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Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

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Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#351

Post by Gander5739 »

chris_wot wrote: post #176
PakistaniDenzel wrote: post #171

Funny how GearsDatapacks ( https://github.com/gearsdatapacks ) votes to delete the Odin page because it's "non-notable" yet is a core member of the non-notable Gleam language which shockingly has a Wikipedia page

Even more incredible that someone who represents an organisation is allowed to edit the English Wikipedia under that username! Anyone else would have their account banned. But hey, don't expect consistency or fairness from the ones on the English Wikipedia.

GearsDatapacks appears to be a pseudonym, not an organisation.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#352

Post by Barrin92 »

jibal wrote: post #198
skotobaza wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the goal of an encyclopedia is to inform people on things that it covers, isn't it? It's quite broad with Wikipedia but still... The language clearly exists, it's not a student project, it's is use, people are interested in it. So the page was created, but is now removed because of formalities (the lack of good enough sources).

Note the bad faith of your correspondent: > As a reader thank god not everything that has grabbed the attention of social media gets an article. ... > what I want doesn't matter for an encyclopedia.

please stop crying about bad faith every time someone disagrees with you. If you think everyone talks with you in bad faith maybe you didn't articulate your points very well.

What I said isn't bad faith, that's literally not how encyclopedias work. The Encyclopedia Britannica which comes in at a frugal 120k entries doesn't add new ones because you yell at the manager long enough, they choose what to add.

Encyclopedias are not consumer or user driven but curator driven. It's not want or popularity that determines inclusion, it's judgement by trusted authors and maintainers that something meets the quality standards and relevance. It's not reddit, there's no upvotes or downvotes. I know that's difficult to understand in an age where everyone thinks they're right because they yell loud enough.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#353

Post by Gander5739 »

Rochus wrote: post #236

I find it strange that they deleted the article. The topic is relevant and of sufficient interest. I think there is a deeper bureaucratic pattern behind it. In every once-useful organization, there comes a point where the rules stop being instruments and become relics: nobody asks whether they still serve the original purpose, because the bureaucracy now exists mainly to defend its own procedures. That is basically P…

> The topic is relevant and of sufficient interest.

According to what authority?

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#354

Post by torginus »

stymaar wrote: post #181
lvoudour wrote: post #127

I have never been a wikipedia contributor (let alone a mod), but their points seem fair. Maybe not fair for the particular case, but fair for the general case. People who ridicule wikipedia policies should at least acknowledge that the modern internet is a very low trust society with millions of bad actors trying to push their agenda at the expense of others. And now with AI bots running amok the headache increases t…

Also, how are we supposed to know that JangaFX is a real company, and its CEO a real person? Creating fake companies and persona is not particularly high effort today, if that's all it takes for a pet project to be featured on Wikipedia, it's going to end up full of crap real quick.

> Also, how are we supposed to know that JangaFX is a real company, and its CEO a real person?

From the page: https://jangafx.com/legal/end-user-license-agreement

     JangaFX, LLC, a North Carolina Limited Liability Company located at PO BOX 27...

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#355

Post by strenholme »

leecommamichael wrote: post #144

>There are two ways one can "figure out a person" who rarely states their beliefs explicitly, specifically a public figure: >You can infer from their descriptions and prescriptions about things—that's slow, takes times, but it will give you the most accurate image to the extent of the public information. See who they follow on Twitter. This feels like an appeal to tribalism against Bill. My politics are left-leaning…

Agreed. This blog entry was really good, but then it started getting really left-leaning and making leftist cancel-culture type arguments by the end. Why is it relevant that Odin’s developer follows Matt Walsh on Twitter? Would Matt Walsh really call himself a “White supremacist”, or that a label placed on him by people who don’t like Walsh?

These culture war “hot takes” at the end of the article distract from what was otherwise a reasonable look at how online culture brings out people who believe conspiracy theories, don’t care about objective fact, and post content with far more heat than light.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#356

Post by RetroTechie »

pmarreck wrote: post #260
amiga386 wrote: post #218

I am a terminally-online person, and I do program. I am not interested in neolanguages. This article is literally the first time I've heard of Odin (the language), and I only clicked it because I thought it was about the Norse god, not some invented language. There are various bounds for notability in Wikipedia, and no matter how much of a fan of the new thing you are, you are encouraged to root around for sources. H…

I've heard of Odin for years now. Maybe because I like knowing about new/nascent languages. For example, have you heard of roc-lang? You've likely heard of Zig. It's possible I'm in a bubble, but it would be a fairly notable bubble. Things that are perhaps niche but growing should be an argument for keeping them. Isn't Wikipedia a compendium of facts? Odin's existence is one of those facts. /shrug

> I've heard of Odin for years now.

So have I. But what's notable for many HN users, may be muuuuch less notable for average dude on the street.

Wikipedia's policies on this seem pretty clear & reasonable to me. And not too high a bar to clear, imho.

So perhaps a better question is why Odin hasn't - so far. Or just agree that maybe it's not as notable (yet!) as some may think.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#357

Post by stymaar »

torginus wrote: post #354
stymaar wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, how are we supposed to know that JangaFX is a real company, and its CEO a real person? Creating fake companies and persona is not particularly high effort today, if that's all it takes for a pet project to be featured on Wikipedia, it's going to end up full of crap real quick.

> Also, how are we supposed to know that JangaFX is a real company, and its CEO a real person? From the page: https://jangafx.com/legal/end-user-license-agreement JangaFX, LLC, a North Carolina Limited Liability Company located at PO BOX 27...

What does that prove exactly?

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#358

Post by fragmede »

tux3 wrote: post #216
willdr wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I tried saying this to both GingerBill and Casey on Twitter but they were unreceptive. I understand their frustrations and I think Wikipedia does have sourcing gaps for projects like Odin. But you can't really understand the spam problem until you've seen it firsthand, and general case notability requirements are one of the first lines of defence against bad actors.

And notability isn't just for spam, the core difficulty with Wikipedia is that people disagree about what should be written in articles. The site only functions because of a masterful Jiu-jitsu move where we redirect heated arguments about what Wikipedia should say into heated arguments about which Reliable Source to cite. That's the fundamental underlying reason behind all the rules and all the deletion discussions.…

Except for the citogensis problem. https://xkcd.com/978/

what's the gate being kept and by whom?

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#359

Post by Rochus »

Gander5739 wrote: post #353
Rochus wrote: post #236

I find it strange that they deleted the article. The topic is relevant and of sufficient interest. I think there is a deeper bureaucratic pattern behind it. In every once-useful organization, there comes a point where the rules stop being instruments and become relics: nobody asks whether they still serve the original purpose, because the bureaucracy now exists mainly to defend its own procedures. That is basically P…

> The topic is relevant and of sufficient interest. According to what authority?

I'm not an Odin user, but interested in programming languages. Concerning Odin, we have these figures:

GitHub stars 10.5k, Forks 966, Contributors 537, Commits 17,511, Releases 97, latest shown as May 4 2026, Discord members 10,016.

I know of many undisputed topics on Wikipedia which have less prevalence.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#360

Post by fmajid »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #297
SanjayMehta wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I tried looking for reliable secondary sources that discuss the Odin programming language. I couldn't find any. That's not Wikipedia's fault. It is a bit weird that people are insisting that Odin is such a big deal that it must have a Wikipedia page, but apparently no tech website of note has ever mentioned it.

It's funny. Just last week I was trying to figure out what this ODIN thing is, and naturally searched Wikipedia, and found nothing. I then did a web search, and found nothing particularly illuminating, and gave up trying to figure out what it is and just added a filtering rule to filter out any further mention of Odin in my RSS feed reader.
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