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A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

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Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#91

Post by Victerius »

lucideer wrote: post #64

Plenty of comments on here suggesting WP relaxing/removing notability requirements: the problem is deeper. WP could retain the exact notability requirements they currently have, as written, and still vastly improve the situation from the current mess. As it stands: - mentions of any thing or person without a pre-existing article (by extension meeting notability requirements) are quickly deleted by fans of the frequen…

> Becoming a new contributor to Wikipedia today involves a barrier to entry only zealots will bother to spend time overcoming.

The current editors and admins will die someday. Who will replace them? If only the worst kind of people bother making the effort to become the next editors and admins, then Wikipedia will decline in quality and eventually die and be replaced by other sources, like fandom.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#92

Post by _aavaa_ »

adamrezich wrote: post #37
_aavaa_ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but "is this musician notable" literally is a popularity contest.

but that's not how Wikipedia works. their policies don't care how popular or well-known someone or something is, what matters is whether or not journalists, news outlets, and other such groups (who must themselves be "notable") find them "notable" enough to cover. the Philip Roth story mentioned in the article is one such example of this—it's a good thing Mr. Roth worked at The New Yorker (a verified "notable" news o…

Except they do care how popular the musician is. It's just that instead of setting the threshold themselves they choose to pass the buck and defer to journalists and other groups.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#93

Post by derefr »

_gabe_ wrote: post #82
derefr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia serves the public, and its notability heuristic is demand-driven. It doesn't matter how famous someone is within their own domain, if a member of the public outside of that domain would never have reason to look that person up, and therefore would get no marginal value out of Wikipedia having that page. Personally, I don't know the name of a single advertising voice actor. Nor would anyone even three steps…

> Wikipedia serves the public, and its notability heuristic is demand-driven. This sentence seems to be incompatible with itself. > the public This constitutes all public groups, including the advertising industry. > its notability heuristic is demand-driven Driven by who ? The editors at Wikipedia? Depending on which domain they reside in, they may have a very skewed perception of what the demand in a particular are…

> This constitutes all public groups, including the advertising industry.

You're making a useless semiotic distinction. The default English-language connotation of the words "the public" is to refer to "lay-people; civilians; people with a non-vocational interest in a subject." As in, Wikipedia is not an academic publication, nor is it an industrial publication, nor is it an esoteric publication. When such interests are incompatible with the interests of people outside of those groups, Wikipedia chooses the interests of the people outside of the niche ("the public") over the interests of the people in the niche. Niches can go make their own websites. Wikipedia is for the average human being — one who isn't thinking "in" the context of a domain, but rather in the context of "common knowledge." One who can't just take a step back and search for "[domain] wiki" and then use that, because they wouldn't know what to plug in for the [domain] part.

See also: the job of a dictionary in defining words, vs. the job of an academic or industrial or esoteric text in defining jargon terms.

> Driven by who? The editors at Wikipedia?

Like I said — demand. As in, analytics data of what users are trying to look up — Google Analytics traffic for "[topic] wikipedia"; things typed into Wikipedia's own search box; etc. The aggregate measure of humanity's expectation of a particular Wikipedia article existing; and the generalization of that into an expectation on whether Wikipedia will cover particular classes of topics.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#94

Post by barnabee »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #65

I probably will side with Wikipedia this time. As mentioned in the discussion page [1], there doesn't seem to have any coverage from mass media about him, the only opponent in the discussion lists a bunch of sources/references that are either database-type websites, attendance lists, or product credit. These unfortunately don't really count, any professionals would have such things to a degree. Also it looks like he…

The idea of an encyclopaedia that only includes topics with significant mass media coverage is both incredibly crass and extremely depressing.

If that is the primary standard for inclusion (or “notability”) it is a huge shame and a wasted opportunity.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#95

Post by winternett »

bityard wrote: post #83
winternett wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get on there myself with over 20 years of making and publishing music and being on radio etc... And for that same reason can't get verified on Twitter and many other sites I promote my music work on. First of all, Wikipedia has banned all T-Mobile IPs from being able to even log in to my account... 10 years ago when I tried to post my biography there, they rejected it for lack of notability... Twitter also re…

Wikipedia isn't (or isn't intended to be) a platform for promotion.

That's not what I wrote. I said a Wikipedia entry is required for Twitter verification... Where we do promotion (On Twitter).

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#96

Post by winternett »

zasdffaa wrote: post #87
winternett wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get on there myself with over 20 years of making and publishing music and being on radio etc... And for that same reason can't get verified on Twitter and many other sites I promote my music work on. First of all, Wikipedia has banned all T-Mobile IPs from being able to even log in to my account... 10 years ago when I tried to post my biography there, they rejected it for lack of notability... Twitter also re…

From your profile "A web design, promotions, branding, and PR group based in Washington DC http://www.winternett.com " I don't want crap on wikipedia, thanks.

>I don't want crap on wikipedia, thanks.

Wow, that's not the company I was referring to...

The company I was referring to is RUFFANDTUFFRECORDINGS.COM

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#97

Post by erik_seaberg »

tgv wrote: post #15
powera wrote: post #3

It wouldn't be entirely unfair to say that Wikipedia's policies are designed to keep people like Mr. Gioia off the site and out of the decision making process. Considering that he doesn't want to learn what Wikipedia's policies are, or why they exist (and his calling people who disagree with him "trolls"), I am inclined to think that is a good thing.

If the policy is “you must feature in Grove’s”, Wikipedia becomes even more derivative than it already is.

As it was always intended be. Secondary sources only, no original research.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#98

Post by ilikehurdles »

themodelplumber wrote: post #88

Not sure if this has changed, but I wish there was a way to kind of dull the downside-edge of this kind of outcome. For example maybe there's another place the person's info can go that's not so obviously a trash can, and ideally even still a useful or interesting place. It ought to be possible, IMO. And I'll add that noteworthiness is a real cringe of a model in a lot of ways. Personally I saw the downsides of this…

Wikipedia commingles the “facts” with the organization of those facts. What Wikipedia really is, is that organizational structure. Whether a developer has their own page, or is mentioned on the page of a product they created, is irrelevant in that both views acknowledge the same facts: the developer exists and the product exists and these things are related in that the developer created it.

It would be interesting if the database of facts driving Wikipedia were available to all, and Wikipedia is recognized as providing one of potentially many ways to organize/publish that database for human reading. In other words, if I want to add information about a composer and her composition to the database I can do so, and if Wikipedia chooses only to publish the composition but not the composer, that is entirely their decision.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#99

Post by shp0ngle »

As a wikipedia contributor, I disagree.

You don’t automatically deserve Wikipedia article because you exist, or even because you did a good job your whole life. Even if you have tons of credits on IMDV. You don’t “deserve” wikipedia article. It’s not a collection of everything that exists ever.

The criteria for notability on wikipedia are actually quite clear and documented.

It’s not a badge for a job well done…

And if you disagree with that - fine, it’s creative commons, you can easily get all the articles with all their histories (wikipedia helpfully dumps all that periodically every day as giant XML), and the software is open source; you can fork it and create article on every living human being that ever existed.

Re: A prominent composer lost his Wikipedia page

#100

Post by adamrezich »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #92
adamrezich wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but that's not how Wikipedia works. their policies don't care how popular or well-known someone or something is, what matters is whether or not journalists, news outlets, and other such groups (who must themselves be "notable") find them "notable" enough to cover. the Philip Roth story mentioned in the article is one such example of this—it's a good thing Mr. Roth worked at The New Yorker (a verified "notable" news o…

Except they do care how popular the musician is. It's just that instead of setting the threshold themselves they choose to pass the buck and defer to journalists and other groups.

exactly. this also leads to e.g. "Controversy" sections of articles with sentences that make uncharitable statements about people or groups, sometimes outstripping the rest of the article in terms of length, and ending with [11][12][13][14][17][24][27] so you know it's a super accurate true statement instead of politically- and/or ideologically-slanted analysis from multiple sources (potentially all referencing a single source themselves) that "just so happen" to be completely identical. it doesn't matter that if it was something that happened years ago that's wholly irrelevant now and everyone's long forgotten about it—if a Sufficient Quantity of Journalists said that the thing was notably controversial at the time, well, it's notably controversial forever!

it seems like I encounter more and more of this exact thing all over Wikipedia as time marches on.

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