http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2007/10/30/wikiwatch-how-did-...
Oh look. Our webcomics deletionism has driven off contributors and hurt the project.
I'm surprised. Are you surprised? I'm surprised.
-Phil
On 11/10/07, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2007/10/30/wikiwatch-how-did-...
Oh look. Our webcomics deletionism has driven off contributors and hurt the project.
I AM offering a solution. It goes like this: Don't send Wikimedia
Foundation your money
until they change the system. Wikipedia should be writer-friendly,
encouraging improvement
to articles, constructively criticizing them where appropriate, and erring
on the side of
inclusion.
Solution? I've got your solution: magic it better!
Sure, speedy deletion sucks, but it's the best we've got. Of course we want real solutions.
Steve
On Nov 9, 2007, at 10:14 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 11/10/07, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2007/10/30/wikiwatch-how-did-...
Oh look. Our webcomics deletionism has driven off contributors and hurt the project.
I AM offering a solution. It goes like this: Don't send Wikimedia
Foundation your money
until they change the system. Wikipedia should be writer-friendly,
encouraging improvement
to articles, constructively criticizing them where appropriate, and erring
on the side of
inclusion.
Solution? I've got your solution: magic it better!
Sure, speedy deletion sucks, but it's the best we've got. Of course we want real solutions.
Speedy deletion works great.
People who tag articles within minutes of their creation and don't contact the article writers to ask for an assertion of notability are a problem.
A7 remains the most misused CSD. Its error rate remains unacceptably high, and it is the culprit in most of the worst newbie-biting deletions we do.
-Phil
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 10:53:25 -0500, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
A7 remains the most misused CSD. Its error rate remains unacceptably high, and it is the culprit in most of the worst newbie-biting deletions we do.
Right. So we have an idea on the table: speedy deletions (for actively harmful content, like poop vandalism, attack pages and the like) and accelerated {{prod}} for those which just look wrong (garage bands and the like). Will this help? It might, it might not.
Another problem: Phil Sandifer does not scale. You know a lot about webcomics, and I trust your judgment on them, which makes for a great first cut as far as I'm concerned: if Phil says it's unworthy, then it almost certainly is genuinely junk. Get more of your well-informed friends in on it.
Guy (JzG)
On 09/11/2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
Another problem: Phil Sandifer does not scale. You know a lot about webcomics, and I trust your judgment on them, which makes for a great first cut as far as I'm concerned: if Phil says it's unworthy, then it almost certainly is genuinely junk. Get more of your well-informed friends in on it.
The webcomic artists do have a point: there was indeed a long-running attempt to get rid of webcomics in Wikipedia, to the point where those against them tried to put through a notability guideline that would preclude expert opinion as biased toward the subject - i.e., a direct anti-expert guideline, specifically to stop Phil objecting to them.
That said, the present campaign appears (I must say) somewhat petulant and ill-conceived as to what is article-worthy in Wikipedia. The notion of third-party verifiability is not widely appreciated.
The public relations problem is that "notable" is Wikipedia jargon, *not* how the word is understood by outsiders. This means it's going to continue to be a problem as long as it's used on AFD and other points of public interaction in the jargon sense rather than the conventional English language sense.
- d.
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 09/11/2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
Another problem: Phil Sandifer does not scale. You know a lot about webcomics, and I trust your judgment on them, which makes for a great first cut as far as I'm concerned: if Phil says it's unworthy, then it almost certainly is genuinely junk. Get more of your well-informed friends in on it.
The webcomic artists do have a point: there was indeed a long-running attempt to get rid of webcomics in Wikipedia, to the point where those against them tried to put through a notability guideline that would preclude expert opinion as biased toward the subject - i.e., a direct anti-expert guideline, specifically to stop Phil objecting to them.
That said, the present campaign appears (I must say) somewhat petulant and ill-conceived as to what is article-worthy in Wikipedia. The notion of third-party verifiability is not widely appreciated.
The public relations problem is that "notable" is Wikipedia jargon, *not* how the word is understood by outsiders. This means it's going to continue to be a problem as long as it's used on AFD and other points of public interaction in the jargon sense rather than the conventional English language sense.
- d.
We could change the name of Notability to some other term. I'd almost be tempted to suggest a nonsense word or something completely unrelated to make clear that we're not talking about notability in the colloquial sense. Instead of notability why not say "Ardvarkness"? Articles are included if they have Ardvarkness?
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:29:17 -0500, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
We could change the name of Notability to some other term. I'd almost be tempted to suggest a nonsense word or something completely unrelated to make clear that we're not talking about notability in the colloquial sense. Instead of notability why not say "Ardvarkness"? Articles are included if they have Ardvarkness?
Sorry, aardvark, wombat and echidna are all taken.
What is wrong with "encyclopaedic" though?
Guy (JzG)
Quoting Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net:
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:29:17 -0500, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
We could change the name of Notability to some other term. I'd almost be tempted to suggest a nonsense word or something completely unrelated to make clear that we're not talking about notability in the colloquial sense. Instead of notability why not say "Ardvarkness"? Articles are included if they have Ardvarkness?
Sorry, aardvark, wombat and echidna are all taken.
What is wrong with "encyclopaedic" though?
That would have another advantage- people wouldn't be able to keep calling for deletion of topics that have sources by saying it isn't "encyclopaedic".
On 09/11/2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
What is wrong with "encyclopaedic" though?
That the word means "covers everything" probably wouldn't make it the best choice for a jargon term implying "doesn't cover everything."
What do we mean? I think we mean "not suitable for Wikipedia", and "notable" is an AFD jargon word pressed into the cause. Is there something that says that in less than four words?
- d.
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 19:44:45 +0000, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
What do we mean? I think we mean "not suitable for Wikipedia", and "notable" is an AFD jargon word pressed into the cause. Is there something that says that in less than four words?
The Prisoner coined the term "unmutual" (a great term for our more problematic editors). Maybe we can come up with something like that.
Guy (JzG)
On Nov 9, 2007, at 1:18 PM, David Gerard wrote:
That said, the present campaign appears (I must say) somewhat petulant and ill-conceived as to what is article-worthy in Wikipedia. The notion of third-party verifiability is not widely appreciated.
I think the present campaign stems both from the astonishingly bad- faith and hostile campaign to drive webcomics contributors away combined with the jargony public face that Wikipedia shows users when it comes to new article creation.
It is certainly misguided. But had we not so utterly soured our relationship with the webcomics community (and we have - there is very little rational discussion to be had with webcomics people about Wikipedia anymore based on the slap in the face that the previous campaign was) we could probably come to some sort of understanding with a lot of them. Instead we made that impossible, because we're awesome like that.
-Phil
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 13:39:11 -0500, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
It is certainly misguided. But had we not so utterly soured our relationship with the webcomics community (and we have - there is very little rational discussion to be had with webcomics people about Wikipedia anymore based on the slap in the face that the previous campaign was) we could probably come to some sort of understanding with a lot of them. Instead we made that impossible, because we're awesome like that.
Well, maybe. But you know some of these people and they trust you. You are the public face here, and you are a nice guy, so maybe that can be fixed. Or maybe not.
Things to do:
Change AfD into "articles for discussion".
Allow any editor in good standing to say "OK, I can fix this one" and take it on for 14 days, at the end of which if it is not fixed it drops back into the funnel. With the comments wiped; it's probably not the same article any more.
Make this individual editors, not projects - some wikiprojects are in flagrant breach of [[WP:OWN]] pretty much all the time.
Allow more outcomes: * keep * delete * merge to... (and notify the first merge advocate on close that it's time to put his idea into practice) * accelerated cleanup, 7 days to reference and tidy or it goes into a category for expired accelerated cleanup and can be nuked
Some ideas anyway, with the idea of allowing people to pick an article out of the trash can and fix it without having to spend their whole time defending it on AfD and without risking invalid !votes because the article has changed (I'm thinking of people like Geogre here). Obvious crap, waste as little time as possible. Sure, the creator of a garage band article wants it kept and will remove a {{prod}}, too bad. And the borderline ones, get to a list small enough to be manageable and intelligible, and attract some genuine thought.
Guy (JzG)
Quoting Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com:
It is certainly misguided. But had we not so utterly soured our relationship with the webcomics community (and we have - there is very little rational discussion to be had with webcomics people about Wikipedia anymore based on the slap in the face that the previous campaign was) we could probably come to some sort of understanding with a lot of them. Instead we made that impossible, because we're awesome like that.
-Phil
But see my last post, where I noted all the major webcomics who are ok with us. We've really only pissed off a subset of the community and to some extent much of that subset are people who would be pissed at us anyways. Pissing off Howard Tayler was bad, and we should try to do everything we can to get him back on our side if it is at all possible. But for a lot of the others they would have been pissed at us eventually. See for example at http://www.partiallyclips.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=78b47d2cc544fd659e2... where Rob Balder responds to a polite attempt by Mindspillage to explain notability and a few other issues.
Sure, pissing people off is bad but let's keep this in perspective. Also, let's remember that part of the entire webcomics problem was a backlash against an inclusion criterion for any webcomic with even a very low Alexa rating. So maybe one lesson from this should be "don't lower inclusion bars for any subject, because when you raise them again you'll get lots of stress and drama"
On 09/11/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
side if it is at all possible. But for a lot of the others they would have been pissed at us eventually. See for example at http://www.partiallyclips.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=78b47d2cc544fd659e2... where Rob Balder responds to a polite attempt by Mindspillage to explain notability and a few other issues.
That would indeed be in the class of people who really aren't worth trying to deal with until they realise Wikipedia isn't their publicity channel.
- d.
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:01:42 -0500, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
See for example at http://www.partiallyclips.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=78b47d2cc544fd659e2... where Rob Balder responds to a polite attempt by Mindspillage to explain notability and a few other issues.
Bizarre. We have an article on PartiallyClips and it was never deleted.
Guy (JzG)
Quoting Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net:
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:01:42 -0500, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
See for example at http://www.partiallyclips.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=78b47d2cc544fd659e2... where Rob Balder responds to a polite attempt by Mindspillage to explain notability and a few other issues.
Bizarre. We have an article on PartiallyClips and it was never deleted.
Hi main beef was that we speedy deleted the initial version of the article about his more recent comic Erfworld. See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Erfworld Quoting from a personal message to me "Erfworld was a "notable webcomic" from the moment it launched on the 5th highest traffic website in webcomics. It did NOT need the Time blog or Dragon Magazine cites to prove it. Any system for measuring notability which cannot accomodate an example like Erfworld is broken. The webcomics notability system has been intentionally broken by deletionists (one of whom speedy-deleted the original article)." - Now, I think he's wrong here (if I replaced "5th highest traffic website in webcomics" with ""5th highest traffic website in crocheting" we would immediately see this as ridiculous (although I find the initial claim a bit ridiculous to start with)). However, he may have, beyond all the invective (I've taken this comment out of a longer message with much profanity) he may have a point: if something looks like it is very likely going to be notable, there isn't much harm in waiting a few weeks. It will piss off fewer people and save us all time and effort.
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:35:47 -0500, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Hi main beef was that we speedy deleted the initial version of the article about his more recent comic Erfworld.
Which could have been avoided by people waiting to see what the critical reception was before creating the article. Wikipedia is not, I think, supposed to be the web's no. 1 "you read it here first" cutting edge news source.
My opinion is slightly coloured by the fact that I think no music can be accurately assessed as historically important until the writer dies. I make a small exception for the Beatles (since they've been "dead" as a band for a few decades).
One day people will look back at our thousands of articles on albums by deathgrindcore bands that sold ten thousand copies and will laugh that anybody could be bothered to catalogue them.
I've nearly persuaded my children of this. Nearly.
Guy (JzG)
On 09/11/2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
One day people will look back at our thousands of articles on albums by deathgrindcore bands that sold ten thousand copies and will laugh that anybody could be bothered to catalogue them. I've nearly persuaded my children of this. Nearly.
I'd disagree, actually. Having this stuff documented is *gold* to the researcher. It would go in a specialist encyclopedia of the subject, it should go in Wikipedia.
- d.
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 20:02:59 +0000, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I'd disagree, actually. Having this stuff documented is *gold* to the researcher. It would go in a specialist encyclopedia of the subject, it should go in Wikipedia.
I have just been reading an academic work on musicology that says anything past about 1900 becomes a nightmare for the musicologist because, outside of the masters, the volume of documentation is simply too big to allow any meaningful process of critical categorisation.
I think the view on the thousands of sold-a-dozen CDs will be the same: of no practical use or interest, does not make the cut in any rational analysis of the subject.
Guy (JzG)
Quoting Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net:
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 20:02:59 +0000, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I'd disagree, actually. Having this stuff documented is *gold* to the researcher. It would go in a specialist encyclopedia of the subject, it should go in Wikipedia.
I have just been reading an academic work on musicology that says anything past about 1900 becomes a nightmare for the musicologist because, outside of the masters, the volume of documentation is simply too big to allow any meaningful process of critical categorisation.
I think the view on the thousands of sold-a-dozen CDs will be the same: of no practical use or interest, does not make the cut in any rational analysis of the subject.
If Wikipedia is doing its job they should have an immediate ability to focus based on a) popularity (number sold) or b) a more indirect measure of popularity (such as number of Wikipedia articles which link to the subject). I'd suspect(speculating here) that part of the problem for the musicologists is that no extensive organization of the pre-1900 documentation occurred when people were still around who knew about the material.
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:38:37 -0500, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
I'd suspect(speculating here) that part of the problem for the musicologists is that no extensive organization of the pre-1900 documentation occurred when people were still around who knew about the material.
Rather the opposite: by 1900 they had decided it was worth doing, and everyone was at it, so there was so *much* material it became unmanageable :-)
Guy (JzG)
On 09/11/2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 20:02:59 +0000, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I'd disagree, actually. Having this stuff documented is *gold* to the researcher. It would go in a specialist encyclopedia of the subject, it should go in Wikipedia.
I have just been reading an academic work on musicology that says anything past about 1900 becomes a nightmare for the musicologist because, outside of the masters, the volume of documentation is simply too big to allow any meaningful process of critical categorisation.
I think the view on the thousands of sold-a-dozen CDs will be the same: of no practical use or interest, does not make the cut in any rational analysis of the subject.
Guy (JzG)
If computer searches continue to improve I doubt that will be much of a problem.
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 18:18:44 +0000, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The public relations problem is that "notable" is Wikipedia jargon, *not* how the word is understood by outsiders. This means it's going to continue to be a problem as long as it's used on AFD and other points of public interaction in the jargon sense rather than the conventional English language sense.
Yes, I absolutely agree. That is one of the things we could probably change, if we really wanted to. Do we?
Guy (JzG)
Quoting Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com:
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2007/10/30/wikiwatch-how-did-...
Oh look. Our webcomics deletionism has driven off contributors and hurt the project.
I'm surprised. Are you surprised? I'm surprised.
Up to a point, many of the webcomics deleted didn't meet notability and it is telling that one of the chief complaints about the webcomics deletions were that deletion reduced the traffic they were getting. We could have handled the webcomics matter much more effectively and diplomatically (and some of the AfD attempts were frankly ridiculous) but many of the webcomics removed we were correct to remove.
On Nov 9, 2007, at 10:46 AM, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com:
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2007/10/30/wikiwatch-how-did-...
Oh look. Our webcomics deletionism has driven off contributors and hurt the project.
I'm surprised. Are you surprised? I'm surprised.
Up to a point, many of the webcomics deleted didn't meet notability and it is telling that one of the chief complaints about the webcomics deletions were that deletion reduced the traffic they were getting. We could have handled the webcomics matter much more effectively and diplomatically (and some of the AfD attempts were frankly ridiculous) but many of the webcomics removed we were correct to remove.
I've never denied that.
But there were users who had an active desire to remove webcomics articles as thoroughly as they could get away with for reasons that amounted to a lack of interest in the topic, a rigorous and definition- based view of notability, and an utter disdain for actual expert viewpoints.
That was a disaster.
I am all about removing promotional articles. But there exists a real webcomics community that is interesting, notable, and has documented sources and commentary. And our coverage of it was actively and serially removed in as offensive a manner as possible.
-Phil
Philip Sandifer wrote:
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2007/10/30/wikiwatch-how-did-...
Oh look. Our webcomics deletionism has driven off contributors and hurt the project.
I'm surprised. Are you surprised? I'm surprised.
I saw this back when it first came up and considered writing a posting here about it, but I decided against it because I figured I'd sound like a broken record. But I guess that fact itself is kind of significant.
Frankly, I support this boycott. We, as a community, decided to reduce our support for webcomics articles as much as possible, so it's entirely reasonable that they, as a community, would decide to reduce their support for Wikipedia as much as possible. Some editors like to point out how prominent Wikipedia has become as a reason why it's important to remove "non-notable" material. Well, here's the flipside of that; a lot of people notice now when we snub a subject area that they themselves consider notable.
Quoting Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca:
Philip Sandifer wrote:
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2007/10/30/wikiwatch-how-did-...
Oh look. Our webcomics deletionism has driven off contributors and hurt the project.
I'm surprised. Are you surprised? I'm surprised.
I saw this back when it first came up and considered writing a posting here about it, but I decided against it because I figured I'd sound like a broken record. But I guess that fact itself is kind of significant.
Frankly, I support this boycott. We, as a community, decided to reduce our support for webcomics articles as much as possible, so it's entirely reasonable that they, as a community, would decide to reduce their support for Wikipedia as much as possible. Some editors like to point out how prominent Wikipedia has become as a reason why it's important to remove "non-notable" material. Well, here's the flipside of that; a lot of people notice now when we snub a subject area that they themselves consider notable.
Up to a point. Many of the webcomics people aren't complaining about the targeted deletions of notable items (which in any event were almost all kept or were recreated after DRVs). The complain to a large extent is that we aren't keeping almost all Webcomics. Many have complained that anything less than keeping all webcomics is "censorship", See the relevant Wikinews article - http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcomic_communi... and the highly informative comments thread- http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Comments:Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcomi...
That's not to say that parts of their response aren't unreasonable. Users did not restrict themselves to targeting merely the problematic materialthere was a lot of collateral damage, and we could have been much more diplomatic about everything. However, we should not lose sight that most of the articles deleted did not belong on Wikipedia and that the elements of the webcomics community that are unhappy with us are often parts that are unhappy because the loss of Wikipedia articles hurts either their egos or livelyhood.
Finally, note that many prominent webcomics are still on very good terms with us despite this supposed backlash. For example, XKCD continues to have positive Wikipedia themed humor (indeed I doubt that the author Randall Munroe(who incidentally has been a model Wikipedian where COI and related issues are concerned) is even aware of this blowup). http://www.achewood.com/ http://www.dieselsweeties.com/ http://www.fetusx.com/ http://www.pvponline.com/about are all notable webcomics which go so far as to link to their relevant Wikipedia articles (and if I'm not mistaken PvP was even one of the webcomics that got deleted at one point).
Overall, this matter has been blown out of proportion I for one am far more concerned about pissing off Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Cory Doctorow. They are our natural constituency. But as far as I'm aware no one involved in that incident has even tried to apologize to Hayden.
On 09/11/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Overall, this matter has been blown out of proportion I for one am far more concerned about pissing off Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Cory Doctorow. They are our natural constituency. But as far as I'm aware no one involved in that incident has even tried to apologize to Hayden.
I understood that there had been considerable high-level discussion and apology on the matter (phone calls from Jimbo and so forth).
But that Making Light ran a blatant personal attack article *after* the original conflict had apparently been sorted out, however, does not speak well of them at all in terms of being people it's reasonable to consider bothering to interact with.
- d.
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 19:04:16 +0000, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
But that Making Light ran a blatant personal attack article *after* the original conflict had apparently been sorted out, however, does not speak well of them at all in terms of being people it's reasonable to consider bothering to interact with.
I have a couple of thoughts from this exchange.
Webcomic "marketing" is essentially viral or memetic. Clicks is how sell themselves to publishers and advertisers, it's the life-blood of the webcomic genre. Wikipedia does not play that game well; we try to wait until significance is established, whereas they really want us to play a part in making significance happen.
This should never have got this far, though. When did Comixpedia go online? Wikipedia could never be the global directory of all webcomics, that is something we are not and Comixpedia apparently is; we should have been better at communicating that.
And actually we should have <puts a pound in the buzzword box> leveraged the Wikiproject here. The webcomics editors include many long-time, sensible, practical people. A system of filtering, triage, review and selective quiet removal, led by people who know what they are talking about, is much harder to complain about.
Question: do Wikiprojects have the self-discipline to be trusted?
In other words, if we made the first stage of AfD a direction to the Wikiprojects, with no comments allowed in the "catch-all" criterion until they had been assessed as properly identified deletion candidates, would the projects prevent deletion of everything they like, regardless of objective measures of quality and verifiability?
Guy (JzG)
On 09/11/2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
This should never have got this far, though. When did Comixpedia go online? Wikipedia could never be the global directory of all webcomics, that is something we are not and Comixpedia apparently is; we should have been better at communicating that.
That Howard Tayler mounted his campaign apparently unaware of the existence of Comixpedia doesn't speak well to Comixpedia's mindshare in its supposed primary audience, the webcomics subculture.
And actually we should have <puts a pound in the buzzword box> leveraged the Wikiproject here. The webcomics editors include many long-time, sensible, practical people. A system of filtering, triage, review and selective quiet removal, led by people who know what they are talking about, is much harder to complain about. Question: do Wikiprojects have the self-discipline to be trusted?
Some do, some don't. When I started the Scientology one, I tried very hard to word the page so as not to appear to be claiming ownership of the area, for example - every decision has got to fly with uninvolved Wikipedians.
In other words, if we made the first stage of AfD a direction to the Wikiprojects, with no comments allowed in the "catch-all" criterion until they had been assessed as properly identified deletion candidates, would the projects prevent deletion of everything they like, regardless of objective measures of quality and verifiability?
Even with some less-than-stellar Wikiprojects (I don't have any current examples in mind), it would be worth a try. Though I expect Wikiproject Crappy Garage Bands, etc. to form soon after.
- d.
On Nov 9, 2007, at 2:48 PM, David Gerard wrote:
On 09/11/2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
This should never have got this far, though. When did Comixpedia go online? Wikipedia could never be the global directory of all webcomics, that is something we are not and Comixpedia apparently is; we should have been better at communicating that.
That Howard Tayler mounted his campaign apparently unaware of the existence of Comixpedia doesn't speak well to Comixpedia's mindshare in its supposed primary audience, the webcomics subculture.
I suspect that he is aware of Comixpedia. (Though I have no personal contact with him, and don't honestly know. But I'd be surprised if he's not aware.) But remember also that Comixpedia was designed as the angry fork from Wikipedia - the second choice alternative.
-Phil
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 19:48:41 +0000, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I expect Wikiproject Crappy Garage Bands, etc. to form soon after.
We already have WikiProject G-Unit Records, which I consider functionally identical :o)
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 19:04:16 +0000, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
But that Making Light ran a blatant personal attack article *after* the original conflict had apparently been sorted out, however, does not speak well of them at all in terms of being people it's reasonable to consider bothering to interact with.
I have a couple of thoughts from this exchange.
Webcomic "marketing" is essentially viral or memetic. Clicks is how sell themselves to publishers and advertisers, it's the life-blood of the webcomic genre. Wikipedia does not play that game well; we try to wait until significance is established, whereas they really want us to play a part in making significance happen.
This should never have got this far, though. When did Comixpedia go online? Wikipedia could never be the global directory of all webcomics, that is something we are not and Comixpedia apparently is; we should have been better at communicating that.
And actually we should have <puts a pound in the buzzword box> leveraged the Wikiproject here. The webcomics editors include many long-time, sensible, practical people. A system of filtering, triage, review and selective quiet removal, led by people who know what they are talking about, is much harder to complain about.
Question: do Wikiprojects have the self-discipline to be trusted?
In other words, if we made the first stage of AfD a direction to the Wikiprojects, with no comments allowed in the "catch-all" criterion until they had been assessed as properly identified deletion candidates, would the projects prevent deletion of everything they like, regardless of objective measures of quality and verifiability?
Guy (JzG)
It depends on the project. Some projects (MILHIST comes to mind, there are others), would be quite trustworthy and even now often nominate inappropriate articles in "their" area for AfD themselves. Others (ROADS comes to mind, I recall them sending out a "newsletter" when a few road articles were up for AfD with an undisguised canvassing attempt, as well as many projects on fictional subjects) would simply reject any request to delete -any- type of cruft in "their" area.
I love the idea, though. You mean those saying "keep and reference" -actually have to find the references-? Brilliant!
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 10:23:20 -0700, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
It depends on the project. Some projects (MILHIST comes to mind, there are others), would be quite trustworthy and even now often nominate inappropriate articles in "their" area for AfD themselves. Others (ROADS comes to mind, I recall them sending out a "newsletter" when a few road articles were up for AfD with an undisguised canvassing attempt, as well as many projects on fictional subjects) would simply reject any request to delete -any- type of cruft in "their" area.
This has the ring of truth. I am pretty convinced that the longer-standing projects are likely to be pragmatic.
I love the idea, though. You mean those saying "keep and reference" -actually have to find the references-? Brilliant!
Yes, pretty much that. And the payback is they get to check it out and save it with minimum drama if it's genuinely worthwhile.
Guy (JzG)
On Nov 11, 2007 7:23 PM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
It depends on the project. Some projects (MILHIST comes to mind, there are others), would be quite trustworthy and even now often nominate inappropriate articles in "their" area for AfD themselves. Others (ROADS comes to mind, I recall them sending out a "newsletter" when a few road articles were up for AfD with an undisguised canvassing attempt, as well as many projects on fictional subjects) would simply reject any request to delete -any- type of cruft in "their" area.
Sadly this shilling has two sides. While what you say is entirely true, there is almost nobody around on wikipedia who would say that despite military history buffs monomaniacal interest in their subject, something most people would find zero interest in, means it should be presumed a priori likely to be non-encyclopaedic.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
Quoting Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com:
On Nov 11, 2007 7:23 PM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
It depends on the project. Some projects (MILHIST comes to mind, there are others), would be quite trustworthy and even now often nominate inappropriate articles in "their" area for AfD themselves. Others (ROADS comes to mind, I recall them sending out a "newsletter" when a few road articles were up for AfD with an undisguised canvassing attempt, as well as many projects on fictional subjects) would simply reject any request to delete -any- type of cruft in "their" area.
Sadly this shilling has two sides. While what you say is entirely true, there is almost nobody around on wikipedia who would say that despite military history buffs monomaniacal interest in their subject, something most people would find zero interest in, means it should be presumed a priori likely to be non-encyclopaedic.
Well, part of the issue is that Mil History is well-established so even the tiniest of military history matters often have many reliable sources. If more new interests like webcomics want to be treated the same way they need to create more reliable sources. I mentioned at one point to Badlydrawnjeff on a related note that one serious solution to a lot of problems were for someone to start a reasonably well-edited Journal of Popular Culture. Unfortunately, many of these groups focus on adding material to Wikipedia. If they put the same effort in to make reliable sources, they'd get the Wikipedia material by default.
All of that said, general assumptions about lack of notability of an entire area is generally unproductive and should be avoided if possible.
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Well, part of the issue is that Mil History is well-established so even the tiniest of military history matters often have many reliable sources. If more new interests like webcomics want to be treated the same way they need to create more reliable sources. I mentioned at one point to Badlydrawnjeff on a related note that one serious solution to a lot of problems were for someone to start a reasonably well-edited Journal of Popular Culture. Unfortunately, many of these groups focus on adding material to Wikipedia. If they put the same effort in to make reliable sources, they'd get the Wikipedia material by default.
There's Comixpedia.
Yeah, I know, it wouldn't stand a chance - it's a perfect storm of "wiki, not RS!" and "webcomics, NN!" (with perhaps a bit of "OR!" thrown in since some of the articles are refugees from Wikipedia itself). But I'm actually serious. I've been over there a few times and it looks like a great source of information on the topic, at least as good as most of the websites I use as references.
On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 12:32:37 -0700, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
There's Comixpedia.
Um. There's a bit of a problem with that. Something doesn't stop being unsupported by independent critical references (in the literary sense) simply by being moved to another wiki.
But I know what you're driving at. If there was a comics wiki with an editorial process run by identified experts, and a system of rating content for cultural and likely historical significance, then that would probably pass muster, in my eyes anyway.
Guy (JzG)
On Nov 9, 2007 11:04 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
But that Making Light ran a blatant personal attack article *after* the original conflict had apparently been sorted out, however, does not speak well of them at all in terms of being people it's reasonable to consider bothering to interact with.
Well, many of them are old-school Usenetters, used to down and dirty personal conflict, no holds barred. I suspect that's a good part of it.
It was also about a clash between two insular groups, each of which was/is quite good at thinking of themselves as The Good People and not noticing how that to those not in the group they appear prickly and combative.
They acted like dicks. However, 'our group' acted like dicks too - or at least, those of us who didn't, weren't noticed - civility tends to get quietly ignored.
-Matt
Stating that some people were overly eager to get rid of web comics is a vast understatement.
The whole thing was full of rampant ignoring of consensus, administrators ignoring rules in order to push a delete through (see the Starslip Cris deletion, a WP:POINT that actually proved its point), speedy deletions of articles that don't deserve it, meat puppets used by admins for deletion but rejected when used against deletion, discussions closed with such short notice that anyone not immediately aware of them has no practical chance to object, mass deletions which are difficult to contest all at once (sound familiar, spoiler people?), deletion of the awards article to justify the deletion of other articles that mention the award, etc.
Sure, there are people who don't understand notability, and some of the articles deleted actually weren't notable. But any indiscriminate deletion is going to hit some deserving targets, simply because there are a lot of targets. And sure, some of the damage was fixed later on (the awards article did return). It's still a massive abuse of Wikipedia process. I suggest reading through the wikinews talk/comment pages, ignoring the fact that a lot of the posters there don't understand notability, and instead focusing instead on the other complaints. There are plenty of them, and a good chunk of them are perfectly valid.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcomic_co... http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Comments:Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcomi...
Also see
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Comments:Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcomi...
where one poster who does understand notability points out that what is really needed is for the notability rules simply to be followed, not changed.