

The two-sides of Wikipedia - jancona
http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2010/06/the_twosides_of_wikipedia.php

======
tptacek
This guy is upset that Wikipedia deleted an article about a Swedish indie-rock
band that appears to have been covered in depth by one alt-weekly in Vancouver
and nobody else --- an article, incidentally, that was posted and deleted 3
times before that alt-weekly one-pager was published.

I don't know how we benefit from rehashing this over and over again, and since
this is the #1 issue people appear to have with Wikipedia (and the issue most
directly and frequently addressed by Wikipedia's voluminous site guidelines),
I think it's fair to point that out. But, once again, with feeling:

Wikipedia is _not_ an effort to organize all the world's information. That's
Google. Wikipedia is an effort to build the world's best encyclopedia. The
difference between an "encyclopedia" and "all the world's information" is that
the information in an encylopedia needs to be reliable. To ensure that the
information in the encylopedia has a chance at being reliable, the
encyclopedia is constrained to information that can be written about notable
topics cover in reliable secondary sources.

Virtually everybody who writes an article about a nonnotable topic ends up
objecting, often loudly, when the article is deleted. That's understandable.
Wikipedia could do a better job of warning people of the bar their topic needs
to clear. But they can't make resurrection of deleted articles trivial to
anybody, or they will spend all their time re-litigating deletions.

This is not helped by the fact that WP articles gain extremely favorable
search engine position almost by default.

People seem to have a really hard time with the idea that Wikipedia imposes
restrictions in order to make the lives of editors and maintainers easier. But
--- and I say this as a WP-skeptic --- the community effort that built WP is
monumental and unprecedented. They get the benefit of the doubt.

Regardless, the likelihood that the particular "speedy deletion" policy this
article complains about will ever be resolved is epsilon. Speedy deletion,
particularly of no-name bands, vanity books, websites, and tiny companies is
almost the first line of defense against article-creep. Changing the policy
would be an existential change to the way WP is managed.

Which doesn't matter, because you can resurrect speedy'd articles already; you
just need to take the article to Deletion Review and make a case for it. Maybe
WP needs an article on First Aid Kit. I like Fleet Foxes, too! (WP has
excellent coverage of Fleet Foxes). But WP is run by human beings donating
their time, and people make mistakes, and it is utterly disingenuous to
pretend like First Aid Kit is an obvious "keep".

~~~
mdisraeli
Wikipedia does not even aim to be the best encyclopedia, just an encyclopedia.

I've not read the actual article, as it seems that the host can't cope with
the traffic, but if it was speedily deleted, it probably deserved it - most
speedy deletions are genuine and helpful. However, as an experienced wikipedia
editor, I have to say that you are wrong.

A few years ago, I built up over 500 mainspace edits and received numerous
barnstars. I worked to correct minor errors, source references for articles,
rewrite articles to flow better, and even to reduce tensions amongst editors
and promote the editing of wikipedia by experts. But in the end, the corrosive
and bitter nature of the community drove me away, much as it drives away a lot
of people who are both knowledgable in their field and able to write about it.

"People seem to have a really hard time with the idea that Wikipedia imposes
restrictions in order to make the lives of editors and maintainers easier."

This idea is trivial to disprove. Firstly, the majority of articles do not
need constant attention, and the number of articles is not directly
proportional to the level of vandalism. The majority of editors focus on a few
articles, and certain high-interest topics get the most attention. Very few
editors actually go and work on random articles, so stating that there is any
sort of diversion of energy by the presense of minority interest articles is
false. If anything, removing minority interest kicks away the editors that
supported those articles, editors who might otherwise have contributed to
vandalism patrolling and other more widely helpful activities. Article-creep
is an entirely imagined threat that simply does not exist.

In fact, a lot of articles nominated for deletion for not being notable have
been fairly stable, unvandalised, verifiable, and even maintaned by their
creators and related community. No one had an issue with the presense of these
articles beyond not being notable enough - as if a purely electronic
encyclopedia had some pressing page limit about to be reached.

You mention secondary sources, yet wikipedia editors as a whole can't
understand how to use primary, secondary and tirtary sources correctly. It is
a widely held (and enforced) belief that, when wanting to state that something
was said in a book, only a secondary source can be cited. So they would prefer
a newspaper's review to the actual book itself, for example. This is, for most
cases, simply absurd.

Let's consider the deletion process. Officially, Articles For Deletion is
about concensus. In practice, it's typically just a vote by the in-croud, most
of which never explain their opinion beyond a brief comment. It doesn't matter
how much you source an article during this process - it will normally get
culled anyhow if they have taken a dislike. Indeed, there is a distinct
dislike of trying to improve articles - instead you should just nominate them
for deletion (never mind the fact that a quick google search can often give
useful references to shore up an article)!

I could go on, but I'd be here all night.

~~~
Perceval
As an administrator in my sixth year now, I thought I'd weigh in on one of the
issues you brought up.

 _It is a widely held (and enforced) belief that, when wanting to state that
something was said in a book, only a secondary source can be cited. So they
would prefer a newspaper's review to the actual book itself, for example. This
is, for most cases, simply absurd._

I think you're right, and I think that type of behavior is a
misinterpretation. There's obviously no need to cite a secondary source about
what a book literally says. In fact, in this case, rather than citing the
primary source and paraphrasing, the best thing would be to directly quote the
book.

The problem arises when "stat[ing] that something was said in a book" involves
an implicit judgment, synthesis, interpretation, or analysis of the book. In
this case, although you are trying your best to neutrally paraphrase a book's
content, you are in some way introducing your own judgment into the process.

In most cases if the editor is acting in good faith then there is no big
problem here. But on controversial subjects or articles working for featured
status, it is better to avoid the possibility of "original research" (for
those unfamiliar with this Wikipedia policy:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:OR>). Putting an editor's judgment
about a book is original research, but putting a verifiable and attributed
judgment from a secondary source isn't—secondary sources represent the 'state
of the debate' about an article's topic. It's the job of tertiary sources
(i.e. encyclopedias) to represent the state of the debate, not to write
original assessments of the topic.

I agree with you that too strict an enforcement of this rule ends in an
absurd, frustrating, and dispiriting situation for all involved. But on
controversial articles there is often a good reason to insist on verifiable
secondary sources.

~~~
derefr
Is a Wikipedia user allowed, in an article, to quote any arbitrary text that
exists in some permanent location (with an attribution and datestamp), as long
as it's not Wikipedia? Even if they themselves wrote it? Couldn't there just
be developed a bookmarklet for Wikipedia edits that takes a text selection,
posts it to the user's personal blog, and then turns the selection into a
quote from the blog? What would be the difference?

~~~
tokenadult
_Couldn't there just be developed a bookmarklet for Wikipedia edits that takes
a text selection, posts it to the user's personal blog, and then turns the
selection into a quote from the blog? What would be the difference?_

Blogs wouldn't be the sources I would want to see more of in Wikipedia. Dead
trees, because of their expense, still prompt more fact-checking and editing.

I'm an editor of an article that is before the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee
just now. (I happened to wander by, as a newbie Wikipedian, just as the
article went from failed mediation to arbitration.) There is enough making
stuff up already on Wikipedia. The last thing it needs is more ease in using
blog posts (generally very unreliable) as sources.

~~~
joeyh
With the amusing result that Wikipedia will cite newspaper articles that cite
information from blogs, rather than directly citing the blog.

(Happened to me and my blog. And as a data point, out of some hundreds of
newpaper etc articles about a blog post, the total number that seemed to
involve any kind of value-added fact checking was 2.)

~~~
mukyu
I have seen cases where news articles are written using the wikipedia article
but not citing it and then the information in the original wikipedia article
is citing using the news article that got the information from wikipedia in
the first place.

------
watt
The Lady Gaga article was too deleted one time (maybe more) in the beginning
(in year 2008). If that's saying something.

(
[http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Lady_gaga...](http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Lady_gaga_%28deleted_04_Jun_2008_at_03:00%29)
)

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

~~~
jrockway
The second to the wall will be people who think Wikipedia artices are worth
killing for.

~~~
gojomo
Don't panic, the revolution will be peaceful and well-read.

Perhaps we'll just scare the deletionists off to their own planet with (WP:V!)
stories of a giant mutant space goat.

