insanecarbonbasedlif's Journal: Wikipedia Censorcracy

Howard Tayler over at Schlock Mercenary writes about how Wikipedia editors are using "notability" or the lack there-of to delete webcomic articles they don't find worthy of their fine encyclopedic tradition. This personally touches a nerve, as I've seen articles that I read and updated deleted as spam (with claims that I'm being paid to post such articles), not notable (how great a catch-all is that?), or not up to Wikipedia standards (how about keeping the article around so it can be revised to reach that standard?). All in all, I'm becoming quite soured to the whole "open encyclopedia" idea as I watch valuable information being dumped by "editors" at wikipedia who are editing well outside their areas of knowledge, just to advance their ideas of what's worthy or not.

How's this for doublespeak, from Wikipedia's entry for itself:

Wikipedia's philosophy is that unmoderated collaboration among well-meaning, informed editors will gradually improve the encyclopedia in its breadth, depth and accuracy, and that, given enough time, the truth will win out and even subtle errors will be caught and corrected.

Funny how there's nothing in that article about agendas, Article For Deletion discussions in which one side consistently ignores the other, and editing by uninformed editors. But not "funny, ha-ha!". More like "funny [Redacted - Not Notable]".

Funny

[Corporate Troll]

Especially I've been reading up about Userfriendly on wikipedia just yesterday. I found it interesting...

dick swinging contests

[ces]

The comments about Wikipedia succumbing to the same problems as almost every other self-important collaborative effort are instructive. (Debian I'm looking at you)

Hopefully the relevance police will be reigned in somewhat as almost any arbitrary article can be deleted on the basis of non-relevance especially by those with little knowledge in the subject area.

And yet some big name pop stars who will be forgotten quickly after their 15 minutes of fame are up have not only articles for themselves but for every

Notability in a nutshell

[sanctimonius hypocrt]

"A topic is notable and suitable for an article if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable and independent of the subject itself and each other." - Notability criteria [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

This provides so much grey area that it's dizzying. If "non-trival", "published work", and "reliable source" could be rigorously defined to prevent bias that would be one thing, but hey, even Wikipedia knows - Subjectivity of what "notability" is [wikipedia.org] in a nutshell (that is, protecting a group of nuts):

The application of the prime criterion may itself be subjective in individual cases. In particular, the determination of whether a particular source is "non-trivial" and of how many sources are required to satisf

Re:

[sanctimonius hypocrt]

I take the position that almost everything can be included somewhere, but not everything should have its own page [wikipedia.org]. But yeah, it is subjective. Sometimes administrators just delete stuff; other times a bunch of random guys on the internet vote on it. Sometimes Jimbo Wales rules by fiat. So yeah, we get to pick however we want (whoever 'we' is), but you don't have to pretend it's unbiased. And it's not the only game in town. There's everything2, or citizendium, or Uncyclopedia, or your own website; or you can

Re:

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

Everyone on Wikipedia complains endlessly

You misspelled internet. It starts with an "I", not a "W". :) (I hate smileys >:( )

Moo

[Chacham]

Wikipedia, Science, both are supposedly objective, but end up being very subjective. We cannot run away from our inherent subjectivity, and the more we try to, the more it will come back unseen.

Objectivity is a good thing, just not on its own.