6 ms·
Yes, deletionnists are driving people to other venues. Wikia often claims to run the world's biggest wiki once you aggregate all their communities. It's sad tha
by Aissen 11y ago
Yes, deletionnists are driving people to other venues. Wikia often claims to run the world's biggest wiki once you aggregate all their communities. It's sad that the Wikimedia foundation let the deletionnists destroy so much value in Wikipedia without providing an alternative (like dedicated community wikis).
- chris_wot 11y agoI'm curious, what article was deleted that you can cite as an example of destruction of knowledge? edit: it's a serious question! Instead of down voting, just tell me. Or even downvote, but at least tell me.
- michaelwww 11y agoDeletionpedia is no longer kept up but I used to enjoy browsing it to see what was deleted . http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php
- detaro 11y agoSome observations from looking through these: * Huge amounts of various fictional universe lore, similar to the article * quite a few bands * some percentage of articles exists again, with better content
- michaelwww 11y agoThe discussion over deleting "Boomerang Engineer" is kind of funny. "totally improbable specialization. Throw it away (and hope it doesn't return):" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Boomerang_engineer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
- lmm 11y agoA couple of local (or internet-local) bands. One BBC documentary about a particular subculture that I was interested in at the time. One (fairly obscure, but involving some minor technical firsts) video game. All pop-cultural ephemera perhaps, but the sort of thing that qualifies as knowledge in my book.
- Aissen 11y agoIt's the main subject of the article. There are currently 721 pokemons, but less than 40 of them have an article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Pok%C3%A9mon_directory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Pok%C3%A9mon_director... Also note that I didn't say destruction of knowledge, but destruction of value(data), which is a very different thing. I don't need to care about pokemons, or star trek episodes to understand that some people might be interested in documenting and organizing those. Maybe Wikipedia isn't the place. It doesn't mean the Wikimedia foundation could not provide an open solution.
- detaro 11y agoAnd the full lists have info about all of them, just grouped in batches of 50. I don't think the pokemons are a good example of "lost content".
- chris_wot 11y agoTry Wikidata. Now Wikidata is cool. https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jerf 11y ago"It's sad that the Wikimedia foundation let the deletionnists destroy so much value in Wikipedia without providing an alternative (like dedicated community wikis)." Why should they, if Wikia does it?
- scrollaway 11y agoPartly because Wikia is a for-profit, extremely unethical company. They stuff more ads than content on their wikis, force established brands to move to .wikia subdomains, force awful design changes on their users, and they don't hesitate copying content from other wiki bases such as Gamepedia. (ATA: I was an admin on WoWWiki, one of their largest wiki, when it was sold to Wikia. I kept in touch with Wikia employees since.)
- jerf 11y agoWell, the real point is "Why should they when somebody else can?" Especially since I don't strongly believe that Wikipedia will necessarily be "ad free" in, say, five or ten years. Time rolls on. Wikipedia should be focusing on making the best Wikipedia they can; let other focus on making the best community sites they can. We don't have to bundle everything into one organization.
- knughit 11y agoWikipedia is copyleft, and has a preemptive immuninty to ads. Is wikia?
- ValentineC 11y agoMost Wikia sites seem to use some form of Creative Commons licensing: http://www.wikia.com/Licensing http://www.wikia.com/Licensing I think fans contribute to Wikia more out of convenience and inertia.
- CM30 11y agoThis is why I tend to support wikis hosted elsewhere, or those that move away from Wikia. For example, the Bulbapedia site here is self hosted, and part of a Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance that encourages people to leave Wikia and join their network to avoid just this sort of thing: http://www.niwanetwork.org/ http://www.niwanetwork.org/ They still get the odd email from a delusional Wikia staffer trying to get one of their sites to become a Wikia site, but they immediately turn them down.
- cookiecaper 11y agoYes, for something that was trying to archive "the sum of all human knowledge", I always felt Wikipedia was rather selective about what it'd allow. WP has always been firmly an establishment outlet, only allowing things if they received a substantial number of citations in the mainstream press (and big outlets too, not local outlets). I personally think there is a way to do a much better Wikipedia. One day I might try it.
- tptacek 11y agoCould you be very specific about what value in Wikipedia has been destroyed by deletionism? You're making an expansive claim: "so much" value it triggered a flight from the project. You should be able to cite specific articles to back it up. Fortunately for you, there are detailed archives of most of the debates over deleted articles on Wikipedia. Could you dredge up some examples?
- hysan 11y agoThe first thing I remembered was the deletion nomination spree that took down a bunch of programming language articles a couple years back (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2215168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2215168). It took quite a bit of internet backlash for this to get noticed and reversed - something that probably wouldn't happen for lesser known articles. I can't cite any other examples off the top of my head, but I know I've run into dead bookmarks once in a while for obscure Linux/OSS related articles on Wikipedia. Though I guess it's debatable if those lost articles really had any worth.