[WikiEN-l] Re: How did this happen (comixpedia??)

[Brown, Darin]

> Message: 7
> Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 05:15:39 +0000
> From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: How did this happen (comixpedia??)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<f80608430511142115s86863b4p369a22f75279688 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> On 11/15/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
> > Geni wrote:
> Not it doesn't. Things are either verifiable or they are not. There
> are a supriseing number of aproaches to trying to verify things.

And that was just my point. The nature of verifiability may change depending
on the topic. Having the same expectations for math or physics, which have
hundreds of professional journals, vs. webcomix, which does have some
professional journals, but where a lot of the community operates outside
this, doesn't seem right. This is what I meant by, it raises issues about
verifiability. Not that it doesn't exist, but that you can't always apply
norms from one area to another.

> True. However some measure of trafic is one of the few things that can
> be verifed in many cases. However there are other options. For examplr
> Casey and Andy has become the basis of GURPS Casey & Andy.

This is getting at what I was getting at with regard to proofs in math
articles earlier -- sometimes, you're just not going to be able to find a
"smoking gun" to establish notability or verify something. Verifying a
calculation, or making judgments about whether a particular topic or person
is notable in spite of raw numbers is a subtle issue and in any particular
case, I would defer to experts.

> That is a key part of being a fork. Wikinfo (the first real fork)
> droped NPOV. Comixpedia
> are not a true fork since they didn't take all of wikipedia's content

Ok, clearly there's a lot of confusion on my part (and maybe in general)
what exactly a fork is. Does a fork really have to "take all of wikipedia's
content?"

My original point stands. If Comixpedia had simply developed harmoniously as
a place to promote non-notable webcomics, that would be one thing. But there
was some hostility and the creators said the site was created not just as a
place to promote non-notables, but because they were frustrated with
processes at AfD.

> This is where stuff such as WP:MUSIC comes in handy
> 
> 
> > And who is carrying out these standards? Those who are knowledgeable? Or
> > those with a bone to pick? I have seen a lot of evidence that the latter
> > have had disproportionate sway.
> 
> That is the problem of not establishing proper WP:MUSIC style
> standards (and not being a school).

You don't seem to understand my point. I'm saying that you are never going
to be able to write down and make formal policy about every type of decision
regarding deletion or inclusion or articles. Just like the Constitution
requires interpretation by judges in practice, policies require
interpretation in practice. This requires good faith, a certain deference to
people who know more, and a certain flexibility. Saying these can be
replaced by just writing more and more policies is folly. And it allows
people to turn interpretation into policy.

> > What's to stop people who don't give a damn about baseball from deciding
> > what players are "notable"? What's to stop people who don't give a damn
> > about chess from deciding what famous games are "notable"? What's to
> stop
> > people who don't give a damn about music from deciding which individual
> > piano concertos are "notable"?
> 
> In most cases WP:MUSIC deals with the issues that arise over music.

I went there, it's all aimed toward popular music. There is nothing to stop
someone from knocking down a relatively obscure piano concerto because
they've never heard of it or the composer. Notability would come from the
reputation of the concerto in the music community and things that had been
written about it. But there could be very little written about it and still
be notable. You have to rely on judgment. And you can never formalize this
by writing more and more policies.

> 
> > What's to stop people who don't give a damn
> > about math from deciding what theorems are "notable"?
> 
> Fear.

Are you suggesting they should?

> 
> >None of these things
> > can be determined solely by google rankings or alexa rankings. For
> example,
> > the fact a pitcher has only been in the majors 2 years and has a career
> ERA
> > of 5.90 is far more compelling argument for deletion based on NN than
> google
> > ranks. Barring some specific incident (newsstory, etc.)
> 
> 
> For you maybe. For me it just means that that AFD has just developed a
> very strong SEP field

I have no idea what SEP is. And yes, the ERA stats are better than google
rankings. They tell you more.

> Define the community. I suspect a lot of wikipedia regulars read at
> least one webcomic.

And that makes them experts? I drink coffee most days, but I don't think I'm
a coffee expert. I read newspapers, but don't think I'm a journalism expert.

> It is uncommon for people to write vanity articles on mathmatical
> topics and the odds are that such articles really were writen by an
> expert.

Exactly my point -- you are admitting that decisions on deletion or
notability are made on superficial appearances rather than real knowledge --
"there are more trolls, vanity seekers in area X than Y, so I'll be a lot
harsher on deleting articles in area X than Y". This works for some of the
anonymous new articles, since a lot of them *are* speedy deletes. But I'm
saying these decisions should be based on knowledge, not presumptions about
the "odds" that the contributors are in bad faith contributing vanity.

I was simply stating that if many of the arguments from other areas were
applied to math, without fear, countless legitimate articles would be in AfD
purgatory for a long time.

darin