Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#31

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:12 AM 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…

[deleted]

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#32

Post by jacques_chester » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:13 AM UTC

pvg wrote: post #29

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.

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

So, because computer science does things differently from other fields, it is at fault?

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#33

Post by tptacek » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:13 AM UTC

jedsmith wrote: post #27

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…

> 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…

This comment is totally uncalled for. You're participating in a discussion about someone's effort to remove "non-notable" articles from Wikipedia. That someone actually took the time to comment on HN, for the first time, for this one story. Attempting to chase that person off HN by saying "get over yourself" decreases the quality of HN for everyone. Please don't do that.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#34

Post by boyter » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:13 AM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #16

w1ntermute wrote: post #14

It's about time someone created a anti-deletionist (inclusionist?) Wikipedia overlay that keeps copies of pages that have been deleted. Perhaps some kind of framing, while ugly, could be used to keep server load to a minimum while allowing people to access all of Wikipedia through that overlay site.

The vast majority of deleted pages are utter crap. While what you suggest would be interesting I don't see it having much value, unless you manually selected which pages to include. Even then, they'd be 99.9% stubs, with nobody editing or expanding them. We just need to deal with deletionism.

I found that some things deleted were just petty though. For example, before Cuil came about I added a page about Anna Patterson co-founder of Cuil and was previously known as creating the biggest index using internet archive.

Cuil becomes big news and then she was removed with the note that she wasn't really of note. Then the details about her were removed from Cuil's page. Quite odd.

http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Anna_Patt...

I was even expanding on the page, and it even had a few other contributions from other people.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#35

Post by jedsmith » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:14 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #33

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…

This comment is totally uncalled for. You're participating in a discussion about someone's effort to remove "non-notable" articles from Wikipedia. That someone actually took the time to comment on HN, for the first time, for this one story. Attempting to chase that person off HN by saying "get over yourself" decreases the quality of HN for everyone. Please don't do that.

I edited it out before you commented, because I agreed upon a reread of my own comment.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#36

Post by Udo » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:14 AM UTC

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 the system is re-enforcing the belief that their only talent, destroying information, is also a valid form of contribution. It is no statistical accident that rampant wiki deletionism is even more intense in ..."strict" countries such as Germany.

At the same time it is important to note that a lot of articles have serious shortcomings and are in need of improvement. While deleting them is in my opinion unforgivable as long as they contain useful information, I believe Wikipedia could profit from a more modern approach to article rating and validation. If substandard articles were allowed to continue existing albeit with low ratings and missing validation tags, Wikipedia as a process could focus more on improvement as opposed to gleeful pruning. If they concentrated on more constructive measures and included better ways of gathering user feedback for quality control, they could also provide former deletionist users with a UI option that simply prevents them from ever having to see an article that is below a certain quality threshold. Everybody would win.

As it stands today, Wikipedia increasingly fails at its stated mission of being a repository for the world's knowledge. Sadly, I don't believe it is possible to change Wikipedia in any way, ever. Someday, someone will have to come along and fork it.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#37

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:14 AM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #30

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…

> 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 notabi…

[deleted]

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#38

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:15 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#39

Post by jacques_chester » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:16 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #37

jacques_chester wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 notabi…

[deleted]

Sorry, you're right. A PhD student isn't an idiot, regardless of how angry they might make me.

edit:

Chris, I apologise. I let my anger get the best of me. I'll keep my ad homs to a minimum wherever possible.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#40

Post by chrismonsanto » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:16 AM UTC

jedsmith wrote: post #27

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…

> 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 based on my own opinion :( The purpose of the AfD process is to get the opinions of others so that a consensus can be established! I'm sorry -- I really am -- that the Alice ML and Nemerle communities were offended by my AfD. My nomination of a language for deletion does not speak for my opinion of the language itself. I figured if I was doing the wrong thing, that the AfD would result in a keep, and at the very least, sources that I had not found would be found by others to improve the article. One of the basic tenets of Wikipedia is "assume good faith", and very few have done so so far. I am completely open to civil discussion about any aspect of my work, and I would love to develop more concrete/relevant criteria for assessing notability of a programming language.