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Perhaps the test of notability for something like a hackerspace should be whether a successful (and thus de facto notable) company emerged from it? I imagine t

Perhaps the test of notability for something like a hackerspace should be whether a successful (and thus de facto notable) company emerged from it? I imagine that Y Combinator wouldn't be deserving of its own Wikipedia page if nothing had yet come of it. Why should other incubators be treated differently?

_delirium 16y ago
Well, it's more whether there are decent sources to document it, but yeah, that's probably most likely if some well-known company emerged from it. Once upon a time there was something like a philosophical "notability" test, but since that led to interminable arguments, it's these days a lot closer to a descriptive "has been noted" test, which boils down to, "if someone says [citation needed], do you have one?". Where to draw the line is still controversial, but it's somewhere between, on the one hand, "is in every history book", and on the other, "has never been mentioned anywhere except on its founder's blog". A decent number of the hackerspace articles do seem uncomfortably close to the 2nd case, with the articles actually being created by the people who run the hackerspace or are closely associated with it, and not citing any third-party sources for the information (i.e. something other than the hackerspace's own website or blog). I must say I do find this rally-people-into-a-mob-to-defend-my-page aspect pretty distasteful, though. If you want to be part of Wikipedia, anyone can and should go and start helping out. If you don't, also fine. But a bunch of people who have no real interest in improving Wikipedia only showing up to promote things they're a fan of is a bit lame, especially when it reeks of people being mainly interested in the SEO. (Also happens on the other side, when occasionally there's mobs that show up demanding that Wikipedia delete something; those mobs also have no real interest in improving the encyclopedia more generally, or even familiarizing themselves with how and why things work as they do.)
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  If you want to be part of Wikipedia, anyone can and should go and start helping out. Deletionism doesn't exactly encourage people from these groups to come help out. That, and the endless politics/bureaucracy have kept me from bothering to edit. Why make a change when it will likely be reverted?
  - _delirium 16y ago
    A good place to start is to write an article on: 1) something you are not personally closely connected to; and 2) have information on, from decent third-party sources that you can cite. Nobody I know who's done that has had a problem, though I obviously don't know thousands of people. People don't generally go around randomly deleting well-cited articles that don't appear to be self-promotion. I certainly write about all sorts of random stuff and don't really run into problems. But it's all stuff I have no connection to, and I go to the library to find sources for the articles. The people I know who have had problems were mostly on Wikipedia to promote themselves, their project, or a project/thing they were closely connected to. A bunch of academics, for example, seem to think that a great place to start editing Wikipedia is to write an article about themselves, cited to their own webpage. Either that, or about one of their research projects, or a theorem they just proved, or a close colleague. All not very good places to start.
    - tibbon 16y ago
      I personally find it hard to think of things that I'm an expert on, but have no connections to. I probably know more about the sources and articles about the university I attended better than I know or read about UC Davis for example. Also, since I have never been anywhere near UC Davis, I have little incentive to write on it. Could I take random articles and potentially find things to cite for them? Sure, but would they really be the best citations? That I'm unsure of. I'm not close to them and I'm not really qualified to write on them or choose sources. For example, if I wanted to write on Neuroanatomy, I could find plenty of citations, but they might be from shitty journals. But I don't know the difference between the good journals and the bad ones because I'm not in this field. It is entirely possible that I could write a very well cited article with plenty of citations that is complete bunk. Yet my girlfriend is working on her PhD in Neuroscience, so she would be much better qualified to write on it. Yet, she's perhaps too close to the subject?
      - powellc 16y ago
        It's like quantum mechanics for information. You can know about something, but then you've likely gotten personally connected too. Keep your distance while trying to be informative and you just look like Terry Gross on Fresh Air: a pseudo-specialist who gets charmed by the likes of Brian Greene and the "multi-verse." God help us all if the multiverse wikipedia entry quotes Gross' interview with Greene and counts towards "notability."
tptacek 16y ago
YC startup people drink a lot of coffee. Should we have an article on each coffee shop frequented by founders of successful YC companies? There are notable hackerspaces. Notable hackerspaces should get coverage on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is very up-front about its definition of "notability".
c3o 16y ago
Hackerspaces are something very different from incubators, so that's not a fair comparison. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace

_delirium 16y ago

Well, it's more whether there are decent sources to document it, but yeah, that's probably most likely if some well-known company emerged from it. Once upon a time there was something like a philosophical "notability" test, but since that led to interminable arguments, it's these days a lot closer to a descriptive "has been noted" test, which boils down to, "if someone says [citation needed], do you have one?". Where to draw the line is still controversial, but it's somewhere between, on the one hand, "is in every history book", and on the other, "has never been mentioned anywhere except on its founder's blog". A decent number of the hackerspace articles do seem uncomfortably close to the 2nd case, with the articles actually being created by the people who run the hackerspace or are closely associated with it, and not citing any third-party sources for the information (i.e. something other than the hackerspace's own website or blog). I must say I do find this rally-people-into-a-mob-to-defend-my-page aspect pretty distasteful, though. If you want to be part of Wikipedia, anyone can and should go and start helping out. If you don't, also fine. But a bunch of people who have no real interest in improving Wikipedia only showing up to promote things they're a fan of is a bit lame, especially when it reeks of people being mainly interested in the SEO. (Also happens on the other side, when occasionally there's mobs that show up demanding that Wikipedia delete something; those mobs also have no real interest in improving the encyclopedia more generally, or even familiarizing themselves with how and why things work as they do.)

jokermatt999 16y ago
If you want to be part of Wikipedia, anyone can and should go and start helping out. Deletionism doesn't exactly encourage people from these groups to come help out. That, and the endless politics/bureaucracy have kept me from bothering to edit. Why make a change when it will likely be reverted?
- _delirium 16y ago
  A good place to start is to write an article on: 1) something you are not personally closely connected to; and 2) have information on, from decent third-party sources that you can cite. Nobody I know who's done that has had a problem, though I obviously don't know thousands of people. People don't generally go around randomly deleting well-cited articles that don't appear to be self-promotion. I certainly write about all sorts of random stuff and don't really run into problems. But it's all stuff I have no connection to, and I go to the library to find sources for the articles. The people I know who have had problems were mostly on Wikipedia to promote themselves, their project, or a project/thing they were closely connected to. A bunch of academics, for example, seem to think that a great place to start editing Wikipedia is to write an article about themselves, cited to their own webpage. Either that, or about one of their research projects, or a theorem they just proved, or a close colleague. All not very good places to start.
  - tibbon 16y ago
    I personally find it hard to think of things that I'm an expert on, but have no connections to. I probably know more about the sources and articles about the university I attended better than I know or read about UC Davis for example. Also, since I have never been anywhere near UC Davis, I have little incentive to write on it. Could I take random articles and potentially find things to cite for them? Sure, but would they really be the best citations? That I'm unsure of. I'm not close to them and I'm not really qualified to write on them or choose sources. For example, if I wanted to write on Neuroanatomy, I could find plenty of citations, but they might be from shitty journals. But I don't know the difference between the good journals and the bad ones because I'm not in this field. It is entirely possible that I could write a very well cited article with plenty of citations that is complete bunk. Yet my girlfriend is working on her PhD in Neuroscience, so she would be much better qualified to write on it. Yet, she's perhaps too close to the subject?
    - powellc 16y ago
      It's like quantum mechanics for information. You can know about something, but then you've likely gotten personally connected too. Keep your distance while trying to be informative and you just look like Terry Gross on Fresh Air: a pseudo-specialist who gets charmed by the likes of Brian Greene and the "multi-verse." God help us all if the multiverse wikipedia entry quotes Gross' interview with Greene and counts towards "notability."

tptacek 16y ago

YC startup people drink a lot of coffee. Should we have an article on each coffee shop frequented by founders of successful YC companies? There are notable hackerspaces. Notable hackerspaces should get coverage on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is very up-front about its definition of "notability".

c3o 16y ago

Hackerspaces are something very different from incubators, so that's not a fair comparison. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace