4 ms·

I used to contribute to wikipedia. I stopped after a number of articles I created were deleted by "notability nazis". There is a strong favoritism of what peopl

I used to contribute to wikipedia. I stopped after a number of articles I created were deleted by "notability nazis". There is a strong favoritism of what people think is notable over what actually is. The rules are not followed and many things that should be removed aren't while things that should stay are removed. I am not interested in participating in a system where my hard work is discarded regardless of excuses.

ghaff 12y ago
Even if I understand why the rule/criterion exists, notability is a particularly problematic Wikipedia rule. Just about everything is notable if you get local enough (whether in terms of location, field, community, etc.) And the proofs of notability, such as they are, end up being (ironically) rather rooted in things like publication in dead tree periodicals or books even if that makes actual verification difficult. So you end up with notability being rather arbitrarily decided by admins who see nothing wrong with long articles on obscure pieces of geek fandom while being unconvinced about the notability of people like influential executives at major companies, journalists, and the like.
- t0mbstone 12y ago
  Why even have notability be a requirement? Why can't the wikipedia just hold everything about everything?
  - ghaff 12y ago
    The "deletionist" argument is essentially that, absent a notability requirement, Wikipedia would become this dumping ground for articles whose facts would be difficult to verify and which interested so few people that maintaining any sort of quality would be difficult. I'm much more on the inclusionist side but but I also appreciate the concerns if it were taken to an extreme. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in...
    - nanoscopic 12y ago
      Perhaps simply have a indicator on articles of whether or not it meets notability then? If you don't want to see "unnotable articles" then you can simply shut off including them in searches.
  - smackfu 12y ago
    Well, the idea is that something has to be notable to have its own entry, not to be in the encyclopedia at all. If the page on something is only one paragraph, maybe that one paragraph should be on a different page. If you have it in both places, now you have duplication, and duplication leads to errors.
    - e12e 12y ago
      In the words of Douglas Adams: [I got it revised, it now says] "Mostly Harmless". I think the it's a good idea, but it's not a good fit for wikipedia as it exist today. I think it's grown to the point that for good or bad, it needs to be managed more like the Google corpus, than a traditional encyclopaedia. I'm not advocating abandoning human editing all together, but I think a new ideas are needed: wp's success has made it into a fundamentally new thing. It exists in the conceptual space between the sum of all newspapers and scientific journals, traditional encyclopaedia and the whole World Wide Web.
- sparkzilla 12y ago
  Arbitrary decisions are a huge problem in Wikipedia. We get round this problem at Newslines by replacing notability with newsworthiness. If someone has news written about them then it is suitable for inclusion.
  - ghaff 12y ago
    Does replacing the word really make it less arbitrary though? What's the threshold for something being considered news? An "official" news outlet? A blog? Does being quoted in a couple of news stories count? How about, say, a blogger who is reasonably well-known within a specific community--and may even be quoted by other bloggers--but doesn't write about things that would necessarily be picked up by news outlets?
    - sparkzilla 12y ago
      Yes, it does actually because it avoids situations where links from entire news sources are declared invalid because the mob doesn't think they are reliable. For example, The Daily Mail is counted as an unreliable source on Wikipedia. "Good" news sources can be wrong (Rathergate), while "bad" sources like the National Enquirer can break stories (John Edward's affair and child). The problem arises on Wikipeida because its editors act as fact checkers. But your idea of what a fact is can be quite different from mine. On Newslines we create the archive and let the reader decide what is true, by marking claims as claims. Very few bloggers break original news. If they do we can add it as a source.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
    The trouble is, of course, that people will game that system to be included in Wikipedia. What is news? 20 years ago that meant being written about in some regional city's newspaper. Now? It's some half-assed blog. Anyone can finagle that trick if they're motivated enough. And getting into Wikipedia has some obscure benefits that make it worthwhile.
  - presumeaway 12y ago
    That's far too easy to game, though, and even works on Wikipedia. Just the other day, I searched for a particular boutique marketing firm, and found they had a Wikipedia entry, complete with 20-30 references. All of which were basically from the same small, inexpensive PR campaign. Wikipedia runs a serious risk of becoming a commercial echo chamber (if it hasn't already). What're you guys doing at Newslines to prevent it from turning into a vehicle for self-promotion?
bane 12y ago
Here's a fun anecdote a friend of mine told me. He's a researcher in an obscure field so he's a primary source, well published etc. He corrected something on a WP page that he happens to be an expert in, it was reverted. There was a war over notability. He didn't count as a source since he was primary. So he had one of his grad students put it in and cite some research on his academic webpage. After a couple automatic reverts it finally stayed because it was now coming from a secondary source. So basically, if you publish a blog with some information about a topic, then have "your friend" make the change and cite your blog, it's good. But try to do it yourself and it's no good.
AlyssaRowan 12y ago
This, all of this. My impressions of it are that arbitrary notability wars basically killed Wikipedia's chance at any kind of completeness - and that has killed any desire I have to become involved in it, if it'll just throw my efforts in the bin. It's as good as it'll get on what it has because it's camped by editors who don't allow changes, even for the better; and it just doesn't want any contributions on anything it doesn't already have. I don't buy the argument that there isn't enough space on the internet. Wikis are at their worst on high-profile, contested topics, and at their best in minutiæ Wikipedia's entrenched cabal passionately hates. Curious, as a social experiment. It's interesting it became as good as it did, but it's firmly in maintenance mode now and that won't keep the cobwebs off forever. I wonder how much it's being gamed by PR companies and governments now.

ghaff 12y ago

Even if I understand why the rule/criterion exists, notability is a particularly problematic Wikipedia rule. Just about everything is notable if you get local enough (whether in terms of location, field, community, etc.) And the proofs of notability, such as they are, end up being (ironically) rather rooted in things like publication in dead tree periodicals or books even if that makes actual verification difficult. So you end up with notability being rather arbitrarily decided by admins who see nothing wrong with long articles on obscure pieces of geek fandom while being unconvinced about the notability of people like influential executives at major companies, journalists, and the like.

t0mbstone 12y ago
Why even have notability be a requirement? Why can't the wikipedia just hold everything about everything?
- ghaff 12y ago
  The "deletionist" argument is essentially that, absent a notability requirement, Wikipedia would become this dumping ground for articles whose facts would be difficult to verify and which interested so few people that maintaining any sort of quality would be difficult. I'm much more on the inclusionist side but but I also appreciate the concerns if it were taken to an extreme. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in...
  - nanoscopic 12y ago
    Perhaps simply have a indicator on articles of whether or not it meets notability then? If you don't want to see "unnotable articles" then you can simply shut off including them in searches.
- smackfu 12y ago
  Well, the idea is that something has to be notable to have its own entry, not to be in the encyclopedia at all. If the page on something is only one paragraph, maybe that one paragraph should be on a different page. If you have it in both places, now you have duplication, and duplication leads to errors.
  - e12e 12y ago
    In the words of Douglas Adams: [I got it revised, it now says] "Mostly Harmless". I think the it's a good idea, but it's not a good fit for wikipedia as it exist today. I think it's grown to the point that for good or bad, it needs to be managed more like the Google corpus, than a traditional encyclopaedia. I'm not advocating abandoning human editing all together, but I think a new ideas are needed: wp's success has made it into a fundamentally new thing. It exists in the conceptual space between the sum of all newspapers and scientific journals, traditional encyclopaedia and the whole World Wide Web.
sparkzilla 12y ago
Arbitrary decisions are a huge problem in Wikipedia. We get round this problem at Newslines by replacing notability with newsworthiness. If someone has news written about them then it is suitable for inclusion.
- ghaff 12y ago
  Does replacing the word really make it less arbitrary though? What's the threshold for something being considered news? An "official" news outlet? A blog? Does being quoted in a couple of news stories count? How about, say, a blogger who is reasonably well-known within a specific community--and may even be quoted by other bloggers--but doesn't write about things that would necessarily be picked up by news outlets?
  - sparkzilla 12y ago
    Yes, it does actually because it avoids situations where links from entire news sources are declared invalid because the mob doesn't think they are reliable. For example, The Daily Mail is counted as an unreliable source on Wikipedia. "Good" news sources can be wrong (Rathergate), while "bad" sources like the National Enquirer can break stories (John Edward's affair and child). The problem arises on Wikipeida because its editors act as fact checkers. But your idea of what a fact is can be quite different from mine. On Newslines we create the archive and let the reader decide what is true, by marking claims as claims. Very few bloggers break original news. If they do we can add it as a source.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  The trouble is, of course, that people will game that system to be included in Wikipedia. What is news? 20 years ago that meant being written about in some regional city's newspaper. Now? It's some half-assed blog. Anyone can finagle that trick if they're motivated enough. And getting into Wikipedia has some obscure benefits that make it worthwhile.
- presumeaway 12y ago
  That's far too easy to game, though, and even works on Wikipedia. Just the other day, I searched for a particular boutique marketing firm, and found they had a Wikipedia entry, complete with 20-30 references. All of which were basically from the same small, inexpensive PR campaign. Wikipedia runs a serious risk of becoming a commercial echo chamber (if it hasn't already). What're you guys doing at Newslines to prevent it from turning into a vehicle for self-promotion?

bane 12y ago

Here's a fun anecdote a friend of mine told me. He's a researcher in an obscure field so he's a primary source, well published etc. He corrected something on a WP page that he happens to be an expert in, it was reverted. There was a war over notability. He didn't count as a source since he was primary. So he had one of his grad students put it in and cite some research on his academic webpage. After a couple automatic reverts it finally stayed because it was now coming from a secondary source. So basically, if you publish a blog with some information about a topic, then have "your friend" make the change and cite your blog, it's good. But try to do it yourself and it's no good.

AlyssaRowan 12y ago

This, all of this. My impressions of it are that arbitrary notability wars basically killed Wikipedia's chance at any kind of completeness - and that has killed any desire I have to become involved in it, if it'll just throw my efforts in the bin. It's as good as it'll get on what it has because it's camped by editors who don't allow changes, even for the better; and it just doesn't want any contributions on anything it doesn't already have. I don't buy the argument that there isn't enough space on the internet. Wikis are at their worst on high-profile, contested topics, and at their best in minutiæ Wikipedia's entrenched cabal passionately hates. Curious, as a social experiment. It's interesting it became as good as it did, but it's firmly in maintenance mode now and that won't keep the cobwebs off forever. I wonder how much it's being gamed by PR companies and governments now.