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sigh As a die-hard inclusionist, I'll never understand deletionism... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia http://en.wikipedi

sigh As a die-hard inclusionist, I'll never understand deletionism... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in...

Confusion 17y ago
There is too much information in the world to include it all in Wikipedia. That leads to information dilution, which has the consequence that you cannot find what you are looking for anymore. Die hard inclusionism is as stupid as die hard deletionism. If you cannot understand the opposing viewpoint, you do not understand your own position.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  So, you're making the case here that on the page about Y combinator there should be lots of relevant information about Y combinator left out ? Giving every start-up including the failed ones their own page would be a waste of space, but to give them a single line in a list is pretty good use of the space available I would say.
  - snprbob86 17y ago
    Why is giving each their own page a waste of space? Even if it is only a one sentence stub, it might be interesting to someone and their mother. No one else will ever know it is there, but a tiny piece of history, no matter how insignificant it may seem now, will be preserved. It's not hurting anybody. Imagine if some YC startup did some interesting things, but ultimately failed and was promptly forgotten. Two years later, the same team builds something fantastic rooted firmly in the work they had done previously. This new startup becomes an astonishing success. Suddenly, that prior effort (especially why it failed) is noteable. Oh noez! We deleted it! It is arrogant for any individual or even any group to believe they have any knowledge of what was, is, or will be noteable.
    - ErrantX 17y ago
      That makes the assumption that failure of the company is something that the notability of "something interesting" would be judged on... Which in my experience is not the case: if it was interesting or unique people will write about it - and then it is notable. (wikipedia is not really for recording primary information; that makes it a little useless)
- snprbob86 17y ago
  Is there too much information in the world to include it all on Google? My position is that we should work to improve the tools by which we organize information without ever having to destroy any. I firmly believe that "non-notable" pages should remain marked as such. By default, penalize them in search results and hide them behind a confirmation gate. But don't delete them. Decorate the hell out of them with boxes indicating they don't meet quality standards, but if just one person thought it was notable enough to write about, it deserves to be included. Inclusion need not lead to information dilution. The binary nature of "notability" is overly simplistic, so redirect the destructive energy spent on the deletion debate towards constructive classification of data.
- Tichy 17y ago
  On second thought, I guess you are somewhat right. I don't see how having more articles would hurt, but imagine every single article being 1000 pages long. Google would not help with that. I still wouldn't consider deleting stuff the best solution to that. It just is a matter of organizing the data better. A hard problem, no doubt. I suppose for the YC example, the list of YC Companies could be a separate article. Maybe this is also a hint as to what the next search engine after Google could provide. I guess that would be more like what Wolfram Alpha had promised to be.
- selven 17y ago
  How does including information prevent me from finding other information? Sure, it makes the "random page" option (which really should have a bias toward popular articles) less interesting, but if you're looking for information on something, the article on it will be the first search result and you can go straight to it ignoring all the other ones. I have never in my life been incovenienced by insignificant articles getting in my way.

Confusion 17y ago

There is too much information in the world to include it all in Wikipedia. That leads to information dilution, which has the consequence that you cannot find what you are looking for anymore. Die hard inclusionism is as stupid as die hard deletionism. If you cannot understand the opposing viewpoint, you do not understand your own position.

jacquesm 17y ago
So, you're making the case here that on the page about Y combinator there should be lots of relevant information about Y combinator left out ? Giving every start-up including the failed ones their own page would be a waste of space, but to give them a single line in a list is pretty good use of the space available I would say.
- snprbob86 17y ago
  Why is giving each their own page a waste of space? Even if it is only a one sentence stub, it might be interesting to someone and their mother. No one else will ever know it is there, but a tiny piece of history, no matter how insignificant it may seem now, will be preserved. It's not hurting anybody. Imagine if some YC startup did some interesting things, but ultimately failed and was promptly forgotten. Two years later, the same team builds something fantastic rooted firmly in the work they had done previously. This new startup becomes an astonishing success. Suddenly, that prior effort (especially why it failed) is noteable. Oh noez! We deleted it! It is arrogant for any individual or even any group to believe they have any knowledge of what was, is, or will be noteable.
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    That makes the assumption that failure of the company is something that the notability of "something interesting" would be judged on... Which in my experience is not the case: if it was interesting or unique people will write about it - and then it is notable. (wikipedia is not really for recording primary information; that makes it a little useless)
snprbob86 17y ago
Is there too much information in the world to include it all on Google? My position is that we should work to improve the tools by which we organize information without ever having to destroy any. I firmly believe that "non-notable" pages should remain marked as such. By default, penalize them in search results and hide them behind a confirmation gate. But don't delete them. Decorate the hell out of them with boxes indicating they don't meet quality standards, but if just one person thought it was notable enough to write about, it deserves to be included. Inclusion need not lead to information dilution. The binary nature of "notability" is overly simplistic, so redirect the destructive energy spent on the deletion debate towards constructive classification of data.
Tichy 17y ago
On second thought, I guess you are somewhat right. I don't see how having more articles would hurt, but imagine every single article being 1000 pages long. Google would not help with that. I still wouldn't consider deleting stuff the best solution to that. It just is a matter of organizing the data better. A hard problem, no doubt. I suppose for the YC example, the list of YC Companies could be a separate article. Maybe this is also a hint as to what the next search engine after Google could provide. I guess that would be more like what Wolfram Alpha had promised to be.
selven 17y ago
How does including information prevent me from finding other information? Sure, it makes the "random page" option (which really should have a bias toward popular articles) less interesting, but if you're looking for information on something, the article on it will be the first search result and you can go straight to it ignoring all the other ones. I have never in my life been incovenienced by insignificant articles getting in my way.