Hi all, I really, really struggle with the idea of "notability" and attempting to work out how much information is "tolerated" in Wikipedia before people start nominating it for deletion with various words ending in "-cruft".
So, a concrete example. I would be tempted to add more information on juggling tricks into Wikipedia. There is already an excellent juggling wiki (http://www.jugglingdb.com/jugglewiki/), but this poses no obstacle: our mythical African Wikipedia reader may not have access to the net.
So, it is almost unarguable that [[cascade (juggling)]] has no place in WP. This is the most basic juggling pattern, and a term that many are likely to know.
Next down the notability scale, we have [[reverse cascade]], [[shower (juggling)]] and [[fountain (juggling)]]. Basic patterns that deserve to be documented.
Now, how about [[machine (juggling)]], [[Mills Mess]] and [[Rubinstein's Revenge]]? These are more advanced tricks that a non-juggler is unlikely to know. He may recognise the first two, but probably not the third.
Continuing, [[crossed-arms cascade]], [[contortionist (juggling)]] and [[penguin (juggling)]] would represent even less well-known moves, that are however known to almost all jugglers.
Even more obscure, how about [[Luke's Lobotomy]], [[Time-reversed Mills Mess]] or [[Manham's Mangle]]? These are unknown to anyone except serious jugglers, and very unlikely to be seen in a performance for a general audience.
And to take one final leap, how about [[Seven Ball Marden's Mayem]], [[Turbo Wally Walk]], [[Mountain Tennis]] or even [[Hermine (juggling)]]? I haven't heard of any of these, I found them on jugglewiki. The last one has possibly never been attempted by anyone other than its inventor, yet is documented thoroughly with video footage.
So, my question is: where should the line be drawn on inclusion into "the sum of all human knowledge", and on what basis? Also, is that basis really documented anywhere, or does it all come down to the caprices of the editors who one day decide that these tricks aren't "notable", and that this jugglecruft (I swear this word will be used) has to die?
Thanks all for any comments, advice etc.
Steve
I would drop them all into an article on juggling tricks/juggling moves. Perhaps a seperate one for cascades. Without reading them, I think the articles on most moves are too small to warrant their own article. Drop them together in a larger article and redirect the existing names to the new article/list.
Mgm
On 3/24/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all, I really, really struggle with the idea of "notability" and attempting to work out how much information is "tolerated" in Wikipedia before people start nominating it for deletion with various words ending in "-cruft".
So, a concrete example. I would be tempted to add more information on juggling tricks into Wikipedia. There is already an excellent juggling wiki (http://www.jugglingdb.com/jugglewiki/), but this poses no obstacle: our mythical African Wikipedia reader may not have access to the net.
So, it is almost unarguable that [[cascade (juggling)]] has no place in WP. This is the most basic juggling pattern, and a term that many are likely to know.
Next down the notability scale, we have [[reverse cascade]], [[shower (juggling)]] and [[fountain (juggling)]]. Basic patterns that deserve to be documented.
Now, how about [[machine (juggling)]], [[Mills Mess]] and [[Rubinstein's Revenge]]? These are more advanced tricks that a non-juggler is unlikely to know. He may recognise the first two, but probably not the third.
Continuing, [[crossed-arms cascade]], [[contortionist (juggling)]] and [[penguin (juggling)]] would represent even less well-known moves, that are however known to almost all jugglers.
Even more obscure, how about [[Luke's Lobotomy]], [[Time-reversed Mills Mess]] or [[Manham's Mangle]]? These are unknown to anyone except serious jugglers, and very unlikely to be seen in a performance for a general audience.
And to take one final leap, how about [[Seven Ball Marden's Mayem]], [[Turbo Wally Walk]], [[Mountain Tennis]] or even [[Hermine (juggling)]]? I haven't heard of any of these, I found them on jugglewiki. The last one has possibly never been attempted by anyone other than its inventor, yet is documented thoroughly with video footage.
So, my question is: where should the line be drawn on inclusion into "the sum of all human knowledge", and on what basis? Also, is that basis really documented anywhere, or does it all come down to the caprices of the editors who one day decide that these tricks aren't "notable", and that this jugglecruft (I swear this word will be used) has to die?
Thanks all for any comments, advice etc.
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
So, it is almost unarguable that [[cascade (juggling)]] has no place in WP. This is the most basic juggling pattern, and a term that many are likely to know.
[snip]
And to take one final leap, how about [[Seven Ball Marden's Mayem]], [[Turbo Wally Walk]], [[Mountain Tennis]] or even [[Hermine (juggling)]]? I haven't heard of any of these, I found them on jugglewiki. The last one has possibly never been attempted by anyone other than its inventor, yet is documented thoroughly with video footage.
I would drop them all into an article on juggling tricks/juggling moves. Perhaps a seperate one for cascades. Without reading them, I think the articles on most moves are too small to warrant their own article. Drop them together in a larger article and redirect the existing names to the new article/list.
I wouldn't, but I suspect this comes down to the mergist / "divisionist" (just coined that) philosophical difference. The way I see it, Wiki is hypertext, and I see no reason to defeat the purpose of hypertext by lumping independent topics into a single monolithic article.
I any case, I also see no reason not to include most of those -- at least the ones that are documented in independent secondary sources and can be considered established. Having those articles does not interfere with the rest of Wikipedia, and, given their fairly neutral subject matter, should not present significant maintainability issues.
As for things like [[Hermine (juggling)]], that could fall foul of our original research and verfiability policies if there are no secondary sources to confirm the claims of the inventor. If included, it should at least be worded carefully.
On 3/24/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
As for things like [[Hermine (juggling)]], that could fall foul of our original research and verfiability policies if there are no secondary sources to confirm the claims of the inventor. If included, it should at least be worded carefully.
Well, the video (http://unknownjuggling.tripod.com/october/hermine.WMV) is pretty conclusive that it's possible :) He doesn't claim that anyone else does it, though.
Anyway, I certainly don't propose that every trick that anyone invents in their backyard should be documented in WP.
Why exactly *do* we suggest merging separate short articles together into one big article, anyway? To create "the perfect article"?
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/24/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
As for things like [[Hermine (juggling)]], that could fall foul of our original research and verfiability policies if there are no secondary sources to confirm the claims of the inventor. If included, it should at least be worded carefully.
Well, the video (http://unknownjuggling.tripod.com/october/hermine.WMV) is pretty conclusive that it's possible :) He doesn't claim that anyone else does it, though.
I didn't mean the claim that it was possible: the video should document that pretty well. I meant the claim that he invented it, and that the name he coined for it is accepted. Those would need verification, or, in its absence, should at most be documented as claims of one person only.
In this particular case I wouldn't put the bar very high, but we're to take his claims at face value, we at least ought to be able to point to another source and say "Well, at least this other guy agrees with him."
On 3/24/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
I didn't mean the claim that it was possible: the video should document that pretty well. I meant the claim that he invented it, and that the name he coined for it is accepted. Those would need verification, or, in its absence, should at most be documented as claims of one person only.
In this particular case I wouldn't put the bar very high, but we're to take his claims at face value, we at least ought to be able to point to another source and say "Well, at least this other guy agrees with him."
Ah, interesting, I hadn't thought of that. I actually hadn't thought of questioning the claim - in this particular case, the guy (a very creative, young juggler from the US) created a named series of tricks for each letter of the alphabet, Hermine being the 8th.
But there are probably hundreds of better known tricks that I would focus on first.
Steve
On 3/24/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
I didn't mean the claim that it was possible: the video should document that pretty well. I meant the claim that he invented it, and that the name he coined for it is accepted. Those would need verification, or, in its absence, should at most be documented as claims of one person only.
In this particular case I wouldn't put the bar very high, but we're to take his claims at face value, we at least ought to be able to point to another source and say "Well, at least this other guy agrees with him."
I think the substantive point to document here is that such a move does exist in the world of juggling. Whether we call the article by a certain name or credit one particular guy with inventing it is something to be dealt with by normal editing, but we don't want to be in a position where we say "we've seen strong evidence of this juggling move but we can't document it because the name by which the source knows it may be ideosyncratic. Let's get all human knowledge *into* the encyclopedia, and once it's there we can argue about what name to call things.
On 3/24/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
I think the substantive point to document here is that such a move does exist in the world of juggling. Whether we call the article by a certain name or credit one particular guy with inventing it is something to be dealt with by normal editing, but we don't want to be in a position where we say "we've seen strong evidence of this juggling move but we can't document it because the name by which the source knows it may be ideosyncratic. Let's get all human knowledge *into* the encyclopedia, and once it's there we can argue about what name to call things.
I think I've been misquoted somewhere :) This particular trick (which I know next to nothing about, because no one has ever talked about it), is afaik, simply a rather odd combination of flailing arms and balls that one guy came up with once, called Hermine, and decided to publish on the web. As such, it is not, IMHO, interesting enough to be in WP.
However, applying your above argument to something more common like ass catches (the "World Juggling Federation" insists on calling them "blind catches"), I would tend to agree with you.
I would love to document the "thoroughly impossible trick" (genuinely called that - google it!) 5 balls juggled overhead, straight into 5 balls behind the back, straight back into 5 balls overhead, with no transition throws. Ouch! (and yes, there is footage of someone actually doing it) It would be kind of cool to have an article on [[db97531]] (again, actually called that).
Interesting thing I now realise with juggling is that verifiability is easy - jugglers have a history of videotaping their creations to prove to other jugglers that they can actually do it.
Well all of the above is somewhat encouraging. I will try slowly adding more articles and see what happens. Is it considered [[WP:POINT]] to nominate your own article on AfD, just to test the waters? I really don't want to write 20 articles and have them all deleted several months down the track.
Steve
On 3/24/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Why exactly *do* we suggest merging separate short articles together into one big article, anyway? To create "the perfect article"?
Two reasons:
(a) improves the information density of our articles. (b) the average Wikipedian is less likely to support the deletion of an article about several several related subjects than one about a single, rather obscure, subject.
On Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:01:21 +0000, you wrote:
Two reasons:
You forgot (c):
A flower is more beautiful than a scattering of petals. Guy (JzG)
This is a basic editing question. Create separate articles for everything you can verify. Don't stand for any nonsense about "reliable" sources--a good juggling website should be reliable enough, whatever brain-damaged nonsense may have been stuffed into various guidelines). Create a general article on juggling techniques and refer to the other articles in it. Include in that article some less well known (but still documented) juggling tricks.
Steve Bennett (stevage@gmail.com) [060324 23:28]:
I really, really struggle with the idea of "notability" and attempting to work out how much information is "tolerated" in Wikipedia before people start nominating it for deletion with various words ending in "-cruft".
You appear to be asking for a cure for blithering idiocy. There is no cure for such, particularly on AFD.
(No doubt someone on AFD will claim this is a "personal attack." If so, please detail who it's an attack on.)
- d.
On 3/24/06, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
You appear to be asking for a cure for blithering idiocy. There is no cure for such, particularly on AFD.
Sure there is - well written policy helps. Even if 10 blithering idiots vote to delete a page, if the 11th points to the rule which clearly rules out deletion in the particular case, then hopefully the admin is sensible enough to ignore the 10. If the 11th is only screaming "use common sense!" then he won't get far.
Steve
On 3/24/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/24/06, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
You appear to be asking for a cure for blithering idiocy. There is no cure for such, particularly on AFD.
Sure there is - well written policy helps. Even if 10 blithering idiots vote to delete a page, if the 11th points to the rule which clearly rules out deletion in the particular case, then hopefully the admin is sensible enough to ignore the 10. If the 11th is only screaming "use common sense!" then he won't get far.
In my early days at Wikipedia I was told about an editor who, in closing AfDs, actually decided to go by the deletion policy. He got into quite a lot of trouble.
On 3/24/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
In my early days at Wikipedia I was told about an editor who, in closing AfDs, actually decided to go by the deletion policy. He got into quite a lot of trouble.
That's somewhat amusing. I remember the same story, and my automatic assumption that that admin was *you*...
-- Sam