7 ms·

Honestly even if he isn’t famous why can’t Wikipedia keep his entry? Why does Wikipedia even have “notable” requirements anyways? There’s not a storage issue.

Honestly even if he isn’t famous why can’t Wikipedia keep his entry? Why does Wikipedia even have “notable” requirements anyways? There’s not a storage issue. Wikipedia can literally have billions of articles and still be easy to maintain. There’s not really a quality issue. Wikipedia is known for not being 100% reliable. But moreover, they have tons of ways to denote “this article needs citations” and “this isn’t a reliable source”. If Wikipedia is concerned about quality, they can have “verified” and “contributed” articles, just like how distros have “stable” and “user-contributed / experimental”. Spammers and useless content? This is an issue. But this guy is clearly not spam, the proof being any of his official works. I do agree that Wikipedia authors should remove “spammy” entries and entries on complete nobodies and random things, but you shouldn’t need to be in an Oxford journal to not be considered a “nobody”. Even things which are famous in small towns and 1000-member groups should be on Wikipedia IMO, because most of the stuff is already on there is about as relevant to me or anyone else (which is to say, pretty irrelevant). If you want relevant content, that’s what the search tools and indexing are for. Wikipedia is supposed to be “the grand encyclopedia” where you can find info on basically anything. There are already tons of Wikipedia articles on obscure people, places, and things. Way more obscure than this composer even if he isn’t truly well-known. Why does “relevance” even matter?

derefr 4y ago
> Why does Wikipedia even have “notable” requirements anyways? Think of it like code in an active open-source project. Someone needs to maintain the article: update it when house style changes, evaluate any new contributions to it as being valid or not, etc. Like code experiencing code-rot, a Wikipedia article rots if editors don't give it active attention. This has exactly the implications you'd expect: it means that articles about things that don't change, are easier to keep around than are articles about things that might change; which are in turn easier to keep around than are articles about things that definitely will change. Living people — where the article is basically living biography for them — are in that last category. The "notability" requirement can be translated into editor-ese as a combination of 1. "how many people could we find who could contribute to this page", and 2. "how much demand is there for Wikipedia — rather than some other website — to do the work of keeping this." Re: the first point about contribution, this is why Wikipedia doesn't let people be their own primary source — it's because, when that primary-source person eventually stops maintaining the page, who will then be able to take over the maintenance? If that's "nobody", then to prevent that, the page shouldn't be allowed in the first place. Re: the second point about demand — the Pokemon Pikachu has its own Wikipedia page, because people expect Wikipedia specifically to have an article about Pikachu. Other Pokemon do not — because there's already Bulbapedia around to satisfy the demand for an encyclopedia with articles about Pokemon, and the pages from it are easily found in any search engine. If a different set of editors are willing to take on the maintenance burden for those articles in their own domain — and are doing a decent job of it — then why should Wikipedia's editors duplicate that effort?
- DuskStar 4y ago
  > Re: the second point about demand — the Pokemon Pikachu has its own Wikipedia page, because people expect Wikipedia specifically to have an article about Pikachu. Other Pokemon do not — because there's already Bulbapedia around to satisfy the demand for an encyclopedia with articles about Pokemon, and the pages from it are easily found in any search engine. If a different set of editors are willing to take on the maintenance burden for those articles in their own domain — and are doing a decent job of it — then why should Wikipedia's editors duplicate that effort? You've got the chronology here backwards IIRC - Bulbapedia exists because Wikipedia got rid of "non-notable" Pokemon.
  - sanqui 4y ago
    Bulbapedia was launched in February 2005[1], while Wikipedia reached the consensus that "not all Pokémon are notable" in mid-2007[2]. [1] https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Main_Page https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Main_Page [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pok%C3%A9mon_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pok%C3%A9mon_test
    - calvinmorrison 4y ago
      Which brings us to, should wikipedia have more domain specific wikis? Why does everyone end up on fandom or some other random wiki site when wikipedia is already ad free, hosted worldwide and ain't going anywhere. Wikipedia doesn't _have_ to be just a encyclopedic overview of topics, it should have dive ins as deep as you want if there are people willing to write it.
      - derefr 4y ago
        A wiki "is" its maintainers. Separate editors — separate wiki. Wikipedia stops where the interest of Wikipedia's editors in maintaining pages stops; which is usually where the interest of another, distinct group of editors in maintaining those pages starts. That other set of editors could all just be Wikipedia editors, but then they'd have to play by Wikipedia's rules. They'd rather play by their own set of rules, and more importantly, have the ability to define their own rules. Autonomy. Sovereignty. Now, in theory, there could be some "hierarchy of wikis" all maintained within one system, where different namespaces are maintained by different groups of editors (similar to e.g. Reddit with subreddit moderators) — but, because the goal would remain the creation of a single cohesively-presented encyclopedia, this would result in terrible inter-group conflicts about things that don't fall crisply into the magisterial domain of one group of editors or the other — e.g. rules for when a wiki page in one namespace, should link a topic of a wiki page in another namespace, and how that citation should be done. (Imagine if editors in namespace A believed that a page in namespace B really should exist, and so kept linking to it, despite the editors of namespace B disagreeing; and the system hosting all of these constantly bubbling up the non-existent page to the attention of the editors in namespace B because it received new external links.) The solution to this is decentralization. No hierarchy, no shared system, just reusable open-source software and federation through hypertext linkage entirely controlled by the origin. Which is exactly what you get when each wiki is its own website.
tshaddox 4y ago
Regardless of all the accusations of incompetent, unfair, or inconsistent enforcement of their own policies (which are serious and deserve inspection and criticsm), I don't think Wikipedia's stated policies around notability are unreasonable. The policy that most directly addresses your comments is "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_no.... They explicitly reject arguments of the form "we should be able to have any page we want as long as storage costs aren't a problem."
glasshug 4y ago
Readers interested in these arguments can find more at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inclusionism https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inclusionism and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism.
winternett 4y ago
I can't get on there myself with over 20 years of making and publishing music and being on radio etc... And for that same reason can't get verified on Twitter and many other sites I promote my music work on. First of all, Wikipedia has banned all T-Mobile IPs from being able to even log in to my account... 10 years ago when I tried to post my biography there, they rejected it for lack of notability... Twitter also requires an entry to be published on Wikipedia for artists, now I could probably wait forever until someone still never writes one about me, or I could choose to pay a renowned publication to run a fluff piece on me like many other musicians do. I am so tired of the manufactured gatekeeping nonsense that is required of me just to make music and be heard, no wonder why so many quit the business... ugh.
- bityard 4y ago
  Wikipedia isn't (or isn't intended to be) a platform for promotion.
  - Victerius 4y ago
    I'm surprised more ambitious people don't have "having an entry on Wikipedia" as a life goal.
    - winternett 4y ago
      It's def. not any sort of life goal. More like getting a driver's license, so that you can drive. Once you pass the test, the driver's test is no longer a concern (unless you change countries perhaps).
  - winternett 4y ago
    That's not what I wrote. I said a Wikipedia entry is required for Twitter verification... Where we do promotion (On Twitter).
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  From your profile "A web design, promotions, branding, and PR group based in Washington DC http://www.winternett.com http://www.winternett.com" I don't want crap on wikipedia, thanks.
macspoofing 4y ago
>Why does Wikipedia even have “notable” requirements anyways? To prevent me having a Wikipedia page.
- techdragon 4y ago
  Pretty sure you have one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing ;-)
  - anfilt 4y ago
    lol, not the person you responded to but very funny. On serious note notable is relative in my opinion. There is also just the value for history wise. So being able to lookup a brief synopsis of someone who may only be notable in a small area or less well known niche still seems useful for an encyclopedia.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Damn you’re good
leijurv 4y ago
I think it has to do with verifiability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:V https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:V Essentially everything written has to be verifiable, and if a person doesn't have enough reliable sources talking about them, it isn't really possible to write a verifiable article. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:GNG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:GNG and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RS
cannabis_sam 4y ago
>Honestly even if he isn’t famous why can’t Wikipedia keep his entry? The answer is Deletionists, people who are unable to contribute with actual knowledge and information, so they have decided that their contribution is destruction of knowledge and information. The Wikipedia bureaucracy, as it exists, is unfortunately not equipped to handle these types of book burners…
bazoom42 4y ago
Anybody can already create their own web page or wiki following their own policies. The reason people want their content on Wikipedia is because a Wikipedia page signal a certain notability compared to a random web page. So the inclusionists want to eat the cake and keep it too.

derefr 4y ago

> Why does Wikipedia even have “notable” requirements anyways? Think of it like code in an active open-source project. Someone needs to maintain the article: update it when house style changes, evaluate any new contributions to it as being valid or not, etc. Like code experiencing code-rot, a Wikipedia article rots if editors don't give it active attention. This has exactly the implications you'd expect: it means that articles about things that don't change, are easier to keep around than are articles about things that might change; which are in turn easier to keep around than are articles about things that definitely will change. Living people — where the article is basically living biography for them — are in that last category. The "notability" requirement can be translated into editor-ese as a combination of 1. "how many people could we find who could contribute to this page", and 2. "how much demand is there for Wikipedia — rather than some other website — to do the work of keeping this." Re: the first point about contribution, this is why Wikipedia doesn't let people be their own primary source — it's because, when that primary-source person eventually stops maintaining the page, who will then be able to take over the maintenance? If that's "nobody", then to prevent that, the page shouldn't be allowed in the first place. Re: the second point about demand — the Pokemon Pikachu has its own Wikipedia page, because people expect Wikipedia specifically to have an article about Pikachu. Other Pokemon do not — because there's already Bulbapedia around to satisfy the demand for an encyclopedia with articles about Pokemon, and the pages from it are easily found in any search engine. If a different set of editors are willing to take on the maintenance burden for those articles in their own domain — and are doing a decent job of it — then why should Wikipedia's editors duplicate that effort?

DuskStar 4y ago
> Re: the second point about demand — the Pokemon Pikachu has its own Wikipedia page, because people expect Wikipedia specifically to have an article about Pikachu. Other Pokemon do not — because there's already Bulbapedia around to satisfy the demand for an encyclopedia with articles about Pokemon, and the pages from it are easily found in any search engine. If a different set of editors are willing to take on the maintenance burden for those articles in their own domain — and are doing a decent job of it — then why should Wikipedia's editors duplicate that effort? You've got the chronology here backwards IIRC - Bulbapedia exists because Wikipedia got rid of "non-notable" Pokemon.
- sanqui 4y ago
  Bulbapedia was launched in February 2005[1], while Wikipedia reached the consensus that "not all Pokémon are notable" in mid-2007[2]. [1] https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Main_Page https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Main_Page [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pok%C3%A9mon_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pok%C3%A9mon_test
  - calvinmorrison 4y ago
    Which brings us to, should wikipedia have more domain specific wikis? Why does everyone end up on fandom or some other random wiki site when wikipedia is already ad free, hosted worldwide and ain't going anywhere. Wikipedia doesn't _have_ to be just a encyclopedic overview of topics, it should have dive ins as deep as you want if there are people willing to write it.
    - derefr 4y ago
      A wiki "is" its maintainers. Separate editors — separate wiki. Wikipedia stops where the interest of Wikipedia's editors in maintaining pages stops; which is usually where the interest of another, distinct group of editors in maintaining those pages starts. That other set of editors could all just be Wikipedia editors, but then they'd have to play by Wikipedia's rules. They'd rather play by their own set of rules, and more importantly, have the ability to define their own rules. Autonomy. Sovereignty. Now, in theory, there could be some "hierarchy of wikis" all maintained within one system, where different namespaces are maintained by different groups of editors (similar to e.g. Reddit with subreddit moderators) — but, because the goal would remain the creation of a single cohesively-presented encyclopedia, this would result in terrible inter-group conflicts about things that don't fall crisply into the magisterial domain of one group of editors or the other — e.g. rules for when a wiki page in one namespace, should link a topic of a wiki page in another namespace, and how that citation should be done. (Imagine if editors in namespace A believed that a page in namespace B really should exist, and so kept linking to it, despite the editors of namespace B disagreeing; and the system hosting all of these constantly bubbling up the non-existent page to the attention of the editors in namespace B because it received new external links.) The solution to this is decentralization. No hierarchy, no shared system, just reusable open-source software and federation through hypertext linkage entirely controlled by the origin. Which is exactly what you get when each wiki is its own website.

tshaddox 4y ago

Regardless of all the accusations of incompetent, unfair, or inconsistent enforcement of their own policies (which are serious and deserve inspection and criticsm), I don't think Wikipedia's stated policies around notability are unreasonable. The policy that most directly addresses your comments is "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_no.... They explicitly reject arguments of the form "we should be able to have any page we want as long as storage costs aren't a problem."

glasshug 4y ago

Readers interested in these arguments can find more at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inclusionism https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inclusionism and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism.

winternett 4y ago

I can't get on there myself with over 20 years of making and publishing music and being on radio etc... And for that same reason can't get verified on Twitter and many other sites I promote my music work on. First of all, Wikipedia has banned all T-Mobile IPs from being able to even log in to my account... 10 years ago when I tried to post my biography there, they rejected it for lack of notability... Twitter also requires an entry to be published on Wikipedia for artists, now I could probably wait forever until someone still never writes one about me, or I could choose to pay a renowned publication to run a fluff piece on me like many other musicians do. I am so tired of the manufactured gatekeeping nonsense that is required of me just to make music and be heard, no wonder why so many quit the business... ugh.

bityard 4y ago
Wikipedia isn't (or isn't intended to be) a platform for promotion.
- Victerius 4y ago
  I'm surprised more ambitious people don't have "having an entry on Wikipedia" as a life goal.
  - winternett 4y ago
    It's def. not any sort of life goal. More like getting a driver's license, so that you can drive. Once you pass the test, the driver's test is no longer a concern (unless you change countries perhaps).
- winternett 4y ago
  That's not what I wrote. I said a Wikipedia entry is required for Twitter verification... Where we do promotion (On Twitter).
zasdffaa 4y ago
From your profile "A web design, promotions, branding, and PR group based in Washington DC http://www.winternett.com http://www.winternett.com" I don't want crap on wikipedia, thanks.

macspoofing 4y ago

>Why does Wikipedia even have “notable” requirements anyways? To prevent me having a Wikipedia page.

techdragon 4y ago
Pretty sure you have one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing ;-)
- anfilt 4y ago
  lol, not the person you responded to but very funny. On serious note notable is relative in my opinion. There is also just the value for history wise. So being able to lookup a brief synopsis of someone who may only be notable in a small area or less well known niche still seems useful for an encyclopedia.
- tomcam 4y ago
  Damn you’re good

leijurv 4y ago

I think it has to do with verifiability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:V https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:V Essentially everything written has to be verifiable, and if a person doesn't have enough reliable sources talking about them, it isn't really possible to write a verifiable article. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:GNG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:GNG and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RS

cannabis_sam 4y ago

>Honestly even if he isn’t famous why can’t Wikipedia keep his entry? The answer is Deletionists, people who are unable to contribute with actual knowledge and information, so they have decided that their contribution is destruction of knowledge and information. The Wikipedia bureaucracy, as it exists, is unfortunately not equipped to handle these types of book burners…

bazoom42 4y ago

Anybody can already create their own web page or wiki following their own policies. The reason people want their content on Wikipedia is because a Wikipedia page signal a certain notability compared to a random web page. So the inclusionists want to eat the cake and keep it too.