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As a former Wikipedian, what's there to say? The evidence is still there, and was there for years and years. Deletionism was, and remains, a wrong-headed attitu

As a former Wikipedian, what's there to say? The evidence is still there, and was there for years and years. Deletionism was, and remains, a wrong-headed attitude that does not understand what makes WP qualitatively different from standard encyclopedic offerings. There is not a motivating need to limit WP's scope, and indeed that is why WMF forked off projects like Wiktionary and Wikidata to their own TLDs. The main problem with WP is that it is far easier to be wrong than to be right, and the effort required to be right is linear in the number of words written. In short, the number of editors per page required for acceptable quality does not roll off with large numbers of pages, but stays relatively high, at around 1-2 editors/page. Worse, the number of moderators per editor does not roll off either. The number of bureaucrats required therefore keeps growing, logarithmically but steadily, and the demands on arbitration committees keep growing. The committees themselves have long ago failed basic principles of legal legibility, leading to sprawling bureaucracy. One possible solution is to fundamentally alter what we store. Rather than writing thousands of words of prose, we could use Wikidata to automatically generate articles. We already have factboxes which could be largely automatically populated, and many people only care about the factboxes. Prose would be limited to commentary and explication, but would not be the main bodies of articles. This is not just a pipe dream; LMFDB [0] exists and is worth examining as an example of how code and data can automatically generate the bulk of an encyclopedia. But, let's be honest, the writing was on the wall when Esperanza [1] was dissolved. We are now somewhere between Bureaucracy and The Aftermath. [0] https://www.lmfdb.org/ https://www.lmfdb.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Esperanza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Esperanza

narag 6y ago
Wow, the death of hope...
zozbot234 6y ago
> One possible solution is to fundamentally alter what we store. Rather than writing thousands of words of prose, we could use Wikidata to automatically generate articles. This is in fact being proposed at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Proposal_towards_a_multilingual_Wikipedia_and_a_new_Wikipedia_project https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Proposal_tow... by a prominent Wikidatan. (Edit: follow up at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilambda https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilambda and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikilambda https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikilambda .) However generating sensible articles would require expanding the current Wikidata model, and this is something that should happen gradually and be managed by the WD community itself, not at a separate project. The whole pretty-printing-in-natural-language part is the most speculative by far, and incubating it separately makes more sense. It's worth noting that Wikidata itself is not "deletionist" other than as implied by verifiability- and sourcing-requirements. Its model is far more general and far more "inclusionist" than even the most permissive visions for Wikipedia.
duskwuff 6y ago
> There is not a motivating need to limit WP's scope, and indeed that is why WMF forked off projects like Wiktionary and Wikidata to their own TLDs. This feels like a gross misreading of the facts. Wiktionary is separate from Wikipedia because its work product is fundamentally different -- it's a dictionary, not an encylopedia. Wikipedia has a lot of articles about things that aren't words, and Wiktionary has a lot of pages for words that wouldn't make sense to write an encyclopedia article about. Wikidata, meanwhile, is only about raw data. Which is a part of an encyclopedia, but far from all of it. (How would you write an article about the history of Rome using only data?) > But, let's be honest, the writing was on the wall when Esperanza [1] was dissolved. This, too, is a gross misstatement of the facts. Esperanza was dissolved because it was becoming a cabal. It started as a social group, but rapidly grew into its own organization, with its own decision-making processes and elected officials separate from those of Wikipedia. There was widespread agreement, even from Esperanza's founder, that the organization was no longer fulfilling its purpose, and an effort to reform it before it was shut down. There's a decent summary at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-01-02/Experanza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

narag 6y ago

Wow, the death of hope...

zozbot234 6y ago

> One possible solution is to fundamentally alter what we store. Rather than writing thousands of words of prose, we could use Wikidata to automatically generate articles. This is in fact being proposed at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Proposal_towards_a_multilingual_Wikipedia_and_a_new_Wikipedia_project https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Proposal_tow... by a prominent Wikidatan. (Edit: follow up at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilambda https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilambda and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikilambda https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikilambda .) However generating sensible articles would require expanding the current Wikidata model, and this is something that should happen gradually and be managed by the WD community itself, not at a separate project. The whole pretty-printing-in-natural-language part is the most speculative by far, and incubating it separately makes more sense. It's worth noting that Wikidata itself is not "deletionist" other than as implied by verifiability- and sourcing-requirements. Its model is far more general and far more "inclusionist" than even the most permissive visions for Wikipedia.

duskwuff 6y ago

> There is not a motivating need to limit WP's scope, and indeed that is why WMF forked off projects like Wiktionary and Wikidata to their own TLDs. This feels like a gross misreading of the facts. Wiktionary is separate from Wikipedia because its work product is fundamentally different -- it's a dictionary, not an encylopedia. Wikipedia has a lot of articles about things that aren't words, and Wiktionary has a lot of pages for words that wouldn't make sense to write an encyclopedia article about. Wikidata, meanwhile, is only about raw data. Which is a part of an encyclopedia, but far from all of it. (How would you write an article about the history of Rome using only data?) > But, let's be honest, the writing was on the wall when Esperanza [1] was dissolved. This, too, is a gross misstatement of the facts. Esperanza was dissolved because it was becoming a cabal. It started as a social group, but rapidly grew into its own organization, with its own decision-making processes and elected officials separate from those of Wikipedia. There was widespread agreement, even from Esperanza's founder, that the organization was no longer fulfilling its purpose, and an effort to reform it before it was shut down. There's a decent summary at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-01-02/Experanza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...