Re: [WikiEN-l] Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction
On Sun, 7 Mar 2010, David Goodman wrote: The criteria are the same as for any other source: whether it is used in publications that are acknowledged to be reputable. It is the way the outside world looks at it. You are replying to the question what rules make sense by answering the question what rules do we have, which misses the point. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction
On Fri, 5 Mar 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: Something that has a Rush Limbaugh episode dedicated to it is probably notable in any sane sense, even if Rush Limbaugh isn't a reliable source. Sorry, what if I say that I neither know nor care about anything Rush Limbaugh does or says (which is true), that I'm on the other side of the Atlantic from almost everyone who does care, and that puts me in the same position as about 90% of the world's population? The same thing that happens if it's in a newspaper (which counts as a reliable source) and you don't get the newspaper on the other side of the ocean, and the newspapers on your side won't even print it because nobody cares about it over where you are. The same thing that happens if there's some European town which gets an article even though nobody in America cares about it and its total population is smaller than the audience of Rush Limbaugh. You're just making an argument for European provincialism disguised as an argument against American provincialism. Notability, either in Wikipedia or in real life, doesn't require that everyone in the world care about something, just that enough people do. Enough people need not include you. Certainly if we didn't have the exclusion of most blogs, we would have a system that would be fantastically easy to game: how hard is to get some topic mentioned in a dozen blogs? Then you need to have criteria for blogs which are stricter than every blog but still looser than what we have now. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction
Ken Arromdee wrote: On Fri, 5 Mar 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: Something that has a Rush Limbaugh episode dedicated to it is probably notable in any sane sense, even if Rush Limbaugh isn't a reliable source. Sorry, what if I say that I neither know nor care about anything Rush Limbaugh does or says (which is true), that I'm on the other side of the Atlantic from almost everyone who does care, and that puts me in the same position as about 90% of the world's population? The same thing that happens if it's in a newspaper (which counts as a reliable source) and you don't get the newspaper on the other side of the ocean, and the newspapers on your side won't even print it because nobody cares about it over where you are. The same thing that happens if there's some European town which gets an article even though nobody in America cares about it and its total population is smaller than the audience of Rush Limbaugh. You're just making an argument for European provincialism disguised as an argument against American provincialism. Notability, either in Wikipedia or in real life, doesn't require that everyone in the world care about something, just that enough people do. Enough people need not include you. You miss my point entirely. Which is what if I say something entirely subjective as a judgement of notability, in reply to your subjective argument for notability. _That_ is why Wikipedia tries to have _some_ objective criteria for inclusion of topics. I made this point to you in a previous thread on notability. Certainly if we didn't have the exclusion of most blogs, we would have a system that would be fantastically easy to game: how hard is to get some topic mentioned in a dozen blogs? Then you need to have criteria for blogs which are stricter than every blog but still looser than what we have now. OK, this is a more reasonable debate. If the astronomers say that a particular blog on recent astronomy has the sort of stature for announcements that would warrant its use as a reference, then its use shoudn't be ruled out entirely. But are there criteria that are workable? Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction
Gwern Branwen wrote: The [[dwm]] deletion discussion has caught the interest of some of the more nerdy online communities: - http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b8s29/the_wikipedia_deletionists_are_at_it_again_this/ - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1163884 It's interesting to see the general levels of disgust and how few current editors there are in comparison to former, and read the dislike of WP:N. As usual, one has to sift the arguments. Why aren't blogs included under RS? That would be because they are generally unreliable? Why does a snowboarding slalom event not have its own article? That would be because no one has started one, I guess. Why does someone who left in 2006 still bring it up? Elephant's memory for grudges, I suppose. I certainly hope the usability initiatives bear fruit and entice regular people into becoming editors, because we're burning our bridges among our original techy contributor base. Yes, the logic should be that the encyclopedia during the next decade gets its priorities in line with the human race in general, or at least anglophone online members in general, rather than those of the geeky end of the spectrum. Whatever those are owed (which is much). Perhaps then we might get more of the perspective that writing off a database of three million articles because of the absence of the three of particular personal interest is a trifle blinkered. Though I'm not so sure about that ... Oh yes, and what Carcharoth said about FLOSS history needing the secondary sources: if they don't write the history, it isn't just WP coverage that suffers, but the whole documentation, especially if the primary sources are emails, perishable web pages, and suchlike. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction
On 5 March 2010 13:25, Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 5:58 AM, Charles Matthews Oh yes, and what Carcharoth said about FLOSS history needing the secondary sources: if they don't write the history, it isn't just WP coverage that suffers, but the whole documentation, especially if the primary sources are emails, perishable web pages, and suchlike. So basically, 'if you guys choose to use modern media like wikis and blogs, and not dead tree formats, then don't cry about your articles being deleted - it's all *your* fault! Cut your hair, you damn hippies!' A lot of these deletions are on the complete absence of evidence that anyone outside the project actually cares. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction
On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 1:28 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 5 March 2010 13:25, Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 5:58 AM, Charles Matthews Oh yes, and what Carcharoth said about FLOSS history needing the secondary sources: if they don't write the history, it isn't just WP coverage that suffers, but the whole documentation, especially if the primary sources are emails, perishable web pages, and suchlike. So basically, 'if you guys choose to use modern media like wikis and blogs, and not dead tree formats, then don't cry about your articles being deleted - it's all *your* fault! Cut your hair, you damn hippies!' A lot of these deletions are on the complete absence of evidence that anyone outside the project actually cares. By project you mean dwm, not Wikipedia, I presume? :-) Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction
On 5 March 2010 13:30, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 1:28 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: A lot of these deletions are on the complete absence of evidence that anyone outside the project actually cares. By project you mean dwm, not Wikipedia, I presume? :-) Yes. The objections are this is noteworthy for having x thousand downloaders and a busy forum. But no note outside of that. There's typically (I say *typically*) little evidence that anyone who doesn't already know about the project would ever, ever look it up. The YCombinator thread has a comment pointing out that they want to get into Wikipedia precisely *because* it isn't a random-crap bucket. No-one has as a checklist item make sure there's a Knol about our project. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction
On Fri, 5 Mar 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: As usual, one has to sift the arguments. Why aren't blogs included under RS? That would be because they are generally unreliable? One of the things that's bizarre about notability is that it requires reliable sources to establish notability. Something that has a Rush Limbaugh episode dedicated to it is probably notable in any sane sense, even if Rush Limbaugh isn't a reliable source. Likewise, whether blogs are reliable sources really shouldn't have anything to do with whether blogs indicate notability. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction
Ken Arromdee wrote: On Fri, 5 Mar 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: As usual, one has to sift the arguments. Why aren't blogs included under RS? That would be because they are generally unreliable? One of the things that's bizarre about notability is that it requires reliable sources to establish notability. Thought we went into all that ... Something that has a Rush Limbaugh episode dedicated to it is probably notable in any sane sense, even if Rush Limbaugh isn't a reliable source. Sorry, what if I say that I neither know nor care about anything Rush Limbaugh does or says (which is true), that I'm on the other side of the Atlantic from almost everyone who does care, and that puts me in the same position as about 90% of the world's population? Likewise, whether blogs are reliable sources really shouldn't have anything to do with whether blogs indicate notability. Fundamentally, whether or not we had notability or not as a guiding principle, the following should be true: the topics on WP should be determined by pull not push. I mean thaty editors should be deciding what to include by what there is to edit. They should not be generated by what is crassly and in bad Latin called a media agenda. That is because this effort is an encyclopedia, not a Limbopedia. Half-baked topics should spend time in wiki purgatory, until their sins of unreferencedness are expurgated. Certainly if we didn't have the exclusion of most blogs, we would have a system that would be fantastically easy to game: how hard is to get some topic mentioned in a dozen blogs? It is true that the mainstream print media will run with stories that are basically a put-up job sometimes; but that doesn't prove we should be less critical, but more strict. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction
Hopefully someone will write a proper history of the FLOSS (free/libre/open source software) movement someday. As someone who has sometimes tried to find sources on early 20th century stuff where it seems no-one wrote a history, I certainly hope the FLOSS history doesn't end up the same way. Carcharoth PS. But (having had to find out something about swings) at least we have these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_%28seat%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_boarding On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 8:15 PM, Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com wrote: The [[dwm]] deletion discussion has caught the interest of some of the more nerdy online communities: - http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b8s29/the_wikipedia_deletionists_are_at_it_again_this/ - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1163884 It's interesting to see the general levels of disgust and how few current editors there are in comparison to former, and read the dislike of WP:N. I certainly hope the usability initiatives bear fruit and entice regular people into becoming editors, because we're burning our bridges among our original techy contributor base. ([[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dwm (2nd nomination)]] is trending keep, but many FLOSS articles have been deleted lately, and many will yet feel the axe.) -- gwern ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction
Perhaps in future we could send these to the incubator (unless their BLP or the like) instead of deleting then see if the people want to work on them? -Peachey ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
