3 ms·

Thanks Neil, a completely inaccurate reading of what I wrote. For the record, deletionists have been a problem for many people who are members of sub-cultures

by zedshaw 16y ago

Thanks Neil, a completely inaccurate reading of what I wrote. For the record, deletionists have been a problem for many people who are members of sub-cultures and Wikipedia has ignored the problem. Writing more arbitrary rules is not the solution. The solution is to fix the software so people can create a richer organization of information. I personally have had some idiot with a vendetta get a page about me deleted numerous times despite me having been mentioned in about 10 trade and mass publications and having a book published (now two) as well as my own articles in the press. It was baffling that a single person can get a page deleted without any warning, flagging, or attempts to do some research. But really it comes down to trust. I don't trust any organization that begs me for money then deletes the content that matters to me most and tries to hide behind some bogus "well it's not us really (tee-hee)". Either Wikimedia is in charge or they silently allow this kind of crap. Finally, the issue of deletionism is purely the result of bad usability and structure. All you need to do is make a place to put these pages rather than delete them and you'll solve tons of problems.

neilk 16y ago
You might be responding to an earlier version of what I said, but I absolutely agree with you that it's got a lot to do with the software. Do you really want the Wikimedia Foundation to set themselves up as a judge of the content in Wikipedia? I mean, apart from the fact that we have no mandate or qualifications to do this, how could you get an organization that fits around a few tables in a restaurant to judge all the edit wars in Wikipedia? In over 250 languages?! If this problem is going to be solved, it's going to be solved in some distributed fashion, by the community, or by interested hackers such as yourself pitching in and giving the community new tools. There's a good chance you (by which I mean any hacker reading this) could get PAID to solve this problem. Or, it's going to be solved by someone forking Wikipedia content or starting over, but the same problems have to be solved somehow.
- zedshaw 16y ago
  No, after this and many other things I'm not interested in working for them, at all. Especially if I find out the rumors of a "nerd purge" agenda are true. If there is a call to delete "nerdy" content I'm gonna really turn up the destruction.
  - neilk 16y ago
    A "nerd purge". At Wikipedia. You just broke my brain. What are you talking about?
    - knowtheory 16y ago
      maybe he's referring to the sentiment here? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2215731 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2215731 (also, lotsa wikimedia ppl on HN then? ;) )
    - zedshaw 16y ago
      I've started to notice that a lot of "nerdy" topics get deleted lately. I can't prove it, but I suspect there's some attempt to cleanse the "white male nerd" out of Wikipedia in order to attract normal people. Again, I can't prove it. If it's true that's about the worst way to crap on the people who donate the most money and do the most work keeping the project going.
      - neilk 16y ago
        Demographically, Wikipedia is white male nerds. You might have seen some stuff in the media lately about how it's felt that this limits the scope of the encyclopedia. But it's not so much that there's an anti-nerd sentiment, it's that we have to broaden the base. It can be a bit crazy sometimes. You think you have problems with your page -- I heard that the #1 actor in India had his page deleted because some kid from a Western country thought he was non-notable. Wikipedia can be a great place to learn about science and technology, but let's say, the history of feminism? There are articles on every micro-neighborhood of San Francisco, but sometimes hardly anything on major cities of Africa.
    - owyn 16y ago
      Oh wow, I definitely wasn't trying to start some kind of a "nerd purge" meme! I was just trying to say that there are other wikis besides wikipedia on all kinds of nerdy subjects. Where there aren't any delete wars and contributions are encouraged, and everyone can be happy tralalala. I work at that place, we encourage nerdy things! There's also a pretty long tail that nobody really pays much attention to. :) So maybe part of the reason this blew up so big could be the anxiety that if it's not on wikipedia, then it might as well not exist? I don't really think that's true...
ErrantX 16y ago
The problem is that WP is a place where a "global culture" (i.e. an encyclopaedia with global scope) meets sub-culture (in this case a sub-set of programmers). My own personal feeling is that we are too quick to scrub stuff. But there is an important reason for the notability guideline; even though the Wiki is essentially limitless there is a point where indiscriminate inclusion just becomes impossible to handle. I reckon near 70% of the current content is sub-standard and probably about 20% is abysmal - the clean up effort on that is going to take decades. Without some form of line in the sand that gets worse and worse and worse till in the end we have a spam filled mess. In this case the GNG was clearly being applied a little strongly; bottom line is that common sense is important :) A programming language with a tenuous but credible claim to notability should probably stay. I wrote the Mongrel2 article, which is potentially hanging by the skin of its teeth if really questioned. Fortunately common sense does tend to prevail with most editors, so I don't see it being deleted any time soon. > I personally have had some idiot with a vendetta get a page about me deleted numerous times Which one? I cleaned up your [1] article a little while ago and all I found in the history was on old PROD (proposed deletion) [2] The deletion process is designed to be flexible; so we have speedy deletions for stuff that is quite obviously out of scope or otherwise problematic from a single glance. Those are quite tight criteria and all they really need to be bypassed is a credible claim to significance (not notability, it is a lower claim). Next is the PROD; which requires you to make a statement about why it should be deleted. That sticks around for 7 days when an admin will have a look and either agree or disagree - during which time anyone else (this is what I spend a lot of my time doing) jumps in to fix it and decline the prod. Then we have AFD which is a full discussion lasting 7 days to establish whether the article can stay. The point is to make sure a few people are checking out the article. It's not a perfect process for certain and sometimes it is possible for "a single person can get a page deleted", but never really without warning (to someone..). There is, I think, two problems; firstly a groundswell of material we are slogging through the get up to scratch. And secondly we don't have enough active editors in the sub-domains. Feel free to fix the latter :) All you need to do is make a place to put these pages rather than delete them and you'll solve tons of problems. Deletionpedia does this already BTW. [3] 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zed_Shaw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zed_Shaw 2. The PROD stemmed from when the article was first created. That is a real problem, it pisses me off how quick people are to tag & get rid of new stuff nowadays. 3. http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/ http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/

by zedshaw 16y ago

neilk 16y ago

You might be responding to an earlier version of what I said, but I absolutely agree with you that it's got a lot to do with the software. Do you really want the Wikimedia Foundation to set themselves up as a judge of the content in Wikipedia? I mean, apart from the fact that we have no mandate or qualifications to do this, how could you get an organization that fits around a few tables in a restaurant to judge all the edit wars in Wikipedia? In over 250 languages?! If this problem is going to be solved, it's going to be solved in some distributed fashion, by the community, or by interested hackers such as yourself pitching in and giving the community new tools. There's a good chance you (by which I mean any hacker reading this) could get PAID to solve this problem. Or, it's going to be solved by someone forking Wikipedia content or starting over, but the same problems have to be solved somehow.

zedshaw 16y ago
No, after this and many other things I'm not interested in working for them, at all. Especially if I find out the rumors of a "nerd purge" agenda are true. If there is a call to delete "nerdy" content I'm gonna really turn up the destruction.
- neilk 16y ago
  A "nerd purge". At Wikipedia. You just broke my brain. What are you talking about?
  - knowtheory 16y ago
    maybe he's referring to the sentiment here? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2215731 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2215731 (also, lotsa wikimedia ppl on HN then? ;) )
  - zedshaw 16y ago
    I've started to notice that a lot of "nerdy" topics get deleted lately. I can't prove it, but I suspect there's some attempt to cleanse the "white male nerd" out of Wikipedia in order to attract normal people. Again, I can't prove it. If it's true that's about the worst way to crap on the people who donate the most money and do the most work keeping the project going.
    - neilk 16y ago
      Demographically, Wikipedia is white male nerds. You might have seen some stuff in the media lately about how it's felt that this limits the scope of the encyclopedia. But it's not so much that there's an anti-nerd sentiment, it's that we have to broaden the base. It can be a bit crazy sometimes. You think you have problems with your page -- I heard that the #1 actor in India had his page deleted because some kid from a Western country thought he was non-notable. Wikipedia can be a great place to learn about science and technology, but let's say, the history of feminism? There are articles on every micro-neighborhood of San Francisco, but sometimes hardly anything on major cities of Africa.
  - owyn 16y ago
    Oh wow, I definitely wasn't trying to start some kind of a "nerd purge" meme! I was just trying to say that there are other wikis besides wikipedia on all kinds of nerdy subjects. Where there aren't any delete wars and contributions are encouraged, and everyone can be happy tralalala. I work at that place, we encourage nerdy things! There's also a pretty long tail that nobody really pays much attention to. :) So maybe part of the reason this blew up so big could be the anxiety that if it's not on wikipedia, then it might as well not exist? I don't really think that's true...

ErrantX 16y ago

The problem is that WP is a place where a "global culture" (i.e. an encyclopaedia with global scope) meets sub-culture (in this case a sub-set of programmers). My own personal feeling is that we are too quick to scrub stuff. But there is an important reason for the notability guideline; even though the Wiki is essentially limitless there is a point where indiscriminate inclusion just becomes impossible to handle. I reckon near 70% of the current content is sub-standard and probably about 20% is abysmal - the clean up effort on that is going to take decades. Without some form of line in the sand that gets worse and worse and worse till in the end we have a spam filled mess. In this case the GNG was clearly being applied a little strongly; bottom line is that common sense is important :) A programming language with a tenuous but credible claim to notability should probably stay. I wrote the Mongrel2 article, which is potentially hanging by the skin of its teeth if really questioned. Fortunately common sense does tend to prevail with most editors, so I don't see it being deleted any time soon. > I personally have had some idiot with a vendetta get a page about me deleted numerous times Which one? I cleaned up your [1] article a little while ago and all I found in the history was on old PROD (proposed deletion) [2] The deletion process is designed to be flexible; so we have speedy deletions for stuff that is quite obviously out of scope or otherwise problematic from a single glance. Those are quite tight criteria and all they really need to be bypassed is a credible claim to significance (not notability, it is a lower claim). Next is the PROD; which requires you to make a statement about why it should be deleted. That sticks around for 7 days when an admin will have a look and either agree or disagree - during which time anyone else (this is what I spend a lot of my time doing) jumps in to fix it and decline the prod. Then we have AFD which is a full discussion lasting 7 days to establish whether the article can stay. The point is to make sure a few people are checking out the article. It's not a perfect process for certain and sometimes it is possible for "a single person can get a page deleted", but never really without warning (to someone..). There is, I think, two problems; firstly a groundswell of material we are slogging through the get up to scratch. And secondly we don't have enough active editors in the sub-domains. Feel free to fix the latter :) All you need to do is make a place to put these pages rather than delete them and you'll solve tons of problems. Deletionpedia does this already BTW. [3] 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zed_Shaw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zed_Shaw 2. The PROD stemmed from when the article was first created. That is a real problem, it pisses me off how quick people are to tag & get rid of new stuff nowadays. 3. http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/ http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/