As noted earlier in this thread, that is exactly the moral I've learned. Wikipedia has no tolerance for works in progress.
I tend to agree with Guy's and Aaron's evaluation here. The article, once it enters main namespace, is in the frontline. People making a "normal" search for it will be able to access it. The article should be able to stand on its own legs by then and if it doesn't it should be deleted, even if the subject is notable and a proper article can be written in its place.
For example, the first edition we got about Robert Aumann contained
"He won the Nobel Prize!"
Lets go through why this type of article is bad. First, the article is not very useful to the readers. The people who are likely to look up Robert Aumann are those who read that he had won the economics prize already. The people who didn't know this would also find the article useless. (They would think "Huh?, What Nobel prize? When? For what?". Second, it is an embarrassment to Wikipedia if people look this up or follow a bluelink, expecting to find a real article, and find this. The reader is annoyed and decides that the reputation of Wikipedia being low quality is absolutely true. Third, the presence of such articles, written by a veteran Wikipedian I might add, tells newbies that they don't need to put any effort into writing the articles (after all the vets don't), and that makes the quality of newer articles very poor.
Therefore, that revision of the article was speedy deleted, based on the criterion of little or no context. So when you push the save button on a new article make sure that you have made an attempt at answering
*What/Who IS the subject? *Why should the reader care? *Could this article be useful to anyone?
If you plan on making a longer article for first submission and don't want to suffer a browser crash right before you submit it, you can put work in progress on a subpage of you userpage, and then move it off to the main article namespace when the article is in reasonably good shape.
This is not extreme immediatism. A poorly written, or short article which is still useful and establishes context can be included.
Sigvat Stensholt (AKA "Sjakkalle")
On 15 Feb 2006, at 08:00, Sigvat Stensholt wrote:
If you plan on making a longer article for first submission and don't want to suffer a browser crash right before you submit it, you can put work in progress on a subpage of you userpage, and then move it off to the main article namespace when the article is in reasonably good shape.
Best to put a note on the talk page of the uncreated article too, just in case someone else is working on it (if its likely).
Justinc
Sigvat Stensholt wrote:
As noted earlier in this thread, that is exactly the moral I've learned. Wikipedia has no tolerance for works in progress.
I tend to agree with Guy's and Aaron's evaluation here. The article, once it enters main namespace, is in the frontline. People making a "normal" search for it will be able to access it. The article should be able to stand on its own legs by then and if it doesn't it should be deleted, even if the subject is notable and a proper article can be written in its place.
For example, the first edition we got about Robert Aumann contained
"He won the Nobel Prize!"
Lets go through why this type of article is bad. First, the article is not very useful to the readers. The people who are likely to look up Robert Aumann are those who read that he had won the economics prize already. The people who didn't know this would also find the article useless. (They would think "Huh?, What Nobel prize? When? For what?". Second, it is an embarrassment to Wikipedia if people look this up or follow a bluelink, expecting to find a real article, and find this. The reader is annoyed and decides that the reputation of Wikipedia being low quality is absolutely true. Third, the presence of such articles, written by a veteran Wikipedian I might add, tells newbies that they don't need to put any effort into writing the articles (after all the vets don't), and that makes the quality of newer articles very poor.
Therefore, that revision of the article was speedy deleted, based on the criterion of little or no context. So when you push the save button on a new article make sure that you have made an attempt at answering
*What/Who IS the subject? *Why should the reader care? *Could this article be useful to anyone?
If you plan on making a longer article for first submission and don't want to suffer a browser crash right before you submit it, you can put work in progress on a subpage of you userpage, and then move it off to the main article namespace when the article is in reasonably good shape.
This is not extreme immediatism. A poorly written, or short article which is still useful and establishes context can be included.
Sigvat Stensholt (AKA "Sjakkalle")
Just curious...have you read the revision Sean saved? Because while stubby, it was far from one or two context-less sentences. (I do think brenneman has a point, but a lot of the messages on this matter seem to think Sean's initial article was crap.)
John
On 15 Feb 2006, at 10:53, John Lee wrote:
Just curious...have you read the revision Sean saved? Because while stubby, it was far from one or two context-less sentences. (I do think brenneman has a point, but a lot of the messages on this matter seem to think Sean's initial article was crap.)
It didnt show itself to be encyclopaedic. Mind you it still doesnt so clearly the 9 minutes wasnt really the limiting factor in this case.
Justinc
On 2/15/06, Sigvat Stensholt sigvats@mi.uib.no wrote:
criterion of little or no context. So when you push the save button on a new article make sure that you have made an attempt at answering
*What/Who IS the subject? *Why should the reader care? *Could this article be useful to anyone?
I agree: the minimum standard for informativeness should be fairly low, but rigorously enforced. I recently created [[DMExpress]], with this line of text (plus link to website, and category):
DMExpress is an [[ETL]] tool designed primarily for performance. It uses a proprietary database.
I think this is enough information to be usfeul for someone who just wants to know what the hell this product is that they saw mentioned somewhere. I might even argue that with just the first sentence it is sufficient to tell the reader what category of software the product is, and what makes it different.
Do others agree with this?
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 2/15/06, Sigvat Stensholt sigvats@mi.uib.no wrote:
criterion of little or no context. So when you push the save button on a new article make sure that you have made an attempt at answering
*What/Who IS the subject? *Why should the reader care? *Could this article be useful to anyone?
I agree: the minimum standard for informativeness should be fairly low, but rigorously enforced. I recently created [[DMExpress]], with this line of text (plus link to website, and category):
DMExpress is an [[ETL]] tool designed primarily for performance. It uses a proprietary database.
I think this is enough information to be usfeul for someone who just wants to know what the hell this product is that they saw mentioned somewhere. I might even argue that with just the first sentence it is sufficient to tell the reader what category of software the product is, and what makes it different.
Do others agree with this?
I recently created [[Directivity]], which has a stub notice and a reference. I'd have {{prod}}ed yours as "software which doesn't explain notability, no incoming links, advertising" (and I still might).
On 2/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
I recently created [[Directivity]], which has a stub notice and a reference. I'd have {{prod}}ed yours as "software which doesn't explain notability, no incoming links, advertising" (and I still might).
Interesting. I'm not sure how incoming links are relevant, but as for explaining notability, fair enough. We're talking about a class of software tools with perhaps several dozen members at most, and most of which cost in excess of $20,000 for a basic licence. So it's probably notable...how would you go about succinctly making that point though?
Steve
On 15 Feb 2006, at 14:09, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 2/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
I recently created [[Directivity]], which has a stub notice and a reference. I'd have {{prod}}ed yours as "software which doesn't explain notability, no incoming links, advertising" (and I still might).
Interesting. I'm not sure how incoming links are relevant, but as for explaining notability, fair enough. We're talking about a class of software tools with perhaps several dozen members at most, and most of which cost in excess of $20,000 for a basic licence. So it's probably notable...how would you go about succinctly making that point though?
Costing in excess of $20000 and being in a class with a small number of members doesnt make anything notable.
Paintings by a moderate artist might fall into that category, but the paintings would just be listed under the artist.
What else is notable about this?
Justinc
On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
Costing in excess of $20000 and being in a class with a small number of members doesnt make anything notable.
Paintings by a moderate artist might fall into that category, but the paintings would just be listed under the artist.
What else is notable about this?
I know very little about DMExpress - hence the stubbiness :) Here's my scenario: I work in the domain of ETL. Someone mentions DMExpress. I have no idea what it is. I head to Wikipedia, my first resource when I want to know what *anything* is. No article.
Should there not be an article? There aren't that many ETL tools. Your analogy is a bit flawed: You're saying that the artist is notable, but his paintings aren't. The equivalent then would be something like that the company is notable, but that individual copies of their products aren't. Really, though, in many cases, the company is not notable, their product isn't notable, and obviously individual instances of their products are not.
To resolve the question of whether my example of a stub was above or below the minimum quality waterline (just as an example, delete it for all I care :)), we do need to agree whether DMExpress is notable or not. A brief search shows 800 google results including magazine articles, so I'm not sure what the "no" argument would be.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
Costing in excess of $20000 and being in a class with a small number of members doesnt make anything notable.
Paintings by a moderate artist might fall into that category, but the paintings would just be listed under the artist.
What else is notable about this?
I know very little about DMExpress - hence the stubbiness :) Here's my scenario: I work in the domain of ETL. Someone mentions DMExpress. I have no idea what it is. I head to Wikipedia, my first resource when I want to know what *anything* is. No article.
Should there not be an article? There aren't that many ETL tools. Your analogy is a bit flawed: You're saying that the artist is notable, but his paintings aren't. The equivalent then would be something like that the company is notable, but that individual copies of their products aren't. Really, though, in many cases, the company is not notable, their product isn't notable, and obviously individual instances of their products are not.
To resolve the question of whether my example of a stub was above or below the minimum quality waterline (just as an example, delete it for all I care :)), we do need to agree whether DMExpress is notable or not. A brief search shows 800 google results including magazine articles, so I'm not sure what the "no" argument would be.
Actually some further expansion on ETL would be nice - I don't understand the concept of "data warehousing" yet. Is this basically selling credit card details and other personal info to the highest bidder?
On 2/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Actually some further expansion on ETL would be nice - I don't understand the concept of "data warehousing" yet. Is this basically selling credit card details and other personal info to the highest bidder?
Yes it would, most of these topics are quite underdeveloped in Wikipedia. I think you're confusing data warehousing with datamining - a data warehouse is just a large database that contains every fact that a business needs to run its operation. ETL is a pretty general term for sticking data in datawarehouses, amongst other things.
Steve
On 15 Feb 2006, at 16:07, Steve Bennett wrote:
I know very little about DMExpress - hence the stubbiness :) Here's my scenario: I work in the domain of ETL. Someone mentions DMExpress. I have no idea what it is. I head to Wikipedia, my first resource when I want to know what *anything* is. No article.
Should there not be an article? There aren't that many ETL tools. Your analogy is a bit flawed: You're saying that the artist is notable, but his paintings aren't. The equivalent then would be something like that the company is notable, but that individual copies of their products aren't. Really, though, in many cases, the company is not notable, their product isn't notable, and obviously individual instances of their products are not.
To resolve the question of whether my example of a stub was above or below the minimum quality waterline (just as an example, delete it for all I care :)), we do need to agree whether DMExpress is notable or not. A brief search shows 800 google results including magazine articles, so I'm not sure what the "no" argument would be.
I dont know if there should be one. I cant tell from the stub, thats the problem. The company might be notable (I think that WP:CORP is a bit restrictive, and should be ignored in many cases). But individual software products are often not very notable (if I write the history of software if wont include much about programs that import and export data). But it of course may be very important; just neither of us know.
I would rather have a good article about ETL including a list of products (that could be redirects) than a bunch of stubs that may never be filled in.
Justinc
On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
I dont know if there should be one. I cant tell from the stub, thats the problem. The company might be notable (I think that WP:CORP is a bit restrictive, and should be ignored in many cases). But individual software products are often not very notable (if I write the history of software if wont include much about programs that import and export data). But it of course may be very important; just neither of us know.
I've expanded the stub now. I understand that software products are not inherently notable, but let's not confuse some shareware platform game with expensive, highly specialised data loading software used by massive companies to transfer enormous quantities of data each day.
I would rather have a good article about ETL including a list of products (that could be redirects) than a bunch of stubs that may never be filled in.
A good article about ETL would be great, and some basic information on the various products - short articles, or collected together - would be great. I don't know about "never be filled in" - Wikipedia is supposedly timeless. Compared to many of the really trivial subjects covered, it's a bit disappointing that the whole domain of data management, data warehousing, ETL etc is of such low quality.
Maybe time for a bounty...:)
Steve
On 15 Feb 2006, at 22:28, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
I dont know if there should be one. I cant tell from the stub, thats the problem. The company might be notable (I think that WP:CORP is a bit restrictive, and should be ignored in many cases). But individual software products are often not very notable (if I write the history of software if wont include much about programs that import and export data). But it of course may be very important; just neither of us know.
I've expanded the stub now. I understand that software products are not inherently notable, but let's not confuse some shareware platform game with expensive, highly specialised data loading software used by massive companies to transfer enormous quantities of data each day.
Its much more like an initial stub should be now. Its not clear that it shouldnt be moved to the company but thats ok, it wouldnt lose anything either way.
I am not sure that price is part of notability in software; I have written non notable but expensive software.
I would rather have a good article about ETL including a list of products (that could be redirects) than a bunch of stubs that may never be filled in.
A good article about ETL would be great, and some basic information on the various products - short articles, or collected together - would be great. I don't know about "never be filled in" - Wikipedia is supposedly timeless. Compared to many of the really trivial subjects covered, it's a bit disappointing that the whole domain of data management, data warehousing, ETL etc is of such low quality.
Maybe time for a bounty...:)
Never filled in is an interesting one. Some things will not be documented well enough to write an article if its not written soon. Maybe that will change if things like internet archive work. Maybe that means they werent notable.
Yes it is frustrating that so much work goes into trivial subjects and (despite what some people seem to think) there are vast areas without even stubs or redlinks. Someone pointed out to me the other day that we dont have an article on [[Scandinavian design]], the genesis of among other things [[Ikea]]. I have books lying around my computer that would provide sources for hundreds of missing articles. Must write one now.
Justinc
On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
I am not sure that price is part of notability in software; I have written non notable but expensive software.
Is there any discussion of notability for software? How many software products do we want in Wikipedia? I would have thought several thousand, if not several tens of thousands could easily be justified. We are, after all, an encyclopaedia. Is our aim not to produce a consultable body of knowledge? I'm a little confused about why we seem to keep trying to raise the bar on notability.
Yes it is frustrating that so much work goes into trivial subjects and (despite what some people seem to think) there are vast areas without even stubs or redlinks. Someone pointed out to me the other day that we dont have an article on [[Scandinavian design]], the genesis of among other things [[Ikea]]. I have books lying around my computer that would provide sources for hundreds of missing articles. Must write one now.
Heh, good idea. My apartment is a tribute to [[Ikea|Scandinavian design]].
Steve
On 2/15/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
I'm a little confused about why we seem to keep trying to raise the bar on notability.
I think it's among other things connected with the feeling expressed here by Justin:
On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
Yes it is frustrating that so much work goes into trivial subjects and (despite what some people seem to think) there are vast areas without even stubs or redlinks.
In other words, I feel that people keep trying to raise the bar on notability because it bugs them that people are willing to expend so much effort on what they consider "trivia" when there's so much work to be done on "worthy" subjects.
To be fair, it's only one reason, another being that some feel (don't you love weasel terms?) that large amounts of information on "trivial" subjects detracts from our image.
-Matt
On 15 Feb 2006, at 23:27, Matt Brown wrote:
On 2/15/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
I'm a little confused about why we seem to keep trying to raise the bar on notability.
I think it's among other things connected with the feeling expressed here by Justin:
On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
Yes it is frustrating that so much work goes into trivial subjects and (despite what some people seem to think) there are vast areas without even stubs or redlinks.
In other words, I feel that people keep trying to raise the bar on notability because it bugs them that people are willing to expend so much effort on what they consider "trivia" when there's so much work to be done on "worthy" subjects.
To be fair, it's only one reason, another being that some feel (don't you love weasel terms?) that large amounts of information on "trivial" subjects detracts from our image.
Actually I dont have a problem with large amounts of trivia.
I do have a problem with stuff that makes a bad stub but could add detail and context to a larger article. When I was organizing the stuff in the field of [[Beer]] I spent a lot of time merging articles about individual beers (normally written after a trip to the pub) into articles about breweries. Beers come and go but breweries are companies and have documentation. I think I left about 40 beers that had real notability (some eponymous with breweries eg Guinness and the Budweisers, others historical). Maybe one day someone will write good articles about every beer brewed by Miller, 100 words or so but I doubt it. In the mean time a sentence under the main article is better in every way.
Steve said:
Is there any discussion of notability for software? How many software products do we want in Wikipedia? I would have thought several thousand, if not several tens of thousands could easily be justified. We are, after all, an encyclopaedia. Is our aim not to produce a consultable body of knowledge? I'm a little confused about why we
seem
to keep trying to raise the bar on notability.
Notability for software is interesting, not sure I have seen any guidelines (I dont contribute much as its too much like work). Does the program embody new techniques? Did it create a new market? Did it replace the market leader? Maybe those questions just reflect my interests but at least they give something to write a few hundred words on.
Its difficult. Sometimes there are articles that I might think could only be a stub and be wrong. And having a stub might make someone else write a real article. The stubs I have written that have been taken up by other people have really pleased me, although not as much as some of the obscure stuff I have written real articles on (like [[Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association]]).
Justinc
On 2/16/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
Notability for software is interesting, not sure I have seen any guidelines (I dont contribute much as its too much like work). Does the program embody new techniques? Did it create a new market? Did it replace the market leader? Maybe those questions just reflect my interests but at least they give something to write a few hundred words on.
Eep, that's setting the bar *way* too high IMHO. Like a singer is only notable if they had a number one hit. Maybe rough guidelines like: - free software: more than 100,000 downloads - low cost software: more than X sales? - other software: articles written in major computing magazines?
Its difficult. Sometimes there are articles that I might think could only be a stub and be wrong. And having a stub might make someone else write a real article. The stubs I have written that have been taken up by other people have really pleased me, although not as much as some of the obscure stuff I have written real articles on (like [[Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association]]).
I don't think anyone has ever destubbed an stub I've made :)
Steve
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In other words, I feel that people keep trying to raise the bar on notability because it bugs them that people are willing to expend so much effort on what they consider "trivia" when there's so much work to be done on "worthy" subjects.
There are three problems with this:
1) One person's trivia is another person's worthy subject.
2) It doesn't necessarily transfer. People who are feverishly working on editing one of the Pokemon articles are not likely to edit something more "worthy" like nuclear physics if the Pokemon article was not found or not allowed. Instead, they'd be off playing with their Pokemon cards, or writing for a site that *did* have Pokemon articles. We just lost an editor.
3) We should welcome all people, regardless of their article preferences or their choice of what to spend their time on. A great way to do this it to have an amazing breadth of articles. The trivial articles can often be a "gateway drug" - they find us when searching Google for a particular Simpsons episode, find out they can edit it, make a small correction, follow a few links, create an account, do some more editing, and the next thing you know they are vandal fighting, improving random articles, and posting their two cents to the Peppers controversy. :)
To be fair, it's only one reason, another being that some feel (don't you love weasel terms?) that large amounts of information on "trivial" subjects detracts from our image.
If by large amounts if information they mean the size and detail of some of our articles on "trivial" things, then the solution is to increase the depth of non-trivial articles, not to curb the creation of "large-yet-trivial" ones.
If by large amounts they mean the number of articles on trivial things versus non-trivial things, setting a higher bar to limit the number of trivial articles created is not the answer. What needs to happen is draw in more editors. Even if most only edit "trivial" articles, some will also contribute to "non-trivial" ones. I'd rather see non-trivial articles improved by 20% at the cost of keeping the same same trivial/non-trivial ratio, rather than see the ratio decrease for a 5% improvement.
- -- Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200602152130 http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
On 15 Feb 2006, at 13:53, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
I agree: the minimum standard for informativeness should be fairly low, but rigorously enforced. I recently created [[DMExpress]], with this line of text (plus link to website, and category):
DMExpress is an [[ETL]] tool designed primarily for performance. It uses a proprietary database.
I recently created [[Directivity]], which has a stub notice and a reference. I'd have {{prod}}ed yours as "software which doesn't explain notability, no incoming links, advertising" (and I still might).
I think DMExpress is really bad. Using ETL, a TLA link is completely useless as I dont know what it is without clicking. The fact it uses a proprietary database, well its not clear why that is the one interesting fact about it. Surpsised it wasnt {{prod}ded yet.
Directivity is a perfect stub I think, much better than my recent [[Frognal]] that I fell asleep while writing.
Justinc
Sigvat Stensholt wrote:
As noted earlier in this thread, that is exactly the moral I've learned. Wikipedia has no tolerance for works in progress.
I tend to agree with Guy's and Aaron's evaluation here. The article, once it enters main namespace, is in the frontline. People making a "normal" search for it will be able to access it. The article should be able to stand on its own legs by then and if it doesn't it should be deleted, even if the subject is notable and a proper article can be written in its place.
For example, the first edition we got about Robert Aumann contained
"He won the Nobel Prize!"
Ah, but it was written by Jimbo :)