be an interesting question: Given the fact that Wikipedia is controlled by a very few people with a very narrow view of what's notable, and use that to control what information is contained in Wikipedia, regardless of the truth, veracity, or notability of that information, should Wikipedia be regarded as a source of useful information, or as a propaganda machine to be avoided at all costs?
It's a painful question to have to ask - at one time, I espoused Wikipedia as, well, one of the best examples of the strengths of the internet.
More and more, however, I'm finding that, given the nature of those in control of Wikipedia... I just don't know anymore.
Re:something to say != something relevant (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmmm, actually Fox News has more credibility.
The bias on Fox is overt and wholly transparent. The bias on Wikipedia is covert and secretive, though it is of course even more biased and manipulated than Fox.
Re:something to say != something relevant (Score:4, Informative)
The article on SUCS (the Swansea University Computer Society[1]) was deleted. Was it notable? It was the only computer society in the UK to have its own computer room, and was responsible for much of the TCP/IP code in Linux until a few years ago (it was credited on the boot screens of all kernels up until 2.5.66) when Alan Cox was a student. Other members of the society went on to work on projects like GNOME, Mono, GNUstep, LLVM, and several others. Its role in the early development of Linux is documented in several press interviews with Alan Cox, which sounds like it should meet your criteria.
The article was marked for deletion twice. The first time there was an overwhelming majority against. The second time, the person calling for the vote decided that all of the people who voted against were 'sock puppets' and so would have their votes ignored.
[1] Yes, I'm aware it's a terrible acronym.
Re:I'm a confirmed WP deletionist (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, I'll admit, it might save them a few kilobytes of bandwidth or a gigabyte of storage, but honestly, bandwidth and storage are dirt cheap these days.
original research (Score:3, Insightful)
Another reason for deletion is articles that constitute original research [wikipedia.org] rather than encyclopedia articles. I have advocated the deletion of several articles that are really an original synthesis of ideas from unrelated sources. Such articles can be very interesting and perhaps there should be an originalresearchopedia for their bloody carcasses after a successful deletion, but they don't belong on an encyclopedia.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A sprawling article of 350KB does no-one any good. Wikipedia articles should be concise summaries of the topic. Too many articles on WP are bullet point lists of referenced facts, with no overall narrative structure. Keeping a high signal-to-noise ratio requires filtering out all the noise. Too many wikipedians believe that a mention in a reliable source means something is notable. Newspaper quotes are the worst - newsworthy is not the same as noteworthy.
Re:I'm a confirmed WP deletionist (Score:5, Insightful)
Well... it's not your statue, remember it.
Re:I'm a confirmed WP deletionist (Score:4, Insightful)
*Snap*
Artist: "But... those were arms..."
Deletionist: "NO U SUXORS I MAKE BETTR."
Re:I'm a confirmed WP deletionist (Score:5, Insightful)
You're shirking your responsibility as an editor to actually edit pages, in favor of lazily deleting out of hand. That, right there, is what's wrong with the Wikipedia.