On Nov 9, 2007, at 10:14 AM, Steve Bennett wrote: Speedy deletion works great. People who tag articles within minutes of their creation and don't contact the article writers to ask for an assertion of notability are a problem. A7 remains the most misused CSD. Its error rate remains unacceptably high, and it is the culprit in most of the worst newbie-biting deletions we do. -Phil

On 09/11/2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote: The webcomic artists do have a point: there was indeed a long-running attempt to get rid of webcomics in Wikipedia, to the point where those against them tried to put through a notability guideline that would preclude expert opinion as biased toward the subject - i.e., a direct anti-expert guideline, specifically to stop Phil objecting to them. That said, the present campaign appears (I must say) somewhat petulant and ill-conceived as to what is article-worthy in Wikipedia. The notion of third-party verifiability is not widely appreciated. The public relations problem is that "notable" is Wikipedia jargon, *not* how the word is understood by outsiders. This means it's going to continue to be a problem as long as it's used on AFD and other points of public interaction in the jargon sense rather than the conventional English language sense. - d.

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:29:17 -0500, joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: Sorry, aardvark, wombat and echidna are all taken. What is wrong with "encyclopaedic" though? Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On 09/11/2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote: That the word means "covers everything" probably wouldn't make it the best choice for a jargon term implying "doesn't cover everything." What do we mean? I think we mean "not suitable for Wikipedia", and "notable" is an AFD jargon word pressed into the cause. Is there something that says that in less than four words? - d.

On Nov 9, 2007, at 1:18 PM, David Gerard wrote: I think the present campaign stems both from the astonishingly bad- faith and hostile campaign to drive webcomics contributors away combined with the jargony public face that Wikipedia shows users when it comes to new article creation. It is certainly misguided. But had we not so utterly soured our relationship with the webcomics community (and we have - there is very little rational discussion to be had with webcomics people about Wikipedia anymore based on the slap in the face that the previous campaign was) we could probably come to some sort of understanding with a lot of them. Instead we made that impossible, because we're awesome like that. -Phil

Quoting Philip Sandifer <snowspinner(a)gmail.com>om>: But see my last post, where I noted all the major webcomics who are ok with us. We've really only pissed off a subset of the community and to some extent much of that subset are people who would be pissed at us anyways. Pissing off Howard Tayler was bad, and we should try to do everything we can to get him back on our side if it is at all possible. But for a lot of the others they would have been pissed at us eventually. See for example at http://www.partiallyclips.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=78b47d2cc544fd659e… where Rob Balder responds to a polite attempt by Mindspillage to explain notability and a few other issues. Sure, pissing people off is bad but let's keep this in perspective. Also, let's remember that part of the entire webcomics problem was a backlash against an inclusion criterion for any webcomic with even a very low Alexa rating. So maybe one lesson from this should be "don't lower inclusion bars for any subject, because when you raise them again you'll get lots of stress and drama"

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:01:42 -0500, joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: Bizarre. We have an article on PartiallyClips and it was never deleted. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:35:47 -0500, joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: Which could have been avoided by people waiting to see what the critical reception was before creating the article. Wikipedia is not, I think, supposed to be the web's no. 1 "you read it here first" cutting edge news source. My opinion is slightly coloured by the fact that I think no music can be accurately assessed as historically important until the writer dies. I make a small exception for the Beatles (since they've been "dead" as a band for a few decades). One day people will look back at our thousands of articles on albums by deathgrindcore bands that sold ten thousand copies and will laugh that anybody could be bothered to catalogue them. I've nearly persuaded my children of this. Nearly. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 20:02:59 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: I have just been reading an academic work on musicology that says anything past about 1900 becomes a nightmare for the musicologist because, outside of the masters, the volume of documentation is simply too big to allow any meaningful process of critical categorisation. I think the view on the thousands of sold-a-dozen CDs will be the same: of no practical use or interest, does not make the cut in any rational analysis of the subject. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:38:37 -0500, joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: Rather the opposite: by 1900 they had decided it was worth doing, and everyone was at it, so there was so *much* material it became unmanageable :-) Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 18:18:44 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes, I absolutely agree. That is one of the things we could probably change, if we really wanted to. Do we? Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Nov 9, 2007, at 10:46 AM, joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: I've never denied that. But there were users who had an active desire to remove webcomics articles as thoroughly as they could get away with for reasons that amounted to a lack of interest in the topic, a rigorous and definition- based view of notability, and an utter disdain for actual expert viewpoints. That was a disaster. I am all about removing promotional articles. But there exists a real webcomics community that is interesting, notable, and has documented sources and commentary. And our coverage of it was actively and serially removed in as offensive a manner as possible. -Phil

Quoting Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca>ca>: Up to a point. Many of the webcomics people aren't complaining about the targeted deletions of notable items (which in any event were almost all kept or were recreated after DRVs). The complain to a large extent is that we aren't keeping almost all Webcomics. Many have complained that anything less than keeping all webcomics is "censorship", See the relevant Wikinews article - http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcomic_commun… and the highly informative comments thread- http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Comments:Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcom… That's not to say that parts of their response aren't unreasonable. Users did not restrict themselves to targeting merely the problematic materialthere was a lot of collateral damage, and we could have been much more diplomatic about everything. However, we should not lose sight that most of the articles deleted did not belong on Wikipedia and that the elements of the webcomics community that are unhappy with us are often parts that are unhappy because the loss of Wikipedia articles hurts either their egos or livelyhood. Finally, note that many prominent webcomics are still on very good terms with us despite this supposed backlash. For example, XKCD continues to have positive Wikipedia themed humor (indeed I doubt that the author Randall Munroe(who incidentally has been a model Wikipedian where COI and related issues are concerned) is even aware of this blowup). http://www.achewood.com/ http://www.dieselsweeties.com/ http://www.fetusx.com/ http://www.pvponline.com/about are all notable webcomics which go so far as to link to their relevant Wikipedia articles (and if I'm not mistaken PvP was even one of the webcomics that got deleted at one point). Overall, this matter has been blown out of proportion I for one am far more concerned about pissing off Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Cory Doctorow. They are our natural constituency. But as far as I'm aware no one involved in that incident has even tried to apologize to Hayden.

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 19:04:16 +0000, "David Gerard" &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I have a couple of thoughts from this exchange. Webcomic "marketing" is essentially viral or memetic. Clicks is how sell themselves to publishers and advertisers, it's the life-blood of the webcomic genre. Wikipedia does not play that game well; we try to wait until significance is established, whereas they really want us to play a part in making significance happen. This should never have got this far, though. When did Comixpedia go online? Wikipedia could never be the global directory of all webcomics, that is something we are not and Comixpedia apparently is; we should have been better at communicating that. And actually we should have <puts a pound in the buzzword box> leveraged the Wikiproject here. The webcomics editors include many long-time, sensible, practical people. A system of filtering, triage, review and selective quiet removal, led by people who know what they are talking about, is much harder to complain about. Question: do Wikiprojects have the self-discipline to be trusted? In other words, if we made the first stage of AfD a direction to the Wikiprojects, with no comments allowed in the "catch-all" criterion until they had been assessed as properly identified deletion candidates, would the projects prevent deletion of everything they like, regardless of objective measures of quality and verifiability? Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Nov 9, 2007, at 2:48 PM, David Gerard wrote: I suspect that he is aware of Comixpedia. (Though I have no personal contact with him, and don't honestly know. But I'd be surprised if he's not aware.) But remember also that Comixpedia was designed as the angry fork from Wikipedia - the second choice alternative. -Phil

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote: It depends on the project. Some projects (MILHIST comes to mind, there are others), would be quite trustworthy and even now often nominate inappropriate articles in "their" area for AfD themselves. Others (ROADS comes to mind, I recall them sending out a "newsletter" when a few road articles were up for AfD with an undisguised canvassing attempt, as well as many projects on fictional subjects) would simply reject any request to delete -any- type of cruft in "their" area. I love the idea, though. You mean those saying "keep and reference" -actually have to find the references-? Brilliant!

On Nov 11, 2007 7:23 PM, Todd Allen &lt;toddmallen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Sadly this shilling has two sides. While what you say is entirely true, there is almost nobody around on wikipedia who would say that despite military history buffs monomaniacal interest in their subject, something most people would find zero interest in, means it should be presumed a priori likely to be non-encyclopaedic. -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]

joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: There's Comixpedia. Yeah, I know, it wouldn't stand a chance - it's a perfect storm of "wiki, not RS!" and "webcomics, NN!" (with perhaps a bit of "OR!" thrown in since some of the articles are refugees from Wikipedia itself). But I'm actually serious. I've been over there a few times and it looks like a great source of information on the topic, at least as good as most of the websites I use as references.

On Nov 9, 2007 11:04 AM, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Well, many of them are old-school Usenetters, used to down and dirty personal conflict, no holds barred. I suspect that's a good part of it. It was also about a clash between two insular groups, each of which was/is quite good at thinking of themselves as The Good People and not noticing how that to those not in the group they appear prickly and combative. They acted like dicks. However, 'our group' acted like dicks too - or at least, those of us who didn't, weren't noticed - civility tends to get quietly ignored. -Matt