I would be offended, too, but when I went to his page I see no signs it is under threat of deletion. Tempest in a teapot fugit?
Is Randal L Schwartz notable enough for Wikipedia?
61–70 of 73 posts
Re: Is Randal L Schwartz notable enough for Wikipedia?
#62The real question to ask is why does anyone take wikipedia serious as a source these days? I would trust Schwartz's opinions on Peruvian copper mining, quantum physics, square dancing, or any other subject long before I would trust any article on wikipedia because Schwartz has more credibility.
> The real question to ask is why does anyone take wikipedia serious as a source these days? Who's saying you should? And what's different about "these days" versus, I don't know, 2005? Feel free to substitute there your favorite year from any point on the timeline of Wikipedia nostalgia. Edit: Goddamn. I really hate to do it, but challenges, please? The notion that you can/should/could ever trust Wikipedia is some w…
If I understand it correctly (I think Wikipedia is trustworthy therefore I am stupid), I believe this is a fairly minority opinion.
Re: Is Randal L Schwartz notable enough for Wikipedia?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously? I've been very very careful to abide by WP:BIO. The only changes I've ever made are to add ISBNs or my photo. I even stay out of the talk page for the most part as well. I call "troll".
Randal, I apologize that I misspoke, I should have read the policies more thoroughly. I was merely stating my perception of why someone might be trying to delete the article, I had no intent to "troll." Never thought I would have the guy who taught me Perl get mad at me on the Internet... Sorry again Randal
Not mad, just trying to set facts right.
Re: Is Randal L Schwartz notable enough for Wikipedia?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
If "author of first book about Perl" doesn't make your book, you're a pretty poor writer.
Nothing I said was meant to be taken personally, so please stop with the ad hominems. I apologize if I offended you. I didn't mean to imply that your life and work are not important. I just don't feel like every single biography is worthy of ``the sum of human knowledge'', even if that person's work is. I guess that's not a fashionable opinion to have in the post-Twitter era, especially on a website where people subm…
It's not about being taking personally. It's just a fact: I wrote (with Larry Wall) the first book about Perl. And then the second book about Perl, which became the seminal teaching guide. If that doesn't deserve a note in the Perl history, you're confused.
Re: Is Randal L Schwartz notable enough for Wikipedia?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The real question to ask is why does anyone take wikipedia serious as a source these days? Who's saying you should? And what's different about "these days" versus, I don't know, 2005? Feel free to substitute there your favorite year from any point on the timeline of Wikipedia nostalgia. Edit: Goddamn. I really hate to do it, but challenges, please? The notion that you can/should/could ever trust Wikipedia is some w…
If I understand it correctly (I think Wikipedia is trustworthy therefore I am stupid), I believe this is a fairly minority opinion.
What?
Re: Is Randal L Schwartz notable enough for Wikipedia?
#66Re: Is Randal L Schwartz notable enough for Wikipedia?
#67Yes. Over time, if Perl is no longer significant either practically or historically, perhaps his wikipedia entry could be archived as "ancient history", but for the moment it is relevant.
Re: Is Randal L Schwartz notable enough for Wikipedia?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get the point, but it starts to become annoying when people repeatedly propose deletion of pages nobody with an IQ above room temperature would consider deleting.
Like I said downthread: this article actually was crappy. The AfD is going to improve it.
The danger of using an AfD as a tool for improving an article is that it forces people to improve it or remove what already exists, which discourages people from adding articles if they can't add an extensive article (or even if they can).
An AfD should not get filed unless the article itself has negative value to Wikipedia, and Wikipedia would be better off with the article gone. There do exist such articles, but that should be a pretty high bar.
Re: Is Randal L Schwartz notable enough for Wikipedia?
#69This is a Web site that thinks it appropriate to offer a synopsis for every episode of Burn Notice. There's a page for each season, plus a page for the show itself. Why is the inclusion of Randal even an issue? "Reasons for deletion ... Any other content not suitable for an encyclopedia" I like Burn Notice, it's fun and entertaining. But does it need to be in an encyclopedia? More so than Randal L Schwartz? Talk abou…
I frequently use Wikipedia as a source of information on a TV series, and that includes an episode list and synopses. If people might want to look it up, why should they have to move that content elsewhere to one of the various TV summary sites, most of which suck a lot more than Wikipedia (with the exception of special cases for shows popular enough to have dedicated sites, like Memory Alpha).
Re: Is Randal L Schwartz notable enough for Wikipedia?
#70Yes. No reasonable person could even contest this. Randal Schwartz has been written about in reliable sources extensively, owing to an incident in which he was convicted for a felony involving breaking into Intel servers. •••• PEOPLE OF HN: ANYBODY CAN PROPOSE ANY ARTICLE ON WP FOR DELETION. THERE IS NO BAR FOR IT. •••• If you make comically stupid proposals, like "[Barack Obama] isn't notable and should be deleted",…
Yes, anyone can propose an article for deletion. However, I see two problems with what you've said.
First, yes, the "immune response" usually manages to produce some improvement, but often it just produces a deleted article because nobody who might have cared managed to notice. Whenever I observe those processes, I see two primary forces: many people with way too much time on their hands arguing policies without thinking, and people tired of trying to explain common sense via citations to chapter and verse of Wikipedia policy. (See also: wrestling a pig in mud.)
Second, the article links to various policy changes that suggest Wikipedia no longer considers "published author" a sufficient criteria for notability. That seems like a severe problem quite aside from this particular article.
Fundamentally, proposing an AfD means precisely one thing: "I think this article has negative value for Wikipedia, such that deleting it would improve Wikipedia.". All too often I see articles proposed for deletion (and "successfully" deleted) which have clearly positive value for Wikipedia.