Reading http://www.laboratorium.net/archives/SevenWikipediaFallacies.html :
So maybe the argument is that the fluff somehow degrades the tone of the encyclopedia. But that can't be much of a concern either. Are we really going to discredit something useful because it also chooses to be fun? No one ever forces you to read about Star Trek. If you want to know how a Geneva drive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_drive works, what matters to you is that Wikipedia have a damn good entry on it. That the same web site also contains a multi-part list of fictional citieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictional_citiesis neither here nor there.
I tried to follow the link to the list of fictional cities (because I find the topic interesting). But it had been deleted.
Why? The argument was that a category would be better.
I have my opinions about that, but then WHY DID THEY NOT JUST REDIRECT TO THE CATEGORY?
Arghhhhhh.
Sorry for the rant.
On 12/6/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Reading http://www.laboratorium.net/archives/SevenWikipediaFallacies.html:
So maybe the argument is that the fluff somehow degrades the tone of the encyclopedia. But that can't be much of a concern either. Are we really going to discredit something useful because it also chooses to be fun? No one ever forces you to read about Star Trek. If you want to know how a Geneva drive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_drive works, what matters to you is that Wikipedia have a damn good entry on it. That the same web site also contains a multi-part list of fictional citieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictional_citiesis neither here nor there.
I tried to follow the link to the list of fictional cities (because I find the topic interesting). But it had been deleted.
Why? The argument was that a category would be better.
I have my opinions about that, but then WHY DID THEY NOT JUST REDIRECT TO THE CATEGORY?
Arghhhhhh.
Sorry for the rant.
You know what I find annoying? People who 'vote' to merge or delete on xFD. If you think something is mergeable, deletion shouldn't even enter your mind. Also, merging keeps information, deletion destroys it, they're two entirely different beasts. Votes like that are entirely meaningless, but especially annoying when the delete part is bolded and put in front. Why can't people just say '''Merge''' to article X. Deletion can be discussed again if a merge fails. Same goes for cleanup. Just because it's not up to scratch now, doesn't mean an article should be deleted immediately...
Ah, ranting relieves the soul... :)
Mgm
On Wed, 2006-12-06 at 21:43 +0100, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
You know what I find annoying? People who 'vote' to merge or delete on xFD. If you think something is mergeable, deletion shouldn't even enter your mind. Also, merging keeps information, deletion destroys it, they're two entirely different beasts. Votes like that are entirely meaningless, but especially annoying when the delete part is bolded and put in front. Why can't people just say '''Merge''' to article X. Deletion can be discussed again if a merge fails. Same goes for cleanup. Just because it's not up to scratch now, doesn't mean an article should be deleted immediately...
I've done that (delete or merge) a few times, with the best of intentions. For me, it means "in my opinion, Wikipedia's best interests are served by deleting this because [...]. However, if there is insufficient support for that, then I would support [partial] merging into [...] as a poor alternative, because I think that is better than the present state of affairs."
Ah, ranting relieves the soul... :)
So true!
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
You know what I find annoying? People who 'vote' to merge or delete on xFD. If you think something is mergeable, deletion shouldn't even enter your mind. Also, merging keeps information, deletion destroys it, they're two entirely different beasts. Votes like that are entirely meaningless, but especially annoying when the delete part is bolded and put in front. Why can't people just say '''Merge''' to article X.
As far as I understand it we're _legally required_ to preserve the article history if we merge the contents somewhere else. The GFDL requires us to maintain an author list and the way Wikipedia does that is via the edit history.
I just hit a case like this a few days back over on [[Talk:Otherkin]], where someone pasted the most recent version of the deleted article [[Draconity]] for potential merging. As it currently stands this looks legally no different than cutting and pasting the entire text of an Encyclopedia Britannica article into a talk page and suggesting it be merged.
And since [[Draconity]] itself has already been recreated as a redirect, what is the point of keeping the history deleted anyway? The article's inaccessible to readers either way. As long as an article isn't deleted for copyright or libel reasons, if we've got a redirect sitting there we might as well preserve the article history in case something salvageable is discovered in there one day.
And since [[Draconity]] itself has already been recreated as a redirect, what is the point of keeping the history deleted anyway? The article's inaccessible to readers either way. As long as an article isn't deleted for copyright or libel reasons, if we've got a redirect sitting there we might as well preserve the article history in case something salvageable is discovered in there one day.
I have restored the article history for [[Draconity]].
Unfortunately, I can already foresee people coming and arguing that "the article has been up on AfD and the decision was to delete", and it annoys me already.
Timwi wrote:
And since [[Draconity]] itself has already been recreated as a redirect, what is the point of keeping the history deleted anyway? The article's inaccessible to readers either way. As long as an article isn't deleted for copyright or libel reasons, if we've got a redirect sitting there we might as well preserve the article history in case something salvageable is discovered in there one day.
I have restored the article history for [[Draconity]].
Unfortunately, I can already foresee people coming and arguing that "the article has been up on AfD and the decision was to delete", and it annoys me already.
Since there are potentially legal issues involved here (I'm not a lawyer but the GFDL seems pretty clear on this matter), perhaps it would be reasonably straightforward getting the deletion policy amended to prevent this kind of history loss. Strict adherence to rules can work both ways.