2 ms·

> 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 w

by 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.
    - ktizo 14y ago
      As far as whether I was making a joke or not, it is a bit of both. I understand that the wikipedia definition of the term notable means something that has been decided to be included in the encyclopedia, however in discussions over whether articles should be deleted, I have noticed that it seems very common for wikipedia members to give notability as the reason for deletion, which if notability merely means whether something has been decided to be suitable for the encylopedia, is then circular reasoning.
      - morsch 14y ago
        They use it as a proxy for the notability criteria laid out in [0] and the various more concrete notability criteria for various genres. I think that's all right. But it often comes down to people subjectively feeling one way or another about an article's notability and then applying the rules in a way that delivers the desired outcome.

by kijin 14y ago

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.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    As far as whether I was making a joke or not, it is a bit of both. I understand that the wikipedia definition of the term notable means something that has been decided to be included in the encyclopedia, however in discussions over whether articles should be deleted, I have noticed that it seems very common for wikipedia members to give notability as the reason for deletion, which if notability merely means whether something has been decided to be suitable for the encylopedia, is then circular reasoning.
    - morsch 14y ago
      They use it as a proxy for the notability criteria laid out in [0] and the various more concrete notability criteria for various genres. I think that's all right. But it often comes down to people subjectively feeling one way or another about an article's notability and then applying the rules in a way that delivers the desired outcome.