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Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

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Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#21

Post by l0nwlf »

ubernostrum wrote: post #10
tokenadult wrote: post #2

All anyone needs to do about this is find reliable sources to improve the articles that are being nominated for deletion. Really. If some wikipedian who knows about published, reliable sources about each of the languages simply adds some source citations to the articles, all will be well.

Fun fact: I left a note for the guy asking why he doesn't do that (hunt up citations and improve articles). His response was to go complain about how "ironic" that was on some other well-known deletionist's page, and whine about how he's "martyring" himself for Wikipedia. In other words: there's basically no reasoning with the guy who's behind this.

Because : "He will not reply to senseless accusations any longer. Don't bother nominating him for conflict of interest or vandalism or whatnot, it's already been tried and didn't work."

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#22

Post by rst »

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…

A Ph.D. student in the field of programming languages, no less. Their grad student directory points to this rather thin homepage: http://monsan.to/

I can't find anything in citeseer, though.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#23

Post by chrismonsanto »

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 reliable sources to back them up. I didn't nominate them for deletion because of hard drive space. I nominated them because there was nothing to say about them barring a superficial overview of syntax.

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/whatnot on my user page. I also never thought my 15 minutes of fame would be for nominating Nemerle for deletion :) Maybe I should have a Wikipedia article...?

But seriously. Anyone could have commented on the AfD. Anyone could have provided reliable sources. The only thing anyone did was bitch and moan. I didn't delete the articles -- the Wikipedia administrators did. Thumbs down, internet.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#25

Post by chrismonsanto »

ubernostrum wrote: post #10
tokenadult wrote: post #2

All anyone needs to do about this is find reliable sources to improve the articles that are being nominated for deletion. Really. If some wikipedian who knows about published, reliable sources about each of the languages simply adds some source citations to the articles, all will be well.

Fun fact: I left a note for the guy asking why he doesn't do that (hunt up citations and improve articles). His response was to go complain about how "ironic" that was on some other well-known deletionist's page, and whine about how he's "martyring" himself for Wikipedia. In other words: there's basically no reasoning with the guy who's behind this.

I would love to do that! The problem is that for the articles I nominated, no citations exist :(

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#26

Post by jedsmith »

tibbon wrote: post #17

In reading about this I came across a few things that I honestly wasn't aware of for Wikipedia, which made me feel these deletionists are even more silly than I prior thought http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not... The Notability guidelines often both me really, as they are a somewhat silly set of 'rules' in many ways and not everything f…

The one thing that has always blown my mind on Wikipedia is that they have "votes" all the time where people edit in their opinion, but then a decision is made which may or may not take the votes into account. They're actually pretty clear on this: there's a policy that says something to the effect of "yeah, we'll take votes, but the person acting on the vote doesn't have to listen to the votes because Wikipedia isn't a democracy. You're lucky if we read the votes and take them into account!".

Mindblowing.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#27

Post by jedsmith »

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…

> 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/whatnot on my user page. I also never thought my 15 minutes of fame would be for nominating Nemerle for deletion :) Maybe I should have a Wikipedia article...?

Infamy is not the kind of fame that you want.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#28

Post by vicngtor »

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…

I think a lot of people over-reacted. When people see the title of this article, he/she would immediately think you are trolling and doing this for no concrete reasoning.

(I am not that your actions are justified, but I am just pointing out that a lot of people are acting before they have considered both sides of the story)

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#29

Post by pvg »

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…

'Only mentioned in conference proceedings' is actually a fairly decent criterion for exclusion from a general encyclopedia - which is the sort of thing all the deletionist/notability teacup storms revolve around.

The importance of conference proceedings in distributing CS research doesn't seem particularly relevant.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#30

Post by jacques_chester »

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

So now we need two levels of notability. First you must be published and you must have "impact". How is this "impact" thing defined, by the way? Are you agitating for an agreed bibliometric standard for notability?

> I didn't nominate them for deletion because of hard drive space. I nominated them because there was nothing to say about them barring a superficial overview of syntax.

OK, so you thought they sucked.

Did you:

1. Decide to improve them? Nah, not the wikipedia way.

2. Slap on one of the numerous tags saying "this article needs improvement"? Nah, not the wikipedia way.

3. Mark it for deletion because you thought the article was sucky and took no action to improve it? Ding ding ding!

> I didn't delete the articles -- the Wikipedia administrators did.

You action was a necessary cause of their deletion and therefore you are one of the directly culpable persons destroying the long tail of knowledge.

edit: slightly politified per tptacek's request.

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