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Steve Yegge is a "non-notable programmer"
- illumin8 16y agoWhy does wikipedia even care if someone is notable or not? If someone went to the trouble to create a page about someone else, aren't they "notable" enough to have a page? This reeks of editorial bias.
- sgt 16y agoI think it makes perfect sense. If one allows articles that have little interest, you'll pretty soon end up with a massive amount of articles that very few people are interested in reading, and even worse: articles that nobody is interested in maintaining. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and should as such have relatively high standards as opposed to the rest of the web.
- _delirium 16y agoYeah, I think like many Wikipedia policies it's a useful pragmatic policy. How it's applied to specific cases is always worth looking at, but in principle, a ton of articles with no real interest or citeable sources lead to low-quality stuff. If a Coca-Cola PR person were to insert a bunch of advertising fluff in their article, people would notice almost immediately and fix it. But if your corner barber shop writes an article about themselves with a bunch of advertising fluff, without a notability policy it might stay there for a long time, because nobody cares enough or has any information they can use to improve the article. I mean what would it even mean to have a good article about your corner barber shop? Would you base it on personal observation, or do independent interviews with the owner or something? Unless it's gotten some degree of attention for something, and gotten written up somewhere, it seems like a good idea to just decide there's not enough there to write a Wikipedia article on it. (There really are a bunch of really small businesses trying to insert ad blurbs into Wikipedia, so it's not a purely hypothetical problem. Minor academics pasting their CVs and bio blurbs into Wikipedia is another issue.)
- nadam 16y agoThey could automate this: if an article would not be read for a given amount of time by a given number of users, it could be automatically deleted. This would be much more objective than what they are doing now.
- tomjen3 16y agoBut that is exactly the error - Wikipedia is no more an encyclopedia than nytimes.com is a newspaper. You cannot ship a 200 page newspaper or a 2000 volume encyclopedia, for entirely practical reasons having to do with physics. It is therefore sensible to assume limit what you put into the encyclopedia, but since the same limit does not apply to the online edition of wikipedia, it does not make sense to apply it there.
- hugh3 16y agoSpace is not the limitation. The limitation is the number of people willing to put in their spare time to maintain the encyclopaedia.
- sabat 16y agoIt's more complex than you're making it. One man's notable figure is another man's regular Joe. If one allows articles that have little interest To whom? The "general public"? I'm not sure anything has interest to the general public anymore. The world has become massively fragmented.
- dasil003 16y agoWell it's not completely subjective either. It's related to a critical mass of people believing someone or their works to be notable. Also re: fragmented world, I'm not sure that the world has ever been as connected as it is right at this moment.
- sabat 16y agoIt's related to a critical mass of people believing someone or their works to be notable. Agreed. Maybe we differ on what size makes a critical mass. I'm not sure that the world has ever been as connected as it is right at this moment. That's precisely what's making it so fragmented. People no longer need to join one giant popular culture, and are bonded with others all over the world in tiny interest groups. Anecdotally, I've never seen American Idol or America's Next Top <whatever>, and yet there is a notable population that worships those shows. For their part, they've never heard of _why or World of Warcraft or most anything else I'm interested in. I'm talking about cultural fragmentation, specifically.
- mortenjorck 16y agoI think the theory is that without notability, there won't be enough interested editors to maintain a consensus on the article's "NPOV." For varying definitions of consensus and neutral point of view, of course.
- DanielStraight 16y agoIt never ceases to amaze how little Wikipedia understands Wikipedia. The purpose of Wikipedia to the end user (at least from my own personal experience and how I've seen other people use it) is to be able look up anything of any importance and get a quick overview of it. Wikipedia will happily include every obscure city, animal and flower species on Earth (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizothorax_yunnanensis_yunnanensis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizothorax_yunnanensis_yunnan...), but will try to delete articles on bloggers and singers that are very well known within their niche. I don't get it. Adding additional pages to Wikipedia does very little to reduce its value and plenty to increase its value (always coming up first in Google to give a basic overview). No one is going to read or print the whole thing anyway. Whether it's 3.3 million or 13.3 million articles doesn't seem to make a difference.
- SomeCallMeTim 16y agoI've said this before, but if Wikipedia ever fails, it will be because of their tendency to delete articles that other people find relevant; a competitor that doesn't insult its users by deleting their articles capriciously (and that includes a decent search function) would actually have a chance at the throne.
- DanielStraight 16y agoIt's not just the immediate impact of deletion either. I don't bother trying to add to Wikipedia anymore, because I know if I can't meet some ill-defined criteria of notability within about 5 minutes, the article will be gone. Wikipedia really does not seem to do very much to encourage involvement, especially when it comes to adding to the site.
- _delirium 16y agoI haven't really found that, and I've added hundreds of articles. I think one of my articles has ever been deleted (on an internet meme), and two or three others were nominated for deletion but consensus was to keep them. If you write an article in a neutral tone that sounds like an encyclopedia article, with good sources that you cite to back up the statements it makes, it'll rarely run into problems. If you write articles purely in certain controversial areas, like recent internet memes, I can see running into a lot of problems. But the vast majority of areas don't really have any rampant deletion. I've written articles on mathematical formulas, on prominent computer scientists, on important physics books, on 18th-century politicians, on famous paintings, on well-known children's toys, and on varieties of cheese, among other things, and never gotten any problems with any of them.
- simplegeek 16y agoPage says "Even though I'm quite aware of who he is as a programmer, he doesn't meet our standards for inclusion." I'm just curious about their standards for inclusion, any ideas?
- wmf 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people) I guess programmers are counted under "creative professionals". (There may be a meta-lesson here that there are specific notability guidelines for porn stars but not for programmers.)
- protomyth 16y agoI wonder how many hack poets or writers are on Wikipedia that have less of an influence or body of work than programmers they have rejected.
- Semiapies 16y agoOr slavishly detailed write-ups of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes.
- hugh3 16y agoWhile individual Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes would seem to be only of borderline notability, any Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode in existence has been seen by many millions of people. Do a comparable number of people know about Steve Yegge?
- Semiapies 16y agoI thought the value of a reference work was that it had things one might not know, not that it made a convenient place to engage in one's fandom.
- ax0n 16y agoSteve Who?
- phrotoma 16y agoHe seems to be notable enough to be considered a "reliable source" for several other articles ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Steve+Yegge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Steve+Yeg...
- shod 16y agoWell spotted, do references have to meet the same notability requirements as articles themselves?
- kenjackson 16y agoAlmost certainly not. You will often find reference to papers by authors not listed in Wikipedia and not notable enough to be listed.
- astine 16y agoActually, the quote is "None-notable programmer" :)
- helium 16y agoYea, but I thought I would be forgiving....
- kqr2 16y agoI think the real debate is what it means to be a notable programmer. The criteria for inclusion in the list is debatable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programmers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programmers Discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AList_of_programmers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AList_of_programmers
- growt 16y agoI agree. Is Bill Gates really a notable programmer? A notable business man and a notable altruist, yes. But a programmer?
- wglb 16y agoYes. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC.
- gaius 16y agoYes. He wrote MS Basic for example. He was a hands-on coder throughout Microsoft's early days.
- growt 16y agoHands on, yes. But "notable"? It's really a fuzzy criteria. I mean would you still know Gates for MS Basic if he didn't succeed with Microsoft?
- gaius 16y agoHe was certainly famous at the time - MS Basic was good enough that they could charge for it to people who already had a free Basic with their hardware.
- protomyth 16y agoWell, the featured article today is "Degrassi: The Next Generation", so I guess I know where their priorities are.
- _delirium 16y agoI think if you were to order topics by importance for inclusion in an encyclopedia, Degrassi: The Next Generation is much higher than Steve Yegge, though there's certainly an argument for including both. Certainly it's had more cultural impact on a much larger scale than Yegge. Encyclopedia coverage isn't a judgment of quality; it's not like the criteria for covering a novel or a film is the reviews they get from literary critics or film critics.
- protomyth 16y agoI think you hit what I believe with the phrase "cultural impact". Wikipedia doesn't deal well with a people/concepts/projects that have a technical impact on the lives of people. Look at how many video bloggers have pages then look at the technical people that influence the way we work.
- _delirium 16y agoSome of the problem is that Wikipedia's supposed to be a tertiary source, so it can only really follow what other people choose to cover. Technical people who have had good biographies written about them, or are mentioned in history books, or anything else similar, certainly get Wikipedia articles (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Physicists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Physicists), and those who don't yet have Wikipedia articles should get them. But if someone claims a particular technical person is important, yet they've never had a biography written about them, never even had a newspaper article written about them, never been mentioned even for a page or two in a history-of-technology book, and have basically gotten no writeups anywhere, Wikipedia shouldn't really be the first place they get a bio. The problem is really with the rest of the world: if indeed the person is important, why haven't any historians or journalists ever written about him/her? Once they do, Wikipedia can easily follow, citing those sources. As a tertiary source, Wikipedia's goal is to just summarize the existing literature, but if the existing literature itself is deficient, that's a problem that needs to be fixed elsewhere, in the primary and secondary sources. Someone in history, or in journalism, or in some similar field, needs to ask, "why aren't we writing about [x]?" Some might just be patience. Pop culture is very time-sensitive, so is covered almost immediately-- books, journal articles, and newspaper articles appear within months or even days, which the Wikipedia article can cite. Important computer scientists do eventually get mentioned in biographies and history of technology books, but it sometimes takes years--- nobody is rushing to put out biographies right now covering "Important Computer Scientists of 2010" or anything.
- hugh3 16y agoHonestly, who is Steve Yegge? I've only heard of him because articles from his blog are occasionally posted here. His blog doesn't give any biographical details as far as I can tell, and I tried to look him up on wikipedia to see what he's actually done, but he doesn't have an article. Can anyone explain why he's notable (apart from the old "I've heard of him therefore..." argument)? Not being combative, just curious.
- btmorex 16y agoAs far as I can tell, he isn't notable outside of blogging (I had no idea who he was either). I can understand why his wikipedia page got deleted. On the other hand, I have no problem with wikipedia including pages on famous bloggers who happen to be programmers. I think wikipedia's biggest strength is having something on just about everything. If I googled "Steve Yegge", it would be nice to have a wikipedia page there with a short blurb on why people know him (blogging about programming presumably).
- tptacek 16y agoWikipedia thinks it's an encyclopedia, not a search-engine aid or a "who's who"-style directory.
- SMrF 16y agoHe wrote js2 mode, which I love: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Js2Mode http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Js2Mode Other than that, I've heard he writes great blog posts on programming and works at Google.
- patio11 16y agoYou have to understand that Wikipedia is what would happen if your liberal arts faculty committee meeting had a fling with StackOverflow: it is both a community with implicit status/karma, it has a (contentiously) consensus policy where academic papers and newspapers matter and the rest of the world is a bunch of pajama-wearing amateurs of minor significance, and it totally fetishizes adherence to the defined Wiki process. If you really feel strongly that Yegge should be included, the effective way to do it is either get someone at the NYT to sneeze about him in print or hone your rules-lawyer skills, learn all their policies/acronyms, and outlast the other guys.
- bena 16y agoBoth Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood have Wikipedia pages and consider Steve Yegge to be important enough to have as a guest on their podcast.
- dasil003 16y agoThey consider him smart and insightful enough. Notable (or "important") does not necessarily follow.
- motters 16y agoNon-notable programmers of the world unite! (and take over)
- GiraffeNecktie 16y agoI used to love editing Wikipedia to the point of obsession, but after going through a grueling process of defending an article from deletion I decided I had better things to do with my life. The subject of the article in question was the author of at least half a dozen highly influential books in his field, the subject of a biography published by a mainstream publisher, cited in publications by his peers probably hundreds if not thousands of times over the past thirty years, interviewed and quoted in mainstream media around the world etc etc etc. Unfortunately there was a clique of editors who didn't like his ideas. Essentially they thought he was a quack and therefore couldn't stand the idea that he'd be given exposure in Wikipedia. I have no opinion on whether he's a quack and it really has nothing whatsoever to do with his notability. Eventually I was able to establish that the guy is influential and the article is still there, but the stupidity of having to endlessly argue the point made me say to hell with it and I haven't edited anything since.
- mindcrime 16y agoAnd he's back. Right after I re-created the page, somebody tagged it - again - for "speedy delete" but the admin rejected the speedy delete request. Thankfully. With the citations and references I included, I hope that particular article will be safe from deletion now. But if anybody else feels like working on it a bit, have at it.
- mindcrime 16y agoF#@ng Deletionists. Grrrr.... Anyway, I just created a new Steve Yegge page with a number of links from reputable sources, including links from where he has presented at UIUC, Stanford and OSCON, an infoq.com article, and ajaxian.com article and an interview with Steve by the StackExchange guys. How anyone can contend that that isn't enough to establish notability is beyond me. You don't get invited to speak at Stanford, UIUC and to talk at OSCON if you're not "somebody."
- mindcrime 16y agoMy big problem with Wikipedia's notability guidelines is that they're too general. I don't accept that "notability" has to mean "known worldwide" or "known by a large number of people regardless of their domain." I believe that notability within a given domain (say, programming) should be enough. And I don't think there's much - if any - question that Steve is "notable" within programming circles. Same with open-source projects... when the Wikipedia page for a F/OSS project is afd'd, the argument is always "it hasn't been covered in the NY Time" versus "but every geek knows about it, uses it, considers it notable, etc." Ok, to be fair, there's some grey area here... make the domain small enough and everybodY is notable. (To themselves, for example). But I still think the WP policy needs adjusting... it's just not working for the way people expect and want to use Wikipedia.