Old Man Murray Wikipedia Controversy Continues 173
An anonymous reader writes "As discussed previously on slashdot, the Old Man Murray article was deleted from Wikipedia. After much controversy, the article has been restored. However, the debate to delete the article continues, with both deletionists and Old Man Murray fans swarming to the article."
Uh, debate is where? (Score:5, Informative)
Where does the debate continue? There was no link in the summary pointing to any ongoing debate. Just the previous Slashdot story and the main wikipedia article. There have been no edits to the OMM talk page for a week.
Shoddy, shoddy, shoddy submission.
Maybe they're referring to the SignPost article that has a handful of comments from a few days ago?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-03-07/Deletion_controversy [wikipedia.org]
Re:Uh, debate is where? (Score:4, Interesting)
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the wrinkle is that the deletion controversy is what inspired some of those third-party sources to be written. in fact, one of them was amusingly titled "The Remarkable Notability of Old Man Murray."
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i mostly agree with this, but in your original post you suggested that editors could learn from this example and add third-party sources which, in this case, they couldn't have... it's also arguable that they aren't really third-party sources at all; they are more like second-party sources since they are essentially being commissioned by wikipedia itself...
Re:Uh, debate is where? (Score:5, Insightful)
2+2 does not equal 5. Sure, fascism produces some great art, and economic benefits. Do you want to live under a fascist regime?
There are other ways of getting good results, there are other ways of getting good sourced articles. There are much better ways than behaving like power-crazed spoiled children. There are much better ways than driving any decent intelligent person away from wikipedia for good.
But no, the jackbooted scum that are the current wikiadmins are intent on driving away the very people who could actually make wikipedia into the resource it should be, but currently is very far from being.
Until such time as the crooked Jimbo and his clique are finally kicked out of wikipedia, there will be no truth, no justice and no trust on that site.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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You know, anybody can run mediawiki.
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a gauntlet of skanky losers who have claimed the Wiki as "their domain".
Then they may be in violation of WP:OWN.
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sockpuppet means many accounts being controlled by a single person
meat puppet is anyone who shows up simply to say something because someone else instructed them or asked them to.
They're actually different people, but they only joined the discussion because someone instructed them to, or went to some forum and said "Hey everybody look at this!"
You can have existing editors be meat puppets, it's not just limited to off-wiki users, though typically that's the case.
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It's a person who Only comes to the discussion because they were prompted or instructed to mainly because the person asking then knew they would (not) vote a certain way. This usually occurs on a subjects fan forum blog etc. Where they post and say "everyone go write keep on this discussion"
Which is totally appropriate. I don't visit the Washington Monument on a daily basis, but if someone wanted to tear it down, I'd hope someone would drag a whole mess of meatpuppets into the decision meetings. Just because there isn't regular traffic visiting something doesn't mean it's not important.
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It's not remotely appropriate. The whole point of AfDs is generally to get opinions of people who edit the article and those who randomly come across it as well as people who may just regularly watch deletion discussions. They're hoping for a reasonably random sample. If one side goes out of their way to stack the deck, it's not really a fair discussion, which is why administrators generally don't even count votes and are supposed to look at the actual strength of the argument from both sides. However exces
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Which neatly summarizes how broken Wikipedia is since that the description is synonymous with "outsider". No one's going to just trip on some random debate on some sub-sub-sub page of Wikipedia, so ANY new voice - which could even include experts - is going to have been brought in by someone e
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No, they don't, and they only get called that because something doesn't meet the policies and guidelines on wikipedia and that something is something you happen to like. I've seen very few, if any, people who vote delete on everything without merit. And even if they did, if there are actual valid sources, then the admin would close the discussion as a keep. People who watch AfD are not automatically "deletionists" however the kind of meat puppets we are tal
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What is the pragmatic difference between writing original research directly in Wikipedia, or writing the same original research into a blog article or separate domain specific wiki, and then sourcing it on Wikipedia?
It seems wikipedia shares something in common with C: "Any problem can be solved with a layer of indirection."
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What is editorial control? (Score:3)
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You don't threaten to delete an article when it requires improvement, you mark the article as requiring improvement. They have tags for exactly these purposes. Wikipedia has gone a little deletion-crazy recently, probably out of some misguided desire to become more "respectable".
Re:Uh, debate is where? (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like the deletion policy makes sense, if it's what's needed to get editors to add reliable third-party sources.
No it doesn't, as that is pretty much a classic case of the broken window fallacy [wikipedia.org]. The energy and effort wasted in those deletion debates could have been spend far better and the fallout of those deletions is rather horrible, as you always lose some authors in the process.
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I agree that editors could simply add the references to reliable sources in the first place, but what if they won't unless the article or material in it may be deleted? It's not the broken window fallacy at all. It's just repercussions from not following the rules, which leads to the rules being followed.
If you don't pay your water bill on time, the water company shuts off your water. That leads to you paying your water bill and your water gets turned back on. It's not that evil water fascists that are cont
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I agree that editors could simply add the references to reliable sources in the first place, but what if they won't unless the article or material in it may be deleted?
The point is: The deletionist contributes nothing of value. He is like the thieve that breaks into your house. Sure, he might force you secure your home, thus resulting in a safer home, but that doesn't stop it wrong being a fucking annoying waste of time. Back in the day when Wikipedia was awesome you'd simply stick a "citation missing" or whatever template on top of the article and call it a day. Deletions should be reserved for things where there is good reason to assume that the content is fraud, fake,
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Material for which no source can be found should be validated the same way you would verify any other data. A minute or two of searching can usually locate sources. The reader can update the page to include the source, or delete the offending statement if no verification appears to exist.
This is the constructive way to handle the issue. To blindly delete without attempting to validate is simply vandalism.
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Deletions should be reserved for things where there is good reason to assume that the content is fraud, fake, copyright infringement or spam
"Fake" may be part of it. After the Seigenthaler incident, information about a living person is assumed fake unless clearly verifiable. "Spam" may also be part of it. An article about a subject attracts readers to click on the article's external links.
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"There have been no edits to the OMM talk page for a week."
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Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is there even a debate? If the article is generating such a controversy, then OBVIOUSLY it's notable enough to stay there? Where the hell is common sense when you need it?
That's what search is for. (Score:4, Funny)
Here. [wikipedia.org] Note that it has material that may be challenged or removed as it does not cite any references or sources.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to Wikipedia - common sense means nothing, and they actually have to have ESSAYS on what constitutes "Wikilawyering", "Gaming the system", and pretty much every tactic that is adopted by asshole "admins" and their followers but forbidden to everyone else (even if you're trying to counter their own bad-faith scumbaggery).
Remember - you can learn a lot from what former admins write [livejournal.com] regarding how Wikipedia really works [blogspot.com].
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"common sense means nothing"
That phrase means nothing in this context. "Of course everyone knows how to build an open collaborative encyclopedia. Anyone who disagrees with me is a fool." I don't mean to say that everyone's opinion shouldn't matter. There should be no "caste" system and I understand Wikipedia has a problem with that.
But it's a fallacy to assume there exists some universal "common sense" for a task that's never before been attempted.
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Yeah, asshole admins basically drove me away from contributing to Wikipedia. Not like I was a major contributor, but I'd put some time in.
Getting into a spat with an admin who was automatically reverting any changes made to 'his' article was enough to make me quit trying. His admin buddies backed him up on it, when all I was trying to do was add ISBN numbers to the biography section, and his second-long revert times meant he wasn't even reading what he was reverting.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Funny)
Because the deletionists won't be happy until Wikipedia consists of nothing but an article on itself and vanity articles extolling the many virtues of the deletionists?
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The idea to only have those articles in Wikipedia someone actually cares for (e.g. maintaining it and incorporate new facts and sources), and of those editors so many, that there is actually a peer review of the articles in question has something for it, don't you think?
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Once an article is complete, there's really nothing you can do to it except make it less clear or less factual.
Everyone who reads is a peer to review it, isn't that a central part of the whole philosophy? Perhaps they found it to be good enough. If you disagree, by all means fix it.
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The idea to only have those articles in Wikipedia someone actually cares for (e.g. maintaining it and incorporate new facts and sources), and of those editors so many, that there is actually a peer review of the articles in question has something for it, don't you think?
I'm a little shaky on this whole 'internet' thing but last I checked there were a lot of us using it. There's lots of articles on Wikipedia that don't need frequent updating and even if they're out of date they're better than nothing.
Re:Maintain? (Score:4, Insightful)
For "Communism not working", Wikipedia works remarkably well, don't you think? Or -- what an heretical thought! -- maybe Wikipedia has nothing to do with Communism?
(The way some US-americans label anything and everything not adhering to some very strange voodoo economic theories as "communist" has striked me always as some odd personality trait. Probably because US-americans have never directly experienced the real existant communism, and have no clue what they are talking about.)
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You forgot the porn star and manga character articles. They have to be there. After all, especially for the porn stars, there is a plethora of sources available. Of course, to ensure the quality of the article, said sources need to be reviewed...
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Funny)
Common sense isn't as common as the name would imply, so the deletionists deleted it.
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There is no better way to get lots of attention than for somebody to try to suppress you!
Think Wikileaks for example.
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Note that the submission states "An anonymous reader writes . . .".
So it's all BS and a mistake for Slashdot to run it.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Funny)
Clearly, we're running out of internets, and need to delete stuff to keep the drive clear for more "important" information.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Informative)
The theoretical reason for deleting articles is that if they're not notable, there's likely to be inaccuracies due to nobody looking at the page on a regular basis. And even if it was accurate when it went up things change.
The main problem is that nobody can really decide what is and isn't notable, and it frequently comes down to politics. However now that there's been this scandal, Old Man Murray should be considered notable. If for no other reason than demonstrating Wikipedia editorial douche baggery.
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Nope. Someone might decide that their ordinary family, street, or manhole cover deserves an article and some bunch of clueless inclusionists would show up to protect it out of principle.
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I'm sorry but I disagree. I have never heard of XYZ band getting a few dozen friends to whine about their page deletion. Thousands of people have now heard about Old Man Murray getting its page deleted. I personally didn't know the site, but now I do. You could argue the site is even more notable than it was before.
If you want to be technical, the very fact the news has made the headlines created dozens of back links from sites like /. or RPS. That alone would be enough for notability, thus controversy brin
Here's the guy... (Score:2, Funny)
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Thank you. Now I know what's wrong with Wikipedia.
Was first on Rock Paper Shotgun (Score:2)
Of course... (Score:2)
Cocksuckers then ask for money (Score:2)
And then the cocksuckers have the balls to ask for money after pulling shit like this.
Wikipedia is not getting one fucking donation from me until they get rid of these deletion happy mutherfuckers.
Who the fuck cares if an article is notable to you, that the same bullshit, can't fucking call it reasoning because it isn't, that fuckers in Texass used to keep Ã"scar Romero out of their history books Kinda surprised Wikipedia hasn't cited the Texas State Board of Education and removed him from there as w
The next article (Score:2)
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An so on. And so on.
Wikipedia is overrun by deletionists (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a former Wikipedian who stopped making substantial edits in 2006. I have seen so many articles that are covered by relable sources but are still deleted by deletionists. Just like how the idea of Linux on the desktop was destroyed by warring KDE/Gnome factions which further split up into Plasma/Classic and Shell/Spatial/Unity and Xfree86/Xorg/Wayland factions. Wikipedia deletionists destroyed the original goal of "imagine free access to the sum of all human knowlege, thats what we are doing" motto. Now Jimbo just facespamms every few months BEGGING for your money that could go to legimate educational institutions while letting deletionists and thug admins eliminate good faith editors.
Wikipedia needs to be blacklisted and replaced by an inclusionist project that bans deletionists and promotes legitmate edits. The closest is probably Wikia but it is advertising and has COI with Jimbo.
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I anticipated this development (Score:2)
as a connoisseur of fine irony.
Before the Wikipedia brouhaha, Old Man Murray probably didn't meet Wikipedia's notability standards, which require citable external sources of information on a topic. Then the act of deleting the article caused such sources to spring into existence, thus making Old Man Murray notable if one follows the guidelines literally.
The reasonable intent of the citation rule is that a thing should not be considered just notable because some Wikipedia contributors *claim* it is. Yet, s
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as a connoisseur of fine irony.
Before the Wikipedia brouhaha, Old Man Murray probably didn't meet Wikipedia's notability standards
Wikipedia is full of articles that don't meet "notability" standards. The real issue is "is there someone out there in a position of power who gets a bug up his ass and decides that this particular entry is not notable". It has been well documented that Wikipedia is controlled by a handful of OCD control freaks.
Evades me (Score:2, Interesting)
The point of this Slashdot submission just totally evades me. Apparently someone nominated the article for deletion with perfectly sound reasoning in January. No proponents responded (meaning: nobody cared for the article), so it was deleted accordingly. Wikipedia does not accept something being articleworthy just because you know the organization / website / whatever – you have to provide evidence that this phenomena is real and notable – otherwise Wikipedia would be just full of all sorts of h
theft (Score:2)
Deletionists steal knowledge from the public.
The real problem with a "notability" standard... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Wikipedia and its current admins had been around in 1890, they'd have deleted the entry for Vincent Van Gogh.
Encyclopedias have to restrict themselves due to their medium. They would love to be repositories of all knowledge if they could, but that's just not possible, it would take too much paper. Wikipedia has the potential to become what traditional encyclopedias can only aspire to be -- but they've decided instead to imitate as if it were a virtue what encyclopedias do out of unfortunate necessity. They've basically decided to self-limit themselves to make sure they don't transcend the limitations of their paper relatives, and for some reason consider themselves better off for making sure they are no better.
Studying history, it's often frustrating to go over what people wrote centuries before, because they often fail to note precisely what you're most interested in finding out. History shows people are extremely poor at determining what's actually worth noting at the time. The best service that could ever be provided to the future would be to try as hard as possible to note as much as possible. The catch, of course, is to keep from drowning the information in noise, but the answer to that is organization and search tools, not limiting the data. No one is going to miss the information they're looking for because a page for Old Man Murray is on the site, and if there ever were so many similar entries that this was at all a danger, an index page of "notable" writers would clear up the problem lickety-split.
They should be working on how to organize information to make sure whatever the current generation finds most notable is most easy to find, not on limiting information to what history tells us will inevitably be a large number of very poor decisions on what's actually worth recording.
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And in 1890 - they'd have been right to do so. In 1890 Vincent Van Gogh was pretty much a minor figure, well known - but in a small circle. At the time of his death, he was one of dozens and dozens of such figures which might someday become interesting and influential.
His fame and influence didn't really begin to grow until almost twenty years after his death. The dozens and dozens of o
That makes a zero-sum assumption (Score:4, Insightful)
editors time is not [cheap] [...] Given the number of pages that I regularly see that have tags months and years old indicating that they need sources, formatting, etc... I'd say Wikipedia is in the midst of an unrecognized crisis in this regard.
Your argument assumes that editor time can be freely shifted from one article to another. If I'm very interested in anime and manga (and nothing else), I'm not going to start editing articles about voting theory or cladistics and the tree of life, or whatever---I don't have the interest, and/or I don't have the knowledge. A similar argument has been applied to free software contributors: people do what they're going to do, and you can't boss volunteers around.
To some extent, people care about Wikipedia in general; to that extent, you can transfer editor work hours between articles. I think the policy that maximizes use of both flexible and non-flexible volunteer labor is to direct the flexible labor to where the marginal return is greatest, given a fixed and unalterable supply of non-flexible labor. Concretely: use a bug tracker or ticket system and auto-fill it with "Most visited [citation needed]", "Oftenest viewed [flag:foobar]". That way, flexible volunteer labor can be directed to where that's useful, and the seldom-viewed stuff can coexist and be crap, and no one will care because no one reads it anyways, and in that way everyone gets to have their cake and eat it too.
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Yeah, when you're living in a time period, everything is basically just like background: it's taken for granted. And not considered notable.
But it's highly notable for people from, say the future, looking backward. How did people in Rome, Greece, Egypt, etc. do daily stuff like wash their hands? Or did they even? Cut their food, etc.? And not just nobles, but ordinary people.
Ya I've never understood that (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean I understand that you want to delete things that are false, or that infringe copyright, or are illegal, or things like that. Right, no problem. But why delete things just because they aren't notable? As you said, it isn't as though we are going to run out of bits. Also it isn't as though it clutters things up, since you access information via search and thus skip over shit you don't care about. Thus there's no reason not to include everything, no matter how trivial and "un-notable"
What's more, the standard is clearly stupid since there is some extremely un-notable shit in there. The amount of articles on fictions characters from literature, including some pretty obscure ones from anime and shit is legion. This is not notable under any standard I can think about but there you go, large articles with lots of information. Doesn't bother me in the slightest, in fact I like it because if someone mentions then and I go "What the fuck is that?" I can find out.
Well if you are going to allow trivial shit like that, then I'd say all bets are off. Let pretty much anything that is true and sourced on there. Fuck notability.
People wanting to delete over notability are just worthless whiners who would rather bitch than contribute. They are saying "I don't find this interesting so I want it to go away," which is crap. I see the same shit on forums. Someone will start a new thread on a topic related to an existing thread and someone else will say "I don't see why this needs a new thread." My reply is "You know we don't pay by the thread, right?"
The reason they are saying it isn't because they are actually concerned, but because they want to try and shut down discussion on a topic they don't care about or don't like. It is just stupid.
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Doesn't bother me in the slightest, in fact I like it because if someone mentions then and I go "What the fuck is that?" I can find out.
I've argued that extensively on Wikipedia years ago - to deafening silence as the only answer.
Notability should - if you insist on having it at all, which I think is dumb - be an inverse qualifier. The less well-known something is, the more likely it is that people will want to look it up. Sure you look up Ronald Reagan occasionally, because you need his birthdate or whatever. But when you look up, say, the Darfur governeur from 50 years ago, that's when you want an encyclopedia because it's unlikely you ca
Editorial supervision (Score:2)
Normally this is where editorial supervision would come into play. For better or for worse, this is how it works in professiona
One problem with the web is that web pages go away (Score:2, Insightful)
Make a web page with a bunch of links to other sites on it. Given enough time all those links will die.
Wikipedia requires that you link to other content on the web for an article to be "notable."
Given enough time, all the links on the wikipedia page will die away. Therefore nearly all content on wikipedia will go away, unless it is general information from established historical sites.
Wikipedia should never delete anything just because the old links went away. In fact, they should work with internet arc
No more money for Wikipedia. (Score:2)
I've given $50 to Wikipedia two years in a row. I won't do that anymore. Holy fucking shit, look, the site's been taken over by five year olds with overly developed vocabularies. Sorry kids, if you want money go ask your parents.
idiots (Score:3)
The sheer fact that it's deletion and the controversy are plastered all over should be indication that the magazine is, indeed, "notable".
What are your chances that your average porn star or manga character, many of whom have their won Wikipedia pages, could create even half as much of an uproar?
The problem with the deletionists is that they've gone far beyond reason. The time and energy consumed and the frustration (on all sides) created by this discussion alone is much, much more damaging to Wikipedia than leaving an article that maybe doesn't deserve it there. When your defense of a principle causes so much damage to the larger whole that your principle is claiming to protect, then something is wrong.
And, btw., we have a word for people who don't see that. It's "fanatics".
Re:So?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So?? (Score:5, Insightful)
>Who cares?
My guess: 2 kinds of people. Those that say that this Murray thing was/is notable and those that don't want the biggest encyclopedia, and a free as in freedom one at that, to be governed by corrupt bureaucrats.
Re:So?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, some people do, not neccessarily because they care about the content.
At the risk of repeating myself, I've mentioned the case of Pidgey the Pokemon before [slashdot.org]. Suffice to say that once Pidgey had his own page on Wikipedia, just like Old Man Murray, but now he does not.
Now, you may well scoff at the case of Pidgey(Or of Old Man Murray). After all, why should this trite children's toy be given space on an encyclopedia of any kind? But such views inevitably take us into rather different territory than Wikipedia's stated objective to become "A Repository of All Human Knowledge". If we accept that Pidgey can be excluded from the great library of the internet, then it follows that we can exclude a great deal more.
And indeed we have. Wikipedia has in the last three years undergone a great purge of information and content which would rival any Soviet censorship bureau. "What of it?!", claim supporters. "Why should we tolerate Pidgey's presence on the shelves of our glorious archive?".
And that's really what it comes down to. Information remains on Wikipedia, not because it is notable, (Pidgey was part of a $5 billion franchise), or maintainable (Sadly, Pokemon fans are still as numerous and eager as ever) . No; Information remains on Wikipedia only because it is tolerated . Old Man Murray is up for deletion because someone--anyone--simply did not want to tolerate its presence any longer.
That is what Wikipedia has been reduced to. The online book which anyone can burn. And they do. It is a great library who's primary task is destroying and deleting its own collections. That and streamlining the procedures which makes this possible.
Scoff at Pidgey if you like, but if a book about him sat on the shelf in any library, no librarian in the world would needlessly dispose of it. Indeed, many would be loath to do so, and would maintain that book as they would any other; diligently and with careful attention. The fact that Wikipedia, with its infinite shelf space and everlasting tombs, should so eagerly and callously destroy its volumes is nothing short of an international disgrace.
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I get what you're going for here, but there are alternate tensions at work. Wikipedia doesn't actually have infini-space (or infini-bandwidth), it has a large-but-finite space, which is subject to both technical and organizational concerns . To address your example directly, libraries get rid of books all the time - the process is called weeding, and it's where a large portion of those books with plastic jackets at library book sales come from.
To address your other example (Pidgey), well, there's still a
Re:So?? (Score:4, Interesting)
it has a large-but-finite space
I could be wrong about this, but as far as I'm aware, the full content (including edit history!) of wikipedia totals less than 5TB, which should by no means be difficult to house. Now, perhaps there are architectural considerations that I'm not taking into account, but even if that's the case, remember that these deletion discussions often grow to a size eclipsing that of the article being discussed.
This isn't about space. It's about image. Some Wikipedians don't want their encyclopedia hosting frivolous or trivial information, because that conflicts with the air of solemn academia they affect.
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I will concede that space probably isn't the biggest consideration they have, although for a donation-maintained web service, 5TB (and appropriate backup and maintenance) isn't insignificant either. But the limiting factor they'll hit first is probably either bandwidth or search efficiency problems. I'm not by any means an expert on Wikimedia internals, but I would guess that they could probably blow up their search-space without necessarily blowing up their content-space.
And, yes, some Wikipedians are di
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It's not about image ... it's a social MMO and deletions are how you can prove you are winning.
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you can download the whole english language wiki text as a 6gb file. let's say images take 500 times more space. so the total for english wikipedia is 306gb. lets say all the other languages take up 5 times the space. the grand total turns out to be ~1.8tb. let's just double it for fun, bringing us to 3.6tb.
are you seriously saying that wikipedia does not have enough space for this? and the murray article was original eork, not copy-pasted from someplace else.
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That is in fact not their stated objective.
Hence the problem some people have.
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It was their objective for many years, and you can still see mention of this objective in places on Wikipedia. Like in Jimbo's annual letter calling for donations, for example.
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it is. wikipedia started out with that motto.
the wiki on wikipedia says:
Wikipedia seeks to create a summary of all human knowledge in the form of an online encyclopedia, with each topic of knowledge covered encyclopedically in one article. Since it has virtually unlimited disk space it can have far more topics than can be covered by any conventional print encyclopedias.
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I worked in a library for a long time. The only way a book got thrown out is if it's condition was really bad, ie it was puked on or had a significant number of pages torn out. A book could potentionally be sent into storage but it was never thrown away for space, even books that we had ~200 copies of due to their popularity. And those books remained in the system and could be pulled out of storage if a patron wanted it. Financially, it's cheaper to keep it in storage and still let patrons check it out via
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My second guess would be apathy. 99.99% of current Wikipedia users would continue to use the original, even if you hired (or hacked!) every screen and marquee in Times Square to advertise your fork.
My third guess is French: "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose". Wikipedia is a bureaucracy wrapped in red tape and Byzantine nerd politicking, but it did
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I agree that Wikipedia is overrun by deletionists, so I will tell you what I would do differently:
1. Add more democracy, get rid of the crazy "majority doesn't decide, consensus does" which can be subjective, and decide objectively with voting.
2. Equate power between admins and normal users - give users ability to recall admin, separate admin privileges (like bans and deletions).
3. Weigh votes slightly by stable (not reverted) added content to the main pages or images.
4. Create several notability levels for
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Place accredited experts and academics in charge of pages. Give knowledgeable, identified individuals ultimate editorial control over pages or groups of pages so that, while anyone can edit, disputes, in-correctness and cruft can all be managed by an overall editor proficient in that field.
Establish a new foundation to run the encyclopedia, with close links to academia and higher educational bodies. Fund the site though these links and not via private donations. Establish a boa
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Why isn't there a wikipedia fork yet? We could leave the deletionists at the old rotten one, and welcome people who actually contribute to the new one.
The fork doesn't solve the problem.
An encyclopedia has to maintain some minimal level of substance and credibility if it not to become a vanity press.
Articles need to be well-written. Reasonably up-to-date and credibly sourced.
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So delete all articles without credible sources.
Oh, but don't delete articles! That's rude and makes people teh sadz.
So we start finding sources for the articles instead.
But that takes time. A lot of time. Much more time than making things up and creating Wikipedia articles. The list of unsourced articles is piling up. I can't use this crap.
So we stop all new submissions until all current articles are properly sourced.
Wikipedia just got incredibly outdated. I don't need an encyclopedia telling me Muba
Re: (Score:2)
Deleted pages can be found on DeletionPedia [dbatley.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As I recall, Quake III Arena used Old Man Murray as an Easter Egg. I'm pretty certain that everyone's heard of Quake III Arena. I mean, it's still the best competitive FPS to have existed. Surely it's acknowledgement of Old Man Murray justifies at least a passing mention? I mean, you don't become part of a best-selling franchise by being a nobody...