
Wikipedia's Notability Requirements And The Slash - invisiblefunnel
http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1297662169.html
======
erikpukinskis
_You can literally read these requirements as "some big mega corp my grandma
might encounter has mentioned it."_

This is spot on. I had to engage in a _battle_ on Wikipedia to keep the page
up for dream hampton. Not everyone knows who she is, but she was the editor
for The Source at one time, and ghost wrote Jay-Z's autobiography, among other
things.

What I ran into is that Wikipedia basically demands that you get published in
these megacorp publications that are basically all run by rich white people,
and mostly men. So being written about in black publications, which tend to be
more magazines and online publications, and less Library of Congress kind of
stuff, doesn't cut it according to Wikipedia's notability "guidelines". If the
white editors don't recognize the publication names, they don't "count".

The fact is, if she had been editor of Rolling Stone, I don't think there
would've been a problem.

There were other factors too... being an editor and ghostwriter means she's
more behind the scenes, and less likely to get outright exposure in the press.
But that, too, is a requirement that I think turns Wikipedia into an amplifier
of power, rather than a distributor of one.

I'm not sure if there was some outright racism going on too. I mean, she was
mentioned in the New York Times and people were still calling for her page
removal. At that point things start to get a little murky for me. But the
situation was fishy for sure.

~~~
knowtheory
If you look at wikipedia's contributor stats it's like 70% white†, college
aged males. (Actually wikipedians are like 87% male.
[http://feministing.com/2011/02/02/why-are-only-13-of-
wikiped...](http://feministing.com/2011/02/02/why-are-only-13-of-wikipedia-
contributors-women/) )

they're working on improving the gender balance, but i suspect that the format
will still retain this skew simply due to societal/demographic reasons.

I don't know that that means that there was any overt or covert racism, but
there is definitely a contributor bias :P

† upon further investigation i have not been able to find references to racial
demographics for wikipedia. Consider this hearsay.

~~~
mkramlich
> If you look at wikipedia's contributor stats it's like 70% white†, college
> aged males. (Actually wikipedians are like 87% male.
> [http://feministing.com/2011/02/02/why-are-only-13-of-
> wikiped...](http://feministing.com/2011/02/02/why-are-only-13-of-wikiped..).
> )

When an all/mostly black country invents something like the Internet, and then
creates a website like Wikipedia, and then most of the nerds it attracts to
administrate it happen to be black male nerds, then, yes, you'll see a
different demographic mix. But until that happens, you'll see demographic
trends that are likely (and reasonably) going to be heavily influenced by
their starting conditions.

------
neilk
Thanks, Zed. A typically balanced, well-researched and well-thought-out
solution to a complex problem. I especially liked the part where you blamed
all of Wikipedia for the actions of a single user.

I wish you had considered the route of getting involved instead. There are
just some basic, fundamental things that would help fix this. A modification
to the notability rules would require a lot less effort than your other
proposals. The notability rules work pretty well for kicking out useless chaff
like pages about high school garage bands that have never played a show. But
they do privilege old-school publishing and broadcasting, so particularly
ephemeral creations like new programming languages may fare very poorly
against the notability criteria. But this strikes me as fixable.

Programmers can help too. We don't even have the capability, for instance, for
people to be emailed when their favorite page is up for deletion. We don't
have a lot of means for casual involvement; everything depends on logging into
Wikipedia regularly. This is part of why battles in Wikipedia tend to be won
by the most, shall we say, persistent.

I work for the Wikimedia Foundation, as a programmer. In general our resources
are stretched pretty thin, and there's really only been two years so far of a
budget that's even remotely in line with the size and impact of the site
(thanks to your contributions). In a lot of ways we're still playing catchup
with an explosive period of growth that happened around 2006-2007, using
technology that's getting a bit venerable.

But the issue of deletionism and the general community demeanor is a problem
that is occupying more and more of our attention. If it matters to you then
contact me. I can definitely tell you there are lots and LOTS of ways to help
out.

Actually you could even get PAID to fix this problem. Want a job working here?
We have lots of open technical positions. <http://bit.ly/WikimediaJobs>

The one thing I can't guarantee is that it will satisfy your need to rage. The
truth is, almost everyone in the Wiki community is acting in good faith. What
they need are a) your input as a knowledgeable person about how policies need
to change, and b) your technical and design skills, to create systems that
avoid these communication breakdowns, and guide volunteers to be more
effective.

~~~
zedshaw
Thanks Neil, a completely inaccurate reading of what I wrote. For the record,
deletionists have been a problem for many people who are members of sub-
cultures and Wikipedia has ignored the problem. Writing more arbitrary rules
is not the solution. The solution is to fix the software so people can create
a richer organization of information.

I personally have had some idiot with a vendetta get a page about me deleted
numerous times _despite_ me having been mentioned in about 10 trade and mass
publications and having a book published (now two) as well as my own articles
in the press. It was baffling that a single person can get a page deleted
without any warning, flagging, or attempts to do some research.

But really it comes down to trust. I don't trust any organization that begs me
for money then deletes the content that matters to me most and tries to hide
behind some bogus "well it's not _us_ really (tee-hee)". Either Wikimedia is
in charge or they silently allow this kind of crap.

Finally, the issue of deletionism is purely the result of bad usability and
structure. All you need to do is make a place to put these pages rather than
delete them and you'll solve tons of problems.

~~~
neilk
You might be responding to an earlier version of what I said, but I absolutely
agree with you that it's got a lot to do with the software.

Do you really want the Wikimedia Foundation to set themselves up as a judge of
the content in Wikipedia? I mean, apart from the fact that we have no mandate
or qualifications to do this, how could you get an organization that fits
around a few tables in a restaurant to judge all the edit wars in Wikipedia?
_In over 250 languages?!_

If this problem is going to be solved, it's going to be solved in some
distributed fashion, by the community, or by interested hackers such as
yourself pitching in and giving the community new tools. There's a good chance
you (by which I mean any hacker reading this) could get PAID to solve this
problem.

Or, it's going to be solved by someone forking Wikipedia content or starting
over, but the same problems have to be solved somehow.

~~~
zedshaw
No, after this and many other things I'm not interested in working for them,
at all. Especially if I find out the rumors of a "nerd purge" agenda are true.
If there is a call to delete "nerdy" content I'm gonna really turn up the
destruction.

~~~
neilk
A "nerd purge". At Wikipedia. You just broke my brain.

What are you talking about?

~~~
zedshaw
I've started to notice that a lot of "nerdy" topics get deleted lately. I
can't prove it, but I suspect there's some attempt to cleanse the "white male
nerd" out of Wikipedia in order to attract normal people. Again, _I can't
prove it_. If it's true that's about the worst way to crap on the people who
donate the most money and do the most work keeping the project going.

~~~
neilk
Demographically, Wikipedia is white male nerds. You might have seen some stuff
in the media lately about how it's felt that this limits the scope of the
encyclopedia. But it's not so much that there's an anti-nerd sentiment, it's
that we have to broaden the base.

It can be a bit crazy sometimes. You think you have problems with your page --
I heard that the #1 actor in India had his page deleted because some kid from
a Western country thought he was non-notable. Wikipedia can be a great place
to learn about science and technology, but let's say, the history of feminism?
There are articles on every micro-neighborhood of San Francisco, but sometimes
hardly anything on major cities of Africa.

------
mquander
_Let's put aside the insanely weird idea that one person has the ability to
derail the creation of information unilaterally, without a vote, and without
any oversight to focus on the real problem..._

Jesus, does Zed Shaw live on another planet? I've never edited a Wikipedia
article in my life and even I know that when an article is nominated for
deletion, there's a big hullabaloo where everyone votes and argues about it
before it's actually deleted.

Also:

 _It's sort of impossible to say that the Esoteric programming languages page
should not have a description of every "notnotable" programming language._

I do not think "impossible" means what you think it means.

~~~
thristian
Zed Shaw's personal hell: being given a laptop with an internet connection, a
browser pointed at Wikipedia, and being asked to complete the article _List of
things which do not exist_.

~~~
othermaciej
How about "List of articles which do not mention themselves"?

~~~
nickzoic
List of Articles not listed in a List of Articles.

------
JanezStupar
This year I donated 50€ for the worthy cause of Wikipedia. One of my arguing
points was that there is a lot of obscure information I am sometimes looking
for that there is no reference of - except for Wikipedia.

Jimbo put your dog on a leash, or next year, when your bambi eyed face gazes
into me from my monitor, I will send a turd in a bag instead of a donation.

Does anyone know what address I could/should send my complaint to for maximum
impact?

------
ugh
The notability requirements do not exist for a technical reason. That’s
entirely wrong. Maintainability is the reason. The space is not limited but
the time of people working on those articles. The goal is for Wikipedia to
only have articles of a high quality, the more articles there are the harder
that gets.

I’m not trying to defend the notability rules (I think that they are quite
often pretty stupid), I’m only saying that it is completely and utterly wrong
to claim that Wikipedia’s notability rules exist for a technical reason.

~~~
knowtheory
But the argument from maintainability is stupid too.

Wikipedia already stuffers from variable quality, and all its content comes
with a big huge caveat emptor. Furthermore, the existence of poor quality
doesn't have any bearing on whether the well trafficked content is good or
not.

Deletionists really don't have any leg to stand on, and i find it mystifying
and infuriating that they are allowed to continue deleting content put up by
other people (mostly in good faith), essentially without cause or
justification.

They can't delete their way to good content, because no content on wikipedia
starts out as good content. You can't claim that leaving up poor content is a
problem, or they should just lock the whole fucking thing, and only accept
well curated patches.

~~~
bdonlan
The point isn't to delete bad content. The point is to delete content that is
known by so few people that it is unlikely to get the attention needed to
become a good article.

To put it another way, even if someone writes a really, really good article
about their neighbor's dog Spike - complete with genealogy down to Rover the
fifth, the harrowing near-death encounter when that gallstone removal surgery
went wrong, and even a detailed account of that incident last Wednesday when
Spike wet the carpet, there are so few people who know anything about that dog
that it's impossible to fact-check the article. For all anyone knows it's all
made up. So the line has to be drawn somewhere, and there need to be clear
policies for it, as otherwise, well, things like this happen.

~~~
knowtheory
But Spike is a straw-man (well, dog).

These programming languages aren't non-existant, and can be verified as
actually existing. It's not that there are _no_ references to it.

On top of that, i'm still unclear why it would even matter? Things with little
interest will generate little traffic. The potential to misinform is pretty
low. And if it were to be the case that an article that was incorrect
(maliciously or not) were to suddenly see an increase in traffic, presumably
that can only serve to encourage people to point out inaccuracies and correct
them (treating fictionalized accounts of anything as being an inaccuracy). And
wikipedia already has a mechanism for resolving synonymy and name-resolution
disputes.

~~~
prodigal_erik
If Wikipedia just accumulated everything it could, we'd end up with a billion
articles 90% of which are vandalized, outdated, mistaken crap. The potential
to misinform would be huge. They can only successfully scale the corpus at the
rate at which they gain volunteer editors (who are far rarer than people who
just write one article about their favorite obscure thing, and then leave).

~~~
chc
It is frankly easier to get a fake article by the editors than a real one. The
editors generally do not check articles for accuracy or quality (beyond what a
high-schooler with a dictionary could do) — they just fastidiously apply a
checklist of rules.

Also, I think it would be easier to get editors if being an editor were more
about making the site good and less about dealing with the head cases who
currently edit the site. (Nothing personal intended against any individual
editors who may be reading — it's just a general reflection of how things look
to people who have casually attempted to try editing.)

------
mukyu
Plan A doesn't work. It is actually easier to delete things from pages than
deleting pages themselves. If you edit war over it you will lose.

Plan B does not work. Wikipedia guidelines do not consider self-published
sources as 'reliable' and things published by Lulu are considered self-
published. Wikipedia does not consider itself a reliable source either. It is
also not going to disappear in a puff of logic like God in hhgttg, no matter
how witty you think it is.

Plan C has not worked in the years of people deleting things that appeal to
far broader audiences than esoteric programming languages. They are still
around. How well do you think this will work?

Plan D is something many people have done. In a way, Wikia is a giant example
of it. In other cases they go to wikinfo or create their own wiki.

This post is exactly like 100s of others that someone writes whenever
Wikipedia deletes (or even tries to delete) something that they care about.
The ground is well-tread and it brings nothing new or interesting to the
table. The internet does not need another blog post where someone spends an
hour in isolation writing about it.

On an irrelevant note, mediawiki does support subpages (the slashes), but
articles cannot have them as article titles may contain slashes. This has
absolutely nothing to do with Wikipedia's notation of notability and the
reasons people try to get rid of non-notable content.

~~~
zedshaw
Plan A is a DOS attack. It's not about getting the information there, it's
about putting so much there repeatedly that they have to admit that those
topics need their own page.

Plan B wouldn't be "self-published". It would be published by me as a record
of the languages that came out that year. Since no language I have is in the
book, it's not self-published. If what you're really saying is Wikipedia
doesn't recognize Lulu.com, then they're gigantic hypocrites. My book, "Learn
Python The Hard Way" is published there, and has an ISBN and Lulu is my
publisher. It's just as legit as my books published by Addison/Wesley,
especially given their size.

You say Plan C doesn't work, but then here you are debating the topic, and
Wikipedia's primary supporters are probably all over this. As many other
people say, it's all filled with white nerdy males. If Wikipedia goes around
deleting the things they like in order to "de-nerdify" the content, then
eventually people will stop donating and go after them. I plan on doing it,
and maybe some others.

Plan D is mostly a joke, but it might be good to create a record of the "great
nerd purge" that seems to be hitting Wikipedia lately.

I also find it sad that you say people write things like this when Wikipedia
deletes content they care about, and yet nothing is done. In fact, you sound
powerful and proud of this fact, like it gives you a sense of pride, which is
really _really_ scary.

~~~
mukyu
Plan A only bothers whomever tries to maintain [[List of esoteric programming
languages]] or wherever you pick as a battleground. I know it sounds to you
like you can really "stick it to the man" and they will swoon over your
brillant tactics and relent, but you will only bother people that actually
care about esolangs in the first place and Monsanto certainly isn't going to
be around. The best you can hope for is some people get blocked and pages
protected.

Wikipedia's policies would consider it self-published. It does not matter that
you would be writing about languages that you are not affiliated with. Again,
you are not going to change Wikipedia's policies by pointing out that
Wikipedia itself is self-published in their eyes.

I think you are vastly overestimating the number of people that have even
heard, much less care about these esoteric languages.

I do not know why you ascribe these emotions to me, but they are not in the
least accurate. I do not think my personal opinion on this set of articles is
at all significant. I do not care about them, either way.

Frankly, what disturbs me is how you have very strong opinions about how
Wikipedia does or should work with an incredibly superficial actual
understanding. For example, why do you argue over how Wikipedia sees Lulu?
Have you even read Wikipedia's policy on Reliable Sources or Verifiability? It
is not as if Lulu itself or other things like it are new. It has been debated
a number of times and at length. You have no knowledge of the issue and
provide no insight.

~~~
zedshaw
Well so far you've just thrown out proclamations without any references
backing what you say. I mean, you're some random dude on a forum who's
basically repeated what I've said and went "WRONG!". How insightful.

~~~
mukyu
I'm sorry that you are incapable of taking 5 minutes to find read the specific
Wikipedia policy pages that mentioned by name. Just because you know nothing
about subjects and like to bullshit about them on the internet does not mean
that everyone else does the same. Since you mostly seem to be interested in
hearing yourself speak I will not engage you further.

~~~
bxr
I'm sorry that you're incapable of taking the 5 seconds to realize that the
overabundance of specific Wikipedia policy pages are the reason why people
have given up trying to fix it from within and are content to lob stones from
outside without digging into the rules.

Just because you know so goddamn much about policies and the like, doesn't
mean anybody else cares.

Since you mostly seem to be interested in seeing yourself further existing
bureaucracy and not IAR to create the best a resource for wikipeida users, I
will engage you in a futile attempt to point out the reason that people are
not doing what you ask.

------
donaldc
Notability requirements for an article to exist at all is the wrong approach.

Instead, wikipedia should allow most any article to be added, but have one or
more groups that "certify" articles as notable. People who want to avoid all
the non-notable clutter can then elect a view of wikipedia that only includes
articles certified by the group (or groups) they choose, while non-notable
articles can still be viewed by those who choose to view them, and can have
the breathing room to in some cases evolve into notable articles.

------
bambax
It seems the notability requirements really serve Wikipedia's own notability.
It can't say "we'll take our list of topics from Encyclopedia Britannica" but
it's what it would like to do.

In the beginnings it actually made sense, too, since it would never have took
off if every page was about Joe Schmo's cat.

But now that Wikipedia is probably more famous and more well known than any
other "real world" encyclopedia, such "respectability hacks" are unneeded and
should be repelled.

------
baddox
I think the key here is that Wikipedia's notability requirements really only
apply to people, publications, and events. For some things, for example the
article on esoteric programming languages, it doesn't really make sense to
talk about notability.

------
gojomo
Zed writes: "I have registered notnotable.com... Just put up the same
software, get some free hosting from some of the companies out there that I
know, and start filling it in with anything that's not on Wikipedia."

There've been a few abortive attempts to create a repository for deleted
Wikipedia content, or a more inclusionist Wikipedia with the same software...
and they've all proved moribund.

The trick is not just the name or concept, but the entire community and
mission. Reusing the same software – while attractive for a quick start –
could present problems. Part of the reason Wikipedia has resorted to
deletionism, in my mind, has been weaknesses in MediaWiki, and having the same
general appearance and workflow is likely to just walk a new project down the
same paths. And defining an alternative solely as "what Wikipedia isn't" puts
a rather hard and low cap on its growth as an independent identity.

With these problems in mind, I've started working on a reference knowledge-
base to complement Wikipedia that will loosen the 'notability' requirement in
favor of 'true and useful'. Otherwise, it will share the same licensing and a
wiki-centric edit model.

The project codename is 'Infinithree' ('∞³'), and I'm discussing it pre-launch
at <http://infinithree.org> and (Twitter/Identica) @infinithree.

------
nazgulnarsil
_puts on conspiracy cap_

wikipedia _was_ a huge threat to traditional information sources, but now
something has to come from one of those traditional sources to be considered
legitimate info. problem solved.

------
Tichy
The donations thing just made me wonder if it could work to have donations per
page. That is, you could kind of adopt an article (and get a banner on that
article announcing you are the sponsor, perhaps).

Immediate problem would of course be advertising, which would not be desired.

It's just that if I donate now, I feel as if I am supportive of their
deletionist policies, which I am not.

------
f10
Strange that e.g. several content farms are deemed notable by the Wikipedia
editors:

    
    
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahalo.com
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softpedia
    
    

Notability requirements are fine, but not if they are applied selectively.

~~~
bane
You should probably flag them AfD.

------
redthrowaway
That's just... wrong. Come on, Zed, at least do your homework. Chris isn't
deleting the pages, nor is he acting as some sort of sole determinant of
noteworthiness. He's simply proposing them for deletion through the Articles
for Deletion process. Also, Wikipedia handles sub-pages just fine. Most active
editors have a number of sub-pages on their userpage, and many articles have
sub-pages as well where people will store drafts while working on a revision.
Your information is wrong, and your tone is insulting. Cut it out, man.

~~~
zedshaw
I don't care what the bureaucratic process is, all I know is one guy went on a
rampage electing pages for deletion and they're gone. This "plausible
deniability" of page deletion so nobody is to blame really is odd.

~~~
redthrowaway
There's a discussion at each AfD where anyone can come in and say why a page
should or should not be kept. In the end, it is the adminstrator's decision as
to whether or not there is a consensus to delete (default is to keep), and
there are processes in place for getting the decision overturned.

Chris nominated 8 pages for deletion over a period of 3 days. While it's a
spree that's likely hasty, it's by no means a rampage. I believe he was wrong
to do as he did, but only a couple pages were deleted, and there's a
discussion to have Nemerle restored. He's hardly a one-man wiki-wrecking crew.

~~~
bane
_it is the adminstrator's decision as to whether or not there is a consensus
to delete (default is to keep)_

The _de facto_ process is to default to delete. As this embarrassing debacle
has shown, there were no votes to delete, and yet poof! the articles were
deleted and a day later, with significant backlash and discussion, almost all
in favor to reinstate or at least open the pages back up to be reconstituted,
are not back up.

Wikipedia's editing "process" is a shameful joke.

------
blickly
In case anyone is still curious how this got resolved, Monsanto gave up. From
his wikipedia user page
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Christopher_Monsanto>):

> Dear internet,

> You guys win. I will stop nominating pages for deletion.

> I wasn't doing this to troll or to slam any language community. I was just
> trying to help -- I read the WP guidelines for inclusion, and whenever I
> came across a language that didn't seem to meet said criteria, I nominated
> it for AfD. I think, with respect to Wikipedia's established notability
> guidelines, my arguments for deletion were airtight, which is probably why
> the articles were eventually deleted. I'm not sure my actions warranted the
> kind of internet-hatred I received as a result. If anyone thought what I was
> doing was wrong, they could have just sent me a friendly message and I would
> have politely discussed the issue. Few took this route, and I am sorry that
> due to time constraints and an overwhelming amount of invective I could not
> reply sensibly to everyone.

> Since the internet seems to care more about keeping these articles than I
> care about deleting them, I'll stop. I personally think a lot of the
> articles should have been deleted. I think that ALL articles I nominated for
> deletion fail to meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Here's a
> challenge, then, for the internet: instead of spamming my Wikipedia talk
> page (which I don't really care about), why don't you work on fixing WP's
> notability guideline for programming languages? Otherwise, some other naive
> editor will eventually try to delete them. Perhaps they won't have as much
> experience dealing with trolls and flamebait as I have had, and will become
> very hurt and confused. Nobody wants that :(

------
owyn
You could always create an esoteric languages wiki of your own if you were all
fired up about it (I work at wikia, and that's the service we provide, we have
170,000 wikis on various subjects, using the same software! Founded by the
same guy!)

But that's not really the point here. It's just because it's wikipedia that
everyone gets all weird about it. The information is out there, I don't see
why it's so important that every esoteric project have a wikipedia.org page.
It's not supposed to be a compendium of ALL human knowledge, it's an
encyclopedia of generally useful knowledge. There has to be SOME criteria for
excluding stuff. There's already a problem with wikipedia containing way too
many pages about nerd topics and not enough information about the rest of the
world.

~~~
carussell
_It's not supposed to be a compendium of ALL human knowledge_

...:

 _Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free
access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing._ —Jimmy
Wales. Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Responds. Slashdot, 2004.
[http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/07/28/1351230/Wikipe...](http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/07/28/1351230/Wikipedia-
Founder-Jimmy-Wales-Responds)

~~~
owyn
The focus is changing, 2011:

“It’s about diversifying the community. At the moment we’re really male, geek
orientated, which is great, but there are lots of editors that we don’t get
who are geeks, but not tech geeks. So they may be real experts in, say,
ancient Chinese poetry but if they go to try to edit Wikipedia, then they find
it too intimidating and we lose them and that’s just silly."

I think this whole explosion of whatever-it-is-itis is a perfect example of
that.

~~~
carussell
I'm trying to figure out what that quote has to do with anything brought up in
this thread.

~~~
owyn
Hm? It was just a counterpoint to your quote.

I'm just saying, wikipedia most likely can't and probably shouldn't contain an
article about everything. It's just not possible, nor desirable, although it
makes a good quote. It seems like deleting useless crap is one approach to
that, and encouraging editors to contribute more to non-nerd-lore topics is
another approach.

~~~
carussell
_It was just a counterpoint to your quote_

In what way?

 _encouraging editors to contribute more to non-nerd-lore topics_

Surprise! Deleting Star Wars articles doesn't create more content for the
article about the large-tailed antshrike.

And guess what? I don't even like Star Wars, and I think the lack of
information on, you know, _real stuff_ (in contrast to "nerd-lore topics") is
disheartening. So lay off with the kind of presumptions you're throwing around
in these comments.

~~~
owyn
I realize deleting one thing does not create a different thing.

I agree it was more of a tangential quote and not a direct counter, but I was
trying to point out that some of this "deletionism" is probably due to a
recognition that not everything is being covered equally, and it might be nice
to prune the leaves from time to time to encourage growth in new directions.
Or something like that. Also, I'm not trying to speak for anyone else but
myself, everything I said was just my own musing about the topic. However, I
do have a feeling that if the first 10 years of wikipedia was represented by
your quote, the next 10 years might be represented by mine. The goal seems to
be growing up and encouraging people, which seems like a good idea,
considering all the rage generated by this topic. If it can't contain
everything then what it does NOT contain is going to be a deliberate choice by
the community, and this whole thread seems to be dominated by one side of the
argument so I thought I'd throw in a tangent. Thanks for the thoughtful
comments though, and I should probably have put more thought into my own
comments, I was just commenting in the spur of the moment.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...it might be nice to prune the leaves from time to time to encourage growth
in new directions_

Could you explain the mechanism by which that would work?

Do you expect that the person contributing articles about Star Wars will,
after his article on Boba Fett's brother in law is deleted, decided to write
an article about critical feminist post-industrialist theory?

~~~
owyn
Looks like I really ran into a buzzsaw here. Sorry for not presenting a
magical unicorn for you on demand.

Sure, maybe in 10 years after they grow up and develop some interests besides
Star Wars, that person might have something more useful to contribute.

~~~
carussell
_Sorry for not presenting a magical unicorn for you on demand._

You're suggesting that this kind of deletionism is constructive in the long
run. The onus is on you here.

------
starpilot
_Wikipedia has not [sic] problem paying for storage_

What do the near-constant donation drives cover then?

~~~
Lewisham
Bandwidth, servers and staff. Storage is most certainly not their problem; the
English language Wikipedia is only about 5TBs of text. That's cheap.

~~~
natep
Actually, it seems like a roughly even split between salaries+wages, internet
hosting, in-kind expenses, operating, travel, and deprecation (in 2007, at
least, because it was easiest to find)[1]. Wikimedia may not be a publicly
traded company, but they do release their financials.

[1]
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/49/Wikime...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/49/Wikimedia_2007_fs.pdf)

------
idonthack
Wikipedia deletionism has nothing to do with the lack of paths. Organization
is handled by mediawiki's category feature. Name collisions are avoided and
similar names collected on disambiguation pages.

"Plan A" is not a new idea, it's exactly what happens to other categories with
lots of items that don't deserve their own page.

"Plan B" won't work because part of deletionist policy is to ignore sources
published by self-publishing outfits, because "anybody can publish there".

"Plan C" won't solve a goddamn thing. Good luck with "Plan D".

Quit asking for features that already exist.

~~~
zedshaw
Oh, an name of idonthack with no comments and no karma really. Well, since you
don't meet the requirements of notability in my world I'm just going to down
vote you.

Thanks for playing anonymous troll.

------
carussell
_Plan B ¶Put out a yearly publication on Lulu.com … This publication is then a
legit secondary source by a real publisher…_

Uh... _nope_.

Hey, I have an idea! Let's publish suggestions like this to a blog and purport
for it to be sound, so then it can be picked up by quacks who have an agenda
to push in a bunch of _completely unrelated_ situations. (Think vaccine scare
pushers or those looking for self-promotion, who already exist in abundance on
Wikipedia). Yeah! Let's _all_ eschew with stuff like a "nuanced
understanding".

Whether you are for or against this instance of deletionism, Shaw's plan B
here wouldn't successfully legitimize anything of any subject matter, _and
that's a good thing_.

~~~
carussell
I've seen this get voted down by a non-trivial amount, then upvotes bring it
back up, and now it's voted back down. Anyone care to, you know, comment about
whatever you're finding in my words to be an assault on your faculties of
reason?

~~~
zedshaw
It's hard for Wikipedia to say that other publishers are not legitimate
because they're online, when Wikipedia itself had to fight for legitimacy
because of it's online nature. Doing that means they're just tools of the
giant corporate publishers and not even _close_ to their original purpose.
Instead, they would need to recognize Lulu (like Amazon and the Library of
Congress do) and accept books from there or be shown as complete hypocrites.

Another thing to note: People say that Lulu doesn't have an editorial process
but they do. Once you publish a book they review it and if it meets their
standards they put it into Amazon and other sellers for you. Considering that
editorial standards at _all_ publishing houses is damn near zero except for
copy-editing and slapping a cover on, I think it's fair to say Lulu is just
fine as a source.

~~~
carussell
_Wikipedia itself had to fight for legitimacy_

Sorry, _what_? If someone told you Wikipedia succeeded in a "fight for
legitimacy", you were lied to.

 _they're just tools of the giant corporate publishers_

You don't have to be published by giant corporate publishers to be cited on
Wikipedia. You don't have be published by corporate publishers, giant or not.
There are an immense number of citations on Wikipedia that fail to meet those
criteria, and they can even be the best sources to cite (and not just because
of a lack of sources).

 _Instead, they would need to recognize Lulu (like Amazon and the Library of
Congress do) and accept books from there or be shown as complete hypocrites._

No, no; no need to argue here. You already had me sold. Down with nuanced
understanding, I say.

~~~
zedshaw
> No, no; no need to argue here. You already had me sold. Down with nuanced
> understanding, I say.

A "nuanced understanding" of rules just lets people enforce them arbitrarily.
Either make them concrete and fair, or find a way to not need them.

~~~
morn76
Zed, there's also a site called Deletionpedia which supposedly contains all
pages that have been removed from the English-language WP, usually because of
notability. Their content might be a good starting point for your
notnotable.com project.

~~~
gojomo
Deletionpedia appears dead; the deleted pages most recently mentioned on their
'Recent Changes' (disregarding server clock issues) are from June 2008:

[http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Special:R...](http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges)

