Re: [WikiEN-l] Another notability casualty
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 05:25 AM 3/6/2010, Charles Matthews wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Wikipedia painted itself into this corner. Indeed, said corner being #5 website in the world according to recent Comscore figures. The onus is still on those who think the system is broken. Onus? No, I'm seeing masses of highly experienced editors leaving the project, with those replacing them being relatively clueless, as to the original vision, which was itself brilliant but incomplete. The biggest problem with the system is massive inefficiency, with huge amounts of editor labor necessary to make decisions and maintain them, long-term. A secondary problem is that the process does not reliably seek consensus, which is an essential element in the estimation of the degree of neutrality obtained. And the massive inefficiency compounds this problem. You can sail on, believing that it's working just fine. And, I suppose, you can believe that all the admins who have left, or who maintain comments that it's broken, are just, what? Sour grapes? There is a lot of criticism out there that is obviously ignorant. But that's not all there is. Yes, there is also stuff that is plainly directed against the project, from some of WR to the WSJ's reiteration of the discredited Ortega statistics (see the most recent Signpost). It doesn't take too much to distinguish legitimate beefs from troll-talk. Some of us who have been around for a while might think that a smaller, better-trained workforce could possibly get on faster with constructive work. It seems well-established that the big influx of 2006-7 has now sorted itself out into those who have learned the system and are supporting it substantially, and those who have moved on (fnding tweets more to their attention span, whatever). People do come and go anyway on a big site. But we were talking about notability. (Notability has always been a broken concept, but the real question is whether the system as a whole is broken, rather than whether individual subjective judgements always agree with the result of deletion processes.) The system is broken. It's obvious. But almost all of those who recognize this also believe that it's impossible to fix, and so they either leave in despair or they struggle on for a while. I'm unusual. I know it's broken, and I know why, and I know how to fix it. And what I'd suggest would take almost no effort. And it's been opposed at every turn, attempts were made to delete and salt a small piece of the proposal, years ago, a very modest experiment that would have changed no policy or guideline. I agree with unusual - the jury seems still to be out on the rest. What I'd propose is very simple, but it happens that it's also very difficult to understand without background; I happen to have the background. Few Wikipedia editors do. I could be wrong, but what I've seen is that the *very idea* arouses very strong reactions. Based on ... what? I could say, but it's really not up to me. I can do nothing by myself except set up structures that people can use or not. I proposed a change to the guideline, a special provision, that *generally* a recognized national member society of a notable international society would be notable. If you know the notability debates, you can anticipate the objections. Notability is not inherited. Indeed, it isn't. Not normally. DGG has already addressed the substance. What's happening is that guidelines are being interpreted as fixed rules, instead of as ways of documenting how the community operates. If documentation of actual decision-making is pursued, then inconsistencies can be directly addressed, and can produce more refined -- and more accurate -- guidelines. This build-up of experience, documented, is what's normal with structures like that of Wikipedia, if they are to remain sustainable. That this is actively blocked, that attempts to document actual practice are strongly resisted, is part of the problem. Instruction creep. But that assumes that the guidelines are fixed rules, not simply documentation that can be read to understand how the community is likely to decide on an issue. Some of the more high-profile associated topics of notable topic X can be mentioned in the article on X, but that doesn't mean they are all worth a separate article. Where does the decision get made? There is notable topic, amateur radio. There is an international organization which reocognizes national societies, one per nation. It's the IARU, in the situation being discussed. It intrinsically creates 200 possible subtopics, organized by nation, by the nature of the situation. Each one of these *probably* has reliable sources that would justify a separate article, given a deep enough search, but suppose there were a couple of exceptions. If we start valuing editor time, a major oversight in the
Re: [WikiEN-l] Another notability casualty
At 04:34 AM 3/7/2010, Charles Matthews wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: What I'm seeing from Mr. Matthews is an argument, that, no, the guidelines should prevail, and we should not change the guidelines to reflect actual practice. I'm certainly not saying that, and it doesn't represent my view. I didn't understand what you were saying so well, at first. Thanks for noticing and acknowledging that. It helps. Proposals to create nearly 200 stubs in an area on the assurance that they are probably verifiable somehow falls under a different general heading, the creation of a walled garden of material where ordinary editors are basically told to keep out. Well, not exactly. But because the standard set up by the decision about the assurance is simple and applicable to all 200 articles, it would become difficult to AfD them. And it should be difficult, except in one way. If one disagrees with the standard, discuss the standard. Consensus can change. But individually AfDing the articles, making a claim that has been repeatedly rejected, no, that's not okay. Making that global decision on notability, which would apply only specifically to the specific international organization and its members, and only by extension and individual decision to many more international organizations of similar nature, simply allows results to become predictable without writing them in stone. Nothing about this would prevent ordinary editors from working on the articles. Walled gardens are no good when editors assumed to know are in charge of the content. That's correct. But this was not the issue here. Some better approach needs to be negotiated, allowing at least some informal guidelines to emerge. Yes, exactly. Documenting actual practice, without presuming that this is binding. It's actually the Wikipedia way, but it's being lost (because it's presumed that guidelines are binding, that became obvious in this affair, and then, if they are binding, they must be written authoritatively and prescriptively, which then can make them impossible to manage, editing them becomes highly contentious, with decisions being made by the few who care to deal with those pages On the other hand, that some kind of result happened and was sustained isn't deniable. Until and unless it changes and that is sustained. (Example: which scholastic philosophers to include? We tend to go by the contents of academic works of reference as at least a sensible approach.) That's right. It's posible to decide, for example, that all philosophers listed in some authoritative reference are notable, ipso facto. That doesn't mean that no others are notable, but it does mean that far less time might be spent demanding sources or the article will be deleted. Someone, instead, who sees unsourced material might tag it, or, later, remove it, but the article doesn't then get deleted. The listing in the authoritative source would remain, as a minimum. Another example I'd propose, without insisting on it, particularly (i.e., maybe it's a bad idea, it's just being proposed as something that could be considered), it's a case I ran across when I started looking at abusive blacklistings. Lyrikline.org is a German poetry site with the support of the German government; it's quite notable. It has a review process by which it decides what poets to host, and it hosts a biography, some poetry, and audio of the poet reading. It would be possible to determine, as an example, that all poets with lyrikline.org pages were, ipso facto, notable. As I recall, we might gain several hundred poet stubs, fairly easily. (The poets are from all over the world.) Why would this indicate notability? Well, the decision that is being made there is whether or not the poet is notable! And that decision is being made by those knowledgeable in the field. It's probably a sounder decision than one made by the general Wikipedia editorship. By adopting it, we could avoid a lot of unnecessary dispute. ___ 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] Another notability casualty
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Wikipedia painted itself into this corner. Indeed, said corner being #5 website in the world according to recent Comscore figures. The onus is still on those who think the system is broken. (Notability has always been a broken concept, but the real question is whether the system as a whole is broken, rather than whether individual subjective judgements always agree with the result of deletion processes.) snip I proposed a change to the guideline, a special provision, that *generally* a recognized national member society of a notable international society would be notable. If you know the notability debates, you can anticipate the objections. Notability is not inherited. Indeed, it isn't. Some of the more high-profile associated topics of notable topic X can be mentioned in the article on X, but that doesn't mean they are all worth a separate article. Such decisions should go case-by-case, but in general terms they are about structuring of content, rather than permissible content. [[Mary Ball Washington]], mother of George Washington, gets an article (not very substantial); her mother doesn't. I don't see that recognized national is a very different attribute from notable, but certain office-holders might be considered worth an article ex officio (general notability doesn't recognise anything ex officio, I think, but arguably more special guidelines could.) snip 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] Another notability casualty
On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 10:25 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: snip Some of the more high-profile associated topics of notable topic X can be mentioned in the article on X, but that doesn't mean they are all worth a separate article. Such decisions should go case-by-case, but in general terms they are about structuring of content, rather than permissible content. Structuring of content is an interesting question. Sometimes small stubs are better than a list, as it is easier to link to separate articles than to items in a list, especially if there is no real unifying structure for the list. Sometimes it takes a while to work out what list, or summary article, something should be part of, but if done well, that can work well. But sometimes separate articles is the way to go. Even if the individual articles are unlikely to be much more than a GA-level article at best, the separate articles approach has several advantages, even if some content gets duplicated across several articles. 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] Another notability casualty
We will never solve the problem of structuring--different encyclopedias at various times have done it quite opposite. (Some French encyclopedias have even consisted of 5 or 6 very long volume length articles, divided in an elaborate scheme to a number of subsections. Recall that the print Brittanica for many years was divided into two separate parts, one with long articles, one with short ones--and with many subjects having a different article in each section. In an electronic encyclopedia using structured information, and sufficiently elaborate metadata and frameworks, to provide the different frameworks, the reader would be able to convert back and forth between separated and combined formats, just like an electronic map can display one or more layers . The problem is not structure. The problem is that people take having a separate article as an indicator of importance, and will continue to do so. Readers have expectations, and we write for them, not ourselves, so we need to conform to what they expect of an encyclopedia format. But another problem is content: in an open edited encyclopedia with no enforceable editorial guidelines, experience shows that the content of individual items in long articles will tend to shorten, and combining into large articles loses information. When there are short articles, people tend to want to make them longer, and they look for and add information--information sometimes in unencyclopedic detail. We are spending far too much time debating over structure of individual articles--it would be much better to have fixed conventions for different types of articles, and everyone write to them. Deliberately taking a field I do not work in, we could for example decide that all the athletic teams of a college will be grouped in one article separate from the college, regardless of importance and regardless of how how long or short the resulting article is. Or we could decide that for some sports, such as football, we would always make a separate article if there were a varsity team. Either way, people would know where to write the material. (I am not advocating for doing either one of them, except to say that either one would be simpler to deal with than a mixture, and after their first experience with the encyclopedia, people would know where to look. according to reader choice. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 9:04 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 10:25 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: snip Some of the more high-profile associated topics of notable topic X can be mentioned in the article on X, but that doesn't mean they are all worth a separate article. Such decisions should go case-by-case, but in general terms they are about structuring of content, rather than permissible content. Structuring of content is an interesting question. Sometimes small stubs are better than a list, as it is easier to link to separate articles than to items in a list, especially if there is no real unifying structure for the list. Sometimes it takes a while to work out what list, or summary article, something should be part of, but if done well, that can work well. But sometimes separate articles is the way to go. Even if the individual articles are unlikely to be much more than a GA-level article at best, the separate articles approach has several advantages, even if some content gets duplicated across several articles. 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 ___ 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] Another notability casualty
Can you remember which French encyclopedias did that elaborate scheme. It sounds interesting. The difference with Wikipedia is the possibilities of linkage and transclusions and differing formats available in a digital encyclopedia, but the downside is the inconsistency in the solutions devised and discarded and reinvented over the years in an encyclopedia anyone can edit - it is sometimes difficult for consistency to emerge. I agree that something driven by reader choice would be good, but still with editorial guidance. Carcharoth On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 4:39 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: We will never solve the problem of structuring--different encyclopedias at various times have done it quite opposite. (Some French encyclopedias have even consisted of 5 or 6 very long volume length articles, divided in an elaborate scheme to a number of subsections. Recall that the print Brittanica for many years was divided into two separate parts, one with long articles, one with short ones--and with many subjects having a different article in each section. In an electronic encyclopedia using structured information, and sufficiently elaborate metadata and frameworks, to provide the different frameworks, the reader would be able to convert back and forth between separated and combined formats, just like an electronic map can display one or more layers . The problem is not structure. The problem is that people take having a separate article as an indicator of importance, and will continue to do so. Readers have expectations, and we write for them, not ourselves, so we need to conform to what they expect of an encyclopedia format. But another problem is content: in an open edited encyclopedia with no enforceable editorial guidelines, experience shows that the content of individual items in long articles will tend to shorten, and combining into large articles loses information. When there are short articles, people tend to want to make them longer, and they look for and add information--information sometimes in unencyclopedic detail. We are spending far too much time debating over structure of individual articles--it would be much better to have fixed conventions for different types of articles, and everyone write to them. Deliberately taking a field I do not work in, we could for example decide that all the athletic teams of a college will be grouped in one article separate from the college, regardless of importance and regardless of how how long or short the resulting article is. Or we could decide that for some sports, such as football, we would always make a separate article if there were a varsity team. Either way, people would know where to write the material. (I am not advocating for doing either one of them, except to say that either one would be simpler to deal with than a mixture, and after their first experience with the encyclopedia, people would know where to look. according to reader choice. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 9:04 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 10:25 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: snip Some of the more high-profile associated topics of notable topic X can be mentioned in the article on X, but that doesn't mean they are all worth a separate article. Such decisions should go case-by-case, but in general terms they are about structuring of content, rather than permissible content. Structuring of content is an interesting question. Sometimes small stubs are better than a list, as it is easier to link to separate articles than to items in a list, especially if there is no real unifying structure for the list. Sometimes it takes a while to work out what list, or summary article, something should be part of, but if done well, that can work well. But sometimes separate articles is the way to go. Even if the individual articles are unlikely to be much more than a GA-level article at best, the separate articles approach has several advantages, even if some content gets duplicated across several articles. 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 ___ 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] Another notability casualty
Carcharoth wrote: Can you remember which French encyclopedias did that elaborate scheme. It sounds interesting. The difference with Wikipedia is the possibilities of linkage and transclusions and differing formats available in a digital encyclopedia, but the downside is the inconsistency in the solutions devised and discarded and reinvented over the years in an encyclopedia anyone can edit - it is sometimes difficult for consistency to emerge. I agree that something driven by reader choice would be good, but still with editorial guidance. I don't know about full volume length articles, but it's a plausible notion. More realistically, traditional encyclopedias took advantage of alphabetical order without regard to article size. Thus in the Espasa-Calpe versión is a 46 page article with all but the first three pages being about versions of the Bible. It is immediately preceded by a 3-line article about Versiola (a village in Italy with population 600), and followed by a two line dictionary definition of versista. In the first edition of the EB 30 pages about navigation is preceded by two lines about the Mexican town of Navidad, and followed by NAUMACHIA, in antiquity, a shew or spectacle among the ancient Romans, representing a sea-fight. The 12-volume Smithsonian Scientific Series of the 1920s and 1930s does not call itself an encyclopedia and is not alphabetical, yet is encyclopedic in its coverage of science. Jeremy Collier's Dictionary from 1686 used an alphabetical arrangement, but is really encyclopedic in content. The long/short article volumes in the EB is very recent since it only started with the 15th edition. Wiki is not paper is a great advantage for linking, and building other fantastic connections between articles, but does not handle stubs very well. Knowing when to merge a stub into a list is an art that must necessarily remain flexible. I don't believe that we should attach too much weight to consistency; that too easily becomes an obsession. I have no interest in working to make any article good or featured; if others want to take on that challenge they are welcome to do so. The vast majority of articles will still never make it there. That's fine! Consistency is the enemy of creative solutions. In the simplest case there may be two equally good ways of presenting a topic. Do we really need to insist that one way is better than the other for the sake of consistency. Perhaps in the distant future one may prove better than the other, but we cannot now prejudge that. The readers' choice principle is fine as long as it does not impose reader's choice. The big drawback here is that a reader cannot choose what he does not know about. Personal experience has shown that I am in a minority when it comes to liking black jellybeans, though I find it annoying that the majority who selectively exclude black jellybeans deny me the experience of variety when they leave only the black jellybeans in the bowl. Some may want that black jellybeans be banned from assortments on the grounds that they are forced to pay for something they don't want. If that were to happen the people who buy assortments may never even know that black jellybeans exist. Ec ___ 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] Another notability casualty
At 05:25 AM 3/6/2010, Charles Matthews wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Wikipedia painted itself into this corner. Indeed, said corner being #5 website in the world according to recent Comscore figures. The onus is still on those who think the system is broken. Onus? No, I'm seeing masses of highly experienced editors leaving the project, with those replacing them being relatively clueless, as to the original vision, which was itself brilliant but incomplete. The biggest problem with the system is massive inefficiency, with huge amounts of editor labor necessary to make decisions and maintain them, long-term. A secondary problem is that the process does not reliably seek consensus, which is an essential element in the estimation of the degree of neutrality obtained. And the massive inefficiency compounds this problem. You can sail on, believing that it's working just fine. And, I suppose, you can believe that all the admins who have left, or who maintain comments that it's broken, are just, what? Sour grapes? There is a lot of criticism out there that is obviously ignorant. But that's not all there is. (Notability has always been a broken concept, but the real question is whether the system as a whole is broken, rather than whether individual subjective judgements always agree with the result of deletion processes.) The system is broken. It's obvious. But almost all of those who recognize this also believe that it's impossible to fix, and so they either leave in despair or they struggle on for a while. I'm unusual. I know it's broken, and I know why, and I know how to fix it. And what I'd suggest would take almost no effort. And it's been opposed at every turn, attempts were made to delete and salt a small piece of the proposal, years ago, a very modest experiment that would have changed no policy or guideline. What I'd propose is very simple, but it happens that it's also very difficult to understand without background; I happen to have the background. Few Wikipedia editors do. I could be wrong, but what I've seen is that the *very idea* arouses very strong reactions. Based on ... what? I could say, but it's really not up to me. I can do nothing by myself except set up structures that people can use or not. I proposed a change to the guideline, a special provision, that *generally* a recognized national member society of a notable international society would be notable. If you know the notability debates, you can anticipate the objections. Notability is not inherited. Indeed, it isn't. Not normally. DGG has already addressed the substance. What's happening is that guidelines are being interpreted as fixed rules, instead of as ways of documenting how the community operates. If documentation of actual decision-making is pursued, then inconsistencies can be directly addressed, and can produce more refined -- and more accurate -- guidelines. This build-up of experience, documented, is what's normal with structures like that of Wikipedia, if they are to remain sustainable. That this is actively blocked, that attempts to document actual practice are strongly resisted, is part of the problem. Instruction creep. But that assumes that the guidelines are fixed rules, not simply documentation that can be read to understand how the community is likely to decide on an issue. Some of the more high-profile associated topics of notable topic X can be mentioned in the article on X, but that doesn't mean they are all worth a separate article. Where does the decision get made? There is notable topic, amateur radio. There is an international organization which reocognizes national societies, one per nation. It's the IARU, in the situation being discussed. It intrinsically creates 200 possible subtopics, organized by nation, by the nature of the situation. Each one of these *probably* has reliable sources that would justify a separate article, given a deep enough search, but suppose there were a couple of exceptions. If we start valuing editor time, a major oversight in the development of project structure, we might say that if, in almost all cases, with adequate work, we could find reliable sources for 190 articles, we mighg as well treat all these subtopics identically. Is there any harm to the project from this? But where does the decision get made? Is it possible to make a global decision as I'm suggesting? I.e., in *this* situation, we will give each national member society an article, as a stub, based on national scope and IARU recognition, with the IARU web site as the source. Is it reliable for the purpose of determining that the national member society is notable? What I see here is that those who argue guidelines as an abstraction are saying No, and they give reasons that are abstract. But those who know the field, uniformly, are saying, Yes, and they seem to be bringing neutral editors along with them, and closing admins who have
Re: [WikiEN-l] Another notability casualty
At 09:04 AM 3/6/2010, Carcharoth wrote: Structuring of content is an interesting question. Sometimes small stubs are better than a list, as it is easier to link to separate articles than to items in a list, especially if there is no real unifying structure for the list. Sometimes it takes a while to work out what list, or summary article, something should be part of, but if done well, that can work well. As a process junkie, my concern is how the decision gets made. When there is an article covering the *class* of articles, and national society members of a notable international society provides such an example, then a list can be used either within that article or separately. Then the question arises as whether available sourced detail about each society should go in the list or in stubs (with stubs becoming more extensive articles where justified by the existence of sources.) That's a decision on which no general guideline could be set, I believe, at least not at this point. One of the ways of creating guidelines is to link to examples of decisions, which can then point out inconsistencies, and sometimes these inconsistencies represent truly different cases (i.e., they aren't really inconsistent, because the conditions are different) or represent a need for attention to one or the other examples. Creating better guidelines like this could actually result in cleaner content. But not by making guidelines controlling, simply by making them reflect actual practice, which might, transiently, actually cite contradictory practices. When actual practice conflicts with a guideline, if the actual practice is cited in the guideline as an exception, it then can attract wider review. Is this good? I think so! Maybe the actual practice is what's defective and what will fix it is changing the actual decisions, not demanding that the guideline reflect the ideal. But sometimes separate articles is the way to go. Even if the individual articles are unlikely to be much more than a GA-level article at best, the separate articles approach has several advantages, even if some content gets duplicated across several articles. Yes. The radio amateur stubs all say more or less the same thing in the lede, boilerplate. But that's short. They have the logo of the society in a template. The articles are mostly brief and attractive. There are two lists, the list of national members of the IARU, in the IARU article, and a List of amateur radio organizations. The latter is a far more problematic case, and attention will turn to it and the articles listed there. The deletionist -- no aspersions intended -- focused on the national organizations, where the strongest case can be made. If this editor had succeeded there, there then would have been a pile of AfDs very likely to be successful. I have not expressed an opinion on the pile of local clubs shown in the overall list, but I'm guessing that consensus there will be to merge most of the individual articles back to the list, once the national organization issue is out of the way, which it largely is. There will be, I expect, if I'm not banned in short order, a DRV on the single deleted national organization, and I expect it's likely to be successful at undeletion. Or not. *Wikipedia process is unreliable.* Sure, ultimately a consensus can be found, but it can be horrific getting there. ___ 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] Another notability casualty
On 7 March 2010 00:00, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: Onus? No, I'm seeing masses of highly experienced editors leaving the project, with those replacing them being relatively clueless, as to the original vision, which was itself brilliant but incomplete. You aren't allowing for the typical length of intense participation in *any* online environment typically being 18-24 months (MMORPGs, etc), and that the stated reason may not be the reason. (Protip: someone who gets blocked as much as you do should consider the possibility there are things they fundamentally don't understand about the environment.) - 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] Another notability casualty
On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 7:31 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 7 March 2010 00:00, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: Onus? No, I'm seeing masses of highly experienced editors leaving the project, with those replacing them being relatively clueless, as to the original vision, which was itself brilliant but incomplete. You aren't allowing for the typical length of intense participation in *any* online environment typically being 18-24 months (MMORPGs, etc), and that the stated reason may not be the reason. This, incidentally, allows for a third option to Abd's dilemma: an editor can just be patient. Here's a personal example, lightly fictionalized (because I know that if I specify the page and edits, *someone* will take it upon themselves to undo them just to make a point). 3 or 4 years ago, there was a certain controversy, which got written up into an article. The article included a chronology with referencing/links to the site which first noticed the discrepancy which started the whole shebang. This site was considerably disapproved of, and the Powers That Be decreed that links to it were banned, and of course, without the referencing links, the initial entries in the chronology were now unreferenced OR* to be removed. Bans were spoken of. I gave up on the subject, and instead added a reminder to revisit it in a few years' time - roughly 2 of the canonical cycles. That timer fired a few months ago. I took the material as it was in the last removal, and added it back in. Not one person has commented about or opposed the addition. * I'll note in passing that OR has policy-creeped considerably since the early days; certainly the people who originally were invoking OR against Time Cube or Archimedes Plutonium or the electric universe would be a little surprised at current usage. -- 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] Another notability casualty
Systematically arranged encyclopedias: Well, checking my references, a little more than 6 vols., but on the principle: There were. 1. Encyclopedie francaise, 1935-66 was published in 21 topical volumes. , with the contents in each arranged by topic, with an alphabetic index to each volume: titles were such as v.2 Physics v.3 Astronomy 4. Life ... v.19 Philosophy religion. in other words, 21 long articles. ( issued loose-leaf for updating, rather than in bound vols. ) 2.Encyclopedie de la Pleaide, 1955- 26 vols. Examples: v.18 Biology, v., 20 Geography 3. In Spanish Enciclopia Labor , 1955-60, in 9 vols., including v. 7 Literature and music, v. 8, arts, sports, games 4. In Dutch, eerste nederlandse systematisch ingericht encyclopedie 1946-53 9.v. e.g. v.2 literature and the arts, v.3, History sociology politics and in English: Oxford Junior encyclopedia. 1964 13 v. , such as v.8: Engineering, v.9 recreation , but with the articles arranged alphabetically within each vol. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 7:48 PM, Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 7:31 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 7 March 2010 00:00, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: Onus? No, I'm seeing masses of highly experienced editors leaving the project, with those replacing them being relatively clueless, as to the original vision, which was itself brilliant but incomplete. You aren't allowing for the typical length of intense participation in *any* online environment typically being 18-24 months (MMORPGs, etc), and that the stated reason may not be the reason. This, incidentally, allows for a third option to Abd's dilemma: an editor can just be patient. Here's a personal example, lightly fictionalized (because I know that if I specify the page and edits, *someone* will take it upon themselves to undo them just to make a point). 3 or 4 years ago, there was a certain controversy, which got written up into an article. The article included a chronology with referencing/links to the site which first noticed the discrepancy which started the whole shebang. This site was considerably disapproved of, and the Powers That Be decreed that links to it were banned, and of course, without the referencing links, the initial entries in the chronology were now unreferenced OR* to be removed. Bans were spoken of. I gave up on the subject, and instead added a reminder to revisit it in a few years' time - roughly 2 of the canonical cycles. That timer fired a few months ago. I took the material as it was in the last removal, and added it back in. Not one person has commented about or opposed the addition. * I'll note in passing that OR has policy-creeped considerably since the early days; certainly the people who originally were invoking OR against Time Cube or Archimedes Plutonium or the electric universe would be a little surprised at current usage. -- 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] Another notability casualty
At 11:39 AM 3/6/2010, David Goodman wrote: We will never solve the problem of structuring--different encyclopedias at various times have done it quite opposite. That's a non sequitur. The solved the problem. Differently. (Some French encyclopedias have even consisted of 5 or 6 very long volume length articles, divided in an elaborate scheme to a number of subsections. Recall that the print Brittanica for many years was divided into two separate parts, one with long articles, one with short ones--and with many subjects having a different article in each section. I have that encyclopedia, it was brilliant. The next step was hypertext. Wikipedia didn't adopt a layered hypetext model, but a flat model, which then does not allow a notability hierarchy, only an all-or-nothing decision, more or less. Either a separate article or inclusion as a section in an article (or item in a list) or no inclusion at all. Part of this was a decision not to allow subpages. Using a subpage structure would allow a top-level page on a topic that would require high notability and stable and broad consensus, with the notability level being enough to justify the attention that it takes to gain high consensus when there is controversy, in particular. Then the top-level page would refer to subpages on details and related topic as best classified. If we began to understand notability as not absolute, but relative, and use such a page structure, notability decisions would be *classifications,* not absolute, as such. If it's determined that there is a certain minimum standard for an article to exist at all, (basically, WP:V), then the argument becomes, not Keep/Delete for anything that can satisfy the policy, but what level of notability and classification is best *for the reader*. The present Wikipedia structure, to this reader, is a mess. Sometimes I go to an article and it's just right, but more often there is either too little detail or too much. Various revert wars, in topics where there is either controversy or some faction or other wants the project to be A Certain WAy, have removed much of what used to be of high utility in topics I know. I read Robert Cleese the other way. I love Mr. Cleese. And the article made me want to throw up. It's not something specific, it is the indiscriminate mixture of truly notable information wtih boring *verifiable* detail, assuming it's verifiable. With a subpage structure, there would be a top level article on Mr. Cleese. (Actually, it might not be fully top, there might be a Comedians article above it, or something like that, or maybe Biographies/Comedians etc. The Comedians page might be a general history of Comedians, types of comedians, etc, based on sources, etc. On the Cleese page would be an overview of his life and the most notable aspects of it, like you'd find in an ordinary biographical encyclopedia. And then there would be, as appropriate, subpages to cover the boring detail, which may, in fact, be of interest to someone. In an electronic encyclopedia using structured information, and sufficiently elaborate metadata and frameworks, to provide the different frameworks, the reader would be able to convert back and forth between separated and combined formats, just like an electronic map can display one or more layers . Yeah, and subpages actually make this easy with any browser. I'm not sure that combined formats are needed, but that's a software issue. Collapse boxes are another approach that can be used instead of subpages. And, suppose that this or some idea is a good one. How in the world would a decision be made? I see that the simplest decisions can take such horrifically complicated process that people have mostly given up. The problem is not structure. DGG has not understood my references to structure. It's about decision-making process, which others have called governance. But how the project is presented is a *kind* of structure, a different kind than what I'm talking about, and there is an inter-relation. The problem is that people take having a separate article as an indicator of importance, and will continue to do so. Readers have expectations, and we write for them, not ourselves, so we need to conform to what they expect of an encyclopedia format. The expectation was inappropriate, setting that up was an error, that predictably created high inefficiency, as the boundary is constantly debated. We have piles of articles that do not match reader's expectations of importance, and missing articles that do, largely because readers vary and have different needs and expectations. The sum of human knowledge creates expectations that are seriously at variance with actual practice. But another problem is content: in an open edited encyclopedia with no enforceable editorial guidelines, experience shows that the content of individual items in long articles will tend to shorten, and combining into large articles
Re: [WikiEN-l] Another notability casualty
At 01:10 PM 3/6/2010, Carcharoth wrote: I agree that something driven by reader choice would be good, but still with editorial guidance. With a print encyclopedia, there is a publisher who is in charge. However, the publisher is dependent upon the buyers of encyclopedias, who are generally either readers or involved with readers and serving readers more directly. The publisher then manages the editors, according to the standards it develops, either to please the readers, or to please the founders and investors (who may have independent motives, for better or for worse.) The editors review and edit contributions by writers, to make them conform to the criteria set by the publisher. Good editors encourage writers and, at the same time, contain what they do within established boundaries. Sometimes, I believe, writers are called editors, particularly if it's a writer coordinating any synthesizing content from a number of writers, but I'm sure DGG can contribute more and better detail. Then, if this is the case, what I'm calling editors may be called managing editors. Wikipedia mashed it all together, resulting in the predictable: massive confusion of roles, and the classic cats-and-dogs struggle between writers and editors, in the worst form. Classic publishing structure was designed to moderate and mediate this, for efficiency. Good writers are hard to find! So too, really good editors. The Wikipedia model was innovative, in a way, but did not adequately consider efficiency. That seemed to be fine when new editors were arriving in droves. In the long run, the lack of efficient process will kill the project, if something doesn't change. ___ 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] Another notability casualty
At 07:31 PM 3/6/2010, David Gerard wrote: On 7 March 2010 00:00, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: Onus? No, I'm seeing masses of highly experienced editors leaving the project, with those replacing them being relatively clueless, as to the original vision, which was itself brilliant but incomplete. You aren't allowing for the typical length of intense participation in *any* online environment typically being 18-24 months (MMORPGs, etc), and that the stated reason may not be the reason. Indeed. Or it might be the reason, or be related to the reason. (Protip: someone who gets blocked as much as you do should consider the possibility there are things they fundamentally don't understand about the environment.) Well, certainly that's a possiblity. The reverse is also a possibility, and Wikipedia process, basically, can't figure out the difference. It's not like I've never seen this before. Time will tell. ___ 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] Another notability casualty
At 05:53 PM 2/24/2010, Ken Arromdee wrote: You shouldn't *need* to go through this level of debate just to keep a page around when the notability rules could be fixed instead. Otherwise we're no longer the encyclopedia anyone can edit, we're the encyclopedia that anyone with an extraordinary level of debate skills can edit. Wikipedia painted itself into this corner. Before being blocked, a minor inconvenience this week, I came across a situation with 13 AfD's filed on national member societies of the International Amateur Radio Union. Some of these societies had existed since the 1920s, and it is a certainty that reliable source exists for them, but those sources can be a devil to find, unless someone has access to and is willing to comb through old issues of QST, or can search in local print archives of newspapers from the time of recognition or other notable events. WP:CLUB notes that national-level nonprofit organizations are *generally* notable. In this case, the IARU, at some point, when they were not members and did not participate in the decision except by applying, decided to admit them as the sole representative of the entire nation in the IARU. We have the IARU as a source for the fact that they are the national members, and the IARU points to the national societies' web sites, and we often have those sites as a source for additional information about the societies, information that is highly likely to be true. In ordinary language, that means that they are reliable for that purpose. This is not controversial information. But the problem is obvious. I proposed a change to the guideline, a special provision, that *generally* a recognized national member society of a notable international society would be notable. If you know the notability debates, you can anticipate the objections. Notability is not inherited. A bit more puzzling was the claim that the IARU was not independent from the admitted member. As to the act of admission, it certainly was! It will only admit one society, and it appears that when there are conflicting claimants, they want them to get it together and form a uniting society. Tehy want one representative in the nation to represent the international union to the government of that country, and, as well, to represent the country's interests before the IARU and international bodies. I got practically no support at the relevant talk page (it is the talk page for the guideline that WP:CLUB) points to. And there was no support at WP:RSN for the proposition that the IARU was reliable for the purpose of determining membership and official web site URL. Yet what happened at AfD? Out of 13, 11 closed as Keep, 1 as Delete, and 1 as No Consensus. Some of the Keep results had exactly the same lack of independent sources as the Delete result. Guidelines are supposed to represent actual practice, not prescribed practice. The point is to avoid disruption from AfDs that will fail, or from insistence on keeping something that will be deleted. But the editors who sit on the guidelines seem to think otherwise, and one of them complained that editors, voting in the AfD, were not following the guideline, and he helpfully pointed to it. As he had just changed in an effort to make crystal clear his interpretation, which was obviously not theirs! By not allowing guidelines to move to represent actual practice, when there is an opportunity, disruption and senseless debate continues. Someone else will read the existing guideline, interpret it with a literalist understanding (there *must* be at least *two* independent reliable sources, period, no exceptions) and then file an AfD, wasting a lot of time. In this case the editor filed 13, and there were obviously many more on the way, there are something like 200 such national societies. There is an alternate interpretation. The stubs should be deleted. And they were only kept because people interested in amateur radio voted for them. Suppose this is the case. (It's not. DGG was asked about one of these AfDs and he basically came up with the same arguments as I did.) If it's the case, then the guideline should be clarified so that the rest of us won't make that mistake again, of trying to keep stuff that will only be deleted, and, instead, we will pull the stubs back into a list article. A similar list article had existed previously, and it had been decided that stubs were cleaner and better, because there is, in fact, a lot of reliable information about these societies, that could indeed be put in a list article (where some kinds of self-published information can be used), and having looked at the articles and reflected on the list possibility, I agree with the standing consensus. But nobody voted to remove the information, just to delete the articles. It's an absolutist understanding of what an article must be, based on a technical failure, the failure to find what surely must
Re: [WikiEN-l] Another notability casualty
George Herbert wrote: On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Perhaps this contains the germ of an idea: a process Drafts for mainspace, a review debating unuserfying. The Bizarre Records solution to our problems - just what sthe world/s Wikipedia needs, another srecord label/s contentious process. Either namespace, or another independent namespace (Drafts). User namespace makes things harder to find; which is not necessarily appropriate. We want drafts to be communally findable - to encourage contributions, fixes, reviews, and eventual upgrades. This has floated before, in some variation, and not flown. But perhaps it's time to float it again and see if it flies now. Right. But doing things with aliases is not exactly out of reach. And I'm somewhat surprised, considering it all, that there isn't even an editorial guideline on moving drafts? Not that I would feel compelled to read it, but it seems an omission. 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] Another notability casualty
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 1:56 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.comwrote:
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Charles Matthews
charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote:
Perhaps this contains the
germ of an idea: a process Drafts for mainspace, a review debating
unuserfying. The Bizarre Records solution to our problems - just what
sthe world/s Wikipedia needs, another srecord label/s
contentious process.
Either namespace, or another independent namespace (Drafts).
User namespace makes things harder to find; which is not necessarily
appropriate. We want drafts to be communally findable - to encourage
contributions, fixes, reviews, and eventual upgrades.
Userspace does have the benefit of being *blatantly* unofficial, which is
sometimes a good thing with drafts, especially if those drafts have
problematic content that's being indexed by search engines.
Aside from that issue, though, a Draft namespace does sound like a
smoother workflow, as you suggest. If you can't get a canonical namespace
in, Wikipedia:Drafts/Page[/Version] might not be a bad naming convention.
--
Luna Santin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Luna_Santin
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Another notability casualty
On Wed, 24 Feb 2010, George Herbert wrote: Interesting comparison with historical antecedants! This is more the sort of level of debate I'd like to see at AfD. I wonder what a closing admin would make of it... :-) You shouldn't *need* to go through this level of debate just to keep a page around when the notability rules could be fixed instead. Otherwise we're no longer the encyclopedia anyone can edit, we're the encyclopedia that anyone with an extraordinary level of debate skills can edit. And yet - without the first level filtering offered by these rules, we can't easily seek out and remove a lot of obvious abuse. My point isn't that we should do away with notability; it's that we should *fix* it.___ 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] Another notability casualty
George Herbert wrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 2:53 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: On Wed, 24 Feb 2010, Carcharoth wrote: Interesting comparison with historical antecedants! This is more the sort of level of debate I'd like to see at AfD. I wonder what a closing admin would make of it... :-) You shouldn't *need* to go through this level of debate just to keep a page around when the notability rules could be fixed instead. Otherwise we're no longer the encyclopedia anyone can edit, we're the encyclopedia that anyone with an extraordinary level of debate skills can edit. snip Even with the most expansive idea of what topics an encyclopedia should include, it's an encyclopedia, not a phone book, or website directory, or place for people to advertise their companies or services. If we fail to enforce ...The Encyclopedia... part of our mission statement, we're failing, too. Notability ends up being shorthand for a lot of things; one of them is, this isn't important enough that I think we can reasonably QA and review this article and ones like it. snip So - posting the question - are we better off as the encyclopedia that is 99% crap, or as the encyclopedia that anyone can almost edit, but not quite, actually restricted to a somewhat enlightened elite? Neither extreme being actually idea or real, what side of the spectrum do we want to try to aim at, and how do we want to try to move over time? In this context, I was interested to get an outside view of how knols are doing (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2010/tc20100218_199388.htm occurring in the Signpost story on the Google donation). As we know, knols take inclusionism to one limit, and have wiki-like low barriers to entry, but dispense really with the community and notability. I happen to have had a knol turn up in a Google search for the first time in the past few days, too. It was written by a Wikipedian, was useful to me, was not on a topic Wikipedia would have included (it was a link farm and had little scope for being anything else) - and (as it turned out) was not really as good as another non-knol page I had more trouble finding. Several conclusions: - knols are inclusionist in so simple-minded a way that no one (not even Google) thinks they do the same job as Wikipedia; - the 99% figure for knols might be harsh, but it might not, and instead our intensive processes to upgrade content, there is only a very severe survival of the fittest that applies (most of the postings are simply going to be entirely ignored); - it is quite a good thing that our baroque model was launched well before knols. It would be trivial to adapt anything good in the knol model, clearly (just redefine the User: namespace slightly). Perhaps this contains the germ of an idea: a process Drafts for mainspace, a review debating unuserfying. The Bizarre Records solution to our problems - just what sthe world/s Wikipedia needs, another srecord label/s contentious process. 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] Another notability casualty
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Perhaps this contains the germ of an idea: a process Drafts for mainspace, a review debating unuserfying. The Bizarre Records solution to our problems - just what sthe world/s Wikipedia needs, another srecord label/s contentious process. Either namespace, or another independent namespace (Drafts). User namespace makes things harder to find; which is not necessarily appropriate. We want drafts to be communally findable - to encourage contributions, fixes, reviews, and eventual upgrades. This has floated before, in some variation, and not flown. But perhaps it's time to float it again and see if it flies now. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ 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] Another notability casualty
Ken Arromdee wrote: On Tue, 23 Feb 2010, David Goodman wrote: The present rules at Wikipedia are so many and contradictory that it is possible to construct an argument with them to justify almost any decision--even without using IAR. I'm trying to figure out if you're arguing with me. You're right, of course, the rules are completely messed up. But I think it's fair to say that notability rules are only a sufficient condition and it's possible for something to not satisfy the rules and still be notable is a *very* unpopular position, to the point where it may as well not be true. It's the difference between never say never and never say never say never? This is after all what IAR is there for. Failure of the General Notability Guideline to give the right result may indicate that a special guideline might be more helpful. If the work of creating such special guidelines has gone about as far as people want, and if certain classes of information (such as what is happening on the street or in places where the usual media don't document them) are excluded by consensus, and if notability is applied as a generic test to topics that (for example) don't have a WikiProject interested in arguing in other ways, then what you say may represent the simplest broad generalisation. That's a few ifs and buts. 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] Another notability casualty
Bod Notbod wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:38 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: Since we have no really universally agreed vision of what the encyclopedia should be, almost any decision is the result of compromise [...] Personally, I think that's the worst way to find a solution. I hope I'm snipping in such a way as to not change your argument there, I have no doubt I'll be told if not. What is the *best* way to find a solution then? Solutions take the form of complicate the flowchart. Add preliminary steps before any deletion, review steps after deletions, and so on. The problem is ... many people active on the site don't have too clear a view of what the current flowchart is - or in other words current best practice isn't always followed, and therefore tweaking it doesn't have as much traction as it should. But I do recommend trying to get the overview of what the processes look like, certainly over reading the fine print in [[WP:N]]. 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] Another notability casualty
I thing compromise IS the solution. I said that the sort of compromise by deciding the individual cases half one way half the other on a more or less random basis is the worst way to do a compromise. I didn't go into the best way to form a compromise. The way that works in the outside world is that someone in authority forces the people to compromise under threat of deciding the issue themselves. Except for behavior, we have no such authority and I wouldn't want us to have one as a general matter. Perhaps we might resort to binding arbitration with an ad hoc arbitrator in some cases. More generally, we did a better method of forming policy. Polls are susceptible to swamping by one side unless there is a serious attempt in more general participation than say , the current BLP poll. Discussions in the usual way can be deadlocked by a single person persisting in an objection, as is happening right now at WT:FICTION. The only practical hope is for us to attract new people who will come to the discussions without long-set preconceptions about them. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 5:58 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Bod Notbod wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:38 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: Since we have no really universally agreed vision of what the encyclopedia should be, almost any decision is the result of compromise [...] Personally, I think that's the worst way to find a solution. I hope I'm snipping in such a way as to not change your argument there, I have no doubt I'll be told if not. What is the *best* way to find a solution then? Solutions take the form of complicate the flowchart. Add preliminary steps before any deletion, review steps after deletions, and so on. The problem is ... many people active on the site don't have too clear a view of what the current flowchart is - or in other words current best practice isn't always followed, and therefore tweaking it doesn't have as much traction as it should. But I do recommend trying to get the overview of what the processes look like, certainly over reading the fine print in [[WP:N]]. 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 ___ 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] Another notability casualty
This is of course true too. People don't think video game composers deserve to have articles; so they argue for non-notability. Whether this should be the case is another story. I consider this to be an abuse of the rules. That's an example of a fairly common human prejudice against new creative genres. Novels were held in light esteem while Henry Fielding and Jane Austen were writing them--light entertainment for adolescent girls. It wasn't really until Thackeray that the genre became respectable reading for serious adults. When motion pictures were new they were mostly regarded as light entertainment for working class audiences. Partly as a result, nearly 90% of the films from the silent era weren't curated and have been lost forever. Of course 90% of every genre is crap and the Pac-Man theme will probably torment me for the next three hours. But Austen was nearly forgotten for fifty years after her death--I wonder what critics of the next generation will say about the theme music from Morrowind. -Durova -- http://durova.blogspot.com/ ___ 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] Another notability casualty
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 8:17 PM, Durova nadezhda.dur...@gmail.com wrote: This is of course true too. People don't think video game composers deserve to have articles; so they argue for non-notability. Whether this should be the case is another story. I consider this to be an abuse of the rules. That's an example of a fairly common human prejudice against new creative genres. Novels were held in light esteem while Henry Fielding and Jane Austen were writing them--light entertainment for adolescent girls. It wasn't really until Thackeray that the genre became respectable reading for serious adults. When motion pictures were new they were mostly regarded as light entertainment for working class audiences. Partly as a result, nearly 90% of the films from the silent era weren't curated and have been lost forever. Of course 90% of every genre is crap and the Pac-Man theme will probably torment me for the next three hours. But Austen was nearly forgotten for fifty years after her death--I wonder what critics of the next generation will say about the theme music from Morrowind. Interesting comparison with historical antecedants! This is more the sort of level of debate I'd like to see at AfD. I wonder what a closing admin would make of it... :-) 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] Another notability casualty
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 2:53 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: On Wed, 24 Feb 2010, Carcharoth wrote: Interesting comparison with historical antecedants! This is more the sort of level of debate I'd like to see at AfD. I wonder what a closing admin would make of it... :-) You shouldn't *need* to go through this level of debate just to keep a page around when the notability rules could be fixed instead. Otherwise we're no longer the encyclopedia anyone can edit, we're the encyclopedia that anyone with an extraordinary level of debate skills can edit. And yet - without the first level filtering offered by these rules, we can't easily seek out and remove a lot of obvious abuse. Even with the most expansive idea of what topics an encyclopedia should include, it's an encyclopedia, not a phone book, or website directory, or place for people to advertise their companies or services. If we fail to enforce ...The Encyclopedia... part of our mission statement, we're failing, too. Notability ends up being shorthand for a lot of things; one of them is, this isn't important enough that I think we can reasonably QA and review this article and ones like it. If we erase notability completely, every person with net access in the world, everyone's band, all the small businesses in the world, etc. will all end up covered. Say 100x more articles? We already have large areas that are not well monitored and not well up to existing quality standards. So - posting the question - are we better off as the encyclopedia that is 99% crap, or as the encyclopedia that anyone can almost edit, but not quite, actually restricted to a somewhat enlightened elite? Neither extreme being actually idea or real, what side of the spectrum do we want to try to aim at, and how do we want to try to move over time? Keep in mind participation level statistics, etc... -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ 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] Another notability casualty
David Goodman wrote: David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 6:53 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: On Mon, 22 Feb 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: You are paraphrasing from [[Wikipedia:Notability]]. However, as is common enough in this (endless, unresolved) discussions, you are not doing so accurately enough. Firstly, [[Wikipedia:Notability]] is only a guideline, not an official policy for anything. In practice, guidelines end up having the same effect as policies: anyone who can quote them in a dispute that is anywhere near close always wins. Policies don't appreciably differ from guidelines in this respect. Secondly, you are paraphrasing from the detailed explanation of the first section, but missing the essential (really) point. Which is that If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article is a sufficient condition, not a necessary one. In the very example I'm bringing up, the notability guidelines *were* interpreted as a necessary condition. Since the article failed to satisfy them, it was deleted for lack of notability. And I'd wager that notability is pretty much always used this way. If you look at enough AfDs, you can find every possible interpretation and misinterpretation. A great many articles have been kept with less than full formal sourcing by the GNG guideline, and a great many have been deleted even though they had it. Such deletion is usually done under the provisions of WP:NOT, which rules out a great many types of articles. Although WP:NOT is policy, there are very few agreed guideline for interpreting any part of it, so the actual decision sometimes seem to come out only a little better than random. Other decisions are made on the technicalities of what should count as a reliable source for the purpose--and again, there is not very great consistency. The present rules at Wikipedia are so many and contradictory that it is possible to construct an argument with them to justify almost any decision--even without using IAR. Many of the inconsistencies exist only in the eye of the species known as the Lesser Horned Wikilawyer - they illustrate the proved that the Devil can cite Scripture. The phenomenon under discussion belongs really to the Illogical Positivist: the notability guidelines are a vast case analysis, and the General Notability Guideline is the default case, meant to catch the situations where no other guideline applies. As we have been saying, it is phrased as a sufficient condition: if it is not also a necessary condition, what happens? Well, the case analysis might not be complete: we might (gasp) have to use our own brains. Must it be complete? Only if you believe there is a hypostatised concept notability that really must be applicable in all cases. I think what is being said above is that there are many of those Illogical Positivists around, and they argue somewhat in the way I'm saying. Now that wouldn't surprise me at all, as a statement. People often enough do use any argument from quasi-policy in what is a rhetorical rather than a logical way. 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] Another notability casualty
The existing situation is of great assistance to another species: the wiki-barrister, expert is using whatever legal processes are available to achieve equity. . If such a person intuitively think an article should be kept, they will find arguments to keep it, and vice-versa. For essentially every article at AfD contested in good faith, they could find plausible arguments based on policy for either keeping or deleting. For the unscrupulous subspecies, they could find arguments of some sort for a good deal that is not really reasonably contestable. In truth, the only general concept of notability is what articles are suitably important for the encyclopedia that we want to have. Collectively, we can decide on whatever sort of encyclopedia we want, and can consequently have whatever concept of notability we want. There is no actual pre-existing meaning of the term, and WP:N goes to some lengths to distinguish it from any word used in an ordinary way. People argue as if Wikipedia should conform to some standard of notability, but we can have whatever rules we please. We can use a concept like the GNG to whatever extent and in whatever way we decide to use it. For example, some people have argued we should in some fields only count scholarly articles, and no general news sources at all; some people have argued the exact reverse. If we prefer abstract standards, we can have them at whatever level we want. To take an area I work on, we have decided to include all college presidents; we could limit it to major universities, or we could decide to include all high school principals. To take an area where I don't work, we have flipped back and forth on whether to include minor-league baseball players. Since we have no really universally agreed vision of what the encyclopedia should be, almost any decision is the result of compromise. We can have whatever compromise can get enough agreement. It's not a matter of logic, just a matter of of what we can find that works for enough of us to resolve the individual problems. (At present, we use inconsistency as a sort of compromise: of articles on computer programs of very similar marginal importance, and very similar marginal sourcing, about half will be included and half not, so people of all positions on this can say they win half the time, or (more likely) complain that they lose half the time. Personally, I think that's the worst way to find a solution. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 12:58 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: David Goodman wrote: David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 6:53 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: On Mon, 22 Feb 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: You are paraphrasing from [[Wikipedia:Notability]]. However, as is common enough in this (endless, unresolved) discussions, you are not doing so accurately enough. Firstly, [[Wikipedia:Notability]] is only a guideline, not an official policy for anything. In practice, guidelines end up having the same effect as policies: anyone who can quote them in a dispute that is anywhere near close always wins. Policies don't appreciably differ from guidelines in this respect. Secondly, you are paraphrasing from the detailed explanation of the first section, but missing the essential (really) point. Which is that If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article is a sufficient condition, not a necessary one. In the very example I'm bringing up, the notability guidelines *were* interpreted as a necessary condition. Since the article failed to satisfy them, it was deleted for lack of notability. And I'd wager that notability is pretty much always used this way. If you look at enough AfDs, you can find every possible interpretation and misinterpretation. A great many articles have been kept with less than full formal sourcing by the GNG guideline, and a great many have been deleted even though they had it. Such deletion is usually done under the provisions of WP:NOT, which rules out a great many types of articles. Although WP:NOT is policy, there are very few agreed guideline for interpreting any part of it, so the actual decision sometimes seem to come out only a little better than random. Other decisions are made on the technicalities of what should count as a reliable source for the purpose--and again, there is not very great consistency. The present rules at Wikipedia are so many and contradictory that it is possible to construct an argument with them to justify almost any decision--even without using IAR. Many of the inconsistencies exist only in the eye of the species known as the Lesser Horned
Re: [WikiEN-l] Another notability casualty
On Tue, 23 Feb 2010, David Goodman wrote: The existing situation is of great assistance to another species: the wiki-barrister, expert is using whatever legal processes are available to achieve equity. . If such a person intuitively think an article should be kept, they will find arguments to keep it, and vice-versa. For essentially every article at AfD contested in good faith, they could find plausible arguments based on policy for either keeping or deleting. For the unscrupulous subspecies, they could find arguments of some sort for a good deal that is not really reasonably contestable. This is of course true too. People don't think video game composers deserve to have articles; so they argue for non-notability. Whether this should be the case is another story. I consider this to be an abuse of the rules. ___ 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] Another notability casualty
On Sun, 21 Feb 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: I never understood, why does notability require a reliable source anyway? Doesn't - urban myth put about by people with a kindergarten version of logical positivism. But no reliable sources means nothing can actually be said in an article that has any content. X is famous for being famous - we get round to deleting articles like that. No reliable sources *for notability* doesn't mean that nothing can be said in the article. The restrictions on reliable sources for notability are stricter than the restrictions on reliable sources for article content. Notability requires that each individual source has significant coverage, and is limited to secondary sources only. Article content allows you to take information from multiple sources each of which only has a small amount of coverage, and it is not limited to secondary sources (in fact, under some circumstances you can even use material written by the subject). ___ 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] Another notability casualty
On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: On Sun, 21 Feb 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: I never understood, why does notability require a reliable source anyway? Doesn't - urban myth put about by people with a kindergarten version of logical positivism. But no reliable sources means nothing can actually be said in an article that has any content. X is famous for being famous - we get round to deleting articles like that. No reliable sources *for notability* doesn't mean that nothing can be said in the article. The restrictions on reliable sources for notability are stricter than the restrictions on reliable sources for article content. Notability requires that each individual source has significant coverage, and is limited to secondary sources only. Article content allows you to take information from multiple sources each of which only has a small amount of coverage, and it is not limited to secondary sources (in fact, under some circumstances you can even use material written by the subject). This tends to indicate that you are better off putting a small section, paragraph, or footnote, in another article, and having the original title redirect to that article instead (or some list or overview of the main topic). It may not be an ideal solution, but it works until more sources are found, or are published, and then the redirect can be turned back into an article. That way, the information confirmed by reliable sources is kept, the arguments over notability are avoided, and readers looking for something at that title are sent to where they can find the information (they do have to look a bit harder if the location of the information isn't obvious). This is otherwise known as merging. The single silliest convention at AfD is the one that says you can't merge an article that is being discussed for deletion. It is silly because on any given day a skilled editor can merge half the articles nominated at AfD, thus retaining the information that has been reliably sourced, rather than losing it. But this is outweighed by most people not considering the merge option and only opting for keep or delete. Admittedly, some articles aren't really suitable for merging. 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] Another notability casualty
Ken Arromdee wrote: On Sun, 21 Feb 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: I never understood, why does notability require a reliable source anyway? Doesn't - urban myth put about by people with a kindergarten version of logical positivism. But no reliable sources means nothing can actually be said in an article that has any content. X is famous for being famous - we get round to deleting articles like that. No reliable sources *for notability* doesn't mean that nothing can be said in the article. The restrictions on reliable sources for notability are stricter than the restrictions on reliable sources for article content. Notability requires that each individual source has significant coverage, and is limited to secondary sources only. Article content allows you to take information from multiple sources each of which only has a small amount of coverage, and it is not limited to secondary sources (in fact, under some circumstances you can even use material written by the subject). You are paraphrasing from [[Wikipedia:Notability]]. However, as is common enough in this (endless, unresolved) discussions, you are not doing so accurately enough. Firstly, [[Wikipedia:Notability]] is only a guideline, not an official policy for anything. Secondly, you are paraphrasing from the detailed explanation of the first section, but missing the essential (really) point. Which is that If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article is a sufficient condition, not a necessary one. The nutshell says A topic that is suitable for inclusion and has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. In other words certain topics pass. This criterion isn't saying for sure what is not notable. Admittedly the rest of the article is badly drafted enough so that the confusion is somewhat forgiveable. Anyway, recall what notability is for. We use it as a rather crude tool to prise people away from their initial view of what topics should be included, which is typically subjective. And then when they have taken the point that there should be something objective, we move to saying notability depends on available information. So really notability only functions as a stepping stone across the river: once an editor is on the side of developing content by referencing and thinking in those terms, we can talk to them as colleagues. (Well, doesn't always go that way.) But my point about logical positivism was based on that conception, to the extent that people who really believe that an abstract protocol could be used to replace dickering on about quite which RS might establish N are doomed to dickering, but at the level of abstract guidelines rather than at AfD. Sufficient conditions for inclusion are cleaner, but (for example) tend to reinforce systemic bias problems. To the extent that you phrased your comment in terms of necessity, you have an abstract point. 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] Another notability casualty
On Mon, 22 Feb 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: You are paraphrasing from [[Wikipedia:Notability]]. However, as is common enough in this (endless, unresolved) discussions, you are not doing so accurately enough. Firstly, [[Wikipedia:Notability]] is only a guideline, not an official policy for anything. In practice, guidelines end up having the same effect as policies: anyone who can quote them in a dispute that is anywhere near close always wins. Policies don't appreciably differ from guidelines in this respect. Secondly, you are paraphrasing from the detailed explanation of the first section, but missing the essential (really) point. Which is that If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article is a sufficient condition, not a necessary one. In the very example I'm bringing up, the notability guidelines *were* interpreted as a necessary condition. Since the article failed to satisfy them, it was deleted for lack of notability. And I'd wager that notability is pretty much always used this way. ___ 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] Another notability casualty
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 6:53 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: On Mon, 22 Feb 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: You are paraphrasing from [[Wikipedia:Notability]]. However, as is common enough in this (endless, unresolved) discussions, you are not doing so accurately enough. Firstly, [[Wikipedia:Notability]] is only a guideline, not an official policy for anything. In practice, guidelines end up having the same effect as policies: anyone who can quote them in a dispute that is anywhere near close always wins. Policies don't appreciably differ from guidelines in this respect. Secondly, you are paraphrasing from the detailed explanation of the first section, but missing the essential (really) point. Which is that If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article is a sufficient condition, not a necessary one. In the very example I'm bringing up, the notability guidelines *were* interpreted as a necessary condition. Since the article failed to satisfy them, it was deleted for lack of notability. And I'd wager that notability is pretty much always used this way. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l If you look at enough AfDs, you can find every possible interpretation and misinterpretation. A great many articles have been kept with less than full formal sourcing by the GNG guideline, and a great many have been deleted even though they had it. Such deletion is usually done under the provisions of WP:NOT, which rules out a great many types of articles. Although WP:NOT is policy, there are very few agreed guideline for interpreting any part of it, so the actual decision sometimes seem to come out only a little better than random. Other decisions are made on the technicalities of what should count as a reliable source for the purpose--and again, there is not very great consistency. The present rules at Wikipedia are so many and contradictory that it is possible to construct an argument with them to justify almost any decision--even without using IAR. ___ 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] Another notability casualty
On Sat, 20 Feb 2010, Carcharoth wrote: I would look up some sources, but I really hate those pseudonym in another language in an obscure and emerging genre (video music) cases. You really can't make much progress with those unless someone actually goes and writes a book about it, or you know the other language (and I know no Japanese at all). I never understood, why does notability require a reliable source anyway? The source isn't being used as a source of facts about the subject. We should require a *prominent* source, not a reliable one--something mentioned on Rush Limbaugh and Conan O'Brien really ought to be considered notable. Prominent blogs and fansites would then count towards establishing notability, which would have eliminated this problem. ___ 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] Another notability casualty
Ken Arromdee wrote: I never understood, why does notability require a reliable source anyway? Doesn't - urban myth put about by people with a kindergarten version of logical positivism. But no reliable sources means nothing can actually be said in an article that has any content. X is famous for being famous - we get round to deleting articles like that. 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] Another notability casualty
Actually our notability guidelines foster bad music articles. Songs that have been ranked on national or significant music charts, that have won significant awards or honors or that have been performed independently by several notable artists, bands or groups are probably notable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_%28music%29#Albums.2C_singles_and_songs As a result we get thousands of articles which are basically nothing more than laundry lists of chart placements and recordings, usually unreferenced but occasionally with minimal referencing. A few from 1955 (randomly chosen year). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_Boom_Boomerang_%28song%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croce_di_Oro http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domani http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamboat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fool_for_You http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_to_Get_%28song%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Important_Can_It_Be%3F http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Guess_I%27m_Crazy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Just_Found_Out_About_Love http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_You,_Samantha Systematic cleanup is nearly impossible because my time tends to get eaten up with the real basics when I do sweeps. These articles are magnets for copyright violations, for instance. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=In_the_Wee_Small_Hours_of_the_Morningdiff=345538182oldid=341758494 -Durova On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 2:59 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Ken Arromdee wrote: I never understood, why does notability require a reliable source anyway? Doesn't - urban myth put about by people with a kindergarten version of logical positivism. But no reliable sources means nothing can actually be said in an article that has any content. X is famous for being famous - we get round to deleting articles like that. 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 -- http://durova.blogspot.com/ ___ 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] Another notability casualty
On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 3:59 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 4:05 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: I stumbled into this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Kinuyo_Yamashita My personal summary: Notability requirements shown to be utterly broken for popular culture topics. Yeah. It's difficult. The discussion looks like a 'no consensus', but throw in the socking accusations and the BLP background, and you can understand the result, even if you disagree with it. I would look up some sources, but I really hate those pseudonym in another language in an obscure and emerging genre (video music) cases. You really can't make much progress with those unless someone actually goes and writes a book about it, or you know the other language (and I know no Japanese at all). Carcharoth And it doesn't help that composers lend themselves to being indexed in databases and general name-checking without substantive content. For example, look at the hits for Kinuyo in my CSE: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=009114923999563836576%3A1eorkzz2gp4q=%22Kinuyo+Yamashita%22 Leaving aside the issue that I have no idea whether to whitelist originalsoundversion.com as a RS or blacklist it as a database/blog filling up my results, note that there are tons of references mentions, but few substantive discussions. (Ironically, one of the more prominent hits is an osv.com post criticizing the deletion: http://www.originalsoundversion.com/?p=7667 ) -- 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] Another notability casualty
On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 4:05 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: I stumbled into this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Kinuyo_Yamashita My personal summary: Notability requirements shown to be utterly broken for popular culture topics. Yeah. It's difficult. The discussion looks like a 'no consensus', but throw in the socking accusations and the BLP background, and you can understand the result, even if you disagree with it. I would look up some sources, but I really hate those pseudonym in another language in an obscure and emerging genre (video music) cases. You really can't make much progress with those unless someone actually goes and writes a book about it, or you know the other language (and I know no Japanese at all). 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
