"A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
The project is not collaborative like Wikipedia, but for many topics, there will be competing knols on the same subject. The goal is to cover all topics, from encyclopedic topics to how-to-fix-it instructions. The control over the article will remain with the author, who can also choose to display ads and get a substantial revenue share. Most probably, the license won't be a free one, but "Google will not ask for any exclusivity on any of this content and will make that content available to any other search engine."
It's too early to say, but the success of Knol may spell extinction for projects like Citizendium: most "experts" would prefer to retain sole authorship of their articles and get paid for it.
And of course, it may spell doom for Wikipedia as well. Knol will certainly provide a more authoritative, more reliable source of knowledge than Wikipedia: http://www.google.com/images/blogs/knol_lg.png
On 14/12/2007, Utkarshraj Atmaram utcursch@gmail.com wrote:
"A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read." http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
It's too early to say, but the success of Knol may spell extinction for projects like Citizendium: most "experts" would prefer to retain sole authorship of their articles and get paid for it. And of course, it may spell doom for Wikipedia as well. Knol will certainly provide a more authoritative, more reliable source of knowledge than Wikipedia:
Sounds like about.com II, or Scholarpedia.
- d.
On Dec 14, 2007 8:54 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/12/2007, Utkarshraj Atmaram utcursch@gmail.com wrote:
Sounds like about.com II, or Scholarpedia.
With the difference of Knol being licensed under CC-BY 3.0
On 14/12/2007, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 14, 2007 8:54 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Sounds like about.com II, or Scholarpedia.
With the difference of Knol being licensed under CC-BY 3.0
So I see. BIG WIN! That'll make me a fan :-)
- d.
On Dec 14, 2007 3:29 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/12/2007, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 14, 2007 8:54 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Sounds like about.com II, or Scholarpedia.
With the difference of Knol being licensed under CC-BY 3.0
So I see. BIG WIN! That'll make me a fan :-)
- d.
One problem: an article there'll probably have to be viewed as a self-published source; I don't see Google claiming to exercise any editorial control. WP:V might see a few disagreements as people try to alter it to allow reliance on free, signed content.
RR
On Dec 14, 2007 3:29 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/12/2007, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 14, 2007 8:54 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Sounds like about.com II, or Scholarpedia.
With the difference of Knol being licensed under CC-BY 3.0
So I see. BIG WIN! That'll make me a fan :-)
- d.
One problem: an article there'll probably have to be viewed as a self-published source; I don't see Google claiming to exercise any editorial control. WP:V might see a few disagreements as people try to alter it to allow reliance on free, signed content.
RR
The article they display uses references. Anything wrong should draw plenty of feedback and subsequent corrections or clarifications.
Fred
On 14/12/2007, Relata Refero refero.relata@gmail.com wrote:
One problem: an article there'll probably have to be viewed as a self-published source; I don't see Google claiming to exercise any editorial control. WP:V might see a few disagreements as people try to alter it to allow reliance on free, signed content.
If the writer's an acknowledged authority in the field, that shouldn't be a problem.
- d.
On Dec 14, 2007 4:38 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/12/2007, Relata Refero refero.relata@gmail.com wrote:
One problem: an article there'll probably have to be viewed as a self-published source; I don't see Google claiming to exercise any editorial control. WP:V might see a few disagreements as people try to alter it to allow reliance on free, signed content.
If the writer's an acknowledged authority in the field, that shouldn't be a problem.
Oh, I agree it shouldn't. But WP:V has the line "However, caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so", which clearly suggests we should try and avoid signed but self-published articles even by acknowledged experts. In effect, this is going to be similar to, for example, archives of unpublished 'working papers' or university websites' freely available lecture transcripts. They're around, accessible, free, and written by experts, but we don't like using them for some reason.
RR
On Dec 14, 2007 4:38 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/12/2007, Relata Refero refero.relata@gmail.com wrote:
One problem: an article there'll probably have to be viewed as a
self-published source; I don't see Google claiming to exercise any editorial control. WP:V might see a few disagreements as people try to alter it to allow reliance on free, signed content.
If the writer's an acknowledged authority in the field, that shouldn't be a problem.
Oh, I agree it shouldn't. But WP:V has the line "However, caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so", which clearly suggests we should try and avoid signed but self-published articles even by acknowledged experts. In effect, this is going to be similar to, for example, archives of unpublished 'working papers' or university websites' freely available lecture transcripts. They're around, accessible, free, and written by experts, but we don't like using them for some reason.
RR
They said they would invite author. Thus there is a published work on at least a related subject.
Fred
Mathias Schindler wrote:
On Dec 14, 2007 8:54 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/12/2007, Utkarshraj Atmaram utcursch@gmail.com wrote:
Sounds like about.com II, or Scholarpedia.
With the difference of Knol being licensed under CC-BY 3.0
Oo, excellent! Once the GFDL becomes compatible with CC-BY (I'm assuming the "SA" is automatic these days) there can be free traffic between the two. I was a bit worried they'd be locked up behind some incompatible license.
On Dec 14, 2007 11:03 AM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Oo, excellent! Once the GFDL becomes compatible with CC-BY (I'm assuming the "SA" is automatic these days) there can be free traffic between the two. I was a bit worried they'd be locked up behind some incompatible license.
As far as I understand the CC-BY (without the -SA), it should now already be possible to incorporate CC-BY text in Wikipedia (IANAL), since the only requirement is attribution, something we do already thanks to the GFDL.
Mathias
On Dec 14, 2007 2:47 PM, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 14, 2007 8:54 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/12/2007, Utkarshraj Atmaram utcursch@gmail.com wrote:
Sounds like about.com II, or Scholarpedia.
With the difference of Knol being licensed under CC-BY 3.0
The license is not the only difference -- in fact, I doubt that they'll force people to use CC-BY 3.0; the authors will probably have a choice.
The major difference is the word "Google".
One may ask: if I had to write on insomnia, I could create a page at Google Pages. How is Knol any different?
* The knol on insomnia will appear on the first page when you Google for "insomnia" * The knol is written by a Stanford University faculty member (which means the schools might accept such a knol as a reference for term papers). * The author gets paid for writing the knol
As Udi Manber mentions, Knol is meant to be "the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read." Remember what we tell people when they question reliability and accuracy of our articles? "Wikipedia is a starting point for research". That's what Knol is meant to be. If successful, it might rob Wikipedia of Google juice.
Moreover, Knol will have a focus on authorship. From the blog, "The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors [...] We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content." In all probability, Manber was trying to highlight the difference between Wikipedia and knol. Google will hope that the best Knol articles will come from expert academics (the screenshot shows an article written by Rachel Manber of Stanford University).
In most cases, the structure and content outline of a great Wikipedia article are decided by a single user or a very small group of users -- the others just fill in the gaps, correct typos, wikify the article, or crib about the article being biased. The Knol users will be "able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on". By, "submit edits and additional content", they probably mean that an article can be written by a group of users, which is what happens at Wikipedia. And of course, the users can submit feedback in forms of comments and question, which will lead to a better, revised article (see the "revisions" tab in the screenshot).
The temptation of getting paid and getting recognition through sole authorship might attract best contributors to Knol. At Knol, they won't have to bother about protecting their articles against trolls, cranks, vandals, and consensus of anonymous users.
Also, Knol can be updated frequently, just like Wikipedia. Errors can be pointed out and corrected in a short time, just like Wikipedia. And when Google "opens" it up, it can grow very fast, just like Wikipedia.
One might argue that Knol won't have unbiased articles on controversial topics like "Palestine" or "Kashmir", since the articles will be controlled by a single authors (or a set of authors). But then, the Wikipedia articles on such topics are hardly ever considered unbiased by everybody. Most of such articles are often tagged with {{pov}} or other ugly tags. A pro-Sri Lanka person will always crib about the existence of the article "Allegations of state terrorism in Sri Lanka", and an LTTE supporter will always complain about the article not being renamed to "State terrorism in Sri Lanka". Such articles on Wikipedia are mostly an "argument nexus" http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/commentary/alttext/2006/04/70670 -- Knol will users to create an argument nexus by allowing writing reviews on articles, rating the articles, and posting comments on why the article is good or bad.
Just like we highlight our best articles on the front page, Google will try their best to make sure that the best articles appear on top in the search results: "Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results." There'll be bad knols, but then, there are bad articles on Wikipedia tool.
It'll be interesting to see how Google deals with attack pages, notability issues and spam (blatant spam, "conflict of interest" or otherwise). Udi Manber says "the participation in knols will be completely open, and we cannot expect that all of them will be of high quality." So, I assume that they'll they won't bother, as long as they're earning good revenues (as with Blogger). Therefore, there'll be no complaints about cruel deletionist admins like me :) And unlike us Wikipedians, Google doesn't bother about criticism from Daniel Brandt and his ilk.
I'm not trying to predict death of Wikipedia. I'm just trying to discuss a worst-case scenario: what happens if we stop getting Google juice, if our best contributors move on to Knol for money and recognition, if our readers (who are also our donors) leave Wikipedia and start patronizing knol.
-- Utkarshraj Atmaram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Utcursch
On 14/12/2007, Utkarshraj Atmaram utcursch@gmail.com wrote:
The temptation of getting paid and getting recognition through sole authorship might attract best contributors to Knol.
With a few exceptions such as say football or Asbestos the amount paid out will be insignificant. looks more like bringing made for adsense content in house.
On Dec 14, 2007 6:27 AM, Utkarshraj Atmaram utcursch@gmail.com wrote:
As Udi Manber mentions, Knol is meant to be "the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read." Remember what we tell people when they question reliability and accuracy of our articles? "Wikipedia is a starting point for research". That's what Knol is meant to be. If successful, it might rob Wikipedia of Google juice.
Good. Wikipedia needs to be shaken up a bit. :-) I suspect Google's software and interface will be orders of magnitude more usable that ours, and attract more non-technical users, which will in turn promote pressure to get more developers to fix up the site. Competition should be welcome.
The temptation of getting paid and getting recognition through sole
authorship might attract best contributors to Knol. At Knol, they won't have to bother about protecting their articles against trolls, cranks, vandals, and consensus of anonymous users.
I wonder if the potential exists for a Wikipedia clone to make revenue from ads, and then distribute that revenue to the "best" editors based on trust networks and metrics of neutrality, etc. Reward people for making desirable edits that are neutral, reliably sourced, civil, and so on. If they set it up well and kept the open source licensing, I'd migrate.
I'm not trying to predict death of Wikipedia. I'm just trying to discuss a worst-case scenario: what happens if we stop getting Google juice, if our best contributors move on to Knol for money and recognition, if our readers (who are also our donors) leave Wikipedia and start patronizing knol.
Hey, if they improve on Wikipedia, they deserve any user migration they get, and humanity will be better for it.
On Dec 14, 2007 4:24 PM, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
I predict that some enterprising souls will quickly "create" knols by using GFDL text from Wikipedia, thus getting paid for the work of others.
Step 1: Mirror Wikipedia Step 2: Surround it with ads and use search engine optimization Step 3: Profit
Omegatron wrote:
Good. Wikipedia needs to be shaken up a bit. :-) I suspect Google's software and interface will be orders of magnitude more usable that ours, and attract more non-technical users, which will in turn promote pressure to get more developers to fix up the site. Competition should be welcome.
My hope from all this is that it will renew our appreciation for some of the coverage Wikipedia gives to pop cultural and "low-notability" topics that have been under steady pressure from merging and deleting for a long time now. It's true that our quality is sometimes lacking on these areas, but they're topics that people actually want to read and come to Wikipedia looking for information on. It's silly to shoot ourselves in the foot by turning them away.
Hey, if they improve on Wikipedia, they deserve any user migration they get, and humanity will be better for it.
Indeed. Depending on the final details of their policies, of course, I might be inclined to add a few articles I know of that have been pointlessly trimmed down to nothing on Wikipedia. I'm not interested in the revenue, just in making the information we've buried in old revisions "live" again.
On 12/17/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
My hope from all this is that it will renew our appreciation for some of the coverage Wikipedia gives to pop cultural and "low-notability" topics that have been under steady pressure from merging and deleting for a long time now. It's true that our quality is sometimes lacking on these areas, but they're topics that people actually want to read and come to Wikipedia looking for information on. It's silly to shoot ourselves in the foot by turning them away.
We don't turn them away. Pop culture is a huge part of Wikipedia. Of course, the absolute most revoltingly bad parts of it we kill off. But your implication that we're slowly moving towards some state where there will be very little or no pop culture on Wikipedia is off the mark.
Indeed. Depending on the final details of their policies, of course, I might be inclined to add a few articles I know of that have been pointlessly trimmed down to nothing on Wikipedia. I'm not interested in the revenue, just in making the information we've buried in old revisions "live" again.
I guess one nice thing about Knols is you don't need to reference your material, you just say that you *are* the reference. I understand why we insist on referencing everything...but there are times when you'd pray for any information at all, even if it's not referenced.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/17/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
My hope from all this is that it will renew our appreciation for some of the coverage Wikipedia gives to pop cultural and "low-notability" topics that have been under steady pressure from merging and deleting for a long time now. It's true that our quality is sometimes lacking on these areas, but they're topics that people actually want to read and come to Wikipedia looking for information on. It's silly to shoot ourselves in the foot by turning them away.
We don't turn them away. Pop culture is a huge part of Wikipedia. Of course, the absolute most revoltingly bad parts of it we kill off. But your implication that we're slowly moving towards some state where there will be very little or no pop culture on Wikipedia is off the mark.
A long while ago I noticed that there were articles for most episodes from the "Scrubs" TV show, a very popular comedy series. They were mostly quite detailed, with comprehensive infoboxes and standardized sections, very far from "revoltingly bad". They were poorly categorized so I created [[category:Scrubs episodes]] and spent an hour or so tidying everything up, then moved on with other things since I don't watch the series myself.
A few days back I got an automated notice that category:Scrubs episodes was up for speedy deletion because it was empty. I see now that pretty much every episode article has been wiped out and redirected to the "list of Scrubs articles", which has only the barest minimum of information about each episode in it. Wikipedia has drastically reduced the amount of information it carries about this series. This has been happening a lot, check the history of pretty much any "list of <foo> episodes" article and you'll see a massive surge of redirects and link removals in recent months. I imagine some group of editors must have managed to make some change to a notability guideline somewhere and are now using it to cut a swath of destruction through such articles.
In one case I came across an article for an episode of a TV series that had been based on a much more obscure play of the same name. The article on the TV episode had been wiped and redirected. So I salvaged some material from the article's history to create an article about the _play_, and that article appears to be perfectly acceptable. I guess plays are "literary", and therefore not as easily tarred with the fancruft brush even though this one's not nearly as widely known as the "non-notable" episode that was based on it.
It's not just for articles about individual episodes. Recently the article about the main antagonist organization in the science fiction TV series Farscape, the "Peacekeepers," got deleted after a weak AfD with three keep votes and four delete votes. The rest of the articles about various details of the Farscape series started collapsing like a house of cards after that. I notice that one of the few survivors that's still up for AfD, [[Command_Carrier]], has as part of its nomination the comment "Many other Farscape articles have been AfD'ed since, and all that's clear is that they have been abandoned by fandom". Well, duh. Why should fans of Farscape bother spending any further effort on improving Wikipedia articles when so much of their work is just being arbitrarily swept away?
I also notice a number of "merge and delete" votes in that AfD. In fact, it looks like the deletion that started this all was a merge-and-delete case as well; material from [[Peacekeeper (Farscape)]] got put into [[Races in Farscape]]. I'm restoring the history. I don't delve into AfD often, are "merge and delete" votes really this common in general over there? If so that's a serious problem, it's riddling Wikipedia with copyvios.
A good idea for Google would be to have some mechanism to make it easy to import a Wikipedia article into a Knol complete with edit history. That'd allow this work to be transwikied over there and saved, and Google would get the content and the eyeballs that Wikipedia's throwing away. Win for our contributors, win for Google.
Quoting Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/17/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
My hope from all this is that it will renew our appreciation for some of the coverage Wikipedia gives to pop cultural and "low-notability" topics that have been under steady pressure from merging and deleting for a long time now. It's true that our quality is sometimes lacking on these areas, but they're topics that people actually want to read and come to Wikipedia looking for information on. It's silly to shoot ourselves in the foot by turning them away.
We don't turn them away. Pop culture is a huge part of Wikipedia. Of course, the absolute most revoltingly bad parts of it we kill off. But your implication that we're slowly moving towards some state where there will be very little or no pop culture on Wikipedia is off the mark.
A long while ago I noticed that there were articles for most episodes from the "Scrubs" TV show, a very popular comedy series. They were mostly quite detailed, with comprehensive infoboxes and standardized sections, very far from "revoltingly bad". They were poorly categorized so I created [[category:Scrubs episodes]] and spent an hour or so tidying everything up, then moved on with other things since I don't watch the series myself.
A few days back I got an automated notice that category:Scrubs episodes was up for speedy deletion because it was empty. I see now that pretty much every episode article has been wiped out and redirected to the "list of Scrubs articles", which has only the barest minimum of information about each episode in it. Wikipedia has drastically reduced the amount of information it carries about this series. This has been happening a lot, check the history of pretty much any "list of <foo> episodes" article and you'll see a massive surge of redirects and link removals in recent months. I imagine some group of editors must have managed to make some change to a notability guideline somewhere and are now using it to cut a swath of destruction through such articles.
In one case I came across an article for an episode of a TV series that had been based on a much more obscure play of the same name. The article on the TV episode had been wiped and redirected. So I salvaged some material from the article's history to create an article about the _play_, and that article appears to be perfectly acceptable. I guess plays are "literary", and therefore not as easily tarred with the fancruft brush even though this one's not nearly as widely known as the "non-notable" episode that was based on it.
It's not just for articles about individual episodes. Recently the article about the main antagonist organization in the science fiction TV series Farscape, the "Peacekeepers," got deleted after a weak AfD with three keep votes and four delete votes. The rest of the articles about various details of the Farscape series started collapsing like a house of cards after that. I notice that one of the few survivors that's still up for AfD, [[Command_Carrier]], has as part of its nomination the comment "Many other Farscape articles have been AfD'ed since, and all that's clear is that they have been abandoned by fandom". Well, duh. Why should fans of Farscape bother spending any further effort on improving Wikipedia articles when so much of their work is just being arbitrarily swept away?
I also notice a number of "merge and delete" votes in that AfD. In fact, it looks like the deletion that started this all was a merge-and-delete case as well; material from [[Peacekeeper (Farscape)]] got put into [[Races in Farscape]]. I'm restoring the history. I don't delve into AfD often, are "merge and delete" votes really this common in general over there? If so that's a serious problem, it's riddling Wikipedia with copyvios.
A good idea for Google would be to have some mechanism to make it easy to import a Wikipedia article into a Knol complete with edit history. That'd allow this work to be transwikied over there and saved, and Google would get the content and the eyeballs that Wikipedia's throwing away. Win for our contributors, win for Google.
The relevant guidelines are WP:FICT and WP:EPISODE which are frankly being used to remove a tremendous amount of content. The sensible thing to do for all of this is to allow some minimum of inherited notability. But I doubt anyone is going to go for that. Almost every tv show on my watchlist is being wiped out. This isn't creating as much drama as the webcomics but it is far more pervasive. Many of the Stargate editors have left simply in disgust and I suspect this is true for other series as well.
On Dec 20, 2007 7:25 AM, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/17/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
My hope from all this is that it will renew our appreciation for some of the coverage Wikipedia gives to pop cultural and "low-notability" topics that have been under steady pressure from merging and deleting for a long time now. It's true that our quality is sometimes lacking on these areas, but they're topics that people actually want to read and come to Wikipedia looking for information on. It's silly to shoot ourselves in the foot by turning them away.
We don't turn them away. Pop culture is a huge part of Wikipedia. Of course, the absolute most revoltingly bad parts of it we kill off. But your implication that we're slowly moving towards some state where there will be very little or no pop culture on Wikipedia is off the mark.
A long while ago I noticed that there were articles for most episodes from the "Scrubs" TV show, a very popular comedy series. They were mostly quite detailed, with comprehensive infoboxes and standardized sections, very far from "revoltingly bad". They were poorly categorized so I created [[category:Scrubs episodes]] and spent an hour or so tidying everything up, then moved on with other things since I don't watch the series myself.
A few days back I got an automated notice that category:Scrubs episodes was up for speedy deletion because it was empty. I see now that pretty much every episode article has been wiped out and redirected to the "list of Scrubs articles", which has only the barest minimum of
.....
The relevant guidelines are WP:FICT and WP:EPISODE which are frankly being used to remove a tremendous amount of content. The sensible thing to do for all of this is to allow some minimum of inherited notability. But I doubt anyone is going to go for that. Almost every tv show on my watchlist is being wiped out. This isn't creating as much drama as the webcomics but it is far more pervasive. Many of the Stargate editors have left simply in disgust and I suspect this is true for other series as well.
I have actually noticed this myself, as little time as I spend working on this area. I think there's two reasons it's misguided, neither of which will be accepted as valid arguments on AfD in a million years:
a) People come to the site looking for this information. If it's something people expect to find on Wikipedia, they should probably be able to find it there.
b) Many, many other shows have pages for every episode; I doubt if we're getting rid of the pages for Buffy or MASH anytime soon. So if some shows have article, then why not all, the summarily deleted fan editor is likely to wonder. Who are these crazy inconsistent Wikipedians? I've seen, for instance, half the episodes of a tv show get merged and rdr'ed, but not the other half (plus a couple deleted for good measure). In Wikipedia, inherited notability has not been a valid argument, but in the rest of the world it would seem to make sense to have a blanket policy -- either we allow pages for individual episodes, or we don't. This business about "only the most notable" episodes, which is currently in WP:EPISODE, doesn't make much sense from a sourcing standpoint (especially for new shows), is quite hard to enforce, and it seems is being enforced arbitrarily.
c) Also, there are plenty of other wikis besides Wikipedia; rather than Knol, I'd love to see this stuff gently transwiki'd into Wikia if appropriate, if it has to go.
-- phoebe
Quoting phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com:
.....
The relevant guidelines are WP:FICT and WP:EPISODE which are frankly being used to remove a tremendous amount of content. The sensible thing to do for all of this is to allow some minimum of inherited notability. But I doubt anyone is going to go for that. Almost every tv show on my watchlist is being wiped out. This isn't creating as much drama as the webcomics but it is far more pervasive. Many of the Stargate editors have left simply in disgust and I suspect this is true for other series as well.
I have actually noticed this myself, as little time as I spend working on this area. I think there's two reasons it's misguided, neither of which will be accepted as valid arguments on AfD in a million years:
a) People come to the site looking for this information. If it's something people expect to find on Wikipedia, they should probably be able to find it there.
b) Many, many other shows have pages for every episode; I doubt if we're getting rid of the pages for Buffy or MASH anytime soon. So if some shows have article, then why not all, the summarily deleted fan editor is likely to wonder. Who are these crazy inconsistent Wikipedians? I've seen, for instance, half the episodes of a tv show get merged and rdr'ed, but not the other half (plus a couple deleted for good measure). In Wikipedia, inherited notability has not been a valid argument, but in the rest of the world it would seem to make sense to have a blanket policy -- either we allow pages for individual episodes, or we don't. This business about "only the most notable" episodes, which is currently in WP:EPISODE, doesn't make much sense from a sourcing standpoint (especially for new shows), is quite hard to enforce, and it seems is being enforced arbitrarily.
c) Also, there are plenty of other wikis besides Wikipedia; rather than Knol, I'd love to see this stuff gently transwiki'd into Wikia if appropriate, if it has to go.
-- phoebe
Yes, at this point inclusionism is dead and eventualism is a heresy. If enough editors try and get WP:EPISODE's guideline status removed then one could go DRV all of these. I'm about to go on vacation and haven't been willing to attempt to do so in the past because of lack of success but if enough people actually agree with me there's no need not to try. This is really destroying a lot of content and the GFDL issue pointed out by Derksen doesn't help matters at all (although that's more easily corretable)
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Yes, at this point inclusionism is dead and eventualism is a heresy. If enough editors try and get WP:EPISODE's guideline status removed then one could go DRV all of these. I'm about to go on vacation and haven't been willing to attempt to do so in the past because of lack of success but if enough people actually agree with me there's no need not to try. This is really destroying a lot of content and the GFDL issue pointed out by Derksen doesn't help matters at all (although that's more easily corretable)
I rarely get involved in policy disputes, but this does seem like a hill worth dying on - I've done some more looking around and the amount of material being removed in this particular purge is enormous. It also seems to be heavily driven by just a handful of editors - the same usernames keep popping up in the histories. I guess it's been gotten away with so far because there hasn't actually been deleting going on for the most part, just redirecting.
I notice now that an arbitration case has been filed on this subject; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes_and_characters. Haven't had time to read through it all yet.
I'm going to go on vacation in a few days myself, unfortunately, but I'll still have net access. Anyone more policy-savvy than I have suggestions on how I should go about tossing my hat into this fight?
On Dec 20, 2007 12:14 PM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Yes, at this point inclusionism is dead and eventualism is a heresy. If enough editors try and get WP:EPISODE's guideline status removed then one could go DRV all of these. I'm about to go on vacation and haven't been willing to attempt to do so in the past because of lack of success but if enough people actually agree with me there's no need not to try. This is really destroying a lot of content and the GFDL issue pointed out by Derksen doesn't help matters at all (although that's more easily corretable)
I rarely get involved in policy disputes, but this does seem like a hill worth dying on - I've done some more looking around and the amount of material being removed in this particular purge is enormous. It also seems to be heavily driven by just a handful of editors - the same usernames keep popping up in the histories. I guess it's been gotten away with so far because there hasn't actually been deleting going on for the most part, just redirecting.
I notice now that an arbitration case has been filed on this subject; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes_and_characters. Haven't had time to read through it all yet.
I'm going to go on vacation in a few days myself, unfortunately, but I'll still have net access. Anyone more policy-savvy than I have suggestions on how I should go about tossing my hat into this fight?
The fuck? I find it absolutely crazy how some deletionists are taking deletionism far beyond what many original deletionists ever envisioned. I see no reason at all why we cannot have articles on episodes of notable television shows, provided they are referenced and contain more information than can be gleaned from a [[List of X episodes]]. This is completely insane and fucktarded - episodes of TV shows are not inherently non-notable.
Johnleemk
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007, Bryan Derksen wrote:
I notice now that an arbitration case has been filed on this subject; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes_and_characters. Haven't had time to read through it all yet.
I'm sure someone's going to reply to this with a snarky comment, but this looks an *awful* lot like rehash of spoiler warnings, except instead of removing spoiler tags, people are removing episode articles. And I'm not just saying that because it's a dispute, either.
For instance, note this from the proposed decision:
Editors who have been apprised that a particular change is controversial or disputed are expected to engage in discussion to resolve the dispute. It is inappropriate to repeat the change over a wide range of pages in order to present opponents with a fait accompli or to exhaust their ability to contest the change.
On 20/12/2007, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
I'm sure someone's going to reply to this with a snarky comment, but this looks an *awful* lot like rehash of spoiler warnings, except instead of removing spoiler tags, people are removing episode articles. And I'm not just saying that because it's a dispute, either.
Yes, but will Knols with spoilers rate higher than ones without?
- d.
On 20/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 20/12/2007, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
I'm sure someone's going to reply to this with a snarky comment, but this looks an *awful* lot like rehash of spoiler warnings, except instead of removing spoiler tags, people are removing episode articles. And I'm not just saying that because it's a dispute, either.
Yes, but will Knols with spoilers rate higher than ones without?
It makes little sense to try and write articles that will have to compete with IMDB wikipedia and various review sites and the movie site itself. On top of that the ads are unlikely to pay too well.
On 12/20/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
It makes little sense to try and write articles that will have to compete with IMDB wikipedia and various review sites and the movie site itself. On top of that the ads are unlikely to pay too well.
People who do contribute there will do so mostly because it's something other than Wikipedia, rather than due to any favorable differences in structure or policy.
The knol is always grassier on the other side of the motorcade.
—C.W.
Ok, I've asked at that page if there is any real consensus for the guideline. If you have an opinion, feel free to comment. I'm about to go on vacation now, and will leave therefore thankfully miss any ensuing drama.
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Ok, I've asked at that page if there is any real consensus for the guideline. If you have an opinion, feel free to comment. I'm about to go on vacation now, and will leave therefore thankfully miss any ensuing drama.
I've chipped in too now, for folks who want a direct link it's at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Television_episodes#Is_there_any_actual_consensus_for_this_guideline_at_all.3F. I'm of two minds here whether I should start actually reverting and restoring some of the more obviously wrong-headed deletions that have already been done; on the one hand of course revert-warring is bad, but on the other hand I'm worried about the fait accompli gambit that appears to be in play here.
Really, this is a stupid overreach of notability-mongering. Any given random episode of a show like Scrubs has been seen by millions of people and is going to be available in DVD box-sets for years and years to come, that _alone_ puts it above 90% of the articles we have about books or wee little towns or dead congressmen or what have you. We've got articles on hundreds of asteroids that are known only by a few orbital parameters in a catalogue someplace and there's nary a complaint. I'm extremely annoyed.
I think there is a specific standard for the notability of fiction for good reason. I'm not sure that having been seen by millions of glazer over eyeballs is necessarily enough for something to be notable - it may be, but I would argue that there have been tons of episodes of tons of TV shows and in 5 years no one will remember 99 percent of them, let alone cite them for anything. Additionally, they present clear RS problems - how often do reliable sources publish a treatment of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode? I wouldn't go undeleting them unless you first get approval on policy changes. I'm sure the fan-types will support you, but the community in general seems to be leaning away from your position.
On Dec 20, 2007 7:43 PM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Ok, I've asked at that page if there is any real consensus for the guideline. If you have an opinion, feel free to comment. I'm about to go on vacation now, and will leave therefore thankfully miss any ensuing drama.
I've chipped in too now, for folks who want a direct link it's at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Television_episodes#Is_there_any_actual_consensus_for_this_guideline_at_all.3F. I'm of two minds here whether I should start actually reverting and restoring some of the more obviously wrong-headed deletions that have already been done; on the one hand of course revert-warring is bad, but on the other hand I'm worried about the fait accompli gambit that appears to be in play here.
Really, this is a stupid overreach of notability-mongering. Any given random episode of a show like Scrubs has been seen by millions of people and is going to be available in DVD box-sets for years and years to come, that _alone_ puts it above 90% of the articles we have about books or wee little towns or dead congressmen or what have you. We've got articles on hundreds of asteroids that are known only by a few orbital parameters in a catalogue someplace and there's nary a complaint. I'm extremely annoyed.
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On 12/21/07, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
them, let alone cite them for anything. Additionally, they present clear RS problems - how often do reliable sources publish a treatment of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode?
Well, that's about the worst example you could give, because Buffy *does* get scholarly treatment. But anyway.
There's something very misguided going on here, perhaps as the result of rather ugly notability guidelines being treated as axioms on which to construct further guidelines. Does anyone really think it's a good idea that *some* episodes of a given series have articles but not *all* of them? Do we really think that it's smart to have articles about the "notable" episodes 3, 4, 8, and 11 of season 2 of whatever series, but not the rest? Would any "real" encyclopaedia do this?
Personally, I think we have often gone too far with details on individual episodes of shows (particularly unscripted shows, such as big brother, or game shows). But the answer isn't to chop all the information altogether. The answer is restraint: a short article (or paragraph in a list article) with the key information about the episode, without the cruft. Summarise the plot. Don't give us a blow-by-blow description. Tell us what makes it different from other episodes. Don't give us pointless trivia.
But no, restraint, judgment and good taste don't often figure in discussions of our treatment of popular culture.
Steve
Really? Scholarly treatment of Buffy? Oy. Actually now that you mention it, I vaguely recall such a thing. Alright, next time I'll use... "Kyle XY" instead? Don't tell me he's in some Harvard journal.
More seriously - I think you are absolutely correct, there is no point in having episode articles if you aren't going to have articles on all the episodes. Practically speaking, it would be impossible to ever adequately reference the majority of them anyway. I think a single article per popular series, at the most, could be acceptable (to me). Unless somehow a particular episode gets huge coverage (like the final 'reveal' episode of "Ellen").
On Dec 20, 2007 10:54 PM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/21/07, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
them, let alone cite them for anything. Additionally, they present clear RS problems - how often do reliable sources publish a treatment of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode?
Well, that's about the worst example you could give, because Buffy *does* get scholarly treatment. But anyway.
There's something very misguided going on here, perhaps as the result of rather ugly notability guidelines being treated as axioms on which to construct further guidelines. Does anyone really think it's a good idea that *some* episodes of a given series have articles but not *all* of them? Do we really think that it's smart to have articles about the "notable" episodes 3, 4, 8, and 11 of season 2 of whatever series, but not the rest? Would any "real" encyclopaedia do this?
Personally, I think we have often gone too far with details on individual episodes of shows (particularly unscripted shows, such as big brother, or game shows). But the answer isn't to chop all the information altogether. The answer is restraint: a short article (or paragraph in a list article) with the key information about the episode, without the cruft. Summarise the plot. Don't give us a blow-by-blow description. Tell us what makes it different from other episodes. Don't give us pointless trivia.
But no, restraint, judgment and good taste don't often figure in discussions of our treatment of popular culture.
Steve
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Nathan Awrich wrote:
Really? Scholarly treatment of Buffy? Oy. Actually now that you mention it, I vaguely recall such a thing. Alright, next time I'll use... "Kyle XY" instead? Don't tell me he's in some Harvard journal.
You're holding the subject area to ludicrously inappropriate standards. "Reliable sources" are not one-size-fits-all; what's a "reliable source" for an article about a blood protein is completely different from what's a "reliable source" for a sports figure or a TV show or a medieval monk. This sort of robotic following of guidelines outside their areas of applicability as if they were rigid laws is the basic cause of the problem here.
More seriously - I think you are absolutely correct, there is no point in having episode articles if you aren't going to have articles on all the episodes. Practically speaking, it would be impossible to ever adequately reference the majority of them anyway. I think a single article per popular series, at the most, could be acceptable (to me). Unless somehow a particular episode gets huge coverage (like the final 'reveal' episode of "Ellen").
This is a fully volunteer project. If you tell people they aren't allowed to work on the areas that interest them, they're just going to go away. If you don't want to write more than one article on a show, then don't - choose some subject that you're more interested in. But don't tell other people where they should be putting their own efforts.
There's an article for every named crater on the Moon. How do you think it would go over if I went to WikiProject Moon and told them "I'm not a selenologist or anything but I've decided this subject's only worth one article of coverage, I'm going to merge these all into [[Craters on the Moon]] per the WP:CRATERSARENTINTERESTING guideline you've never heard of before. You're not allowed to revert me until you can overturn it"? More importantly, why on Earth would I do that in the first place? How does it _hurt_ Wikipedia to have such extensive coverage?
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Nathan Awrich wrote:
Really? Scholarly treatment of Buffy? Oy. Actually now that you mention it, I vaguely recall such a thing. Alright, next time I'll use... "Kyle XY" instead? Don't tell me he's in some Harvard journal.
You're holding the subject area to ludicrously inappropriate standards. "Reliable sources" are not one-size-fits-all; what's a "reliable source" for an article about a blood protein is completely different from what's a "reliable source" for a sports figure or a TV show or a medieval monk. This sort of robotic following of guidelines outside their areas of applicability as if they were rigid laws is the basic cause of the problem here.
More seriously - I think you are absolutely correct, there is no point in having episode articles if you aren't going to have articles on all the episodes. Practically speaking, it would be impossible to ever adequately reference the majority of them anyway. I think a single article per popular series, at the most, could be acceptable (to me). Unless somehow a particular episode gets huge coverage (like the final 'reveal' episode of "Ellen").
This is a fully volunteer project. If you tell people they aren't allowed to work on the areas that interest them, they're just going to go away. If you don't want to write more than one article on a show, then don't - choose some subject that you're more interested in. But don't tell other people where they should be putting their own efforts.
There's an article for every named crater on the Moon. How do you think it would go over if I went to WikiProject Moon and told them "I'm not a selenologist or anything but I've decided this subject's only worth one article of coverage, I'm going to merge these all into [[Craters on the Moon]] per the WP:CRATERSARENTINTERESTING guideline you've never heard of before. You're not allowed to revert me until you can overturn it"? More importantly, why on Earth would I do that in the first place? How does it _hurt_ Wikipedia to have such extensive coverage?
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Cruft. Disorganization. Lack of context. If we're to be writing an -encyclopedia-, it needs to have certain standards. We don't for example cover every living person in the world, because the vast majority of them are not notable. Let Myspace do that. Similarly, let All Music Guide cover the two-bit bands and tv.com cover every episode of every show. We're supposed to be distilling, not replicating.
On 21/12/2007, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Cruft. Disorganization. Lack of context. If we're to be writing an -encyclopedia-, it needs to have certain standards. We don't for example cover every living person in the world, because the vast majority of them are not notable. Let Myspace do that. Similarly, let All Music Guide cover the two-bit bands and tv.com cover every episode of every show. We're supposed to be distilling, not replicating.
However. When it is possible to have a complete set, completing the set has value. We have EVERY census location in the US. EVERY SINGLE ONE. The "encyclo-" bit means covering the lot. When simplifying as much as possible, take care not to go simpler.
- d.
On 21/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
However. When it is possible to have a complete set, completing the set has value. We have EVERY census location in the US. EVERY SINGLE ONE. The "encyclo-" bit means covering the lot. When simplifying as much as possible, take care not to go simpler.
Ah, yes, I'm fond of beating this drum :-)
When we have 90% or 95% of a set, the remaining 5% in many ways are significant and worth writing about simply for the value in having a complete set.
A reference source where you know you can get information - even if "this only existed for two weeks, in 1957, and didn't do anything" - on every single example of something becomes in effect a specialist encyclopedia on that topic *as well* as a general-purpose encyclopedia; if you only list the notable elements it's hit and miss and you can't rely on finding information.
Which is why we have articles on tiny townships, on nonentity politicians, on Popes who never even got ordained and died after five weeks*. Because being able to say "we have them *all*" makes us a better encyclopedia.
On Dec 21, 2007 2:04 PM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 21/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
However. When it is possible to have a complete set, completing the set has value. We have EVERY census location in the US. EVERY SINGLE ONE. The "encyclo-" bit means covering the lot. When simplifying as much as possible, take care not to go simpler.
Ah, yes, I'm fond of beating this drum :-)
When we have 90% or 95% of a set, the remaining 5% in many ways are significant and worth writing about simply for the value in having a complete set.
A reference source where you know you can get information - even if "this only existed for two weeks, in 1957, and didn't do anything" - on every single example of something becomes in effect a specialist encyclopedia on that topic *as well* as a general-purpose encyclopedia; if you only list the notable elements it's hit and miss and you can't rely on finding information.
Which is why we have articles on tiny townships, on nonentity politicians, on Popes who never even got ordained and died after five weeks*. Because being able to say "we have them *all*" makes us a better encyclopedia.
For some reason this reminds me a lot of the [[interesting number]] paradox - let's say certain numbers are interesting (whatever that means - you could use "notable" too!), and certain numbers aren't. But in that case, is it not the case that one interesting aspect of the uninteresting numbers is that they are uninteresting?
Johnleemk
On 12/22/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
When we have 90% or 95% of a set, the remaining 5% in many ways are significant and worth writing about simply for the value in having a complete set.
I'd set the bar lower. 70%. Maybe even 50%.
This does remind me of the time I wrote an article about a minor New Zealand skifield, and it was AfD'd on NN grounds. However, every single other skifield had an article, and was apparently notable. It sort of made that skifield notable by virtue of its unique status of non-notability...
Which is why we have articles on tiny townships, on nonentity politicians, on Popes who never even got ordained and died after five weeks*. Because being able to say "we have them *all*" makes us a better encyclopedia.
Hell yeah.
Steve
It's not just having a complete set--though that surely matters. (We can have a complete set by other means too, such as combination articles with enough information about the individual parts). It's also about consistency--the particular items kept are not necessarily the most important of them--our precision of deciding at AfD is nowhere near that good, and will never be while we refuse to recognize precedent. Lack of consistency makes us look incompetent to do the real work of building a good encyclopedia. Even more, it's about the practical operation of WP. The work of arguing each individual article is excessive. It's particularly hard to defend under the current system, for it's much easier to nominate and say all of this needs to be sourced, than to defend, and source all of it, while indefinitely repeated AfDs are accepted until an article is finally deleted. We could save all this trouble, and all this conflict, and have time for writing and improving articles, and stay on better terms with each other, if we accepted the notability of these sorts of articles. But as we do that, we should also accept the lack of nobility of other sorts of articles. (baring special individual circumstances). We do that with such things as bus stations, and elementary schools. Think if we had to delete each article on an elementary school at AfD rather than Prod! What we did is simple clear distinctions, adopted by true gneral consensus, not vague general rules that have to be individually interpreted for each of the 2 or 3 thousand articles a day. That, and mutual tolerance. I'll accept your computer games, if you accept my theologians.
On 12/21/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/22/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
When we have 90% or 95% of a set, the remaining 5% in many ways are significant and worth writing about simply for the value in having a complete set.
I'd set the bar lower. 70%. Maybe even 50%.
This does remind me of the time I wrote an article about a minor New Zealand skifield, and it was AfD'd on NN grounds. However, every single other skifield had an article, and was apparently notable. It sort of made that skifield notable by virtue of its unique status of non-notability...
Which is why we have articles on tiny townships, on nonentity politicians, on Popes who never even got ordained and died after five weeks*. Because being able to say "we have them *all*" makes us a better encyclopedia.
Hell yeah.
Steve
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On 12/22/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
What we did is simple clear distinctions, adopted by true gneral consensus, not vague general rules that have to be individually interpreted for each of the 2 or 3 thousand articles a day. That, and mutual tolerance. I'll accept your computer games, if you accept my theologians.
Yes, this would be a good path to a more mature system. Blanket rules "there can be one article per episode for every series that satisfies criterion X", where X is determined once for the series. Hell, we can even have internal lists like "List of TV series determined notable enough for one article per episode" and "List of TV series determined notable enough for one article per major character" etc. So at least all the discussion over the TV series is held *once*, in that centralised location.
Steve
On Fri, 21 Dec 2007, David Goodman wrote:
It's not just having a complete set--though that surely matters. (We can have a complete set by other means too, such as combination articles with enough information about the individual parts). It's also about consistency--the particular items kept are not necessarily the most important of them--our precision of deciding at AfD is nowhere near that good, and will never be while we refuse to recognize precedent. Lack of consistency makes us look incompetent to do the real work of building a good encyclopedia.
You know, I could say the same about spoiler tags--spoiler tagging all spoilers for consistency is better even if it does tag some plot sections that you can already tell contain spoilers.
In fact, I did say that. Nobody cared.
Even more, it's about the practical operation of WP. The work of arguing each individual article is excessive.
I could say that about spoiler tags too.
I think this episode deletionism pretty much proves that removal of spoiler tags--and the particular ways the system was gamed in order to do it--was far from unique.
Of course you need to look back further than spoiler tags for this. Webcomic deletion has a lot in common with episode deletion too. Sure, a lot of those webcomic articles did deserve deletion, but that was simply because indiscriminate deletion will always catch some that really deserve it.
On 22/12/2007, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
In fact, I did say that. Nobody cared.
See, to anyone else, this might suggest that they were taking completely the wrong approach.
- d.
Andrew Gray wrote:
When we have 90% or 95% of a set, the remaining 5% in many ways are significant and worth writing about simply for the value in having a complete set.
The trouble is deciding which way to tip. In the Farscape case, we had articles on every fictional species that appeared in more than one or two episodes.
Then a low-profile AfD managed to slip in and delete the article on one of the more prominent members, and after that it was a case of "why do we have articles on all these minor species when we don't have this prominent one?" We went from 95% to 0. That's the wrong direction for an encyclopedia whose goal is comprehensiveness to be going in.
Todd Allen wrote:
Cruft. Disorganization. Lack of context. If we're to be writing an -encyclopedia-, it needs to have certain standards. We don't for example cover every living person in the world, because the vast majority of them are not notable. Let Myspace do that. Similarly, let All Music Guide cover the two-bit bands and tv.com cover every episode of every show. We're supposed to be distilling, not replicating.
So why do we bother having articles about topics that Britannica's already thoroughly covered, then? Why do we allow stubs to exist if "disorganized" and "lacking context" are valid reasons for summary deletion?
Also, I should point out that in many of the cases that I've checked where articles were removed our coverage is _better_ than TV.com. Better both in terms of detail and presentation, and better in terms of license (if TV.com's under any sort of free licence I can't find it in that cluttered mess). So in some cases the removal of these articles is removing the best source of information about those shows that you can readily find _anywhere_ on the Internet.
And before you take that as an opening to cry "OR!", bear in mind that one can take multiple sub-par sources and combine them into something that's greater than any one source individually.
On 21/12/2007, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Nathan Awrich wrote:
Really? Scholarly treatment of Buffy? Oy. Actually now that you mention it, I vaguely recall such a thing. Alright, next time I'll use... "Kyle XY" instead? Don't tell me he's in some Harvard journal.
You're holding the subject area to ludicrously inappropriate standards. "Reliable sources" are not one-size-fits-all; what's a "reliable source" for an article about a blood protein is completely different from what's a "reliable source" for a sports figure or a TV show or a medieval monk. This sort of robotic following of guidelines outside their areas of applicability as if they were rigid laws is the basic cause of the problem here.
More seriously - I think you are absolutely correct, there is no point in having episode articles if you aren't going to have articles on all the episodes. Practically speaking, it would be impossible to ever adequately reference the majority of them anyway. I think a single article per popular series, at the most, could be acceptable (to me). Unless somehow a particular episode gets huge coverage (like the final 'reveal' episode of "Ellen").
This is a fully volunteer project. If you tell people they aren't allowed to work on the areas that interest them, they're just going to go away. If you don't want to write more than one article on a show, then don't - choose some subject that you're more interested in. But don't tell other people where they should be putting their own efforts.
There's an article for every named crater on the Moon. How do you think it would go over if I went to WikiProject Moon and told them "I'm not a selenologist or anything but I've decided this subject's only worth one article of coverage, I'm going to merge these all into [[Craters on the Moon]] per the WP:CRATERSARENTINTERESTING guideline you've never heard of before. You're not allowed to revert me until you can overturn it"? More importantly, why on Earth would I do that in the first place? How does it _hurt_ Wikipedia to have such extensive coverage?
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Cruft. Disorganization. Lack of context. If we're to be writing an -encyclopedia-, it needs to have certain standards. We don't for example cover every living person in the world, because the vast majority of them are not notable. Let Myspace do that. Similarly, let All Music Guide cover the two-bit bands and tv.com cover every episode of every show. We're supposed to be distilling, not replicating.
You have mischaracterised this issue as binary: your standards or no standards at all. No one has suggested we have an article on every living person in the world (a problem for reliable sources, surely?)
To use All Music Guide or tv.com as a source in a band or television episode article would not be replication - the information presented by those sites and the information presented by Wikipedia is completely different. Some information those sites contain will necessarily be excluded from Wikipedia and some information we contain will be excluded from their sites. The information shared between both will be presented in a different ways.
On 21/12/2007, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Nathan Awrich wrote:
Really? Scholarly treatment of Buffy? Oy. Actually now that you mention it, I vaguely recall such a thing. Alright, next time I'll use... "Kyle XY" instead? Don't tell me he's in some Harvard journal.
You're holding the subject area to ludicrously inappropriate standards. "Reliable sources" are not one-size-fits-all; what's a "reliable source" for an article about a blood protein is completely different from what's a "reliable source" for a sports figure or a TV show or a medieval monk. This sort of robotic following of guidelines outside their areas of applicability as if they were rigid laws is the basic cause of the problem here.
More seriously - I think you are absolutely correct, there is no point in having episode articles if you aren't going to have articles on all the episodes. Practically speaking, it would be impossible to ever adequately reference the majority of them anyway. I think a single article per popular series, at the most, could be acceptable (to me). Unless somehow a particular episode gets huge coverage (like the final 'reveal' episode of "Ellen").
This is a fully volunteer project. If you tell people they aren't allowed to work on the areas that interest them, they're just going to go away. If you don't want to write more than one article on a show, then don't - choose some subject that you're more interested in. But don't tell other people where they should be putting their own efforts.
There's an article for every named crater on the Moon. How do you think it would go over if I went to WikiProject Moon and told them "I'm not a selenologist or anything but I've decided this subject's only worth one article of coverage, I'm going to merge these all into [[Craters on the Moon]] per the WP:CRATERSARENTINTERESTING guideline you've never heard of before. You're not allowed to revert me until you can overturn it"? More importantly, why on Earth would I do that in the first place? How does it _hurt_ Wikipedia to have such extensive coverage?
Thank you for one of the funniest and most insightful posts I have read on this list in a long time.
On 12/21/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/21/07, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
them, let alone cite them for anything. Additionally, they present clear RS problems - how often do reliable sources publish a treatment of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode?
Well, that's about the worst example you could give, because Buffy *does* get scholarly treatment. But anyway.
I think it is a clear problem with some of the people merging/redirecting articles that they do *not* have any requisite ability to judge accurately whether a good article could be written about that particular episode. In this they are not infact accurately reflecting the guideline, but infact fail to do so miserably.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On Dec 20, 2007 10:54 PM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/21/07, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
them, let alone cite them for anything. Additionally, they present clear RS problems - how often do reliable sources publish a treatment of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode?
Well, that's about the worst example you could give, because Buffy *does* get scholarly treatment. But anyway.
There's something very misguided going on here, perhaps as the result of rather ugly notability guidelines being treated as axioms on which to construct further guidelines. Does anyone really think it's a good idea that *some* episodes of a given series have articles but not *all* of them? Do we really think that it's smart to have articles about the "notable" episodes 3, 4, 8, and 11 of season 2 of whatever series, but not the rest? Would any "real" encyclopaedia do this?
Personally, I think we have often gone too far with details on individual episodes of shows (particularly unscripted shows, such as big brother, or game shows). But the answer isn't to chop all the information altogether. The answer is restraint: a short article (or paragraph in a list article) with the key information about the episode, without the cruft. Summarise the plot. Don't give us a blow-by-blow description. Tell us what makes it different from other episodes. Don't give us pointless trivia.
But no, restraint, judgment and good taste don't often figure in discussions of our treatment of popular culture.
The irony is that this means you agree substantially with the disputed guideline. If the problem lies in the guideline, it lies in the section dealing with what kind of articles are acceptable, but the larger problem lies with the kind of people who got that section into the guideline, and use it as a blanket policy reason for tarring all episode articles with the same brush.
Johnleemk
Nathan Awrich wrote:
I think there is a specific standard for the notability of fiction for good reason. I'm not sure that having been seen by millions of glazer over eyeballs is necessarily enough for something to be notable
Excuse me, but "glazed-over eyeballs?" These are our readers and our editors we're talking about. Please refrain from dismissing their interests as unimportant because you don't share them. It would be just as inappropriate to refer to the authors and users of our sports-related articles as "overmuscled jocks", or our politician-related articles as "politics weenies", or whatever other derogatory characterization one might come up with.
If you don't find a subject area interesting to you, just _leave it alone_.
- it
may be, but I would argue that there have been tons of episodes of tons of TV shows and in 5 years no one will remember 99 percent of them, let alone cite them for anything. Additionally, they present clear RS problems - how often do reliable sources publish a treatment of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode?
I expect every one of them has a DVD with a commentary track available, for starters. A quick Google search also turns up http://www.tv.com/buffy-the-vampire-slayer/show/10/summary.html, http://www.buffyguide.com/, http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/, http://www.buffyworld.com/, and http://chosentwo.com/buffy/ on the first page of results. Some of these may not be as useful as others but I have a hard time believing that _none_ of them are reliable sources.
Unless you meant perhaps peer-reviewed journal articles?
I wouldn't go undeleting them unless you first get approval on policy changes. I'm sure the fan-types will support you, but the community in general seems to be leaning away from your position.
That doesn't seem to be the case over on the talk page of WP:EPISODE. So if the community in general hasn't approving of the guideline that was used as justification for deleting them, they can be deleted, but they can't be undeleted until everyone agrees? Double standard, no thanks. The "default" position should be to refrain from deleting when in doubt.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Nathan Awrich wrote:
I think there is a specific standard for the notability of fiction for good reason. I'm not sure that having been seen by millions of glazer over eyeballs is necessarily enough for something to be notable
Excuse me, but "glazed-over eyeballs?" These are our readers and our editors we're talking about. Please refrain from dismissing their interests as unimportant because you don't share them. It would be just as inappropriate to refer to the authors and users of our sports-related articles as "overmuscled jocks", or our politician-related articles as "politics weenies", or whatever other derogatory characterization one might come up with.
If you don't find a subject area interesting to you, just _leave it alone_.
As much as Nathan is radically off-base on this issue, I would probably be a little kinder about "glazed-over eyeballs." He's talking about a medical phenomenon that can happen to any reader on any subject. It can even happen on a favorable topic when the quality of the writing is execrable.
I get it on policy pages, and one big problem with them is that the reasonable people leave them alone. I read this at [[Wikipedia:Notability]]: /"Presumed"/ means objective evidence meets the criteria, without regard for the subjective personal judgments of editors." Fearing that they haven't confused us enough the writers add this footnote: "Non-notability is a re_buttab_le presumption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebuttable_presumption based only on a lack of suitable evidence of notability, which becomes moot once evidence is found. It is not possible to prove non-notability because that would require a negative proof http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_proof." I guess that establishes that it does not take a long article to make eyes glaze over. This is a definition of "presumed" that is contrary to the normal use of the word. A policy (or guideline) that takes such liberties with the language only merits ridicule.
As I see it guidelines are quasi-policy documents without enough support to make it as policy. They should never be viewed as enforceable, and should give wide latitude to those who would approach the subject differently
I have a hard time believing that _none_ of them are reliable sources.
Unless you meant perhaps peer-reviewed journal articles?
I grant that much of pop culture material is ephemeral, but that is precisely why we should view it more favorably. By chronicling these we give future generations a much greater insight into today's society. In topics such as this "peer-reviewed journal articles" are a nonsensical criterion. They are little more than excuse to support destructive behaviour. The concept has its place in some fields of learning, but not here.
I wouldn't go undeleting them unless you first get approval on policy changes. I'm sure the fan-types will support you, but the community in general seems to be leaning away from your position.
That doesn't seem to be the case over on the talk page of WP:EPISODE. So if the community in general hasn't approving of the guideline that was used as justification for deleting them, they can be deleted, but they can't be undeleted until everyone agrees? Double standard, no thanks. The "default" position should be to refrain from deleting when in doubt.
Indeed. These policies and guidelines have a habit of popping up all over with the support only of those interested in developing the statement in question. The simple fact that it is there in no way implies that it has community support. It just means that most of the community probably doesn't know that it's there. To say that this policy cruft needs to meet exceptional criteria to be deleted is to pervert all notions of fair play. If the people who support this kind of cruft weren't so fearful that the community might strike it down they would have no problem with a voting process that remains open even after a guideline has been seemingly adopted. If the level of support falls below a pre-determined level some months later it would simply cease to be applicable. It often takes months before affected editors even notice that a guideline has been adopted.
Ec
All right. I'm sorry if the 'glazed over eyeballs' came across as insulting to TV-watchers. I used to watch Buffy, and my eyeballs glazed over :-P On the subject:
You both make a persuasive argument. I don't think every episode of every TV show is de facto notable for inclusion, and I also don't think we can base a guideline of notability on something like Nielsen ratings (i.e. this show is more popular than X, therefore it should be included). The top of that notability guideline is definitely in need of some rehabilitation, but lower down there is a link to a great essay from Uncle G:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Uncle_G/On_notability
If the core of notability is non-trivial coverage in reliable secondary sources (not just peer reviewed journals) then most episodes of most TV shows will fail that guideline, as will most movies and most novels. And yet, even the most obscure TV shows and episodes have fans who will want to have articles about their favorite characters, shows and episodes. There is an argument to preserving the totality of the output of popular culture for research or other posterity-related purposes, but that conflicts directly with Wikipedia's notability guideline. Holding on to an enormous collection of NN data is not the mission.
Maybe the solution is a WikiTV project, and listification of all episodes with wikilinks to related WikiTV articles? Then the project can have its own inclusion mission and guidelines, perhaps along the lines of all plot summaries are presumed to be accurate unless contradicted by a secondary source and all episodes of all TV shows are allowed.
Hopefully less 'radically off-base',
Nathan
On 21/12/2007, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
If the core of notability is non-trivial coverage in reliable secondary sources (not just peer reviewed journals) then most episodes of most TV shows will fail that guideline, as will most movies and most novels. And yet, even the most obscure TV shows and episodes have fans who will want to have articles about their favorite characters, shows and episodes. There is an argument to preserving the totality of the output of popular culture for research or other posterity-related purposes, but that conflicts directly with Wikipedia's notability guideline.
That sounds like an excellent argument for trashing the "notability" guideline, which has always been deeply problematic, particularly for its subjectivity.
Remember that the Wikipedia jargon word "notability" originated as a back-formation from "non-notable," which was Votes For Deletion jargon for "I don't like it." And that's about all it still is.
- d.
On Dec 21, 2007 1:07 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
That sounds like an excellent argument for trashing the "notability" guideline, which has always been deeply problematic, particularly for its subjectivity.
Wholly agreed.
Additionally, most such articles exist as break-outs from an article that nobody is arguing should be deleted. Breaking out detail that would make the primary article unwieldy is a long accepted Wikipedia practise.
Remember that the Wikipedia jargon word "notability" originated as a back-formation from "non-notable," which was Votes For Deletion jargon for "I don't like it." And that's about all it still is.
Notability is the attempt to provide solid rules for deletion because of the criticism that 'non-notable' is subjective. However, consistent subjectivity is still subjective, no matter how consistent it is.
Notability is also not well derived from core policy, IMO.
-Matt
Is there a technical reason why 'breakout' articles can't be article subpages? In that way they wouldn't be articles in themselves, but subsets of other articles, and you could judge the notability of an article in whole without judging its individual components separately. Maybe a worry that a proliferation of article subpages would make things unmanageable?
On Dec 21, 2007 4:44 PM, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 21, 2007 1:07 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
That sounds like an excellent argument for trashing the "notability" guideline, which has always been deeply problematic, particularly for its subjectivity.
Wholly agreed.
Additionally, most such articles exist as break-outs from an article that nobody is arguing should be deleted. Breaking out detail that would make the primary article unwieldy is a long accepted Wikipedia practise.
Remember that the Wikipedia jargon word "notability" originated as a back-formation from "non-notable," which was Votes For Deletion jargon for "I don't like it." And that's about all it still is.
Notability is the attempt to provide solid rules for deletion because of the criticism that 'non-notable' is subjective. However, consistent subjectivity is still subjective, no matter how consistent it is.
Notability is also not well derived from core policy, IMO.
-Matt
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On 21/12/2007, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Is there a technical reason why 'breakout' articles can't be article subpages? In that way they wouldn't be articles in themselves, but subsets of other articles, and you could judge the notability of an article in whole without judging its individual components separately. Maybe a worry that a proliferation of article subpages would make things unmanageable?
If by "technical reason" you mean something to do with the code behind the site, no, not at all. Subpages work, we just made the choice a long time ago not to use them. A subpage is really just a page with a slash in the title, the fact that's it's a subpage only causes a few very minor changes in how things work.
If a subject is worth a subarticle, it's worth an article, IMHO, I don't really see how having a slash in the name makes a big enough difference.
On 21/12/2007, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Is there a technical reason why 'breakout' articles can't be article subpages? In that way they wouldn't be articles in themselves, but subsets of other articles, and you could judge the notability of an article in whole without judging its individual components separately. Maybe a worry that a proliferation of article subpages would make things unmanageable?
Wikipedia used to have subpages,but went to a flat namespace and never looked back.
- d.
On Dec 22, 2007 12:13 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 21/12/2007, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Is there a technical reason why 'breakout' articles can't be article subpages? In that way they wouldn't be articles in themselves, but subsets of other articles, and you could judge the notability of an article in whole without judging its individual components separately. Maybe a worry that a proliferation of article subpages would make things unmanageable?
Wikipedia used to have subpages,but went to a flat namespace and never looked back.
- d.
Indeed. What we didn't have in those days though, was transclusion. An interesting idea would perhaps be to transclude smaller grain portions of an agglomerated article into it. Not sure if that is a wise idea or not.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
I think the distinction is it would clearly be a subset of another article that you couldn't reach without realizing it was a subpage, not a full article - with an appropriate header like {{article-subpage}} leading anyone following a search hit to the full article. As it stands, these episode articles get hit as individual articles without being viewed necessarily as part of a larger structure. You could maybe solve some of the same problems with portals, I don't know.
On Dec 21, 2007 5:24 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 22, 2007 12:13 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 21/12/2007, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Is there a technical reason why 'breakout' articles can't be article subpages? In that way they wouldn't be articles in themselves, but subsets of other articles, and you could judge the notability of an article in whole without judging its individual components separately. Maybe a worry that a proliferation of article subpages would make things unmanageable?
Wikipedia used to have subpages,but went to a flat namespace and never looked back.
- d.
Indeed. What we didn't have in those days though, was transclusion. An interesting idea would perhaps be to transclude smaller grain portions of an agglomerated article into it. Not sure if that is a wise idea or not.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
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On 21/12/2007, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I think the distinction is it would clearly be a subset of another article that you couldn't reach without realizing it was a subpage, not a full article - with an appropriate header like {{article-subpage}} leading anyone following a search hit to the full article. As it stands, these episode articles get hit as individual articles without being viewed necessarily as part of a larger structure. You could maybe solve some of the same problems with portals, I don't know.
I think the infoboxes help a lot there. A lot of them include episode numbers, links to previous and next episodes, etc, which make it quite clear that they are just one of many.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I think the infoboxes help a lot there. A lot of them include episode numbers, links to previous and next episodes, etc, which make it quite clear that they are just one of many.
All of the episode articles in this recent purge that I've looked at in detail already had well-developed infoboxes and categories grouping them together, but clearly that didn't save them. I suspect it merely allowed them to be "rooted out" more efficiently.
I think it would be best to establish once and for all that, _by itself_, "non-notability" is not a particularly good reason to delete anything. Lack of verifiability, sure - that's something that can be more objectively determined and that will still eliminate much of the problem cases that deletionists are concerned about. But notability is simply too subjective.
And, as my own personal dream solution, I'm sacrificing another chicken this Christmas to hopefully bring about some flavor of version flagging that allows people who are fundamentally offended by the inclusion of stuff that doesn't interest them to make it vanish from their sight without affecting those who still want to see it. Sort of like how we've already got CSS tricks to allow redlinks to be banished on a person-by-person basis, or stub templates, or spoiler templates, thereby allowing those things to peacefully coexist with the users that despise them. *wistful sigh*
On Fri, 21 Dec 2007, Bryan Derksen wrote:
I think it would be best to establish once and for all that, _by itself_, "non-notability" is not a particularly good reason to delete anything.
These weren't deletes, they were merges.
Perhaps we should recognize that merges can be de-facto deletes and start treating them as such.
Ken Arromdee wrote:
On Fri, 21 Dec 2007, Bryan Derksen wrote:
I think it would be best to establish once and for all that, _by itself_, "non-notability" is not a particularly good reason to delete anything.
These weren't deletes, they were merges.
Perhaps we should recognize that merges can be de-facto deletes and start treating them as such.
Indeed. They are merges only in name; in the vast majority of cases the various "list of" articles have only a tiny amount of information compared to the original articles. The only real difference between this and deletion is the ability for non-admins to go digging for the original text (assuming they know it's there for the finding, which most users wouldn't).
On Dec 22, 2007 1:57 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Fri, 21 Dec 2007, Bryan Derksen wrote:
I think it would be best to establish once and for all that, _by itself_, "non-notability" is not a particularly good reason to delete anything.
These weren't deletes, they were merges.
Perhaps we should recognize that merges can be de-facto deletes and start treating them as such.
Merges *cannot* be de-facto deletes very easily. There's a significant question as to whether these can be done without violating the GFDL.
On 22/12/2007, Ral315 en.ral315@gmail.com wrote:
These weren't deletes, they were merges.
Perhaps we should recognize that merges can be de-facto deletes and start treating them as such.
Merges *cannot* be de-facto deletes very easily. There's a significant question as to whether these can be done without violating the GFDL.
De-facto deletion in terms of "the material has been removed from any currently published page", and it is no longer there for a reader not explicitly digging into the history, rather than in the technical Wikipedia-specific sense of "we have chosen to perform the 'delete' action on the page"...
As an update for anyone who still cares, there is substantial agreement on the talk page of the guideline that it's perfectly fine. I think the subject of notability for episode articles is well worth discussing, but I lack the interest or energy to be the one doing the brunt of discussion (it's why I burnt out in the first place). If we're ever going to achieve a new consensus on this, now seems as good a time as any.
Johnleemk
----- Original Message ----- From: John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com Date: Sunday, December 23, 2007 11:50 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:EPISODE To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
As an update for anyone who still cares, there is substantial agreement on the talk page of the guideline that it's perfectly fine. I think the subject of notability for episode articles is well worth discussing, but I lack the interest or energy to be the one doing the brunt of discussion (it's why I burnt out in the first place). If we're ever going to achieve a new consensus on this, now seems as good a time as any.
Bah. I _just_ went on vacation, too. Guess I can't escape wikipolitics even now...
Bryan Derksen wrote:
As an update for anyone who still cares, there is substantial agreement on the talk page of the guideline that it's perfectly fine. I think the subject of notability for episode articles is well worth discussing, but I lack the interest or energy to be the one doing the brunt of discussion (it's why I burnt out in the first place). If we're ever going to achieve a new consensus on this, now seems as good a time as any.
Bah. I _just_ went on vacation, too. Guess I can't escape wikipolitics even now...
The purpose of this campaign is great, and I support it whoheartedly, but the timing at the beginning of a holiday period may have been a strategic error.
Ec
----- Original Message ----- From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Bah. I _just_ went on vacation, too. Guess I can't escape
wikipolitics even now...
The purpose of this campaign is great, and I support it whoheartedly, but the timing at the beginning of a holiday period may have been a strategic error.
It puts lie to the whole concept of "consensus" if a decision like this can swing permanently one way or the other based on whether it just happens to be made during a week when not a lot of people are paying attention.
On 12/24/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
It puts lie to the whole concept of "consensus" if a decision like this can swing permanently one way or the other based on whether it just happens to be made during a week when not a lot of people are paying attention.
Not really. Consensus is a very loose concept. Previous "consensuses" have been struck down on the basis that not enough people were involved (notably, the merger of WP:V, WP:RS etc) It wouldn't be unreasonable to challenge the consensus later on, if indeed not many people were involved.
Steve
Just FYI for everyone, this ArbCom case has closed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes _and_characters
I don't follow ArbCom cases too much but was following this one as a frequent editor of the Scrubs TV series articles. I was surprised at the lack of an apparent decision in this one. As I stated in AN, telling the editors to "work collaboratively and constructively with the broader community" seems ridiculous to me. The case made its way to ArbCom because the editors were unable to do exactly that. Granted, ArbCom doesn't get into content disputes, but telling users to work together who obviously can't seems counterproductive to me. There was a reason it went to ArbCom in the first place.
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett Sent: Monday, December 24, 2007 6:39 AM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:EPISODE
On 12/24/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
It puts lie to the whole concept of "consensus" if a decision like
this can swing permanently one way or the other based on whether it just happens to be made during a week when not a lot of people are paying attention.
Not really. Consensus is a very loose concept. Previous "consensuses" have been struck down on the basis that not enough people were involved (notably, the merger of WP:V, WP:RS etc) It wouldn't be unreasonable to challenge the consensus later on, if indeed not many people were involved.
Steve
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That is actually not all that uncommon for these types of situations - similar things happen in nationalism disputes. Rather than making the difficult content dispute decisions (which isn't their place) they admonish editors to work constructively and sometimes address conduct issues if necessary.
They didn't accept this case to deal with the underlying content dispute, and the decision principles cover the conduct that was objectionable which was the basis of 'cert' here.
Generally, there is no need to pause attempts to build consensus in a content dispute during an ArbCom case, as long as it is done without exacerbating the conduct and policy issues being addressed by Arbs.
On Dec 28, 2007 12:28 PM, Majdan, Nik nmajdan@aplmc.com wrote:
Just FYI for everyone, this ArbCom case has closed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes _and_characters
I don't follow ArbCom cases too much but was following this one as a frequent editor of the Scrubs TV series articles. I was surprised at the lack of an apparent decision in this one. As I stated in AN, telling the editors to "work collaboratively and constructively with the broader community" seems ridiculous to me. The case made its way to ArbCom because the editors were unable to do exactly that. Granted, ArbCom doesn't get into content disputes, but telling users to work together who obviously can't seems counterproductive to me. There was a reason it went to ArbCom in the first place.
I completely understand that ArbCom wasn't going to make a content decision (although, I still kinda question why not. If ArbCom is our equivalent of the Supreme Court, they should have this jurisdiction.). It just seems odd to me. ArbCom is our highest level of dispute resolution. So, those in dispute must have went through several other mediums of DR before getting to ArbCom. ArbCom takes the case, and spends a month reviewing evidence and what-not. Then, they come back with a ruling and that ruling is to urging the editors to work collaboratively and constructively with the community and implement an acceptable approach to resolving content dispute (paraphrase of actual ruling). Obviously, they are unable to do this and that's why its failed a couple previous rounds of dispute resolution. Just seems off to me. By the time a case gets to ArbCom, all matters of negotiations have failed. I don't even know what I expected ArbCom to do, it just seems like a lot of wasted time for an impotent ruling.
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Nathan Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 11:40 AM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:EPISODE
That is actually not all that uncommon for these types of situations - similar things happen in nationalism disputes. Rather than making the difficult content dispute decisions (which isn't their place) they admonish editors to work constructively and sometimes address conduct issues if necessary.
They didn't accept this case to deal with the underlying content dispute, and the decision principles cover the conduct that was objectionable which was the basis of 'cert' here.
Generally, there is no need to pause attempts to build consensus in a content dispute during an ArbCom case, as long as it is done without exacerbating the conduct and policy issues being addressed by Arbs.
On Dec 28, 2007 12:28 PM, Majdan, Nik nmajdan@aplmc.com wrote:
Just FYI for everyone, this ArbCom case has closed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes
_and_characters
I don't follow ArbCom cases too much but was following this one as a frequent editor of the Scrubs TV series articles. I was surprised at
the
lack of an apparent decision in this one. As I stated in AN, telling
the
editors to "work collaboratively and constructively with the broader community" seems ridiculous to me. The case made its way to ArbCom because the editors were unable to do exactly that. Granted, ArbCom doesn't get into content disputes, but telling users to work together who obviously can't seems counterproductive to me. There was a reason
it
went to ArbCom in the first place.
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Thank you.
On Dec 28, 2007 9:49 AM, Majdan, Nik nmajdan@aplmc.com wrote:
I completely understand that ArbCom wasn't going to make a content decision (although, I still kinda question why not. If ArbCom is our equivalent of the Supreme Court, they should have this jurisdiction.).
Well, we're not (although some parallels have been drawn). We're essentially the replacement for Jimbo's former role as the final arbiter of user conduct, especially when it comes to blocking/banning.
Speaking personally, I feel we are not equipped to make such decisions, both in terms of manpower and in terms of expertise.
I don't even know what I expected ArbCom to do, it just seems like a lot of wasted time for an impotent ruling.
While I obviously can't breach the confidentiality of our internal deliberations nor speak for other arbitrators, if an arbcom decision isn't as decisive as hoped, good odds are that either
a) We believe we do not have jurisdiction over the issue (either unanimously or by majority), or b) No decisive action had a majority (i.e. we disagreed too much to come to a resolution), or c) We had absolutely no idea what to do about the situation.
Arbcom is a committee, and committees by their very nature are not very decisive bodies, since a majority of the committee has to agree on any decision made. Furthermore, even though our rules say that a bare majority is sufficient, in practise we have preferred rough consensus over majority; very few rulings have been reached that are strongly opposed by a substantial minority of the arbcom.
I hope this helps a little,
-Matt
Thank you for your response. It definitely does help hearing a bit more how decisions are made.
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Matthew Brown Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 3:10 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:EPISODE
On Dec 28, 2007 9:49 AM, Majdan, Nik nmajdan@aplmc.com wrote:
I completely understand that ArbCom wasn't going to make a content decision (although, I still kinda question why not. If ArbCom is our equivalent of the Supreme Court, they should have this jurisdiction.).
Well, we're not (although some parallels have been drawn). We're essentially the replacement for Jimbo's former role as the final arbiter of user conduct, especially when it comes to blocking/banning.
Speaking personally, I feel we are not equipped to make such decisions, both in terms of manpower and in terms of expertise.
I don't even know what I expected ArbCom to do, it just seems like a
lot
of wasted time for an impotent ruling.
While I obviously can't breach the confidentiality of our internal deliberations nor speak for other arbitrators, if an arbcom decision isn't as decisive as hoped, good odds are that either
a) We believe we do not have jurisdiction over the issue (either unanimously or by majority), or b) No decisive action had a majority (i.e. we disagreed too much to come to a resolution), or c) We had absolutely no idea what to do about the situation.
Arbcom is a committee, and committees by their very nature are not very decisive bodies, since a majority of the committee has to agree on any decision made. Furthermore, even though our rules say that a bare majority is sufficient, in practise we have preferred rough consensus over majority; very few rulings have been reached that are strongly opposed by a substantial minority of the arbcom.
I hope this helps a little,
-Matt
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It's really not fair to say that such users are unable to work together. TTN, everyone, and myself, have continued to follow advice about making more time for discussion and trying to help users understand why these articles are being removed, rather than just forcing the issue. This is one reason I didn't think the case needed to be accepted. The real reason this was an arbcom case was because of the very large amount of articles that were being redirected, and that resulting in a lot of different people getting mad. That's very different than trying different means of resolving the dispute. This situation is far from hopeless, and despite the impressions you might have gotten, no one wants to be at each other's throats.
-- Ned Scott
On Dec 28, 2007, at 10:28 AM, Majdan, Nik wrote:
Just FYI for everyone, this ArbCom case has closed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes _and_characters
I don't follow ArbCom cases too much but was following this one as a frequent editor of the Scrubs TV series articles. I was surprised at the lack of an apparent decision in this one. As I stated in AN, telling the editors to "work collaboratively and constructively with the broader community" seems ridiculous to me. The case made its way to ArbCom because the editors were unable to do exactly that. Granted, ArbCom doesn't get into content disputes, but telling users to work together who obviously can't seems counterproductive to me. There was a reason it went to ArbCom in the first place.
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett Sent: Monday, December 24, 2007 6:39 AM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:EPISODE
On 12/24/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
It puts lie to the whole concept of "consensus" if a decision like
this can swing permanently one way or the other based on whether it just happens to be made during a week when not a lot of people are paying attention.
Not really. Consensus is a very loose concept. Previous "consensuses" have been struck down on the basis that not enough people were involved (notably, the merger of WP:V, WP:RS etc) It wouldn't be unreasonable to challenge the consensus later on, if indeed not many people were involved.
Steve
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On 28/12/2007, Ned Scott ned@nedscott.com wrote:
It's really not fair to say that such users are unable to work together. TTN, everyone, and myself, have continued to follow advice about making more time for discussion and trying to help users understand why these articles are being removed, rather than just forcing the issue. This is one reason I didn't think the case needed to be accepted. The real reason this was an arbcom case was because of the very large amount of articles that were being redirected, and that resulting in a lot of different people getting mad. That's very different than trying different means of resolving the dispute. This situation is far from hopeless, and despite the impressions you might have gotten, no one wants to be at each other's throats.
Yeah. The reason the AC has historically avoided content issues is because they are not and cannot be experts on everything, and really can't tell when someone's wrong or right in the general case; only their behaviour.
The other issue is good faith: everyone warring, at each others' throats, is almost certainly honestly doing their best for an encyclopedia. It's almost certain no-one is in fact aiming to do evil.
Sometimes, throwing it back is the least worst they can do. The ArbCom is not your mother, even when you want them to be.
- d.
I do not believe arbcom has truly contributed to the resolution of this dispute. All they are willing to say is wishing the people work together - of which a lack of it was the complaint. You are right Arbcom wont rule on actual content but surely taking action against speedy mass removal of content would only be sane.
By reviewing 20 December contribution of TTN:
I see TTN revert waring to remove content: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kracko&action=history
I see TTN, Jack Merridew, sgeureka and perhaps other faces that participated in the RFAR (I didn't look) piling up their vote on the AfD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Recurring_weapo...
I see a problem there! Disruption! Arbcom isn't willing to say a thing.
Failing to contribute to dispute resolution is a failure of Arbcom in this case. Arbcom hasn't even taken measures compelling people to work together.
I'll just watch the fire works now on. The community has continued to ignore the problem.
- White Cat
On Dec 29, 2007 2:37 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/12/2007, Ned Scott ned@nedscott.com wrote:
It's really not fair to say that such users are unable to work together. TTN, everyone, and myself, have continued to follow advice about making more time for discussion and trying to help users understand why these articles are being removed, rather than just forcing the issue. This is one reason I didn't think the case needed to be accepted. The real reason this was an arbcom case was because of the very large amount of articles that were being redirected, and that resulting in a lot of different people getting mad. That's very different than trying different means of resolving the dispute. This situation is far from hopeless, and despite the impressions you might have gotten, no one wants to be at each other's throats.
Yeah. The reason the AC has historically avoided content issues is because they are not and cannot be experts on everything, and really can't tell when someone's wrong or right in the general case; only their behaviour.
The other issue is good faith: everyone warring, at each others' throats, is almost certainly honestly doing their best for an encyclopedia. It's almost certain no-one is in fact aiming to do evil.
Sometimes, throwing it back is the least worst they can do. The ArbCom is not your mother, even when you want them to be.
- d.
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Ned Scott wrote:
It's really not fair to say that such users are unable to work together. TTN, everyone, and myself, have continued to follow advice about making more time for discussion and trying to help users understand why these articles are being removed, rather than just forcing the issue. This is one reason I didn't think the case needed to be accepted. The real reason this was an arbcom case was because of the very large amount of articles that were being redirected, and that resulting in a lot of different people getting mad. That's very different than trying different means of resolving the dispute.
You make an error that is common among politicians. It's a belief that more people would find a position acceptable if only you could explain it better. This seems to ignore the possibility that people are rejecting the position because they feel it's wrong.
Ec
While I am hopping that it is possible to better explain the rationale for those who want to trim some of these articles down, I'm also saying when we fail to do that we can't enforce the view by edit waring or by force.
--Ned Scott
On Dec 29, 2007, at 4:19 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
You make an error that is common among politicians. It's a belief that more people would find a position acceptable if only you could explain it better. This seems to ignore the possibility that people are rejecting the position because they feel it's wrong.
Ec
I see the arb com ruling as providing incentive for us to arrive at some compromise--more precisely, to try to force us to arrive at some compromise. (the alternative is that it will be decided by who's user behavior escalates out of control the earlier). As someone taking a basically opposite position from Ned on the issues, I understand his postings here and elsewhere as a sincere expression of a willingness to try to find something that will let us return to writing and improving articles--and I join him in this. Of course , neither of us can reasonably expect to really like whatever will be the resulting compromise. Once we all accept that, we should be able to find something.
DGG
On 12/29/07, Ned Scott ned@nedscott.com wrote:
While I am hopping that it is possible to better explain the rationale for those who want to trim some of these articles down, I'm also saying when we fail to do that we can't enforce the view by edit waring or by force.
--Ned Scott
On Dec 29, 2007, at 4:19 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
You make an error that is common among politicians. It's a belief that more people would find a position acceptable if only you could explain it better. This seems to ignore the possibility that people are rejecting the position because they feel it's wrong.
Ec
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On Sat, 29 Dec 2007, David Goodman wrote:
I see the arb com ruling as providing incentive for us to arrive at some compromise--more precisely, to try to force us to arrive at some compromise. (the alternative is that it will be decided by who's user behavior escalates out of control the earlier).
Making thousands of de-facto deletions, though, means it has *already* escalated out of control.
Ken Arromdee wrote:
On Sat, 29 Dec 2007, David Goodman wrote:
I see the arb com ruling as providing incentive for us to arrive at some compromise--more precisely, to try to force us to arrive at some compromise. (the alternative is that it will be decided by who's user behavior escalates out of control the earlier).
Making thousands of de-facto deletions, though, means it has *already* escalated out of control.
Indeed. I don't want to have to come to the same "compromise" that happened with the spoiler warning template. We need some sort of recognition that the status quot is for those articles to have _not_ been deleted and work from there.
Well, speaking as devil's advocate - what you're really saying is that they should be recreated. And perhaps before taking the step of recreation, it should established that these articles ought to exist in the first place.
Yes. Nathan is right that the better strategy is to defend the existing articles, and so establish that such articles should remain on wikipedia. A more widespread intelligent selective good-faith participation in afds is the ordinary wikipedians defense against cabals. And the best of all is to improve existing articles so people will be ashamed even to nominate them--or if they still do, we will establish a solid pattern of snow keep closes.
On 12/29/07, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Well, speaking as devil's advocate - what you're really saying is that they should be recreated. And perhaps before taking the step of recreation, it should established that these articles ought to exist in the first place.
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You're welcome to try, but I'm not sure how successful that will be for -all- of them. You can't blindly defend all episode articles and expect them to all have the same conditions. Personally, I do think we are in a time where real-world information is growing about entertainment, and we will get more real-world information about TV shows. But even then, it doesn't always mean that information is best represented in a per-episode format. For example, if that information can apply to more than one episode, or is more about a character than a specific episode, etc.
Still, that's not to say that it isn't possible. The series of The Simpsons episode articles continue to surprise me. I think they have something like 60 GA articles, and a hand full of FAs. However, even if every episode of a show has shown reasonable potential, that doesn't always mean that the existing summary is even worth saving. Some of them are nothing more than a few sentences that are copied off the List_of article.
Recently, since I've become more familiar with moving stuff over to external wikis (mainly Wikia), I've realized there should be extra care taken when you have something that people have worked on for a while. There really isn't any reason why we can't have a place for everything. (and in a perfect world, the Wikimedia Foundation would have some kind of fiction-wiki, given how high-traffic those articles are.) When I come across articles that have a reasonable number of edits, and good quality summaries, I myself will not take those to AfD (unless a total transwiki, with article history, is possible and done).
If you want to establish that a group of articles should remain, then the best way to do that is to show reasonable potential for real-world information that would justify those articles. The "cabal" is only trying to improve our coverage on fiction, rather than being buried under a sea of summary that does a poor job compared to the show itself.
-- Ned Scott
On Dec 29, 2007, at 8:27 PM, David Goodman wrote:
Yes. Nathan is right that the better strategy is to defend the existing articles, and so establish that such articles should remain on wikipedia. A more widespread intelligent selective good-faith participation in afds is the ordinary wikipedians defense against cabals. And the best of all is to improve existing articles so people will be ashamed even to nominate them--or if they still do, we will establish a solid pattern of snow keep closes.
Do not advertise 3rd party sites like wikia. I don't care if Jimbo founded it. Its just like any 3rd party site. Existence of any 3rd party site is no compromise. I do not write articles just to get Jimbo or some other site owner get rich. I do it for great encyclopedia only. People can copy it, reuse it, alter it at will but I do it for the encyclopedia. Lets delete all content on history as we do have a history wikia right? I thought so.
TTN is uninterested in improving anything. Open you eyes and read my post. I cited evidence of revert waring and blanking of "list of character" articles. He empties entire categories without bothering to say a word on them. And all that is stuff he does in 48 hours.
Out of world content is just the guise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:TTN#Doctor_Who
Their presence obviously hasn't stopped TTN. So long as TTN and others like him continue the provocative and disruptive mass blankings, I do not expect to see any resolution. Well... I suppose he will eventually piss off enough people to generate a non-favorable consensus.
In the perfect world of Wikipedia (don't involve the foundation) we wouldn't need to be having this conversation as no one would be mass blanking pages. We have dealt with this for so long on wikipedia. The entire deal with stubs. This is just a rehash of it. It will blow up just like those discussions.
- White Cat
On Dec 30, 2007 7:27 AM, Ned Scott ned@nedscott.com wrote:
You're welcome to try, but I'm not sure how successful that will be for -all- of them. You can't blindly defend all episode articles and expect them to all have the same conditions. Personally, I do think we are in a time where real-world information is growing about entertainment, and we will get more real-world information about TV shows. But even then, it doesn't always mean that information is best represented in a per-episode format. For example, if that information can apply to more than one episode, or is more about a character than a specific episode, etc.
Still, that's not to say that it isn't possible. The series of The Simpsons episode articles continue to surprise me. I think they have something like 60 GA articles, and a hand full of FAs. However, even if every episode of a show has shown reasonable potential, that doesn't always mean that the existing summary is even worth saving. Some of them are nothing more than a few sentences that are copied off the List_of article.
Recently, since I've become more familiar with moving stuff over to external wikis (mainly Wikia), I've realized there should be extra care taken when you have something that people have worked on for a while. There really isn't any reason why we can't have a place for everything. (and in a perfect world, the Wikimedia Foundation would have some kind of fiction-wiki, given how high-traffic those articles are.) When I come across articles that have a reasonable number of edits, and good quality summaries, I myself will not take those to AfD (unless a total transwiki, with article history, is possible and done).
If you want to establish that a group of articles should remain, then the best way to do that is to show reasonable potential for real-world information that would justify those articles. The "cabal" is only trying to improve our coverage on fiction, rather than being buried under a sea of summary that does a poor job compared to the show itself.
-- Ned Scott
On Dec 29, 2007, at 8:27 PM, David Goodman wrote:
Yes. Nathan is right that the better strategy is to defend the existing articles, and so establish that such articles should remain on wikipedia. A more widespread intelligent selective good-faith participation in afds is the ordinary wikipedians defense against cabals. And the best of all is to improve existing articles so people will be ashamed even to nominate them--or if they still do, we will establish a solid pattern of snow keep closes.
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Considering our recent pleasant interactions, I'm not sure what has caused you to become so harsh. For starters, I am not "advertising" anything, I'm noting another GFDL wiki site that the community can use as a tool. Right now I'm formatting a WikiProject page for transwiki'ing articles to wikis outside of the Foundation wikis, and we just learned on [[WT:FICT]] that http://annex.wikia.com now allows any user to import articles, not just admins (this means full article histories can easily be copied off-wiki). These are great resources, and I won't hesitate to tell everyone I can about them. And this isn't just limited to Wikia; there's a ton of wikis and wiki farms out there that are also great resources.
If you wish to make nothing but bad-faith assumptions about TTN, that's between you and him. If his behavior needs further evaluation, then so be it, but everyone involved is making an effort to not use strong-arm tactics, and instead use discussion.
People are redirecting/merging/deleting pages because the community at large does not believe the content to be encyclopedic. I know you disagree with that, but that is the way things currently are. How we handle the situation is what is being discussed, and what amount of plot summary we should include, and how we organize that information, etc. Some episode articles are justified, others are not, but there is no blanket "all episodes should be kept/deleted".
If you want to be pessimistic about this, and treat it like a war to be fought, then we will just be repeating the past.
-- Ned Scott
On Dec 29, 2007, at 10:47 PM, White Cat wrote:
Do not advertise 3rd party sites like wikia. I don't care if Jimbo founded it. Its just like any 3rd party site. Existence of any 3rd party site is no compromise. I do not write articles just to get Jimbo or some other site owner get rich. I do it for great encyclopedia only. People can copy it, reuse it, alter it at will but I do it for the encyclopedia. Lets delete all content on history as we do have a history wikia right? I thought so.
TTN is uninterested in improving anything. Open you eyes and read my post. I cited evidence of revert waring and blanking of "list of character" articles. He empties entire categories without bothering to say a word on them. And all that is stuff he does in 48 hours.
Out of world content is just the guise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:TTN#Doctor_Who
Their presence obviously hasn't stopped TTN. So long as TTN and others like him continue the provocative and disruptive mass blankings, I do not expect to see any resolution. Well... I suppose he will eventually piss off enough people to generate a non-favorable consensus.
In the perfect world of Wikipedia (don't involve the foundation) we wouldn't need to be having this conversation as no one would be mass blanking pages. We have dealt with this for so long on wikipedia. The entire deal with stubs. This is just a rehash of it. It will blow up just like those discussions.
- White Cat
Ned Scott had I considered you "garbage" in the matter I would not have even attempted to talk to you. I value your opinions on the matter greatly. I value what you are trying to do but you are missing a particular point: I documented multiple revert wars and article blankings TTN committed just in 48 hours. You are ignoring that completely which is why this post is so "harsh". His conduct contributes to the problem and not the solution. Hence it is disruptive. He must stop before we attempt anything.
One must discuss the matter first before taking action. That is the minimal standard of collaboration. Otherwise it is like a Cardassian court: the verdict is reached before the trial.
I have been patiently looking the other way in regards to TTN's conduct. My patience has a limit. Is the actions of TTN based on consensus? Community at large is ignoring the issue. Even arbcom is ignoring the issue for the most part. They do see a problem as per their discussion but are unwilling to act on it. Because of the ignorance and/or apathy of the wikipedia community as a whole, this issue has escalated and will continue to escalate.
I am a part of that community and I disagree with your statement completely. There are many other people that disagree. You do not assume what the community wants and assume it is what you want. You reach a resolution first and then it is very easy to enforce it. This matter is to be handled on a case by case basis. To be more specific on an article by article basis. This is what collaboration is about right?
If this isn't a war then TTN and others can very easily stop the mass blanking and discuss the issue throughly and reach a compromise. If they aren't going to stop willingly, alternative ways can be easily arranged.
Also advertising 3rd party sources as you are doing is something immensely disliked. Please stop doing so. The target wiki can be licensed under GFDL but that is still a 3rd party site. It is also very hostile to ask people to "get the heck out" to another wiki because some people will not allow them to edit here. It does not create a collaborative environment. People should feel welcome to the discussion not be shown the door. So I ask you not to do this anymore. Not here and not on wikipedia at least for a while.
- White Cat
On Dec 30, 2007 8:49 AM, Ned Scott ned@nedscott.com wrote:
Considering our recent pleasant interactions, I'm not sure what has caused you to become so harsh. For starters, I am not "advertising" anything, I'm noting another GFDL wiki site that the community can use as a tool. Right now I'm formatting a WikiProject page for transwiki'ing articles to wikis outside of the Foundation wikis, and we just learned on [[WT:FICT]] that http://annex.wikia.com now allows any user to import articles, not just admins (this means full article histories can easily be copied off-wiki). These are great resources, and I won't hesitate to tell everyone I can about them. And this isn't just limited to Wikia; there's a ton of wikis and wiki farms out there that are also great resources.
If you wish to make nothing but bad-faith assumptions about TTN, that's between you and him. If his behavior needs further evaluation, then so be it, but everyone involved is making an effort to not use strong-arm tactics, and instead use discussion.
People are redirecting/merging/deleting pages because the community at large does not believe the content to be encyclopedic. I know you disagree with that, but that is the way things currently are. How we handle the situation is what is being discussed, and what amount of plot summary we should include, and how we organize that information, etc. Some episode articles are justified, others are not, but there is no blanket "all episodes should be kept/deleted".
If you want to be pessimistic about this, and treat it like a war to be fought, then we will just be repeating the past.
-- Ned Scott
On Dec 29, 2007, at 10:47 PM, White Cat wrote:
Do not advertise 3rd party sites like wikia. I don't care if Jimbo founded it. Its just like any 3rd party site. Existence of any 3rd party site is no compromise. I do not write articles just to get Jimbo or some other site owner get rich. I do it for great encyclopedia only. People can copy it, reuse it, alter it at will but I do it for the encyclopedia. Lets delete all content on history as we do have a history wikia right? I thought so.
TTN is uninterested in improving anything. Open you eyes and read my post. I cited evidence of revert waring and blanking of "list of character" articles. He empties entire categories without bothering to say a word on them. And all that is stuff he does in 48 hours.
Out of world content is just the guise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:TTN#Doctor_Who
Their presence obviously hasn't stopped TTN. So long as TTN and others like him continue the provocative and disruptive mass blankings, I do not expect to see any resolution. Well... I suppose he will eventually piss off enough people to generate a non-favorable consensus.
In the perfect world of Wikipedia (don't involve the foundation) we wouldn't need to be having this conversation as no one would be mass blanking pages. We have dealt with this for so long on wikipedia. The entire deal with stubs. This is just a rehash of it. It will blow up just like those discussions.
- White Cat
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I have never defended "all" episode articles. Don't know anyone who has. Some of them are really minor and well worth merging; one of the factors is the importance of t he show. I usually word it as defending the defensible ones, I see I forgot he adjective this time.
And I agree with you that they do not necessarily need separate articles. It depends on the importance and the amount of material available; both real-world, and plot worth summarizing.
And I agree with including as much important real-world information as we can get, and, like you, I do expect to see more--though it typically takes a year or two for academic work to be published. But the plot and character and setting content is equally important.
Why should we look for another wiki? fiction is important, and plot is after all the basis of it. A fiction is fundamentally a story. I think in wanting appropriately full inclusion of this material I share the consensus of ordinary wpedians, as will be confirmed when we get a broad enough forum. But if not, not.
DGG
On 12/30/07, Ned Scott ned@nedscott.com wrote:
You're welcome to try, but I'm not sure how successful that will be for -all- of them. You can't blindly defend all episode articles and expect them to all have the same conditions. Personally, I do think we are in a time where real-world information is growing about entertainment, and we will get more real-world information about TV shows. But even then, it doesn't always mean that information is best represented in a per-episode format. For example, if that information can apply to more than one episode, or is more about a character than a specific episode, etc.
Still, that's not to say that it isn't possible. The series of The Simpsons episode articles continue to surprise me. I think they have something like 60 GA articles, and a hand full of FAs. However, even if every episode of a show has shown reasonable potential, that doesn't always mean that the existing summary is even worth saving. Some of them are nothing more than a few sentences that are copied off the List_of article.
Recently, since I've become more familiar with moving stuff over to external wikis (mainly Wikia), I've realized there should be extra care taken when you have something that people have worked on for a while. There really isn't any reason why we can't have a place for everything. (and in a perfect world, the Wikimedia Foundation would have some kind of fiction-wiki, given how high-traffic those articles are.) When I come across articles that have a reasonable number of edits, and good quality summaries, I myself will not take those to AfD (unless a total transwiki, with article history, is possible and done).
If you want to establish that a group of articles should remain, then the best way to do that is to show reasonable potential for real-world information that would justify those articles. The "cabal" is only trying to improve our coverage on fiction, rather than being buried under a sea of summary that does a poor job compared to the show itself.
-- Ned Scott
On Dec 29, 2007, at 8:27 PM, David Goodman wrote:
Yes. Nathan is right that the better strategy is to defend the existing articles, and so establish that such articles should remain on wikipedia. A more widespread intelligent selective good-faith participation in afds is the ordinary wikipedians defense against cabals. And the best of all is to improve existing articles so people will be ashamed even to nominate them--or if they still do, we will establish a solid pattern of snow keep closes.
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On Dec 30, 2007 7:01 AM, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
I have never defended "all" episode articles. Don't know anyone who has. Some of them are really minor and well worth merging; one of the factors is the importance of t he show. I usually word it as defending the defensible ones, I see I forgot he adjective this time.
And I agree with you that they do not necessarily need separate articles. It depends on the importance and the amount of material available; both real-world, and plot worth summarizing.
And I agree with including as much important real-world information as we can get, and, like you, I do expect to see more--though it typically takes a year or two for academic work to be published. But the plot and character and setting content is equally important.
Why should we look for another wiki? fiction is important, and plot is after all the basis of it. A fiction is fundamentally a story. I think in wanting appropriately full inclusion of this material I share the consensus of ordinary wpedians, as will be confirmed when we get a broad enough forum. But if not, not.
DGG
-- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
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I believe we all want "appropriately full inclusion", the disagreement is where "appropriately" begins. My general thought is that articles should be considered on their own merits, and permastubs should be merged or deleted, period, whether they're part of some type of "set" or not. Yes, that includes Popes and asteroids. Stick them on a list or merge them somewhere. Others want a permastub on everything in the world. Most everyone is somewhere in between. My hope is, in the end, we can get -somewhere- with it. I hope that "somewhere" includes "delete or merge unsourced, OR-laden permastubs". Others hope it's to leave them around. We shall see.
I think the disagreement is where appropriate ends. Do we toss out our notability and reliable sourcing guidelines in order to have complete sets of articles? This morning I thought about it this way:
When you hear of a project that has a complete description of every episode of every TV show, all significant (and most insignificant) characters, as well as all associated trivia - do you think Wikipedia, or something else? If that vision brings to mind Wikipedia for you, then you have a very different idea of accumulating the knowledge of humanity for open access than I do.
Maybe I'm way out in left field about this, but I think at the most we should include general descriptions of the most popular shows (if we have to, and if it meets all of our other guidelines). If people want to elaborate on individual episodes of merit (argh) then they should do it like this:
[[24_(TV_Show)/Episodes/The_World_is_Saved_part_909349]] so each episode does not get its individual article, and can not be separated from the main show. This also makes it easier to manage each show because you can just do an index of the directory 24_TV_show/Episodes/ rather than searching and making sure the same episodes aren't listed under different names, etc.
Nathan
On 30/12/2007, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I think the disagreement is where appropriate ends. Do we toss out our notability and reliable sourcing guidelines in order to have complete sets of articles?
"Notability", definitely. It's a meaninglessly subjective measure. Complete sets are a virtue in themselves.
- d.
So if we toss out notability, I can have a bio if I can prove I exist through a reliable source?
On Dec 30, 2007 3:28 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 30/12/2007, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I think the disagreement is where appropriate ends. Do we toss out our notability and reliable sourcing guidelines in order to have complete sets of articles?
"Notability", definitely. It's a meaninglessly subjective measure. Complete sets are a virtue in themselves.
- d.
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On 30/12/2007, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
So if we toss out notability, I can have a bio if I can prove I exist through a reliable source?
Living bios are different. But are you verifiable in third-party sources?
Remember that "notability" is a Wikipedia jargon word back-formed from the use of "non-notable" on AFD to mean "I've never heard of it."
- d.
Sure, I get a few hits. But I think my bio will say I am superman and Darth Vader, because with 100 million new frivolous articles - who would notice?
On Dec 30, 2007 3:40 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 30/12/2007, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
So if we toss out notability, I can have a bio if I can prove I exist through a reliable source?
Living bios are different. But are you verifiable in third-party sources?
Remember that "notability" is a Wikipedia jargon word back-formed from the use of "non-notable" on AFD to mean "I've never heard of it."
- d.
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We do have some sort of b'cracy going on. First you mass merge articles to a few lists after heavy trimming. Wait a month or two to calm the fan reaction. Merge these lists to a single list after heavy trimming. Wait a month or two to calm the fan reaction. Blank the list and convert it to a redirect to the main article.
I really do not understand this tendency to "mass merge" articles out of notability concerns. What are you doing? Do they become notable when merged to a long and unintelligible list? This is helping wikipedia become a better encyclopedia? Not everyone has a private broadband line going into their computer you know. You might, but the vast majority of the world doesn't. GPRS connections for example are no faster than 56k
Merges of lots of short articles with no hope of growing is understandable. Merges of long articles is not. One key problem when merging multiple LONG articles is that the merged page gets ridiculously long. Articles are shortened for this purpose and you get very little content. Then people complain that these list of character articles are unencyclopedic because there is little actual information on them. In other words due to a lack of information that were removed during the merge, list of character articles get blanked. We break articles apart when they get too long. We do not do the opposite.
Just because something contains little out-of-universe info, why does that mean a non-discussion auto deletion? Don't get me wrong, I do understand why we *want* out-of-universe info. I want out-of-universe info too. It keeps the article interesting if nothing else. What I do not understand is why we *require* out of universe info for articles to exist. Articles are *required * to be written with the use of [[WP:V|verifiable]] and [[WP:RS|reliable]] sources. Someone should explain me why is out-of-universe info required without wikilawyering me policies, guidelines or essays.
As Jimbo stated that seeking of a "universal notability" is a mistake. Harvard will not publish an article or a book on Pokemon species, Simpsons characters, Doctor Who vilans, Star Trek episodes anytime soon. This does not mean they should be bulk removed. We have articles on Simpons which is the shining example of how fiction related articles can be improved. Simpsons have had about 400 TV episodes. If they all become FAs that will be about 1/3rd or 1/4th of our current number of Featured articles. This is the strength of Wikipedia and weakness of snubs like Britannica. If you want Wikipedia to be a Britannica, you could just buy Britannica...
*Case study: *Unown
For the following article I see plenty of sources. Granted it isn't featured quality but it certainly isn't a stub. Note that some referances are not shown because someone forgot to add {{reflist}}
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unown&oldid=148901394
It was shortened to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unown#Unown
Which version is more encyclopedic? More readable? Overall more useful? Better sourced? Did the shortened version increase article quality?
You've just made a huge load of strawman arguments and misleading statements that border on outright lies of what actually has happened.
I recall you arguing passionately to save a recap episode that would never have any information to say about it. I remember you insisting that we have separate articles for -the same character- of that same show. I remember those of us on the talk page continually disproving your highly illogical and flawed viewpoint regarding notability, organization, and the amount of reasonable plot summary. You haven't changed in almost two years since then. If someone ever cited a guideline, you would attack that guideline. If we established a consensus, you would ignore the arguments and instead try to mislead others into joining the debate with strawman arguments.
How can you expect anyone, on either side of this debate, to have any respect for your views when you disrespect us with this rubbish?
--Ned Scott
On Dec 31, 2007, at 5:41 AM, White Cat wrote:
We do have some sort of b'cracy going on. First you mass merge articles to a few lists after heavy trimming. Wait a month or two to calm the fan reaction. Merge these lists to a single list after heavy trimming. Wait a month or two to calm the fan reaction. Blank the list and convert it to a redirect to the main article.
I really do not understand this tendency to "mass merge" articles out of notability concerns. What are you doing? Do they become notable when merged to a long and unintelligible list? This is helping wikipedia become a better encyclopedia? Not everyone has a private broadband line going into their computer you know. You might, but the vast majority of the world doesn't. GPRS connections for example are no faster than 56k
Merges of lots of short articles with no hope of growing is understandable. Merges of long articles is not. One key problem when merging multiple LONG articles is that the merged page gets ridiculously long. Articles are shortened for this purpose and you get very little content. Then people complain that these list of character articles are unencyclopedic because there is little actual information on them. In other words due to a lack of information that were removed during the merge, list of character articles get blanked. We break articles apart when they get too long. We do not do the opposite.
Just because something contains little out-of-universe info, why does that mean a non-discussion auto deletion? Don't get me wrong, I do understand why we *want* out-of-universe info. I want out-of-universe info too. It keeps the article interesting if nothing else. What I do not understand is why we *require* out of universe info for articles to exist. Articles are *required
- to be written with the use of [[WP:V|verifiable]] and [[WP:RS|
reliable]] sources. Someone should explain me why is out-of-universe info required without wikilawyering me policies, guidelines or essays.
As Jimbo stated that seeking of a "universal notability" is a mistake. Harvard will not publish an article or a book on Pokemon species, Simpsons characters, Doctor Who vilans, Star Trek episodes anytime soon. This does not mean they should be bulk removed. We have articles on Simpons which is the shining example of how fiction related articles can be improved. Simpsons have had about 400 TV episodes. If they all become FAs that will be about 1/3rd or 1/4th of our current number of Featured articles. This is the strength of Wikipedia and weakness of snubs like Britannica. If you want Wikipedia to be a Britannica, you could just buy Britannica...
*Case study: *Unown
For the following article I see plenty of sources. Granted it isn't featured quality but it certainly isn't a stub. Note that some referances are not shown because someone forgot to add {{reflist}}
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unown&oldid=148901394
It was shortened to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unown#Unown
Which version is more encyclopedic? More readable? Overall more useful? Better sourced? Did the shortened version increase article quality?
Same old, same old... The discussion yet again degrades to "all your statements are false and must be ignored". I suppose your stand point is so weak that you have to attack me on first opportunity. Your tone is insulting and incivil. Here I am telling you that "I value your opinions on the matter greatly" and in return you name-call my views "rubbish". I am willing to compromise but you aren't at all as you aren't even 'agreeing to disagree' - basic consensus in practicehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Consensus#Consensus_in_practice.
Let's not talk about the past two years, shall we. You make it sound as if you never encountered me whatsoever for the two years.
My understanding of "consensus" is a community wide decision based on collaboration of different users who may even have opposing views which cannot be achieved via vote stacking of identically minded people. My understanding of "guidelines" is that they have community-wide support behind it before they are put into practice. My understanding of guidelines is that they are not enforced as there are plenty of conflicting guidelines. [[WP:EPISODE]] neither has community consensus behind it nor is it being applied consistently.
All you, TTN and others want to do is delete the work of others. They/You draft guidelines strictly for this purpose, to delete and not to expand. Such guidelines are more of a "how to" to delete. There are plenty examples of like-minded people consistently voting in groups in a similar manner to delete. TTN's contribution is dedicated to mass deletion and he is operating like a bot. He isn't willing to compromise, he isn't even willing to participate in the general discussion. So it isn't surprising for such people to even give the basic courtesy of respecting my views.
Fine, I'll let the matter escalate. No one can say that I have not tried discussing this. While I do not necessarily expect people to agree with me, I do require that my views be respected at a minimum for me to participate in a discussion. This matter will explode sooner or later. This arbcom case was merely the tip of the iceberg. I suppose people are right. Mailing lists are a complete waste of time. I am done here on this matter.
All I want to do is passionately write an encyclopedia. For that crime I must be put through all sorts of nonsense. I know there is a phrase "no good deed goes unpunished" but this is ridiculous.
- White Cat
On Jan 1, 2008 4:34 AM, Ned Scott ned@nedscott.com wrote:
You've just made a huge load of strawman arguments and misleading statements that border on outright lies of what actually has happened.
I recall you arguing passionately to save a recap episode that would never have any information to say about it. I remember you insisting that we have separate articles for -the same character- of that same show. I remember those of us on the talk page continually disproving your highly illogical and flawed viewpoint regarding notability, organization, and the amount of reasonable plot summary. You haven't changed in almost two years since then. If someone ever cited a guideline, you would attack that guideline. If we established a consensus, you would ignore the arguments and instead try to mislead others into joining the debate with strawman arguments.
How can you expect anyone, on either side of this debate, to have any respect for your views when you disrespect us with this rubbish?
--Ned Scott
On Dec 31, 2007, at 5:41 AM, White Cat wrote:
We do have some sort of b'cracy going on. First you mass merge articles to a few lists after heavy trimming. Wait a month or two to calm the fan reaction. Merge these lists to a single list after heavy trimming. Wait a month or two to calm the fan reaction. Blank the list and convert it to a redirect to the main article.
I really do not understand this tendency to "mass merge" articles out of notability concerns. What are you doing? Do they become notable when merged to a long and unintelligible list? This is helping wikipedia become a better encyclopedia? Not everyone has a private broadband line going into their computer you know. You might, but the vast majority of the world doesn't. GPRS connections for example are no faster than 56k
Merges of lots of short articles with no hope of growing is understandable. Merges of long articles is not. One key problem when merging multiple LONG articles is that the merged page gets ridiculously long. Articles are shortened for this purpose and you get very little content. Then people complain that these list of character articles are unencyclopedic because there is little actual information on them. In other words due to a lack of information that were removed during the merge, list of character articles get blanked. We break articles apart when they get too long. We do not do the opposite.
Just because something contains little out-of-universe info, why does that mean a non-discussion auto deletion? Don't get me wrong, I do understand why we *want* out-of-universe info. I want out-of-universe info too. It keeps the article interesting if nothing else. What I do not understand is why we *require* out of universe info for articles to exist. Articles are *required
- to be written with the use of [[WP:V|verifiable]] and [[WP:RS|
reliable]] sources. Someone should explain me why is out-of-universe info required without wikilawyering me policies, guidelines or essays.
As Jimbo stated that seeking of a "universal notability" is a mistake. Harvard will not publish an article or a book on Pokemon species, Simpsons characters, Doctor Who vilans, Star Trek episodes anytime soon. This does not mean they should be bulk removed. We have articles on Simpons which is the shining example of how fiction related articles can be improved. Simpsons have had about 400 TV episodes. If they all become FAs that will be about 1/3rd or 1/4th of our current number of Featured articles. This is the strength of Wikipedia and weakness of snubs like Britannica. If you want Wikipedia to be a Britannica, you could just buy Britannica...
*Case study: *Unown
For the following article I see plenty of sources. Granted it isn't featured quality but it certainly isn't a stub. Note that some referances are not shown because someone forgot to add {{reflist}}
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unown&oldid=148901394
It was shortened to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unown#Unown
Which version is more encyclopedic? More readable? Overall more useful? Better sourced? Did the shortened version increase article quality?
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On Sunday 30 December 2007 14:35, Nathan wrote:
So if we toss out notability, I can have a bio if I can prove I exist through a reliable source?
Certainly.
Everything that has a verifiable existence is article-worthy.
On Dec 30, 2007 12:53 PM, Kurt Maxwell Weber kmw@armory.com wrote:
On Sunday 30 December 2007 14:35, Nathan wrote:
So if we toss out notability, I can have a bio if I can prove I exist through a reliable source?
Certainly.
Everything that has a verifiable existence is article-worthy.
Kurt Weber kmw@armory.com
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So I can write an article on my car? Public records exist regarding it, it verifiably exists. Should we really have an article on stuff like that?
On Monday 31 December 2007 01:35, Todd Allen wrote:
So I can write an article on my car? Public records exist regarding it, it verifiably exists.
Of course.
Should we really have an article on stuff like that?
I don't see why not. The whole point of an encyclopedia is to include the sum of all human knowledge; while that goal may not be completely attainable, that's no reason to try to come as close as possible. Ya gotta try!
At 12:01 PM 12/31/2007, Kurt Maxwell Weber wrote:
On Monday 31 December 2007 01:35, Todd Allen wrote:
So I can write an article on my car? Public records exist regarding it, it verifiably exists.
Of course.
Should we really have an article on stuff like that?
I don't see why not. The whole point of an encyclopedia is to include the sum of all human knowledge; while that goal may not be completely attainable, that's no reason to try to come as close as possible. Ya gotta try!
Sometimes these discussions miss an important part of what an encyclopedia is, assuming "sum" to mean the entirety. That's one possible meaning, but there is another: "sum it up for me" does not mean "core-dump every bit of information you have on me." It means to outline, to present in *summary*, and this is where we come to "notable." *However*, the problem with "notable" is that, in truth, it varies with person and context. What is notable to one is not notable to another, and what is not notable for me today may be notable, indeed crucial, tomorrow.
Human conscious does consider some information notable and some not. This is coded into "notable," it means worthy of notice, and notice is an action of consciousness. Our senses are normally filtered, most of the input coming in never makes it into consciousness. However, at times, we may turn our attention to part of it, and it is all there.
Thus the "sum of all human knowledge," ideally, would never involve deletion, at all. But it would involve categorization and hierarchy, so that anyone approaching the knowledge may proceed down a hierarchy from what is generally most notable to the finest available detail.
At the level of finest available detail, there cannot possibly be the kind of validation of fact that is utterly necessary for top-level information; practically by definition, much of this is unverifiable, it is coming in only through one channel, it may be even be noise in that channel. It is what it is. Perception or assertion.
If storage were a problem, then deletion of non-notable information would make sense. Given that this information is generally not deleted, however, but merely hidden, the question then becomes why we are hiding submitted articles from public view. For some articles, the answer is clear: the articles violate copyright, defame, or have certain other legal problems. Articles like that, however, don't need AfD for deletion. The problem, as I see it, is that all articles that are left for view sit on a level plain; basically there should be two broad classes of articles: verified and unverified. Verification requires some sort of process, and is only possible for articles that practically by definition are notable at least in a minimal sense: not only did someone care enough to write the article, but then someone else, quite possibly a privileged user (generally trusted by the community to do fact-checking), cared enough to verify it and was able to do so. Until then, *all* articles should be considered unverified, and, quite possibly, semi-hidden, not seen in a top-level view of the encyclopedia. (That might motivate some article cleanup!)
Hierarchies of knowledge are essential for intelligence.
On 12/31/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
So I can write an article on my car? Public records exist regarding it, it verifiably exists. Should we really have an article on stuff like that?
By a simple cost/benefit analysis, no. The benefit is minute. The cost is small, but real, and there is a risk of misuse of these types of articles.
Steve
On Sunday 06 January 2008 21:13, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/31/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
So I can write an article on my car? Public records exist regarding it, it verifiably exists. Should we really have an article on stuff like that?
By a simple cost/benefit analysis, no. The benefit is minute. The cost is small, but real, and there is a risk of misuse of these types of articles.
Steve
Actually, yes that is a legitimate subject for an article.
On Sun, 2008-01-06 at 21:21 -0600, Kurt Maxwell Weber wrote:
On Sunday 06 January 2008 21:13, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/31/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
So I can write an article on my car? Public records exist regarding it, it verifiably exists. Should we really have an article on stuff like that?
By a simple cost/benefit analysis, no. The benefit is minute. The cost is small, but real, and there is a risk of misuse of these types of articles.
Steve
Actually, yes that is a legitimate subject for an article.
I think he meant his own personal car, not the type/model.
Ian [[User:Poeloq]]
Nathan wrote:
So if we toss out notability, I can have a bio if I can prove I exist through a reliable source?
What "complete set" are you a part of that we have existing coverage of? The context we're discussing here is a situation where it's not there's no dispute at all about whether we should have an article about a TV series _as a whole_, but it's in question whether we should have more specific articles about individual episodes within that series.
Personally, I think it's entirely reasonable to have our criteria for inclusion be transitive. When an article becomes very large we split it into smaller sub-articles, it would be silly and counterproductive if we then turned around and deleted the smaller sub-articles because they're too specific in their focus.
That was the old structure of wikipedia. in 2002 I think. Bad idea.
- White Cat
On Dec 30, 2007 10:25 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I think the disagreement is where appropriate ends. Do we toss out our notability and reliable sourcing guidelines in order to have complete sets of articles? This morning I thought about it this way:
When you hear of a project that has a complete description of every episode of every TV show, all significant (and most insignificant) characters, as well as all associated trivia - do you think Wikipedia, or something else? If that vision brings to mind Wikipedia for you, then you have a very different idea of accumulating the knowledge of humanity for open access than I do.
Maybe I'm way out in left field about this, but I think at the most we should include general descriptions of the most popular shows (if we have to, and if it meets all of our other guidelines). If people want to elaborate on individual episodes of merit (argh) then they should do it like this:
[[24_(TV_Show)/Episodes/The_World_is_Saved_part_909349]] so each episode does not get its individual article, and can not be separated from the main show. This also makes it easier to manage each show because you can just do an index of the directory 24_TV_show/Episodes/ rather than searching and making sure the same episodes aren't listed under different names, etc.
Nathan
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On Sun, 30 Dec 2007, David Goodman wrote:
I have never defended "all" episode articles. Don't know anyone who has. Some of them are really minor and well worth merging; one of the factors is the importance of t he show. I usually word it as defending the defensible ones, I see I forgot he adjective this time.
Reminds me of webcomics again. Quite a few webcomic articles deserved deletion, no doubt. But the anti-webcomic crusade was indiscriminate; It's just that doing it indiscriminately always catches some deserving targets as well as some undeserving targets.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions..." How true, how true.
- White Cat
On Dec 31, 2007 6:51 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Sun, 30 Dec 2007, David Goodman wrote:
I have never defended "all" episode articles. Don't know anyone who has. Some of them are really minor and well worth merging; one of the factors is the importance of t he show. I usually word it as defending the defensible ones, I see I forgot he adjective this time.
Reminds me of webcomics again. Quite a few webcomic articles deserved deletion, no doubt. But the anti-webcomic crusade was indiscriminate; It's just that doing it indiscriminately always catches some deserving targets as well as some undeserving targets.
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Oh come on. TTN has stated several times that he is on a mission to remove content. That is his driving factor - that has been his driving factor. Collaborative editing does not mean people clean up the mess after TTN.
Consider a this case
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Video_games/... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Video_games/...
How much was TTN willing to start a discussion? He was expecting others to do so for sure!
Revert waring:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kracko&action=history http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waddle_Dee&action=history http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whispy_Woods&action=history http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dyna_Blade_%28Kirby%29&action=... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=King_Dedede&action=history http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Francis_%28The_Fairly_OddParents%2...
Blanking of a list of character article (twice)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_The_Fairly_OddParents_char... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_The_Fairly_OddParents_char...
Prod of an entire list of character article (it ain't a stub):
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_characters_in_SRMTHFG%21&a...
Take a look at this deletion nom:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/NiGHTS
How much discussion was there prior to the deletion nom to perhaps improve the article? None. Other users have worked to clean up the mess TTN made.
He empties entire categories (by blanking articles) and later nominates them for deletion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Captain_Simian_%26_the_Sp... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:All_Saints_characters&... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:All_Saints_episodes&d...
I see no discussion whatsoever at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Captain_Simian_%26_the_Space_Monkeys http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Captain_Simian_%26_the_Space_Monke... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:All_Saints_%28TV_series%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_All_Saints_episodes
If panic blanking of entire categories w/o discussion is acceptable then you'd be right, sadly that is not so.
All this above is what I fished in the last 50 edits of TTN. All content above are the result of edits between 19 and 20 December. I do not see much evidence of discussion in any of the linked cases.
Once Arbcom accepts a case it should be willing to resolve the dispute. It is obvious there is a problem. Arbcom could have at least made rulings compelling people to work together.
- White Cat
On Dec 29, 2007 1:19 AM, Ned Scott ned@nedscott.com wrote:
It's really not fair to say that such users are unable to work together. TTN, everyone, and myself, have continued to follow advice about making more time for discussion and trying to help users understand why these articles are being removed, rather than just forcing the issue. This is one reason I didn't think the case needed to be accepted. The real reason this was an arbcom case was because of the very large amount of articles that were being redirected, and that resulting in a lot of different people getting mad. That's very different than trying different means of resolving the dispute. This situation is far from hopeless, and despite the impressions you might have gotten, no one wants to be at each other's throats.
-- Ned Scott
On Dec 28, 2007, at 10:28 AM, Majdan, Nik wrote:
Just FYI for everyone, this ArbCom case has closed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes _and_characters
I don't follow ArbCom cases too much but was following this one as a frequent editor of the Scrubs TV series articles. I was surprised at the lack of an apparent decision in this one. As I stated in AN, telling the editors to "work collaboratively and constructively with the broader community" seems ridiculous to me. The case made its way to ArbCom because the editors were unable to do exactly that. Granted, ArbCom doesn't get into content disputes, but telling users to work together who obviously can't seems counterproductive to me. There was a reason it went to ArbCom in the first place.
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett Sent: Monday, December 24, 2007 6:39 AM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:EPISODE
On 12/24/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
It puts lie to the whole concept of "consensus" if a decision like
this can swing permanently one way or the other based on whether it just happens to be made during a week when not a lot of people are paying attention.
Not really. Consensus is a very loose concept. Previous "consensuses" have been struck down on the basis that not enough people were involved (notably, the merger of WP:V, WP:RS etc) It wouldn't be unreasonable to challenge the consensus later on, if indeed not many people were involved.
Steve
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-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ned Scott Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 11:19 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:EPISODE
It's really not fair to say that such users are unable to work together. TTN, everyone, and myself, have continued to follow advice about making more time for discussion and trying to help users understand why these articles are being removed, rather than just forcing the issue. This is one reason I didn't think the case needed to be accepted. The real reason this was an arbcom case was because of the very large amount of articles that were being redirected, and that resulting in a lot of different people getting mad. That's very different than trying different means of resolving the dispute. This situation is far from hopeless, and despite the impressions you might have gotten, no one wants to be at each other's throats.
-- Ned Scott
On Dec 28, 2007, at 10:28 AM, Majdan, Nik wrote:
Just FYI for everyone, this ArbCom case has closed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes _and_characters
I don't follow ArbCom cases too much but was following this one as a frequent editor of the Scrubs TV series articles. I was surprised at the lack of an apparent decision in this one. As I stated in AN, telling the editors to "work collaboratively and constructively with the broader community" seems ridiculous to me. The case made its way to ArbCom because the editors were unable to do exactly that. Granted, ArbCom doesn't get into content disputes, but telling users to work together who obviously can't seems counterproductive to me. There was a reason it went to ArbCom in the first place.
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett Sent: Monday, December 24, 2007 6:39 AM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:EPISODE
On 12/24/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
It puts lie to the whole concept of "consensus" if a decision like
this can swing permanently one way or the other based on whether it just happens to be made during a week when not a lot of people are paying attention.
Not really. Consensus is a very loose concept. Previous "consensuses" have been struck down on the basis that not enough people were involved (notably, the merger of WP:V, WP:RS etc) It wouldn't be unreasonable to challenge the consensus later on, if indeed not many people were involved.
Steve
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On 21/12/2007, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia used to have subpages,but went to a flat namespace and never looked back.
Indeed. What we didn't have in those days though, was transclusion. An interesting idea would perhaps be to transclude smaller grain portions of an agglomerated article into it. Not sure if that is a wise idea or not.
I believe this [is/has been] done with some of the cricket articles. Don't know how that experiment worked out... anyone familiar with it?
On 21/12/2007, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 21/12/2007, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed. What we didn't have in those days though, was transclusion. An interesting idea would perhaps be to transclude smaller grain portions of an agglomerated article into it. Not sure if that is a wise idea or not.
I believe this [is/has been] done with some of the cricket articles. Don't know how that experiment worked out... anyone familiar with it?
Yeah, their templates got zapped. Templates that pretend to be body text are rather susceptible to abuse and off-watchlist article changing, and have been used that way in the past. There's as yet no way to say "this template can only go in these articles."
- d.
Matthew Brown wrote:
On Dec 21, 2007 1:07 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
That sounds like an excellent argument for trashing the "notability" guideline, which has always been deeply problematic, particularly for its subjectivity.
Wholly agreed.
Additionally, most such articles exist as break-outs from an article that nobody is arguing should be deleted. Breaking out detail that would make the primary article unwieldy is a long accepted Wikipedia practise.
Remember that the Wikipedia jargon word "notability" originated as a back-formation from "non-notable," which was Votes For Deletion jargon for "I don't like it." And that's about all it still is.
Notability is the attempt to provide solid rules for deletion because of the criticism that 'non-notable' is subjective. However, consistent subjectivity is still subjective, no matter how consistent it is.
Notability is also not well derived from core policy, IMO.
-Matt
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"If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it."
Last I checked, verifiability is core policy, and that's from it. Sounds like a reasonable derivation to me.
The great value of these articles to me is hat I will typically not have seen a show, but it will be discussed in something I read or in conversation. To avoid appearing like a totally out-of-touch archaic idiot, I then want to find out something. (Thought the specific topics will vary, this is one key reason why people read encyclopedias, to find out the basics about things they are not familiar with. I want to find out about the basics; the plot, the characters, the setting, what films or whatever which I might have seen that do refer to it, what it might refer to that I do know about, the sort of basically trivial details or gags that people talk about. These are all things that the guidelines cut back on sharply. Of course, I do want to find out about them in a manner I can understand--if the article on a episode goes frame by frame by line through every detail, assuming that I can put everything in place, I generally can't follow it. That's the difference between a general encyclopedia like WP and a specialized fan site--but I need much more than the sentence or two about each episode that the plot summaries are now being reduced to. And I usually can follow complicated series plots better from articles about the characters than about each episode in sequence--but those article are usually now rejected. And all of this will hold with respect to each form of art to those who are not experts in it.
On 12/21/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Nathan Awrich wrote:
I think there is a specific standard for the notability of fiction for good reason. I'm not sure that having been seen by millions of glazer over eyeballs is necessarily enough for something to be notable
Excuse me, but "glazed-over eyeballs?" These are our readers and our editors we're talking about. Please refrain from dismissing their interests as unimportant because you don't share them. It would be just as inappropriate to refer to the authors and users of our sports-related articles as "overmuscled jocks", or our politician-related articles as "politics weenies", or whatever other derogatory characterization one might come up with.
If you don't find a subject area interesting to you, just _leave it alone_.
- it
may be, but I would argue that there have been tons of episodes of tons of TV shows and in 5 years no one will remember 99 percent of them, let alone cite them for anything. Additionally, they present clear RS problems - how often do reliable sources publish a treatment of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode?
I expect every one of them has a DVD with a commentary track available, for starters. A quick Google search also turns up http://www.tv.com/buffy-the-vampire-slayer/show/10/summary.html, http://www.buffyguide.com/, http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/, http://www.buffyworld.com/, and http://chosentwo.com/buffy/ on the first page of results. Some of these may not be as useful as others but I have a hard time believing that _none_ of them are reliable sources.
Unless you meant perhaps peer-reviewed journal articles?
I wouldn't go undeleting them unless you first get approval on policy changes. I'm sure the fan-types will support you, but the community in general seems to be leaning away from your position.
That doesn't seem to be the case over on the talk page of WP:EPISODE. So if the community in general hasn't approving of the guideline that was used as justification for deleting them, they can be deleted, but they can't be undeleted until everyone agrees? Double standard, no thanks. The "default" position should be to refrain from deleting when in doubt.
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Bryan Derksen wrote:
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Ok, I've asked at that page if there is any real consensus for the guideline. If you have an opinion, feel free to comment. I'm about to go on vacation now, and will leave therefore thankfully miss any ensuing drama.
I've chipped in too now, for folks who want a direct link it's at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Television_episodes#Is_there_any_actual_consensus_for_this_guideline_at_all.3F. I'm of two minds here whether I should start actually reverting and restoring some of the more obviously wrong-headed deletions that have already been done; on the one hand of course revert-warring is bad, but on the other hand I'm worried about the fait accompli gambit that appears to be in play here.
Really, this is a stupid overreach of notability-mongering. Any given random episode of a show like Scrubs has been seen by millions of people and is going to be available in DVD box-sets for years and years to come, that _alone_ puts it above 90% of the articles we have about books or wee little towns or dead congressmen or what have you. We've got articles on hundreds of asteroids that are known only by a few orbital parameters in a catalogue someplace and there's nary a complaint. I'm extremely annoyed.
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You are welcome to B, but I will likely R and start to D. Secondary sources or not. That applies to asteroids too, but they can always be listified later.
On Dec 21, 2007 11:51 AM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Ok, I've asked at that page if there is any real consensus for the guideline. If you have an opinion, feel free to comment. I'm about to go on vacation now, and will leave therefore thankfully miss any ensuing drama.
I've chipped in too now, for folks who want a direct link it's at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Television_episodes#Is_there_any_actual_consensus_for_this_guideline_at_all.3F. I'm of two minds here whether I should start actually reverting and restoring some of the more obviously wrong-headed deletions that have already been done; on the one hand of course revert-warring is bad, but on the other hand I'm worried about the fait accompli gambit that appears to be in play here.
Really, this is a stupid overreach of notability-mongering. Any given random episode of a show like Scrubs has been seen by millions of people and is going to be available in DVD box-sets for years and years to come, that _alone_ puts it above 90% of the articles we have about books or wee little towns or dead congressmen or what have you. We've got articles on hundreds of asteroids that are known only by a few orbital parameters in a catalogue someplace and there's nary a complaint. I'm extremely annoyed.
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You are welcome to B, but I will likely R and start to D. Secondary sources or not. That applies to asteroids too, but they can always be listified later.
Asteroids have excellent secondary sources - there's just usally not a ton of information on them, although for any number'd asteroid most of the important information is generally known.
I mean, please don't pick on asteroids - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/WilyD :(
WilyD
Todd Allen wrote:
You are welcome to B, but I will likely R and start to D. Secondary sources or not. That applies to asteroids too, but they can always be listified later.
Are you serious? I mention asteroids and now the articles about them are in your sights for removal too, "secondary sources or not"?
I also mentioned dead congressmen, wee little towns, and books. How about those?
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Todd Allen wrote:
You are welcome to B, but I will likely R and start to D. Secondary sources or not. That applies to asteroids too, but they can always be listified later.
Are you serious? I mention asteroids and now the articles about them are in your sights for removal too, "secondary sources or not"?
I also mentioned dead congressmen, wee little towns, and books. How about those?
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I believe you misunderstood "secondary sources or not". That's likely my fault for failing to word my point clearly. What I mean is, whether an article is standalone, merged, or removed should hinge on one question-"How much secondary source material is available on this subject?" If the answer is "plenty", we can write a comprehensive article, and should have one. If the answer is "a little", we should find a suitable parent article. If the answer is "none or namedrops/entries in directories only", it may or may not merit mention in a parent article, but definitely shouldn't be standalone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes_and...
This RfAr focuses on the topic in question. I think any discussion on the matter should wait until a resolution there. We can work with what we got from arbcom.
I will however say that the community has ignored the non-discussion non-consensus mass removal of episode and character articles to date which only escalated the problem.
- White Cat
On Dec 21, 2007 12:16 AM, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Ok, I've asked at that page if there is any real consensus for the guideline. If you have an opinion, feel free to comment. I'm about to go on vacation now, and will leave therefore thankfully miss any ensuing drama.
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joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
The relevant guidelines are WP:FICT and WP:EPISODE which are frankly being used to remove a tremendous amount of content. The sensible thing to do for all of this is to allow some minimum of inherited notability. But I doubt anyone is going to go for that. Almost every tv show on my watchlist is being wiped out. This isn't creating as much drama as the webcomics but it is far more pervasive. Many of the Stargate editors have left simply in disgust and I suspect this is true for other series as well.
The majority of us are not interested enough in these comics or TV series to become involved in the disputes. We will happily refer to the articles to give us background when an allusion arises elsewhere, but we are not about to edit there when we have nothing to offer but our ignorance. And spending my time there to engage in dramatic battle with others who are even more ignorant about the subject seems like an awful waste of that time.
The silent majority (to use a familiar cliché) is content to let those interested in comics and TV to go ahead and write about their favorite subjects. At least that means they are wasting somebody else's time. ;-)
In my moments of despair, I go so far as to speculate that we may be lacking good leadership.
Ec
Quoting Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
The silent majority (to use a familiar cliché) is content to let those interested in comics and TV to go ahead and write about their favorite subjects. At least that means they are wasting somebody else's time. ;-)
Yes, benign neglect for this sort of thing isn't such a bad idea.
Victory goes to the watchful and persistent. The rule about Canvassing prohibits notifying people who are likely to share one's views,so the AfD process can easily be manipulated by even small cabals. It applies off-WP too, so , to avoid violating it, i will simply mention there are multiple discussions at AFD, as well as WP:FICTION, WP:EPISODE, and every other possibly relevant policy page, without explicitly saying which way I think the debate should go.
Obviously, if only the Farscape people turn out for Farscape, and similarly others for their own favorites only, those who dislike all comics pages will likely be in the majority. If people realise that WP is made up of many small groups of hobbyists, then those who like one type of specialised article may realise they should support others as well.
Its not just comics. Similar attacks have been made on video games and even conventional novels. Similar ones are made for detailed articles about non-fiction also: hadith, verses of the bible, members of royal families. None of us cares about every one of them. But it does not take much effort to give support at AfD for things that look support-worthy. If everyone who cares about the sort of detailed content which is at the heart of WP were to show up there occasionally, and join some discussions about things where they can be a truly neutral party, those who want to delete all such content--and it's much the same group for all of these sorts of articles--might find they do not represent the consensus.
Or they still might. It's not my decision.
On 12/20/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
The relevant guidelines are WP:FICT and WP:EPISODE which are frankly being used to remove a tremendous amount of content. The sensible thing to do for all of this is to allow some minimum of inherited notability. But I doubt anyone is going to go for that. Almost every tv show on my watchlist is being wiped out. This isn't creating as much drama as the webcomics but it is far more pervasive. Many of the Stargate editors have left simply in disgust and I suspect this is true for other series as well.
The majority of us are not interested enough in these comics or TV series to become involved in the disputes. We will happily refer to the articles to give us background when an allusion arises elsewhere, but we are not about to edit there when we have nothing to offer but our ignorance. And spending my time there to engage in dramatic battle with others who are even more ignorant about the subject seems like an awful waste of that time.
The silent majority (to use a familiar cliché) is content to let those interested in comics and TV to go ahead and write about their favorite subjects. At least that means they are wasting somebody else's time. ;-)
In my moments of despair, I go so far as to speculate that we may be lacking good leadership.
Ec
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On 2007.12.20 04:04:24 -0700, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca scribbled 5.2K characters:
A long while ago I noticed that there were articles for most episodes from the "Scrubs" TV show, a very popular comedy series. They were mostly quite detailed, with comprehensive infoboxes and standardized sections, very far from "revoltingly bad". They were poorly categorized so I created [[category:Scrubs episodes]] and spent an hour or so tidying everything up, then moved on with other things since I don't watch the series myself.
A few days back I got an automated notice that category:Scrubs episodes was up for speedy deletion because it was empty. I see now that pretty much every episode article has been wiped out and redirected to the "list of Scrubs articles", which has only the barest minimum of information about each episode in it. Wikipedia has drastically reduced the amount of information it carries about this series. This has been happening a lot, check the history of pretty much any "list of <foo> episodes" article and you'll see a massive surge of redirects and link removals in recent months. I imagine some group of editors must have managed to make some change to a notability guideline somewhere and are now using it to cut a swath of destruction through such articles.
In one case I came across an article for an episode of a TV series that had been based on a much more obscure play of the same name. The article on the TV episode had been wiped and redirected. So I salvaged some material from the article's history to create an article about the _play_, and that article appears to be perfectly acceptable. I guess plays are "literary", and therefore not as easily tarred with the fancruft brush even though this one's not nearly as widely known as the "non-notable" episode that was based on it.
It's not just for articles about individual episodes. Recently the article about the main antagonist organization in the science fiction TV series Farscape, the "Peacekeepers," got deleted after a weak AfD with three keep votes and four delete votes. The rest of the articles about various details of the Farscape series started collapsing like a house of cards after that. I notice that one of the few survivors that's still up for AfD, [[Command_Carrier]], has as part of its nomination the comment "Many other Farscape articles have been AfD'ed since, and all that's clear is that they have been abandoned by fandom". Well, duh. Why should fans of Farscape bother spending any further effort on improving Wikipedia articles when so much of their work is just being arbitrarily swept away?
I also notice a number of "merge and delete" votes in that AfD. In fact, it looks like the deletion that started this all was a merge-and-delete case as well; material from [[Peacekeeper (Farscape)]] got put into [[Races in Farscape]]. I'm restoring the history. I don't delve into AfD often, are "merge and delete" votes really this common in general over there? If so that's a serious problem, it's riddling Wikipedia with copyvios.
A good idea for Google would be to have some mechanism to make it easy to import a Wikipedia article into a Knol complete with edit history. That'd allow this work to be transwikied over there and saved, and Google would get the content and the eyeballs that Wikipedia's throwing away. Win for our contributors, win for Google.
Yes, there's a definite [[chilling effect]] going on here. I won't go so far as to say that this is the deliberate end of such editors' actions (for all that "picking off the weak ones" first and then going after the strong has been listed by them as their strategy), that "amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to our interpretation of guidelines", but that has been the effect.
An anecdote: recently on the current TTN Arbcom case, one editor was adumbrating what he believed were examples of the kind of articles Wikipedia doesn't and shouldn't have. One example was Bill Clinton's dog.
As it happens, I knew perfectly well that we had an article on [[Buddy (dog)]], and [[Socks (cat)]] too. But I had to pause for a time: by mentioning those two articles as counterexamples on a page TTN and his supporters frequented, was I marking these articles for death as surely as if I had started the AfD myself?
After a couple of minutes of thought, I decided that even if Buddy got deleted (Socks is referenced out the wazoo and so in no danger, I thought), he was a popular enough presidential pet that his article would get recreated at some point. But it did take some thought, and I'm actually unsure that mentioning the two pets here is not even more dangerous for the articles.
-- gwern X400 NAVCM F-22 SERT rain RIT Gulf BLACKER clones cryptanalysis
On 12/17/07, Omegatron omegatron+wikienl@gmail.com wrote:
I wonder if the potential exists for a Wikipedia clone to make revenue from ads, and then distribute that revenue to the "best" editors based on trust networks and metrics of neutrality, etc. Reward people for making desirable edits that are neutral, reliably sourced, civil, and so on. If they set it up well and kept the open source licensing, I'd migrate.
The idea of paid editing has been discussed several times, and there is a good argument that it's not desirable to pay editors to write for Wikipedia, even if it were possible. People approach tasks very differently if they are rewarded than if they are not. And then of course, every system that uses metrics to determine rewards can, and most certainly will, be gamed. Then the game will overwhelm the original goal.
Steve
Utkarshraj Atmaram wrote:
"A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
I predict that some enterprising souls will quickly "create" knols by using GFDL text from Wikipedia, thus getting paid for the work of others. After that, other writers will take the same text and modify it to improve its popularity, creating dozens of variations on the same text.
Will
On 14/12/2007, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
Utkarshraj Atmaram wrote:
"A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read."
<
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
I predict that some enterprising souls will quickly "create" knols by using GFDL text from Wikipedia, thus getting paid for the work of others. After that, other writers will take the same text and modify it to improve its popularity, creating dozens of variations on the same text.
Will
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The text from the knol could then be copied back into Wikipedia (assuming licences still compatiable) and become a viscous circle.
Stwalkerster
On Dec 14, 2007 4:36 PM, Simon Walker stwalkerster@googlemail.com wrote:
The text from the knol could then be copied back into Wikipedia (assuming licences still compatiable) and become a viscous circle.
A "virtuous" cycle, you mean. Sharing is Good.
On 16/12/2007, Omegatron omegatron+wikienl@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 14, 2007 4:36 PM, Simon Walker stwalkerster@googlemail.com wrote:
The text from the knol could then be copied back into Wikipedia (assuming licences still compatiable) and become a viscous circle.
A "virtuous" cycle, you mean. Sharing is Good.
Referencing circles, however, are not, and lead to slight embarrassment all around when we find a Wikipedia article references a newspaper article that got its info from an earlier version of the same Wikipedia article ;-)
- d.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Omegatron wrote:
On Dec 14, 2007 4:36 PM, Simon Walker stwalkerster@googlemail.com wrote:
The text from the knol could then be copied back into Wikipedia (assuming licences still compatiable) and become a viscous circle.
A "virtuous" cycle, you mean. Sharing is Good.
Nah. It'll move slowly enough to qualify for "viscous." I agree that it is unlikely to be vicious.
- -- Sean Barrett | >ARE YOU SAYING NO JUST TO BE NEGATIVE? sean@epoptic.com | >_
On 12/14/07, Simon Walker stwalkerster@googlemail.com wrote:
The text from the knol could then be copied back into Wikipedia (assuming licences still compatiable) and become a viscous circle.
This is how fiction become ubiquitous fact. Which crossed the road first, the chicken or the egg?
—C.W.
On Dec 14, 2007 3:24 PM, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
I predict that some enterprising souls will quickly "create" knols by using GFDL text from Wikipedia, thus getting paid for the work of others. After that, other writers will take the same text and modify it to improve its popularity, creating dozens of variations on the same text.
Will
Ha, yikes. It will be a race! What will google do when there are 50 articles with the same text about the same thing... As long as attribution is ok, I don't guess this is a licensing issue, but it's still kinda ugly.
That's the real world. On any subject about which contradictory views are possible, they are present. There will be a place for those information sources attempting to provide a reliable synthesis. The goal is to make WP the source which can be shown to be the most reliable at it, and the WP hypothesis is that this can be done by collaborative editing.
On 12/14/07, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
On Dec 14, 2007 3:24 PM, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
I predict that some enterprising souls will quickly "create" knols by using GFDL text from Wikipedia, thus getting paid for the work of others. After that, other writers will take the same text and modify it to improve its popularity, creating dozens of variations on the same text.
Will
Ha, yikes. It will be a race! What will google do when there are 50 articles with the same text about the same thing... As long as attribution is ok, I don't guess this is a licensing issue, but it's still kinda ugly.
Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion
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