The Battle For Wikipedia's Soul

njondet recommends an article at The Economist that sheds light on the identity crisis faced by Wikipedia as it is torn between two alternative futures. "'It can either strive to encompass every aspect of human knowledge, no matter how trivial; or it can adopt a more stringent editorial policy and ban articles on trivial subjects, in the hope that this will enhance its reputation as a trustworthy and credible reference source. These two conflicting visions are at the heart of a bitter struggle inside Wikipedia between 'inclusionists,' who believe that applying strict editorial criteria will dampen contributors' enthusiasm for the project, and 'deletionists' who argue that Wikipedia should be more cautious and selective about its entries."

Wikipedia as Advertising

[commisaro (1007549)]

Personally I get annoyed when I see a comment in a Wikipedia article which was obviously added by someone promoting some product, or some stupid viral video attempt they posted on youtube which was peripherally related to the article in question. I feel that deletion of these kind of trivial things is important to maintain the integrity of Wikipedia. Sure, it could strive to be a record of all human knowledge... but then, some humans have some pretty useless "knowledge" which I don't really want to read about.

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

[iNaya (1049686)]

Just delete the blatant advertising.

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

[SausageOfDoom (930370)]

I agree with that, but I've seen a lot of interesting pages that get deleted just for the sake of "Oh, it's not of interest to a wide enough audience" etc. That's absurd - it's not as if each new page costs a significant amount of money to maintain, and who is in a position to decide that anyway? Besides, look at how many pages on obscure sci-fi characters there are, and then tell me that's of relevance to a wide audience...

If it's advertising or devoid of information, delete. Otherwise, live and let live - surely more information has to be better.

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

[Carbon016 (1129067)]

The thing is, most new articles began "devoid of information" - or, in WP terminology, a stub. If that stub is sourced, it usually stays, if it's not it goes. Articles don't pop into existence in a full state of being, so the line between delete and keep is much more fluid.

Deletionists are conservative

[Wooky_linuxer (685371)]

Way too conservative, I'd say. They deleted whole, complete and well researched articles on the Warcraft universe because it wasn't "encyclopedic". Also a lot of Star Wars stuff has been deleted too. Basically deletionists view with bad eyes everything that is fiction related, and dismiss it. Basically anything that is not traditionally accepted as "knowledge" has no place in Wikipedia in their eyes. It is an extremely prejudicial position, not to mention that deletion of articles should be done by consent - but it isn't. Deletionists are like trolls: since destroying content is much easier than creating, they can win over a similar number of inclusionists no matter how hard the latters try.

Based on the difficulties Wikipedia has had to raise money lately, I'd say most people don't like their stand. Fork wikipedia already, I say, and create an all inclusive wiki, before there is only a handfull of articles left which reference Britannica as their only reliable source. Sigh.

Re:Deletionists are conservative

[zotz (3951)]

"Based on the difficulties Wikipedia has had to raise money lately, I'd say most people don't like their stand. Fork wikipedia already, I say, and create an all inclusive wiki, before there is only a handfull of articles left which reference Britannica as their only reliable source. Sigh."

Yup, there are some interrelated problems from my point of view.

I think a possible solution would be to leave stuff in, but somehow promote "good" articles to some sort of "official article" status.

I gave up trying to add to wikipedia a long time ago due to info I added getting deleted. Granted, I never added or tried to add complete essay articles. I added more like bulleted info on areas I knew something about and where I could find no info on the matter on the site.

My take is that some info is better than no info. And it might inspire someone to add a bit to it and things can grow.

So I came across Citizendium again the other day and decided to check if I could perhaps add something there. No, they only want complete articles it seems. That is not my bag. They are going to get nothing from me. I would like to contribute, but they are ruling my contributions out before I begin. Which, I guess is better than after I have spent and wasted time trying to contribute.

( http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page [citizendium.org] )

I think the dual status idea could help both sites.

Info can be added and remain even if not up to par. (Not talking seriously inaccurate here, just not complete and finished articles.) It can stay this way as long as it takes. When and if an article reaches a certain level of quality or completeness, it can get some sort of official article status.

Give viewers a toggle switch to limit views to only official articles should they so choose.

all the best,

drew
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

Re:Deletionists are conservative

[smallfries (601545)]

Bingo. One of the original motivations for the project was "Wiki is not paper". Originally they wanted the inclusive h2g2 approach. The current debate is one of image - if it is diluted by lots of borderline articles. Only a wikipedian could think that dodgy articles would somehow damage the "reputation" of the site, but that's a digression.

As the problem is simply one of image, create two brands, say "Wikipedia Core" and "Wikipedia Fringe". Keep everything, but only elevate articles into the core on some sort of vote / consensus. Keeps both sides happy. The inclusionists get every bit of trivia every recorded, and the deletionists get their pristine image of a "pure" encyclopaedia. Given that the project was initiated as a response to the problems of paper-based encyclopaedias I'm surprised nobody within the project has suggested this.

Seems vaguely reminiscent of slashdot around the time they introduced moderation. Reading the Fringe could someday be seen as browsing at -1.

Re:Deletionists are conservative

[AmiMoJo (196126)]

The problem is far too much conservatism on Wikipedia in general, but that it is inconsistent. You take the article on "Jimmy Wales". It says he was born August 7, 1966, but where is the citation? Stuff like that gets by while other uncited stuff is deleted because the Wikipedia trolls^H^H^H^H editors are on a deletion binge.

Re:Deletionists are conservative

[jollyreaper (513215)]

Agreed, the deletionists really do seem like griefers or trolls.

What I like about Wikipeida is I can find info about virtually anything on there, from obscure books to general scientific knowledge. The deletionist jihad against fictional information is exactly the same as if doctrinaire librarians went through the library with torches burning all novels because fiction lacks notability. Says who? And again, it costs a library money and space to store books but new articles in Wiki cost damn near zero.

It seems like the smartest way to handle this is to use a classification system on the articles, that way if you only want stodgy conservative wiki, you set your filter and there you go. You'd never stray into the wider wiki unless by clicking a link from a stody article.

I just find the whole unilateral nature of the deletionist thing so arrogant. It's no different from the various religions when they get into sectarian pigfights and one side starts burning the books (and sometimes members) of the other side.

Re:usefulnes of big disorder vs well-arranged libr

[Wooky_linuxer (685371)]

Schopenhauer wasn't familiar with the concept of relational databases. Having articles on fiction do not mess with or make non-fiction articles less available, unlike a physical lybrary. It is all a matter of image; deletionists want wikipedia to have an image of a traditional encyclopedia. What bothers me is that they want to impose their ideals of relevance and value to everyone else.

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

[cabalamat3 (1089523)]

I've seen a lot of interesting pages that get deleted just for the sake of "Oh, it's not of interest to a wide enough audience" etc.

Me too, which is why I've started includipedia [includipedia.com], an inclusionist fork of Wikipedia.

That's absurd - it's not as if each new page costs a significant amount of money to maintain

My thoughts exactly

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

[nahdude812 (88157)]

I'd recommend you start your project with one of Wikipedia's database dumps, then go through and start undeleting articles. Your homepage can even consist of links to good articles deleted from Wikipedia which were recreated in Includipedia. You can watch Wikipedia's AFD boards and contact the users defending their articles, suggesting that they recreate them on Includipedia and link to Includipedia in the footnotes of relevant articles from Wikipedia.

If you play it right, you might possibly even give Wikipedia deletionists something to recommend to those people disillusioned with their favorite articles getting deleted.

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

[AndGodSed (968378)]

And also, how do you determine what is "trivial" and what isn't? I am all for the inclusion of every bit of human knowledge.

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

[ta bu shi da yu (687699)]

Please, stay off Wikipedia then. Wikipedia doesn't need to document that Joe Blogg's left nostril is 5 millimeters wider than his right.

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

[kestasjk (933987)]

Please, stay off Wikipedia then. Wikipedia doesn't need to document that Joe Blogg's left nostril is 5 millimeters wider than his right.

Well who's going to write about that? Joe Blogg can't, because autobiography isn't allowed. And anyway, who's going to search it? Unless Wikipedia becomes so overloaded with information that it can't function isn't it better to err on the side of letting more stuff in? If no-one cares about it no-one will notice it anyway. If it was an encyclopedia you wouldn't want to waste space, but it's a website that is searchable.

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

[abaddononion (1004472)]

Except that this simply isn't true. If nobody notices trivial information, why does so much of the criticism of Wikipedia consist of complaints that it's full of trivial information? The simple truth is that practically every major article has a "Trivia" section, or an "In Popular Culture" section, or whatever, that takes up a massive amount of space, sticks out like a sore thumb, contains absolutely no information of any significance whatsoever, and yet cannot be deleted because any attempt to do so causes a million schoolchildren to scream with rage.

See, it's this mentality that ticks some people (like me) off. I dont use Wikipedia as "a replacement to an encyclopedia". Why would I do that? I have google if Im being lazy, and if I want to trust my information, I go to the library and get a real, tamper-proof encyclopedia regardless. When I want to *really* research a topic, I ignore the wikipedia links and try to find something I consider more reliable, like online documented medical journals, or whatever.

What I *really* use Wikipedia for, and what I loved it for, is the vast amount of human knowledge floating around the internet that cant be found in any other form. The "trivia" section is the most useful part of an article to me, because it's the only way to see all of the various references to something in pop culture. How the heck else am I supposed to find a comprehensive (or at least nearly) list of all the places the Grauman's Chinese Theatre is ever referenced in television or movies? Anything else in the Wikipedia article, I could look up... ANYWHERE ELSE.

It's the constant attempts of Wikipedia editors right now to kill any of the "flavour" of wikipedia out that has made me stop going to the website altogether. In *my* opinion, it had one use. It cant be trusted for encyclopedic information, because it's in constant flux, so I go get a *real* encyclopedia for that stuff. But it was great for obscure referential stuff that cant be found elsewhere. For example, this [wikipedia.org]. Which is an article that they have attempted to delete like 4 times now, and probably will before it's all said and done.

Everything to everybody.

[MikeFM (12491)]

Hdd space is cheap so the only problem with allowing anything and everything is in making it easy to sort. Making a Slashdot-like rating system would help quite a bit. Users could then mod stuff up and down and flag certain types of content. Users with high karma would get an auto flag to the top.

On top of that I'd add paid moderators and experts to enter content and double check that no users cheat the karma/mod system into letting them inappropriately get material miscategorized or misrated.

Nothing has to be deleted. Just make it easy for users to sort through. If someone wants to see every stupid thing anyone has put in then let them. If someone wants to see only expert content then let them. Isn't that the whole point of allowing every user to customize their own experience? Just make the default something reasonable such as all expert content and all content of a reasonably high karma/mod value.

Re:Everything to everybody.

[Admiral Ag (829695)]

The paid moderators are a must, as long as they are prevented from adding new content (C.O.I). But I don't expect that this will ever happen in Wikipedia, which has almost run its course. If nothing else, Wikipedia has demonstrated the power of the wiki concept, but its inability to self regulate in weeding out sociopaths, POV warriors and petty authoritarians has led to the departure of many good contributors, who simply can't stand dealing with some of the obsessive and Machiavellian loons who populate the site. There's no better sign of the downfall of Wikipedia than the endlessly increasing sets of rules and the endless discussions over them. I guess they just lost sight of the fact that Wikipedia should be structured to serve its users and not the obsessive people who have made it their hobby. Secret email lists, cabals, evidence of admin dishonesty oversighted, rules bent to suit the ruling clique, etc.

But it's rare to see something so novel work perfectly the first time. No doubt someone will realize that there is money to be made in providing a better mousetrap, or at least one that doesn't so obviously reek of bongwater as Wikipedia.

Don't get me wrong, I like Wikipedia, but we can do better.

Why can't it be both?

[BadAnalogyGuy (945258)]

A few years ago, no one imagined that we'd have accomplished what we did here on Wikipedia. Compared to the entrenched encyclopedia companies, we were far behind, and we always knew the climb would be steep. But in record numbers of entries, we came out and wrote so many articles. And with these articles and discussions, it was made clear that at this moment - in this fight for intellectual freedom - there is something happening on the Web.

There is something happening when men and men pretending to be women in Des Moines and Davenport; in Lebanon and Concord come out of their basements to write and rewrite and edit and correct because they believe in what this medium can be. We can be the new majority who can lead this world out of a long intellectual property darkness - Communists, Free-marketeers, and Furries who are tired of the high prices of Britannica and the inadequacy of Funk and Wagnalls; who know that we can disagree without being disagreeable; who understand that if we mobilize our voices to challenge the money and influence that's stood in our way to knowledge and challenge ourselves to reach for something better, there's no obscure minutia we can't illuminate - no minor character we cannot flesh out.

Our new Web encyclopedia can end the outrage of unaffordable, unavailable encyclopedias in our time. We can bring doctors and patients; workers and businesses, Democrats and Republicans together for discussion and consultation; and we can tell the big name encyclopedia players that while they'll get a seat at the table, they don't get to buy every chair. Not this time. Not now.

All of the inclusionists and the deletists on this site share these goals. All have good ideas. And all are valuable contributors who serve this website honorably. But the reason Wikipedia has always been different is because it's not just about what I or they will do, it's also about what you, the people who love knowledge, can do to increase it.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the years to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of the world false hope and bad information. But in the unlikely story that is Wikipedia, there has never been anything false about participation. For when we have faced down increasing attacks on our credibility; when we've been told that we're not a valid source, or that we shouldn't even try to be the be all and end all, or that we can't, thousands upon thousands of Wikipedia authors have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a free and liberated people.

Yes we can.

False dilemma (was Re:Why can't it be both?)

[traveller.ct (958378)]

I don't see the reason why Wikipedia cannot document every trivial human knowledge and still be a trustworthy and credible reference source.

Re:False dilemma (was Re:Why can't it be both?)

[Carbon016 (1129067)]

To be semantic, every trivial piece of human knowledge includes the contents of my room at 2:47 AM. There's no real need for that information.

To be fair, the problem is with reliability. If I add something that I heard once (in the 'sum of human knowledge'), there's no way for someone to use that for research or even to check it back to someone reliable to make sure I didn't make the whole bloody thing up. Unless I can go to the library, grab the book and say "oh, wow, this is exactly like Wiki said it was! oh and look, hundreds of pages going into depth on the same topic! now I'm off to write a paper!", the information exists in a Schrodinger-like state of verifiable purgatory where citing it is a huge risk if I don't know anything about it in the first place.

There's really a reason that if you go grab a book off a shelf it has a giant bibliography full of references to other books. It's an implicit certification of accuracy.

Re:Why can't it be both?

[nevali (942731)]

I'd agree with that; just because something's "trivial" doesn't mean it's not credible. The compromise is to allow articles on anything, but to hold all articles to the same editorial standards.

I do think that Wikipedia shouldn't be considered a valid source for reference material in itself, but I don't think any other encyclopaedia should be either; on the upside, the last copy of the EB that I saw didn't have a list of external authoritative sources attached to each article.

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

[andy314159pi (787550)]

Personally I get annoyed when I see a comment in a Wikipedia article which was obviously added by someone promoting some product, or some stupid viral video attempt they posted on youtube which was peripherally related to the article in question. I feel that deletion of these kind of trivial things is important to maintain the integrity of Wikipedia.

Right, but this has nothing to do with most of the articles that are deleted from Wikipedia.

Well I guess I'm an inclusionist then...

[PO1FL (1074923)]

Because I really like the trivial and sometimes weird articles on Wikipedia. I like the articles that probably would not make it into any other resource.

Re:Well I guess I'm an inclusionist then...

[Znork (31774)]

I have to agree. I often explicitly search wikipedia for reasonably structured information on neo-culture subjects like characters in TV shows, books or cartoons.

Much of wikipedias usefulness stems from it's inclusivity; if any given subject had to have a related doctorate, we'd have to wait 50 years until academia decides to catch up.

Trivial is relative

[addie (470476)]

That which may be trivial today could end up being very important in the long run. Vincent Van Gogh only sold one single painting in his lifetime, as he simply wasn't very popular. If we leave out articles on certain people or events based on our perceptions of their current importance, that information could be lost forever. Let history judge what is or is not trivial, we're just too biased to do so in the present. I'm a fan for inclusion, all the way.

Re:Trivial is relative

[xtracto (837672)]

Not only that, what could be "trivial" for one people is really informative for others. There is some knowledge that does not "belong" to other sections in an article. This is knowledge that may not be large enough to fill a paragraph but is still information. Even if this information is that X character in a movie was based on Y or took some lines from Z. To some people that might look trivial but other people might find it useful for a research of say, the influence of "oldies" 1990s movies in the new 2050 movies.

Moreover, I do not find "trivial" and "trustworthy" as conflicting approaches. You can have a very trustworthy place with Trivia (like your typical neighbour woman who knows about *everything* that happens in the neighbourhood, you know her information is trustworthy, although some of it may be trivial). I think what they should be aiming for is to improve the quality of those articles that seem "trivial". Yes, even the thousand of Anime/Manga articles, they are not tririval, they are information.

Deletionists

[apankrat (314147)]

I guess I fall under the "inclusionist" type as I wholeheartedly believe that
nuking the content in a favor of a formal compliance with a policy du jour
is a wrong thing to do. Deleting is easy, creating is hard. And re-creating
is nearly impossible. If you tried resurrecting a deleted Wikipedia article,
you know what I mean.

Re:Deletionists

[Dachannien (617929)]

Verifiable reliable secondary sourcing isn't exactly a "policy du jour" on Wikipedia, and it's generally the best way to determine the notability of a subject. Easily the most frequently deleted types of articles are spam/advocacy articles, self-bios, and articles about garage bands. In all three cases, the articles are often placed in hopes of increasing the fame of the author/subject, and in all three cases, sources are rarely if ever provided, hence the articles' eventual removal.

If you have an article topic that is well-researched and well-sourced, by which I mean the subject has received attention in reliable mainstream media, then write the article and cite the sources. But just remember that you don't own that article, and it will be ultimately judged by the Wikipedia community to determine its suitability for inclusion (or modification, merging with another article, etc.).

Re:Deletionists

[unfunk (804468)]

If you have an article topic that is well-researched and well-sourced, by which I mean the subject has received attention in reliable mainstream media, then write the article and cite the sources.

...and therein lies the problem. We have well fleshed-out articles on interesting things like SkyOS [wikipedia.org] up for deletion because it hasn't had "mainstream media" attention, while there's a squintillion articles on completely inane things whose articles comprise no more than a couple of sentences, which can be found simply by hitting the "Random Article" link a couple of times.

Here, I'll find some for you:

Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan

Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan (Arabic: ) is a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi and the current foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates. He received his position in the cabinet reshuffle in February 2006, and was previously the information and culture minister.

No offense to the guy, of course - just puling an example of a lame Wikipedia article...
Even better is this one:

Pakistan at the 1964 Summer Olympics

Pakistan competed at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.

...very informative...

It's not as though Wikipedia is starved of bandwidth or storage space, so why can't it be a repository of all sorts of nuggets of informative gold? Why do things need to be reported in "mainstream media" to be worthy of inclusion? Slashdot's not mentioned on the nightly news or in newspapers, or even in many magazines, so does this mean it should be deprived of an entry in Wikipedia? Did Wikipedia have an article on itself in its early days, before it received "mainstram media" attention?

Very, very old news

[Raul654 (453029)]

This is being reported as if it's a new thing. It's not. Far from it. I've been at Wikipedia for nearly 5 years now, and this debate has been raging as long as I've been there. In 2003/2004, it centered around high schoolers. By 2005/2006, it was individual Pokemon and TV shows. Now it's individual TV episodes and characters thereof.

What's the deletionist justification?

[babbling (952366)]

I can understand why someone might want lots of strange and "trivial" articles on Wikipedia. They want it to be a resource that they can always turn to for pretty much any and all information.

Why do the deletionists care if there are trivial articles on there? If they consider an article trivial, isn't it fairly easy to just not read it and not contribute to it?

Do they base their stance purely on how "trivial articles" may affect Wikipedia's public image, or do they have some sort of technical concern about having too many articles?

Re:What's the deletionist justification?

[Titoxd (1116095)]

More of a social concern about having too many articles; monitoring articles takes time, and having articles on topics that they consider worthless, but that still need to be monitored, causes the amount of eyes watching each article to decrease. This allows, in theory, more vandalism to sneak by, and decreases the average quality of Wikipedia articles, or so I've heard

You may want to read the Deletionism page on Metawiki [wikimedia.org] for more info.

Re:What's the deletionist justification?

[Mex (191941)]

It's the difference between having no entry for Planet Earth, and having one that says "Mostly Harmless".

Re:What's the deletionist justification?

[gsslay (807818)]

Exactly. Many of the worse pages on Wikipedia have been edited by a handful of people and haven't been even been glanced at by someone who knows what their doing (e.g. can spell) or aren't horribly biased. Fan articles are particularly bad, as they tend to be written by uncritical fanatics who are more interested in gushing about their chosen subject and conveying everything they know about it and their interpretation of things. Notability, accuracy, neutrality and references barely get a look in. You want bad articles? Try browsing some of the professional wrestling or anime articles. They'd make you weep.

Each and every one of those pages are the kind of dross that gives Wikipedia a bad name for being an amateur collection of random opinions. They are the noise that is in danger of drowning out the knowledge and there simply isn't the people to tidy them. Far better they were removed.

Re:What's the deletionist justification?

[Carbon016 (1129067)]

The justification is as follows: an encyclopedia is a generalized collection of information for easy brushing up on a subject or to begin research. It's a giant summary of what other people say. Because WP decided to use the encyclopedia template, all those weird trivial articles that nobody reports on in media deserve the hatchet. Had it not and been a collection of everything, they would have a home, but then you have to deal with a bunch of people creating articles on their friends discussing how gay they are with no reason for deletion (similar to Everything2).

It's not based on technical reasons, nor on "trivia" - if Bob's Local Cheese Statue was discussed in the newspaper a bunch of times, and that's cited in the article, that article will definitely stay. It's more based on "can you back this up using a real source, not yourself", to both preserve reliability and make sure that if someone wants to use it for research they can figure out who said what.

Re:What's the deletionist justification?

[ultranova (717540)]

Do they base their stance purely on how "trivial articles" may affect Wikipedia's public image, or do they have some sort of technical concern about having too many articles?

I suspect that the main reason is a lot less noble: "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and petty power corrupts completely out of proportion to the actual power." Destroying someone else's work is using power, and that is a rewarding activity in itself, so people with nothing to contribute do so to make themselves feel important.

That's why I've made a principal decision to never again contribute to Wikipedia: doing so would mean engaging in petty power games with deletionists and other control freaks, so why bother ?

I'm definitely in the inclusionist's camp

[TrekkieGod (627867)]

What makes wikipedia worthwhile is the amount of information available. Wikipedia credibility isn't in peril because it contains TNG episode descriptions (and it does). It's in peril because it contains inaccurate information. The one time I corrected wikipedia was the removal of some disguised claims to perpetual motion. The information had a few web page citations backing it up. I followed the links, because what they were saying intrigued me, and ended up at some crackpot's website. So I deleted that information. If it had been wrong on star trek related information, it would still be unreliable. If it didn't have any star trek information, it would still be providing wrong information on that topic.

What that tells you is that the current system works. Any encyclopedia works like that. I wasn't allowed to cite hard-copy encyclopedias when I was doing projects in school, they were meant as a starting point to gather information. Same thing I do with wikipedia. When I want quick information, I go there (and I go there quite often). If I need the extra reliability, I may look at the papers cited at wikipedia and decide if they're good reputable starting points, or go elsewhere.

Wikipedia is tremendously useful if you use it as an encyclopedia is meant to be used. A repository of tons of information for quick reference. If editors continue doing a good job requiring citation sources and checking for accuracy of information on topics they understand, it will continue to grow. If editors start removing information because "it's not worthy" I'm going to have to start going elsewhere for that information and they've accomplished nothing to increase their reputation.

Why can't it be both?

[l2718 (514756)]

In reality, Wikipedia is too large to have cohesive policy of this type. Rather, it is very fragmented with a large number of groups and projects, each with its own standards of quality, reliability and notability. In Mathematics, Wikipedia has become the de-facto first reference for definitions. I wouldn't use it for research results, but if you need to know what a contravariant functor [wikipedia.org] is, or the basic construction of Hausdorff measure [wikipedia.org] then starting at Wikipedia works. The same holds for some fields of theoretical physics. And this is perfectly compatible with there being large swathes of the encyclopedia devoted to debating the special power sof minor characters in little-known Japanese manga, written using in-universe language. The point is that most users can easily tell the difference between the two kinds of pages.

Trivial is a matter of opinion

[HomerJ (11142)]

Just because some random people determine something is "trival" doesn't mean it is.

There are a lot of things that are marked as such, that I don't think they are. Episode lists of TV shows for instance. Watch a show, want to know what season it was in, Wikipedia can tell you...at least for now.

I've always considered that the whole IDEA of Wikipedia. A site with every meaningful and meaningless piece of information you want. You need to know the particulars of the 1980 Presidential election? Wikipedia. You want to know the in-depth backstory of G-Man in Half Life? Wikipedia will tell you that as well. The latter may be called trivial by some, but I'm sure a lot of people have read it as well.

The fact that there ARE all these types of pages mean two things. People want to write them, and people want to read them. If wikipedia starts to delete them, there will be another wiki that will host them.

WP is probably beyond fixing at this point

[Carbon016 (1129067)]

The solution to this mess would seem to be to trash everything unsourced or transwiki it to a place that doesn't care about reliability, but that's not going to happen. Wikipedia sets down all these rules and then tries to weasel out of them in any way it can anymore - anyone (esp. an admin) that attempted to actually follow its rules to the letter (delete unsourced content on sight) would get blocked within a couple hours. If you're an established editor and you add something unsourced, it's fine, but if you're an IP it gets rolled back. The whole thing is silly and I don't edit there anymore.

In addition, nobody really understands the point of an encyclopedia anymore. It's to condense and collect information into a generalized mess so that someone can come along, find a snippet or less deep version of the info they need, then follow the source. The "OH MY GOD IT'S THE WEB WE CAN ADD ANYTHING WE WANT LET'S MAKE A BUNCH OF TV SHOWS" mentality snuck in pretty fast. Wikipedia has put way more emphasis on "wiki" and thrown the "pedia" part out the window years before, and *surprise* it's an issue!

Slashdotters are mostly inclusionists?

[Thanshin (1188877)]

And if so, why?

I'm all for including every little piece of info as long as it's possible to organize, and right now it seems to stay quite stable having all kinds of "minimalistic" pieces of data.

However, what called my attention upon entering the commentaries is that most people here were "inclusionists". Is it the aversion to censorship? The interest in unpopular areas of human knowledge?

I think a poll about this in Slashdot would be interesting.

They should fix their own

[Splab (574204)]

ranks before handling content. As it is now there are strong evidence of bias among editors, causing deletion of useful information - and you can't restore deleted articles, information is lost forever.

One example is the YATE (telephony) article. It got deleted by an editor who is tied with Asterix. On top of that, the user original writing the article had a copy on his own journal - that also got deleted. Now the article might have been substandard, but instead of letting problems being fixed it got downright deleted by someone with a very biased opinion.

I for one have stopped using wikipedia.

Re:They should fix their own

[FireFury03 (653718)]

One example is the YATE (telephony) article. It got deleted by an editor who is tied with Asterix.

The OpenPBX article went the same way (there was a lot of evidence that the deleting editor was tied to Asterisk and was attempting to delete a lot of articles about Asterisk alternatives). It's one of the reasons I've given up editing Wikipedia - I've seen far too many genuinely useful articles be deleted, even though they cite external sources.

I'm convinced the AfD process is utterly flawed because most of the people who take part are either deletionists (who will vote "delete" no matter what), or already connected with the article (who will defend it and vote "keep", and be immediately discredited by the deletionists as being biassed). Unbiassed people just don't have an interest in taking part in this sort of petty politics, so if an article is entered into the AfD process the chances are it's going to get deleted.

Surely there must be some compromise.

[Gldm (600518)]

If only there was some way to include the "trivial" information yet not see it unless specifically looking for it. Maybe if there was some sort of ranking system that could be used to filter what information was deemed trivial, like a score or rating system. Possibly even some kind of description tags to aid in this, like "insightful", "funny", "interesting", or "troll". Then those who were not interested in the trivial information could browse at a higher filter level, and those who were searching for it could still find it when desired.

Nah that would never work.

Label, don't regulate

[zestyping (928433)]

If the community decides that a page isn't notable, just label it thus and move on. There's no reason to delete the page.

The same thing goes for page locking: although there are still some extreme cases where pages need to be locked, many of the reliability problems would be mitigated by labelling recently-changed parts or frequently-changed parts of pages. Readers can then take responsibility for their own level of trust.

Both cases are about matching expectations to reality: the situation can be improved by changing the content OR by making expectations more accurate.

To fix wikipedia

[Loconut1389 (455297)]

* require users to have an account to edit- is that so difficult to do? It adds accountability. At least you've gone through the effort to create a gmail account and a wikipedia account. It won't cure vandalism, but might prevent some of the bot vandalism.
* allow users to declare a field of expertise (or multiple fields). As these users make edits, their ranking goes up the longer the edits go without reversion- or some other way for users to say "yes, this guy seems to know about astrophysics".
* Perhaps create a non-profit entity to verify backgrounds (confirm Ph.D's, etc) and add a trust metric which is offset by user rankings.
* on top of the above, have a mode to view a page color coded by the contributor's expertise. Edits by good editors get a certain color in that particular page view. Allow pages to be restricted to users with a certain level of credibility.

the above ideas (only ideas) might serve to help rank pages reliability. Then inclusionists could have their way and the exclusionists have less reason to exclude.

Britannica

[Loconut1389 (455297)]

What I don't understand is why someone like Britannica doesn't edit pages in wikipedia and cite their own articles. This would serve two purposes-
* Britannica gets relevance
* Articles get concrete data that is reliable

everybody wins?

Former editor and inclusionist

[Cinnaman (954100)]

I'm definitely in the inclusionist camp, I got fed up and quit editing (although I may rejoin under a new name) because of the deletionists, who hold the upper hand because only certain popular editors get nominated for the power to delete (and lock, etc.).
When I joined in '04 wikipedia was largely inclusionist but since it reached around 750,000 english articles, became increasingly deletionist to the point that it is now largely deletionist.

Also, the "free" part of its motto "the free encyclopedia" also means open-source, so anything with a hint of not being GDFL approved is deleted with prejudice. "Fair use" at some point became "fair game", nevermind that I (and others) spent time sourcing fair use images only to have them all deleted.

Re:deletionists

[gilroy (155262)]

Excellent. It took fewer than 20 comments to go from "interesting discussion of an important if abstract philosophical difference" to "ad hominem attack on anyone who disagrees with me". No wonder human discourse is so rarefied and refined these days!

"And furthermore, you're ugly!" Yeah, that rhetorical flourish really adds to the logical cohesion of a point.