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I agree with most of this. The only issue I have is at recommending people get a group together and spend a month editing wikipedia articles in order to defend the article you really want - I don't have a problem with the unethical nature of it (although if wikipedia were a better place, I would) - my issue is that you're giving too much power to wikipedia by making getting an article on it important enough to go to those lengths. It's better to ignore the whole thing.
dude stop trying to game the system your farticle sucked
I don't think the point was to game the system, rather it was saying that in order to have a say on what stays and what goes in Wikipedia you need to have been an active editor for some time.
It's great to say that getting an article doesn't matter, but that's not the issue. The issue is when you write an article about something you know about, and its deleted because someone who knows nothing about it decides its not worth knowing. That is frustrating.
So, is Wikipedia an encyclopedia of neutral facts or facts that are only a part of popular culture?
It is an encyclopedia of facts an arbitrary group thinks is worth knowing.
Agreed. A small zine whose entry I helped write was deleted as "not notable." The criterion for notability was two independent Google hits besides Wikipedia. Though the zine had two hits (both of them zine libraries), one Wikipedia user - a self-proclaimed comics fanatic - made the argument that the libraries weren't notable, and the article was deleted.
Agreed. A small zine whose entry I helped write was deleted as "not notable." The criterion for notability was two independent Google hits besides Wikipedia. Though the zine had two hits (both of them zine libraries), one Wikipedia user - a self-proclaimed comics fanatic - made the argument that the libraries weren't notable, and the article was deleted.
Heh, I guess even the big guys have to follow the rules:
A simple test for notability is this : search for it on google. A search for "Imaginary Theatre Association" returns nothing at all that lends any sense of notability to the association: only a crappy looking MSN Group, and the wiki article you created. There are not even any official (dedicated) websites.
You see, in order for an article to be notable, it must ASSERT it's notability, either with relevant weblinks or references to books, magazines, or other published information on the subject. Your article did none. It just appeared to be a plug to what appears to be one tiny website among billions.
How many people visit your site?? How many members are there?? Check Alexa statistics. Policies have been worked out to deal with this kind of thing. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:N... for discussions on this. The fact is, Wikipedia is NOT a free webhost or advertising tool, and to maintain it's integrity standards need to be laid down by the encyclopedists.
So, I hope this helps you understand the process better. If you truly think it is notable and can survive on Wikipedia, then you can try to bring it through deletion review and get the article undeleted, and possibly your work restored.
Also, consider putting your page on a different wiki project, such as those at wikia.com There are all sorts of specialized wikis there that are easy to contribute to.
anyone else interested in wikipedia policy should check out "What Wikipedia is Not" here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOT
I will also note that wikipedia's goals are Long Term. In other words, wikipedia should not be biased to today's pop culture. Articles should be notable a ten, twenty, fifty, and a hundred years from now. Simliarily, there are projects to make wikipedia has all the information contained in older encyclopedias so that important people from centuries ago are included. These projects help counteract and systemic bias inherent in the system.
Dan: Did you really read my rant? You've apparently overlooked a key part of it:
Prior to the article appearing in Wikipedia I had never heard of the "Imaginary Theatre Association." I don't ever anticipate meeting anyone involved in the group. I think I'm a reasonably neutral party on the matter.
As such, a healthy chuck of your comment is totally off topic. I don't care that if it's included. If I felt it had gotten a fair consideration, I would have no problem with the deletion. My complaint is about the behavior of certain holier-than-thou editors who are more interested in procedure and destruction than actually creating something good.
Wikipedia is great. I use it frequently for reference, perhaps daily. I've been doing so do many years. That's why I started contributing several years ago; I have a desire to give back to such a useful resource. Check my edit history and seriously suggest that I've even once made edits in bad faith, to promote a particular site or POV. I understand Wikipedia's goals just fine, thank you. You're telling me nothing new. You're not helping me understand anything. You are annoying me.
Maybe it's just bad timing, but for the last few months of my editing I've spend increasing amounts of time bumping into editors more interested in rules and destruction than actually improving Wikipedia. I'm frustrated with the editors who are rules obsessed and love erroneously declaring a guideline a policy and hard-and-fast rule, ignoring the limited charter of guidelines, that many guidelines are disputed, and Wikipedia's actual policies. I'm frustrated at editors who are so in love with destroying information that they'll swoop into a field they're clearly unfamiliar with and try to delete articles instead of understanding and possibly improving them. I'm frustrated at editors involved in AfD disputes just do a quick Google search and pronounce the case closed. I'm frustrated by editors who vote something as non-notable, without saying a single word to the claims of notability put forth. I'm frustrated by editors who claim that Wikipedia is for the ages, that we must not let trivial things in, but are too cowardly to do the god-damn article-per-Pokemon purge, or perhaps the article-per-episode-of-a-crappy-sci-fi-show purge; their puritan zeal disappears in the face of mass opposition.
These people completely ignore why Wikipedia grew in just a few short years from nothing to the single most cited online reference. Yes, the English language Wikipedia needs a heck of a lot more citations. But the solution is improvement and cautious deletion, not a draconian system. Those in favor of a draconian system are prone to drive off the sometimes contributors, turning Wikipedia into a insular community of people with too much free time on their hands. Such a community will produce less content, have less peer review, and be more prone to letting bias slip into article. Ultimately it will create a slow moving system that may be very safe, but has completely failed to provide something truly new and wonderful over traditional encylopedias. It sickens me to my stomach to know that these short-sighted would-be-lawyers may destroy such a wonderful resource.
While notability rules could be argued for compliance in this case, I do think Dan's comment about "wikipedia should not be biased to today's pop culture" is disingenuous at best, and blind at worst.
A prime example is the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game entry in Wikipedia. Do you really think, Dan, that this game will be so monstrously popular in 100 years that it needs such a detailed entry? The entry should have been just this (gotten from the entry for this in Wikipedia):
The Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game is a collectible card game based on Duel Monsters, which appears as the main plot device in the popular Japanese manga Yu-Gi-Oh! and Toei's Yu-Gi-Oh! series and NAS's Yu-Gi-Oh! series. In its fictional contexts, the game is sometimes referred to as Magic and Wizards or M&W in the original Japanese manga.
Distributed by Konami (as Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters: Official Card Game) in Asian countries and Upper Deck Entertainment everywhere else, it was inspired by the game in the manga and anime series; however, the rules are adhered more strictly and are comparatively more consistent and balanced than the game represented in its fictional contexts.
I mean really, that's it. That's all it should have been. Anything else is honestly extraneous to what the card game is in the context of the world as a whole.
And, using point 7 from the what wikipedia is not link, I would have a righteous field day extricating the innumerable plot summaries and universe descriptions detailed for the X-Men universe which has also permeated the wikipedia website. Concerning X-Men, sure, there could be plenty of articles about how the comic evolved from some guy drawing it on paper to a multinational comic, how its distribution systems work, who worked on it, etc, etc, etc. But those things are actual facts in the world. What aren't facts are the 15 different plot lines and in 4 of them Professor X dies in some excruciating way which turned out to be a dream all along and that Jean Gray is the Phoenix, but maybe not.... etc.
Why does the plot summary and universe description (one outrightly denied by wikipedia's very own rules, the other not even facts in this world) get to stay, but Imaginary Theatre Association's ~10 links to real world examples of them have to go?
Examination of that contradiction will be enlightening.
I have to agree there, this is very very -enlightening- need les to say there dan.
Thank you for your time, and Have a nice Day! -RCEHoppe.
Ok, I guess I got a little bit carried away there. Sorry guys. There are several different takes on wikipedia. I don't actually don't follow the "long term" take that much, and I guess I'm not really much of an expert on wiki policy, goals or notability.
I agree that deletion procedures are a very important part of wikipedia. There needs to be a balance between creating a compendium of sourced, useful knowledge, and the heavily biased, spam-ridden, and vanity type articles that come onto wikipedia every day. Also, I agree that we can't scare contributers away, something which I try to be careful about, but may have done a poor job with recently.
So, I guess it is good we are having this discussion.
This is probably only funny to people who have participated in AfD votes. Ideally people who are at least a little bitter. Tales from Wikipedia! at Halfpixel.com.
(Thanks to Scarybug for pointing it out to me.)
I've never participated in AfD discussions, but I have more than enough bitterness to appreciate that link. Thanks!
A bit more bitter humor. brennanw summarized Wikipedia's problems like so: "The problem... ...is that they're too busy nominating webcomic articles for deletion to bother updating anything else." (source)
(Amusingly, the ellipsis are in the original; there are no missing words.)
p to 6 months ago we financially contributed funds to Wikipedia but no more, for we thought that it was a good idea and where its thinking was in unison with our own - using knowledge for the good of humankind. When we as novices tried to place our Swiss charity within Wikipedia we were absolutely savaged by the editors. They in fact blocked our right of reply, which is even documented by themselves. We even sent our registration documents via email to the then executive director of Wikimedia, the holding organization, to prove that our international group was registered as a Swiss charity. He did nothing at all. A few months later he resigned with another top Wikimedia executive, 'Jimbo's second in command. The greatest problem with Wikipedia that we now find is that they are highly selective in who should place information and where therefore they will never really have a web-based encyclopaedia that is unbiased and totally factual. It is totally at the whims of the few enlightened ones who control what should be a great reference. Unfortunately we now see that it is not.
For anyone interested further on how Wikipedia editors work, the full account including all emails will be part of our next web newsletter 'Scientific Discovery'. It will be on-line by the end of July 2007. Overall, It is time we feel that Wikipedia looked internally at itself and that they concluded that they have major problems with the way they treat new entrants. This analysis should especially be directed towards the attitude of their editors, who remove the right of reply and delete super-quick for reasons not based on evidence but only hearsay. By the way also, the Wikipedian Editor Zoe who first blocked us and the initial instigator of all the basic trouble, fell out with 'Jimbo' and where she as well left a few months later. Apparently she had made a vendetta against a certain professor according to 'Jimbo's' opinion. Thereafter she took her bat and ball away and has never been seen since. I believe she also threatened the embattled professor at the time - the web link is http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:dUfUXyA24...;hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=uk.
Dr. David Hill Chief Executive World Innovation Foundation Charity Bern, Switzerland
Up to 6 months ago we financially contributed funds to Wikipedia but no more, for we thought that it was a good idea and where its thinking was in unison with our own - using knowledge for the good of humankind. When we as novices tried to place our Swiss charity within Wikipedia we were absolutely savaged by the editors. They in fact blocked our right of reply, which is even documented by themselves. We even sent our registration documents via email to the then executive director of Wikimedia, the holding organization, to prove that our international group was registered as a Swiss charity. He did nothing at all. A few months later he resigned with another top Wikimedia executive, 'Jimbo's second in command. The greatest problem with Wikipedia that we now find is that they are highly selective in who should place information and where therefore they will never really have a web-based encyclopaedia that is unbiased and totally factual. It is totally at the whims of the few enlightened ones who control what should be a great reference. Unfortunately we now see that it is not.
For anyone interested further on how Wikipedia editors work, the full account including all emails will be part of our next web newsletter 'Scientific Discovery'. It will be on-line by the end of July 2007. Overall, It is time we feel that Wikipedia looked internally at itself and that they concluded that they have major problems with the way they treat new entrants. This analysis should especially be directed towards the attitude of their editors, who remove the right of reply and delete super-quick for reasons not based on evidence but only hearsay. By the way also, the Wikipedian Editor Zoe who first blocked us and the initial instigator of all the basic trouble, fell out with 'Jimbo' and where she as well left a few months later. Apparently she had made a vendetta against a certain professor according to 'Jimbo's' opinion. Thereafter she took her bat and ball away and has never been seen since. I believe she also threatened the embattled professor at the time - the web link is http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:dUfUXyA24...;hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=uk.
Dr. David Hill Chief Executive World Innovation Foundation Charity Bern, Switzerland
The whole Wikipedia concept is fatally flawed. The notion that one can produce an authoritative encyclopedia without any kind of editorial control is patently ridiculous.
There is a far greater and more insidious threat to Wikipedia than simple character assassination or falsehood. It can broadly be labelled “infomercial content†(i.e. content that purports to be informative but has a commercial bias). A good example is the entry on Barcelona (Spain). The whole article reads like a tourist brochure and any reference to the city’s pollution problems is swiftly removed by an army of self-appointed censors. There are strong indications that the Barcelona Tourist Board (or its army of acolytes) has effectively hijacked the site. This kind of thing is going to become more prevalent as Wikipedia becomes better known. Basically, there is nothing that can be done to stop this corporate take-over of Wikipedia without editorial control yet such control runs counter to the whole Wiki ethos.
The idea that “a community of users†is going to apply some common sense criteria regarding content is a mistaken one. In the case of the Barcelona entry, the influence of Catalan/Spanish speakers on both content and style is all too evident. The locals seem eager to “sell†their city to the wider world and to show off their appalling English. Wikipedia not only lacks the control mechanisms to stop them, it also wilfully fails to recognize it has a serious problem.
I notice that Dr. Hill has spammed over 20 blogs with this comment, but I figured that I should respond anyway. :)
For some reason, it appears that Dr. Hill believes that if he provides the Wikimedia Foundation with money, then his charity will be automatically guaranteed a spot on Wikipedia. I am happy to say that this is not the case. While I have nothing personally against World Innovation Foundation Charity, Wikipedia's neutrality and impartiality is very important.
I have reviewed the original article. There are absolutely no references in the final revision before it was deleted. The main reason that it was deleted was because we didn't believe that the organisation was notable enough to be listed on Wikipedia. This was done through articles for deleteion - I will let the reader judge whether this was a fair process. I should also note that if someone believes and can demonstrate that they are notable, then there is a deletion review process.
Dr. Hill should also be aware of our suggested guidelines that deal with potential conflicts of interest. Though it isn't prohibited on Wikipedia, it is clearly a conflict of interest to write about your own organisation. It is thus frowned upon. I think that given the goals of Wikipedia, this is pretty reasonable.
Personally, I don't believe that Wikipedia editors or the Wikimedia Foundation has anything against this charity. In my dealings with Wikipedia and the WMF, I have always found that they welcome contructive dialogue with organisations and individuals.
Chris Sherlock User:Ta bu shi da yu English Wikipedia Administrator (writing in personal capacity)
Should all people participate in the AFD votes?
Dear Chrsi...It does not matter if Dr. Hill spammed more then 20 blog becuase every one is free for his or her arguments, but fact can never be changed.
This policy consensus article has ran for over a month and has not received much attention in the last couple of weeks. I feel justified in closing it for now.
The post was great but I enjoying the comments by readers too.
The post was great but I enjoying the comments by readers too.
Dear BoxJam, I read your comments, you are thinking right, but if you gather some people and ask them for editing and they do it then it will take much time, that people don't have. http://www.websiteation.com
It's now September, 2008. Nothing has changed.
The Wikipedians application of rules is truly unbalanced. I've edited a bunch of articles; been through a couple of AfD, (Articles for Deletion), debates, etc.
Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of the Wikipedia Overlord admins really do seem to mean well and most likely do the right thing most of the time. Unfortunately, there's a few self styled purists who've come to power here because the main criteria seems to be effort more so then quality. (With quality being the admittedly subjective thing.) As a result, there's a pile of folks that likely hurt the project.
What does the future hold for all this? We'll see. Either it'll get gamed more and be forced to change and grow up. Or it'll all work out somehow.
Either way, anyone who just thinks, "Dude, it's like the coolest and you just gotta' roll with it" and doesn't recognize either a) the real problems or b) the long term risks they pose to the project, is likely being very shortsighted.
Scott
I've had info on my radio station up on Wikipedia, and during 2006 2007, the page was deleted six times. At the time I only had two pages supporting the external source rule of Wikipedia. Over the last few months, the station and I have had a bit of press, and now I have eight supported external sources, to verify that I am really an exsisting person (for the benefit of those morons at Wikipedia)
Fortunately, I have saved all my work into a word document, so it was just the matter of copying, and pasting it back up there.
Curiosity got the better of me today, as I then got into the deletion logs of Wikipedia, and found that going down the logs that they were about ten pages deleted every minute, by the same administrator.
Now, let me ask the question, can anybody read that fast? If someone is going through that many pages in that period of time, would they have the ability to make an informed decision, and why they would delete a page????? Sounds like Wikipedia destroying it self. lol
To me, it seems like a heap of very sad administrators, sitting in some dark room full of computers with no life. :)
Take a look:
@Mark:
The majority of deletions are of painfully obvious advertisements, vandalism, and experimentation. I find it entirely plausible that an admin working through the backlog could delete very quickly. And, how often do you hit Wikipedia for a notable subject and find that there was an article, but it's been deleted? I'm guessing you've never run into it by chance.
A bit of a heads up: If you're writing about yourself, or something you're heavily involved in, you need to be extremely careful about the conflict of interest. You can do it, but people will likely go over your contributions with a fine tooth comb and may be prejudiced against it. Hold yourself to the highest standards if you feel you must do so! Also take care, external sources is a good start, ideally you need to meet the reliable, third-party, published sources guideline. In particular, if you're editing with a conflict of interest, people may hold your sources to extremely strict standards.
If you'd like, feel free to get in touch via email with the sources you have. I'd be happy to at the least give you a quick opinion your odds. If the sources are are good by my understanding of the guidelines, I'd be happy to write the initial article. As a third party I'd have no COI and the article would be much more likely to survive a challenge.
Been there.
Edited an article about a certain global corporation to include details of an ongoing lawsuit against them.
The edit was swiftly reverted with the two-word reason, 'not notable'.
The edit was reverted by a user who was clearly a fanboy of said global corporation, and an apologist for global corporations in general - and, sadly, an extremely active and 'respected' contributor.
These days I don't bother, obviously.
You're a moron.
"It is an encyclopedia of facts an arbitrary group thinks is worth knowing." you got that right boxjam
I have to agree!! As a librarian, I often find myself checking references. I recently updated a Wikapedia article (added a few references I found which balanced out the information presented. Despite being peer-reviewed references, they were inexplicably deleted (no explanation was ever given!). With Wikapedia it is READER BEWARE!
Julie, if your edits were reverted without any reason, you can revert the revert for just that reason. Sometimes you need to push back a bit. If you can give a link to your edit, I'd be happy to take a quick look.
That last was me, in a particularly special level of stupid.
Wikipedia editors seem to be going the same way as DMOZ editors, full of themselves, their importance and with an eye to their own.
It was some years ago when I created an article about Honeywell's Distributed Systems Architecture, based on documents and on my own experience - just to find the article eliminated some months later. Then I struggled to create references and additions in existing articles of related subjects, just to make sure Distributed Systems Architecture not to have missing in Wikipedia - and then with the need to recreate them after seeing them deleted again and again. At least I lost the first battle and I won the last. But for what price - hours of off-time work to create what was bound for deletion.
Today I see Wikipedia just as a consumer - someone is doing something which is nice to have for free, but I don't make any contribution. And when I open the Wikipedia site where I see a banner asking for donations, I close this banner with a smile. Needless to say, they will not see any penny from my pocket...
Bernard
I'm new to Wikipedia, but threw myself into research before creating an article. I work in the HR industry, and noticed a few competitors do not have Wikipedia articles. They're big names in HR, an I thought it would be great to start off with a topic I already know a great deal about.
Guess I skipped over notability guidelines since my article linked to six news sources and two HR award sites. When it was marked for deletion, the only comment was non-notable. Read the policies this morning. The company had what it needed to be considered notable. Scratching my rad over it for the last half-hour.
If you're feeling curious, my username is shannonclh. The article was about Dayforce. It's still in my sandbox... I am going to try creating a few more HR company articles (there are still two competitors who do not have Wikipedias), but will most likely leave Wiki if the editors require users to be seasoned before submitting articles.
As a professional writer, I give advie to novices. As a novice Wikipedian, I expect to receive advice when my work is rejected. That just hasn't been the case. I feel that, had a more experienced user had written the article, perhaps it would have been accepted just the way it was.
Sadly, absolutely nothing has changed since this article was posted. I used to contribute quite a bit to Wikipedia, but got sick of the editorial cliques -- groups of buddies that will rush to back one another (or repeatedly revert corrections) even if they know jack-all about an article topic. It doesn't make me much happier that much of the problem is that being intelligent or reasonable is a disadvantage compared to aggressively fighting & taking action regardless of the rules.
The most infuriating recent example was the buddy-team deletion of an article on a 30-year-old computer BBS game considered highly influential/important... It was dismissed as "non-notable" because editors in their early 20s with no interest in computer/game history hadn't heard of it.
I'm now testing out a new "trick" for gaming their stupid little buddy system: on forums I'm routinely on where I saw a topic heavily covered, I link my signature to the deletion discussion to words like "keep [subtopic/article X] from being 'disappeared'!"
IMHO the best way to cure Wikipedia's sickness is for a large coalition of people to start nominating & working together to ram through deletions of everything that seems even marginally non-notable. The site won't change its policies until something like that happens -- and the policy change would *have* to effectively ban the same buddy-team junk the current "in" crowd pulls.
Absolutely correct. The experienced administrators are often hooligans. A well noted but non mainstream article are likely to be attacked by racially dominating admins. Specially, if your topic is away from Western readers you are likely to be in jeopardy. Don't ever spend time on adding articles in wikipedia. Just get enriched by other people's effort. These apparently selfless admins are essentially frustrated souls with no achievement of their own. See, they even ignored Noble winners for notability. Most of them are stupid arrogants.
