1)So maybe we should allow a merges during AFD listing.
2)Pure wiki deletion is a nice idea, but if people start blanking you can't see the difference between page blankers and people who are actually interested in a discussion about the article's validity.
3) Decentralizing discussion will allow a lot of discussion to go unnoticed by people interested in Wikipedia as a whole rather than the article. Centralizing will give visibility to the most people and therefore reflect much better the views of the community.
4) We should have more centralized discussion on groups of articles to get a concensus. I've seen a lot of inclusionists, but barely any that think of the WP:MUSIC guidelines as a bad idea.
5) Moving (again) or changing the deletion process won't fix what's really wrong with it.
It's people's attitudes that need fixing rather than the process we use to delete pages.
For example: *People vote delete on sockpuppet supported articles without as much as a word on the actual article itself. *People vote keep or delete merely because an article is a school or a road without looking at the content. *People continuously criticize VFD/AFD but VFU rarely ever gets any requests. To me that says there's barely any stuff that actually needs to be undeleted.
--Mgm
On 9/13/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
*People continuously criticize VFD/AFD but VFU rarely ever gets any requests. To me that says there's barely any stuff that actually needs to be undeleted.
The standard for undeletion on VFU is so high that a few dedicated deletionists can block virtually all requests. And the traffic there is low enough that it's not difficult for those deletionists to do it.
Perhaps some inclusionists should flood VFU with articles and see if it helps.
I also think that there's a case to be made for bold undeletes, disregarding any so-called consensus that might have arised on VFD/AFD, when the "consensus" is clearly wrong. In my opinion, an admin can ignore AFD "consensus" when following it would harm the encyclopedia.
Kelly
On 13/09/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
In my opinion, an admin can ignore AFD "consensus" when following it
would harm the
encyclopedia.
Kelly
Oh please no. Name anything that could harm wikipedia that doean't get delt with as a speedy or a copyvio.
Original hoaxes. (not speedyable) -- Abi
Abigail Brady wrote:
On 13/09/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
In my opinion, an admin can ignore AFD "consensus" when following it would harm the encyclopedia.
Kelly
Oh please no. Name anything that could harm wikipedia that doean't get delt with as a speedy or a copyvio.
Original hoaxes. (not speedyable)
I'm going to play Devil's Advocate and call [[WP:NOR]] - but that's not a speedy criteria, because an article is no longer original research as soon as references are added.
The proposal of "speedy or nothing" seems to be an attempt to move towards writing a bot that will detecting CSDs and act appropriately. It will never work. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think I'm quite capable of judging for myself what I do and don't want to be on Wikipedia. I don't need a bot or a set of rules saying "anything can stay unless it's X, Y, or Z" to decide for me.
From: Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com
I'm going to play Devil's Advocate and call [[WP:NOR]] - but that's not a speedy criteria, because an article is no longer original research as soon as references are added.
Depends on the kinds of references.
Jay.
Alphax wrote:
Abigail Brady wrote:
On 13/09/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
In my opinion, an admin can ignore AFD "consensus" when following it would harm the encyclopedia.
Kelly
Oh please no. Name anything that could harm wikipedia that doean't get delt with as a speedy or a copyvio.
I'm going to play Devil's Advocate and call [[WP:NOR]] - but that's not a speedy criteria, because an article is no longer original research as soon as references are added.
The proposal of "speedy or nothing" seems to be an attempt to move towards writing a bot that will detecting CSDs and act appropriately. It will never work. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think I'm quite capable of judging for myself what I do and don't want to be on Wikipedia. I don't need a bot or a set of rules saying "anything can stay unless it's X, Y, or Z" to decide for me.
That makes you an exception with whom I can sympathise. I find that both here and in many other circumstances, people have a great deal of difficulty coping with an environment that has flexible rules. A flexible rule environment requires requires that people take time to reflect and consider. This is inconsistent with the compulsion to deal with huge amounts of material quickly. For the compulsive a single word is enough of an explanation, and if he can manage with a cryptic abbreviation so much the better. Some of us just need time to reflect.
Ec
Oh please no. Name anything that could harm wikipedia that doean't get delt with as a speedy or a copyvio.
Deleting encyclopedic articles harms the encyclopedia. Just because a "consensus" of professional deletionists decide that some article or another isn't "notable" doesn't make it unencyclopedic. See Snowspinner's post that started this iteration of this discussion.
Kelly
On 9/13/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Oh please no. Name anything that could harm wikipedia that doean't get delt with as a speedy or a copyvio.
Deleting encyclopedic articles harms the encyclopedia. Just because a "consensus" of professional deletionists decide that some article or another isn't "notable" doesn't make it unencyclopedic. See Snowspinner's post that started this iteration of this discussion.
Kelly _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
So instead you want to give more power to admins? Wikipedia descisions are not made by professional professional deletionists. Most seem to be made by random peopel who just happened to find out about the deleteion listing. As for your claim "Deleting encyclopedic articles harms the encyclopedia" it can only be true if you assume that survival of the fitest type evolution does not apply to wikis.
geni wrote:
On 9/13/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Oh please no. Name anything that could harm wikipedia that doean't get delt with as a speedy or a copyvio.
Deleting encyclopedic articles harms the encyclopedia. Just because a "consensus" of professional deletionists decide that some article or another isn't "notable" doesn't make it unencyclopedic. See Snowspinner's post that started this iteration of this discussion.
So instead you want to give more power to admins? Wikipedia descisions are not made by professional professional deletionists. Most seem to be made by random peopel who just happened to find out about the deleteion listing. As for your claim "Deleting encyclopedic articles harms the encyclopedia" it can only be true if you assume that survival of the fitest type evolution does not apply to wikis.
I concur. There are too many people shouting "OMG ROUGE ADMIN" already.
Alphax wrote:
geni wrote:
On 9/13/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Oh please no. Name anything that could harm wikipedia that doean't get delt with as a speedy or a copyvio.
Deleting encyclopedic articles harms the encyclopedia. Just because a "consensus" of professional deletionists decide that some article or another isn't "notable" doesn't make it unencyclopedic. See Snowspinner's post that started this iteration of this discussion.
So instead you want to give more power to admins? Wikipedia descisions are not made by professional professional deletionists. Most seem to be made by random peopel who just happened to find out about the deleteion listing. As for your claim "Deleting encyclopedic articles harms the encyclopedia" it can only be true if you assume that survival of the fitest type evolution does not apply to wikis.
I concur. There are too many people shouting "OMG ROUGE ADMIN" already.
"ROUGE ADMINS" = a Commie conspiracy? :-)
Ec
On 9/13/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
"ROUGE ADMINS" = a Commie conspiracy? :-)
Ec
Many a true word spoken in jest...
Sam
On 9/13/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Oh please no. Name anything that could harm wikipedia that doean't get delt with as a speedy or a copyvio.
Deleting encyclopedic articles harms the encyclopedia. Just because a "consensus" of professional deletionists decide that some article or another isn't "notable" doesn't make it unencyclopedic. See Snowspinner's post that started this iteration of this discussion.
Kelly
That's the attitude I'm talking about. If anything gets deleted, it's blamed on deletimonists, whether involved or not. I said wrongly deleted stuff should be put on VFU more. It's easy to complain and say it won't work because of deletionists without trying. VFU gets a disproportionate amount of visitors from AFD, not because deletionism is rampant, but because there's so much drivel being deleted that doesn't deserve to be resurrected.
Deleting encyclopedic articles harms Wikipedia, that's true. But keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too. Inclusionists are on the other extreme end of the spectrum and just as wrong.
--Mgm
On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote: But
keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
Does it? How?
Dan
On 9/13/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote: But
keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
Does it? How?
Dan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Well we don't despite what some people think have unlimited hard drive space. It ups the number of artilces that need to be watched for vandalism without giveing any worthwhile return. It risks increase systemic bias even further and it means effort is being put towards something wikipedia is not.
Do you realize how much disk space an article takes?
On 9/13/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Well we don't despite what some people think have unlimited hard drive space.
On 9/13/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
Do you realize how much disk space an article takes?
Deleting an article actually increases the amount of disk space required.
Kelly
On 9/14/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/13/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
Do you realize how much disk space an article takes?
Deleting an article actually increases the amount of disk space required.
Kelly
It might if stuff was kep undeleted forever.
On 9/13/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Deleting an article actually increases the amount of disk space required.
Kelly
It might if stuff was kep undeleted forever.
Huh? I'll assume you mean in the undelete archive. We keep stuff in there as long as we can, I think it was last purged in 2002. Check the top of [[WP:VFU]] if you care.
Kelly Martin wrote:
On 9/13/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
Do you realize how much disk space an article takes?
Deleting an article actually increases the amount of disk space required.
I thought disk space was unlimited! :P
From: Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com
On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote: But
keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
Does it? How?
It reduces the credibility of the project.
Jay.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
JAY JG wrote:
From: Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com
On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
But keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
Does it? How?
It reduces the credibility of the project.
In whose eyes? And why should we care what other people think of how credible our project is in the short term? We're going to be here for centuries hence.
Yours sincerely, - -- James D. Forrester Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] E-Mail : james@jdforrester.org IM (MSN) : jamesdforrester@hotmail.com
From: "James D. Forrester" james@jdforrester.org
JAY JG wrote:
From: Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com
On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
But keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
Does it? How?
It reduces the credibility of the project.
In whose eyes? And why should we care what other people think of how credible our project is in the short term? We're going to be here for centuries hence.
One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even acceptable) source. Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias (i.e. Britannica) harp on. Credibility also brings donations and other kinds of support and funding.
We can pretend it doesn't matter what people think of us, but if we do I think we're sticking our heads in the sand.
Jay.
JAY JG wrote:
One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even acceptable) source. Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias (i.e. Britannica) harp on. Credibility also brings donations and other kinds of support and funding.
Hmm, I'd think if we weren't being taken seriously as a reference work, the servers wouldn't be getting slowly crushed under the ever-growing weight of readers...
At WP's current size, the chances of finding a random vanity article is minuscule - in fact, the critiques of WP's credibility by outside people have been based on points of factual detail in existing articles on familiar subjects, not on whether an "unencyclopedic" article exists or not (which shouldn't be too surprising, since no one will go looking for them in the first place).
Note that I'm not opposed to scrubbing out borderline material, I just don't see a red-alert-the-encyclopedia-is-decaying-right-before-our-eyes situation that requires instant reaction. Our credibility is much more dependent on accuracy and completeness of the high-visibility articles, and energy spent on the marginal is energy taken away from the important.
Stan
From: Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com
JAY JG wrote:
One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even acceptable) source. Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias (i.e. Britannica) harp on. Credibility also brings donations and other kinds of support and funding.
Hmm, I'd think if we weren't being taken seriously as a reference work, the servers wouldn't be getting slowly crushed under the ever-growing weight of readers...
There's a difference between broad popularity and being taken seriously. Wikipedia is free and huge, that alone makes it popular.
At WP's current size, the chances of finding a random vanity article is minuscule - in fact, the critiques of WP's credibility by outside people have been based on points of factual detail in existing articles on familiar subjects, not on whether an "unencyclopedic" article exists or not (which shouldn't be too surprising, since no one will go looking for them in the first place).
Critics will.
Note that I'm not opposed to scrubbing out borderline material, I just don't see a red-alert-the-encyclopedia-is-decaying-right-before-our-eyes situation that requires instant reaction. Our credibility is much more dependent on accuracy and completeness of the high-visibility articles, and energy spent on the marginal is energy taken away from the important.
You have a good point, though I'm not suggesting that there is any "red alert" situation". However, as has also been pointed out, the issue is not just vanity articles and silly articles, but also with the 95% of articles placed on AfD which violate WP:NOT.
Jay.
At WP's current size, the chances of finding a random vanity article is minuscule - in fact, the critiques of WP's credibility by outside people have been based on points of factual detail in existing articles on familiar subjects, not on whether an "unencyclopedic" article exists or not (which shouldn't be too surprising, since no one will go looking for them in the first place).
Critics will.
The same critics that doomed wikipedia and claimed britannica will always be better?
Thanks, RN
From: Ryan Norton wxprojects@comcast.net
At WP's current size, the chances of finding a random vanity article is minuscule - in fact, the critiques of WP's credibility by outside people have been based on points of factual detail in existing articles on familiar subjects, not on whether an "unencyclopedic" article exists or not (which shouldn't be too surprising, since no one will go looking for them in the first place).
Critics will.
The same critics that doomed wikipedia and claimed britannica will always be better?
Dealing with perception is as important as dealing with reality.
Jay.
On 9/14/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
From: "James D. Forrester" james@jdforrester.org
JAY JG wrote:
From: Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com
On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
But keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
Does it? How?
It reduces the credibility of the project.
In whose eyes? And why should we care what other people think of how credible our project is in the short term? We're going to be here for centuries hence.
One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even acceptable) source. Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias (i.e. Britannica) harp on. Credibility also brings donations and other kinds of support and funding.
We can pretend it doesn't matter what people think of us, but if we do I think we're sticking our heads in the sand.
I think your classification of getting taken seriously as "one of Wikipedia's biggest issues" is a POV, and personally, I don't agree with it.
Reliability and credibility have absolutely nothing to do with the selection of article topics. R&C are a function of quality and quantity of references and citations used within the individual articles. Quality of coverage gets us respect, but breadth of coverage gets us admiration for our unique ability in the world of encyclopedias to cover more than anyone else. Any educator who finds a properly sourced and cited article in Wikipedia will respect it, however, educators who find the best written prose in the world in articles that lack cited references won't respect that article.
Wikipedia will never be the monolithic "respected source" that some seem to want it to be as long as it remains a wiki. Individual articles will be respected sources, and bring respect to the project, and if we fork upward with a selection of our best cited and sourced articles, we'll have a monolithic "respected source" within the project, but the wiki-ness of the main prevents it from ever serving this role. There are just too many rough edges in a wiki
I can write you a reliable and credible article on virtually any topic, but many of those topics will be excluded from Wikipedia because a consensus considers them to be "unencyclopedic" and I simply accept that as part of the project.
On 9/14/05, Michael Turley michael.turley@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/14/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
From: "James D. Forrester" james@jdforrester.org
JAY JG wrote:
From: Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com
On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
But keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
Does it? How?
It reduces the credibility of the project.
In whose eyes? And why should we care what other people think of how credible our project is in the short term? We're going to be here for centuries hence.
One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even acceptable) source. Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias (i.e. Britannica) harp on. Credibility also brings donations and other kinds of support and funding.
We can pretend it doesn't matter what people think of us, but if we do I think we're sticking our heads in the sand.
I think your classification of getting taken seriously as "one of Wikipedia's biggest issues" is a POV, and personally, I don't agree with it.
Reliability and credibility have absolutely nothing to do with the selection of article topics. R&C are a function of quality and quantity of references and citations used within the individual articles. Quality of coverage gets us respect, but breadth of coverage gets us admiration for our unique ability in the world of encyclopedias to cover more than anyone else. Any educator who finds a properly sourced and cited article in Wikipedia will respect it, however, educators who find the best written prose in the world in articles that lack cited references won't respect that article.
Wikipedia will never be the monolithic "respected source" that some seem to want it to be as long as it remains a wiki. Individual articles will be respected sources, and bring respect to the project, and if we fork upward with a selection of our best cited and sourced articles, we'll have a monolithic "respected source" within the project, but the wiki-ness of the main prevents it from ever serving this role. There are just too many rough edges in a wiki
I can write you a reliable and credible article on virtually any topic, but many of those topics will be excluded from Wikipedia because a consensus considers them to be "unencyclopedic" and I simply accept that as part of the project.
I wanted to add to my own post that Britannica and Encarta and similar others can get away with far fewer references and sources is because they aren't wikis. Everyone working on the publicly visible portions of product are paid professionals who lose their paychecks if they're not reliable and credible. We don't have that particular "luxury", so we need to cite sources and provide references.
Michael Turley wrote:
I wanted to add to my own post that Britannica and Encarta and similar others can get away with far fewer references and sources is because they aren't wikis. Everyone working on the publicly visible portions of product are paid professionals who lose their paychecks if they're not reliable and credible. We don't have that particular "luxury", so we need to cite sources and provide references.
That's certainly true, but references are also useful in their own right---providing references is a great way to point people to further reading. Even if I trusted 100% that the fact were correct and so didn't need a reference to verify it, it'd still be nice to know where it came from.
-Mark
Reliability and credibility have absolutely nothing to do with the selection of article topics. R&C are a function of quality and quantity of references and citations used within the individual articles. Quality of coverage gets us respect, but breadth of coverage gets us admiration for our unique ability in the world of encyclopedias to cover more than anyone else. Any educator who finds a properly sourced and cited article in Wikipedia will respect it, however, educators who find the best written prose in the world in articles that lack cited references won't respect that article.
Wikipedia will never be the monolithic "respected source" that some seem to want it to be as long as it remains a wiki. Individual articles will be respected sources, and bring respect to the project, and if we fork upward with a selection of our best cited and sourced articles, we'll have a monolithic "respected source" within the project, but the wiki-ness of the main prevents it from ever serving this role. There are just too many rough edges in a wiki
I can write you a reliable and credible article on virtually any topic, but many of those topics will be excluded from Wikipedia because a consensus considers them to be "unencyclopedic" and I simply accept that as part of the project.
-- Michael Turley User:Unfocused
True, that's exactly why I hate articles being deleted based on them being fancruft. Fancruft isn't a bad thing as long as an interesting info-filled article can be written about it.
--Mgm
JAY JG wrote:
One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even acceptable) source. Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias (i.e. Britannica) harp on. Credibility also brings donations and other kinds of support and funding.
We can pretend it doesn't matter what people think of us, but if we do I think we're sticking our heads in the sand.
I think this is an issue better solved by the validation project that's being planned for some time now. Once we start tagging particular revisions of articles as checked by at least someone, we can build a reliable subset without deleting anything from the wider encyclopedia. It's also easier to keep an opt-in subset reliable than to insist on stemming the tide of new articles with an opt-out deletion process.
(I do agree that some articles simply should be deleted, like a lot of the crap that gets speedy-deleted, and even some that doesn't, but I don't think this is the main way to improve reliability.)
-Mark
On Wednesday, September 14, 2005, at 12:28 PM, Delirium wrote:
JAY JG wrote:
One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even acceptable) source. Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias (i.e. Britannica) harp on. Credibility also brings donations and other kinds of support and funding.
We can pretend it doesn't matter what people think of us, but if we do I think we're sticking our heads in the sand.
I think this is an issue better solved by the validation project that's being planned for some time now.
That process is called FAC :). You could have something like "Featured Article Review" that periodically goes over the FAs to make sure they meet the standard etc...
Thanks, RN
Ryan Norton wrote:
On Wednesday, September 14, 2005, at 12:28 PM, Delirium wrote:
JAY JG wrote:
One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even acceptable) source. Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias (i.e. Britannica) harp on. Credibility also brings donations and other kinds of support and funding.
We can pretend it doesn't matter what people think of us, but if we do I think we're sticking our heads in the sand.
I think this is an issue better solved by the validation project that's being planned for some time now.
That process is called FAC :). You could have something like "Featured Article Review" that periodically goes over the FAs to make sure they meet the standard etc...
Well, I meant the broader validation project that's been discussed on and off. FAC is a somewhat high standard; there are plenty of other Wikipedia articles not up to that standard that are still good and reliable (but incomplete) sources of information. Ideally we could have a few grades ("unreviewed", "not crap", "pretty good", "featured" or something). In addition, it'd be nice to tag particular revisions---there's currently no guarantee that the current version of a featured article isn't filled with recently-inserted errors.
-Mark
On 9/14/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
It reduces the credibility of the project.
That's a highly disputable claim for which I doubt you can produce much in the way of support.
Kelly
On Sep 14, 2005, at 11:23 AM, JAY JG wrote:
From: Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com
On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote: But
keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
Does it? How?
It reduces the credibility of the project.
Jay.
I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
-Snowspinner
On 9/14/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
Isn't that exactly why we exist?
On Sep 14, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Phroziac wrote:
On 9/14/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
Isn't that exactly why we exist?
I always thought so.
-Snowspinner
From: Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com
On Sep 14, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Phroziac wrote:
On 9/14/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
Isn't that exactly why we exist?
I always thought so.
We exist to create a great encyclopedia. I don't see how an encyclopedia filled with, as you put it, "silly articles", can ever be considered "great".
Jay.
We exist to create a great encyclopedia. I don't see how an encyclopedia filled with, as you put it, "silly articles", can ever be considered "great".
What's "silly" to one person is serious to another, my friend.
Also, if this is the case, wikipedia will never be considered "great" in this logic.
Thanks, RN
On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, JAY JG wrote:
From: Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com
On Sep 14, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Phroziac wrote:
On 9/14/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
Isn't that exactly why we exist?
I always thought so.
We exist to create a great encyclopedia. I don't see how an encyclopedia filled with, as you put it, "silly articles", can ever be considered "great".
I agree with Jay here (& I hope that doesn't surprise him too much ;).
Consider Wikipedia is a form of publication: currently we have the lowest threshold I can imagine for acceptance of any publication. All you have to do is submit an article that contains information that is somehow useful. (Please ignore any need to define "useful" for the moment.)
By establishing a threshold, we end up rejecting material -- for good or bad reasons -- which will inevitably result in hurt feelings. (That is why in the publishing world rejection slips are so impersonal.) Hurt feelings -- & the fact a certain percentage of submissions are simply dreadful, unusable or submitted as a joke -- result in the "toxic atmosphere" of the deletion process.
And we can't rely on only a "Speedy Delete" process: there will always be cases that fall into the grey area, if for no other reason than the need for a second opinion. And, as Tony Sideway pointed out above, some items are incorrectly placed into CSD -- for whatever reason.
The only solution to this is to COMPLETELY ABOLISH this threshold: either we have one or we don't have one. However, if we have no threshold, then we have to deal with unuseful articles full of gibberish, unfixable POV rants, hoaxes, & biographical entries that contain nothing more than a date of birth, details of education, & details of personality. Perhaps because we can somehow hide them in Wikipedia, we can argue that they aren't a problem -- but left unchecked, these unuseful articles will accumulate & grow into a problem.
Although I believe we need a threshold for Wikipedia, we also should acknowledge that in most cases an article was submitted with the best of intentions: since we are knifing someone's baby, there is no need to express glee while doing so. It appears to me that there is a consensus that the words "cruft" & "notable" should not be used in AfD: would anyone object if I edit the opening page & explain that use of either of these words will result with the nomination being immediately closed as a Speedy Keep?
Geoff
Geoff,
I realise that voters of Articles for Deletion need to sensitive to peoples opinions when voting. Having said this, I would object rather strongly if an admin closed a vote in Articles for Deletion on the grounds that a voter referred to the subject as not being notable.
After all, one of the reasons for Speedy Deletion is that an article has not established notability of the subject. As well, the main reason for keeping an article is the belief that a user might find information on the subject useful. In other words, the topic of the article is notable within a certain field of study.
As for cruft, I never use the word myself as one man's cruft is another man's interest. Having said this, I don't think an admin should close a vote on such a trivial ground and I would support it being relisted as soon as possible.
I think that we will always need an Articles of Deletion process and I think that this system works as well as any could. It should aim to encourage as much participation as possible so should be open to all users.
Regards
Keith User Name: Capitalistroadster
On 9/15/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, JAY JG wrote:
From: Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com
On Sep 14, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Phroziac wrote:
On 9/14/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
Isn't that exactly why we exist?
I always thought so.
We exist to create a great encyclopedia. I don't see how an encyclopedia
filled with, as you put it, "silly articles", can ever be considered "great".
I agree with Jay here (& I hope that doesn't surprise him too much ;).
Consider Wikipedia is a form of publication: currently we have the lowest threshold I can imagine for acceptance of any publication. All you have to do is submit an article that contains information that is somehow useful. (Please ignore any need to define "useful" for the moment.)
By establishing a threshold, we end up rejecting material -- for good or bad reasons -- which will inevitably result in hurt feelings. (That is why in the publishing world rejection slips are so impersonal.) Hurt feelings -- & the fact a certain percentage of submissions are simply dreadful, unusable or submitted as a joke -- result in the "toxic atmosphere" of the deletion process.
And we can't rely on only a "Speedy Delete" process: there will always be cases that fall into the grey area, if for no other reason than the need for a second opinion. And, as Tony Sideway pointed out above, some items are incorrectly placed into CSD -- for whatever reason.
The only solution to this is to COMPLETELY ABOLISH this threshold: either we have one or we don't have one. However, if we have no threshold, then we have to deal with unuseful articles full of gibberish, unfixable POV rants, hoaxes, & biographical entries that contain nothing more than a date of birth, details of education, & details of personality. Perhaps because we can somehow hide them in Wikipedia, we can argue that they aren't a problem -- but left unchecked, these unuseful articles will accumulate & grow into a problem.
Although I believe we need a threshold for Wikipedia, we also should acknowledge that in most cases an article was submitted with the best of intentions: since we are knifing someone's baby, there is no need to express glee while doing so. It appears to me that there is a consensus that the words "cruft" & "notable" should not be used in AfD: would anyone object if I edit the opening page & explain that use of either of these words will result with the nomination being immediately closed as a Speedy Keep?
Geoff
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 9/14/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
Geoff,
I realise that voters of Articles for Deletion need to sensitive to peoples opinions when voting. Having said this, I would object rather strongly if an admin closed a vote in Articles for Deletion on the grounds that a voter referred to the subject as not being notable.
After all, one of the reasons for Speedy Deletion is that an article has not established notability of the subject. As well, the main reason for keeping an article is the belief that a user might find information on the subject useful. In other words, the topic of the article is notable within a certain field of study.
As for cruft, I never use the word myself as one man's cruft is another man's interest. Having said this, I don't think an admin should close a vote on such a trivial ground and I would support it being relisted as soon as possible.
I think that we will always need an Articles of Deletion process and I think that this system works as well as any could. It should aim to encourage as much participation as possible so should be open to all users.
Regards
Keith User Name: Capitalistroadster
On 9/15/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, JAY JG wrote:
From: Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com
On Sep 14, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Phroziac wrote:
On 9/14/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
Isn't that exactly why we exist?
I always thought so.
We exist to create a great encyclopedia. I don't see how an encyclopedia
filled with, as you put it, "silly articles", can ever be considered "great".
I agree with Jay here (& I hope that doesn't surprise him too much ;).
Consider Wikipedia is a form of publication: currently we have the lowest threshold I can imagine for acceptance of any publication. All you have to do is submit an article that contains information that is somehow useful. (Please ignore any need to define "useful" for the moment.)
By establishing a threshold, we end up rejecting material -- for good or bad reasons -- which will inevitably result in hurt feelings. (That is why in the publishing world rejection slips are so impersonal.) Hurt feelings -- & the fact a certain percentage of submissions are simply dreadful, unusable or submitted as a joke -- result in the "toxic atmosphere" of the deletion process.
And we can't rely on only a "Speedy Delete" process: there will always be cases that fall into the grey area, if for no other reason than the need for a second opinion. And, as Tony Sideway pointed out above, some items are incorrectly placed into CSD -- for whatever reason.
The only solution to this is to COMPLETELY ABOLISH this threshold: either we have one or we don't have one. However, if we have no threshold, then we have to deal with unuseful articles full of gibberish, unfixable POV rants, hoaxes, & biographical entries that contain nothing more than a date of birth, details of education, & details of personality. Perhaps because we can somehow hide them in Wikipedia, we can argue that they aren't a problem -- but left unchecked, these unuseful articles will accumulate & grow into a problem.
Although I believe we need a threshold for Wikipedia, we also should acknowledge that in most cases an article was submitted with the best of intentions: since we are knifing someone's baby, there is no need to express glee while doing so. It appears to me that there is a consensus that the words "cruft" & "notable" should not be used in AfD: would anyone object if I edit the opening page & explain that use of either of these words will result with the nomination being immediately closed as a Speedy Keep?
Geoff
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Geoff, Keith.
Sometimes there's people that can word something a lot better than others. In this case I heartily agree with both your last posts. I couldn't have said it better myself.
--Mgm
On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Keith Old wrote:
Geoff,
I realise that voters of Articles for Deletion need to sensitive to peoples opinions when voting. Having said this, I would object rather strongly if an admin closed a vote in Articles for Deletion on the grounds that a voter referred to the subject as not being notable.
After all, one of the reasons for Speedy Deletion is that an article has not established notability of the subject. As well, the main reason for keeping an article is the belief that a user might find information on the subject useful. In other words, the topic of the article is notable within a certain field of study.
While I agree with your point, from my participation in AfD I've come to see that far too often "non-notable" is used in a vague sense, without any definition of what the submitter thinks the criteria for notability is. It's one thing, for example, to say that a web-based community is non-notable because it has a small number of members: then the article can be defended against deletion based on the membership size, or perhaps another point can be introduced to prove notability. (Say, in regards to my example, it is revealed that this web-based community has its origins in the first BBS in Latvia.) It's another to just say "Non-notable website" with no further explanation. Even if a subject _is_ non-notable, the contributor would benefit from learning why that is the case.
As for cruft, I never use the word myself as one man's cruft is another man's interest. Having said this, I don't think an admin should close a vote on such a trivial ground and I would support it being relisted as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, "cruft" does get used (or abused) a lot on AfD, both alone & compounded with other words. (One combination that I still scratch my follically-challenged head over is "stalkercruft". I still have no idea what that might be, or how I would recognize "stalkercruft".)
My intent with this proposal is to force people to be less lazy in their nominations. I for one always treat every nomination I make as a case where I have to prove my case; & at the same time, try to remember that the discussion is about the article, not me or the contributor. It would be nice if more people did this. (Although the temptation to poke fun at an article I admit sometimes is too powerful to resist.)
I think that we will always need an Articles of Deletion process and I think that this system works as well as any could. It should aim to encourage as much participation as possible so should be open to all users.
Agreed. I did not intend to say anything to the contrary.
Geoff
P.S. I'd say more, but I'm about to leave for a 4-day trip away from home & Wikipedia. I leave the discussion to everyone else's capable hands.
"Non-notable" in itself isn't a bad shorthand as long as its use is explained in full by the nominator.
"Cruft" on the other hand seems to be (ab)used by people who don't like the subject matter and is rarely explained with actual evidence of hits, sources and other types of evidence. I wouldn't feel at all hurt if "cruft" would be banned from AFD.
--Mgm
G'day Geoff, <snip />
Although I believe we need a threshold for Wikipedia, we also should acknowledge that in most cases an article was submitted with the best of intentions: since we are knifing someone's baby, there is no need to express glee while doing so. It appears to me that there is a consensus that the words "cruft" & "notable" should not be used in AfD: would anyone object if I edit the opening page & explain that use of either of these words will result with the nomination being immediately closed as a Speedy Keep?
*Yes*. "Notable" is an important shorthand, and much less likely to cause offence than the other AfD tragic favourite "vanity".
"Cruft", well, I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, those who dislike the word "cruft" seem to be those who dislike the *removal* of cruft. On the other, if one were to take an inclusionist POV then merely disliking the removal of obvious cruft is not in itself a Bad Thing. Blast it. I guess "kipple" is out of bounds, too?
Mark Gallagher wrote:
G'day Geoff,
<snip />
Although I believe we need a threshold for Wikipedia, we also should acknowledge that in most cases an article was submitted with the best of intentions: since we are knifing someone's baby, there is no need to express glee while doing so. It appears to me that there is a consensus that the words "cruft" & "notable" should not be used in AfD: would anyone object if I edit the opening page & explain that use of either of these words will result with the nomination being immediately closed as a Speedy Keep?
*Yes*. "Notable" is an important shorthand, and much less likely to cause offence than the other AfD tragic favourite "vanity".
I agree. Someone needs to run a bot over all the active AfD subpages to replace all instances of "vanity" with "self-aggrandising POV on unremarkable subject, an article on which would violate the Principle of Least Astonishment".
Snowspinner wrote:
On Sep 14, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Phroziac wrote:
On 9/14/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
Isn't that exactly why we exist?
I always thought so.
In the world of encyclopedic Darwinism Britannica has ceased being competitive.
Ec
On 9/14/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Sep 14, 2005, at 11:23 AM, JAY JG wrote:
From: Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com
On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote: But
keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
Does it? How?
It reduces the credibility of the project.
Jay.
I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
-Snowspinner _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I said keeping unencyclopedic articles hurts Wikipedia. When people dismiss Wikipedia they're often talk about stubs they find incomplete and items they don't expect to find in encyclopedia. I mean unencyclopedic entries which shouldn't be here to begin with as per WP:NOT.
From: Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com
On Sep 14, 2005, at 11:23 AM, JAY JG wrote:
From: Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com
On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote: But
keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
Does it? How?
It reduces the credibility of the project.
Jay.
I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
The issue isn't just silly articles; that said things like our Ashlee Simpson coverage have already been the subject of public ridicule, and those articles are some of our best written trivia.
Jay.
The issue isn't just silly articles; that said things like our Ashlee Simpson coverage have already been the subject of public ridicule, and those articles are some of our best written trivia.
I've actually heard mostly good things about it... just the quote from the yahoo blog about it being better than 95% of the current world leaders or whatever is a little silly.
Thanks, RN
From: Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com
Deleting encyclopedic articles harms the encyclopedia.
If only it were easy to decide what articles are "encyclopedic".
Just because a "consensus" of professional deletionists decide that some article or another isn't "notable" doesn't make it unencyclopedic.
This kind of partisan language is completely unhelpful.
Jay.
On 9/13/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
I also think that there's a case to be made for bold undeletes, disregarding any so-called consensus that might have arised on VFD/AFD, when the "consensus" is clearly wrong. In my opinion, an admin can ignore AFD "consensus" when following it would harm the encyclopedia.
*cough* [[WP:IAR]], [[WP:BOLD]]. That's half the trifecta!
On 9/13/05 6:53 AM, "Kelly Martin" kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
I also think that there's a case to be made for bold undeletes, disregarding any so-called consensus that might have arised on VFD/AFD, when the "consensus" is clearly wrong. In my opinion, an admin can ignore AFD "consensus" when following it would harm the encyclopedia.
So would that mean that admins could invoke [[WP:IAR] to ignore a "keep" consensus if, in their opinion, following it would harm the encyclopedia? Or does this [[WP:BOLD]] action only apply when it fits with your personal POV?
-FCYTravis
So would that mean that admins could invoke [[WP:IAR] to ignore a "keep" consensus if, in their opinion, following it would harm the encyclopedia?
As long as they're prepared to explain their reasoning, absolutely. IAR is a two-edged sword: if you invoke it and can't defend it, you lose community respect.
Kelly
On 9/13/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
So would that mean that admins could invoke [[WP:IAR] to ignore a "keep" consensus if, in their opinion, following it would harm the encyclopedia?
As long as they're prepared to explain their reasoning, absolutely. IAR is a two-edged sword: if you invoke it and can't defend it, you lose community respect.
Kelly _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Stop talking about me! heh. Seriously though, I agree with Kelly.
From: Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com
On 9/13/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
*People continuously criticize VFD/AFD but VFU rarely ever gets any requests. To me that says there's barely any stuff that actually needs to be undeleted.
The standard for undeletion on VFU is so high that a few dedicated deletionists can block virtually all requests. And the traffic there is low enough that it's not difficult for those deletionists to do it.
And yet things are undeleted all the time.
The bar at VfU seems quite appropriate; VfU is a "court of appeal", so it deals strictly with procedural errors. It's not a "second guess the original voters" or "do-over because I lost" page; otherwise it would simply be AfD2.
Perhaps some inclusionists should flood VFU with articles and see if it helps.
WP:POINT never helps, especially when there is no evidence of a problem to begin with.
I also think that there's a case to be made for bold undeletes, disregarding any so-called consensus that might have arised on VFD/AFD, when the "consensus" is clearly wrong. In my opinion, an admin can ignore AFD "consensus" when following it would harm the encyclopedia.
Sounds like a recipe for admin abuse, or charges of the same. Do you also support admins deleting stuff even though the vote is to keep it, "when consensus is clearly wrong, and following it would harm the encyclopedia".
Jay.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
2)Pure wiki deletion is a nice idea, but if people start blanking you can't see the difference between page blankers and people who are actually interested in a discussion about the article's validity.
People deleting an article by blanking would include an edit summary. I'm kinda suprised that this objection keeps coming up since the solution is so obvious.
Ryan