Introducing Infinithree: Against Wikipedia Deletionism • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing Infinithree: Against Wikipedia Deletionism

#21

Post by bane » Mon, May 30, 2011, 4:22 AM UTC

hugh3 wrote: post #19

bane wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On notability, if wikipedia only contains things that are generally known, what's the point of putting that information in a reference resource? The point of a resource like WP is so people can find things that they may not know. Absurd examples like people's cats and random numbers are not really the problem and I suspect you know that. The problem is not the notability guidelines per se. It's the abusive use of the…

On notability, if wikipedia only contains things that are generally known, what's the point of putting that information in a reference resource? The point of a resource like WP is so people can find things that they may not know. Now there's a strawman. All the facts on wikipedia are widely known to some group of people, but nobody knows 'em all. Though actually, you've just given me another excuse to link to my new…

I don't think removing notability guidelines is the right call either. I think treating the guidelines as guidelines is the right, simple and obvious call.

Unfortunately, notability guidelines are treated like gospel by the deletionists. In cases where stuff is wrongfully deleted, the entire discussion will center around notability, usually with source material references being dismissed out of hand by an overzealous admin.

I'm sure there should be some kind of penalty of some sort or another for editor types who habitually flag AfD and then have them overturned, and that would remedy some of it. But to be honest, speculative discussions about how the foundation could and should deal with the issue have gone nowhere for the better part of half a decade.

Possibly. I've never actually tried editing wikipedia, only reading it.

You really should sometime. I've had things deleted so fast that I didn't even have time to save my edit, then move down to the references section to paste in my references, I swear there are just bots now that monitor new edits and immediately revoke any changes.

It's a pity really.

Good luck reading all the articles! I usually get lost of an extended tour of interesting links whenever I go to the WP.

Re: Introducing Infinithree: Against Wikipedia Deletionism

#22

Post by redthrowaway » Mon, May 30, 2011, 4:40 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #21

hugh3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On notability, if wikipedia only contains things that are generally known, what's the point of putting that information in a reference resource? The point of a resource like WP is so people can find things that they may not know. Now there's a strawman. All the facts on wikipedia are widely known to some group of people, but nobody knows 'em all. Though actually, you've just given me another excuse to link to my new…

I don't think removing notability guidelines is the right call either. I think treating the guidelines as guidelines is the right, simple and obvious call. Unfortunately, notability guidelines are treated like gospel by the deletionists. In cases where stuff is wrongfully deleted, the entire discussion will center around notability, usually with source material references being dismissed out of hand by an overzealous…

Not bots, but users of Huggle and the like. With a thousand or so "vandal patrollers" getting fed the recent changes queue in real time, most edits get pretty heavily scrutinized. Unfortunately, many vandal fighters get overzealous and overstep their bounds.

Re: Introducing Infinithree: Against Wikipedia Deletionism

#23

Post by pbreit » Mon, May 30, 2011, 5:02 AM UTC

There are some major problems with Wikipedia but I don't think deletionism is big enough to sustain a new effort.

My biggest gripes are that many articles are just too long. I'd like to see a word limit or something.

Also, I really don't like the emphasis on citations. It leads to articles comprised no more of disorganized sets of citable sentences. Somewhat counter-intuitively, the citation emphasis leads to less popular but citable statements dominating in many places.

Re: Introducing Infinithree: Against Wikipedia Deletionism

#24

Post by protomyth » Mon, May 30, 2011, 5:35 AM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #20

hugh3 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's making that complaint, so that's a classic straw man. Well, I've met at least one person who advocated the idea that wikipedia should contain any information that was true. When I asked him if I then should be able to create a many-terabyte article entitled "List of random numbers that hugh3's computer generated at [such and such a date and time]" then he said it should. So there are certainly some folks tak…

The person you cite is in no way representative of inclusionists. The analogous position would be to say that deletionists believe Wikipedia should only have articles on subjects that Britannia has articles on. You might be able to find a person who holds such a view, and it might be right to call them a deletionist. It would be disingenuous, however, to say that deletionists hold those views.

The sad part is how often the type of pattern you identified is used, especially on the 24 hour "news" networks by pundits of all sorts. Take any group and find the extreme or hangers on then use those people to define the group as a whole.

Re: Introducing Infinithree: Against Wikipedia Deletionism

#25

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 30, 2011, 5:59 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #16

Hopefully this takes off. After years of complaints and issues with rampant deletionism and abusive editors, Wikimedia has finally started to collect statistics on how this has negatively effected the quality, depth and breadth of the project. I can't find the Wikimedia Foundation report on this (it coincided with the great programming deletion incident), but it was almost universally negative. Some of the more recen…

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Infinithree: Against Wikipedia Deletionism

#26

Post by camtarn » Mon, May 30, 2011, 9:30 AM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #7

How is this different than everything2?

Even E2 will delete content: http://everything2.com/title/Writeup+Deletion

I haven't written anything on there for a very long time, but I do hold the dubious honour of having a writeup (a short treatise on the difference between terminology for bread products) deleted for being pretty much plain wrong :)

Re: Introducing Infinithree: Against Wikipedia Deletionism

#27

Post by camtarn » Mon, May 30, 2011, 9:41 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #18

tantalor wrote: post #7

How is this different than everything2?

It'd be great if everything2 was converted into a wiki instead of the individual submission model it follows now.

It depends - for purely factual content, it would work well. However, it would also discourage the random articles, essays and writings which give E2 its particularly personal voice. Wikipedia is very much about stating the facts about each subject in an encyclopedic way; E2 often ends up being more about several peoples' (possibly differing) opinions on a subject. They're both very valid approaches, and I'm glad both can exist at the same time.

Re: Introducing Infinithree: Against Wikipedia Deletionism

#28

Post by bhickey » Mon, May 30, 2011, 9:50 AM UTC

My biggest complaint with Wikipedia isn't deletionism, but epistemology. Stating that the sky was blue in London on Monday May 30, 2011 demands less rigorous verification than claiming that the rulers of some state did or did not commit genocide. One is superficially inconsequential while the other is likely to lead to a lot of strife.

To give a concrete example, a prominent US geneticist states in the biography on his personal website that his biological father was a highly decorated American pilot. This is a fairly uncontentious claim, yet fails to meet the Wikipedia standard of verifiability.

Re: Introducing Infinithree: Against Wikipedia Deletionism

#29

Post by Steko » Mon, May 30, 2011, 10:09 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #21

hugh3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On notability, if wikipedia only contains things that are generally known, what's the point of putting that information in a reference resource? The point of a resource like WP is so people can find things that they may not know. Now there's a strawman. All the facts on wikipedia are widely known to some group of people, but nobody knows 'em all. Though actually, you've just given me another excuse to link to my new…

I don't think removing notability guidelines is the right call either. I think treating the guidelines as guidelines is the right, simple and obvious call. Unfortunately, notability guidelines are treated like gospel by the deletionists. In cases where stuff is wrongfully deleted, the entire discussion will center around notability, usually with source material references being dismissed out of hand by an overzealous…

It's at the point where directly editing anything is a waste of time for new users. At most I'll put a comment on a talk page and hope the cabal likes a proposed edit and does it themself.

Re: Introducing Infinithree: Against Wikipedia Deletionism

#30

Post by hnhg » Mon, May 30, 2011, 10:17 AM UTC

bhickey wrote: post #28

My biggest complaint with Wikipedia isn't deletionism, but epistemology. Stating that the sky was blue in London on Monday May 30, 2011 demands less rigorous verification than claiming that the rulers of some state did or did not commit genocide. One is superficially inconsequential while the other is likely to lead to a lot of strife. To give a concrete example, a prominent US geneticist states in the biography on h…

This is the difference between saying "the US geneticist's father was a decorated pilot" and " the US geneticist claims his father was a decorated pilot". The latter would be acceptable in Wikipedia, wouldn't it?