No, I think it's an unconscionable mess.

And fax machines work, but that doesn't mean anything in the universe that's not a fax machine is worse than a fax machine.

The question is whether it would be profitable in a free market, not whether it is profitable in the existing market. Clearly it is not profitable in the existing market because nobody is doing it.

How is essential defined here? Which of the following goods and services are essential?

• insulin for a diabetic
• acetaminophen for someone with a broken arm
• acetaminophen for a child with muscle pains
• a refrigerator at home to prevent food spoilage
• hospice for a terminally ill patient
• a liver transplant
• a sex-change operation
• a mammogram for a 55-year-old
• a mammogram for a 16-year-old
• genetic testing for Huntington's
• jaw surgery to eliminate TMJ
• a high-quality mattress
• a quadruple bypass
• a gastric bypass
• cholesterol-lowering drugs
• anxiety-reducing drugs
• an electric toothbrush
• sex
• setting a broken leg

Every single one of these things could save lives or drastically improve one's quality of life. Some of these are commercially available, some are available in hospitals, some are neither. Is it the presence of a doctor that turns some of these things into "essentials" and others into goods? Which of these should we allow profits on? If a government system does not cover any of these things, is it unethical?

If profits are unethical, should we allow profits on anything? Why?

I know this is a smarmy post—I'm not trolling, honestly. But I find people come into these conversations with a pre-existing mental framework that "health = essential" and therefore "profiting on health is unethical" without much exploration. Not everything offered in the health care industry is essential or life-saving, and many goods and services which are absolutely essential and life-saving are offered privately with no objections from anybody (e.g., refrigerators). What makes "health care" exist outside of the framework of goods and services in general? Most health care spending is dedicated to gradually improving quality of life, not saving people from axe wounds. If allowing profit and unrestricted competition is a bad way to improve people's quality of life, why are we even talking about health? Shouldn't we jump to the conclusion that anything that improves people's lives should be strictly non-profit and centrally planned?

There is legitimate criticism of Wikipedia. A shitload of it. I'll be the first to say that some aspects of Wikipedia are absolutely horrendous.

But I almost never see that legitimate criticism in these threads. All I see is:

1. "Its completely arbitrary as to what the mod of the day thinks is 'notable' or not."
   No, it's quite consistent. There's a discussion where people list reasons (read: do not vote) why the article should be kept or deleted. If the discussion clearly shows why the article should be deleted, in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy (namely, Wikipedia's notability guideline, which editors are told to read before writing the article), then and only then* is the article deleted by an admin. If the discussion does not reach a clear conclusion, the article is not deleted. The above comment is clearly based on misunderstanding of how the deletion decisions are made.
2. "How can you be sure there's a general rule deciding which is notable and which is not?"
   Well, it's easy to be sure. Click here. Now you can be sure. In fact, if you read any deletion discussion, someone will link to the rule, because that's what those discussions are about. When you create a page, there's a boldface link to it. Every major page on Wikipedia's guidelines links to it. The above comment is clearly based on misunderstanding of whether there's a rule or not.
3. "It's all up to the individual reader. For 90% people an article explaining compiler design is of no notability."
   (Really? 600 million people are interested in compiler design? But that's beside the point.) Wikipedia's definition of "notability" is different from the colloquial definition of "notability", just as the electrical definition of "potential" is different from the colloquial definition of "potential". All fields have jargon, Wikipedia has its own. Reading the above guideline would make this clear.
4. "...it leads to Eastern European weightlifters being deleted because pimply-faced American 'admins' haven't heard of them, but that every single Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon card ever created has its own separate page."
   Actually, articles are not deleted because admins have not heard of them,* but because of the above process that I mentioned. The case would've been better stated with a link to said weightlifter's discussion, but few in these threads can be bothered with supporting facts (remarkably, it's those same people who keep getting their articles deleted! what a weird coincidence!) Furthermore, not one of the 9000+ Magic cards or the 5000+ Pokemon cards has a page, so this comment was not only based on misunderstanding, but on the commenter being a person who enjoys making up complete bullshit.
5. "Unfortunately, "I think this is silly" is the unspoken reason that a lot of articles get deleted."
   That doesn't explain why so many silly articles are not deleted, or why so many articles that get deleted are completely mundane.
6. "What the Wikipedia administrators should realize is that an online encyclopedia doesn't have to fit into a given shelf space."
   The problem is 1) assuming Wikipedia admins don't understand basic physical facts, and 2) responding to an argument that was never made -- a "strawman". Articles are not deleted to free up server space; they are deleted because they are horrible and Wikipedia is not built as a repository for horrible things, it is designed to be a high-quality resource. Articles whose topics have never been addressed in reliable sources are low-quality resources that cannot be transformed into high-quality resources with any amount of effort, and therefore they lower the reliability and quality of the encyclopedia, as well as encourage the proliferation of such writing. Wikipedia enforces its guidelines because it's not enough to let everyone write whatever they want, there needs to be some threshold to at least maintain a minimum standard of quality.

These discussions never get anywhere because people who understand the process generally don't get their articles deleted. Whenever I've had an article deleted, it was one that clearly did not meet Wikipedia's guidelines (i.e., one that was written before I knew what I was doing). Whenever I've had an article kept, it was one that clearly met Wikipedia's guidelines. Now, everyone's experience is different. Maybe these giant conspiracies are really happening and I've just been lucky. But I've been editing Wikipedia for years, and I haven't had these problems.

It's not that Wikipedia is perfect. But the people who have the most problems are the people who keep saying things that aren't true and keep complaining about hypothetical, ephemeral examples instead of using quotations and links. There's a correlation there.

* I'm not saying no admin has ever abused his power, and I'm not saying the process works perfectly. I'm saying admins do quite well for a large group of humans, and the process works quite well for a process created by a large group of humans.

Maybe people should just read the goddamn policies before submitting data.

Yeah, I'm curious too. Lendrick, if you agree that it's OK to delete articles on some topics, how would you decide what to delete?

A majority vote wouldn't be fair, because admins would delete anything they hadn't heard of.

A Google search wouldn't be fair, because it would be radically biased toward modern topics and internet culture.

The current policy's as fair as you can get. Something's notable if it's been covered in reliable, independent sources. That precludes two-week-old blogs that no notable sources have written about, but allows for obscure topics that are fairly well-known to specific subcultures.

Not one Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon card ever created has its own separate page.

And I'm gonna take a stab and guess that you don't actually have an example of an Eastern European weightlifter being deleted because an American admin hadn't heard of him.

But don't let the facts get in your way. Those "pimply-faced" admins obviously have no idea what they're talking about.

God, that's some obnoxious condescension right there. Those poor, well-meaning fools just haven't realized that an internet website can be bigger than a book! They just don't understand!

Deleted pages are kept on the server. No one's ever said it was a storage issue.

Photos on Wikipedia are rarely analyzed (except on articles about specific photos). When photos are included in an article, they're just filler to say "This is what this subject looked like."

Wikipedia is rarely so specific as to address a single photo, on a subject as broad as WWII. That would be the artistic domain of a dedicated history book, not an encyclopedia.

It depends on what you're using the photo for.

On Wikipedia, the original caption of the picture doesn't really relate in a sensible way to the rest of the article. The article's not about the picture, the picture is about the article's subject, so its caption should be factual, understandable, and neutral. If you include what the picture's caption was in the 1940s, you're just drawing attention to the photo itself, which takes away from the article.

On the Commons gallery itself, the original caption should be included, since a Commons page is about the photo, and not the subject of the photo. So yeah, I would include the original caption there, but also include a modern, neutral caption that is relevant to today, so that people can understand what the photo is actually about.

As far as I see, that's exactly what the plan is. Both captions are being included on Commons, but on the encyclopedia, only modern captions are used. It's not about being politically correct (whatever the fuck that stupid phrase means), it's about being informative and clear.

Prove Torchics don't exist.

Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia (May 2006):

(Full disclosure: this is not an official ultimatum on Wales' part, just his own interpretation of the rules he wrote for his own site.) This is being applied more strongly in the last few years than it was at the site's inception, but the site's only 8 years old. Wikipedia's going to be around for a very long time. It's just getting started. The rules, as written, have always been clear on the need for sources. The direction Wikipedia is moving in is toward higher standards, toward following its own policies, which is how it was intended.

You might want to read the article (that's what was in the article when it was deleted). It barely touched on Torchic's appearance in the show. Most of its content had to do with its name, its "biological characteristics", its appearance in the games/manga/whatever. None of that can come from the cartoon. Most of the article's sources were fansites which could have pulled their information from anywhere.

No, shitty articles are the reason Wikipedia has turned to shit. There were shitty articles when it started, there will be shitty articles ten years from now. As the number of articles increases, the ratio of shittiness will increase, as the long tail of articles is an inevitable shit storm of shittiness. The point of enforcing strict standards is to at least allow a few good articles to rise from the overwhelming abyss of shittiness that is Wikipedia. The point of deletionism is to say "hey, stop ignoring the rules that have been in place since day one, because you're turning Wikipedia to shit".

I didn't say that at all. I said there are lots of Pokemon fansites with no sources, so the fact that Wikipedia doesn't include this information doesn't prevent that information from existing. Wikipedia's higher standards aren't preventing anyone from learning anything about anything.

I wouldn't, since math articles on Wikipedia are terrible. I certainly wouldn't read a math article on Wikipedia which only had other wikis and personal websites as sources.

No, it's a reason to keep Wikipedia's policies the way they are -- and not change them to be the same as any other wiki.

Yes, it does. If the Torchic doesn't require reliable sources, then neither does the World War II article. Unless you're seriously suggesting that every article needs to start with a majority vote on whether it should require reliable sources or not. Wikipedia doesn't do majority votes, it has foundational guidelines which are applied equally to everything, and that is a damn good policy.

Blah, blah, strawman, blah. What "claims" are you talking about? You (not you, people in general) claimed something happened (a fact), I asked for proof. I said Wikipedia's policies are fine (an opinion), you can't ask for proof of that. Wikipedia sucks in a lot of ways, but I don't think the academic standards are causing any of its problems. It just doesn't make sense to me that saying "you know what, nevermind, let's just let people do what feels right to them" will suddenly let it blossom into some futuristic beacon of academic leadership.

It was rhetorical, I don't give a crap who he is or what he's done. My point was, on Wikipedia, it's not enough to say "he's so respected". The point of the article is to give real information derived from real sources, not arbitrary assertions that the majority of editors think is correct. If a bunch of people on Slashdot say he's respected, I have no problem believing that. But the point of Wikipedia is to be a little more academically stringent than the rest of the Internet.

Of course. The existence of a deletion discussion doesn't mean the article subject's not notable, just that there is doubt as to his notability. Since the article's creators failed to provide any proof of notability (which they are obliged, not encouraged, to do), the deletion discussion was set up to determine whether Aaronson was a notable subject.

The article, at the time the discussion began, didn't contain any secondary sources that indicated his notability. That's a perfectly valid reason to say, "hey, this guy doesn't look notable". Nothing unfair about that.

No, they usually don't. Unfortunately, that's exactly what they're supposed to do.

That doesn't mean the deletion debate was invalid, if that's what you're implying. At the time the deletion debate began, the article didn't have a single valid source, and contained almost no useful information about Aaronson other than a summary of his CV. Editors correctly voted "Delete", because the article (at the time) met Wikipedia's guidelines for deletion.

After the discussion began, the article was drastically improved. Editors who had correctly voted "Delete" at first, correctly changed their vote to "Keep" once the article was improved (notice the changed votes in the debate, and the run of "Keep"s at the end). It was only after reliable sources were added that everyone agreed. It wouldn't have been a snowball vote if the article had remained in its existing state, and -- (the important part) -- the article would not have been brought up to its current state if the vote hadn't happened! It would have remained as useless as the majority of stubs on Wikipedia. Now it's full of links to things he's done and people talking about him and his works. Now someone can have an actual understanding of him in a way they wouldn't have been able to if Wikipedia wasn't so stringent and the "deletionists" weren't so trigger-happy.

Of course, now that the debate ended, there have barely been any further edits to the article. It'll languish well into the future, I'm sure, but at least it's at least slightly useful now.

Thanks for proving I'm not a raving lunatic. And your edit summaries are awesome.

Just for full disclosure, I've had edits reverted plenty of times. But in every case, either a) the other person had a better argument, and convinced me; or b) I had a better argument, and convinced them.