A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page • Hacker News Board

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#131

Post by JanneVee » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 9:44 PM UTC

It is things like this that has reduced the usefulness of wikipedia for me personally. I wasn't aware of the whole "notability deletionists" before I tried to look up the Rockstar programming language when discussing esoteric programming languages a while back. I knew that there was a entry there it was a nice short introduction to it but it was deleted by these people. In one way it is piece of "programmer culture" that was removed but at the other hand it is an esoteric programming language so it might not be "notable" almost by definition.

This article highlights the slippery slope of it. It is one thing to remove the esoteric language that nobody is seriously using but has a little cultural significance except for a small number of programmer nerds like myself. This composer is actually notable in comparison. Who gets to decide notability? What is next? Are we going to be removing lore from small ethnic groups because there isn't some academic reference to it and someone dutifully transcribed oral tradition and translated a language which only a few speak... No not notable...

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#132

Post by hitekker » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 9:47 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #117

The author is calling everyone who doesn't agree with him about Faulconer's notability a "troll" (and more times than one in the article). >> In the spirit of Wikipedia procedures and reliable source documents, I want to add a few endnotes to this article. >> TROLLS (Par. 3): Here’s my conversation with Faulconer on the use of this word: >> Ted: People may question the suitability of the word trolls here—some of thes…

It’s a fun, relevant metaphor. Some folks live under a bridge and have nothing to do but to harass travelers. Trolls don’t own the bridge and they certainly shouldn’t be demanding tolls and taxes. But their position has stunted their minds and twisted their hearts.

They’ve spent too much time wallowing in the unreal realm of the internet; they fear the light of day. If people were to shine a light on them, they’d die of embarrassment.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#133

Post by hyperpape » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

kevinpet wrote: post #84

> Just a few months before Donna Strickland won the Nobel, a Wikipedia editor had smugly insisted that she wasn’t a notable physicist. I heard about this at the time, and it stood out to me as totally missing the point. It's completely 100% possible that winning the Nobel Prize elevated Dr. Strickland from not notable to notable. A physicist who has done work that could win a Nobel Prize is probably getting close to…

This isn't the case. I'm familiar with the standards applied for living philosophers, and they fall far short of the level of "future Nobel prize winner" (A quick glance at Wikipedia show I took classes from 7 such individuals while in grad school). Similarly for physicists: there are over 1000 21st century physicists listed on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:21st-century_physicis....

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#134

Post by lozenge » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

sanqui wrote: post #80

DuskStar wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Re: the second point about demand — the Pokemon Pikachu has its own Wikipedia page, because people expect Wikipedia specifically to have an article about Pikachu. Other Pokemon do not — because there's already Bulbapedia around to satisfy the demand for an encyclopedia with articles about Pokemon, and the pages from it are easily found in any search engine. If a different set of editors are willing to take on the m…

Bulbapedia was launched in February 2005[1], while Wikipedia reached the consensus that "not all Pokémon are notable" in mid-2007[2]. [1] https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Main_Page [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pok%C3%A9mon_test

Maybe the people who wanted to write about Pokemon were tired of being debated about what pages, or paragraphs, of their output were "notable"?

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#135

Post by pastage » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:25 PM UTC

dwringer wrote: post #121

jtbayly wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's editing. I mean, I can understand that certain people might not be great at editing. But I'm shocked that they would say there are people they don't even want on the site.

I can't tell if you're suggesting that my edits were simply bad, and typically I would accept that is a possibility; but, even then, it was the fact that I was threatened essentially with being swatted. There was no feedback on the edits that I made. Just unfounded assertions that my IP address was involved in something "unsavory" and that I would face severe consequences if I continued such edits. It made me feel ve…

There are many things to discuss about that, first were your edits correct, secondly how can you make such edits and be accepted on Wikipedia. It doesn't seem like you care about reflecting why you failed at the second one.

I guess that is a field of research how does Wikipedia handle anon edits. I have done thousands of anon edits on Wikipedia and have very low deletion rate, but I guess I kept away from tone and opinion.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#136

Post by entwife » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #45

glasshug wrote: post #17

Please read the discussion that deleted this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio... It's a hard problem. Volunteer editors are spread thinly over millions of articles, some of which (like "Bruce Faulconer") are about living people that are really important to get right.[1] The project has settled on the guideline of _notability_, meaning that articles are kept only if they have signi…

It seems the policies for notable composers [1] fail to recognize the work of TV composers. Judging by this case, composing the music for a TV show watched for years by millions of people doesn't count, but composing something performed in a theatre and watched by far fewer people is officially notable: > Has written musical theatre of some sort (includes musicals, operas, etc.) that was performed in a notable theatr…

This observation is likely a good basis for an improvement to the Wikipedia policies on Notability in music.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#137

Post by mixmastamyk » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

Reminds me of a few months back when I tried to link Amy Winehouse's "Mr. Magic" to the great original Grover Washington piece of the same name. Same name, same music, some Wikipedia support in other places, though not extensive. Both on Youtube, takes seconds to confirm.

Some pedanto reverts it every time I tried. Says "it's not in the booklet" (of the CD). Believe the thinking is that reality is not good enough, it must be confirmed by an authority. A disturbing enough idea in itself.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#138

Post by jtbayly » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

dwringer wrote: post #121

jtbayly wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's editing. I mean, I can understand that certain people might not be great at editing. But I'm shocked that they would say there are people they don't even want on the site.

I can't tell if you're suggesting that my edits were simply bad, and typically I would accept that is a possibility; but, even then, it was the fact that I was threatened essentially with being swatted. There was no feedback on the edits that I made. Just unfounded assertions that my IP address was involved in something "unsavory" and that I would face severe consequences if I continued such edits. It made me feel ve…

Wait a minute. I wasn’t questioning your editing at all. I was only pointing out that this guy is openly admitting not only that he doesn’t want some people editing, but that he doesn’t even want some people to have access to Wikipedia. That’s truly shocking to me.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#139

Post by dwringer » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:35 PM UTC

pastage wrote: post #135

dwringer wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're suggesting that my edits were simply bad, and typically I would accept that is a possibility; but, even then, it was the fact that I was threatened essentially with being swatted. There was no feedback on the edits that I made. Just unfounded assertions that my IP address was involved in something "unsavory" and that I would face severe consequences if I continued such edits. It made me feel ve…

There are many things to discuss about that, first were your edits correct, secondly how can you make such edits and be accepted on Wikipedia. It doesn't seem like you care about reflecting why you failed at the second one. I guess that is a field of research how does Wikipedia handle anon edits. I have done thousands of anon edits on Wikipedia and have very low deletion rate, but I guess I kept away from tone and op…

Regarding the topic of making edits that would be accepted, I assume it was subject matter that rubbed someone the wrong way because as I said it was basically a character assassination of the article's subject. I strongly suspect the writer of the original non-neutral content had a browser extension or bot monitoring the page for any edits. I reflected on it quite a bit (I'm not sure how you concluded I've no interest in that), but I just think it creates a bit of an issue with the community being unwelcoming to newcomers. On the receiving end of it there's not really any way to know why someone decided to make unfounded accusations against you in a public place without engaging them further, which seemed unwise to me.

I agree with you that it looks like a good field for some research, I don't know how the issue of anonymous edits could be handled to productively stamp out abusive edit behavior.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#140

Post by defen » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:43 PM UTC

worik wrote: post #56

Pedantically: "In another bizarre case, an editor at Wikipedia told Philip Roth, “one of the most awarded American authors of his generation” (according to Wikipedia) that he was not a reliable source on the subject of Philip Roth." Philip Roth is not an authoritative source on Philip Roth. I would have thought that was obvious.

How does laundering the info through The New Yorker make it authoritative? Any putative fact checking for the article itself would necessarily entail asking him "Hey Phil, that article you just wrote for us about the inspiration for your best-selling, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel - was that true or were you just having a giggle?"