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(slightly) OT: The article is well known and the author Ulrich Drepper is also well known in the FOSS world for his work on the GNU C Library. [1] So I was su

(slightly) OT: The article is well known and the author Ulrich Drepper is also well known in the FOSS world for his work on the GNU C Library. [1] So I was surprised to find that he did not have a small English language Wikipedia page, even though there were pages in German, French, Norwegian, Japanese and Persian. Oh, "that can't be right - I'll create one!", I thought. (By translating one of the existing pages.) But I could not! The page "is protected from creation" [2]. An archived deletion discussion from 2014 states "This article fails Wikipedia:Notability (people), Wikipedia:Verifiability, and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and should be deleted." ... etc. Edit: s/Dropper/Drepper/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_C_Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_C_Library [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Drepper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Drepper [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Ulrich_Drepper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...

lj3 9y ago
You can try to create one on infogalactic.com. I doubt they would object.
- delhanty 9y ago
  Infogalactic looks all free and easy now - but it could not remain that way if it got to anything like the scale of Wikipedia. Without the "fascist" administrators, Wikipedia would be an absolute spam-fest of corporate drivel, conspiracy theory nutjobs ... etc. My point is that my gut reaction was that Ulrich Drepper was notable enough to have a small Wikipedia page, but it turned out that it had been quite clearly decided that he was not.
  - lj3 9y ago
    > but it could not remain that way if it got to anything like the scale of Wikipedia. I would encourage you to learn a bit more about it first. It will not be following wikipedia down that path.
    - delhanty 9y ago
      My I ask you whether you are connected with Infogalactic in any way? I could not see any disclaimer on your post, but you seem remarkably well informed about them. Ah yes - answered my own question - it seems likely that you are closely connected with Intergalactic. see this "Show HN: Infogalactic (infogalactic.com)" [1] that you submitted 252 days ago. I did actually spend 10 minutes looking at the Infogalactic site before posting my reply. The Introduction page [2] starts out all fine and dandy: >Infogalactic does not share the highly centralized structure of Wikipedia or the ideological dogma of the Wikimedia Foundation. The primary requirements are for the information contributed to be true, relevant, and verifiable, rather than cited from a so-called “published reliable source”, since experience has proven how reliance upon the latter can be easily gamed by editors and administrators alike. There is no culture of notability, ideology, or deletionism at Infogalactic. The addition of perspective filters and two levels of Context and Opinion to every page means that the average editor's contribution is much less likely to be deleted for political reasons or fall victim to edit wars over controversial pages. But then I read down to this bit: >Infogalactic is a private corporation supported by donations and advertising revenue. ... Sorry, but that doesn't work for me. I'd rather stick with the Wikimedia Foundation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12711029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12711029 [2] https://infogalactic.com/info/Infogalactic:Introduction https://infogalactic.com/info/Infogalactic:Introduction
      - lj3 9y ago
        I made a single post almost a year ago and now I'm 'closely connected'? What a joke. > I'd rather stick with the Wikimedia Foundation. I don't care. I'm only aware of infogalactic because it's an alternative to wikipedia, which I sought out to begin with because of the very complaints you just made... > "An archived deletion discussion from 2014 states "This article fails Wikipedia:Notability (people), Wikipedia:Verifiability, and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and should be deleted." ... etc."
        detaro 9y ago
        > I made a single post almost a year ago and now I'm 'closely connected'? What a joke. Show HNs are for posting your own projects, so of course the parent would assume a close connection from you posting one. https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html : Show HN is a way to share something that you've made on Hacker News.
ZephyrP 9y ago
That is bizzare. Is there any way to view historical justifications of this? Ulrich Drepper is undoubtedly worthy of a Wikipedia page. I'm starting a draft page now - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Ulrich_Drepper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Ulrich_Drepper
- delhanty 9y ago
  >Is there any way to view historical justifications of this? See my 3rd reference above from 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Ulrich_Drepper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
  - ZephyrP 9y ago
    I've been looking for information about Ulrich for these past few minutes trying to build a draft document and I'm starting to put together the reasons why Ulrich will not have a page soon... Ulrich has accomplished so much as a programmer, more than nearly any programmer ever will. If we measured contributions objectively, he'd definitely be one of those "1% of programmers who produce 95% of software that is used by more than 1000 people". In fact, I just grepped for 'Ulrich Drepper' on my own personal computer and I've got pages-upon-pages of results (at least 2kloc) of bylines, commits, man pages and tiny thank you notes with only one recipient (Ulrich) deep in places you expect and then many you don't: the Android SDK, Coreutils, Wine project. When you do a bit of research about him (of the variety Wikipedia would accept), there's a different story. There are no awards for Ulrich Drepper, there are no 'real' publications outside of open source that are describing what he does, there are no lively pieces of evidence that the world recognizes his contributions, there most certainly are no fanclubs. What does emerge is a consistent message that the big players of free software wont tolerate him or his software (along with thousands of 'critiques' of his leadership style). Looking over this you see a pattern that emerges where an issue is brought up on a mailing list by people who are trying to help him or at the very least are neutral towards him and he cuts them down, insults them, belittles them for absolutely no reason whatsoever ("I have to let them know that they are dumb so they don't write software that hurts the world"). It's so comically obvious that he doesn't actually believe he's making "software" or "the world" any better while he's doing this. I'm not sure why, but reading about Ulrich Drepper has put the broader world of software in perspective. I've never thought about the 'legitimacy' of Linus Torvald's (and others) management style. I have even been known to think that "asshole bosses get shit done". I had never seen what comes out for the projects that aren't Linux. The smaller & more mundane pieces of software whose petty tyrant isn't tolerated for long. My initial feeling was that Ulrich Drepper deserves a Wikipedia page, but the evidence is that the deletionist might be right. Ulrich Drepper is not widely recognized because he has let his pride, his hubris and his attachment to criticism condemn him to a life of loneliness and anonymity with no indications that he wants either.

lj3 9y ago

You can try to create one on infogalactic.com. I doubt they would object.

delhanty 9y ago
Infogalactic looks all free and easy now - but it could not remain that way if it got to anything like the scale of Wikipedia. Without the "fascist" administrators, Wikipedia would be an absolute spam-fest of corporate drivel, conspiracy theory nutjobs ... etc. My point is that my gut reaction was that Ulrich Drepper was notable enough to have a small Wikipedia page, but it turned out that it had been quite clearly decided that he was not.
- lj3 9y ago
  > but it could not remain that way if it got to anything like the scale of Wikipedia. I would encourage you to learn a bit more about it first. It will not be following wikipedia down that path.
  - delhanty 9y ago
    My I ask you whether you are connected with Infogalactic in any way? I could not see any disclaimer on your post, but you seem remarkably well informed about them. Ah yes - answered my own question - it seems likely that you are closely connected with Intergalactic. see this "Show HN: Infogalactic (infogalactic.com)" [1] that you submitted 252 days ago. I did actually spend 10 minutes looking at the Infogalactic site before posting my reply. The Introduction page [2] starts out all fine and dandy: >Infogalactic does not share the highly centralized structure of Wikipedia or the ideological dogma of the Wikimedia Foundation. The primary requirements are for the information contributed to be true, relevant, and verifiable, rather than cited from a so-called “published reliable source”, since experience has proven how reliance upon the latter can be easily gamed by editors and administrators alike. There is no culture of notability, ideology, or deletionism at Infogalactic. The addition of perspective filters and two levels of Context and Opinion to every page means that the average editor's contribution is much less likely to be deleted for political reasons or fall victim to edit wars over controversial pages. But then I read down to this bit: >Infogalactic is a private corporation supported by donations and advertising revenue. ... Sorry, but that doesn't work for me. I'd rather stick with the Wikimedia Foundation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12711029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12711029 [2] https://infogalactic.com/info/Infogalactic:Introduction https://infogalactic.com/info/Infogalactic:Introduction
    - lj3 9y ago
      I made a single post almost a year ago and now I'm 'closely connected'? What a joke. > I'd rather stick with the Wikimedia Foundation. I don't care. I'm only aware of infogalactic because it's an alternative to wikipedia, which I sought out to begin with because of the very complaints you just made... > "An archived deletion discussion from 2014 states "This article fails Wikipedia:Notability (people), Wikipedia:Verifiability, and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and should be deleted." ... etc."
      - detaro 9y ago
        > I made a single post almost a year ago and now I'm 'closely connected'? What a joke. Show HNs are for posting your own projects, so of course the parent would assume a close connection from you posting one. https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html : Show HN is a way to share something that you've made on Hacker News.

ZephyrP 9y ago

That is bizzare. Is there any way to view historical justifications of this? Ulrich Drepper is undoubtedly worthy of a Wikipedia page. I'm starting a draft page now - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Ulrich_Drepper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Ulrich_Drepper

delhanty 9y ago
>Is there any way to view historical justifications of this? See my 3rd reference above from 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Ulrich_Drepper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
- ZephyrP 9y ago
  I've been looking for information about Ulrich for these past few minutes trying to build a draft document and I'm starting to put together the reasons why Ulrich will not have a page soon... Ulrich has accomplished so much as a programmer, more than nearly any programmer ever will. If we measured contributions objectively, he'd definitely be one of those "1% of programmers who produce 95% of software that is used by more than 1000 people". In fact, I just grepped for 'Ulrich Drepper' on my own personal computer and I've got pages-upon-pages of results (at least 2kloc) of bylines, commits, man pages and tiny thank you notes with only one recipient (Ulrich) deep in places you expect and then many you don't: the Android SDK, Coreutils, Wine project. When you do a bit of research about him (of the variety Wikipedia would accept), there's a different story. There are no awards for Ulrich Drepper, there are no 'real' publications outside of open source that are describing what he does, there are no lively pieces of evidence that the world recognizes his contributions, there most certainly are no fanclubs. What does emerge is a consistent message that the big players of free software wont tolerate him or his software (along with thousands of 'critiques' of his leadership style). Looking over this you see a pattern that emerges where an issue is brought up on a mailing list by people who are trying to help him or at the very least are neutral towards him and he cuts them down, insults them, belittles them for absolutely no reason whatsoever ("I have to let them know that they are dumb so they don't write software that hurts the world"). It's so comically obvious that he doesn't actually believe he's making "software" or "the world" any better while he's doing this. I'm not sure why, but reading about Ulrich Drepper has put the broader world of software in perspective. I've never thought about the 'legitimacy' of Linus Torvald's (and others) management style. I have even been known to think that "asshole bosses get shit done". I had never seen what comes out for the projects that aren't Linux. The smaller & more mundane pieces of software whose petty tyrant isn't tolerated for long. My initial feeling was that Ulrich Drepper deserves a Wikipedia page, but the evidence is that the deletionist might be right. Ulrich Drepper is not widely recognized because he has let his pride, his hubris and his attachment to criticism condemn him to a life of loneliness and anonymity with no indications that he wants either.