

Why Kenya's first Internet meme wasn't notable enough for Wikipedia - neilk
http://hblog.org/writing/the-missing-wikipedians/

======
quant18
_Why Kenya's first Internet meme wasn't notable enough for Wikipedia ... On
March 24, the Wall Street Journal’s Cassandra Vinograd commented on the story
... The article was deleted once again_

Actually in the end, it was notable enough for Wikipedia. The article was not
deleted again following the initial speedy deletions for copyright violation
and the like. It was nominated for a full deletion discussion, but every
single person other than the nominator voted "keep" [1]. Furthermore, the
nominator (the guy who initiated the full debate) isn't exactly a model
Wikipedian; he had been registered for less than half a year, and left in a
huff just two months later after administrators told him to be more patient
with some guy who had added unsourced names to a soccer roster article [2][3].

 _But it is doubtful whether Internet access alone will make people in
developing countries contribute to Wikipedia ... As those from developing
countries come online and try to edit the encyclopedia, a number of conflicts
have arisen due to tensions between so-called ‘inclusionists’ and
‘deletionists’ in the encyclopaedia ... the homophily of the current network
is coming up against its need to expand and diversify_

Incidentally, one of the users who proposed the Makmende article for deletion
(one of the other times, not the main debate above) is himself from a
developing country [4]. And he's contributed to Wikipedia numerous articles
about his home country (as well as others about Swedish, Taiwan, and Russian
chemists) [5].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Makmende)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Woogee>

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_not...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive612#All-
time_Long_Island_Rough_Riders_roster)

[4]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Makmende&actio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Makmende&action=historysubmit&diff=351789352&oldid=351785501)

[5] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Salih>

~~~
neilk
I think your answer is an exemplar of the problems the Wikipedia community
faces.

Insiders are satisfied that the process, honed over a decade, is working. At a
micro level there is nothing to point to that is actually wrong; indeed you
could argue the process is growing in sophistication and fairness.

Outsiders are often _very_ dissatisfied. From their perspective, new
contributions are assailed with objections from people who appear to be
proudly ignorant of the subject in question, and their work is subjected to
bewildering bureaucratic procedures. And this is reflected in the macro
statistics for contributors, which for the English Wikipedia are all flat or
even going in reverse.[1]

I think Wiki-insiders have become a bit disconnected from the experience of
outsiders, especially when it comes to social norms. To an insider, squabbles
about notability and even requests for deletion are normal. Insiders are so
used to this, they avoid being vulnerable to the criticisms of other
Wikipedians, by reflex; for instance, in footnoting everything they say. ;)
Imagine for a minute that you walked into a passionate notability discussion
without such habits already ingrained. How do you think it would go?

The article strongly implies that there is a Global North/Global South problem
here. So your point about how the core 'homophily' group aren't necessarily
from Europe or America is interesting. Perhaps the real axis is
Wikipedian/Non-wikipedian.

[1]
[http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_users#Growth_in...](http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_users#Growth_in_contributors_to_Wikipedia)

~~~
jacobolus
This is hardly a problem unique to Wikipedia, and no especially workable
solutions have been proposed that I’ve seen. If routine members are denied the
ability to do things like bring up deletion discussions, just because some of
them might get tendentiously caught up in the bureaucracy and thereby lose
sight of broader goals, that just makes the process more onerous when it _is_
necessary, which is often.

I think the biggest problem is that the “outsiders” you are generalizing
about, at least in your portrayal, are failing to realize that the “insiders”
are just a bunch of individual people, and don’t stand for any unified
position, conspiratorial or otherwise.

Communicating information to new users, especially ones who make little effort
to learn about community norms and practices, is extremely difficult, because
there is no way to force them to look at any particular explanation. Even talk
page messages lovingly crafted to be as helpful as possible are going to often
meet with “What, I have to spend more than 30 seconds figuring out why my
changes to an article were deemed a regression? No thanks.”

~~~
stcredzero
_Communicating information to new users, especially ones who make little
effort to learn about community norms and practices, is extremely difficult,
because there is no way to force them to look at any particular explanation._

Karma systems deal with this by using game dynamics. Beginners are channeled
into work which supposedly educates them and indoctrinates than into community
values.

~~~
jacobolus
I think there’s a big difference between a site whose visible product is
discussion, such as Hacker News, and a site whose discussion is only in
support of the visible product, like Wikipedia. Newcomers to a discussion
community can easily see practices and norms at work, because the process and
the results are the same thing, and are completely transparent by definition.
Since much if not most of the process of writing Wikipedia is reorganizing and
rewriting and cutting and polishing, without any one user having
responsibility for an article, it’s not obvious just quite what contributions
are most helpful, or even helpful at all.

I think the feedback (reversions with edit summaries, discussion on talk
pages, comments on users’ pages) are okay, but it’s an inherently different
kind of feedback than you’d get from, say, HN or Facebook or Twitter or Stack
Overflow. Just comes with the territory.

I think Wikipedia could do a lot better, especially if it had more programmers
working on technical improvements. But I wouldn’t guess the systems used by
discussion-oriented communities could be usefully easily transferred.

~~~
stcredzero
_the systems used by discussion-oriented communities could be usefully easily
transferred._

The specific mechanisms would have to be different, but the underlying
economics would be the same.

------
sambeau
Scotland has 3 patron saints: St Columba of Iona, St Margaret and St Andrew.

The Wikipedia page listed only St Andrew so I added the other two only to see
them immediately deleted. So I added them again. Again they were deleted.

I asked why they were continually being deleted. Someone, who claimed to be in
charge of the Scotland page, replied:

"if you ask any man in the street he will tell you that St Andrew is the
patron saint of Scotland"

~~~
arethuza
That would appear to be an inconsistency in Wikipedia - on Columba's page he
is listed as a patron saint of quite a few places/activities, including
Scotland.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columba>

Wouldn't it be great if something like Semantic Web technology could actually
detect these inconsistencies?

~~~
sambeau
Looking at the current Scotland page it would appear that I finally won the
argument :)

------
iwwr
It becomes dangerous when deletionists are made out of people who only know
how to delete content.

------
bpodgursky
Who deletes the deletionists?

~~~
cema
Nobody; they too have a right to be included.

------
sambeau
This is going to be a growing problem that Wikipedia will have to address.
Wikipedia is increasingly becoming a primary source.

If you witness an important event that has been reported inaccurately would
your first reaction be to write a newspaper article, write a blog, or edit the
Wikipedia page?

~~~
tokenadult
_Wikipedia is increasingly becoming a primary source._

That's not what Wikipedia claims to be, for any ordinary definition of
"primary source."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RS>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT>

~~~
sambeau
I realise this, I am suggesting they will eventually have to change.

At some point, the weight of millions of edits to itself will have to outweigh
a link to another single source.

------
InclinedPlane
Molly Lewis wrote a song about wikipedia after being kicked off it for not
being notable enough (it's geeky and hilarious):
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFxWhzJWJ4U>

Note: she now has a legit wikipedia entry:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Lewis>

