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Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

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Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#111

Post by jbooth »

chwahoo wrote: post #85
fat_tony wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out that even football referees have a good amount of discretion when making a call. They don't change the rules, but they selectively apply them.

You might be right, but I think your claim is more controversial than you imply. For the most part, I think the league would prefer the rules be applied mechanically. The one exception I can imagine is giving a player a warning about borderline instances of some infraction before calling a penalty.

You can call holding multiple places on the field every single play. If they did that, the game would be ridiculous and nobody would want to watch or play. So they exercise discretion and only apply the penalty when the holding affected the play.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#112

Post by VladRussian »

that is the outermost danger of tomorrow - the youngs today are made believe in the rule of rule. They will be cutting each other's fingers (of course after due process presided over by the millenium judge) for pressing a button on their own hardware they aren't licensed to press by the EULA or for not using real name on Facebook/Quora.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#113

Post by pbhjpbhj »

shin_lao wrote: post #56
_delirium wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are good sources to write an article from, sure. But if there aren't any sources besides the band's website, their MySpace, and a few fans' blog posts, what goes in the article? The usual result is that fans just write a bunch of stuff about the band they like, which doesn't make for the best article. I don't personally care that much, but I don't think the world is greatly harmed by not having those article…

Just basic information, which is better than nothing. If you enquire about the bank in wikipedia you'll get something like "Awesome Band is a neo-dark-fusion-hip-hop jazz Slovenian band formed in 2002. They have produced one album called and are currently active." Answers the question "what is Awesome Band?" which is the role of wikipedia, isn't it?

>Answers the question "what is Awesome Band?" which is the role of wikipedia, isn't it?

No, it's not. Wikipedia is a knowledge repository not _the_ knowledge repository. It's not there to hold every little bit of trivia, if you want to find "what is Awesome Band" then use a search engine. Wikipedia is there to house notable instances and information that has wider application than mere trivia.

Unless Awesome Band started a new genre, influenced well known bands, is a well known band (eg number 1 tracks, headlining particularly large events, etc.) or is known for something else then it's probably enough to mention them as a footnote as a band that played at Event X or possibly as a notable example of a genre or whatever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Wikipedia_conte...

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#114

Post by pbhjpbhj »

yzhengyu wrote: post #8

Notability is broken, since it is usually subjective and wielded mercilessly as an axe by the Wikipedia mafia to cull material which they deem as not notable. Inclusive? Haha, don't make me laugh.

There is, however, nothing stopping articles deemed as not notable by consensus at Wikipedia from being included in other references.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#115

Post by bane »

Osmose wrote: post #23

Trying to delete stories? He nominated them for an open discussion to be decided by an admin. But that doesn't sound nearly as malicious. There are valid criticisms about the AfD process, but most people are blaming Chris as if he just walked by and deleted the articles on his own. I fear that this issue has become less about fixing broken Wikipedia policies that encourage people like Chris to delete articles, and mo…

He nominated them for an open discussion to be decided by an admin.

And the open discussion clearly showed a consensus not to delete the articles.

The process, even if followed, is broken. This debacle is a joke.

Chris should have edited the articles, or ignored them, instead he flagged them for deletion. He positively asserted that they did not belong in wikipedia. None of the respondents to the AfD agreed with him. Yet they were deleted. Semantically, flagging them as AfD was the same as deleting them since that was the outcome in every case.

I agree that he doesn't deserve the entirety of the blame, the horrendously broken editorial process of Wikipedia does. It's so bad that it's virtually impossible to become a new contributor to wikipedia in any meaningful way without become immediately embroiled in WP's editorial shenanigans.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#116

Post by bane »

diN0bot wrote: post #48
j_baker wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that does annoy me is that he seems to agree that the policies need to be changed, but he followed them anyway. Sure, the policies are what ultimately need to be changed, but we also need to discourage blindly following the rules without thinking critically about them.

only after there was a backlash: he did was felt right, people failed to counter, an admin deleted stuff, people bitched and moaned --> therefore, fine if the system is not yielding the right results let's change it. Chris seems to be really decent. even if he had a lapse in judgement, he embraces pleasant discussion. i'm embarrassed by the juvenille response: the meanness most of all, but also the unwillingness to s…

His user page now has a passive-aggressive self congratulatory quote from a supporter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Christopher_Monsanto

Lesson not learned. He's still seeking self-justification for removing knowledge from the public sphere. It's almost 1984-esque.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#117

Post by bane »

shekmalhen wrote: post #33
Osmose wrote: post #23

Trying to delete stories? He nominated them for an open discussion to be decided by an admin. But that doesn't sound nearly as malicious. There are valid criticisms about the AfD process, but most people are blaming Chris as if he just walked by and deleted the articles on his own. I fear that this issue has become less about fixing broken Wikipedia policies that encourage people like Chris to delete articles, and mo…

The AfD process is problematic, but Christopher was also problematic. He was strictly following the rules, even when it didn't make sense, and continued to do so even after other users were telling him, politely, that he was wrong. This sort of behavior is not acceptable on Wikipedia (at least, according to everyone who comments on ridiculous AfD stories). As for teaching him a lesson: he was caught live. The harshne…

This sort of behavior is not acceptable on Wikipedia

I disagree, that sort of behavior is absolutely par-for-the-course in almost every dealing I've seen with WP's self-selected editor class.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#118

Post by bane »

raganwald wrote: post #88
mquander wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but to someone who isn't steeped in Wikipedia-lore, saying that a language's page should be removed from Wikipedia, for whatever reason, is a statement about the language's fans, users or authors, because why would you remove a topic that's useful for a lot of people? (Not to have the debate implied by my question here -- but that's the thought process, and I don't think it's unreasonable.)

saying that a language's page should be removed from Wikipedia, for whatever reason, is a statement about the language's fans, users or authors, because why would you remove a topic that's useful for a lot of people? The notability guidelines, as you can grasp from the name, speak to whether something has been noted , not whether it is useful. Example: My last bike used something called a Hammerschmidt crank. It was…

Notability is not a rule on WP. It's a guideline.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#119

Post by bane »

Retric wrote: post #70
steveklabnik wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deletionism is also one of the major reasons that I only contribute to the Hackety Hack and Shoes articles on Wikipedia, and nothing else. (oh, and I fear the day when I have to try to prove Hackety Hack 'notable.' I'm pretty sure that it isn't by the letter of the law.) They'd have more help if they didn't go around deleting things.

With the current model there needs to be some line because editors are a finite resource and people do occasionally deface articles etc. I would suggest having Wikipedia’s deleted articles end up on another website (using the same backend) which is then ignored by the editorial community to avoid annoying people. PS: There are already plenty of other wiki's with different focus. There is little need for ex: naruto.wi…

One of the powerful features of wikipedia vs. topic specific wikis is the ability to spend literally hours bouncing around seemingly disconnected subjects, learning something new at each new node. You can start at Naruto and end up at African tribal weapons in a sequence of incredibly smooth segues that can consume literally hours of time. Almost everybody who does this describes the experience as "pleasant" or "amazing" and all come away having learned something.

A walled off wiki simply doesn't allow this type of holistic discovery. And in many cases, the boundaries between subjects can seem rather arbitrary and fuzzy. Where does Naruto end and Feudal Japan start?

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#120

Post by bane »

tokenadult wrote: post #59
prodigal_erik wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deletionism is the reason Wikipedia has only a moderate shortage of editors curating content, rather than an utterly insoluble maintenance nightmare. If this farce means the inclusionists are winning, it's the beginning of the end for Wikipedia. They will get what they seem to want—a mirror of the entire web hosted at wikipedia.org, with just as much outdated, useless, and actively misleading crap.

Rather than a "moderate shortage of editors curating content," the Wikimedia Foundation says that the decline in the number of active administrators is "continuing in an unsustainable fashion." http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Wikimedia_Editor... It would be interesting to look at administrators' self-reported reasons for burning out, and it is definitely interesting to look at competing models for buildin…

I can say definitively that I know of at least a dozen people who would otherwise be active contributors to wikipedia if they hadn't had dozens of hours of their work deleted repeatedly.

Not edited or improved, deleted.

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