Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#201

Post by jessriedel » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 2:30 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #133

Udo wrote: post #36

The implication of deletionism as a philosophy is that readers cannot be trusted to make up their own minds about the merits of an article even if it contains positive and negative feedback markers. The whole deletionism fiasco at Wikipedia is ultimately a software and UI failure. Misguided people who in most cases could never write a good article (or even improve an existing one) themselves are running amok because…

> Wikipedia increasingly fails at its stated mission of being a repository for the world's knowledge. This is the problem. Most of us just assume that Wikipedia's mission is being the repository for all human knowledge. But it's not. The last time rampant deleting happened (and I lost a page related to one of my projects) they clearly made the argument that being an endless repository was not their goal. Their goal i…

Well, that project could be wikipedia if the community so decided. They would just need to seriously loosen/eliminate the notability criterion.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#202

Post by tommorris » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 2:48 PM UTC

burgerbrain wrote: post #184

tommorris wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between CSD ("Criterion for Speedy Deletion") and AfD ("Articles for Deletion") here. Something like Nemerle is obviously an interesting article and a failure of the AfD process. I've never done a DRV (Deletion Review) before, so I might look through Christopher Monsanto's deletions. But there ARE good reasons to delete content. I new page patrol on English Wikipedia and see thousands of arti…

Yeah, because 65 bytes is a hell of a thing to waste.

It isn't a hard drive space issue. All deleted articles are kept in the database.

Are you seriously advocating that if someone comes and posts an article in main-space which is nothing but an advert for a crappy little garage band or some kid creating an article about how his friends are gay or whatever shouldn't be deleted?

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#203

Post by namdnay » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 3:24 PM UTC

j_baker wrote: post #111

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…

> Instead of improving the pages (which any self-respecting graduate student could do over a cup of tea and a scone) you just erased them. Unilaterally. Well, technically he and an admin deleted them unilaterally. Regardless, you're correct. The focus should be on building knowledge, not tearing it down.

Unilaterally? Anyone can !vote on an AFD.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#204

Post by eru » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 3:24 PM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #180

eru wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is no statistical accident that rampant wiki deletionism is even more intense in ..."strict" countries such as Germany. Any sources?

This is a missed opportunity for "[citation needed]."

I had already used up my daily quota of humour. I don't want my German citizenship revoked.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#205

Post by Perihelion » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 3:28 PM UTC

I'm offended on behalf of all of the smaller projects who basically just got told that their work is worthless.

I'm also offended that the value of a project seems to be based on how well someone can market it. If your project hasn't made a name for itself, then it's worthless, right? Personally, I'm content to hack away on things that no one has heard of because I enjoy what I'm doing. If someone else happens to find it useful, that's awesome. However, deleting things from the Mecca of knowledge-seekers in an attempt to purify it in this manner is nothing short of crapping on the ideals that Wikipedia was built on.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#206

Post by namdnay » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 3:30 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #133

Udo wrote: post #36

The implication of deletionism as a philosophy is that readers cannot be trusted to make up their own minds about the merits of an article even if it contains positive and negative feedback markers. The whole deletionism fiasco at Wikipedia is ultimately a software and UI failure. Misguided people who in most cases could never write a good article (or even improve an existing one) themselves are running amok because…

> Wikipedia increasingly fails at its stated mission of being a repository for the world's knowledge. This is the problem. Most of us just assume that Wikipedia's mission is being the repository for all human knowledge. But it's not. The last time rampant deleting happened (and I lost a page related to one of my projects) they clearly made the argument that being an endless repository was not their goal. Their goal i…

> a project that contains all human knowledge, on all subjects, without any constraint

I would have said that's (one of) the role(s) of the internet.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#207

Post by jbooth » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 4:06 PM UTC

j_baker wrote: post #113

katovatzschyn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite part is how he admits the rules he's enforcing are inadequate, and yet continues to enforce them. Sounds like furthering a cause. By the specificness of that cause, I would have to bet: - Had an article he wrote on a small programming language, possibly his own, deleted for not being notable enough. - Feels that less notable languages than the one in question were not treated similarly. - Perceives injust…

I doubt it. Chances are, he's just taking an "I don't make the rules, I just enforce them" attitude. I'm always annoyed by people who don't evaluate rules critically, but I suppose that's just something you have to deal with in life.

So this guy's basically the "small town douchey cop" of wikipedia editors? Is he gonna try to organize sting operations on high school parties next?

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#208

Post by larsberg » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 4:10 PM UTC

I'm sort of surprised by the surprise here. As a graduate student myself, my peers and I have all come to the sad conclusion that Wikipedia is good for breadth and bad for depth, at least in CS (I cannot speak for other areas). The primary issue seems to be the combination of deletionists and campers. The former we see in this case.

The latter is something my theory friends complain about. According to two of them who have tried, attempting to expand or correct any of the fringe topics in algorithms and graph theory is futile because of the instant-reverters who will simply revert any change they make.

Of course, what's most disturbing to me about this is... dear gods, man, you're at Princeton! If you don't understand what the contributions of Alice ML are to the field, walk down the hall and talk to Andrew Appel! Or David Walker, if Andrew is too hard to track down. I would hope that by this point this student has learned that there is a lack of fidelity in the search engines for anything published in the 90s and earlier, as the scanned PS converted to PDF is neither as well-indexed nor as comprehensively available (e.g. Springer-Verlag work from that time is frequently not indexed in scholar/citeseer due to a lack of non-subscription links, particularly if published by someone who is no longer in academia).

Fortunately, most of the work in PL was done in the lifetime of people still working. If you're too busy to do a thorough search of relevant work, you can sit down and talk with the people who were there when concurrency was first being introduced and formally modeled to understand Alice's place and contributions (or lack thereof, if that's the conclusion you come to).

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#209

Post by alnayyir » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 4:52 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #133

Udo wrote: post #36

The implication of deletionism as a philosophy is that readers cannot be trusted to make up their own minds about the merits of an article even if it contains positive and negative feedback markers. The whole deletionism fiasco at Wikipedia is ultimately a software and UI failure. Misguided people who in most cases could never write a good article (or even improve an existing one) themselves are running amok because…

> Wikipedia increasingly fails at its stated mission of being a repository for the world's knowledge. This is the problem. Most of us just assume that Wikipedia's mission is being the repository for all human knowledge. But it's not. The last time rampant deleting happened (and I lost a page related to one of my projects) they clearly made the argument that being an endless repository was not their goal. Their goal i…

Only wikipedia has the critical mass necessary to maintain a human knowledge project, otherwise I'd offer to build such a thing.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#210

Post by cabalamat » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:05 PM UTC

I recently created an article about Sunder Katwala (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunder_Katwala) who is the head of the Fabian Society (a prominent UK think tank).

The article had been up for less than a month when someone requested speedy deletion, despite the article having ample evidence of the subject's notability. Deletionists are out of control on Wikipedia, and need to be stopped. I've thought about writing articles and though "no, why bother, some deletionist will just delete it." and I'm sure many others have been similarly dissuaded.

To this end I'm building an inclusionist fork of Wikipedia. The main difference it will have is there will be no notability guidelines, only verifiability ones.