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> “were over four times more likely to have their importance questioned” and their pages marked for speedy deletion Deletionists of Wikipedia are just destinie

> “were over four times more likely to have their importance questioned” and their pages marked for speedy deletion Deletionists of Wikipedia are just destinied to fall on their face, and embarrass the whole project. Deletionism is the single big thing that makes Wikipedia somewhat sour in my view.

thriftwy 9y ago
Here, I have a Venn diagram to illustrate a point: https://www.meta-chart.com/share/how-wikipedia-deletionism-works https://www.meta-chart.com/share/how-wikipedia-deletionism-w... Two important takeaways are: A lot of stuff on Wikipedia just isn't encyclopedic. For example, there's a lot of sports trivia about obscure teams and local leagues. Such data deserves structured storage and not Wikipedia, and I just don't feel "2013 Richmond Raiders season" is more important than any single matematician who worked with Erdős. Second takeaway, a whole world of topics is just not ever noted by Wikipedia. For examples, you can have whole branches of local music scenes ineligible for note because every single artist fails to "be mentioned in a paper made of paper" (in 2010s, seriously) or "sell 3k discs made of plastic and foil" (again, this is in 2010s). If there's some kind of consistent policy I definitely don't see the value of it.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  The justification for the policy I have heard is that people should be able easily verify the information. If it's in the New York Times you can probably believe that it's not been created to game Wikipedia, the same cant be said for a random blog. I regularly see people complain about this without mentioning how they would solve this problem.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    The problem isn't the New York Times though. If someone has been profiled or otherwise written about repeatedly in the NYT, they're probably notable at some level. The issue is mentions in obscure books and local newspapers tend to trump even a significant online presence. I'm not sure what the best answer is either. The closest I've seen is to overlay a more inclusionist Wikipedia with some sort of crowdsourced reputation/quality moderation system. That can be gamed too of course but something along those lines may be the best approach.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    Most of papers made of paper are absolutely not available for verification. Ditto for research articles behind paywall or just cited as paper sources. You could invent dozens of such credible sources with no chances for anybody to ever check. I can understand "we could not verify this so we are deleting this article", but not "we speedy deleted this article without checking anything". The latter has no excuses except for obvious commercial spam.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      The correlation between notability and verifiability certainly starts to break down quickly once you get past easily accessible, well-known, and well-regarded sources. No one is going to chase down paper copies of obscure magazines, newspapers, or out-of-print books to verify some statement, especially if it's not highly questionable for some reason. The system does kinda work because most people aren't outright inventing fake references to game the system.
      - thriftwy 9y ago
        What would be your criteria for the system failing to work? What can go visibly wrong if Wikipedia would cover different subset of obscure topics than it does currently? We're not talking about faking facts in well-visited articles, since a) that's not what is being discussed, and b) that has been done anyway, getting into news multiple times.
        ghaff 9y ago
        To me, "failing to work" would mean not really usable across a wide range of domains. I can find plenty to fault with Wikipedia including the fact that it tilts further in the deletionist direction than would be my personal choice. A failure to include a lot more articles on relatively obscure topics may be a shortcoming but it probably doesn't, at the end of the day, make Wikipedia a lot less useful for the typical person.
        thriftwy 9y ago
- ghaff 9y ago
  Notability and related policies kinda, sorta, maybe work on Wikipedia relative to a total free-for-all but they fall down if you start squinting hard at them. Pretty much everything is notable at some level if you get local enough in either geography or subject matter. And, as you suggest, the fact that the high school quarterback or a local diner got written up in some local newspaper that has managed not to go out of business yet doesn't make them more notable in any important sense than, say, pretty much any scientist with a tenured position at a major university. (Or someone who is well known in open source circles or a senior executive in a major company or ...) I'm not sure what the best answer is. We pretty much know that anything goes doesn't really work (see Google Knol). But the current system on Wikipedia is pretty flawed as well.
- oldcynic 9y ago
  It seems to boil down to opinion. To an extent it has to. Though even when there's dozens of citations possible or articles on paper, and verifiable, entries can go because of an admin opinion. (I've no doubt this isn't the policy, but it sure seems like it sometimes. The one time I started to read into it I gave up.) Plenty that really doesn't seem to pass the sniff test manages to stick around. Though I'd prefer too many edge cases than too few. There's already a mechanism to mark pages with a caveat for needing cleanup or expansion after all.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    >It seems to boil down to opinion. To an extent it has to. There are certainly plenty of cases that would seem to be at one extreme or the other. National political figures, professional sports teams, etc. etc. are clearly notable. The random person whose name is only visible on the Internet on their own website probably not. But in between those poles are published but not well-known books, minor league baseball players, little-seen low-budget movies, random board games, amateur bands etc. Whether, for example, every book that has ever been published could potentially have its own Wikipedia article is ultimately an opinion/philosophy about whether there should be some limits on content that's just very obscure on Wikipedia even if it's theoretically verifiable to at least some degree.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      I just din't see any value in such limits. Do you? As long as article is well-written and not a self-promotion, it should be in.
- posterboy 9y ago
  Isn't it mutual and hence the other way around? Mathematicians don't seem to care much for wikipedia, sceners likewise. While sports fans might see editing, well, as a game.
NoahTheDuke 9y ago
Ooo, another chance to link to Gwern's excellent 'In Defense of Inclusionism'[0] essay. [0]: http://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism http://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism

thriftwy 9y ago

Here, I have a Venn diagram to illustrate a point: https://www.meta-chart.com/share/how-wikipedia-deletionism-works https://www.meta-chart.com/share/how-wikipedia-deletionism-w... Two important takeaways are: A lot of stuff on Wikipedia just isn't encyclopedic. For example, there's a lot of sports trivia about obscure teams and local leagues. Such data deserves structured storage and not Wikipedia, and I just don't feel "2013 Richmond Raiders season" is more important than any single matematician who worked with Erdős. Second takeaway, a whole world of topics is just not ever noted by Wikipedia. For examples, you can have whole branches of local music scenes ineligible for note because every single artist fails to "be mentioned in a paper made of paper" (in 2010s, seriously) or "sell 3k discs made of plastic and foil" (again, this is in 2010s). If there's some kind of consistent policy I definitely don't see the value of it.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago
The justification for the policy I have heard is that people should be able easily verify the information. If it's in the New York Times you can probably believe that it's not been created to game Wikipedia, the same cant be said for a random blog. I regularly see people complain about this without mentioning how they would solve this problem.
- ghaff 9y ago
  The problem isn't the New York Times though. If someone has been profiled or otherwise written about repeatedly in the NYT, they're probably notable at some level. The issue is mentions in obscure books and local newspapers tend to trump even a significant online presence. I'm not sure what the best answer is either. The closest I've seen is to overlay a more inclusionist Wikipedia with some sort of crowdsourced reputation/quality moderation system. That can be gamed too of course but something along those lines may be the best approach.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  Most of papers made of paper are absolutely not available for verification. Ditto for research articles behind paywall or just cited as paper sources. You could invent dozens of such credible sources with no chances for anybody to ever check. I can understand "we could not verify this so we are deleting this article", but not "we speedy deleted this article without checking anything". The latter has no excuses except for obvious commercial spam.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    The correlation between notability and verifiability certainly starts to break down quickly once you get past easily accessible, well-known, and well-regarded sources. No one is going to chase down paper copies of obscure magazines, newspapers, or out-of-print books to verify some statement, especially if it's not highly questionable for some reason. The system does kinda work because most people aren't outright inventing fake references to game the system.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      What would be your criteria for the system failing to work? What can go visibly wrong if Wikipedia would cover different subset of obscure topics than it does currently? We're not talking about faking facts in well-visited articles, since a) that's not what is being discussed, and b) that has been done anyway, getting into news multiple times.
      - ghaff 9y ago
        To me, "failing to work" would mean not really usable across a wide range of domains. I can find plenty to fault with Wikipedia including the fact that it tilts further in the deletionist direction than would be my personal choice. A failure to include a lot more articles on relatively obscure topics may be a shortcoming but it probably doesn't, at the end of the day, make Wikipedia a lot less useful for the typical person.
        thriftwy 9y ago
ghaff 9y ago
Notability and related policies kinda, sorta, maybe work on Wikipedia relative to a total free-for-all but they fall down if you start squinting hard at them. Pretty much everything is notable at some level if you get local enough in either geography or subject matter. And, as you suggest, the fact that the high school quarterback or a local diner got written up in some local newspaper that has managed not to go out of business yet doesn't make them more notable in any important sense than, say, pretty much any scientist with a tenured position at a major university. (Or someone who is well known in open source circles or a senior executive in a major company or ...) I'm not sure what the best answer is. We pretty much know that anything goes doesn't really work (see Google Knol). But the current system on Wikipedia is pretty flawed as well.
oldcynic 9y ago
It seems to boil down to opinion. To an extent it has to. Though even when there's dozens of citations possible or articles on paper, and verifiable, entries can go because of an admin opinion. (I've no doubt this isn't the policy, but it sure seems like it sometimes. The one time I started to read into it I gave up.) Plenty that really doesn't seem to pass the sniff test manages to stick around. Though I'd prefer too many edge cases than too few. There's already a mechanism to mark pages with a caveat for needing cleanup or expansion after all.
- ghaff 9y ago
  >It seems to boil down to opinion. To an extent it has to. There are certainly plenty of cases that would seem to be at one extreme or the other. National political figures, professional sports teams, etc. etc. are clearly notable. The random person whose name is only visible on the Internet on their own website probably not. But in between those poles are published but not well-known books, minor league baseball players, little-seen low-budget movies, random board games, amateur bands etc. Whether, for example, every book that has ever been published could potentially have its own Wikipedia article is ultimately an opinion/philosophy about whether there should be some limits on content that's just very obscure on Wikipedia even if it's theoretically verifiable to at least some degree.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    I just din't see any value in such limits. Do you? As long as article is well-written and not a self-promotion, it should be in.
posterboy 9y ago
Isn't it mutual and hence the other way around? Mathematicians don't seem to care much for wikipedia, sceners likewise. While sports fans might see editing, well, as a game.

NoahTheDuke 9y ago

Ooo, another chance to link to Gwern's excellent 'In Defense of Inclusionism'[0] essay. [0]: http://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism http://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism