
Father of the moderm tiling WMs proposed for deletion in Wikipedia.  - pmarin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwm
======
chaosmachine
Wikipedia should disable "non-notable" article deletion for a year and see
what happens. The rampant deletionist problem really hurts editor morale.
People spend hours working on articles only to have them deleted, often for
arbitrary reasons. For a site that lives and dies by its ability to attract
new volunteers, they sure do their best to scare people off.

~~~
ig1
Wikipedia also lives and dies by it's reputation. People have tried forking
Wikipedia with more inclusive policies numerous times (the code base and
articles are open source), and they've all ended up filled with junk.

I was involved with Wikipedia very heavily for it's first three years (not
been involved for the last 5 years), and there have been periods when it went
through more liberal stages of allowing a broader range of content. The
policies they have now aren't something that've just been made up. They're
policies that have evolved over a decade of seeing what works and what
doesn't.

Non-notable articles often end up abandoned and vandalized for long period.
Sure the precise criteria for notability and verifiability might be debatable,
but there's absolutely no question that those criteria help make Wikipedia a
reliable source of data.

Think about the reason you want something in Wikipedia (rather than just say
on a Google Sites page or Mahalo, etc). You want it on Wikipedia precisely
because of the reputation it has, and that reputation is in a large part down
to the criteria of notability and verifiability.

~~~
scott_s
I think people miss this subtle point, which is it's about volunteer's time
and effort, not disk space. I want Wikipedia to contain as much information as
humanly possible (and by "humanly" I mean across our species), but I recognize
that it's a finite number of volunteers managing all of it. For that reason,
it's inevitable that some articles will get cut.

~~~
whughes
If people are complaining about their articles getting cut, doesn't that mean
that they care about those articles and would maintain them? Wikipedia is
actively spurning volunteers and _reducing_ that "finite number" with
deletionism.

~~~
scott_s
Not necessarily. I think people are more likely to complain than do the grunt-
work of active maintenance. It's certainly easier to do so. And creating an
article doesn't indicate commitment.

I think there are problems - from what I've seen, people outside of an area
can be too quick to judge notability. But I find the attitude that nothing
should be deleted naive.

~~~
billdeancarter
After a WP article about writer Alan Cabal was deleted, following many AfDs, I
re-wrote it from scratch as a Squidoo lens, probably for the better:
<http://www.squidoo.com/Alan_Cabal>

The WP article does still lie in userspace waiting to be resurrected, but it's
a complete waste of time to try and get it back into mainspace:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MichaelQSchmidt/sandbox_Th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MichaelQSchmidt/sandbox_The_unloved_article)

There are other options out there. Citizendium? If the article about dwm is
deleted, re-write it at Citizendium. Why not?

Wikipedia is so 2001-2009. Its time is over, I think.

------
shabda
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Dwm_\(2nd_nomination\))

This page is a lovely example of why I don't contribute to wikipedia anymore.

All the arguments are along the lines of, we should delete/keep this, because
(WP:A, WP:B, WP:NO, WP:YES, meatpuppets, sockpuppets, random wikipedia lingo,
inuslt to people who do not know wikiepda lingo)

I agree shared vocabulary helps communication, but on wikipedia it has become
an active tool to discourage new editors. Sad as at one point I believed
wikipedia to be the best thing to happen to Internet.

~~~
maurycy
Out of curiosity, are there any Wikipedia forks?

*BSD guys had a lot of similar arguments and they ended up with many flavors of BSD (OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, DragonFlyBSD etc.)

~~~
eru
Some spammers mirror it.. But that's about it.

If you can work out a good way to share most edits between the forks ---
because most edits won't be a source of argument --- then you have a fighting
chance.

~~~
joeyo
It could be as simple as mirroring wikipedia but never propagating the
deletions. Trying to edit an article would redirect one to wikipedia; trying
to edit a deleted article would instead edit the local copy (in the event of
the article being recreated on wikipedia at a later date there could be an
automatic upstream merge).

~~~
eru
This might be a good start. Though you will also want to keep links to the
deleted articles alive.

~~~
Perceval
If you took half a second to look through the "New pages" feed, and saw not
only the hideous quality and dubious nature of nearly all newly created pages,
but also the vast quantity of new articles created every few minutes, you
might rethink your position on keeping all deleted articles. Many new articles
deserve speedy deletion.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:NewPages>

~~~
joeyo
Ok, so only add pages to the mirror that are older than N days or have more
than M (non-reverted) edits. Probably you'd also need to have tracking for
when page names change. It's not a deal-breaker.

------
billiob
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Miami33139> is trying to remove every free
software from wikipedia (ejabberd, many IM clients, dwm…).

~~~
shrikant
Interesting how in his/her user-page, Miami33139 puts forth a defensive claim
of being 'inclusionist'.

~~~
theli0nheart
Also interesting how Miami33139 uses Ubuntu.

~~~
eru
How does he? (I feel a bit creepy stalking him like this on the internet.)

~~~
jonursenbach
It says on that on that page.

{{User :OS:Ubuntu Netbook Remix}}

------
ggchappell
Yes, deletionism is getting ridiculous on WP. And it's only going to get
worse, due to _evaporative cooling of group beliefs_.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beli...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beliefs/)

But what to do about it? Various people have mentioned the idea of a WP fork.
This has been tried before, a number of times. These tend not to go anywhere.
The problem seems to be getting a critical mass of people to work on it.

Another idea I've been wondering about: start a movement to get inclusionists
back into WP. It should have its own website, discussion area (inside or
outside WP?), etc. Someone should write up ideas on how WP can be changed
(e.g., vote NO on _all_ deletion polls, not as a statement that any particular
article should not be deleted, but rather simply to set a higher standard for
deletion).

Thoughts? (Or has this also been done already?)

~~~
brazzy
From what I've read, this kind of thing (an organized movement of people
planning to get into Wikipedia and influence votes) would make a lot of
editors cream their pants in anticipation of all the bans for "canvassing",
"sockpuppetry" and "meatpuppetry" they'd be handing out and how heroic they'd
be defending wikipedia against such heinous infiltration.

------
deutronium
I personally can't see why any article should be deleted unless it's obviously
erroneous, its not like they're short of disk space. Obscure articles will
likely remain as such, due to lack of references to them; deletion seems
rather draconian.

As an aside I wonder if Wikipedia will ever be forked due to this apparent
increasing bureaucracy.

~~~
nopassrecover
Indeed the disk space argument is frivolous given the amount of discussion
generated around deleting articles, besides which I wouldn't even be sure that
articles are permanently deleted. This ignores the cost in time and morale to
contributors.

------
mcantor
Stuff like this makes me really want to publish a magazine called "Citation
Needed" or "Articles for Deletion" that would just contain short articles by
experts on whatever was speciously put up for deletion that month, just to
flip off feckless deletionists. It would be worth it for the Wikipedia
citations alone.

------
JoeAltmaier
Definition: Encyclopedia (from wikipedia) a comprehensive written compendium
that holds information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular
branch of knowledge

------
gojomo
!#@!@^% deletionists are ruining Wikipedia. They'll be the first against the
wall when the revolution comes.

~~~
eru
Reminds me of the Hitchhiker..

------
spatulon
I cannot agree with deletionists, but it's still important that articles cite
reputable sources. Unfortunately, those same reputable sources are by and
large the same ones needed for notability.

About a year ago, there was a mini-campaign on HN to save the article about
Fravia. It narrowly avoided getting deleted, but look at it now -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fravia> \- it's still a terrible, rambling mess,
with almost every citation leading to Fravia's own website. The information in
the article may or may not be true, and we don't really have any way of
knowing.

It really seems like something has to reach a certain level of notability
before it's possible to write an article of sufficient quality about it.

~~~
applicative
Again, you don't speak to the criteria. It seems that dwm may actually meet
the criteria these people are now employing. If so, a principal lobe of the
brain of the open source movement is being cut out ... by itself.

------
cf
No, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_(window_manager)> is the Father of
modern tiling WMs

------
ww520
I also have stopped contributing to Wiki. It's not worth it after hours of
work being deleted. They only want popular articles.

------
noj
I'd say Ion is the father of modern tiling WMs.

~~~
codemac
I was about to say... dwm was more like the grandson of modern tiling WMs.

Hell, it was fork from dwm author's _own_ project wmii.

------
Tichy
Don't have the patience to read the whole deletion policy page. Why would they
want to delete such a thing? Is it inconceivable that some day somebody might
stumble across the word "dwm" and look it up on Wikipedia?

~~~
jessriedel
People don't want Wikipedia to be dump for all possible information.

~~~
ars
Yes they do.

Personally I want EVERYTHING in it, even if it's not notable, I don't care.
The guideline should be: would 1 other (un-involved, un-related, etc) person
on the planet be interested it? Then put it in.

I want to see a page on tips and techniques on laying brick, and page on the
history of the coffee house down the corner from where you live. Everything.

------
docgnome
Grrr. Wikipedia protocols for notability are just terrible for FOSS projects,
which is rather ironic. I'm still kinna peeved about the deletion of the
StumpWM article.

------
acg
I'm sure these policies are designed to keep up quality. Deletion is a great
incentive for improving articles. Perhaps the best thing to do in this case is
to fix the article at the moment there is little content. If you care, fix it
:-).

~~~
noarchy
Deletion isn't about improving articles. It is about removing them. If an
article covers an obscure topic or person, what of it, so long as the article
is properly referenced? There are many topics out there that are definitely
arcane and of little interest to most people. Does this mean that Wikipedia
ought to be a knowledge base for nothing but pop culture? I sure hope not.

~~~
acg
Have you read the article? It reads like a blog entry rather than an entry to
an encyclopedia. Wikipedia has been criticized before for not being well
researched and factual. The problem with the article is it may as well be
someone's opinion on the WM. I'm all for more pages but this does not read
well. My point is if you care, make it read like it belongs in there.
Wikipedia is not supposed to be an internet archive it's supposed to be
factual.

~~~
nopassrecover
There are flags that can note the article is poorly written so that noone
mistakes it as authoritative in its current state. Indeed in this manner
people interested in the subject can be attracted to improve it.

------
scorciapino
Haha, oh the irony... I once had my very own WM articles deleted on the
portuguese wikipedia by a proposition of guy that... cataloged guava
varieties.

------
ZeroGravitas
The pro-deletion side come across as dicks, but I think they're right.

Does every piece of software ever written need a Wikipedia page? If you don't
like where they're drawing the line, where would you draw it?

~~~
scscsc
What's wrong with every software ever written having a Wikipedia page if
someone cares enough to make one?

~~~
scott_s
We need more than one person to maintain a Wikipedia page. Multiple people
should be able to vet an article's accuracy. I think the concept of notability
sometimes isn't that the topic doesn't _deserve_ an entry, but rather that
there aren't enough sources to make the entry obviously accurate.

(Granted, I understand sometimes the argument is that a topic doesn't deserve
an entry.)

