Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 280 posts

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#231

Post by gwern »

tommorris wrote: post #165
jedsmith wrote: post #4

I don't remember who said it, but I read something recently which I thought was amusing and not serious (paraphrasing): > All that donation money, and they still can't afford enough hard drive space to avoid deletionism. The guy allegedly doing the flagging has responded on his user page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Christopher_Monsanto Edit: The quoted comment was in jest, and too many missed this, so I'll rei…

Deletionism isn't a hard drive space issue. All deleted articles remain in the database and can be restored by admins.

Until a dev accidentally deletes the deleted-table. (This happened to en once back in 2005 or 2006, I was told, and apparently for a long time deleted images weren't even held onto; hope you didn't want to restore anything from back then.)

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#232

Post by gwern »

nerfhammer wrote: post #67

The solution to this problem that mollifies wikipedia admin culture is to make these pages into sub-pages of huge articles. E.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_in_The_Simpsons . This is a lot less useful way of doing things but it flies almost completely outside the deletionist radar. There is little cultural dance pertaining to the the concept of notability for mentioning something in a list, and no b…

A mergist! You guys still exist? (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mergism)

But seriously, merging into a list can be a very bad idea when you're dealing with a deletionist. Because 'notability isn't inherited', the list is no more notable than any of its items. Theoretically, you can also claim notability if RSs discuss the list (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability#Notability... ), but I've never seen this successfully done - what source will discuss 'List of animals in The Simpsons'? How do you show they are discussing your list without engaging in OR? It's basically impossible.

So a list just makes life much easier for the deletionist - one easy target to AfD rather than 20 or 30. (This happened to me recently with [[Neon Genesis Evangelion glossary]]. The nominator would have taken months or years to chew through each entry if they hadn't been merged, with any luck burned out before the end, and I might have been able to save individual articles.)

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#233

Post by gwern »

tty wrote: post #177
tty wrote: post #152

I find it funny that the guy hasn't made a single contribution to Wikipedia. All his edits either directly remove content or nominate it for deletion. Apparently besides the dislike for programming languages, he also hates it when certain scientists have "Dr." next to their names on their Wikipedia articles. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributi... Examples: >Raj Reddy ‎ (dr. is so unnecessary)…

He also apparently thinks that once a dedicated article gets deleted, all mention of that particular subject should be removed (as is evidenced by the fact that he went on a removal spree and removed most mentions of Nemerle from other Wikipedia articles as soon as wiki:Nemerle was deleted - he didn't just delete links pointing to wiki:Nemerle but the actual mention of it). That is not a WP policy.

But it is a guideline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Red_link#Avoiding_cre...

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#234

Post by carussell »

getsat wrote: post #195
carussell wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are also welcome to include a simple link to your personal home page

Although, that's not a policy page; it's a guideline, but I realize you weren't using a strict definition of the term wrt to Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:USERPAGES#What_may_I_...

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#235

Post by carussell »

EGreg wrote: post #49

I believe there are specific requirements for something to be considered "notable" on wikipedia. Simply fulfill those requirements for each language page and you're good, no? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability

Have you read any of the discussion? It's a contentious issue.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#236

Post by atomi »

chrismonsanto wrote: post #53
kevbin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reduces the overall usefulness and quality of Wikipedia to delete leaves that are referenced from other Wikipedia pages. Nemerle is an example: there are several references to it from other PL pages, that before your "improvement" could be resolved w/in Wikipedia, but now require going outside of Wikipedia to determine that "Nemerle is a high-level statically-typed programming language for the .NET platform." This…

It takes me but a few minutes to figure out whether I am going to nominate an article for deletion. A single hit that looks like it might possibly be a reliable source and I'm outta there. In other words, the articles I am proposing for deletion are the lowest of the low hanging fruit. I honestly didn't think anyone would care, and to be honest, most don't -- the only reason anyone even took note of what I'm doing is…

>More information is not necessarily better :(

Naivety.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#237

Post by mckoss »

Wikipedia has had deletion issues for a very long time. Note that there are also vague rules that allow admins a procedure called "Speedy Deletion". It lets them remove content w/o debate or public visibility. The deleted page, and all discussions about it just disappear (only an admin on Wikipedia can recover it).

One criteria that can be used for Speedy Deletion is:

    No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organizations, web content)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_d...

It's a very subjective measure, yet it encourages over-zealous Wikipedians to expunge content.

The spam problem is very real for any user generated web site. I think it would be more ideal if Wikipedia didn't delete anything - but rather marked pages as being of low quality, or not meeting their standards, and perhaps removing those pages from their search index.

Here's what I wrote about this problem in 2007:

http://faves.com/users/mike/dot/76699957085

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#238

Post by skew »

larsberg wrote: post #208

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 wh…

What is most surprising is the claim on the Alice discussion that Ph.D theses are not reviewed.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#239

Post by carussell »

billswift wrote: post #170
drallison wrote: post #140

I certainly oppose deleting programming languages, obscure or not, from wikipedia. I went to the site to try to register a complaint but could not find a way to do that. It seems that meta-comments are not really handled well withing the wikipedia framework. Or did I just miss the right link.

I think wikipedia (like some other sites I have tried to use) is intentionally obscure; it gives the "Wikipedia is my life" types more control.

Oh, come on, now. It's just that the wiki paradigm is used throughout. Talk pages, for example, are basically no differently editable from their respective articles; Talk:Transport_in_Nagpur is just a plain ol' wiki page that's been created at that name. Hanlon's razor, et cetera, et cetera.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#240

Post by carussell »

rbanffy wrote: post #161

So, what languages were deleted? How much disk space was reclaimed by the deletion? How much bandwidth will that spare? If someone thinks the language is not notable, there is a discussion page attached to the main article where such things can be expressed. The obscurity of the language can also be communicated in the article itself. While lots of us can be pretty sure Nemerle will have no lasting impact in the fiel…

How much disk space was reclaimed by the deletion

None, articles can be restored. Disk space is actually consumed by deletion overhead.

Post reply on HN