5 ms·

I spent a half-hour just trying to find the right form to merely request that the page be reviewed for restoration. That form, as I explained in detail, doesn't

I spent a half-hour just trying to find the right form to merely request that the page be reviewed for restoration. That form, as I explained in detail, doesn't actually work. There is no form for pages that have been deleted. There is a page only (as best I can tell) for pages that are under consideration for being deleted. Once they are gone, they're gone -- unless they were removed for the ill-defined uncontroversial reasons. Yes, I think that Wikipedia would welcome having subject expert barge right in when editors who are not subject experts are having a debate and looking for expert advice. I think they'd welcome that very much. If you actually read the debate on the page I've written about, you'll see the editors don't understand the space that well, cannot find citations to prove or disprove what they're arguing about and in the end someone declares that the lack of an agreement is a consensus. When I get alerted to this, and I'm trying to share detailed reference based on both first-hand knowledge as well as third-hand resources to actually help them make a decision, there is simply no easy way to do this, not unless I want to spend hours figuring out the insider mechanism to Wikipedia. That's simply not how it should work. That is a massive Wikipedia failure, that actual expect on a subject cannot easily contribute. If Wikipedia is designed only to have experts on Wikipedia contribute, then it will continue to succeed as a successful summary of non-expert guesswork. I think, however, it is more than reasonable that those who are involved in the system take a hard look at how many barriers they've erected and whether the bureaucratic system that has come up couldn't be made more user friendly. But hey, the next time you register a car at the DMV, and you've got to go from one window to the next, maybe you'll think no, it's your fault for being upset -- that's just the way the DMV works, and you're to blame for not having studied the bureaucracy better.

hahainternet 15y ago
You didn't even read your original email from Wikipedia, but yet you feel that the people who work on the site should obey your whims despite your inability to be in any way polite. This is not a Wikipedia failure, the failure is on your behalf. You can easily contribute and in fact someone was nice enough to help you in the right direction. Your response to this person was to arrogantly insult them and complain that they did not do more to help you. Once again, the failure here is not Wikipedias.
bigiain 15y ago
I'd be curious to know if this resistance to input from "subject matter experts" is the same for, say, notable physicists or notable cardiac surgeons? It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that because the subject matter in question is "SEO" that there are a lot of prejudices and suspicion of ulterior motives from the wikipedia end. In one sense, I'm of the opinion that if you're promoting yourself as "an SEO expert" your contributions to wikipedia should be treated with significant additional scrutiny due to the possibility of conflict of interest.
- Codayus 15y ago
  I am aware of multiple cases where subject matter experts have tried to fix errors relating to their area of expertise, had the changes reverted, and given up. The phenomenon is by no means limited to "SEO experts", but extends to, for example, law professors, including law professors widely regarded as the foremost experts in their speciality, trying to fix obvious non-controversial errors in an article relating to their speciality. All it takes is one editor deciding that this is a good opportunity to play a status game. And it doesn't take long hanging around Wikipedia to learn that for a significant fraction of the active user base, every opportunity is a good opportunity for a status game.
- wpietri 15y ago
  I don't know that this is specifically resistance to contribution by subject matter experts. I think Wikipedia is more precisely indifferent to their subject matter expertise when it comes to considering direct contributions. If Danny Sullivan wants to edit Wikipedia, he's welcome to, but nobody's going to treat him with more deference than any other editor. What they do make great use of is indirect contributions. If a physicist or a cardiac surgeon writes and publishes a paper on the topic of their expertise, that is fantastic raw material for Wikipedia. Which is precisely the relationship that most subject matter experts have with any other encyclopedia, so it seems reasonable to me.
tptacek 15y ago
The way you want Wikipedia to work is exactly the problem Wikipedia does have: people write vanity/promo articles about themselves, and then get their friends to barge in and claim "subject matter expertise" to rebut the people doing Lexis/Nexis and University library periodical searches to verify that people are non-notable. This happened all the time in my domain of expertise (information security), and it was exasperating trying to beat it back. Some jackass would write an article about himself and then tie up AfD for weeks claiming that the trade press quotes he got constituted reliable source coverage of his notability, while his friends and coworkers would jump on saying "I've worked in this field for 7 years and I can tell you that everyone in information security knows this guy is one of the most important" zzzzzzz Strong delete speedy delete delete with fire. Whatever trouble you feel like you had with Wikipedia's interface: your friend got a very fair shake in the AfD debate. She wrote a non-notable book, and was quoted in passing in a couple articles, and that's basically it. People took real time out of their day to verify the pretty-obvious fact that your friend doesn't need to be in the encyclopedia. Stop being angry about that.
- wpietri 15y ago
  This! One of the things novices eternally miss about Wikipedia is that is might be their first time posting/supporting an article, but it is the eleven billionth time Wikipedia has has to deal with somebody like them. When I got spam in in 1995? I would call spammers on the phone and politely talk them out of spamming. Now? I would happily nuke them from orbit. Most HN readers would. One of the things on Wikipedia that wore me out is people approaching things like Jessie Stricchiola and Danny Sullivan did. I am sure they are decent people generally, and from their perspective I'm sure their self-promotion and drama spewing seems entirely reasonable. But man, when you're just a volunteer trying to help make something cool, stuff like this makes it get real old, real fast.
zbowling 15y ago
You spent half an hour and never did submit it for review. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review#Active_discussions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review#Activ... There are no active discussions on this topic at all. This page took me 5 seconds to find with Google. I also found it on the link they sent you 3 times.
voyou 15y ago
"There is a page only (as best I can tell) for pages that are under consideration for being deleted." No, the Deletion Review page is for requesting that the debate about a deleted page get re-opened, that is, it's exactly the page you want. This seems pretty clear to me from the text on the page (especially the second paragraph), but if this wasn't clear to you I guess evidently the page could be worded better.

hahainternet 15y ago

You didn't even read your original email from Wikipedia, but yet you feel that the people who work on the site should obey your whims despite your inability to be in any way polite. This is not a Wikipedia failure, the failure is on your behalf. You can easily contribute and in fact someone was nice enough to help you in the right direction. Your response to this person was to arrogantly insult them and complain that they did not do more to help you. Once again, the failure here is not Wikipedias.

bigiain 15y ago

I'd be curious to know if this resistance to input from "subject matter experts" is the same for, say, notable physicists or notable cardiac surgeons? It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that because the subject matter in question is "SEO" that there are a lot of prejudices and suspicion of ulterior motives from the wikipedia end. In one sense, I'm of the opinion that if you're promoting yourself as "an SEO expert" your contributions to wikipedia should be treated with significant additional scrutiny due to the possibility of conflict of interest.

Codayus 15y ago
I am aware of multiple cases where subject matter experts have tried to fix errors relating to their area of expertise, had the changes reverted, and given up. The phenomenon is by no means limited to "SEO experts", but extends to, for example, law professors, including law professors widely regarded as the foremost experts in their speciality, trying to fix obvious non-controversial errors in an article relating to their speciality. All it takes is one editor deciding that this is a good opportunity to play a status game. And it doesn't take long hanging around Wikipedia to learn that for a significant fraction of the active user base, every opportunity is a good opportunity for a status game.
wpietri 15y ago
I don't know that this is specifically resistance to contribution by subject matter experts. I think Wikipedia is more precisely indifferent to their subject matter expertise when it comes to considering direct contributions. If Danny Sullivan wants to edit Wikipedia, he's welcome to, but nobody's going to treat him with more deference than any other editor. What they do make great use of is indirect contributions. If a physicist or a cardiac surgeon writes and publishes a paper on the topic of their expertise, that is fantastic raw material for Wikipedia. Which is precisely the relationship that most subject matter experts have with any other encyclopedia, so it seems reasonable to me.

tptacek 15y ago

The way you want Wikipedia to work is exactly the problem Wikipedia does have: people write vanity/promo articles about themselves, and then get their friends to barge in and claim "subject matter expertise" to rebut the people doing Lexis/Nexis and University library periodical searches to verify that people are non-notable. This happened all the time in my domain of expertise (information security), and it was exasperating trying to beat it back. Some jackass would write an article about himself and then tie up AfD for weeks claiming that the trade press quotes he got constituted reliable source coverage of his notability, while his friends and coworkers would jump on saying "I've worked in this field for 7 years and I can tell you that everyone in information security knows this guy is one of the most important" zzzzzzz Strong delete speedy delete delete with fire. Whatever trouble you feel like you had with Wikipedia's interface: your friend got a very fair shake in the AfD debate. She wrote a non-notable book, and was quoted in passing in a couple articles, and that's basically it. People took real time out of their day to verify the pretty-obvious fact that your friend doesn't need to be in the encyclopedia. Stop being angry about that.

wpietri 15y ago
This! One of the things novices eternally miss about Wikipedia is that is might be their first time posting/supporting an article, but it is the eleven billionth time Wikipedia has has to deal with somebody like them. When I got spam in in 1995? I would call spammers on the phone and politely talk them out of spamming. Now? I would happily nuke them from orbit. Most HN readers would. One of the things on Wikipedia that wore me out is people approaching things like Jessie Stricchiola and Danny Sullivan did. I am sure they are decent people generally, and from their perspective I'm sure their self-promotion and drama spewing seems entirely reasonable. But man, when you're just a volunteer trying to help make something cool, stuff like this makes it get real old, real fast.

zbowling 15y ago

You spent half an hour and never did submit it for review. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review#Active_discussions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review#Activ... There are no active discussions on this topic at all. This page took me 5 seconds to find with Google. I also found it on the link they sent you 3 times.

voyou 15y ago

"There is a page only (as best I can tell) for pages that are under consideration for being deleted." No, the Deletion Review page is for requesting that the debate about a deleted page get re-opened, that is, it's exactly the page you want. This seems pretty clear to me from the text on the page (especially the second paragraph), but if this wasn't clear to you I guess evidently the page could be worded better.