I'm looking at an archived copy of that article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Virdi/CyanogenMod); it failed a *very* basic notability requirement - it never showed that it got significant coverage from a reliable source. The project's webpage doesn't count, nor do forums.

You aren't understanding tmk's argument - he is saying statistically it is highly unlikely that a bunch of people would simultaneously lose interest in the same article. The "watch article" feature makes it easy to keep track of an article, so why would everyone lose interest at once while fighting earlier?

I don't believe tom's story, and I'm not surprised to see that he never linked to his example despite several requests for one.

Most of the people who attack Wikipedia for being deletionist don't understand its purpose: Wikipedia seeks to be a reliable source of information before it seeks to be a complete source of information. Wikipedia has gotten better over the years; not because it has grown (which it has), but because it has increased in average quality. Just five years ago Wikipedia was considered somewhat a joke because it contained so much misinformation and unreliable information.

You have a pretty strong opinion on all this, as do a lot of other Slashdotters. I present this challenge to everyone: provide an example of an article that you think deserves to be on Wikipedia but was deleted despite having reliable sources. My guess is you will be hard-pressed to find examples.

Wikipedia is not a Democracy, so a delete request would never be "accepted by a narrow margin". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_democracy)

Besides, if an article was up for deletion 3 times and ultimately was deleted, it had some serious issues. In all those months that passed, a single reliable source would have been enough to squash any deletion nominations right away. Why didn't you just add one?

I'm calling your bluff - please link to your old account or the article in question.

Whatever their stated goal, their actual goal became profit when they went public. If they sacrifice profit for the sake of squirreling away knowledge, their shareholders and board will reign them back in. The current stock price reflects shareholder belief that Google will continue to grow their profits, and if this doesn't occur the price will plummet in a very visible way.

For example, in the remote chance that Google doesn't make a cent off their book scanning after a few years, they will stop scanning books.

OK, this is kind of dumb. As others point out, most of these questions have reasonable explanations. But I think this (http://i.imgur.com/EYY9.png) is actually interesting.

The way someone words his question appears to be correlated to how educated the question actually is.

The system doesn't assume "everyone" does anything. Statistically, only a small sample is necessary.
FTFA: "People who don't want to do it or don't care can completely ignore it," Chaum said. "We only need 3 to 5 percent of people to verify their votes [to make it effective], depending on how close the contest is. If it becomes close, then you need a larger percentage to get the same level of confidence."

I would make the fairly obvious argument that the number of scientists is largely irrelevant compared to the amount of work they produce. A single Einstein is worth an infinite number of mediocre physicists who never end up producing any work in their careers. This is important, because (at least in my experience in academia), 95% of academic scientists and maybe 80% of engineers produce nothing useful in their lifetimes.

While there may be a glut of scientists, there is no glut of *good* scientists; we always need those. Let's not kid ourselves - the number of possible problems scientists and engineers can solve has not gone down over time. If anything, it has gone way up.

According to this media journalist (http://gizmodo.com/5388745/how-a-paid-hulu-would-work):

"Hulu, the joint venture between News Corp.'s Fox, GE's NBC Universal and Disney's ABC, doesn't plan on charging people to watch the stuff it's currently airing on the site-a mix of first-run shows from broadcast TV, a limited number of cable TV shows and a smattering of movies. But Hulu is trying to figure out how to create some kind of premium offering where you'll pay for stuff that isn't on the site right now."

If true, I think that is completely OK. A mix of free ad-supported content with premium high-quality content people are willing to pay for. Not sure how that would work currently, but HBO has proven people are happy to pay for *quality* programming.

This is largely the point; phone companies gather 100s of patents that cover every aspect of their phones. These patents are often so broad that courts will not uphold them or will force them to be narrowed.

Still, the lawyers use these patents as a sort of negotiation tool. In this and many other industries, patent lawyers aren't lawyers as much as strategists; for all we know, Nokia is doing this as a defensive method because they know they are infringing on some Apple IP. Or, perhaps, they want some cool multitouch features in their next phone.

See this article for a fascinating analysis of Apple and Palm's patent war:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/28/apple-vs-palm-the-in-depth-analysis/

I would have agreed with you until I got a Kindle as a present. I have started reading a lot more because of it. Its e-ink screen is much better than an iPhone (I don't want a flashlight shining directly into my eyes when I read at night). When I travel, its size is great (fits in my bag much more easily than a paperback).

Also, I find downloading e-books more convenient than acquiring physical copies of books.