Those of you who have been following the strange life of "notability" on Wikipedia as it evolved from a series of debates on VfD about deletion philosophy to an ill-defined word used to bite newbies, and then to a series of ill-defined guidelines used to bite newbies will be saddened to know that the last firewall on this issue has now been breached, and notability has been enshrined at the level of policy instead of guideline.
Despite a number of objections, consensus seems to be forming on WP:V to include the line "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." in the policy. This line may be familiar in its more-cited form, "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject," from WP:N.
So there you go. The process that is most often used to generate bad press, hurt feelings, and upset newbie contributors is now enshrined as policy.
Go us?
-Phil
Get over it. Nobility has been being used as (effective) policy for many months, if not years. Of course deleting any article is going to get emotional, people are invested in article's they write. But that level of emotion doesn't negate the fact that we just simply can't include every possible topic under the sun and still produce an accurate and reliable encyclopedia. Space is not the issue, quality is. The breadth has to stop somewhere, so we can get to depth.
And the WP:V addition is a fabulous idea. I've always operated that way, and it is (to me) the core reason we need notability: we can't be accurate on a subject if there aren't reliable sources available. If accuracy is literally impossible, then we shouldn't have an article on it.
On Feb 1, 2008 3:30 PM, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Those of you who have been following the strange life of "notability" on Wikipedia as it evolved from a series of debates on VfD about deletion philosophy to an ill-defined word used to bite newbies, and then to a series of ill-defined guidelines used to bite newbies will be saddened to know that the last firewall on this issue has now been breached, and notability has been enshrined at the level of policy instead of guideline.
Despite a number of objections, consensus seems to be forming on WP:V to include the line "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." in the policy. This line may be familiar in its more-cited form, "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject," from WP:N.
So there you go. The process that is most often used to generate bad press, hurt feelings, and upset newbie contributors is now enshrined as policy.
Go us?
-Phil
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On Feb 1, 2008, at 6:39 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
Get over it. Nobility has been being used as (effective) policy for many months, if not years.
It's been used. I've yet to see any evidence of its effectiveness, and particularly no evidence that it is meaningfully superior to a general policy of deleting based on qualitative rather than quantitative judgments.
Of course deleting any article is going to get emotional, people are invested in article's they write. But that level of emotion doesn't negate the fact that we just simply can't include every possible topic under the sun and still produce an accurate and reliable encyclopedia. Space is not the issue, quality is. The breadth has to stop somewhere, so we can get to depth.
Anybody who claims that the deploying of notability on AfD has a thing to do with assessing the quality of articles is lying to you.
And the WP:V addition is a fabulous idea. I've always operated that way, and it is (to me) the core reason we need notability: we can't be accurate on a subject if there aren't reliable sources available. If accuracy is literally impossible, then we shouldn't have an article on it.
Deleting poorly sourced articles that cannot be improved is not a bad idea. Enshrining the idea that we must do so on the level of policy, however, is a terrible idea.
-Phil
Deleting poorly sourced articles that cannot be improved is not a bad idea. Enshrining the idea that we must do so on the level of policy, however, is a terrible idea.
Why? It is something we must do. I guess the difference is that people like you think it's just "not a bad idea" and a necessary evil. I think it improves the encyclopedia. Seeing crap stubs that have sat uncited and untouched for years go down the tube is a relief. I don't have to worry about some newspaperman latching on to them or little billy getting an F over them.
On Feb 1, 2008 4:03 PM, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 1, 2008, at 6:39 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
Get over it. Nobility has been being used as (effective) policy for many months, if not years.
It's been used. I've yet to see any evidence of its effectiveness, and particularly no evidence that it is meaningfully superior to a general policy of deleting based on qualitative rather than quantitative judgments.
Of course deleting any article is going to get emotional, people are invested in article's they write. But that level of emotion doesn't negate the fact that we just simply can't include every possible topic under the sun and still produce an accurate and reliable encyclopedia. Space is not the issue, quality is. The breadth has to stop somewhere, so we can get to depth.
Anybody who claims that the deploying of notability on AfD has a thing to do with assessing the quality of articles is lying to you.
And the WP:V addition is a fabulous idea. I've always operated that way, and it is (to me) the core reason we need notability: we can't be accurate on a subject if there aren't reliable sources available. If accuracy is literally impossible, then we shouldn't have an article on it.
Deleting poorly sourced articles that cannot be improved is not a bad idea. Enshrining the idea that we must do so on the level of policy, however, is a terrible idea.
-Phil
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On Feb 1, 2008, at 7:08 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
Why? It is something we must do. I guess the difference is that people like you think it's just "not a bad idea" and a necessary evil. I think it improves the encyclopedia. Seeing crap stubs that have sat uncited and untouched for years go down the tube is a relief. I don't have to worry about some newspaperman latching on to them or little billy getting an F over them.
Deleting our way to encyclopedic coverage still seems like fucking for chastity to me.
-Phil
Steven Walling wrote:
Seeing crap stubs that have sat uncited and untouched for years go down the tube is a relief. I don't have to worry about some newspaperman latching on to them or little billy getting an F over them.
You don't have to worry about those things *anyway*.
Wikipedia didn't get to be where it is today by worrying about what some newspaperman was going to say, and it's never a good thing to obsess over.
On 02/02/2008, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 1, 2008, at 6:39 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
Get over it. Nobility has been being used as (effective) policy for many months, if not years.
It's been used. I've yet to see any evidence of its effectiveness, and particularly no evidence that it is meaningfully superior to a general policy of deleting based on qualitative rather than quantitative judgments.
That's not what he means by effective. He means it is, in effect, policy. Not that the policy is effective.
On Feb 2, 2008 12:39 AM, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
we just simply can't include every possible topic under the sun and still produce an accurate and reliable encyclopedia. Space is not the issue, quality is. The breadth has to stop somewhere, so we can get to depth.
I do not buy this argument.
It's quite clear that deleting articles about, say, individual Will and Grace episodes or minor Battlestar Galactica characters will not make those articles' editors go "oh well, you're right, guess Ill go and improve the New South Wales Railway Crossings articles". You're just turning those editors away.
Michel
Steven Walling wrote:
Get over it.
Shan't.
Nobility has been being used as (effective) policy for many months, if not years. Of course deleting any article is going to get emotional, people are invested in article's they write. But that level of emotion doesn't negate the fact that we just simply can't include every possible topic under the sun and still produce an accurate and reliable encyclopedia. Space is not the issue, quality is. The breadth has to stop somewhere, so we can get to depth.
This argument gets made over and over and the rebuttal remains the same. If you stop volunteers from working on the topics that interest them, they're not going to spend that effort instead on topics that interest you. They're just going to _leave._
And frankly, more power to them. For years I've felt that Wikipedia should be trying to encompass as much encyclopedic content within itself as possible, that this would improve the general availability of knowledge to the world by organizing it all in a standardized licence and structure with policies like NPOV keeping it reliable. I'd been hoping that the introduction of flagged revisions would help to allay the concerns of the "quality now!" crowd. But of late Wikipedia's climate has turned to deletionism and it's now actively destroying much of the information that was aggregated into it. If this trend doesn't stop I think it might be better to start fragmenting Wikipedia into more special-interest subgroups, as was done with Comixpedia, Wookieepedia, and so forth. If we can at least keep them with the same licensing and wiki code then perhaps someday it can all be brought back into the same fold again by some other aggregator.
And the WP:V addition is a fabulous idea. I've always operated that way, and it is (to me) the core reason we need notability: we can't be accurate on a subject if there aren't reliable sources available. If accuracy is literally impossible, then we shouldn't have an article on it.
The key problem for me is the "third party" requirement. I can write an accurate article on an episode of a TV series by using the DVD and its commentary track as a source, for example, and anyone else with a few dollars to spare can get their own copy and verify my work, but for some reason even if I'm perfectly willing to spend hours and hours crafting this article to whatever standards of quality are desired it's just not acceptable to have it on Wikipedia.
There's _baby_ in that bathwater.
On 02/02/2008, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
If this trend doesn't stop I think it might be better to start fragmenting Wikipedia into more special-interest subgroups, as was done with Comixpedia, Wookieepedia, and so forth. If we can at least keep them with the same licensing and wiki code then perhaps someday it can all be brought back into the same fold again by some other aggregator.
I think that this is a good idea. That way the people that make the decisions on notability are more likely to have a firm handle on what is notable in the particular area they are using. One of the problems in the wikipedia and the *world* is that people tend to deny the importance of things they are not familiar with; and the wikipedia tends to reflect that, and that tends to cause deletionism.
The key problem for me is the "third party" requirement. I can write an accurate article on an episode of a TV series by using the DVD and its commentary track as a source, for example, and anyone else with a few dollars to spare can get their own copy and verify my work, but for some reason even if I'm perfectly willing to spend hours and hours crafting this article to whatever standards of quality are desired it's just not acceptable to have it on Wikipedia.
That's a subtle form of OR though. It's OR that the TV series is important enough to be in the encyclopedia in the first place. How could anyone ever remove anything? How could anyone ever prove or disprove that an untraceable editor had nothing to do with the TV series in the first place? At least if it's we trace the notability to a reliable source then self-interested articles are much less likely, and it's fairly unambiguous whether we can add it or not. There needs to be some rules, and the rules need to more or less work.
These rules more or less do work.
There's _baby_ in that bathwater.
Mmm. But is it a beautiful baby? If there's not even any 3rd party information on it, probably not, except to its parents.
Aren't we mostly trying to collect the shiny stones that are lying on the beach that is this world, the ones that people are interested in, not just the dull rocks?
Ian Woollard wrote:
On 02/02/2008, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
The key problem for me is the "third party" requirement. I can write an accurate article on an episode of a TV series by using the DVD and its commentary track as a source, for example, and anyone else with a few dollars to spare can get their own copy and verify my work, but for some reason even if I'm perfectly willing to spend hours and hours crafting this article to whatever standards of quality are desired it's just not acceptable to have it on Wikipedia.
That's a subtle form of OR though. It's OR that the TV series is important enough to be in the encyclopedia in the first place. How could anyone ever remove anything? How could anyone ever prove or disprove that an untraceable editor had nothing to do with the TV series in the first place? At least if it's we trace the notability to a reliable source then self-interested articles are much less likely, and it's fairly unambiguous whether we can add it or not. There needs to be some rules, and the rules need to more or less work.
But this argument is implicitly assuming the validity of the very premise that I'm disputing; that "lack of notability" is, in and of itself, a good reason to delete an article. If we've got editors who spend the effort to write an accurate article with sources and such, conforming to all the other policies and guidelines that determine what Wikipedia articles are supposed to be like, why throw that away? We don't have space limits, and as I pointed out elsewhere in the thread it's not necessarily a drain on editor resources either since editors volunteer to work on the things that interest them.
Aren't we mostly trying to collect the shiny stones that are lying on the beach that is this world, the ones that people are interested in, not just the dull rocks?
Our editors are people, and they write articles about what they're interested in.
On 02/02/2008, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Ian Woollard wrote:
That's a subtle form of OR though. It's OR that the TV series is important enough to be in the encyclopedia in the first place. How could anyone ever remove anything? How could anyone ever prove or disprove that an untraceable editor had nothing to do with the TV series in the first place? At least if it's we trace the notability to a reliable source then self-interested articles are much less likely, and it's fairly unambiguous whether we can add it or not. There needs to be some rules, and the rules need to more or less work.
But this argument is implicitly assuming the validity of the very premise that I'm disputing; that "lack of notability" is, in and of itself, a good reason to delete an article. If we've got editors who spend the effort to write an accurate article with sources and such, conforming to all the other policies and guidelines that determine what Wikipedia articles are supposed to be like, why throw that away?
Because making a DVD from scratch isn't difficult or particularly expensive, so you're basically letting anybody use the wikipedia for what amounts to a webspace and using it to 'summarise' their own work.
We don't have space limits, and as I pointed out elsewhere in the thread it's not necessarily a drain on editor resources either since editors volunteer to work on the things that interest them.
If we don't have any space limits then the wikipedia is a webspace?
Aren't we mostly trying to collect the shiny stones that are lying on the beach that is this world, the ones that people are interested in, not just the dull rocks?
Our editors are people, and they write articles about what they're interested in.
I think we're really trying to make an encyclopedia, not with articles that people are interested in writing, but interested in *reading*; and unless you have a better idea, you need a good metric on what people are likely to be interested in reading.
Notability at least has the virtue of implying that somebody or an organization with a reputation to protect is saying that something is good and if it is good then people will be much more likely to be interested in reading about it.
We assume good faith. It isn't OR to say that Jean-Luc Picard is bald. If you watch any episode of the next generation this is trivial to establish. However this information isn't available for free. You'd need to either buy a dvd or watch it on TV and pay by watching commercials.
Shows like Star Trek are inherently notable. An average Star Trek episode has a rather crowded audience. Now an average home video does not. Perhaps only the baby's parents care about the video. Now on a traditional encyclopedia you would not find an article on individual star trek episodes. We are fortunately not such an encyclopedia. If people want to write about fiction, who are we to tell them that they can't.
Of course OR is unwelcome but OR is hardly a major problem. Eventually every article will be rewritten to the quality standards of every/most guideline out there. Not complying with guidelines makes an article problematic but that doesn't mean we delete it on sight. It is a work in progress.
[[WP:SPINOUT]] and [[WP:STUB]] are not banned. However if you interprete WP:V like that you are puging such articles.
- White Cat
On Feb 2, 2008 3:14 AM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
If this trend doesn't stop I think it might be better to start fragmenting Wikipedia into more special-interest subgroups, as was done with Comixpedia, Wookieepedia, and so forth. If we can at least keep them with the same licensing and wiki code then perhaps someday it can all be brought back into the same fold again by some other aggregator.
I think that this is a good idea. That way the people that make the decisions on notability are more likely to have a firm handle on what is notable in the particular area they are using. One of the problems in the wikipedia and the *world* is that people tend to deny the importance of things they are not familiar with; and the wikipedia tends to reflect that, and that tends to cause deletionism.
The key problem for me is the "third party" requirement. I can write an accurate article on an episode of a TV series by using the DVD and its commentary track as a source, for example, and anyone else with a few dollars to spare can get their own copy and verify my work, but for some reason even if I'm perfectly willing to spend hours and hours crafting this article to whatever standards of quality are desired it's just not acceptable to have it on Wikipedia.
That's a subtle form of OR though. It's OR that the TV series is important enough to be in the encyclopedia in the first place. How could anyone ever remove anything? How could anyone ever prove or disprove that an untraceable editor had nothing to do with the TV series in the first place? At least if it's we trace the notability to a reliable source then self-interested articles are much less likely, and it's fairly unambiguous whether we can add it or not. There needs to be some rules, and the rules need to more or less work.
These rules more or less do work.
There's _baby_ in that bathwater.
Mmm. But is it a beautiful baby? If there's not even any 3rd party information on it, probably not, except to its parents.
Aren't we mostly trying to collect the shiny stones that are lying on the beach that is this world, the ones that people are interested in, not just the dull rocks?
-- -Ian Woollard
We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly imperfect world things would be a lot better.
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On 02/02/2008, White Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com wrote:
We assume good faith. It isn't OR to say that Jean-Luc Picard is bald. If you watch any episode of the next generation this is trivial to establish.
If it's trivial then it's trivial to reference to a particularly episode.
However this information isn't available for free. You'd need to either buy a dvd or watch it on TV and pay by watching commercials.
Yes.
Shows like Star Trek are inherently notable.
I would quibble with 'inherently' but yes, in practice they are going to be notable.
So if the episode is notable, you can reference it without any issue whatsoever as a source. That is not OR unless Picard was wearing a hat throughout the episode! Provided any reasonable person with that source would draw precisely the same conclusion, you're safe, just the same as if anyone reading a textual source would draw the same conclusion.
An average Star Trek episode has a rather crowded audience. Now an average home video does not. Perhaps only the baby's parents care about the video. Now on a traditional encyclopedia you would not find an article on individual star trek episodes.
There doubtless are encyclopedias on Star Trek (or there could be).
We are fortunately not such an encyclopedia. If people want to write about fiction, who are we to tell them that they can't.
Of course OR is unwelcome but OR is hardly a major problem.
No, it can be a major problem if you don't assert it, I've had people engage in it to change a major article, that was referenced by news organisations, to make it read the way they want, for what were very probably political aims, and in the same article an individual summarised a source to make it read precisely the opposite of what the source said, in a bad faith way; with multiple reverts back when it was pointed out, for what seemed to me to be at the time, their own personal financial gain.
But the vast, vast majority of people are very well meaning.
- White Cat
Steven Walling wrote:
...we just simply can't include every possible topic under the sun and still produce an accurate and reliable encyclopedia. Space is not the issue, quality is. The breadth has to stop somewhere, so we can get to depth.
You're welcome to that opinion, but please realize that's what it is, and it's not a majority opinion, either.
By and large, the only people who are hurt by stubby articles or by articles on allegedly non-notable subjects are the subset of Wikipedia editors who wring their hands over the constructed worry that these articles make us look less "serious".
To which I say, get over it. Our readers certainly don't care. They can and do ignore the articles they don't care about -- they might as well not be there. But to someone who *is* looking for information on a certain topic, an article on it -- no matter if it's stubby or less than exhaustively sourced -- is potentially just as useful as our most polished featured article.
By and large, the only people who are hurt by stubby articles or by articles on allegedly non-notable subjects are the subset of Wikipedia editors who wring their hands over the constructed worry that these articles make us look less "serious".
I don't think they make us look less serious. I don't care how they make us "look" at all. I care about how accurate the information we provide to millions of people that rely on us is.
On Feb 1, 2008 7:38 PM, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
...we just simply can't include every possible topic under the sun and still produce an accurate and reliable encyclopedia. Space is not the issue, quality is. The breadth has to stop somewhere, so we can get to depth.
You're welcome to that opinion, but please realize that's what it is, and it's not a majority opinion, either.
By and large, the only people who are hurt by stubby articles or by articles on allegedly non-notable subjects are the subset of Wikipedia editors who wring their hands over the constructed worry that these articles make us look less "serious".
To which I say, get over it. Our readers certainly don't care. They can and do ignore the articles they don't care about -- they might as well not be there. But to someone who *is* looking for information on a certain topic, an article on it -- no matter if it's stubby or less than exhaustively sourced -- is potentially just as useful as our most polished featured article.
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On Feb 1, 2008 7:42 PM, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think they make us look less serious. I don't care how they make us "look" at all. I care about how accurate the information we provide to millions of people that rely on us is.
The obvious answer to this is to develop promising young editors in the areas of interest, promoting some of them to admin status as they gain experience and community trust.
This does happen naturally, unless there's an isolated subcommunity which isn't participating enough in the general internal administration and politics to eventually promote members out to adminship and more general visibility.
On Feb 1, 2008 7:42 PM, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think they make us look less serious. I don't care how they make us "look" at all. I care about how accurate the information we provide to millions of people that rely on us is.
I'm glad that that's not your problem with them, but I think it is frequently an issue behind some peoples' issues with certain article topics and not others.
-Matt
On Feb 1, 2008 6:39 PM, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
The breadth has to stop somewhere, so we can get to depth.
You really think depth is the problem? How about you go wander on over to ArbCom, where there is currently a furor over the mass deletion of thousands upon thousands of bytes of information by TTN and other editors who are citing WP:FICT as strict policy. ArbCom finally got their act together and declared an embargo on these actions as well.
- GC
Alex Sawczynec wrote:
On Feb 1, 2008 6:39 PM, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
The breadth has to stop somewhere, so we can get to depth.
You really think depth is the problem? How about you go wander on over to ArbCom, where there is currently a furor over the mass deletion of thousands upon thousands of bytes of information by TTN and other editors who are citing WP:FICT as strict policy. ArbCom finally got their act together and declared an embargo on these actions as well.
When deletionists run too fast they soon run out of breadth.
Ec
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Alex Sawczynec wrote:
You really think depth is the problem? How about you go wander on over to ArbCom, where there is currently a furor over the mass deletion of thousands upon thousands of bytes of information by TTN and other editors who are citing WP:FICT as strict policy. ArbCom finally got their act together and declared an embargo on these actions as well.
Where did this happen? They haven't even got enough Arbcom members voting for a temporary embargo yet.
On Feb 4, 2008 4:53 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Alex Sawczynec wrote:
You really think depth is the problem? How about you go wander on over
to
ArbCom, where there is currently a furor over the mass deletion of
thousands
upon thousands of bytes of information by TTN and other editors who are citing WP:FICT as strict policy. ArbCom finally got their act together
and
declared an embargo on these actions as well.
Where did this happen? They haven't even got enough Arbcom members voting for a temporary embargo yet.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes_and...
- GC
On 2008.02.04 14:30:37 -0500, Alex Sawczynec glasscobra15@gmail.com scribbled 0.5K characters:
On Feb 1, 2008 6:39 PM, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
The breadth has to stop somewhere, so we can get to depth.
You really think depth is the problem? How about you go wander on over to ArbCom, where there is currently a furor over the mass deletion of thousands upon thousands of bytes of information by TTN and other editors who are citing WP:FICT as strict policy. ArbCom finally got their act together and declared an embargo on these actions as well.
- GC
Thousands of bytes is sadly an understatement. We're talking thousands of kilobytes, and by this point, a few years into TTN and other's careers, probably hundreds of megabytes. All those '(-20000 bytes)' really add up.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a database in possession of information will not be in want of deleters for the ease of the task as compared with the creation...
-- gwern Capricorn CIDA TSCI IDF NAVWAN Council Panama FLAME Class Steak
Despite a number of objections, consensus seems to be forming on WP:V to include the line "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." in the policy. This line may be familiar in its more-cited form, "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject," from WP:N.
It's notable (no pun intended, not that anyone will believe me) that the former does not include the word "significant" while the latter does. That would make WP:V require a weaker form of notability than WP:N. It's not a simple case of WP:N being included into WP:V.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Despite a number of objections, consensus seems to be forming on WP:V to include the line "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." in the policy. This line may be familiar in its more-cited form, "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject," from WP:N.
It's notable (no pun intended, not that anyone will believe me) that the former does not include the word "significant" while the latter does. That would make WP:V require a weaker form of notability than WP:N. It's not a simple case of WP:N being included into WP:V.
There is that one ray of hope, at least. Find just one third-party source and the topic avoids WP:V.
Now comes the grotty quibbling over what "third party", "reliable" and "article topic" mean, I guess. And whether the great purge to come will give editors time to fix anything before it's swept aside.
Now comes the grotty quibbling over what "third party", "reliable" and "article topic" mean, I guess. And whether the great purge to come will give editors time to fix anything before it's swept aside.
Time? Why should you be creating new stubs that are unsourced at all? I don't create an article unless I have source material available. It kills the need for debate 90% of the time (literally, that's my ratio of creations to AFDs).
On Feb 1, 2008 4:04 PM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Despite a number of objections, consensus seems to be forming on WP:V to include the line "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." in the policy. This line may be familiar in its more-cited form, "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject," from WP:N.
It's notable (no pun intended, not that anyone will believe me) that the former does not include the word "significant" while the latter does. That would make WP:V require a weaker form of notability than WP:N. It's not a simple case of WP:N being included into WP:V.
There is that one ray of hope, at least. Find just one third-party source and the topic avoids WP:V.
Now comes the grotty quibbling over what "third party", "reliable" and "article topic" mean, I guess. And whether the great purge to come will give editors time to fix anything before it's swept aside.
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On Feb 1, 2008, at 7:04 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
Time? Why should you be creating new stubs that are unsourced at all? I don't create an article unless I have source material available.
Good for you. When we update the site code to read "Edit this page if you have source material avaliable" instead of "edit this page" that will be a reasonable expectation to apply to others. The entire project, let's note, was built on people wandering by an adding a fact they happened to know, with the idea that mass untrained peer review would be good enough to get a working project. Citing sources is one of the ways we get to that point, but we have to remember: the project is designed to be editable by anyone in a casual and volunteer manner. We hurt ourselves if we expect everybody to have multiple sources on hand before they edit or create an article.
-Phil
Good for you. When we update the site code to read "Edit this page if you have source material avaliable" instead of "edit this page" that will be a reasonable expectation to apply to others. The entire project, let's note, was built on people wandering by an adding a fact they happened to know, with the idea that mass untrained peer review would be good enough to get a working project. Citing sources is one of the ways we get to that point, but we have to remember: the project is designed to be editable by anyone in a casual and volunteer manner. We hurt ourselves if we expect everybody to have multiple sources on hand before they edit or create an article.
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that. We long ago accepted that simply adding what you know doesn't work since there is no way for people to trust it. We now do require people source things, we just aren't very good at enforcing it (I believe it was Jimbo that said people shouldn't be tagging dubious statements with {{fact}}, they should just be removing them completely).
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that. We long ago accepted that simply adding what you know doesn't work since there is no way for people to trust it. We now do require people source things, we just aren't very good at enforcing it (I believe it was Jimbo that said people shouldn't be tagging dubious statements with {{fact}}, they should just be removing them completely).
Exactly. The days of unsourced facts, much less articles, being okay to leave unchallenged is long over.
On Feb 1, 2008 4:20 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Good for you. When we update the site code to read "Edit this page if you have source material avaliable" instead of "edit this page" that will be a reasonable expectation to apply to others. The entire project, let's note, was built on people wandering by an adding a fact they happened to know, with the idea that mass untrained peer review would be good enough to get a working project. Citing sources is one of the ways we get to that point, but we have to remember: the project is designed to be editable by anyone in a casual and volunteer manner. We hurt ourselves if we expect everybody to have multiple sources on hand before they edit or create an article.
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that. We long ago accepted that simply adding what you know doesn't work since there is no way for people to trust it. We now do require people source things, we just aren't very good at enforcing it (I believe it was Jimbo that said people shouldn't be tagging dubious statements with {{fact}}, they should just be removing them completely).
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Steven Walling wrote:
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that. We long ago accepted that simply adding what you know doesn't work since there is no way for people to trust it. We now do require people source things, we just aren't very good at enforcing it (I believe it was Jimbo that said people shouldn't be tagging dubious statements with {{fact}}, they should just be removing them completely).
Exactly. The days of unsourced facts, much less articles, being okay to leave unchallenged is long over.
Challenge it, certainly. That's how to improve it. Delete it, not so much. Deleting an article generally _doesn't_ improve it.
I've been arguing for years that we could avoid this entire fundamental conflict if only we could finally get flagged revisions of some sort. Then the deletionists could be made happy by flagging uncited articles so that they don't show up on DVDs or what have you, and the inclusionsists could be made happy by not having half-finished articles deleted. _Massive_ sigh.
On Sat, Feb 02, 2008 at 12:20:27AM +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
We now do require people source things, we just aren't very good at enforcing it (I believe it was Jimbo that said people shouldn't be tagging dubious statements with {{fact}}, they should just be removing them completely).
We only require sources for quotes and facts that are challenged or "likely to be challenged", a compromise that I think is reasonable enough. Jimbo is right that dubious claims should be removed to the talk page - but only because they are dubious, not be because they are unsourced.
- Carl
On Fri, 1 Feb 2008, Carl Beckhorn wrote:
We only require sources for quotes and facts that are challenged or "likely to be challenged", a compromise that I think is reasonable enough. Jimbo is right that dubious claims should be removed to the talk page - but only because they are dubious, not be because they are unsourced.
This is susceptible to troublemakers being able to cause trouble by following the rules. They just have to come through and arbitrarily challenge random facts to cause trouble, or even challenge facts that they know are true, but which they don't like.
On Feb 1, 2008 7:27 PM, Carl Beckhorn cbeckhorn@fastmail.fm wrote:
On Sat, Feb 02, 2008 at 12:20:27AM +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
We now do require people source things, we just aren't very good at enforcing it (I believe it was Jimbo that said people shouldn't be tagging dubious statements with {{fact}}, they should just be removing them completely).
We only require sources for quotes and facts that are challenged or "likely to be challenged", a compromise that I think is reasonable enough. Jimbo is right that dubious claims should be removed to the talk page - but only because they are dubious, not be because they are unsourced.
Moving to the talk page is different from deleting, anyway. If completely unsourced articles were moved to their talk page, rather than deleted, I think you'd get fewer objections. But I suppose preventing the deletion of talk pages which have no corresponding article is a battle that was lost long ago.
On Feb 1, 2008, at 7:20 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
We now do require people source things, we just aren't very good at enforcing it (I believe it was Jimbo that said people shouldn't be tagging dubious statements with {{fact}}, they should just be removing them completely).
{{fact}}
Or, to be less cavalier, we now require sourcing as the major way to resolve accuracy disputes. We do not, as a matter of policy, and never have required sourcing for things that nobody is suspicious of, and we do not encourage any sort of Cartesian doubt.
Or, if we do, it's a new and foolish development.
-Phil
On 02/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that.
Not remotely. Vast majority of our information is uncited.
We long ago accepted that simply adding what you know doesn't work
For the most part it does work.
since there is no way for people to trust it.
I can produce fake cites that you could not reasonably check.
We now do require people source things, we just aren't very good at enforcing it (I believe it was Jimbo that said people shouldn't be tagging dubious statements with {{fact}}, they should just be removing them completely).
Jimbo has very few article edits over the last year but:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Church_of_Reality&diff=prev&am...
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that.
Not remotely. Vast majority of our information is uncited.
And that's a bag thing.
On Feb 1, 2008 4:47 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that.
Not remotely. Vast majority of our information is uncited.
And that's a bag thing.
I assume you meant "bad"
In my opinion, yes - it would be nice to have a cite for everything.
It's also a horrible mistake to, for example, run through WP articles and either delete everything that isn't cited, or all articles without RS, or both.
That would remove most of the content, and would be a monumental flipoff to the community that builds content here.
WP is a multi-dimensional tension system between content creators, content improvers, citation focused people, readers, policy wonks, the foundation... An absolutist interpretation of notability, RS, etc are horrible things to consider.
If you intend to blow up the project, there are more graceful ways, like simply deleting the whole database, or killing everyone on Earth.
On Feb 1, 2008 4:59 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 1, 2008 4:47 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that.
Not remotely. Vast majority of our information is uncited.
And that's a bag thing.
I assume you meant "bad"
In my opinion, yes - it would be nice to have a cite for everything.
It's also a horrible mistake to, for example, run through WP articles and either delete everything that isn't cited, or all articles without RS, or both.
That would remove most of the content, and would be a monumental flipoff to the community that builds content here.
WP is a multi-dimensional tension system between content creators, content improvers, citation focused people, readers, policy wonks, the foundation... An absolutist interpretation of notability, RS, etc are horrible things to consider.
If you intend to blow up the project, there are more graceful ways, like simply deleting the whole database, or killing everyone on Earth.
I hate to follow myself up, but...
Getting consensus on a single policy page is different than getting consensus of the community.
The policy page wonks (those here, and there) need to be aware of the difference.
If you assault a problem that has intimate interconnections out through the rest of the project from the narrow perspective of any corner, the results will be disaster.
On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 04:59:50PM -0800, George Herbert wrote:
In my opinion, yes - it would be nice to have a cite for everything.
I don't find that either a workable goal or a desiarable one. Since I think the arguments against it are well enough known, and not hard to come up with in any case, I'll avoid repeating them until asked.
- Carl
On Feb 1, 2008, at 7:59 PM, George Herbert wrote:
In my opinion, yes - it would be nice to have a cite for everything.
I disagree, actually - this attitude assumes that information can be broken down to a sort of atomic level where citations exist on a line- by-line basis. This does not seem to me to be true.
-Phil
George Herbert wrote:
On Feb 1, 2008 4:47 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that.
Not remotely. Vast majority of our information is uncited.
And that's a bag thing.
I assume you meant "bad"
In my opinion, yes - it would be nice to have a cite for everything.
It's also a horrible mistake to, for example, run through WP articles and either delete everything that isn't cited, or all articles without RS, or both.
Indeed.
It's important to remember that {{fact}} means "This fact is uncited, so you, the reader, might want to take it with more grains of salt than usual." It most certainly does *NOT* mean, "this uncited fact will be deleted forthwith if you, the POV editor who inserted it, do not supply a citation (to my satisfaction) pronto."
Oh indeed. Wikipedia itself is tagged with a giant {{fact}} tag ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer). And the finish product is "featured articles" and even then those typically have room for improvement. People should not treat wikipedia like a inished product. It isn't and it will never ever be complete as human knowledge grows over time.
On Feb 2, 2008 5:21 AM, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
On Feb 1, 2008 4:47 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that.
Not remotely. Vast majority of our information is uncited.
And that's a bag thing.
I assume you meant "bad"
In my opinion, yes - it would be nice to have a cite for everything.
It's also a horrible mistake to, for example, run through WP articles and either delete everything that isn't cited, or all articles without RS, or both.
Indeed.
It's important to remember that {{fact}} means "This fact is uncited, so you, the reader, might want to take it with more grains of salt than usual." It most certainly does *NOT* mean, "this uncited fact will be deleted forthwith if you, the POV editor who inserted it, do not supply a citation (to my satisfaction) pronto."
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actively destroying much of the information that was aggregated into it
You're talking about the unreferenced, un-useful and embarrassing information that was aggregated in to it. Those of you who keep railing about the "evil trend of deletionism" convienently forget that much of the deleted articles are in direct violation of policies that have nothing to do with notability.
On Feb 1, 2008 7:21 PM, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
On Feb 1, 2008 4:47 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that.
Not remotely. Vast majority of our information is uncited.
And that's a bag thing.
I assume you meant "bad"
In my opinion, yes - it would be nice to have a cite for everything.
It's also a horrible mistake to, for example, run through WP articles and either delete everything that isn't cited, or all articles without RS, or both.
Indeed.
It's important to remember that {{fact}} means "This fact is uncited, so you, the reader, might want to take it with more grains of salt than usual." It most certainly does *NOT* mean, "this uncited fact will be deleted forthwith if you, the POV editor who inserted it, do not supply a citation (to my satisfaction) pronto."
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Steven Walling wrote:
You're talking about the unreferenced, un-useful and embarrassing information that was aggregated in to it. Those of you who keep railing about the "evil trend of deletionism" convienently forget that much of the deleted articles are in direct violation of policies that have nothing to do with notability.
Um, no, we're not forgetting that. We would assert that the articles in direct violation of policies that have nothing to do with notability should be deleted on those other bases, and that we don't need sweeping new notability policies which can and will be used to delete great swaths of harmless articles which *don't* run afoul of those other policies.
Steven Walling wrote:
actively destroying much of the information that was aggregated into it
You're talking about the unreferenced, un-useful and embarrassing information that was aggregated in to it.
No I'm not. Maybe unreferenced in many cases, but not unreferenceable - merely works in progress.
Also, "embarrassing and unuseful" _to whom_? Can I also nominate articles that I, myself, consider unuseful to be deleted?
Those of you who keep railing about the "evil trend of deletionism" convienently forget that much of the deleted articles are in direct violation of policies that have nothing to do with notability.
If they can be deleted for reasons other than notability, why do you need notability to delete them?
On 02/02/2008, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Those of you who keep railing about the "evil trend of deletionism" convienently forget that much of the deleted articles are in direct violation of policies that have nothing to do with notability.
If they can be deleted for reasons other than notability, why do you need notability to delete them?
I was thoroughly amused to open enwp this morning and find a notice telling me an article I created had been prod-tagged. (Someone has a bot set up to do this, now. Good for them)
So, I go to look.
"It is proposed that this article be deleted because of the following concern: As per Wikipedia policy, small-town mayors are not notable just for being mayors."
Ah, the impeccable timing of coincidence.
(The *guideline* - not policy - says, incidentally, that "Municipal politicians are not inherently notable just for being in politics, but neither are they inherently non-notable just because they're in local politics - evaluate each case on its own individual merits." The town in question is the thirteenth-largest city in a European nation.)
I can't quite remember why I wrote this article. I think I was expecting someone to expand it and wanted to give them a kick-start. Ah, well, untagged now, it's not hurting anyone.
Andrew Gray wrote:
I was thoroughly amused to open enwp this morning and find a notice telling me an article I created had been prod-tagged. (Someone has a bot set up to do this, now. Good for them)
So, I go to look.
"It is proposed that this article be deleted because of the following concern: As per Wikipedia policy, small-town mayors are not notable just for being mayors."
Ah, the impeccable timing of coincidence.
Heh. I got the exact same thing last night, myself. A new user by the name of Noble Sponge has been mass prodding mayors and he hit one that I'd split off of a disambiguation page. Many of the cities in question weren't by any stretch of the imagination "small towns", one had over a million people.
I suspect it is indeed coincidence, though, the prodder hasn't been trying to use WP:V.
On Feb 1, 2008 10:28 PM, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
actively destroying much of the information that was aggregated into it
You're talking about the unreferenced, un-useful and embarrassing information that was aggregated in to it. Those of you who keep railing about the "evil trend of deletionism" convienently forget that much of the deleted articles are in direct violation of policies that have nothing to do with notability.
I'm aghast at the general direction this thread seems to be taking, a direction quite well-summarised by your email. Unreferenced != unuseful != embarrassing. I've deleted hundreds if not thousands of articles, but deletionism has been taken to a degree that I don't think any of us original deletionists imagined it would be.
My first thought when I read the initial email was "Wait, this is what the inclusionists used to demand - a codified policy on what we should delete based on verifiability as opposed to notability." But from the emails in this thread, it seems that this policy is going to be interpreted in a ludicrous way.
Wikipedia is a work in progress. We should not expect articles to be perfect or complete, and that extends to citations. So we have some unreferenced material. Cry me a fucking river. The only unreferenced material that should concern is that which is potentially controversial or otherwise could land us in a pile of deep shit.
There are of course good intentions behind this policy, but I see no reason to fix something that isn't broken. We're already getting rid of articles about garage bands and other worthless pieces of crap, and even then, only "much" of the deleted articles are actually this bad, going by *your* words. The present guidelines are already working to throw out the worthless material submitted to us. Why do we need to fix something that isn't broken, and thereby now make articles on obscure third world politicians or obscure third world brands of instant noodles verboten, all for the sake of cackling at some stupid garage band's lack of verifiability/notability?
I might be okay with this policy if everyone else read it the same way I would - that unverifiable, controversial information should be deleted, and that depending on the situation, unverifiable information can also be deleted. But it seems clear to me that the hordes of morons who now call themselves deletionists want anything unverifiable deleted, and don't care that they haven't presented much of a coherent case for changing a policy that is already accomplishing their own stated goals, and that is already, according to them, throwing out material that might not be so shitty.
Johnleemk
On 2/1/08, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
In my opinion, yes - it would be nice to have a cite for everything.
It's also a horrible mistake to, for example, run through WP articles and either delete everything that isn't cited, or all articles without RS, or both.
But people (for the sake of argument, let's call them deletionists) can and do make that "horrible mistake", one page at a time.
The obvious solution would be to add sources to a redeemable page before some nimrod deletes it, but often that would require telepathic awareness of the next target.
—C.W.
On Feb 3, 2008 5:05 AM, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/1/08, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
In my opinion, yes - it would be nice to have a cite for everything.
It's also a horrible mistake to, for example, run through WP articles and either delete everything that isn't cited, or all articles without RS, or both.
But people (for the sake of argument, let's call them deletionists) can and do make that "horrible mistake", one page at a time.
The obvious solution would be to add sources to a redeemable page before some nimrod deletes it, but often that would require telepathic awareness of the next target.
—C.W.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Is it really your intent to claim that every deleted page is sourceable to begin with? If so, why don't those who fight so ardently to save them give them the best bulletproofing you can give--CITE LOTS OF SOURCES? I've had exactly zero of the articles I've created sent to AfD, because I do not write articles without appropriate sourcing -up front-. No one's going to challenge an article that cites a lot of sources, not even if it's a stub.
On Feb 3, 2008 8:28 AM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
No one's going to challenge an article that cites a lot of sources, not even if it's a stub.
That statement is demonstrably false.
On 03/02/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Feb 3, 2008 8:28 AM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
No one's going to challenge an article that cites a lot of sources, not even if it's a stub.
That statement is demonstrably false.
Replace "sources" with "reliable, non-trivial, independent sources", and it's pretty much true.
On 03/02/08 15:09 +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 03/02/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Feb 3, 2008 8:28 AM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
No one's going to challenge an article that cites a lot of sources, not even if it's a stub.
That statement is demonstrably false.
Replace "sources" with "reliable, non-trivial, independent sources", and it's pretty much true.
Not necessarily. It depends upon whether those reliable, non-trivial, independent sources have established relevance to the subject...
On 03/02/2008, Jake Waskett jake@waskett.org wrote:
On 03/02/08 15:09 +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 03/02/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Feb 3, 2008 8:28 AM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
No one's going to challenge an article that cites a lot of sources, not even if it's a stub.
That statement is demonstrably false.
Replace "sources" with "reliable, non-trivial, independent sources", and it's pretty much true.
Not necessarily. It depends upon whether those reliable, non-trivial, independent sources have established relevance to the subject...
I would say that falls under "non-trivial".
On Feb 3, 2008 10:06 AM, Jake Waskett jake@waskett.org wrote:
On 03/02/08 15:09 +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 03/02/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Feb 3, 2008 8:28 AM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
No one's going to challenge an article that cites a lot of sources, not even if it's a stub.
That statement is demonstrably false.
Replace "sources" with "reliable, non-trivial, independent sources", and it's pretty much true.
Not necessarily. It depends upon whether those reliable, non-trivial, independent sources have established relevance to the subject...
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Not even for "academic articles" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geber_%28crater%29
On Feb 3, 2008 10:09 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 03/02/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Feb 3, 2008 8:28 AM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
No one's going to challenge an article that cites a lot of sources, not even if it's a stub.
That statement is demonstrably false.
Replace "sources" with "reliable, non-trivial, independent sources", and it's pretty much true.
Is it? [[Daniel Brandt]] immediately to mind. But then I looked at AFD, because Brandt's article is obviously a nonstandard case. [[January 2008 stock market volatility]] was the first article I looked at. 30 sources. Browsing up the list I also saw [[POLICEPAY]] and [[Usher's fifth studio album]], and I didn't look at all that many. But I guess it depends how you want to interpret "reliable" and "non-trivial". If you take a narrow enough view of that, then I guess the chances of having someone "challenge" such an article go down (but still not to zero). But then again, if you take a narrow enough view of that, then sourcing an article well enough to please everyone becomes a very tedious task for a great number of articles. Hit random page 5 or 10 times and see if you can come up with impeccable sources for all of the articles, or if not if you can say with a straight face that they should be deleted.
On 03/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 03/02/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Feb 3, 2008 8:28 AM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
No one's going to challenge an article that cites a lot of sources, not even if it's a stub.
That statement is demonstrably false.
Replace "sources" with "reliable, non-trivial, independent sources", and it's pretty much true.
Uh huh:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Franz-Hermann_Br%C3%BCner&diff...
On 2/3/08, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Is it really your intent to claim that every deleted page is sourceable to begin with?
No, but thank you so much for asking. I would hate for that misconception to circulate. You might notice that I said "redeemable page", not "any given page".
If so, why don't those who fight so ardently to save them give them the best bulletproofing you can give--CITE LOTS OF SOURCES?
Bullet resistant, yes. Bulletproof, no. Knife-proof, well... it depends.
I've had exactly zero of the articles I've created sent to AfD, because I do not write articles without appropriate sourcing -up front-.
Good work, but hopefully I don't have to tell you what happens when you call too much attention to your winning streak.
No one's going to challenge an article that cites a lot of sources, not even if it's a stub.
Make it idiot-proof and somebody will build a better idiot.
—C.W.
Charlotte Webb wrote:
No one's going to challenge an article that cites a lot of sources, not even if it's a stub.
Make it idiot-proof and somebody will build a better idiot.
An intelligent idiot will soon discover how to invent reliable sounding sources, even if for no other reason than to keep the deletionists at bay. As long as it's relevant to the subject, if I cite the "Journal of tropical veterinary science" (a real magazine published in Calcutta between 1907 and 1912) who is going to be in a position to challenge that? Sometimes I feel safer reading something that has no references at all than one that has false references to an obscure but real publication.
Ec
On 2/4/08, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
An intelligent idiot will soon discover how to invent reliable sounding sources, even if for no other reason than to keep the deletionists at bay.
By "idiot", I was referring to the typical quixotic nutter who, once he has [insert random stub] in his cross-hairs, will not rest until it is deleted. Many of the tactics used in achieving that goal require talent not possessed by the average idiot. The full arsenal could easily fill an O'Reilly hardcover.
—C.W.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that.
Not remotely. Vast majority of our information is uncited.
And that's a bag thing.
But we haven't deleted the vast majority of our information.
Yet, I guess.
WP:V is good to get rid of garbage articles on stuff only an elite number of people know, such as an article on a home video or a garage band which at most family members and etc know about. That was and still is the intention behind WP:N and WP:V.
Presence of secondary sources does not necessarily mean a topic is notable. For example every military serviceman has a secondary source covering them, their service record. However not every serviceman is notable. On the other hand you'll find it difficult to find "secondary sources" about certain topics such as articles on settlements or topics concerning low-tech places such as many African countries. Now you would probably find primary sources (official governmental websites for example). Or consider the case of fiction related topics. It may be very difficult to establish Picard to be bald through secondary sources.
Of course having more sources on a topic is welcome. No objections there. But the lack of nor the presence of "secondary sources" has little to do with notability. Verifiability yes, notability not.
I do not understand this sudden urge to raise our bar so high that we are now thinking of deleting just about a million articles or more. This new trend is counter-productive f it follows the course of mass deletion. Editing wikipedia supposed to be fun. It is not fun when there are self righteous notability zealots who spend their entire time finding excuses to delete articles. We ought to avoid that.
Road to hell is paved with good intentions. Lets keep that in mind. It is not beneficial to go to either extreme.
- White Cat
On Feb 2, 2008 3:02 AM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that.
Not remotely. Vast majority of our information is uncited.
And that's a bag thing.
But we haven't deleted the vast majority of our information.
Yet, I guess.
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On Feb 1, 2008, at 10:06 PM, White Cat wrote:
I do not understand this sudden urge to raise our bar so high that we are now thinking of deleting just about a million articles or more. This new trend is counter-productive f it follows the course of mass deletion. Editing wikipedia supposed to be fun. It is not fun when there are self righteous notability zealots who spend their entire time finding excuses to delete articles. We ought to avoid that.
Especially since those zealots tend to target articles of the sort that our readers seem to be most interested in. Remember the (now very) old list of most popular articles? It was largely sex terms, professional wrestling, video games, and fictional works. Multiple Naruto articles made the list, in particular.
We need to think seriously about our standards of quality, and be sure to line them up with, you know, what people seem to want. When our top 100 pages are largely porn and Pokemon, well, it becomes hard for me to really justify slashing our porn stars and television episode coverage on anything other than the firmest and most damning of grounds.
-Phil
Philip Sandifer wrote:
We need to think seriously about our standards of quality, and be sure to line them up with, you know, what people seem to want. When our top 100 pages are largely porn and Pokemon, well, it becomes hard for me to really justify slashing our porn stars and television episode coverage on anything other than the firmest and most damning of grounds.
Just last night I spent an evening going through several hundred articles about various remote galaxies tidying up the usage of a template I'd changed. Most were identified only by NGC number and many of the ones that did have a photograph had only a blurry smudge that didn't mean much to anyone except a professional astronomer.
I find it hard to believe that the subjects of most of those articles were even remotely in the same ballpark of notability as a random episode from the TV show Scrubs, which is watched by millions and has a dedicated fan base. But articles about galaxies are Scholarly, so I don't expect anyone's going to purge that particular pile of minutiae any time soon. Better to go after the stuff that actually _distinguishes_ us from the Traditional and Scholarly encyclopedias.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
...But articles about galaxies are Scholarly, so I don't expect anyone's going to purge that particular pile of minutiae any time soon. Better to go after the stuff that actually _distinguishes_ us from the Traditional and Scholarly encyclopedias.
This is another excellent point, that deserves widespread forehead-emblazoning, or something.
I wonder if we could add it to WP:NOT: "Wikipedia is not a traditional encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not *necessarily* formal and scholarly. Wikipedia is not aiming to be a drop-in replacement for the Encyclopaedia Britannica."
Steve Summit wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
...But articles about galaxies are Scholarly, so I don't expect anyone's going to purge that particular pile of minutiae any time soon. Better to go after the stuff that actually _distinguishes_ us from the Traditional and Scholarly encyclopedias.
This is another excellent point, that deserves widespread forehead-emblazoning, or something.
There are Chicken Littles who are fearful that the fall of one of these asteroids onto the earth is imminent. Those who go around caterwauling about how these non-notable articles will bring down Wikipedia similarly have nothing better to do than to spread panic in the barnyard.
Ec
many of us think important both the physical world and the world of human imagination, and interpret a comprehensive encyclopedia as including both what would have been in a traditional scholarly encyclopedia if it had no size restrictions, and what pertains to present day popularity. Personally, I am much more interested in the scholarly part, but I know that the way of really having full overage of academic topics in Wikipedia is including everything for which there is some claim of suitability. At present, when almost one-third of the member of the National Academy of Science do not yet have articles, when two articles on the incoming president of Barnard was just put up for deletion by an experienced administrator, we should be expanding scholarly content, not denigrating it.
We should also of course be expanding whatever is noteworthy otherwise, for popular culture of any significance--long range importance obviously uncertain. There is no contradiction between the two. But when people write upon humanistic topics based on old textbooks, and describe plot by transcribing the content frame by frame, we will not attain our potential with either of them. On Feb 2, 2008 12:24 AM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Philip Sandifer wrote:
We need to think seriously about our standards of quality, and be sure to line them up with, you know, what people seem to want. When our top 100 pages are largely porn and Pokemon, well, it becomes hard for me to really justify slashing our porn stars and television episode coverage on anything other than the firmest and most damning of grounds.
Just last night I spent an evening going through several hundred articles about various remote galaxies tidying up the usage of a template I'd changed. Most were identified only by NGC number and many of the ones that did have a photograph had only a blurry smudge that didn't mean much to anyone except a professional astronomer.
I find it hard to believe that the subjects of most of those articles were even remotely in the same ballpark of notability as a random episode from the TV show Scrubs, which is watched by millions and has a dedicated fan base. But articles about galaxies are Scholarly, so I don't expect anyone's going to purge that particular pile of minutiae any time soon. Better to go after the stuff that actually _distinguishes_ us from the Traditional and Scholarly encyclopedias.
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David Goodman wrote:
many of us think important both the physical world and the world of human imagination, and interpret a comprehensive encyclopedia as including both what would have been in a traditional scholarly encyclopedia if it had no size restrictions, and what pertains to present day popularity. Personally, I am much more interested in the scholarly part, but I know that the way of really having full overage of academic topics in Wikipedia is including everything for which there is some claim of suitability. At present, when almost one-third of the member of the National Academy of Science do not yet have articles, when two articles on the incoming president of Barnard was just put up for deletion by an experienced administrator, we should be expanding scholarly content, not denigrating it.
My intent wasn't to denegrate, I've created my share of NGC object articles myself. My intent was to point out a drastic double standard in notability, whereby things that are of interest to a small number of people but that are "scholarly" get a pass while things that are demonstrably of interest to millions but that are "pop culture" get culled without even AfD debate. IMO it's not a bad thing to have articles on those scholarly topics, it's a bad thing to _not_ have articles on the pop culture ones.
That incoming president of Barnard may have fallen into the BLP-specific notability trap similar to the one that's currently eating mayor articles.
White Cat wrote:
I do not understand this sudden urge to raise our bar so high that we are now thinking of deleting just about a million articles or more. This new trend is counter-productive f it follows the course of mass deletion.
Ain't that the truth.
I know it's not as bad as it seems, but sometimes it really does seem like all the latest trends of Wikipedia editing involve... deleting things. It's as if there are editors who make it their primary mission to delete all unlicensed or wrongly-licensed images, to tag and then delete all unsourced statements, to delete all "non-notable" articles. These crusades are always wrapped in righteous mantles of "improving the encyclopedia", but speaking of raising the bar, the bar for "improving the encyclopedia" through deleting stuff ought to be much higher than for adding stuff.
Writing is more like painting than sculpture. We're not taking a block of marble and carving away everything that doesn't look like an encyclopedia.
geni wrote:
On 02/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
We now do require people source things, we just aren't very good at enforcing it (I believe it was Jimbo that said people shouldn't be tagging dubious statements with {{fact}}, they should just be removing them completely).
Jimbo has very few article edits over the last year but:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Church_of_Reality&diff=prev&am...
What's significant is that even he should see the need to say, "please give us a day or two to work on it for goodness sake" in his summary line.
Ec
And the world is moving on from Wikipedia. It's attitudes like this that have caused the decline in editing and participation at Wikipedia.
On Feb 1, 2008 7:20 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Good for you. When we update the site code to read "Edit this page if you have source material avaliable" instead of "edit this page" that will be a reasonable expectation to apply to others. The entire project, let's note, was built on people wandering by an adding a fact they happened to know, with the idea that mass untrained peer review would be good enough to get a working project. Citing sources is one of the ways we get to that point, but we have to remember: the project is designed to be editable by anyone in a casual and volunteer manner. We hurt ourselves if we expect everybody to have multiple sources on hand before they edit or create an article.
That was the original idea, I agree, but we've moved on from that. We long ago accepted that simply adding what you know doesn't work since there is no way for people to trust it. We now do require people source things, we just aren't very good at enforcing it (I believe it was Jimbo that said people shouldn't be tagging dubious statements with {{fact}}, they should just be removing them completely).
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Steven Walling wrote:
Now comes the grotty quibbling over what "third party", "reliable" and "article topic" mean, I guess. And whether the great purge to come will give editors time to fix anything before it's swept aside.
Time? Why should you be creating new stubs that are unsourced at all? I don't create an article unless I have source material available. It kills the need for debate 90% of the time (literally, that's my ratio of creations to AFDs).
The requirements just changed. Should editors have been looking into the future when writing their stubs to take into account what the requirements _would_ be at some point?
Wikipedia is a work in progress, a growing, living document that is never "finished." The fact that it's riddled with half-complete, poorly-referenced, and downright messy articles is a feature. It's _supposed_ to be that way. If you want a nice printable version to put on your shelves, don't go around shooting unfinished articles on sight. Lean on the developers to finally get flagged revisions implemented.
This thread seems to completely mix up notability and verifiability. The two are not the same, and only verifiability was meant to be policy, not notability.
However, articles that are completely verifiable and well-sourced are still deleted purely on terms of notability.
http://australia.wikia.com/wiki/Rofe_Park is one example I think of every time I drive past it. A heritage-listed park with 6 references.
{{dated prod|concern = {{{concern|non-notable park}}}...}}
Angela
Angela wrote:
This thread seems to completely mix up notability and verifiability. The two are not the same, and only verifiability was meant to be policy, not notability.
The policy itself is confused, in that case. I've already given an example of how I could write a fully cited and verifiable article using a primary source that would be deleted under the "third-party" requirement in the policy as written. Since TV shows are tainted by popularity, though, perhaps I should use something "scholarly "instead.
If I were to write an article about Hamlet and I cited only the text of the play (widely available anywhere) for all of the facts I wrote, is that article unverifiable?
On 02/02/2008, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
If I were to write an article about Hamlet and I cited only the text of the play (widely available anywhere) for all of the facts I wrote, is that article unverifiable?
Provided you stick to things that are very likely to reach consensus that what you wrote is 100% backed up by the text, it's certainly verifiable and probably notable (since Hamlet is notable). But if you try to draw any kind of conclusion, that isn't completely implied by the text, then it's OR.
Ian Woollard wrote:
On 02/02/2008, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
If I were to write an article about Hamlet and I cited only the text of the play (widely available anywhere) for all of the facts I wrote, is that article unverifiable?
Provided you stick to things that are very likely to reach consensus that what you wrote is 100% backed up by the text, it's certainly verifiable and probably notable (since Hamlet is notable).
But it fails the "third party source" requirement.
I'm not saying it's impossible to find third party sources that discuss Hamlet, of course, that would be silly. But I don't see why this is a necessary condition for _verifiability_. You can verify something based purely on primary sources.
But if you try to draw any kind of conclusion, that isn't completely implied by the text, then it's OR.
Not really relevant, though. OR is a whole 'nother policy.
On 02/02/2008, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Ian Woollard wrote:
Provided you stick to things that are very likely to reach consensus that what you wrote is 100% backed up by the text, it's certainly verifiable and probably notable (since Hamlet is notable).
But it fails the "third party source" requirement.
Are you getting your Hamlet source directly from Shakespeare? :-)
I think you could argue fairly well that the script of Hamlet already comes from a third party.
I'm not entirely sure whether that's quite the intention of the policy though ;-)
On Feb 2, 2008 1:11 AM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Ian Woollard wrote:
But if you try to draw any kind of conclusion, that isn't completely implied by the text, then it's OR.
Not really relevant, though. OR is a whole 'nother policy.
Not really. WP:V even says that it, WP:OR, and WP:NPOV "should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should try to familiarize themselves with all three." If your only point is that this rule should be filed under WP:OR instead of WP:V, then it's a fairly useless point to debate.
I should also point out that the sentence you're talking about says "If no reliable, third-party sources *can be found* for an article topic..." [my em]. Reliable, third-party sources *can be found* for Hamlet, even if the initial article doesn't contain them.
On Feb 2, 2008 12:40 AM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Angela wrote:
This thread seems to completely mix up notability and verifiability. The two are not the same, and only verifiability was meant to be policy, not notability.
The policy itself is confused, in that case. I've already given an example of how I could write a fully cited and verifiable article using a primary source that would be deleted under the "third-party" requirement in the policy as written. Since TV shows are tainted by popularity, though, perhaps I should use something "scholarly "instead.
If I were to write an article about Hamlet and I cited only the text of the play (widely available anywhere) for all of the facts I wrote, is that article unverifiable?
Not by any common language definition, although I don't see how it could fail to be original research. Also, it sounds more like a book report (or Cliff's Notes) than an encyclopedia article.
It doesn't seem to me to be the right way of going about writing an encyclopedia article. Now maybe it can still be useful - if you spent any significant amount of time writing it it'd probably be a mistake to just throw it away, but I can see the reasoning that it's not what Wikipedia is supposed to be about.
I believe Wikipedia's strong focus on a single definite goal - making an encyclopedia - has contributed greatly to its success. I just wish all those deleted portions which were deemed not to fit in with that goal were visible. But I've been wishing that for several years now - it probably ain't gonna happen.
On 01/02/2008, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Those of you who have been following the strange life of "notability" on Wikipedia as it evolved from a series of debates on VfD about deletion philosophy to an ill-defined word used to bite newbies, and then to a series of ill-defined guidelines used to bite newbies will be saddened to know that the last firewall on this issue has now been breached, and notability has been enshrined at the level of policy instead of guideline.
Despite a number of objections, consensus seems to be forming on WP:V to include the line "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." in the policy. This line may be familiar in its more-cited form, "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject," from WP:N.
So there you go. The process that is most often used to generate bad press, hurt feelings, and upset newbie contributors is now enshrined as policy.
Go us?
I've always considered the former definition to be "verifiable", and the latter "notable". Verifiable is a pretty objective, pretty easy-to-use guideline - something is either verifiable or it is not. Notability (the key word in the definition is "significant"), is a subjective judgment. Since there is no fixed definition, it changes per person. Notability is so flexible that it can mean many things to many people and is often used as a proxy to delete articles people think shouldn't be on Wikipedia for other reasons.
I can understand Jimbo's plaintive edit comment, because I've been beset by the rabid prod-ninjas. See, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Westar_Institute&action=histor... where my article, with four cites from two websites, was marked less than 3 minutes after I started it. OTOH, I see that his article is notability-tagged: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Church_of_Reality&diff=1827079...
There is a deficiency in the Wikipedia media model in that it rewards those who avoid tabular representation and expand each line into a separate article. The notion that verifiability, not to mention notability, is enough justify a separate article encourages this sort of padding-- and it is padding, because there's no extra information conveyed. I've been doing a lot of lighthouse articles, and really the only thing that saves them from meriting this sort of treatment is that each of them has a enough history to require a separate narrative for each.
Well, Im the admin who removed the speedy, and it was a clear mis-tagging, but for what strikes the casual reader as esoteric subjects it helps to be very explicit and not assume they will even follow the links, let alone use google. And this is not really the place to complain about other editors.
On Feb 7, 2008 9:41 PM, The Mangoe the.mangoe@gmail.com wrote:
I can understand Jimbo's plaintive edit comment, because I've been beset by the rabid prod-ninjas. See, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Westar_Institute&action=histor... where my article, with four cites from two websites, was marked less than 3 minutes after I started it. OTOH, I see that his article is notability-tagged: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Church_of_Reality&diff=1827079...
There is a deficiency in the Wikipedia media model in that it rewards those who avoid tabular representation and expand each line into a separate article. The notion that verifiability, not to mention notability, is enough justify a separate article encourages this sort of padding-- and it is padding, because there's no extra information conveyed. I've been doing a lot of lighthouse articles, and really the only thing that saves them from meriting this sort of treatment is that each of them has a enough history to require a separate narrative for each.
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I'm not making a specific complaint, but merely noting what I see as a trend to get rather trigger-happy about slapping tags on things. And personally I would think it extremely presumptive to start from the assumption that my ignorance of a subject in a field of which I know little or nothing was evidence of anything but my lack of knowledge.
On 08/02/2008, The Mangoe the.mangoe@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not making a specific complaint, but merely noting what I see as a trend to get rather trigger-happy about slapping tags on things.
I think a lot of the problem is that the nominators feel affronted or cheated when a deletion nomination is challenged - they assume ownership of the deletion nomination and feel they have to fight for it.
(I must admit I haven't helped - I have frequently been guilty of stating my opinions of bad nominations in a personal manner, and recently needed to apologise profusely to User:Cirt for my profound dickishness on a deletion matter; I will be trying to do much better in future.)
How to depersonalise the process of deletion nomination?
- d.
In principle the formal language used in the templates is supposed to help sound impersonal--but it works the other way round and strikes new users in particular as impersonal bureaucracy. What we intend to be helpful suggestions come across as the usual self-protective internet warnings and disclaimers.
But what is even worse is not notifying them at all--and we rely on sometimes-functioning bots for the purpose at Speedy deletion and Prod--and good will alone at AfD. There is -- amazingly -- no requirement that the author or main contributors to an article be notified of impending deletion. Even more amazingly, requiring notice has been rejected repeatedly by the long-term experienced users: "they should be using their watchlists" ; "if people had to notify them, AfD deletions would go slower--they might protest more often".
One thing nobody could say about WP, is that we are friendly to newcomers. it's the usenet heritage. At most we give them a list of 30 long help pages to read, but not a single personal word.
On Feb 8, 2008 5:09 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 08/02/2008, The Mangoe the.mangoe@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not making a specific complaint, but merely noting what I see as a trend to get rather trigger-happy about slapping tags on things.
I think a lot of the problem is that the nominators feel affronted or cheated when a deletion nomination is challenged - they assume ownership of the deletion nomination and feel they have to fight for it.
(I must admit I haven't helped - I have frequently been guilty of stating my opinions of bad nominations in a personal manner, and recently needed to apologise profusely to User:Cirt for my profound dickishness on a deletion matter; I will be trying to do much better in future.)
How to depersonalise the process of deletion nomination?
- d.
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On 08/02/2008, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Even more amazingly, requiring notice has been rejected repeatedly by the long-term experienced users: "they should be using their watchlists" ;
Yes, they should. It took me a while to learn about Categories, Images and Templates, but i grasped the Watchlist very quickly.
"if people had to notify them, AfD deletions would go slower--they might protest more often".
That's bad. Let them protest. It's good to see that people care.
I had to deal with arguments and protests over deletions. These protesters are usually not stupid at all, even though they often don't understand our rejection of original research. But i don't mind replying to them personally in each case: every time i do it, it makes me understand even better why NOR is a good thing.
One thing nobody could say about WP, is that we are friendly to newcomers. it's the usenet heritage. At most we give them a list of 30 long help pages to read, but not a single personal word.
Not all of us: I listed myself as "willing to adopt" new users. I receive adoption requests every couple of days and stopped counting my adoptees a long time ago. Many of them never return after their initial request, but a few of them keep asking me questions. The questions are all quite the same, but i always give a full personal reply and add a link to a help or policy "for more info ... and feel free to ask me again if you don't understand anything". I never use copy n' paste in these conversations.
Some of my adoptees have already become good contributors...
Yes, good people do things properly. But as one person said to me once, "you're the only person here who actually tried to help." -- and there were 4 or 5 conventional notices of help on that page. She wanted some simple practical advice about exactly what was best to do to save the article. I'm not the only person, and neither are you. The secret which we both use is to never use copy and paste, or a template. But, as you say, most people are trained to interpret offers of assistance as the conventional "Please let us know if t here is anything more that we can do to help" at the bottom of all negative form letters. Just as some people at WP end their negative warnings with "Have a good day!"
Not to mention that the effective use of a warning list is limited to those who are on WP essentially full time. Look at the time between placing a speedy tag and a the deletion of the article. Look at even AfD and see the decreasing percentage that run the full five days.
On Feb 8, 2008 9:32 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@gmail.com wrote:
On 08/02/2008, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Even more amazingly, requiring notice has been rejected repeatedly by the long-term experienced users: "they should be using their watchlists" ;
Yes, they should. It took me a while to learn about Categories, Images and Templates, but i grasped the Watchlist very quickly.
"if people had to notify them, AfD deletions would go slower--they might protest more often".
That's bad. Let them protest. It's good to see that people care.
I had to deal with arguments and protests over deletions. These protesters are usually not stupid at all, even though they often don't understand our rejection of original research. But i don't mind replying to them personally in each case: every time i do it, it makes me understand even better why NOR is a good thing.
One thing nobody could say about WP, is that we are friendly to newcomers. it's the usenet heritage. At most we give them a list of 30 long help pages to read, but not a single personal word.
Not all of us: I listed myself as "willing to adopt" new users. I receive adoption requests every couple of days and stopped counting my adoptees a long time ago. Many of them never return after their initial request, but a few of them keep asking me questions. The questions are all quite the same, but i always give a full personal reply and add a link to a help or policy "for more info ... and feel free to ask me again if you don't understand anything". I never use copy n' paste in these conversations.
Some of my adoptees have already become good contributors...
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni
English - http://aharoni.wordpress.com Hebrew - http://haharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
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On 08/02/2008, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, good people do things properly. But as one person said to me once, "you're the only person here who actually tried to help." -- and there were 4 or 5 conventional notices of help on that page. She wanted some simple practical advice about exactly what was best to do to save the article. I'm not the only person, and neither are you. The secret which we both use is to never use copy and paste, or a template. But, as you say, most people are trained to interpret offers of assistance as the conventional "Please let us know if t here is anything more that we can do to help" at the bottom of all negative form letters. Just as some people at WP end their negative warnings with "Have a good day!"
However even when not copying and pasting anything people do a lot will tend to become standardized (See how may times I've typed out "Hi did you take this pic?") On top of that you hit the problem is that while templates may feel impersonal they may well be a better option than something that expresses the wikipedian's true feelings.