G'day Brian,
On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 01:27:09AM -0700, Pete Bartlett wrote:
Er. [[WP:OWN]]? Images are an exception, as nearly all images
are the
work of one or two people at most. Articles are not. Articles
can,
and often are, watched. Wikipedians ought to pay attention to
their
watchlists if they wish to express opinions about their
contributions.>
The vast majority of AfDed articles are very new and have just
one author.
Indeed and it is likely that they are put off by having their gems described as "cruft". However, I think people are put off more by otherthings:-
I would make a distinction between "gems" and "articles that should not be deleted". Good articles are rarely put on AfD (an exception is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/TransLink_%28So..., which I started myself and wholly acknowledge received a *lot* of effort; but which is not an encyclopaedia article). Articles that need work and could one day become real gems, however, are put on AfD all the time, and this is a pity.
- General jargon of which cruft is just one.
Absolutely true.
- Being put to AfD within hours or sometimes minutes of starting the
article. I think this is most offensive. New editors are finding their way. They are not obsessed with WP. They have a life. They will take time to develop the article. If someone thinks the article is bad, theymake a note of it and follow it for a week or so, talk to the editor on his talk page and perhaps the article talk page. It is sheer bad mannersand certainly biting the newbie to push something to Afd so quickly. There is no hurry. WP is not going to be perfect tomorrow if you speedy deletea few articles.
Indeed. What's the rush?
- Comments on Afd like, "looks non-verifiable to me", "seems
non-notable" and other comments that show the nominator has not done enough homework before jumping to conclusions. I have seen quite a few AfDs withdrawn recently after the nom realises that the debate is showing they were quite wrong. Nominating something for deletion has its responsabilities.
For many people, nominating an article is no different from "voting" to delete. I've been sporadically trying, along with several others, over the past few months to lift the quality of AfD nominations (the AfD nomination I link above, I would consider a minimum standard). An article nominated for deletion on the grounds of non-notability, for example, should include the reasons the nominator believes the article is non-notable, any steps he took to verify this (check history for number of editors, check "what links here", check Google, and so on), relevant policy if any, and so on. What it should *not* include is any bolded recommendation ("'''Delete''' NN"), insults, or the word "merge".
- Nominations which are basically "I do not understand this, so lets
see whether people want to delete it". We should want to improve and keep stuff, noit delete it.
Absolutely.
I could go on. AfD depresses me for several reasons and the fact that most of the articles are so bad they deserve deletion is only one of them. It is the others that could be improved that leads to so much trouble.
Fortunately there are very few of these, but those that crop up could be handled much better.
It is amazing how often AfD debates do not benefit from the opinion of the original creator.
They may not have set their preferences so articles they edit automatically go on their watchlist. They probably do not yet understandthe watchlist system. Welcome messages should advise newbies on the watchlist.
Uhh, *no*. Welcome messages are long enough as it is --- I often wonder how many newbies take the time to read the current crop of welcome messages, let alone an expanded version.
Cheers,
On 03/05/06, Gallagher Mark George m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
encyclopaedia article). Articles that need work and could one day
become real gems, >however, are put on AfD all the time, and this is a pity.
This should never happen. AfD is totally superfluous when the *topic* belongs in WP. Someone should just remove all the crud they don't like and turn it into a stub at worst.
Steve
Steve Bennett-4 wrote:
On 03/05/06, Gallagher Mark George m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
encyclopaedia article). Articles that need work and could one day become real gems, however, are put on AfD all the time, and this is a pity.
This should never happen. AfD is totally superfluous when the *topic* belongs in WP. Someone should just remove all the crud they don't like and turn it into a stub at worst.
Absolutely. Unfortunately some people's idea of "removing all the crud they don't like" involves deleting articles on subjects with which they are not familiar (since such subjects must therefore be 'non-notable' by definition).
On 03/05/06, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
Absolutely. Unfortunately some people's idea of "removing all the crud they don't like" involves deleting articles on subjects with which they are not familiar (since such subjects must therefore be 'non-notable' by definition).
Sorry, I was referring to remove content within the article, not deleting the article itself.
But I do agree with your perception of the term "non-notable".
Steve
Steve Bennett-4 wrote:
On 03/05/06, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
Absolutely. Unfortunately some people's idea of "removing all the crud they don't like" involves deleting articles on subjects with which they are not familiar (since such subjects must therefore be 'non-notable' by definition).
Sorry, I was referring to remove content within the article, not deleting the article itself.
But I do agree with your perception of the term "non-notable".
Precisely. I was referring to the fact that some people are utterly averse to certain subjects EVER having an article: they are incapable of distinguishing parts of such articles which could EVER be kept.
Note the recurring calls at various sub-sections of the Village Pump for "all those stupid articles on irrelevant fictional subjects" to be removed en masse...
On 5/3/06, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
Absolutely. Unfortunately some people's idea of "removing all the crud they don't like" involves deleting articles on subjects with which they are not familiar (since such subjects must therefore be 'non-notable' by definition). -- Phil
In that case why do our maths and physics articles seem to surive so well (dito our chemistry articles)? People don't seem to delete stuff relateing to subjects they are not familiar with. At most you could complain people try and delete stuff on subjects they are slightly familiar with.
-- geni
On 03/05/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
In that case why do our maths and physics articles seem to surive so well (dito our chemistry articles)? People don't seem to delete stuff relateing to subjects they are not familiar with. At most you could complain people try and delete stuff on subjects they are slightly familiar with.
People have an unstated bias in favour of sciences, and against popular culture. I don't know if this is a bad thing or not. The most badly written article on the most obscure beetle known to mankind will not be nominated. Every article on a fictional subject of popular culture is battling for its life from the moment it's born ;)
Steve
On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
People have an unstated bias in favour of sciences, and against popular culture. I don't know if this is a bad thing or not. The most badly written article on the most obscure beetle known to mankind will not be nominated. Every article on a fictional subject of popular culture is battling for its life from the moment it's born ;)
Steve
Because people don't know about the sciences but everyone knows a bit about polular culture. I doubt many people who haven't studied chemistry know what a [[Biaxial nematic]] is. However everyone knows what a website or a band is. A lot of people will know a bit about fictional characters. The other thing is verifiability. Science is practicaly defined by pulication but even fairly well writen pop culture articles such as [[G-Man (Half-Life)]] have zero citations.
-- geni
On 5/3/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Because people don't know about the sciences but everyone knows a bit about polular culture. I doubt many people who haven't studied chemistry know what a [[Biaxial nematic]] is. However everyone knows what a website or a band is. A lot of people will know a bit about fictional characters. The other thing is verifiability. Science is practicaly defined by pulication but even fairly well writen pop culture articles such as [[G-Man (Half-Life)]] have zero citations.
-- geni
I'd have to say G-man is an abberation. There is no well-defined or accepted reference system for citing games as references, as opposed to articles sourced from books and movies (take a look at [[Palpatine]]). How would you even do it? If a game is broken down into well-defined levels or segments, it is possible, but it is still difficult, and suppose it's a more free-form game than a rigid RPG or adventure game? Or what if it's a multiple path RPG like the Knights of the Old Republic were? To cite the dark side ending, I suppose one would start having references akin to to *''Knights of the Old Republic'', Unknown Planet, during the transition to the Star Forge, protagonist male and majority evil.
~maru
On 5/3/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
I'd have to say G-man is an abberation. There is no well-defined or accepted reference system for citing games as references, as opposed to articles sourced from books and movies (take a look at [[Palpatine]]). How would you even do it?
You don't. That would be original reseach. Instead you find other people who have written about G-man (people must have done) and cite them. With the various gameing magazines around you should be able to get some quite good sources
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 5/3/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
I'd have to say G-man is an abberation. There is no well-defined or accepted reference system for citing games as references, as opposed to articles sourced from books and movies (take a look at [[Palpatine]]). How would you even do it?
You don't. That would be original reseach.
No, that would be citing a _primary_ source, which is entirely within the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. Indeed, in many cases the game itself would probably be a lot easier to get ahold of for verification than old issues of game magazines that might discuss it.
On 5/3/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
geni wrote:
On 5/3/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
I'd have to say G-man is an abberation. There is no well-defined or accepted reference system for citing games as references, as opposed to articles sourced from books and movies (take a look at [[Palpatine]]). How would you even do it?
You don't. That would be original reseach.
No, that would be citing a _primary_ source, which is entirely within the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. Indeed, in many cases the game itself would probably be a lot easier to get ahold of for verification than old issues of game magazines that might discuss it.
By that standard I could give you the instructions for doing various chemical experiments (ones that don't appear in the lititure) as a source.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 5/3/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
No, that would be citing a _primary_ source, which is entirely within the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. Indeed, in many cases the game itself would probably be a lot easier to get ahold of for verification than old issues of game magazines that might discuss it.
By that standard I could give you the instructions for doing various chemical experiments (ones that don't appear in the lititure) as a source.
Not at all. I use that standard and I would not consider your example to be a "primary source," so you're putting something else into the mix to reach that conclusion not present in my standard. Perhaps I'm not explaining it clearly or we have a basic difference in underlying philosophy.
IMO the key difference between the two is that a computer game is a work of "literature" (in a broad sense) whereas a pile of chemicals is not. You "read" a game by playing it but you don't "read" a pile of chemicals by combining them in various predefined ways.
WP:CJ is an organisatino about civility.
On 5/4/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
geni wrote:
On 5/3/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
No, that would be citing a _primary_ source, which is entirely within the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. Indeed, in many cases the
game
itself would probably be a lot easier to get ahold of for verification than old issues of game magazines that might discuss it.
By that standard I could give you the instructions for doing various chemical experiments (ones that don't appear in the lititure) as a source.
Not at all. I use that standard and I would not consider your example to be a "primary source," so you're putting something else into the mix to reach that conclusion not present in my standard. Perhaps I'm not explaining it clearly or we have a basic difference in underlying philosophy.
IMO the key difference between the two is that a computer game is a work of "literature" (in a broad sense) whereas a pile of chemicals is not. You "read" a game by playing it but you don't "read" a pile of chemicals by combining them in various predefined ways. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- Joe Anderson
[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.
On 03/05/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
I'd have to say G-man is an abberation. There is no well-defined or accepted reference system for citing games as references, as opposed to articles sourced from books and movies (take a look at [[Palpatine]]). How would you even do it? If a game is broken down into well-defined levels or segments, it is possible, but it is still difficult, and suppose it's a more free-form game than a rigid RPG or
At first glance, that article has a lot of OR in it. It would be a great article if at least we could point to bulletin boards, forums, wikis, or whatever proving that people (other than Wikipedians) have spent time analysing this character and trying to determine who he is or what he does. Then the article could be more on the social phenomenon. There are occasional fleeting references to "the half life community" or "fans of the game", but surprisingly, no links can be given to substantiate that these debates have actually taken place.
In a word: this article is a perfect example of where blogs and forums *should* be cited, if only as primary sources.
Citing the game itself is probably the wrong direction to be going here.
Steve
On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
At first glance, that article has a lot of OR in it. It would be a great article if at least we could point to bulletin boards, forums, wikis, or whatever proving that people (other than Wikipedians) have spent time analysing this character and trying to determine who he is or what he does. Then the article could be more on the social phenomenon. There are occasional fleeting references to "the half life community" or "fans of the game", but surprisingly, no links can be given to substantiate that these debates have actually taken place.
In a word: this article is a perfect example of where blogs and forums *should* be cited, if only as primary sources.
Citing the game itself is probably the wrong direction to be going here.
Steve
Why can't we cite games though? I'm sensing a distinct dislike of citing anything not easily represented in textual form. Obscure books and monographs impossible for anyone to get ahold of? Sure. A multi-million copy selling game whose cutscenes and game events are not easily cited? No way.
~maru
On 03/05/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
Why can't we cite games though? I'm sensing a distinct dislike of citing anything not easily represented in textual form. Obscure books and monographs impossible for anyone to get ahold of? Sure. A multi-million copy selling game whose cutscenes and game events are not easily cited? No way.
I'm not clear on what you mean by citing a game? And the motivations of doing so. Using "The blue monster appears on levels 7, 23 and 37, and bonus level Z3 if you finish the first 50 levels without taking hit" as a citation is unmanageable.
But yeah it's a grey area. I suspect I've debated this before, and I was on the other side last time :) Most likely if there's anything worth "citing" in there, there would be another, secondary source, which would be more appopriate in any case.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
I'm not clear on what you mean by citing a game? And the motivations of doing so. Using "The blue monster appears on levels 7, 23 and 37, and bonus level Z3 if you finish the first 50 levels without taking hit" as a citation is unmanageable.
Howso? You just managed it right there, slap <ref> tags around it instead of quotation marks and you're good to go. :)
On 03/05/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
I'm not clear on what you mean by citing a game? And the motivations of doing so. Using "The blue monster appears on levels 7, 23 and 37, and bonus level Z3 if you finish the first 50 levels without taking hit" as a citation is unmanageable.
Howso? You just managed it right there, slap <ref> tags around it instead of quotation marks and you're good to go. :)
I think when there's that much effort involved, I'd rather "According to BlueMonsterKilla on walkthroughs.com, ..."
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 03/05/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Howso? You just managed it right there, slap <ref> tags around it instead of quotation marks and you're good to go. :)
I think when there's that much effort involved, I'd rather "According to BlueMonsterKilla on walkthroughs.com, ..."
There are articles that cite books which would probably take way more effort for me to track down than it would for me to play 50 levels of BlueMonsterKilla without taking a hit, though, so I still don't think one should reject a reference purely on the basis of how easy it is to verify (provided it's at least _possible_). Though if a walkthrough were indeed available I agree that it would be a nicer thing to reference.
On 04/05/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
There are articles that cite books which would probably take way more effort for me to track down than it would for me to play 50 levels of BlueMonsterKilla without taking a hit, though, so I still don't think one should reject a reference purely on the basis of how easy it is to verify (provided it's at least _possible_). Though if a walkthrough were indeed available I agree that it would be a nicer thing to reference.
But this is a bit beside the point. We have lots of information in Wikipedia verifiable by first persons experience - talk about the architecture of a building, and anyone who visits it can probably verify it. But we don't require "verifiable information" as much as we require "verifiable sources" who have already stated the information.
In other words, the game may contain some facts, but it doesn't contain a statement or an interpretation of those facts. That's why it's inappropriate to "cite" directly. If the packaging of the game contained a summary of the levels or the characters or something, that might be different.
Steve
On 5/3/06, Gallagher Mark George m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
I would make a distinction between "gems" and "articles that should not be deleted". Good articles are rarely put on AfD (an exception is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/TransLink_%28So..., which I started myself and wholly acknowledge received a *lot* of effort; but which is not an encyclopaedia article).
I'd personally disagree, and have so voted. I feel this is a case where 'Wiki is not paper' applies: it would never be a paper encyclopedia article because it could never be up to date.
At worst, it should be transwikied to a more suitable project, but the fact is, the interest in maintaining it is here, not elsewhere.
-Matt
On Wed, 03 May 2006 22:04:50 +1000, you wrote:
For many people, nominating an article is no different from "voting" to delete.
This is true. In my case, I will nominate if there is a speedy tag/untag war going on. In these cases I will have no opinion at all. I usually remember to say so, I don't want a nom to count as a delete vote. I rarely vote on my own nominations.
I've been sporadically trying, along with several others, over the past few months to lift the quality of AfD nominations (the AfD nomination I link above, I would consider a minimum standard). An article nominated for deletion on the grounds of non-notability, for example, should include the reasons the nominator believes the article is non-notable, any steps he took to verify this (check history for number of editors, check "what links here", check Google, and so on), relevant policy if any, and so on. What it should *not* include is any bolded recommendation ("'''Delete''' NN"), insults, or the word "merge".
A worthy initiative. One problem is that there is such a torrent of spam, vanity and other nonsense that it is hard to spot the difference between these and genuine-but-bad articles on valid subjects. PROD was a good idea to try to separate out the crud, but of course the most blatant spam is often what people will wage the fiercest wars to keep. The tone of discussion on music articles has improved markedly since speedy A7 was extended to bands, most of the really vacuous garage bands never make it to AfD now. But we're never going to fix the problem with AfD without reducing the queues to manageable levels. Maybe that means separate queues per subject area.
Guy (JzG)