On 12/31/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
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."
Really?
Steve
On 31/12/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/31/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
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."
Really?
Really. "Non-notable" was VFD speak for "I don't like it" or "I've never heard of it." From this came the back-formation "notable" and a series of specious "notability" guidelines which have somehow failed to collapse under their own weight.
- d.
On Dec 31, 2007 8:41 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/12/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/31/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
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."
Really?
Really. "Non-notable" was VFD speak for "I don't like it" or "I've never heard of it."
More specifically, it came about during a time when some administrators were discussing not "counting" "votes" which failed to explain themselves. A good theory if you want VFD to not be a vote, but it had the unintended consequence of causing people to make up a meaningless explanation. "Delete. Not notable." I seem to remember retaliating against this a bit with quite a few "Keep. Notable." "votes".
On 1/1/08, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
More specifically, it came about during a time when some administrators were discussing not "counting" "votes" which failed to explain themselves. A good theory if you want VFD to not be a vote, but it had the unintended consequence of causing people to make up a
Bleh. We tried to enforce thinking?
I really hate "notability". There's this general issue of what do we include, and what do we not include, and there are probably 4 or 5 totally different approaches we could take...and "notability" is one of the worst. Someone fix it, pls, tx.
Steve
On 01/01/2008, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Bleh. We tried to enforce thinking?
I really hate "notability". There's this general issue of what do we include, and what do we not include, and there are probably 4 or 5 totally different approaches we could take...and "notability" is one of the worst. Someone fix it, pls, tx.
No. All the others are worse. Importance sounds great until you realize that rather a lot of our articles would be about sanitation engineers and would have to pretty much entirely consist of original research. Mind you that assumes that we could even a agree that preventing large numbers of human deaths is important.
"Everything we can find a source for" fails to consider the existence of tabloids and various propaganda organs.
"Everything we can find a reliable source for" apparently violates BLP.
"Everything we can find a non trivial number of reliable sources for or show that such sources are likely to exist" is pretty much identical to notability.
"Everything that people agree should be in an encyclopedia" might look good on paper but a case could be made under it for deleting [[Cat]]
No notability is a good as you are going to get. Well enough defined that people can generally agree what to argue over and fuzzy enough to avoid breaking down too spectacularly when faced with a corner case.
On 01/01/2008, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Tue, 1 Jan 2008, geni wrote:
"Everything we can find a reliable source for" apparently violates BLP.
How about "everything we can find a reliable source for, except when BLP is involved"?
Hits issues with census records that get published. So that would include pretty much everyone who lived in the UK between 1841 and 1901. Then you have the various military records and the like.
I think every Army personnel has a millitary record. That is both a reliable and verifiable source.
The idea why we asked for secondary sources was to 'get rid of' articles on insignificant garage bands and such. It is effective in doing that but isn't really helping in the case of army personnel.
I think what we should seek with notability is significance not the availability of secondary sources. I mean if a 4 year old British girl goes missing - we get articles on that. Her going missing although tragic is probably less significant than an average TV episode on Star Trek, a series that has been on the air for 37 years.
Now I am not asking for the deletion of any articles. I just think we need to loosen up on notability based deletion significantly.
-- White Cat
On Jan 1, 2008 11:23 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 01/01/2008, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Tue, 1 Jan 2008, geni wrote:
"Everything we can find a reliable source for" apparently violates
BLP.
How about "everything we can find a reliable source for, except when BLP
is
involved"?
Hits issues with census records that get published. So that would include pretty much everyone who lived in the UK between 1841 and 1901. Then you have the various military records and the like.
-- geni
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Jan 1, 2008 4:23 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 01/01/2008, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Tue, 1 Jan 2008, geni wrote:
"Everything we can find a reliable source for" apparently violates BLP.
How about "everything we can find a reliable source for, except when BLP is involved"?
Hits issues with census records that get published. So that would include pretty much everyone who lived in the UK between 1841 and 1901. Then you have the various military records and the like.
So what?
On 01/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
So what?
We do not have the capacity to maintain 500 million 1-3 line articles.
On Jan 1, 2008 6:59 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 01/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
So what?
We do not have the capacity to maintain 500 million 1-3 line articles.
Who doesn't? And why not?
On 02/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Jan 1, 2008 6:59 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 01/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
So what?
We do not have the capacity to maintain 500 million 1-3 line articles.
Who doesn't?
People who edit wikipedia.
And why not?
Do the maths. If you are unable to handle the maths have a look at how many people governments employ to process that type of information..
geni wrote:
On 02/01/2008, Anthony wrote:
On Jan 1, 2008 6:59 PM, geni wrote:
On 01/01/2008, Anthony wrote:
So what?
We do not have the capacity to maintain 500 million 1-3 line articles.
Who doesn't?
People who edit wikipedia.
And why not?
Do the maths. If you are unable to handle the maths have a look at how many people governments employ to process that type of information..
Doing the maths . . . 500 million is the kind of pure hyperbole that will only pleasure the person who likes to count the individual pieces of straw in his straw men.
Ec
On 1/2/08, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We do not have the capacity to maintain 500 million 1-3 line articles.
Geni is right here. There is a basic tradeoff between three factors: 1) The value of the article to the encyclopaedia 2) The potential for harm to us or others caused by that article 3) The cost in hardware and volunteer effort etc in maintaining that article
Any measure of "value" should include the value of comprehensiveness, the value of authoritativeness etc, even if an individual article appears to be unimportant.
"Potential harm" includes things like spam, the amount of time wasted by people arguing on highly divisive topics, libel, misinformation etc. History topics generally have less potential for harm than BLPs.
And in cost, I note that many stubs I've written seem to have had a lot of maintenance effort put into them, as people trawl past, updating categories, interwikis, stub tags etc etc. A sudden influx of 500 million stubs would cost far more volunteer effort than we have available. Also, there are greater costs in distribution, selecting, filtering etc, as we pass on our database to third parties. Articles about currently trading companies and websites seem to require greater volunteer effort in keeping them NPOV than do articles about defunct companies, for instance.
I would like to see any policy on inclusion/scope/notability/importance explicitly address the tradeoff between these factors and offer different rules in different areas.
Steve
On Jan 1, 2008 7:59 PM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
A sudden influx of 500 million stubs would cost far more volunteer effort than we have available.
A sudden influx of 500 million stubs would also *require* far more volunteer effort than we have available. No one has suggested allowing bots to create such stubs, after all.
Incidentally, running 500 million stubs through AFD would also require far more volunteer effort than is available.
On 02/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
A sudden influx of 500 million stubs would also *require* far more volunteer effort than we have available. No one has suggested allowing bots to create such stubs, after all.
With semi automated tools it could be done in about 5 years probably less.
Incidentally, running 500 million stubs through AFD would also require far more volunteer effort than is available.
So? there are two other far more effective deletion methods available.
On Jan 1, 2008 8:49 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
A sudden influx of 500 million stubs would also *require* far more volunteer effort than we have available. No one has suggested allowing bots to create such stubs, after all.
With semi automated tools it could be done in about 5 years probably less.
I'm sure a policy on semi-automated article generation could be devised within those 5 years. How many people do you think could create this many articles in 5 years, anyway? I certainly don't see it happening with only one person, if that's what you were getting at.
And where can I download this database of 500 million entries? It's kind of interesting that it's out there in the first place.
Incidentally, running 500 million stubs through AFD would also require far more volunteer effort than is available.
So? there are two other far more effective deletion methods available.
To delete an article on a dead person based on a reliable source? Is there a CSD criterion for that? Or are you suggesting one be added (in which case one could be added for semi-automated article generation of articles on dead people).
Is there a [[Wikipedia:Devolution of a discussion]]?
Nathan
On 02/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Jan 1, 2008 8:49 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
A sudden influx of 500 million stubs would also *require* far more volunteer effort than we have available. No one has suggested allowing bots to create such stubs, after all.
With semi automated tools it could be done in about 5 years probably less.
I'm sure a policy on semi-automated article generation could be devised within those 5 years. How many people do you think could create this many articles in 5 years, anyway? I certainly don't see it happening with only one person, if that's what you were getting at.
Depends how semi automated the tool actually is. I understand that there are social networking sites with very large numbers of pages.
And where can I download this database of 500 million entries? It's kind of interesting that it's out there in the first place.
I think it's called myspace.
I'm not aware of any online database of 500 million dead people. That was an estimate based on the th4e likely size of various countries military records and the various censuses that are becoming available.
Incidentally, running 500 million stubs through AFD would also require far more volunteer effort than is available.
So? there are two other far more effective deletion methods available.
To delete an article on a dead person based on a reliable source? Is there a CSD criterion for that?
A7 but bot assisted mass prodding and deletion would probably get a higher through put.
On Jan 1, 2008 9:49 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Jan 1, 2008 8:49 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
A sudden influx of 500 million stubs would also *require* far more volunteer effort than we have available. No one has suggested allowing bots to create such stubs, after all.
With semi automated tools it could be done in about 5 years probably less.
I'm sure a policy on semi-automated article generation could be devised within those 5 years. How many people do you think could create this many articles in 5 years, anyway? I certainly don't see it happening with only one person, if that's what you were getting at.
Depends how semi automated the tool actually is. I understand that there are social networking sites with very large numbers of pages.
Well, you're the one making the assertion that allowing articles on dead people based on reliable sources would overwhelm Wikipedia with 500 million semi-automated entries, so I'll let you provide the explanation for how that's going to happen. Personally, I don't see it happening in just 5 years, at least not without some major technology breakthrough.
And where can I download this database of 500 million entries? It's kind of interesting that it's out there in the first place.
I think it's called myspace.
Myspace is not a reliable source.
I'm not aware of any online database of 500 million dead people. That was an estimate based on the th4e likely size of various countries military records and the various censuses that are becoming available.
But then you went on to talk about "semi-automated article generation", which would require those records to be readily available in an electronic form. If you're saying that people are going to go to their local archives and look up this information to copy it in, we're either talking about tens of thousands of participants in this venture or about much more than 5 years.
Incidentally, running 500 million stubs through AFD would also require far more volunteer effort than is available.
So? there are two other far more effective deletion methods available.
To delete an article on a dead person based on a reliable source? Is there a CSD criterion for that?
A7 but bot assisted mass prodding and deletion would probably get a higher through put.
Mass prodding can be done regardless of notability policy, though. As for A7, you've already pointed out one flaw with relying on assertions of "importance".
Of course, in the case of 500 million semi-automated stub creations, IAR should be enough to stop that.
geni wrote:
On 02/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Jan 1, 2008 8:49 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote
Incidentally, running 500 million stubs through AFD would also require far more volunteer effort than is available.
So? there are two other far more effective deletion methods available.
To delete an article on a dead person based on a reliable source? Is there a CSD criterion for that?
A7 but bot assisted mass prodding and deletion would probably get a higher through put.
Now I understand: the way of measuring the success of deletion processes is on the gross number of articles deleted. It's like putting traffic cops on a quota system.
Ec
On 02/01/2008, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
geni wrote:
On 02/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Jan 1, 2008 8:49 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote
Incidentally, running 500 million stubs through AFD would also require far more volunteer effort than is available.
So? there are two other far more effective deletion methods available.
To delete an article on a dead person based on a reliable source? Is there a CSD criterion for that?
A7 but bot assisted mass prodding and deletion would probably get a higher through put.
Now I understand: the way of measuring the success of deletion processes is on the gross number of articles deleted. It's like putting traffic cops on a quota system.
Depends on how may articles you have to deal with. Up to about 10 million keeping the error rate low is the driving force. Beyond that as the inability to maintain kicks in the balance should be expected to shift somewhat.
For example at the present time a fairly significant case could be made that we should be more ready to delete articles on "universities" since it would appear that our ability to maintain such articles in a state where they are not actively misleading is being surpassed by the shear number of the darn things.
geni wrote:
Depends on how may articles you have to deal with. Up to about 10 million keeping the error rate low is the driving force. Beyond that as the inability to maintain kicks in the balance should be expected to shift somewhat.
For example at the present time a fairly significant case could be made that we should be more ready to delete articles on "universities" since it would appear that our ability to maintain such articles in a state where they are not actively misleading is being surpassed by the shear number of the darn things.
Hm, I made the same case for low-notability bios a long time ago. Only when we fail to maintain them against determined POV pushers, libelers and malicious exes - far more damage is done than with universities.
Perhaps it is time to look again at out "default is keep" in areas where we have a maintenance problem that is damaging us. A gentle move towards "we keep what we agree to keep", in these specific areas, is perhaps overdue.
Doc
doc wrote:
Perhaps it is time to look again at out "default is keep" in areas where we have a maintenance problem that is damaging us. A gentle move towards "we keep what we agree to keep", in these specific areas, is perhaps overdue.
This is certainly a retrograde proposal. These maintenance problems are with with certain editors, not with the articles. Making life difficult for the good-faith editors just because their articles tend to be the favorite targets of various problem editors is too much like punishing the victim instead of the offender.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
doc wrote:
Perhaps it is time to look again at out "default is keep" in areas where we have a maintenance problem that is damaging us. A gentle move towards "we keep what we agree to keep", in these specific areas, is perhaps overdue.
This is certainly a retrograde proposal. These maintenance problems are with with certain editors, not with the articles. Making life difficult for the good-faith editors just because their articles tend to be the favorite targets of various problem editors is too much like punishing the victim instead of the offender.
Ec
Hm, the "victim" here is the subject I'd say. And the problem lies not with "one or two editors" but with a community that insists in keeping more biographies than it can realistically maintain - so we get the moronic chanting of "keep, in theory this can be fixed" by people unwilling to lift a finger to keep it fixed.
The problem with your response it that it is extremely myopic. It sees "fairness" and "righteousness" only in terms of the community and the rights of editors.
Having an article I've authored deleted may be annoying, but it is not anywhere in the same league of "punishment" as finding that a high-profile website you've never heard of has been hosting a character-assassinating biography on you written by someone who hates you. And when you complain you find they /might/ clean it up, but they have no realistic mechanism or interest in preventing a re-occurrence, unless you personally log in every day and check it.
That's what I'd really call "punishing the victim"!
Doc
On Jan 2, 2008 7:26 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
For example at the present time a fairly significant case could be made that we should be more ready to delete articles on "universities" since it would appear that our ability to maintain such articles in a state where they are not actively misleading is being surpassed by the shear number of the darn things.
What portion of articles on universities would you say are currently in an actively misleading state? And what portion of articles in general would you say are currently in this state?
On 03/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
What portion of articles on universities would you say are currently in an actively misleading state?
Me? pretty low but then I use a fairly limited definition of university. "universities" are a different matter.
And what portion of articles in general would you say are currently in this state?
A few percent.
On Jan 2, 2008 9:37 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 03/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
What portion of articles on universities would you say are currently in an actively misleading state?
Me? pretty low but then I use a fairly limited definition of university. "universities" are a different matter.
Oh please. "universities", then. I'm trying to get a feeling for how big of a problem you think this is.
I also thought of something while waiting for your response. If maintenance is the problem, wouldn't protection be better than deletion? Instead of deleting 80% of articles on "universities" to reduce the maintenance load, why not protect them on a rotating schedule where 20% are unprotected each day during a five day period?
On Jan 3, 2008 9:19 AM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
I also thought of something while waiting for your response. If maintenance is the problem, wouldn't protection be better than deletion? Instead of deleting 80% of articles on "universities" to reduce the maintenance load, why not protect them on a rotating schedule where 20% are unprotected each day during a five day period?
WP:CREEP aside, sounds like a maintenance nightmare, unless it could be done by bots. IMHO it would be better to coordinate maintenance in a useful way rather than skipping a coordination attempt and going right to protection.
On 1/3/08, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 3, 2008 9:19 AM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
I also thought of something while waiting for your response. If maintenance is the problem, wouldn't protection be better than deletion? Instead of deleting 80% of articles on "universities" to reduce the maintenance load, why not protect them on a rotating schedule where 20% are unprotected each day during a five day period?
WP:CREEP aside, sounds like a maintenance nightmare, unless it could be done by bots. IMHO it would be better to coordinate maintenance in a useful way rather than skipping a coordination attempt and going right to protection.
It'd definitely have to be done by bots, if not coded into the software. And yeah, doing a better job of maintenance would be a much better solution. I only presented protection as a better solution than deletion for dealing with problems of vandalism.
I think what people are trying to say is that we have a growing number of articles and they can't keep up with it. So the intention is removing them in bulk/protecting them in bulk so keeping up with them is possible. No one has said this but this is something implied overal.
I think this is fundamentally flawed. We have plenty of articles in terrible condition. Improving an article does not require a deletion.
If you can't keep up with the articles, you probably are not working collaboratively enough. Why is vandalism hardly a problem? There are groups of users that work together to tackle the problem. Why is POV pushing and low quality articles are a problem? Hardly anyone works on those. And those do work cure the problem by killing it. It is definitely not wise to kill a mosquito with a howitzer gun. That's whats happening.
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. I do not believe anybody including me on this thread had mentioned any constructive ideas so far.
-- White Cat
On Jan 5, 2008 1:29 AM, White Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com wrote:
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. I do not believe anybody including me on this thread had mentioned any constructive ideas so far.
Plenty of constructive ideas have been discussed for years now. Maybe not in this thread, but on this list, and on many of the other ones. Lack of ideas isn't the problem. Convincing someone to implement them is.
Real change, and not just acceptance of something that's been happening all along, seems to always either come from Jimbo or Brion (and in the latter case, probably with input by Jimbo). Repeating the same ideas over and over doesn't accomplish anything.
On 03/01/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Oh please. "universities", then. I'm trying to get a feeling for how big of a problem you think this is.
Double digits. Doesn't help that people tend to react badly when you call them a diploma mill.
I also thought of something while waiting for your response. If maintenance is the problem, wouldn't protection be better than deletion? Instead of deleting 80% of articles on "universities" to reduce the maintenance load, why not protect them on a rotating schedule where 20% are unprotected each day during a five day period?
Because articles are created with maintenance problems and restricting editing on the scale is not acceptable.
On Jan 3, 2008 1:28 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I also thought of something while waiting for your response. If maintenance is the problem, wouldn't protection be better than deletion? Instead of deleting 80% of articles on "universities" to reduce the maintenance load, why not protect them on a rotating schedule where 20% are unprotected each day during a five day period?
Because articles are created with maintenance problems
I for one don't have a problem with deleting articles which have always sucked and can't be trivially fixed.
and restricting editing on the scale is not acceptable.
But deleting articles on this scale is acceptable? Doesn't article deletion restrict editing?
There is very good reason why we should have articles--good objective clear ones--on diploma mills, once they have actually started in business and issuing degrees. Whatever maintenance they take is well worth it. There are a number of people always glad to give a 3rd opinion at any "university" articles where there is trouble in keeping to a NPOV.
On Jan 3, 2008 1:53 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Jan 3, 2008 1:28 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I also thought of something while waiting for your response. If maintenance is the problem, wouldn't protection be better than deletion? Instead of deleting 80% of articles on "universities" to reduce the maintenance load, why not protect them on a rotating schedule where 20% are unprotected each day during a five day period?
Because articles are created with maintenance problems
I for one don't have a problem with deleting articles which have always sucked and can't be trivially fixed.
and restricting editing on the scale is not acceptable.
But deleting articles on this scale is acceptable? Doesn't article deletion restrict editing?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l