Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#61

Post by jacques_chester » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:41 AM UTC

pvg wrote: post #54

jacques_chester wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

What? You seem to be very focused on being upset about something and I can't quite follow what it is. Have you read any of the endless verbiage on notability? There is a (hotly debated, etc, etc) wikipedia policy that article topics have to be 'notable'. If a topic is only covered in academic literature, one can make a perfectly sensible argument that it's obscure and not 'notable' enough for a general encyclopedia.…

It's relevant to CS because in CS, unlike in other fields, conference papers and proceedings are the main way to report on findings. In other fields conferences take a backseat to journals; CS is unusual in this respect.

As for the broader issue of whether academic entries are notable, surely the massive body of mathematics entries on wikipedia indicates that material which is never mentioned in the newspaper is notable.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#62

Post by chrismonsanto » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:41 AM UTC

oconnore wrote: post #43

chrismonsanto wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to do that! The problem is that for the articles I nominated, no citations exist :(

That statement is false. Take Factor for example. It has been hosted at several conferences, has an active community of users, and has an academic paper published in ACM. http://factorcode.org/littledan/dls.pdf Perhaps what you meant to say is that no citations exist that meet your own apparently arbitrary standards of approval? Edit: It appears that it was another individual who recommended wiki/Factor for deletion.…

But I didn't nominate Factor for deletion...

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#63

Post by jedsmith » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:42 AM UTC

chrismonsanto wrote: post #59

jacques_chester wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I am accusing you of bad faith or not, by wikipedia standards. I just find that your approach (move to delete without, so far as I can tell, trying to directly improve the entries) to be destructive to wikipedia's purpose of expanding the availability and interconnectedness of knowledge. Why was wikipedia, and the public at large, better served by deleting these entries?

So many people create pet programming languages and add them to Wikipedia that the PL lists and categories are essentially useless. Most of the languages I propose for deletion have almost no information available about them, and therefore, one can't write a useful Wikipedia article about them. More information isn't necessarily better. Anything I am not 95% sure about I add a notability tag to or simply leave alone.…

> So many people create pet programming languages and add them to Wikipedia that the PL lists and categories are essentially useless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_list_of_programming...

What's useless about that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_object-oriented_program...

I don't see many pet projects here...

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#64

Post by tibbon » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:43 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…

I've seen several deletionists try to wipe their hands clean of responsibility in saying "I didn't delete it, I just nominated it!", which always strikes me as really insincere as they (as you pointed out) definitely played a part.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#65

Post by elliottcarlson » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:43 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…

Ruby was released in 1995, and there was no documentation available in English until 1997. Ruby's popularity outside of Japan didn't even gain any kind of momentum until 2000 and on.

Obviously no one can say for sure, but I am sure an un-notable language could possibly gain even more popularity with a Wikipedia entry as it helps people learn more about a small obscure language that might grow in to something bigger - even if it takes years to do so.

While it might be argued that a page with little to no information should be deleted, I don't think that pages with adequate information to get someone the general idea about some new (possibly just new to the reader) programming language should go anywhere. It's a valuable resource and losing that kind of information from Wikipedia is a shame.

Please keep that line of thought in your AfD's - and think about the "notability" that Frenetic may get in the future.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#66

Post by jacques_chester » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:45 AM UTC

chrismonsanto wrote: post #59

jacques_chester wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I am accusing you of bad faith or not, by wikipedia standards. I just find that your approach (move to delete without, so far as I can tell, trying to directly improve the entries) to be destructive to wikipedia's purpose of expanding the availability and interconnectedness of knowledge. Why was wikipedia, and the public at large, better served by deleting these entries?

So many people create pet programming languages and add them to Wikipedia that the PL lists and categories are essentially useless. Most of the languages I propose for deletion have almost no information available about them, and therefore, one can't write a useful Wikipedia article about them. More information isn't necessarily better. Anything I am not 95% sure about I add a notability tag to or simply leave alone.…

> So many people create pet programming languages and add them to Wikipedia that the PL lists and categories are essentially useless.

OK, so some of them might not even pass my standard of notability (which would be almost embarrassingly lax).

But it strikes me that you're using notability to solve a user interface issue -- that you find it difficult to navigate the programming language section.

More generally, it strikes me as horribly inefficient to rely on what one might call "outrage-driven notability" to correct for what were, you may now realise, erroneous selections for deletion.

Maybe I'm a dolt for blaming you; you're acting rationally within a broken system.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#67

Post by nerfhammer » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:45 AM UTC

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 bureaucratic pseudo-procedure for a deletionist to wield against such practice.

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#68

Post by Locke1689 » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:45 AM UTC

chrismonsanto wrote: post #25

ubernostrum wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: I left a note for the guy asking why he doesn't do that (hunt up citations and improve articles). His response was to go complain about how "ironic" that was on some other well-known deletionist's page, and whine about how he's "martyring" himself for Wikipedia. In other words: there's basically no reasoning with the guy who's behind this.

I would love to do that! The problem is that for the articles I nominated, no citations exist :(

Ouch, this is really sad because it took me ~10 seconds on Google Scholar and I found the Nemerle papers. I'm on your side too (if a language seriously has no users and no publications, why have an article on it), but your research skills are giving us grad students a bad name ;)

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#69

Post by chrismonsanto » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:47 AM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #58

chrismonsanto wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn't this actually an argument for a better UI for wikipedia?

Perhaps, but no one has come forth and developed one. But what would such a UI look like? Would it filter based on user-given notability criteria?

Re: Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia

#70

Post by tibbon » Mon, Feb 14, 2011, 5:48 AM UTC

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…

Does your browsing use-case typify how the average user is consuming the wikipedia? I find far often more than I'm hitting something because I searched for it directly (in which case, I find it notable to my own interests automatically since it is what I was explicitly searching for), or indirectly via a link on another page (and if such does not exist, then there is no distraction or loss).