7 ms·

Everyone's a deletionist about something. Now, watch people 'delete' my comment by downvoting, without giving me any counterargument. > Honestly, I cannot thi

by derleth 14y ago

Everyone's a deletionist about something. Now, watch people 'delete' my comment by downvoting, without giving me any counterargument. > Honestly, I cannot think of a good reason to delete any article at all, unless it's obviously fraudulent, marketing-oriented, illegal, or obscene according to a widely accepted definition of obscenity. None of these are objective, though, meaning this argument will never end. In particular, there is no 'widely accepted definition of obscenity' even within any particular country, let alone the entire English-speaking world (assuming you only care about the English-language Wikipedia). > The argument that it would be too difficult to maintain lots of extra articles is also weak, because not every article needs to be regularly edited, and more articles on niche topics might actually attract more editors. There's the danger of the more out-of-the-way articles becoming spam-traps. The technical solutions would stifle article creation and modification, which seems directly counter to your goals. > No, we won't end up with a page for every John Doe and his cat. Why not? How is not having a page for every John Doe and his cat not simply deletionism? > In fact, it's possible that people with certain psychological traits self-select for Wikipedia editorship. Non sequitur based on psychological projection or other such nonsense. You have no real basis for this statement.

kijin 14y ago
> Everyone's a deletionist about something. That's a very broad definition of deletionism, and I'm not interested in arguing about terminology. (Hey, I don't want any wedding gown photos on my hard drive. Am I a deletionist too?) Besides, distinguishing between private desire/preference and public editorial behavior is exactly what I'm trying to advocate here. > None of these are objective, though, meaning this argument will never end. Objectivity is not black and white. Some rules are easier to enforce fairly than others, and some rules are more subjective than others. I'm not saying that Wikipedia should officially adopt any of the rules that I listed off the top of my head, but they were meant as examples that may be less subjective than "notability". The less room a rule for deletion leaves for subjective interpretation, the better. > There's the danger of the more out-of-the-way articles becoming spam-traps. An article that is over 50% spam might be a good candidate for deletion. Compare this rule with "notability". Which one is more objective? Deletionists are patrolling every out-of-the-way article anyway. If they really want to contribute to Wikipedia, they should devote more energy to deleting obvious spam instead of arguing pointlessly about "notability". > Why not? How is not having a page for every John Doe and his cat not simply deletionism? Because not everyone gives a fuck about having his or her own Wikipedia page. Just like not everyone wants to have a public Facebook wall. Lack of interest is a powerful resource that modern societies should learn to leverage to the benefit of all. If the page doesn't get created in the first place, there is nothing to delete. You can call this deletionism too, but then we're back to arguing about terminology. > Non sequitur based on psychological projection or other such nonsense. Maybe it is, but so is your so-called criticism. (Yes, that's tu quoque.)
- morsch 14y ago
  Wikipedia has long adopted those of your rules that are workable and discussed all of them at great length. None of the rules you propose is any use as an alternative to notability criteria. None of the rules you propose is simple to apply in the real world. Notability is a technical term on Wikipedia. It's a mistake to interpret it as the common English word or concept. It's also not all that subjective: When defined for all possible articles, notability is necessarily extremely abstract. However, notability is being refined and re-interpreted for specific areas in a community process. I'm not always happy about this process, and I certainly don't agree with its results in all cases, but that's a different issue. It's this process that matters. There has to be some process to determine whether an article gets included (though extreme inclusionists may disagree). For this process, Wikipedia:Notability is the constitutional law, the individual Wikiprojects' notability criteria are the law derived from the constitution, both of which are applied to specific instances, in a system with a rich body of case law and with various bodies for arbitration. In a way, it's more useful to think about notability not as an attribute of an entity, but simply as a short verdict of the current process. In other words, a thing is not notable enough to get its own Wikipedia article, but rather the fact that it got included and remained included makes it notable according to the technical meaning of Wikipedia. Of course this is complicated and of course there are horrible downsides of having such a complicated system. Maybe we should just opt for a simpler system and resign to the fact that the end result will be worse. However I doubt that people would herald the new inclusionist Wikipedia where everyone's dad can get an article, instead they'd mercilessly pounce on the new Wikipedia full of spam, self-advertising, non-referenced, non-verified, non-sensical and attack articles.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    the fact that it got included and remained included makes it notable according to the technical meaning of Wikipedia. Why does that remind me exactly of this: Listen up! The first rule of Tautology Club is... http://xkcd.com/703/ http://xkcd.com/703/
    - morsch 14y ago
      This is frustrating. I can't tell if you're making a joke, in which case I understand fine and I was going to make a joke about tautologies myself but then changed my mind. But if you're not making a joke and you think this involves circular reasoning, then you completely missed my point: Notability, the Wikipedia term, is not an input to the article inclusion/exclusion process, it is the output of this process. The process itself depends on the topic and relies on various proxy metrics because notability (the English word) relates to an abstract concept which you can not meaningfully discuss directly.
morsch 14y ago
Excellent post. I have no idea why you were downvoted. As usual, people discussing Wikipedia policy are doomed to rehash arguments long made on Wikipedia meta pages... poorly. I'm a moderate inclusionist (or I was, years ago when I was active on Wikipedia), but the quality of the inclusionist arguments outside of Wikipedia itself is pathetic. I think this is because there are almost no deletionists outside of Wikipedia which elevate the discussion with good counter-arguments.
- kijin 14y ago
  > the quality of the inclusionist arguments outside of Wikipedia itself is pathetic. I'd be interested in reading some of the "good" deletionist & inclusionist arguments inside Wikipedia that you mention. These pages [1][2][3] seem to summarize most of the well-known arguments from both sides, but each of the points listed there are too schematic for a casual reader to make sense of what's actually going on within the community. Besides, some of the arguments there actually look even more pathetic than anything I've read outside of Wikipedia. (What the hell does Roe v. Wade have to do with this?) [1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Deletionism https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Deletionism [2] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Association_of_Deletionist_Wikipedians https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Association... [3] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Association_of_Inclusionist_Wikipedians/Arguments https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Association... > people discussing Wikipedia policy are doomed to rehash arguments long made on Wikipedia meta pages... poorly. Members of some communities seem to think that outsiders are not fully qualified to participate in debates about their beloved policies. But often a detached outsider's perspective is exactly what is needed to fix a broken status quo. For example, both the deletionist and inclusionist "Associations" are made up of experienced editors with strong commitments pro and con. These folks might not be in the best position to talk about the many hurdles that new contributors face every day, which has more to do with maldistributed burdens of proof and the lack of clearly articulated standards. Well-intentioned new contributors don't care whether Wikipedia should be paper or toilet paper. They care when some editor on a power trip spends 30 minutes arguing to delete a little article when he could have spent a much more productive 3 minutes looking up a couple of references that the newbie didn't know how to include.

by derleth 14y ago

kijin 14y ago

> Everyone's a deletionist about something. That's a very broad definition of deletionism, and I'm not interested in arguing about terminology. (Hey, I don't want any wedding gown photos on my hard drive. Am I a deletionist too?) Besides, distinguishing between private desire/preference and public editorial behavior is exactly what I'm trying to advocate here. > None of these are objective, though, meaning this argument will never end. Objectivity is not black and white. Some rules are easier to enforce fairly than others, and some rules are more subjective than others. I'm not saying that Wikipedia should officially adopt any of the rules that I listed off the top of my head, but they were meant as examples that may be less subjective than "notability". The less room a rule for deletion leaves for subjective interpretation, the better. > There's the danger of the more out-of-the-way articles becoming spam-traps. An article that is over 50% spam might be a good candidate for deletion. Compare this rule with "notability". Which one is more objective? Deletionists are patrolling every out-of-the-way article anyway. If they really want to contribute to Wikipedia, they should devote more energy to deleting obvious spam instead of arguing pointlessly about "notability". > Why not? How is not having a page for every John Doe and his cat not simply deletionism? Because not everyone gives a fuck about having his or her own Wikipedia page. Just like not everyone wants to have a public Facebook wall. Lack of interest is a powerful resource that modern societies should learn to leverage to the benefit of all. If the page doesn't get created in the first place, there is nothing to delete. You can call this deletionism too, but then we're back to arguing about terminology. > Non sequitur based on psychological projection or other such nonsense. Maybe it is, but so is your so-called criticism. (Yes, that's tu quoque.)

morsch 14y ago
Wikipedia has long adopted those of your rules that are workable and discussed all of them at great length. None of the rules you propose is any use as an alternative to notability criteria. None of the rules you propose is simple to apply in the real world. Notability is a technical term on Wikipedia. It's a mistake to interpret it as the common English word or concept. It's also not all that subjective: When defined for all possible articles, notability is necessarily extremely abstract. However, notability is being refined and re-interpreted for specific areas in a community process. I'm not always happy about this process, and I certainly don't agree with its results in all cases, but that's a different issue. It's this process that matters. There has to be some process to determine whether an article gets included (though extreme inclusionists may disagree). For this process, Wikipedia:Notability is the constitutional law, the individual Wikiprojects' notability criteria are the law derived from the constitution, both of which are applied to specific instances, in a system with a rich body of case law and with various bodies for arbitration. In a way, it's more useful to think about notability not as an attribute of an entity, but simply as a short verdict of the current process. In other words, a thing is not notable enough to get its own Wikipedia article, but rather the fact that it got included and remained included makes it notable according to the technical meaning of Wikipedia. Of course this is complicated and of course there are horrible downsides of having such a complicated system. Maybe we should just opt for a simpler system and resign to the fact that the end result will be worse. However I doubt that people would herald the new inclusionist Wikipedia where everyone's dad can get an article, instead they'd mercilessly pounce on the new Wikipedia full of spam, self-advertising, non-referenced, non-verified, non-sensical and attack articles.
- ktizo 14y ago
  the fact that it got included and remained included makes it notable according to the technical meaning of Wikipedia. Why does that remind me exactly of this: Listen up! The first rule of Tautology Club is... http://xkcd.com/703/ http://xkcd.com/703/
  - morsch 14y ago
    This is frustrating. I can't tell if you're making a joke, in which case I understand fine and I was going to make a joke about tautologies myself but then changed my mind. But if you're not making a joke and you think this involves circular reasoning, then you completely missed my point: Notability, the Wikipedia term, is not an input to the article inclusion/exclusion process, it is the output of this process. The process itself depends on the topic and relies on various proxy metrics because notability (the English word) relates to an abstract concept which you can not meaningfully discuss directly.

morsch 14y ago

Excellent post. I have no idea why you were downvoted. As usual, people discussing Wikipedia policy are doomed to rehash arguments long made on Wikipedia meta pages... poorly. I'm a moderate inclusionist (or I was, years ago when I was active on Wikipedia), but the quality of the inclusionist arguments outside of Wikipedia itself is pathetic. I think this is because there are almost no deletionists outside of Wikipedia which elevate the discussion with good counter-arguments.

kijin 14y ago
> the quality of the inclusionist arguments outside of Wikipedia itself is pathetic. I'd be interested in reading some of the "good" deletionist & inclusionist arguments inside Wikipedia that you mention. These pages [1][2][3] seem to summarize most of the well-known arguments from both sides, but each of the points listed there are too schematic for a casual reader to make sense of what's actually going on within the community. Besides, some of the arguments there actually look even more pathetic than anything I've read outside of Wikipedia. (What the hell does Roe v. Wade have to do with this?) [1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Deletionism https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Deletionism [2] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Association_of_Deletionist_Wikipedians https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Association... [3] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Association_of_Inclusionist_Wikipedians/Arguments https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Association... > people discussing Wikipedia policy are doomed to rehash arguments long made on Wikipedia meta pages... poorly. Members of some communities seem to think that outsiders are not fully qualified to participate in debates about their beloved policies. But often a detached outsider's perspective is exactly what is needed to fix a broken status quo. For example, both the deletionist and inclusionist "Associations" are made up of experienced editors with strong commitments pro and con. These folks might not be in the best position to talk about the many hurdles that new contributors face every day, which has more to do with maldistributed burdens of proof and the lack of clearly articulated standards. Well-intentioned new contributors don't care whether Wikipedia should be paper or toilet paper. They care when some editor on a power trip spends 30 minutes arguing to delete a little article when he could have spent a much more productive 3 minutes looking up a couple of references that the newbie didn't know how to include.