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A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

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Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#171

Post by Suzuran »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #86
sanqui wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which brings us to, should wikipedia have more domain specific wikis? Why does everyone end up on fandom or some other random wiki site when wikipedia is already ad free, hosted worldwide and ain't going anywhere. Wikipedia doesn't _have_ to be just a encyclopedic overview of topics, it should have dive ins as deep as you want if there are people willing to write it.

Remember that Wikia/Fandom are co-owned by Jimbo Wales. Forcing things off Wikipedia and onto Fandom drives his revenue.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#172

Post by barnabee »

bazoom42 wrote: post #168
barnabee wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is a much tighter “standard” than it needs to be given the constraints. It is depressing to think of all the effort that people put into writing articles that no one can ever benefit from, knowing there’s no good reason for their work to be wasted in this way.

Maybe they shouldnt write these articles on Wikipedia then? Make your own website or wiki and nobody is going to delete it.

Alternatively, critique threads like this and overall community discussions might eventually lead to a change of policy.

They also might not, but it's both a lot less work than your suggestion, and if succesful would lead to a better overall outcome.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#173

Post by Suzuran »

SllX wrote: post #130
kps wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does everyone end up on fandom Fandom dot com is a commercial venture started by Jimmy Wales. Inferences are left as an exercise for the reader.

When it was Wikia, it was alright. It has evolved into something atrocious that I actively avoid.

It was alright until you wanted to leave, suddenly you were banned and "no longer represented the community", and wikia employees had wide latitude in doing whatever they could to frustrate any attempt to migrate off of wikia.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#174

Post by Cr4shMyCar »

SllX wrote: post #130
kps wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does everyone end up on fandom Fandom dot com is a commercial venture started by Jimmy Wales. Inferences are left as an exercise for the reader.

When it was Wikia, it was alright. It has evolved into something atrocious that I actively avoid.

Fandom has become incredibly scummy. I only try to use it on my PC where I have adblockers and a userscript to cut out all the BS they push, and even then it's not enough. They've now turned all searches into cross-wiki searches with absolutely no way to tell if something's on the wiki you're already on until you mouse over it. If I go to The Orville wiki and search for Moclans, it gives me that wiki's page on Moclans, but also pages on Moclans from the "Aliens Wiki", a wiki for some weird ironic cartoon drawn in MS Paint, and another vastly inferior The Orville wiki where the only text on the page is "The Moclans are an alien race in The Orville." All these pages look the same in the search box, and there's no way to turn off cross-wiki search (as far as I could see). I get that they gotta make money somehow, but you should not be able to make your site horrible to use while still dominating the market because you're the easiest product to use.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#175

Post by bazoom42 »

barnabee wrote: post #172
bazoom42 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they shouldnt write these articles on Wikipedia then? Make your own website or wiki and nobody is going to delete it.

Alternatively, critique threads like this and overall community discussions might eventually lead to a change of policy. They also might not, but it's both a lot less work than your suggestion, and if succesful would lead to a better overall outcome.

So the problem is it is easier to edit wikipedia than creating ones own page or wiki? In that case, this should be adressed by better tools instead of convincing wikipedia to accept anything.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#176

Post by bazoom42 »

armchairhacker wrote: post #47

Honestly even if he isn’t famous why can’t Wikipedia keep his entry? Why does Wikipedia even have “notable” requirements anyways? There’s not a storage issue. Wikipedia can literally have billions of articles and still be easy to maintain. There’s not really a quality issue. Wikipedia is known for not being 100% reliable. But moreover, they have tons of ways to denote “this article needs citations” and “this isn’t a…

Anybody can already create their own web page or wiki following their own policies.

The reason people want their content on Wikipedia is because a Wikipedia page signal a certain notability compared to a random web page. So the inclusionists want to eat the cake and keep it too.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#177

Post by bazoom42 »

winternett wrote: post #63
armchairhacker wrote: post #47

Honestly even if he isn’t famous why can’t Wikipedia keep his entry? Why does Wikipedia even have “notable” requirements anyways? There’s not a storage issue. Wikipedia can literally have billions of articles and still be easy to maintain. There’s not really a quality issue. Wikipedia is known for not being 100% reliable. But moreover, they have tons of ways to denote “this article needs citations” and “this isn’t a…

I can't get on there myself with over 20 years of making and publishing music and being on radio etc... And for that same reason can't get verified on Twitter and many other sites I promote my music work on. First of all, Wikipedia has banned all T-Mobile IPs from being able to even log in to my account... 10 years ago when I tried to post my biography there, they rejected it for lack of notability... Twitter also re…

So Twitter requires you to have a Wikipedia page? It seems the problem is with Twitters policies, not with Wikipedias.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#178

Post by syrrim »

Some factor needs to determine what the content of page on wikipedia ends up being. Since "anyone can edit" (credentials are not used as a filter), the content is determined by whoever is most persistent. There are also various processes in place to ensure that content is verifiably correct, and wikipedia largely succeeds in that regard. However, basically everything else, including what information is included, and what spin is put on that information, is decided by the wikipedia editors. They succeed in this regard by being willing to spend the most amount of time camping pages, reverting any change they disagree with, and forming cabals of editors willing to stand up for one another when an editing war emerges.

Given wikipedia's funding, it ought to be possible to pay for credentialed experts to curate the editorial bend of articles in their area of expertise. This would have its own issues, namely of causing a bias towards institutionally favoured interpretations, but I think that would be preferable to the status quo.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#179

Post by elefantastisch »

derefr wrote: post #53
armchairhacker wrote: post #47

Honestly even if he isn’t famous why can’t Wikipedia keep his entry? Why does Wikipedia even have “notable” requirements anyways? There’s not a storage issue. Wikipedia can literally have billions of articles and still be easy to maintain. There’s not really a quality issue. Wikipedia is known for not being 100% reliable. But moreover, they have tons of ways to denote “this article needs citations” and “this isn’t a…

> Why does Wikipedia even have “notable” requirements anyways? Think of it like code in an active open-source project. Someone needs to maintain the article: update it when house style changes, evaluate any new contributions to it as being valid or not, etc. Like code experiencing code-rot, a Wikipedia article rots if editors don't give it active attention. This has exactly the implications you'd expect: it means tha…

But a village of 7 people in the middle of nowhere in Russia... that's notable enough to maintain:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norinskaya

Or a random Kazakh football coach:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Finonchenko

Or a library in Scotland that's planning to close:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedburgh_Library

Wikipedia has been capricious for years about what can stay and what must go.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#180

Post by solardev »

ghaff wrote: post #170
solardev wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't make it up, but I did get the terms slightly wrong. It's "inclusionists" vs "deletionists" (not exclusionists). There's literally a Wikipedia page about it (how notable is THAT): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_i... It's a stupid debate to even be having. IMO only. Clearly I fall into the former camp.

I know you didn't make things up and I didn't see correcting the terminology to be worthwhile. But most people don't think simply everything makes a worthwhile article while, at the same time, I for one generally don't think articles should be deleted even if they're a bit thin on detail and notability so long as they're reasonably sourced.

Maybe it's like politics, where given only two choices, people will just gravitate towards the extremes over time and become hyperpolarized?

I wish there was a sane third way. Like instead of "Speedy delete" (why the hell is that EVER necessary), maybe a friendly auto-merge suggestion ("Hey, thanks for your contribution! This article may not be notable enough to stand on its own, but your addition would be a very valuable addition as a new section of this other existing article. Mind if we put it there instead?") or something like that.

When someone spent hours creating something as a volunteer, they shouldn't ever be met with a choice of "Either convince our bureaucracy in the next few days that this is important, or you will lose all your work." That's an insanely hostile policy towards new editors.

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