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Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

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Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#191

Post by cema »

Jun8 wrote: post #11

Ahh, time for another Wikipedia deletionist pie fight! On the one side, elitist editors who are so saddened by even a single unnecessary HD spin that they want to clean clutter. On the other side, fans of (supposedly) esoteric knowledge. The narrator of Foucault's Pendulum , when he decides to be freelance researcher, says that his main principle will be that all information is equal, nothing is more precious than th…

  all information is equal, 
  nothing is more precious than the other
I am glad Google disagrees.

Not all information is equal. But all information deserves to exist.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#193

Post by pbhjpbhj »

lparry wrote: post #97
chrismonsanto wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I've done a Google Scholar search for Alice ML. There is roughly one admissible source -- "Through the looking glass" in Trends in Functional Programming. Small workshop paper, 12 citations according to CiteSeer. Doesn't show up in the ACM Digital Library. There are a number of other papers on Saarland University's website, but they are either 1) not peer reviewed (tech reports) 2) not cited or 3) not actua…

did you ever stop to think what positive impact the deletion of these articles actually makes? I cant come up with any positive contribution you're making, but I can see that if I saw one of these languages mentioned somewhere (hacker news for instance), you've now ensured I have one less place that I can go to to find out about them. you're a drain on wikipedia, a source of negative knowledge.

I think this is far too harsh.

>"you're a drain on wikipedia, a source of negative knowledge."

Notability requirements are there for a reason. If you think it's notable then there are clear methods on Wikipedia to press your case and establish the notability without stooping to direct personal criticism.

I've not looked in detail but from the couple of posts here it seems the languages in question are esoteric and not especially notable in themselves. Wikipedia is not intended to be a dumping ground for every last bit of trivia.

Unless Alice, for example, has made some profound contribution to CS then it doesn't deserve it's own entry based on the limited number of papers available - even then it may not, the contribution could be listed elsewhere, perhaps on a general page about similar contribution or on the page for the language that has been most impacted.

Wikipedia isn't supposed to be a replacement for use of a search engine.

IMO adding millions of articles which are not going to get beyond stub status and not going to be maintained and take resources (editors) away from other articles is not a wise move.

If you genuinely believe that this is worth effort then there is nothing stopping you from taking the removed articles and starting/contributing to a programming language wiki. http://esoteric.voxelperfect.net/wiki/Language_list appears to be a good place to put this stuff. Or, as I said at the start demonstrating the notability and having the articles reinstated in Wikipedia.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#195

Post by getsat »

carussell wrote: post #137
getsat wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, I love the edit war on his profile regarding his "non-notable" website: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Christopher_M... Which is making him a little handful of money daily: http://w3spy.net/site/smogon.com Chris, I suggest you pay GoDaddy the extra $10/year and hide your address.

Regardless of whether you agree with Monsanto's actions that are the focus of the reddit submission, that stuff is a dick move.

What is Wikipedia's policy on personal offsite URLs on user pages? I think it's just people editing his profile out of spite due to this issue. I agree that it's not done with good intentions.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#197

Post by bane »

chrismonsanto wrote: post #74
wisty wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the deletion threads. He knows what he's talking about, but I think he has some agenda. Maybe he failed a functional language course, and wants to kill off his professor's favourite languages? There's no way that he couldn't just do a google scholar search for "Alice ML functional programming".

Of course I've done a Google Scholar search for Alice ML. There is roughly one admissible source -- "Through the looking glass" in Trends in Functional Programming. Small workshop paper, 12 citations according to CiteSeer. Doesn't show up in the ACM Digital Library. There are a number of other papers on Saarland University's website, but they are either 1) not peer reviewed (tech reports) 2) not cited or 3) not actua…

Stop deleting knowledge, period. It's not your personal job to police what the world is allowed to know.

I was unbelievably pissed off when I searched for "Alice ML" and found a hit on wikipedia via google and come to see the page deleted.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#198

Post by bane »

chrismonsanto wrote: post #40
jedsmith wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) not cited enough to count I look forward to your explanation, to other academics, of why their work doesn't "count" because it isn't "cited enough". I also look forward to you explaining to us why you're qualified to determine whether a paper that you didn't write "counts". > I honestly didn't think that putting in a few AfDs would cause such a shitstorm, to the point where people are calling me a Nazi/asshole/w…

It's not that their work doesn't "count" in the more general sense of the word, it's that their work has not had enough impact at the moment to establish the notability of the topic. I'm sure the researchers in question did fine work, and in the future their work will be widely recognized. I'm as qualified as any other PL researcher (or Wikipedian) to determine the validity of a source. I didn't delete the articles b…

I would love to have some statistics on how often an AfD recommendation results in a "keep".

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#199

Post by tsycho »

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…

HN people, while I whole-heartedly disagree with chrismonsanto's actions here, let's not do any personal attacks.

From wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greys_Law)

"Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#200

Post by ltratt »

chalst wrote: post #149
chrismonsanto wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

None of the articles I nominated for deletion had any reliable sources to back them up. Impact is not a measure of whether a source is reliable, peer review is. One can argue that journals with higher impact factors are likely to have more rigorous peer review, but the AfD's have not talked about journal impact factor. Note that TOPLAS, a source for the Nemerle article, had an impact factor of 1.92 in 2010, the highe…

There's a big debate to be had about the utility of journals in 2011, but when a Wikipedia editor writes about TOPLAS that "I'm not sure about this journal [TOPLAS], more research would be necessary, it may have a low impact factor as it does not have a wikipedia page, which indicates that the journal itself is not notable." then you know you're in trouble. I'm only sorry that my articles which referenced Nemerle wern't enough to save its Wikipedia page - I hope it's reinstated. I don't know whether all of the articles deleted were worthy or not, but Nemerle, in my opinion, has justified its place in the world.
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