Wikipedia deletion getting out of hand

[ThinkBuntu]

It now has reached the point where any article, once published, is immediately subject to scrutiny for notability and is soon recommended for deletion. Do these editors not understand that articles require evolution, and that the very nature of Wikipedia is such that this should never be a concern? The emphasis on collaboration logically favors community over monolithic administrators who erase articles at-will with little in the way of explanation. Forum member RAV TUX experienced this not long ago with his Oz Linux article, but part of me understood that his distro was still nascent and had received little in the way of third-party recognition.

But I was truly surprised to find that the article I created a mere two days ago on Moonlight (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_%28runtime%29), the open-source implementation of Microsoft's upcoming Silverlight browser compatibility, was almost immediately questioned for notability. What bothers me in particular is that the Admins calling articles into question seldom have any knowledge regarding the subject matter.

[Cheese Sandwich]

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, hence tries to enforce the standard of notability before the fact, not a news source of potentially notable developments. When somebody posts an article about his own work that not a lot of people are aware of, that's not really considered "notable".

[Cheese Sandwich]

Forum member RAV TUX experienced this not long ago with his Oz Linux article

Was it spam?

[ThinkBuntu]

I got the notability notice removed after adding three third-party sources. I just think that, with an encyclopedia of limitless space, decisions should err towards keeping articles and not deleting them.

[Cheese Sandwich]

I got the notability notice removed after adding three third-party sources. I just think that, with an encyclopedia of limitless space, decisions should err towards keeping articles and not deleting them.

I tend to agree, but I don't fault them for trying to enforce quality standards.

That said, it's rather disheartening to find tons and tons or articles on pokemon characters, arcane Harry Potter characters & concepts, etc.

[Arathorn]

I find it very annoying too. Wikipedia should add some rating system to their site so people who have been registered for some time can vote and visitors can see in the blink of an eye how many people reviewed the article and found it useful. Then notability should no longer be an issue.

[Cheese Sandwich]

Wikipedia should add some rating system to their site so people who have been registered for some time can vote and visitors can see in the blink of an eye how many people reviewed the article and found it useful. Then notability should no longer be an issue.

But usefulness to long-time members isn't the same thing as notability.

[Arathorn]

True, but the problem editors have with notability seems to be the fact that few people check the facts for things nobody cares about. If the user has a clue on how accurate the data is, who cares what the information is about?

[lingnoi]

Why didn't you just add it on to the Silverlight article rather then creating a new article that will be deleted as advertising.

Since its related to silverlight that seems to be the best place to put it.

[Tundro Walker]

As an "authoritative source" for information, if people constantly find crap cluttering up Wikipedia, nobody will take anything on it seriously anymore. So, yeah, I can kinda agree that some of this stuff needs to be monitored, and scrutinized.

However, I've always seen Wikipedia as not only an encyclopaedia, but a running time line of historical fads & events. A lot of the "crap" articles posted on it, like Pokemon and such, are current fads, and seem worthless, but someone has taken the loving interest and time to post that snapshot in history for all to see. I think it should stay, regardless of how trivial.

My bums gonna get sore if I keep riding the fence on every issue I reply to...LOL!

[SoulinEther]

Why didn't you just add it on to the Silverlight article rather then creating a new article that will be deleted as advertising.

Since its related to silverlight that seems to be the best place to put it.
I kinda have to agree with this guy here. He's right; it's not like this is a Linux-native innovation... it's not worth making a whole new article about... YET.

When it is launched and you can discuss what works, how well it works, etc., then yes, a separate page makes sense.

[CheShA]

That said, it's rather disheartening to find tons and tons or articles on pokemon characters, arcane Harry Potter characters & concepts, etc.

Exactly.. They have a "project" dedicated to documenting everything about Gwen Stefani, including pages on each of her tunes if i remember - in fact I just checked and the page about "Hollaback girl" is approximately twice as long as the page for "Linus Torvalds"... hmmmm

And, like the page titled "The Force (Star Wars)" is longer than the page for all of Australia!!

[kamaboko]

Wikipedia's strength is also its greatest weakness: open to public editing. From time-to-time I find wrong information posted there.

[samjh]

Exactly.. They have a "project" dedicated to documenting everything about Gwen Stefani, including pages on each of her tunes if i remember - in fact I just checked and the page about "Hollaback girl" is approximately twice as long as the page for "Linus Torvalds"... hmmmm

And, like the page titled "The Force (Star Wars)" is longer than the page for all of Australia!!

Evidently people have more interest in those topics than Australia or Linus Torvalds. Sad but true.

If interest was higher for Australia and Linus Torvalds, then more people would have made time to add information to those entries. But as you have seen, no-one seems to have really bothered.

[CheShA]

But as you have seen, no-one seems to have really bothered.

Yeah, we're all too busy sitting in forums whining about it! lol

[samjh]

Yeah, we're all too busy sitting in forums whining about it! lolYup. :D

[H.E. Pennypacker]

Some people really take the notability thing too far. I can't believe Stack Bundles' article has been removed. It's crazy. Stack B?! Stack B not notable? Yeah, right.

[Fenryr]

Wiki is a total waste of badnwidth anyway...Who CARES what they think? If I have questions regarding space sciences, I go to JPL online...For physics, there's CERN and a half dozen other sites staffed by people who KNOW what they're talking about...For medical questions, there's the AMA, the NEJM, and dozens of other places..I could go on, but you get the idea...Never settle for popular opinion when you can go straight to the SOURCE...
Anyone who uses Wiki as a prime source of information needs their BS filters upgraded by several orders of magnitude...*g*

[RAV TUX]

Wiki is a total waste of badnwidth anyway...Who CARES what they think? If I have questions regarding space sciences, I go to JPL online...For physics, there's CERN and a half dozen other sites staffed by people who KNOW what they're talking about...For medical questions, there's the AMA, the NEJM, and dozens of other places..I could go on, but you get the idea...Never settle for popular opinion when you can go straight to the SOURCE...
Anyone who uses Wiki as a prime source of information needs their BS filters upgraded by several orders of magnitude...*g*

Well said.

[amar]

Wikipedia's strength is also its greatest weakness: open to public editing. From time-to-time I find wrong information posted there.

Which of course you quickly edit the page and correct the mistake


Never settle for popular opinion when you can go straight to the SOURCE...
Anyone who uses Wiki as a prime source of information needs their BS filters upgraded by several orders of magnitude...*g*

Actually there are many cases when it is better to use something like wikipedia. As an engineer, if i were to look at a piece of legislation, it is written in legaliese which I don't understand. Wikipedia puts it into simpler, easier to understand terms. Obviously i wouldn't take all my legal advice from wikipedia, just use it for general background before hiring the lawyers.

[Cheese Sandwich]

Wiki is a total waste of badnwidth anyway...Who CARES what they think? If I have questions regarding space sciences, I go to JPL online...For physics, there's CERN and a half dozen other sites staffed by people who KNOW what they're talking about...For medical questions, there's the AMA, the NEJM, and dozens of other places..I could go on, but you get the idea...Never settle for popular opinion when you can go straight to the SOURCE...
Anyone who uses Wiki as a prime source of information needs their BS filters upgraded by several orders of magnitude...*g*

I use it as a very simple lookup for things I don't know. For example, I often hear about "alienware", but didn't know what is was, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. It's sort of like a fancy dictionary. There may be factual errors, but it's most likely correct on the bigger concepts.

[PartisanEntity]

That is the problem with a project such as Wikipedia, I personally do not like it because due to the anonymous nature of those contributing you get a lot of lies, bias and propaganda, naturally any work will suffer these problems, but Wikipedia seems to suffer them a lot due to so many people, some with agendas, adding or removing info.

I use it for light introductory reading for certain topics: technical topics, sciences, basic issues, but I stay away from it when it comes to politics, history, culture and religion.

One example I came across was about a radio/blog host who runs a political blog, he was trying to correct an article written about himself, and every time he added his corrections they would be deleted by 'someone'.

Another example was about some senior Wikipedia editor/staff who pretended to hold a degree on the topics he wrote about and edited, later it turned out he was an imposter using multiple accounts, apparently it had been sanctioned by Wikipedia management until it became public.

Wikipedia might be more useful if it required people to sign up with their real names and offer proof of identification, then you would eliminate organisations, lobbies and individuals who hide behind the user and nicknames to push their agendas and ignorance.

That's why I prefer traditional encyclopaedias where the article is written by Tom Smith or Mary Wood who can offer credentials and not by mickeymouse75 or Dr2Cool.

[samjh]

I tend to use www.answers.com instead of Wikipedia for some research, since answers.com draws from more sources for its articles.

But Wikipedia is quite reliable for most things. Just stay away from controversial topics (especially when a topic within a specialised field is controversial).

[Cheese Sandwich]

...and not by mickeymouse75 or Dr2Cool.

:lol:

...or "chunkylover72" or "WarEZRuLz". :D

[Tundro Walker]

Wikipedia may be kinda crappy, but you have lots of "answers" in one location.

I wouldn't cite it's information for a thesis paper, but, like others have said, it's a good starting jump point to give you a brief intro on a subject, and (hopefully) some useful links for more indepth info.

Think of it this way...when folks have a question, they go to Google. They go to one place to type in their question and dig up tons and tons or responses. Some of those are crap, some are good. It's up to the user to decide. Wikipedia is the same way. You have a question, you want to go to one place to ask it and find some answers. A lot of folks don't know about better sites right off the bat. They do know about Google and Wikipedia. As long as they tie into better information, I think they serve their purpose.

[gtr225]

It appears Fram likes to delete a lot of articles. At his talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fram you can see all the complaints ppl left.

[@trophy]

That said, it's rather disheartening to find tons and tons or articles on pokemon characters, arcane Harry Potter characters & concepts, etc.

Yeah, I ended up learning EVERYTHING about the entire Harry Potter series when I was just looking for one specific spoiler... oh well.

[Polygon]

I tend to agree, but I don't fault them for trying to enforce quality standards.

That said, it's rather disheartening to find tons and tons or articles on pokemon characters, arcane Harry Potter characters & concepts, etc.

why not? its information, and if you happen to be a kid wanting to find out more about your favorite pokemon then a ton of information is there. One of the great things about wikipedia is that if one person knows some random information about something, and makes a wikipedia article about it, then you can read it be like "wow, i didn't know that". Its an encyclopedia for ANYTHING, which goes from religion to video games to book series

Yes wikipedia is a questionable source for stuff like research papers, but for general knowledge wikipedia is amazing. Lots of information there about certain specific topics that cant be found easily anywhere else.

[migla]

I don't think anyone is supposed to cite any encyclopedia (free or proprietary) for a research paper.

I think wikipedia is absolutely awesome and great for a lot of information purposes, and also, they're in the habit of citing sources, from which one can get more information.

Everything should be questioned. Even scientists sometimes make up data.

About the actual topic of the thread:

I don't mind if there's obscure material about not so notable things, because it's not really cluttering my experience, since I don't read wikipedia from cover to over. Sure, some amount of deletion on those grounds is for the best, but the Moonlight project page is maybe too much, in my uninformed opinion. On the other hand, having it mentioned in the silverlight article would probably get more eyeballs on it. :)