Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#211

Post by cabalamat » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:09 PM UTC

Fixnum wrote: post #98

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 There are a number of other papers on Saarland University's website, but they are either 1) not peer reviewed (tech reports) 2) not cited or 3) not actua…

I think you're confusing the "reliability" of a source (in the peer-reviewed article sense) with its reliability as an indicator of the notability of some subject X. The peer-review system basically establishes (a) the reviewers believe the result is non-trivial and (b) the reviewers believe the result is correct. However, I'd say that the very existence of documents such as third-party tutorials/introductions/discus…

> Perhaps it's personal preference, but I find such "long tail" articles useful, even if that means WP contains millions of articles on topics I personally find irrelevant.

So do I. With an encyclopedia of universal scope, there are bound to be articles on things that any particular person doesn't care about. The important thing is that for each article, some people find the information useful.

Wiki is not paper.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#212

Post by cabalamat » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:16 PM UTC

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 There are a number of other papers on Saarland University's website, but they are either 1) not peer reviewed (tech reports) 2) not cited or 3) not actua…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.

> Did you ever stop to think what positive impact the deletion of these articles actually makes?

As far as I can tell, the only positive contribution that deletionism makes to the welfare of humanity is it makes individual deletionists happy when they destroy other people's work.

I wonder if anyone has done research into possible links between deletionism and mental disorders such as OCPD?

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#213

Post by cabalamat » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:23 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #193

lparry wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Wikipedia is not intended to be a dumping ground for every last bit of trivia.

One person's trivia is another person's useful information.

> 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

If significant numbers of people are interested in the subject, then having an article about it promotes the public good. Deleting the article harms these people.

> 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.

If you have a phenomenon with its own name, it's better for a subject to have it's own article, rather than be a note in another article, because then it's easier to find.

> Or, as I said at the start demonstrating the notability and having the articles reinstated in Wikipedia.

Why should the onus be on hard-working Wikipedia editors to show their articles are worthwhile? Instead, it should be on the vandals who want to destroy work.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#214

Post by cabalamat » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:26 PM UTC

akamaka wrote: post #101

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…

I got involved with the deletion debate over the Go! programming language, and was among a handful of people who actually tried to reason out how Wikipedia's notability policies could be improved. The fact is that Wikipedia is full of articles about people's own pet research projects which have no users and no impact. Your arguments are solid and worth thinking about, but as you can see, nobody wants to address the w…

> The fact is that Wikipedia is full of articles about people's own pet research projects which have no users and no impact.

I browse WP a fair bit. I've never come across any such articles.

Even if they do exist, what's the harm? People not interested in the topic won't read them, people who are interested will find them useful.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#215

Post by maximilianburke » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:32 PM UTC

namdnay wrote: post #203

j_baker wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Anyone can vote on whether or not an article should be deleted but how many people actually do? I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of Wikipedia users don't know, and don't care, about Wikipedia politics.

If something is in the process of being deleted that I don't know about then I can't vote on whether or not I want it to be kept around. Wikipedia is great for jumping from link-to-link to find out new things and if the content is being deleted it's that much harder to learn. I didn't even know about the programming language Nemerle before and now the article is gone.

Knowledge shouldn't be voted on.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#216

Post by cabalamat » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:41 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #143

jarin wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that people don't know how Wikipedia works. I think most people who are angry with arbitrary deletion on Wikipedia have probably at some point read through enough of the WP: articles to understand why it's offensive.

Judging by the discussion so far, I would be willing to wager that most people in fact are unfamiliar and have not read anything. One experiment that could be useful is for people to just follow the "Articles for deletion" page for a few days when it's not currently focused on something they're personally big fans of. Say, next Monday through Wednesday. Then everyone would be much better informed to explain what's wr…

> They'd also have a better understanding about the kind of crap that gets regularly deleted

Most of it isn't crap.

For example, I looked at the top 5 articles listed on 13th February -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion...

#1 is an internet marketing company. It has a website which verifiably exists. People considering doing business with them would find this useful. It should be kept.

#2 is an academic. That makes the article useful. OTOH, she's hasd death threats and wants the article down. I'm not sure what I'd do here.

#3 is a sportsman. Should be kept: even if he isn't well known, those who do know about him will likely find the article useful.

#4 is about Swiss people in Sri Lanka. If I was Swiss and was considering relocation to Sri Lanka, I might find this useful. Should be kept.

#5 is about "XMLmosaic", something I've never heard of, and has been speedily deleted.

A majority of these articles (at least 60%) are net-useful to humanity and should be kept. If I did a larger sample, I'm sure I'd get similar results.

About 100 articles a day are posted on AfD and most of these (75-80%) are deleted. What good is served by destroying tens of thousands of useful articles every year? None.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#217

Post by joshfraser » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:42 PM UTC

Christopher has posted this update on his profile:

Dear internet,

You guys win. I will stop nominating pages for deletion.

I wasn't doing this to troll or to slam any language community. I was just trying to help -- I read the WP guidelines for inclusion, and whenever I came across a language that didn't seem to meet said criteria, I nominated it for AfD. I think, with respect to Wikipedia's established notability guidelines, my arguments for deletion were airtight, which is probably why the articles were eventually deleted. I'm not sure my actions warranted the kind of internet-hatred I received as a result. If anyone thought what I was doing was wrong, they could have just sent me a friendly message and I would have politely discussed the issue. Few took this route, and I am sorry that due to time constraints and an overwhelming amount of invective I could not reply sensibly to everyone.

Since the internet seems to care more about keeping these articles than I care about deleting them, I'll stop. I personally think a lot of the articles should have been deleted. I think that ALL articles I nominated for deletion fail to meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Here's a challenge, then, for the internet: instead of spamming my Wikipedia talk page (which I don't really care about), why don't you work on fixing WP's notability guideline for programming languages? Otherwise, some other naive editor will eventually try to delete them. Perhaps they won't have as much experience dealing with trolls and flamebait as I have had, and will become very hurt and confused. Nobody wants that :(

This was fun. Now back to real work, I guess...

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#218

Post by burgerbrain » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:47 PM UTC

tommorris wrote: post #202

burgerbrain wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yeah, so what? No harm is done. Revert bad changes to articles people care about, and ignore articles that nobody cares about. If people actually someone start visiting these 'bad' articles, that means nothing more than you've just identified another avenue for expansion.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#219

Post by cabalamat » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:47 PM UTC

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…

> to the point where people are calling me a Nazi/asshole/whatnot on my user page

If someone calls you a Nazi, they're probably a bad person. But if lots of people call you a Nazi, that should suggest to you that your behaviour may be at fault.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#220

Post by cabalamat » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:51 PM UTC

ugh wrote: post #159

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…

Could you please not call other people “nazis” because they have a slightly different opinion?

The Nazis burnt books. Deleting articles on Wikipedia is an electronic equivalent of that.

While it's quite incendary to call someone a Nazi, I think the cap fits in this case.