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Y Combinator Article Nominated for Deletion by Wikipedia Administrators
- ciscoriordan 18y agoIt's things like this that make me lose faith in Wikipedia.
- tstegart 18y agoI don't know. When you read the definition of what is notable, you can argue someone has a point. Useful? yes, Interesting? of course, Popular? definitely. But you have to dig deeper to decide if YC is notable. After some thought, I think it is. One can say YC is just another VC firm, so why should that be notable. But the unique way in which they are investing and developing companies is notable.
- adamt 18y agoI'd agree completely. Y-combinator is the leading example of a company that is shaking up the the way technology investing is being done. People who believe in the YC model and people who challenge alike all follow its progress closely as it is the flag-bearer of a new wave of investment. This is why just about every major tech/business publication and many newspapers have written about YC. The reality is that YC is now starting to get to the point where it is challenging some parts of the industry. This is why every Techcrunch article that mentions YC or a YC company is filled with the obligatory comments. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” –Gandhi
- parenthesis 18y agoThe fact that several imitators of YC have since popped-up seems to me to make the original notable.
- pb30 18y agoThis method of deletion (prod) is sometimes used as a way to force people/fans to improve the article. To contest the deletion all one has to do is remove the tag, and hopefully improve the article before it is sent to a full deletion discussion.
- tptacek 18y agoIt's not even an AfD, just a prod? I just removed the tag. Now it has to go to AfD to be deleted.
- jfarmer 18y agoThe page is actually pretty crappy, IMO.
- jazj 18y agoThis, of all things?
- Mystalic 18y agoBefore everyone goes nuts, please consider the following: - Wikipedia allows for a civil debate on deletion matters. That's why the talk page is there. - Back up your arguments with logic and facts instead of floods of "YOU ARE WRONG" - that will get you nowhere. - Don't flame anyone for their opinions. - Most of all, let's defend the notability of Ycombinator. As a tech entrepreneur and professional blogger, I believe that A) YCombinator is very notable for not only who it invests in, but it's unique style and that B) People benefit from that information. So I will argue with logic, facts, and courtesy. I hope you all do the same as well.
- iamdave 18y agoHow about instead of running in blazing with integrity, already prepared to disagree with someone we "please expand or rewrite the article to establish its notability." and bring it to Wikipedia standards?
- Mystalic 18y agoThat's a given. The article isn't up to wikipedia standards at the moment.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- Goladus 18y agoFrom the Wikipedia Notability Guidlines page: If it is likely that independent sources could be found for a topic, deletion due to lack of notability is inappropriate unless active effort has been made to find these sources. For articles of unclear notability, deletion should be a last resort. That's why people "go nuts." Whoever nominated this for deletion was either lazy and stupid or just looking for some drama.
- pb30 18y agoRather than just complaining about Wikipedia, I've contested the deletion by removing the prod tag and added some sources from major publications. Please help add references from reliable sources (blogs dont count) or help copyedit the article. Here's a good search for finding reliable sources: http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22y+combinator%22+source%3A%22-newswire%22+source%3A%22-wire%22+source%3A%22-presswire%22+source%3A%22-PR%22+source%3A%22-press%22+source%3A%22-release%22&btnG=Search+Archives http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22y+combinator%22+so...
- rokhayakebe 18y agoRather than just complaining about Wikipedia, I would love to see 2 smart guys in a garage create a competitor.
- pb30 18y agohttp://citizendium.org/ http://citizendium.org/ ?
- rokhayakebe 18y agoMaybe, although they need to work on the UI. But good start.
- gojomo 18y agoThat's the wrong direction: more selective. The right direction: Wikipedia with a constitutional bias against deletionism. Only false, illegal, or privacy-violating information should be deleted. Everything true should be welcomed.
- hugh 18y agoSweet! You should start one of those. I look forward to creating the article "List of random numbers generated by hugh's random number generator on September 18, 2008".
- ph0rque 18y agowhy are there only 16 yc companies listed?
- bfioca 18y agoYeah I don't know - they removed RescueTime and some others. It seems pretty incomplete to have some but not others. I don't know what criteria they're using to decide which should be listed.
- hugh 18y agoWell, they should be using the criteria set out in WP:COMPANY -- I don't think they're quite there yet. Some notable companies are unlisted, and some not-yet-notable companies are. Not every company is notable, and certainly not companies at the two-guys-and-no-revenue stage (compare to your local dry cleaner, who is probably actually profitable).
- comatose_kid 18y agoThe article is about YCombinator, so I'd expect to find all of their known investments listed, 'notable' or otherwise.
- webwright 18y agoI can understand not wanting to have an ARTICLE on each YC companies... But it seems that any page that is primarily about a VC firm would benefit from an up to date listing of investments (and status of those companies). This list would provide a better understanding of YC. Given that there is no SEO juice with links from Wikipedia and given that being on the list resulted in 2-10 vists per day for RescueTime (when we were on it), I see lots of benefit (in term of being accurate/complete), no harm, and no real significant benefit to the companies lists.
- hugh 18y agoThe articles for prominent VC firms don't have a complete list of their investments. There's 20-something listed for Kleiner Perkins, 30-something for Sequoia, and only 3 for DFJ.
- Mystalic 18y agoWell that was a rather quick resolution to the problem.
- ciscoriordan 18y agoThe one-time problem of this specific article being nominated for deletion has been resolved, but the larger issue of the Wikipedia bureaucracy preventing good content from being created and viewed is certainly still around.
- smakz 18y agoI also don't see what the big deal is. Having a Wikipedia article does not all of a sudden validate the Y Combinator idea, and having it deleted certainly does not invalidate the work they've done. To put it in perspective, ignition partners, one of the largest north western venture capital funds, does not have a wikipedia page. Take a look at the articles on VC firms on sand hill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Hill_Road http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Hill_Road Only KPCB has an informative, encyclopedic entry - the rest I would argue don't even need to have articles. Not to mention YC isn't a big VC firm, it's seed-only.
- jbyers 18y agoI don't mind Wikipedia's standards, but I wish they were more evenly applied. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of companies that are less notable than YC that will never be deleted. Instead it is those that are somehow controversial and questionably notable that will be flagged for deletion.
- mikeryan 18y agoYC isn't "Not Notable" they're saying the article doesn't have the sufficient supporting evidence of its notability. (Which it doesn't) This is an easy fix.
- tptacek 18y agoIt is kind of annoying that an admin prodded a page that has mainstream print pubs on the first page of news.google.com results.
- silentbicycle 18y agoIt looks like said mainstream print pubs weren't referenced in the deleted version, though. (Several are now.) Wikipedia generally doesn't use http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/ http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/ as a primary source.
- tptacek 18y agoNo, WP doesn't use Google as a primary source. Neither did I. The first page of Google results includes sources in mainstream print publications, many of which have YC as their actual subject. If you have a concern about sourcing, there's the "refimprove" tag. An uncontested "prod" deletes the article. It is bad form to prod things you didn't even take the time to look up. If you want evidence to that affect, try slapping an AfD on the article and see how long it takes to speedy out. Then, let me know you did, so when your RfA comes up, I can cite the AfD. RfA's have failed over silly stuff like this.
- 18y ago
- biohacker42 18y agoA Wikipedia competitor is one of the things pg would love to fund so....
- snorkel 18y agoSince we're refraining from flaming the wiki wackos on wikipedia let's do it here instead: Get a frigging grip on reality. That page is not that bad. It is useful information. Deleting should be reserved for obvious spam or completely irrelevent or wrong information. But that's fine. The wikieaucracy is gradually destroying wikipedia paving the way for something better to take its place.
- ciscoriordan 18y agoThere's something seriously wrong when the article about Disqus is deleted for not having reliable sources, and a search on Google News for "Disqus" shows articles from the Washington Post, CNET News, Mashable, and VentureBeat, all on the first page.
- pb30 18y agoTheir point of view: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism#Rationale_for_deletionism http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism#Rationale_for_del...
- tptacek 18y agoThis again? Read the comments here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=216723 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=216723. YC has a huge amount of media coverage. There is no way it is going to be deleted. The sole standard for an article remaining in Wikipedia is Notability, which is determined entirely by the presence of reliable independent sources. Anybody can nominate an article for deletion at any time. You could nominate [[Bill Gates]] right now. It would appear, briefly, in the AfD debate log, until someone speedy-kept it. This will get speedied too. Move along, nothing to see here.
- hooande 18y agoDoes traffic play into this at all? Something tells me more people go to that page than to the long tail majority of wikipedia pages.
- radley 18y agoIronic that they'll remove actual people and companies, yet they retain 100s of pages covering the Star Trek universe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Federation_of_Planets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Federation_of_Planets
- echair 18y agoIronic, perhaps, but not at all surprising. Wikipedia is a portrait of wikipedians.
- hugh 18y agoIt's true that people tend to be more aggressive about deleting pages about people and companies than they are about deleting random Star Trek crap, but it kinda makes sense. Most of the truly rubbish pages which show up on wikipedia are random schmoes creating their own wikipedia pages to promote themselves, their businesses, their bands or their blogs, so the notability criteria for people, businesses, bands and blogs are pretty firmly enforced. At least there's only a finite supply of random Star Trek crap to be incorporated.
- ckinnan 18y agoIt's the Internet! Why delete any articles, ever!? It's not like Wikipedia is running out of database space or something. It's dumb to have a subjective "notability" standard at all in a world of practically infinite scale.
- known 18y agoY Combinator Alexa Rank is 205,428 http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fitem%3Fid%3D288200 http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=http%3...
- psyklic 18y ago... and the article is still pretty bad! apparently these comment threads don't inspire much action ;-)
- mroman 18y agoOne answer to their knack for deleting valid content is to simply NEVER donate to them, encourage every single person you know to do the same, and let wikipedia know you are doing this and why. This is what I have done.