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Lots of Hackerspaces on Wikipedia are suggested for deletion

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Re: Lots of Hackerspaces on Wikipedia are suggested for deletion

#11

Post by _delirium »

thwarted wrote: post #9

I don't understand the include everything mindset, and I think I'm in the inclusionist camp. If you encourage other people to put data on Wikipedia, the value of the data drops to zero from an economic and reputation exploitation standpoint. For example, if you think there is value in having a comprehensive list of hacker spaces, set up a site that lists them and maintain it. You'll be known as the person who maintai…

Yes! I really wish there were more documentation projects elsewhere on the internet. I'd even contribute to more if they had some community-contribution process (whether through a wiki or other thing).

In particular, Wikipedia's an encyclopedia; that means it's a tertiary source, which means everything it includes should ideally be cited to secondary sources (books, journal articles, newspaper reports, etc.). There's lots of interesting information you could document that doesn't work in that tertiary-source manner, because the secondary sources don't yet exist. So a project to do original research/compilation/etc. in an area where its contributors are knowledgeable is great. Know Your Meme is actually a pretty good example of that. A hackerspace directory would also be useful. Something like http://www.killfromtheheart.com/, also great.

Re: Lots of Hackerspaces on Wikipedia are suggested for deletion

#12

Post by thwarted »

pangram wrote: post #8
nivertech wrote: post #6

I think, that Wikipedia should have "Donate to prevent deletion" button on every article ;)

Yes, this is brilliant -- and could take care of Wikipedia's funding problems is one stroke.

As long as it was easy to see who had donated how much to keep an article alive (still have puppet accounts though, I guess).

Re: Lots of Hackerspaces on Wikipedia are suggested for deletion

#14

Post by _delirium »

esad wrote: post #10
tptacek wrote: post #2

Without repeating the same boring arguments about whether everything should be covered on Wikipedia, and just stipulating, whether you truly agree with them or not, that we'll confine ourselves to Wikipedia's policy of requiring that articles both assert and document notability: Doesn't it stand to reason that most "hackerspaces" aren't notable? Wikipedia doesn't even have coverage for every major office building in…

Why is inclusionism so bad? So what if we had a wikipedia article for every office building in Chicago or every Pokemon out there?

I'm in favor of that, but only for stuff that has existing material to cite (does that count as inclusionism? it used to...).

If you create a new article about a random office building in Chicago, and you cite all the information in the article to architecture books, journal articles, newspaper articles, etc., and the result is more than one sentence, nobody will delete it, so that basically is the current policy.

But if you personally interview architects, dig through archives of blueprints, etc., to construct a new piece of historical research on a building that the existing historical literature doesn't document, Wikipedia isn't quite the right place to publish that. Either there should be a separate wiki dedicated to researching/documenting the history of Chicago, or you could write up your results, present them at a history conference, and then cite that paper once it's published.

Re: Lots of Hackerspaces on Wikipedia are suggested for deletion

#15

Post by jokermatt999 »

_delirium wrote: post #4
arctangent wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the test of notability for something like a hackerspace should be whether a successful (and thus de facto notable) company emerged from it? I imagine that Y Combinator wouldn't be deserving of its own Wikipedia page if nothing had yet come of it. Why should other incubators be treated differently?

Well, it's more whether there are decent sources to document it, but yeah, that's probably most likely if some well-known company emerged from it. Once upon a time there was something like a philosophical "notability" test, but since that led to interminable arguments, it's these days a lot closer to a descriptive "has been noted" test, which boils down to, "if someone says [citation needed], do you have one?". Where…

If you want to be part of Wikipedia, anyone can and should go and start helping out.

Deletionism doesn't exactly encourage people from these groups to come help out. That, and the endless politics/bureaucracy have kept me from bothering to edit. Why make a change when it will likely be reverted?

Re: Lots of Hackerspaces on Wikipedia are suggested for deletion

#16

Post by SwellJoe »

rmc wrote: post #5
tptacek wrote: post #2

Without repeating the same boring arguments about whether everything should be covered on Wikipedia, and just stipulating, whether you truly agree with them or not, that we'll confine ourselves to Wikipedia's policy of requiring that articles both assert and document notability: Doesn't it stand to reason that most "hackerspaces" aren't notable? Wikipedia doesn't even have coverage for every major office building in…

There are much less hackerspaces per city (usually 1) than office blocks per city.

There's only one SwellJoe in the entire world. Shall I add myself to WikiPedia?

Re: Lots of Hackerspaces on Wikipedia are suggested for deletion

#17

Post by _delirium »

jokermatt999 wrote: post #15
_delirium wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's more whether there are decent sources to document it, but yeah, that's probably most likely if some well-known company emerged from it. Once upon a time there was something like a philosophical "notability" test, but since that led to interminable arguments, it's these days a lot closer to a descriptive "has been noted" test, which boils down to, "if someone says [citation needed], do you have one?". Where…

If you want to be part of Wikipedia, anyone can and should go and start helping out. Deletionism doesn't exactly encourage people from these groups to come help out. That, and the endless politics/bureaucracy have kept me from bothering to edit. Why make a change when it will likely be reverted?

A good place to start is to write an article on: 1) something you are not personally closely connected to; and 2) have information on, from decent third-party sources that you can cite.

Nobody I know who's done that has had a problem, though I obviously don't know thousands of people. People don't generally go around randomly deleting well-cited articles that don't appear to be self-promotion. I certainly write about all sorts of random stuff and don't really run into problems. But it's all stuff I have no connection to, and I go to the library to find sources for the articles.

The people I know who have had problems were mostly on Wikipedia to promote themselves, their project, or a project/thing they were closely connected to. A bunch of academics, for example, seem to think that a great place to start editing Wikipedia is to write an article about themselves, cited to their own webpage. Either that, or about one of their research projects, or a theorem they just proved, or a close colleague. All not very good places to start.

Re: Lots of Hackerspaces on Wikipedia are suggested for deletion

#18

Post by robryan »

SwellJoe wrote: post #16
rmc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are much less hackerspaces per city (usually 1) than office blocks per city.

There's only one SwellJoe in the entire world . Shall I add myself to WikiPedia?

I actually think it would be cool if there was a section for regular people to add themselves to wikipedia, as long as the pages were kept to the same editing standards, minus notability and references of course. Would probably find that so many normal random people lead really interesting lives.

Re: Lots of Hackerspaces on Wikipedia are suggested for deletion

#19

Post by alexeiz »

esad wrote: post #10
tptacek wrote: post #2

Without repeating the same boring arguments about whether everything should be covered on Wikipedia, and just stipulating, whether you truly agree with them or not, that we'll confine ourselves to Wikipedia's policy of requiring that articles both assert and document notability: Doesn't it stand to reason that most "hackerspaces" aren't notable? Wikipedia doesn't even have coverage for every major office building in…

Why is inclusionism so bad? So what if we had a wikipedia article for every office building in Chicago or every Pokemon out there?

Wait a second, we do have a Wikipedia article for every Pokemon out there!
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