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Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

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Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#121

Post by wtallis »

jacoblyles wrote: post #114
zedshaw wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with you is you're going to be a professor, a profession devoted to the advancement of human knowledge and educating laymen in this knowledge, and you just erased one of the main mechanisms for disseminating computer science to the general public. You just made it harder to get people interested in programming. Amazing. Instead of improving the pages (which any self-respecting graduate student could do ove…

>"...you're going to be a professor, a profession devoted to the advancement of human knowledge and educating laymen in this knowledge" Correction: a professor is a profession devoted to advancing human knowledge and then locking that knowledge behind expensive paywalls so that only elites with institutional subscriptions can afford to read it. Academia couldn't care less about the knowledge available to the average…

Academics for the most point don't care about paywalls as long as they are on the right side of any paywalls. University libraries and their institutional subscriptions exist to abstract away the concept of paywalls, so that researchers only need to ask for the article and never need to worry about whether they need to pay for it.

Also, are there really all that many university libraries left that aren't open to the public?

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#123

Post by mattmight »

chrismonsanto wrote: post #23
jacques_chester wrote: post #6

Here's the main offender: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Christopher_Monsanto One of his arguments is that these languages are often only mentioned in conference proceedings. How you get to be a PhD student in computer science without realising that conference proceedings are the leading distribution mechanism for knowledge in the CS research world is a mystery. I may only be a humble honours student, but the cent…

No, of course I know that :( The problem was that the papers mentioned were either 1) not about the subject in question or 2) not cited enough to count. Hopefully your professors also drummed into you that anyone can write a paper and send it to a conference -- the kicker is if it actually makes an impact. Isn't that more-or-less the definition of notability? None of the articles I nominated for deletion had any reli…

> Hopefully your professors also drummed into you that anyone can write a paper and send it to a conference

Sure anyone can submit, but not anyone can get a paper accepted. Conferences in CS are much more selective than journals.

As a Ph.D. student in CS, you should know this.

> the kicker is if it actually makes an impact. Isn't that more-or-less the definition of notability?

No, notability != impact.

My dictionary defines notability as "worthy of attention or notice."

And, how do you measure impact anyway?

By citations? By peer-reviewed papers? By venue prestige? Seasoned academics cringe when these are used as measures of "impact."

You're a Ph.D. student in programming languages. Obscure languages with a handful of users are the norm.

When you're doing a literature search on one of these languages, it's helpful when it pops up on Wikipedia.

You're doing a disservice to the programming languages research community (of which I am a member) by nominating these articles for deletion.

You may be obeying the letter of Wikipedia's policies.

Yet, at the same time, you're being disrespectful to your peers.

If you want to help the community, instead of nominating these pages for deletion, go to conferences like POPL, ICFP or PLDI and ask folks, "So, what's notable about language X?"

They will tell you.

Capture that knowledge and then add it to Wikipedia.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#124

Post by bluesnowmonkey »

bpodgursky wrote: post #86
jacques_chester wrote: post #6

Here's the main offender: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Christopher_Monsanto One of his arguments is that these languages are often only mentioned in conference proceedings. How you get to be a PhD student in computer science without realising that conference proceedings are the leading distribution mechanism for knowledge in the CS research world is a mystery. I may only be a humble honours student, but the cent…

Christopher is a PhD student at Princeton under advisor Dave Walker. If anyone here has connections to Princeton or Dave Walker, I really encourage you to bring this to his attention, as he is hopefully someone Christopher respects enough to listen to advice from. Given that Dave's CV includes designing several esoteric programming languages, I suspect he would have a personal stake in this issue.

Oh no, please, let's not sic the internet mob on these people.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#125

Post by jacoblyles »

Lewisham wrote: post #120
jacoblyles wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"...you're going to be a professor, a profession devoted to the advancement of human knowledge and educating laymen in this knowledge" Correction: a professor is a profession devoted to advancing human knowledge and then locking that knowledge behind expensive paywalls so that only elites with institutional subscriptions can afford to read it. Academia couldn't care less about the knowledge available to the average…

...and this is why almost all academics put their papers as PDFs for free on their web sites. Have you even looked? It is times like this when I wish there was an appropriate emoticon to express an eye roll.

It depends very much on the field. CS has the most open culture of sharing information that I know of, which it should be proud of.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#126

Post by Aramgutang »

burgerbrain wrote: post #112
carsongross wrote: post #110

@chrismonsanto has this thread (and the reddit thread) caused you to reevaluate what we, the programming community, consider 'notable'? The easy reaction would be to focus on the flamers, harden your heart and drive ahead. The wise man, here, stops and thinks for a bit. Restore Nemerle.

He's a wikipedia admin. It is commonly recognized fact that all wikipedia admins are on egotistical power-trips, what do you think is going to happen? You will never see an admission of wrongdoing.

Thankfully, he is not an admin.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#127

Post by prodigal_erik »

bpodgursky wrote: post #86
jacques_chester wrote: post #6

Here's the main offender: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Christopher_Monsanto One of his arguments is that these languages are often only mentioned in conference proceedings. How you get to be a PhD student in computer science without realising that conference proceedings are the leading distribution mechanism for knowledge in the CS research world is a mystery. I may only be a humble honours student, but the cent…

Christopher is a PhD student at Princeton under advisor Dave Walker. If anyone here has connections to Princeton or Dave Walker, I really encourage you to bring this to his attention, as he is hopefully someone Christopher respects enough to listen to advice from. Given that Dave's CV includes designing several esoteric programming languages, I suspect he would have a personal stake in this issue.

A personal stake? I don't see any reason to believe Prof. Walker is so lacking in perspective that he would automatically regard every esoteric language he works on as notable enough to deserve a place in Wikipedia.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#128

Post by udoprog »

The notability requirements do not sufficiently cover "expert" subjects like PLs. Chris mentioned this himself, yet used it as a justification for these articles, this is known as Doublethink (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink) and clearly indicates a second agenda.

Not anyone can invent a programming language, it's not comparable to your pet rock band. Chris, you clearly displayed that you are not capable of handling this subject satisfactory and you've displayed arrogance in response to peoples distress.

Simply put - marking the articles for deletion was rash, and in the larger sense unjustified.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#129

Post by bpodgursky »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #127
bpodgursky wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christopher is a PhD student at Princeton under advisor Dave Walker. If anyone here has connections to Princeton or Dave Walker, I really encourage you to bring this to his attention, as he is hopefully someone Christopher respects enough to listen to advice from. Given that Dave's CV includes designing several esoteric programming languages, I suspect he would have a personal stake in this issue.

A personal stake? I don't see any reason to believe Prof. Walker is so lacking in perspective that he would automatically regard every esoteric language he works on as notable enough to deserve a place in Wikipedia.

Hm, that was probably the wrong phrase to use. I was just thinking that as a researcher on programming languages, he would have more insight into the issue, and have an idea which languages were influential.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#130

Post by prodigal_erik »

burgerbrain wrote: post #91
redthrowaway wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of deleted pages are utter crap. While what you suggest would be interesting I don't see it having much value, unless you manually selected which pages to include. Even then, they'd be 99.9% stubs, with nobody editing or expanding them. We just need to deal with deletionism.

"The vast majority of deleted pages are utter crap." So fucking what? Bits are so cheap they're damn near free, and we have pretty good search technology these days. Who gives a shit if there is some crusty data that nobody cares about lying around? Who precisely is hurt by this?

Wikipedia relies on volunteers to do updates, corrections, and repair of vandalism. Storage is cheap but their time on this thankless work (just look at this thread—and we're relatively civil!) is a limited resource, and the thinner you spread them, the more unusable (outdated, mistaken, and actively misleading) the results will be. If you want a boundless supply of crap content, the union of everything anyone ever bothered to write, we already have one: the web.
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