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The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

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Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#201

Post by bdonlan »

gergles wrote: post #159
wpietri wrote: post #121

There's a lot of Wikipedia I think should be more transparent or more approachable. But deletion discussions aren't really one of them. Deciding what really fits in an encyclopedia isn't simple. Wikipedia has spent literally a decade working out a set of rules that balances utility, fairness, quality, and maintainability. Those rules will inevitably seem bureaucratic and opaque to people who haven't worked on a numbe…

You have deliberately ignored the most contentious part of the Wikipedia policy regarding articles, which is the "Notability" rule. Why an Internet-based encyclopedia with no editors, printed version, or quality control feels the need to limit articles to "notable subjects" is beyond me - it isn't like we're going to run out of electrons any time soon. In this particular case, it was quite clear this person existed a…

Notability is a bit of a misnomer. It's really a way to gauge one extremely important factor: Is it possible to verify the content of this article as correct?

Let's look at the general notability guideline (WP:GNG):

> If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list.

That's it. Simple. Wikipedia wants sources to back up whatever's in the article, it wants significant coverage so it can actually write a decent article using this information, and it wants them to be independent to avoid bias in the source material.

Why it ended up being called "Notability", I don't know. It probably should be renamed - but anything that's sufficiently notable tends to fit this general notability criterion, and vice versa, so I guess it's a decent proxy for notability as well.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#202

Post by wpietri »

gergles wrote: post #159
wpietri wrote: post #121

There's a lot of Wikipedia I think should be more transparent or more approachable. But deletion discussions aren't really one of them. Deciding what really fits in an encyclopedia isn't simple. Wikipedia has spent literally a decade working out a set of rules that balances utility, fairness, quality, and maintainability. Those rules will inevitably seem bureaucratic and opaque to people who haven't worked on a numbe…

You have deliberately ignored the most contentious part of the Wikipedia policy regarding articles, which is the "Notability" rule. Why an Internet-based encyclopedia with no editors, printed version, or quality control feels the need to limit articles to "notable subjects" is beyond me - it isn't like we're going to run out of electrons any time soon. In this particular case, it was quite clear this person existed a…

I addressed the thing you accuse me of deliberately ignoring in my second paragraph.

The resource constraint on Wikipedia isn't electrons; it's the time and attention of conscientious editors. Which yes, Wikipedia has. They also serve as its quality control.

Between phone books and public records, there is evidence that most of the people and all of the buildings (and plots of land) in the US exist. Would Wikipedia be better if they all had articles? How about every garage band, after-school club, casual sodality, and beloved pet?

I say no. And because of something else that people forever bitch about when it comes to Wikipedia: article quality. Unless there's enough material to make a decent article, I think deletion is the appropriate response. If somebody would like a page on the Internet where they self-document their awesomeness, they can make one on their own site.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#203

Post by ricky_rozay »

ultrasaurus wrote: post #99
HnNoPassMailer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone should have a wikipedia page. Notability and value of information however should be clear: Turing's page should clearly be different then the page of my teacher in kindergarten. How? I don't know. We can go much finer in granularity. To be successfully usable, developments are needed to cope with the finer grained information (like having ~10M pages of teachers of kindergartens).

Wouldn't the pagerank algorithm work as a first pas for notability? I can guarantee that more (and more important) wiki pages will link to Turing's page than mine. There would still be policing, but now it's of the form "This article on Bletchley Park shouldn't link to this random guy's page" which is more objective than giving me a notability score.

I like the idea of using some mechanism like the pagerank algorithm for notability but i worry that those random almost-obscure/niche academic subjects may not pass it. When i was in college i found that wikipedia was really helpful for getting background/links to certain lesser-known topics that would pop up in reading assignments...i haven't contributed much to wikipedia however so i don't know how they determine notability of those types of pages

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#204

Post by richardw »

A few years back, the list page for "gtd software" was deleted, the data was lifted, moved to a private web page, the "gtd" page was pointed at the latter as a reference! I (strongly) suspected the private company of arranging it via a wiki-fu but couldn't prove it. Perfect example of gaming the system.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#205

Post by bdonlan »

FaceKicker wrote: post #147
quanticle wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's an article about his company in a legitimate publication, then he can put a page up for his company in Wikipedia. It'd pass the notability requirement and the requirement for verifiable sources. The problem is that getting rid of the notability requirement would lead to lots of people putting up pages with nothing more than opinion. It wouldn't be spam. It'd be more dangerous than that. It'd be unsourced o…

> If there's an article about his company in a legitimate publication, then he can put a page up for his company in Wikipedia. It'd pass the notability requirement and the requirement for verifiable sources. It seemed like the person the blog post was referencing passed that requirement as well, but was deleted.

Except it didn't. As mentioned on the AfD page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion...) she was _mentioned_ in a lot of places, but only in passing - there was no real substance talking about why she's so important, she was just quoted as saying something.

If you can refute this, please follow the very clear instructions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review#Instr...) for doing so. For the deletion review to have any chance of succeeding, it _must_ go over some new point that the previous AfD ignored. Giving new references that are specifically about the person in question would probably work. Simply saying "but, but, she's important!!1! :( :( :(", on the other hand, won't go over well.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#206

Post by TeMPOraL »

sethg wrote: post #153
tptacek wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't buy it. There are some dumb, dumb, dumb people thoroughly ensconced in Wikipedia and its processes; clearly it's not that hard to figure out that to talk to an admin, you can just edit their page. I think Danny Sullivan is being disingenuous. Mediawiki is an obtuse piece of software; he knows that, and we know that, and he's using it as a fig leaf to conceal the fact that he wasn't able to push his frien…

Dumb, dumb, dumb people can learn to follow all sorts of rituals, if they’re sufficiently motivated. That fact does not, in and of itself, justify the rituals.

If you mean those rituals to filter out the unmotivated, then, in fact, it does.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#207

Post by njw45 »

gergles wrote: post #159
wpietri wrote: post #121

There's a lot of Wikipedia I think should be more transparent or more approachable. But deletion discussions aren't really one of them. Deciding what really fits in an encyclopedia isn't simple. Wikipedia has spent literally a decade working out a set of rules that balances utility, fairness, quality, and maintainability. Those rules will inevitably seem bureaucratic and opaque to people who haven't worked on a numbe…

You have deliberately ignored the most contentious part of the Wikipedia policy regarding articles, which is the "Notability" rule. Why an Internet-based encyclopedia with no editors, printed version, or quality control feels the need to limit articles to "notable subjects" is beyond me - it isn't like we're going to run out of electrons any time soon. In this particular case, it was quite clear this person existed a…

Why hasn't anyone taken wikipedia's content and put in it another mediawiki setup run without a deletionist policy?

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#208

Post by wpietri »

Vivtek wrote: post #150
scott_s wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely retarded that you have to learn tons of policy and dozens of acronyms before you're deemed qualified to discuss whether an article should be deleted. I'm actually not convinced of that. That is, I'm not convinced it's a bad thing that people have to learn policy and acronyms in order to participate in a discussion. Wikipedia is - like any large, distributed group effort - entirely dependent on its pro…

I think the complaint is not that there are processes - clearly there must be - but that the processes are opaquely documented, poorly tracked, not transparent to start with, and arbitrarily and often capriciously enforced.

Are they opaquely documented?

I went to Google, typed in "Wikipedia deletion policy" and got what seems like some good documentation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy

Imagining it from Sullivan's perspective, I read down to the bit that says "If you disagree: Take the matter to Wikipedia:Deletion review", which leads me here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review

Reading down a bit, I find this bit in bold: "This process should not be used simply because you disagree with a deletion debate's outcome [...]" which seems to directly address his condition.

I agree that one needs a basic facility with Wikipedia and Mediawiki to usefully participate, which is definitely a barrier to novices. Which certainly makes it seem murky and hard to follow. It's also somewhat stochastic; a lot of outcomes depends on who happens to show up and participate.

A lot of these problems, though, are things you personally could fix. Anybody can edit the documentation and get involved with processes like Articles For Deletion. If you think it could be better, please get involved!

And if you don't like it and won't get involved, then please keep in mind that much of Wikipedia's software and all of its content comes from volunteers. Telling people that they aren't doing enough free work for you is unlikely to improve much of anything.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#209

Post by wpietri »

wpietri wrote: post #146

For those wondering about the backstory, I went and looked at the history of the deleted page. The article for Jessie Stricchiola was created by account "Stricchiola" in November 2009. The commit message: "Added article for search industry pioneer Jessie Stricchiola". That account made only one other significant edit, which was to link the Jessie Stricchiola article into the first paragraph of "Search Engine Marketin…

Oops! I'm too late to edit, but as is probably obvious from context, I meant to write "the article was basically untouched until September 2011".

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#210

Post by vacri »

Animus7 wrote: post #165
geraldalewis wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's extremely difficult to participate, I ask honestly: why should it be easy to participate? > and I don't want to need to spend a bunch at Wikipedia reading countless rules trying to figure that out You don't want to spend time contributing, you just want readers to accept your contribution? I hope I'm misreading your intent, as it sounds like you feel you're above the vetting process? I've made some modest cont…

> I ask honestly: why should it be easy to participate? Because the alternative is massive systemic bias. This issue has been discussed to death and I won't argue anything here, but the point is that having a thick coat of process encourages a _certain kind_ of editor to participate in Wikipedia. Thus, proponents claim, the largest reference work on the internet is biased, in a very nonobvious way. This wouldn't be a…

The quality of technical articles on Wikipedia are second to none. Time and time again technical references have played out in personal and professional endeavours. They're clear and concise.

You've got to accept that some topics, biographies for example, are inherently subjective and can't be purely objective.

Wikipedia is the most rigorous source of 'truth' available to the masses, and the complaints of bias are about bias which may indeed be present, but are markedly subtle. Where is the source of 'truth' that's anywhere near as objective as the offerings of wikipedia?

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