Wikiwatch, the madness continues
Posted February 6th, 2007 by Howard TaylerThe Evil Inc. article is gone again, and this time there’s no mention in the deletion thread of what happened.
Vandals? Vindictive editor? Virgin of the Rocks? Who knows?
To every Wikipedia editor and defender who said “Evil Inc.’s original article lacked notability references, but the new one does, it’s now okay” I call BS. Again. I do appreciate the efforts of editors to get useful and demonstrably notable articles like this reinstated and rewritten (hobit!) but it would appear that the system is still broken.
And for the record, this is not just about one article for one comic strip. As evidenced by the comments I’ve seen in the past two threads (and my email), this kind of madness goes in multiple genres throughout the Wikipedia.
We are watching you.
February 6th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
hmm i really don’t want to see the reaction arround here if the anti-web comic morons decide to take out the schlock page
juenger1701
February 6th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
To summarise, the deletion review process hasn’t ended yet. Since everybody there thinks the article should be restored, an administrator did that ahead of time. Another administrator thought this was too far out of process and put a deletion review notice on the article. All the content is still available in the page history, including the old version of the article (which really had no references; I call BS on your call of BS).
February 6th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
So… deleted this time with no commentary to explain why, other than commentary here saying “it was restored with no commentary so two wrongs make a right.”
You’re digging it deeper. I remain steadfastly unimpressed and disappointed.
February 6th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
and it’s gone again
wiki SOP
step one Dig Hole
step two Shoot self in foot
juenger1701
February 6th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
I ought to edit that statement. :P
February 6th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
well, as of right now it appears to be back again. who knows what the heck they’re playing at over at Wikipedia Non-Central…
February 6th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
As of now, the matter seems to be finished. (I hope.)
The deletion review was withdrawn by the person who started it and closed by the same administrator who earlier put the deletion review notice in place of the Evil Inc. article. The former person then removed the notice and reverted the article to its new and improved version.
In my not very humble opinion, the article is now in better shape than prior to its deletion.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
The article does look a lot better, xyzzy_n. I’ll grant that, and agree to agree on at least this one point.
I appreciate your persistance in the face of such obstinate persecution. :-)
February 6th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
The article is now back for good. Its brief re-disappearance appears to have been an administrator jumping through hoops to ensure that the article is retained by following proper process, so that everyone’s happy. (In the same situation I would’ve simply walked over process, which is one of the reasons why I’m not an admin.)
This is the tour of the sausage factory, folks. :-)
February 6th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
If it’s back for good, I can’t see it. I can go to the History tab and see it, but the main page says it’s deleted.
I noticed that in the History one of the comments was “See sawing is bringing attention offsite.” THAT would be me. I’ve never really read Evil, Inc and certainly never looked for it on Wikipedia, but now I do.
I’m righteously indignated. Where do I complain to? ;)
February 6th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
It’s showing up as back for me. You maybe need to refresh your cache?
February 6th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Tycho’s “discordant mob” seems to have the title “Admin”…
February 6th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
The experiment has begun. A million monkeys at a million keyboards. We call it, “Wikipedia.”
February 7th, 2007 at 4:49 am
rbliss, the deletion log shows nothing for the article after it was restored, so that looks like a problem with your cache.
That was me in the history.
February 7th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Kizor; is your earlier comment an Otto von Bismark referrence, or Slaughterhouse Five? They both come to mind.
February 7th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
So did they sack the people who sacked the people who created the original opening credits?
In late 2006 Help Desk was nominated for deletion. The decision was, ultimately, to keep it… but the defenses mounted for doing so were virtually identical to the defenses mounted in comics that were deleted. I think it depends on which editor you get, what mood they’re in, how regularly they take their meds and how high the dosage happens to be…
February 7th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Given the major book-scanning projects out there (like Google books, Open Content Alliance, Project Gutenberg, etc), it’s only a matter of time before a REAL online encyclopedia becomes available and moves to pick up the ball where Wikipedia dropped it, regarding web content and obscure topics. At that point, Wikipedia will become obsolete and hopefully die off and go away. I greatly look forward to that day. I’m sick to death of grading papers with Wikipedia citations (which is tantamount to saying “some guy told me so”). Not that Wikipedia is not a good PRELIMINARY research tool, which may list a few actually useful sources, but time spent reading Wikipedia as a research tool is better spent doing blind Google searches for articles on the subject, or (God forbid) going to an actual library and looking it up in a book.
February 7th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
The 1911 Britannica is already freely available online (albeit usually at an awful quality). Several other encyclopaedias are available commercially.
On grading Wikipedia-citing papers: an ‘F’ sprayed over the entire first page ought to do the trick. There are several places on Wikipedia where people are warned not to cite it, including a warning on top of the page that generates citations for a given article. Anyone who ignores that has badly missed the point. (However, depending on the topic, Wikipedia may be a more efficient research tool than plain Google. It varies.)
February 7th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
So is Wikiwatch notable? Should *it* have a wikipedia page?
February 7th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Several people seem to be using the term, possibly independently. If a couple of newspapers report about something specific, it’ll become notable, but right now, it isn’t (due to a lack of secondary reporting). The number of ‘OMG my favourite Wikipedia article just got deleted! How dare they!’ blog posts is large. Their impact to date has been negligible.
February 7th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
“So is Wikiwatch notable?”
You mean Wikipedia Watch? It’s tangentially notable; not enough for a standalone article, but it gets a pretty prominent mention in Daniel Brandt’s article, and there’s a redirect at that name that points to his page.
February 7th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Hmm…we need to agitate for a mainstream paper, or (Apparently) /. to cover Wiki Watch to make it “notable.”
Also provide links to criticism of Wikipedia to the Wikipedia entry on Wikipedia…
February 8th, 2007 at 12:56 am
Let’s see what we can do about these here italics… There, that should fix it. I hope. Aaaanyway…
I’d just like to apologise on behalf of Wikipedia… the free online encyclopaedia that anyone can apologise for!
Hopefully Citizendium’ll be a decent replacement for it sometime this year, and the only problem with it will be this one.
I’m not holding my breath though.
Notability? What’s that? On a cosmic scale Earth’s not notable, and won’t be unless/until humanity takes over a notable chunk of the universe…
Yeah, I know. Too much perspective. On the bright side, I’d probably say “meh” in the Total Perspective Vortex. And then eat the fairy cake.
February 8th, 2007 at 12:58 am
Why should we? It’s covered quite well in Brandt’s article and is synonymous with his efforts. Besides, he seems like a kook, going out of his way to collect negative references to him and publishing private information apparently out of retaliation. Of course I’m biased, but I’m also not the one with references to the Borg, King Kong and the killer of Thomas Becket on my page.
February 8th, 2007 at 12:59 am
Um… Why does the italics damage affect everything except usernames?
February 8th, 2007 at 4:18 am
Sam… the usernames are in ‘cite’ tags, which have CSS that explicitly set them as “font-style: normal;” so that over-rides the italic tag on the page - if the italic tag was inside the cite tag I think it would then show the usernames in italics as well.
For anyone not in to web design/HTML, I may as well just add an extra “Oook ook Ooooook” as that’s about as meaningful as the rest of this explanation.
February 8th, 2007 at 7:06 am
Fast glance at history pages indicates there were major edits done on both Evil and Schlock from the 128.205.*.* IP space — University of Buffalo. Given the sixty thousand or so addresses assigned, I don’t have time to check them all before work. However, I suspect there may be more questionable edits from this region, so I’m auto-scanning for such via shell command. Also, the primary culprit on the Evil Inc deletion was “User:Ocatecir”; his remarks on the “Extra Life” deletion and his “trophy case” raise bright red warning flags for me, based on my last experience with someone into deletion as a tool to improve encyclopedic merit. I may add another of the comics he zapped to my regular trawl….
February 8th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Sorry about the open tag, guys. Those responsible for the tagging have been sacked.
February 8th, 2007 at 8:28 am
I’m late to the conversation, so I apologize if it’s been suggested before, but why don’t you create your own wiki specifically for webcomics? I, for one, would love to see a compilation of all that’s available out there, especially one written by the authors and fans.
February 8th, 2007 at 9:43 am
It has been suggested before. It has even been done: http://www.comixpedia.org/
February 8th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Not to mention that wikipedia REMOVED the entry for comixpedia because it was “not notable” — so you can’t even use wikipedia to refer to a resource that covers the information wikipedia has decided not to cover.
My basic opinion is that wikipedia editors can do whatever the hell they want — ultimately the lack of a presence in wikipedia is not going to kill a webcomic — but some of the things wikipedia editors seem to want to do strike me as flat-out stupid.
Unfortunately for the wikipedia editors that are actually doing useful things for wikipedia, stupidity is a lot easier to notice than competence… your good deeds are being lost in an ocean of white noise…
February 8th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Paul Silver: Ah. I thought it might be a CSS thing. I wish I had a convenient way to peek at the CSS of a site. By which I mean more convenient than looking at the source, finding the <link rel=stylesheet …> tag, copying the URL, opening a new tab and pasting the URL there. Of course, if I’d just looked at the source I would have seen the <cite> tags, and guessed that the stylesheet set them to not be italic, ‘cos they normally are.
Cite!
Summary for those who don’t know HTML: Oooook ook.
But if I’m already logged in, it’s easier just to ask, and hey, maybe someone else’ll learn something.
abb3w: How’s that for an advertisement - “Now deleted from Wikipedia by Ocatecir!”
You’ll know Citizendium’s won when they debate whether to delete Wikipedia as not notable, and decide not to because it has historical interest.
Of course, right now Citizendium’s barely more than vapourware…
February 8th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Weird… the <cite> tags disappeared out of my post (I checked the source of the bit where I’d written <cite>Cite!</cite>). I guess “cite” isn’t in Blógünder’s list of permitted tags…
Oh, and the “smart” quotes thing doesn’t handle words beginning with apostrophe correctly.
Apostrophe alone: ‘
': '
'cos: 'cos
February 8th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Alt+0146, then “cos”: ’cos
Dammit, why is TeX (and things based on it, such as LaTeX) the only software I’ve seen that does things like this right? I blame ASCII, for including ‘"’ in the first place.
February 8th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
they are trying to speedy-delete “superosity” again. also, crosby’s more popular work “sore thumbs” was re-posted and is now trying to be speedy-deleted again.
February 8th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
and now “sore thumbs” has been deleted again.
February 9th, 2007 at 2:04 am
Sam: Firebug for Firefox. It’s incredibly groovy.
For the non-web-devs: Ooook.
February 9th, 2007 at 7:10 am
Working on it.
February 9th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Sam… If you’re a Firefox user, I can recommend Chris Pederick’s ‘Web Developer extension’, it gives you a CSS menu which means you can see the CSS on a site with a couple of clicks, and edit it if you want. Also in Firefox if you highlight something you can right-click and View Selection Source, very handy.
The Oook Oook wasn’t a criticism, I’m glad when someone mentions something I can comment on in a use way!
February 9th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
As far as I can see, Wikipedia has two problems:
The first is that they aren’t applying their policies uniformly, people are simply proposing articles for deletion out of spite, and they’re getting deleted. Now, I’m the moderator on a large forum. I know how hard it can be to apply rules in a uniform manner, but this is a deletion process. You need some checks and balances, without them it becomes a game of chance, it all depends on which admin gets to the article first.
The second is that they refuse to admit that they’ve got a problem. They’re argument is, essentially “Those are the rules.”, comments that “Well, the rules either need to actually be applied in a uniform manner, or modified, because they aren’t working now.” are met with “Those are the rules.”
It’s like trying to argue with a parrot.
Speaking, again, as a moderator. This is the worst approach to take. It gets the community very, very angry, and it makes them fear oppression. If every attempt to propose change is met with an angry attack, or retribution (as has happened) then obviously no change is going to be proposed, Wikipedia, known for being revolutionary, becomes stagnant, and dies.
I’d hate to see that. But when anyone with a grudge can go and get countless hours of work removed in half an hour, and the people who argue that this isn’t right are told to shut up or get out, you know you’ve got a problem. I don’t care about the justification. I know how the notability policy is supposed to be used. However, the way it is used is simple: it’s used to get rid of things that people don’t like. It’s a “fall-back”, something that anyone can resort to if they don’t really have a good reason for getting rid of something.
This is wrong.
February 9th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Alright, I know Howard hates when people take time to state their case in a logical progression, so if this gets long: Howard, just skip to the last two paragraphs. Summarization power activate.
Everyone seems to argue that articles should only be deleted if they are inaccurate. You could also call this “Verified.” Huh. That’s alot like a Wikipedia policy - the one that actual matters more than “Notability”
In order to “Verify”, you need references. For something volatile like a website, the site itself doesn’t work exceedingly well. It’s probably referenced in blogs - But anyone can make a blog. In theory, anyone can make a hundred blogs. You’d need something with more permanency, and some system of review - almost like an archived newspaper or something. Hmm.
Of course, to get something like that, the topic would have to be deemed as noteworthy by a nonvolatile unrelated source. It would need… say it with me… “Notability.” Funny how those go together.
In 2004, if PVP went offline, and I said it was mainly about Skull the Troll, a resident of Narnia brought to the PVP world through Francis’ wacky science experiment, how would I be proven wrong? The memory of other readers? Because it was “obvious”? Would either of those work in a generation? Not the best criteria. You’d have endless unproductive edit wars.
That’s where the criteria come from. In order to verify, there needs to be a means by which a non-expert/non-fan could look into the topic, and a way they could do it in a decade, and in a century.
As to why the burden to prove notability is on the defender: It’s impossible to PROVE a negative. You can’t prove no articles on a topic exist, no matter how exhaustively you search - you can only prove that one does. And it’s infinitely easier for a proponent to find one piece of evidence than for an opponent to scour endless possible sources to prove there’s nothing there.
Why not just keep bad articles? Why push to delete them? Fire tempers. As discussed, threat of deletion gets people to introduce verifiable sources, improve article content, and generally increase the value of Wikipedia. If no one cares enough about the content of an article for deletion to IMPROVE it, it should go.
That’s why no one will apologize for the “failure” of the system. Because the system didn’t actually fail. A bad article was attacked, and a better article came out of it, and future viewers of that article profited. Ignis Aurum Probat. I think that should be the motto of Wikipedia.
Notability, in a nonvolatile, unrelated medium, is pretty much necessary for verifiability. Verifiability is the only way to make sure an article is accurate, and we’re all in agreement that inaccurate data should be deleted. The system puts the burden on providing evidence of accuracy/verifiability because proving something doesn’t exist is impossible, and that burden should improve the verifiability and quality of the article. Amorphous communities like Wikipedia need stringent rules to make sure content is good, because personal discretion is not a useful metric amongst millions of theoretically equal editors.
February 10th, 2007 at 1:24 am
Starslip Crisis has just recently been put up for deletion as well.
February 10th, 2007 at 7:22 am
It’s not just Starslip Crisis. At least 8 comics are currently up for deletion. Including Starslip, Ugly Hill, and Superosity (again). Starslip Crisis may actually be vaped because the WCCA were recently classified as non-notable, despite the sources that were being found during the AfD.
(I pray that this is the correct way to insert links, it’s a hit-or-miss issue without a comment help or a preview button…)
February 10th, 2007 at 8:16 am
The problem is that the system does fail. As I said, notability isn’t being used the way it was intended, it’s being used by people persuing vendettas. People have provided sources showing notability, and have been ignored, simply because people didn’t like the subject of the article.
Like it or not, the system is breaking, and changes have to be made, because as-is it would seem that no one actually needs a reason to delete an article, they just need to dislike the subject or whoever wrote it. That is obviously not sanctioned by the rules, but it is what’s happening.
Also, the notability guidelines do need revision, PvP, even during 2004, was easily one of the most popular webcomics online, but Wikipedia would’ve simply gotten rid of it. Would using page-views as a criteria for notability not work better? After all, you could then determine how many people look at it, deciding it it’s notable. On top of which, the more people who view a page, the more likely one of them will spot an error and fix it, which would mean that it would also help guarantee accuracy.
February 10th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Well, for one, notability isn’t supposed to be an end-all be-all policy. It’s not nearly the ironclad necessity Verifiability is… but again, it’s kinda necessary for the latter. The fact that something has 6 billion unique hits per day doesn’t make the accuracy of its entry easier to verify if there are no corroborating details in any other source.
In the end, the point isn’t “this is insufficiently important/popular for an encyclopedia” but rather “there is no way to prove much anything said about it from a source other than the topic of the article and personal recollection.” As mentioned, that latter leads to a lot of edit wars and annoyance.
The problem is that people hop into wikipedia for the first time on a “save this thing you like” crusade, read “notability” and think “They’re saying this isn’t a big thing! It’s totally big! I know about it!” That’s not the point of the policies. The point is to make sure article content is factual, and researchable. Without third-party references available, the article can’t go up, because it can’t be fact-checked under Wikipedia policy.
And personal vendettas help Wikipedia too. They drive people to hunt up bad articles and nominate them for deletion. That drives people to improve those articles so they meet standards. Or it gets a bad article deleted, because fans are too busy going “Wait, dude, no, I like that, I’m gonna start a grassroots campaign!” to actually make the article fit WP criteria.
Wikipedia has the policies to make the system work with millions of users, without falling apart. They’re not perfect, and no set of rules for human society ever will be, because people aren’t perfect either. Wikipedia is not a totalitarian regime that forces you to use them exclusively. If people don’t like the way Wikipedia works… they’re free to find other sources. Like Comixpedia. Instead, it seems like people would rather complain Wikipedia doesn’t work the way they’d want it to. What negative impact does it actually have on anyone’s life if their favorite blog or comic gets its entry deleted?
The system isn’t failing. It’s not behaving as some people would like. That’s not the same thing at all.
February 10th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Yeah, if an award is used for “notability,” and then the award is deemed “non-notable,” it’s clear the intent is sabotage, not improvement.
And the check is, that if Wikipedia disappeared offline tomorrow, it would cause no real loss, and would quickly be just a memory. Therefore, by that argument, Wikipedia is not notable. It’s just one more opinionated site.
And while burden of proof is on the supporters of the article, anyone with any manners at all would do a quick google to see how many hits there are for the article’s subject.
I get 99,000 for Starslip Crisis, 248,000 for Schlock, only 39,000 for my full professional name (And I’m considered “notable” apparently), and 82,000 for Ugly Hill.
Compare to the band I nominated for deletion, having no albums, no major appearances, no reviews and a mere 100 mostly blog related mentions.
See a discrepancy?
February 10th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Should someone do an article on “Wikipedia Webcomic Deletion Debate”? I get 203,000 hits, and 285,000 substituting “Delete.”
February 10th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Actually, if Wikipedia was to disappear tomorrow, there would still be dozens of live mirrors on the WWW and an unknown number of copies of the database dumps on users’ harddisks. Disappearing a major project that was designed to be forked is not as simple as taking down the website.
Regarding the ghits discrepancy, my hypothesis is that non-notable bands tend not to have an extensive online presence (beyond the mandatory Myspace page, of course), while almost any webcomic, no matter how small, has one or more forums, is mentioned by its fans in other forums and is listed on various ranking sites. This generates a lot of ghits but very little usable material.
February 10th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Once again, I know perfectly well how the notability policy is supposed to work. My issue is that it’s not being used to get rid of bad articles, or that unverifiable articles are being gotten rid of, it’s being used to get rid of any article.
People have mentioned how pages with plenty of ‘notability’ references ended up being deleted. Notability is simply being used an excuse. If I knew the right admin I could probably get the ‘Google’ entry deleted for not being notable enough.
Honestly, Wikipedia needs some better checks and balances on the deletion process, since it is being abused.
February 10th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Let me tell you some stuff about the history of the internet xyzzy_n, since you are apparently quite ignorant about the topic. Have you ever heard of Gopher searches, the Archie or Veronica search engines for Gopher? Do you have any idea where you would go to find these search engines, or where you would find the information that was indexed for their use? Of course you don’t, even though they were still in constant use just 12 years ago. If Wikipedia went offline permanently tomorrow, then it would be nothing but a memory a decade from now.
February 10th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Again, my point is, hits (to the site, or, for god’s sake, on google) are meaningless. The number of people who know of a thing, enjoy a thing, has no relation to the verifiability of data on a thing. I’ll say this again, in bold: Popular != Notable, Popular != Verifiable.
“Google hits” is a fairly notorious amateur method of evaluation. I’m sure a randomly chosen pornstar has infinitely more hits on google than nearly any webcomic - doesn’t make them a more important topic, doesn’t make them notable, doesn’t make researching information on them easier. Just means more sites contain the name in question.
If an award is used for notability, and there’s no verifiable reportage on the award, then, guess what? It doesn’t satisfy notability. I can give Schlock the “TSP Award for Excellence” right now on any number of websites. Is it something meaningful that can be verified? Not so much. The idea is to be somewhat draconic to prevent that kind of folderol. Yeah, it downplays more meaningful events, but it prevents the “My website can be verified on my other website, where it received critical acclaim” effect. It also rules out references to shoddy research and pseudoscience published by any quack with a website.
While everyone is given to hyperbole in a debate like this, article deletion is not the end of the world. If you don’t like Wikipedian policies, you’re welcome not to use Wikipedia. You’re welcome to start something you think is better, the code is out there.
The problem, again, is not that Wikipedia is failing to do what it’s supposed to. It’s that it’s failing to do what some people want it to. It’s equivalent to my screaming that my Corolla is a failure, because I can’t go offroading in it. I want to go offroading, and my sedan won’t do it! Who’s going to apologize to me for this failure in design? No one. If I wanted to go offroading, there’s other vehicles out there I should have looked into.
February 10th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Oh, by the by, Buoyancy: I do remember Gopher, Archie, and Veronica - Heck, I remember Jughead - but I wanted to get more details… so I looked them all up on Wikipedia, where they gopher is, in fact, still being discussed. Ironic, no?
Quick, somebody mention them in a webcomic, and see if they’re deleted!
February 11th, 2007 at 3:39 am
Sock- While I understand your point, you’re doing little more than making excuses for for a condition the rest of us (or some of us anyway) are pointing out as… well, not “broken” per se, but very much suboptimal.
Besides the clear and undeniable fact that you- and others- keep skipping over, in that those policies are simply NOT applied with any consistency, and in these cases there’s strong evidence that one or more editors are using the strict-letter-of-the-law as a cudgel because they personally dislike webcomics as a whole.
I’d also like to point out that your ‘popularity’ equation is not entirely correct. It’s quite possible- and common- to be notable simply through popularity (such as the aforementioned Eric Burns of Websnark- both are “notable” as far as Wiki is concerned, and yet a mention in his blog or a Webcomics Examiner article are NOT considered citations to notability.)
It’s further interesting to note the Wiki on Websnark has simply been flagged as needing to cite it’s references- a step I have yet to see used ONCE in a webcomic article, in place of the crude bludgeon of deletion- if not speedy deletion.
There’s that inconsistency again.
Websnark was popular, but has, as far as I know, zero offline citations- that thing being demanded of webcomics, under the Damoclean sword of deletion.
Yet ‘Snark merely gets a “please show us your citations”, which has lasted some two months now, while hugely popular comics like Evil, Inc. and Ugly Hill get pasted with an article for deletion- no other warning- and then deleted after just a few days.
Consistency, sir.
You can argue minutiae all you like, and point out that the rules are working “as they were designed to do”, but for those of us on the pointy end of the stick, the rules are clearly being applied randomly, arbitrarily, inconsistently, and in some cases with thinly veiled malice.
Doc.
February 11th, 2007 at 6:29 am
Doc: “Well, the editors are aware of the sourcing problem now for sure, and they have the 5 days that this AfD will run to provide sources. Ample time.” - by the nominator of the Ugly Hill nomination, after being asked whether the source template had been used prior to the nomination.
So they are quite aware of it… and they’re happy with it.
February 11th, 2007 at 6:44 am
Sock, once again, I know how notability is supposed to work. I’m saying that it’s being used to get rid of articles that do fit all the notability standards. It’s simply being used as an excuse by people to get rid of perfectly fine articles.
There needs to be better checks and balances, because the system is broken. When a sports league is just simply deleted despite the person providing scans of newspaper articles, you know that the policy isn’t being applied the way everyone intends.
February 11th, 2007 at 8:01 am
Buoyancy, I still build my browsers with Gopher support and until recently my university had a Gopher server (albeit not very maintained). I sorely miss working Archie servers (although now there are some WWW search engines that can do similar things). The difference is that the product of the Wikipedia project is not a website but a database dump which is much easier to get, copy and use. If the project and the website disappear, the commercial mirrors will still be getting revenue from their ads. There is simply no reason for the content to vanish like Gopher until somebody makes something better, and improvement a good thing, of course.
February 11th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Doc - I can see that the rules are being applied differently by different people. That’s in the nature of a rather anarchic beast, and unless your ruleset is unimaginably exhaustive, it’s going to happen in every system. This is why judges and lawyers exist in the real world, and you’re just as likely to see different outcomes from the same basic cases if you change the judges and the lawyers. The difference is that on Wikipedia, pretty much everyone involved likely has a conflict of interest, by necessity.
I’m focusing on the main topic at hand - deletion of webcomics - and trying to figure out what’s so terribly wrong about it. As I understand it, Evil Inc. was nominated for deletion, and a lot of people complained, and it got deleted anyway… then a much smaller subset of those people actually did the work and improved the article, and it was reinstated. Net win.
Now, GDwarf, I know that’s what you’re saying, but I’m finding it hard to argue the point meaningfully in the absence of hard details. In the sports league scenario, if the WP entry cited the newspaper article, and there was a dispute as to the existence of the newspaper in question, sending a scan to an admin might be a solution (subject to debates about photomanipulation I’d rather avoid). If the article didn’t cite the newspaper originally, but someone said “No look, this totally exists, here’s a newspaper article” and sent it to a single admin/opposing editor, without introducing the reference to the article… well, that’s not how it works. But I can’t comment on the process there, because there’s no real objective chronology/reportage available to me yet.
I know the policy isn’t being applied the way everyone intends - this discussion is evidence of that. I just don’t know that it’s as large a problem as everyone here seems to think. I contend that a majority are better served by erring on the side of keeping cruft out than erring on the side of allowing inaccurate or frivolous articles.
It’s too bad that things we care about don’t make it onto wikipedia. It’s godawful that the full details of every Star Trek vehicle, Star Wars alien, and ever-so-minor anime character do. I just don’t see why it matters so intensely, why there needs to be a crusade against these evil, evil people trying to get articles about webcomics deleted.
February 11th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Sock- And where are our judges here? We have a hundred thousand lawyers, but no judges.
There’s plenty of *interpretation* going on, but clearly there are variances in interpretation, and no one to make a *ruling*.
We understand it’s not a huge “problem” for one’s Wikipedia article to be deleted. It IS, however, an annoyance, perhaps even a bit of an insult, but it’s also wholly unnecessary.
The idea that a comic that’s been online and MWF regular for say, three years, has 10,000 daily readers and two books out, is “not notable” because the books are self-published through Lulu, not available through Amazon, and nobody’s written a newspaper article about it, is ludicrous.
Yes, I agree there’s some comics that aren’t notable enough to have a Wiki article. Half a dozen of the ones Marks blogged about were dead or have been inactive for a year or more. I don’t see a groundswell to try to bring back “Doemain of our Own”, for example.
Our “problem”, that you can’t see, is that A) The rules are needlessly strict, at least in this case; there are a great many web-only references considered “notable” (IE, the above-noted Websnark) despite no magazine or newspaper coverage. And B) those same rules, agree with them or not, are being applied inconsistently- that is, unfairly- and almost certainly in some cases with malice aforethought.
Wikipedia has some 1.6 million articles in English alone; there’s roughly 3,000 webcomics out there, probably a third of which are dead or inactive or have otherwise ended. Even a thousand webcomic articles are hardly going to contaminate and dilute Wiki, and in any case, Wiki already has it’s own Webcomics project, List of Webcomics, and an article on webcomics in general.
(Aside: The article on webcomics says there’s some 7K webcomics. Thewebcomiclist is also counting print comics like Bloom County, Garfield and Shoe that have online presences, and their list is in desperate need of a culling, as they have, in places, the same comic listed two or even three times due to URL changes and whatnot.
The Belfry lists just under 4,000, with few print comics included [there are some] and only a third or so of that total in the daily/semiweekly/weekly listing. Close to half are listed as “inactive”, “ended”, “on hiatus” or “lost”.)
Moving on: The reason we keep being told that an article need to be “notable” is for accuracy- verifiability. I’ve been a part of three or four newspaper articles about me, or in relation to paintball games or events, with the first such article dating back to 1992.
In two of those articles they misspelled my name. In the first, they misspelled my name *three different ways*. In two full articles (both double-page spreads) they never spelled my name right once.
Moreover, as newspaper articles are wont to do, they got facts wrong- even though I specifically told them the details, and in one case I had a photocopy of a magazine article (which they badly misquoted.) This is accuracy?
A newspaper article on my comic suddenly takes it from “non notable” to “notable”, even though they might get all sorts of small details wrong?
One of the two magazine references that “saved” my article from deletion, was a special strip I drew specifically for a magazine; The editor wrote me and asked for one specifically.
When I drew it, the strip was less than five months old and consisted of fewer than forty strips. Now, did the magazine give my comic notability, or was my comic already, even then, notable enough to be included in the magazine?
Doc.
February 11th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Doc - It’s funny, about the lack of judges, because I thought everyone was complaining about rulings on deletion… if no one’s making a final ruling, then nothing’s actually getting done, and I don’t know what we’re up in arms about. I’ll agree the difference is that making the ruling on a WP entry doesn’t require the sort of judgment and training that acting as a proper judge does - but that’s because the stakes are infinitely smaller.
It’s true enough that all the webcomics in existence probably wouldn’t make up a significant percentage of Wikipedia articles (Well, until articles were started about all their characters, because the comics are notable, therefore so are the stars, and the authors…). Neither would including everyone’s local nonpro football team, peewee soccer league, blog, website… but relax the rules on one, and you set precedent to relax the rules on them all - and add all the personal favorites together, you’ll suddenly see a significant number building up - looming, even.
The rules are draconic in favor of keeping out cruft, I admit that. Keeping strict rules on notability closes the door on more than just webcomics, and prevents the dilution of information by millions of potential two-line entries about things unlikely to be sought for in the first place.
I think a lot of antagonistic rhetoric comes from combining the layman definition of “notable” and the technical meaning of “meets specifications defined by the notability policy.” Nothing changed about the strip itself because a comic was published, it just made it possible to reference the strip reliably through a party other than the creator. That’s a big difference in terms of verifying data, and proving information.
Some newspaper articles are going to have bad reportage, true. Then again, the more of them there are, the higher the likelihood is you can figure out the truth. It’s almost like, the more sources there are available, the more accurate your data can be.
Is setting an arbitrary bar going to prevent all mistakes? Of course not. Is having some standard still necessary to avoid horrible inaccuracy? You betcha. Where the line is drawn is arbitrary - but the need for the line is obvious. While we live in a world of grays, rules generally have to be black and white. Give me a rule you’d enforce, and I’ll show you an example of how it will fail too.
As to the problems I supposedly can’t see… well, from the post to which you’re replying:
A) “I contend that a majority are better served by erring on the side of keeping cruft out than erring on the side of allowing inaccurate or frivolous articles.” - That would be the admission that the rules are strict in favor of keeping out cruft.
B) “Doc - I can see that the rules are being applied differently by different people.” - That sounds a lot like I’m admitting inconsistency to me.
I actually said I didn’t think either as big a problem as purported. Disagreement doesn’t just stem from inattention. Sometimes it stems from differing conclusions from the same data. And, really, at the end of the day, I think we’re working from very different principles in this.
I don’t think Wikipedia needs to be more inclusive to be useful, I prefer to err on the side of excluding material. This is possibly because I’m generally a bastard, but it’s been famously remarked that 90% of nearly everything is crap. With the sheer volume of material that can be entered by millions of Wikipedia editors, I’d rather keep out 90.1%, and lose 1/100th of the useful data, than allow 99.9%, and have 9/10ths of the signal taken up with noise.
All the same, I’d like to hear how, e.g., Murder Inc.’s now-improved article, for example, is a sign of Wikipedia’s corruption and downfall? No one ever seems to deal with the specifics.
February 12th, 2007 at 5:52 am
That said, it looks like the WCCA article has a good chance of being undeleted in deletion review. The discussion on it is truly massive, but once (or if, in the case that we see a case of nasty administrator fiat) the WCCA are re-listed, it’s going to be pretty hard to AFD webcomics that have won WCCAs.
February 12th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
“while almost any webcomic, no matter how small, has one or more forums, is mentioned by its fans in other forums and is listed on various ranking sites. This generates a lot of ghits but very little usable material.”
If something has 100,000 regular readers, it’s notable. If they’ve discussed it that much or more to the point of writing down the name in a forum or journal, it’s notable.
I’m not even going to bother attempting to argue against your religion, since the English language is how I earn my living.
Let’s offer an example on the stupidity of the “notability” rules:
I hear about an online forum called “Great tits.” It’s alleged to be about European birds (Coal tits, blue tits, etc). However, it could as easily be something else. Let’s say I’m the kind of person who would not want to log on to find out, but would like to read a summary. Let’s go to Wikipedia. Oh, that’s right–fora aren’t “notable” unless someone not online I’ve never heard of has noted them.
Well, it would have been NICE to use Wikipedia for an initial research on the matter, but they have a stick too far up their butt to be bothered.
But no matter. I’m going to go improve (by which I mean “delete”) a hundred random articles. Wikipedia will be better for it.
February 12th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Pick ones by Sandstein. That hack couldn’t research his way out of a wet, single-panel Larson gag.
February 13th, 2007 at 7:44 am
ANOTHER COMIC UNDER ATTACK!
After failing to kill EI, this time they’re after “the noob”, extremely familiar in mmorpg circles.
Out of 1,580,000 search results for the noob - comic takes places 1, 2, 4′th (which is it’s wiki entry). Even search rudimentary for the noob + webcomic yeds 100,000 results.
It’s author already published 3 books and comic itself is also published on biggest mmorpg.com oriented portal.
But apparently, that’s not notable enough.
A guy who on his talk page describes himself as “[i]no fan of webcomics and their lack of notability and worth in general[/i]” and has AfD several webcomics requested it’s deletion. Since number of google hits isn’t working for him (and I have seen AfD fail becuse subject has mere 50,000 hits) he put up some pure bullshit explanation “a noticeable effect on culture, society, and media”.
What’s worse, THEY EVEN PROTECTED TALK PAGE, so ordinary people like e and you cannot comment on the issue.
What’s totally absurd is that AfD came [i]just after[/i] the author have gone on winter vacations, so she cannot defend herself.
February 13th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
‘They’ protected the ‘talk page’ because ‘ordinary people’ like you were posting lots of noise there. No big loss. And I don’t see what the author would do to ‘defend herself’ or how the author matters at all.
February 13th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
The author could have evidence of notability. Random fans don’t tend to have the newspaper clippings needed to defend these things, while authors do.
By excluding the author you’re making a kangaroo trial where the only evidence allowed is what the prosecution wants.
February 13th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
xyzzy_n: You don’t see how the author matters at all?
Well, we should all just STOP WRITING then. With that attitude it’s no wonder deletions are such trophies for some WP editors — they don’t have their own muse, and glory instead in destruction.
GDwarf has it right– at the VERY least you have to contact the author and let him/her refine the article to meet the WP standards. Admins should also curtail the privileges of editors whose actions are demonstrably vindictive. Sandstein and others meet this criteria handily. Just because they are not personally part of the cultural revolution occurring on the cartooning front doesn’t mean it’s not happening, or even that it’s not notable.
February 13th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Actually, I’ll revise my statement.
It’s like the crown/prosecution/what-have-you waiting for the defense’s attourney to be out of town before starting the trial.
February 13th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Add another comic to the list. GUComics got deleted yesterday as well; though his community is putting up the good fight. Apparantly being contacted by SOE, Blizzard, Mythic, Sigil, etc… wouldn’t be enoughto get it reinstated either, despite GUComcis being one of the major MMO Comic/Commentary sites (not the biggest but by no means smallfry either).
Andit’s that Sanstein too; What has tohappen to get his abuse of privileges noticed and abilities revoked?
February 13th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
GDwarf, in my experience, fans (especially the kind that leads to AFDs being semi-protected) are very good at collecting newspaper clippings. In the very unlikely case that the author turns out to be the only one to have had references to several sources on hand, the article can be undeleted. In the meantime, please consider the birthday paradox. (Also, it’s not a trial. Context, purpose, structure, rules and results are completely different. The closest thing to trials on Wikipedia are the cases handled by the Arbitration Committee, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RFAR .)
Howard, actually, Wikipedia strongly frowns on an author editing the article about his or her work (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:COI ). This is due to very negative past experience. There is no rule against contacting the author to ask for additional information, but it is an exercise left to those who think that that is the case. Conversely, any editor harassing people off-wiki while pretending to act for Wikipedia is in for a block.
February 14th, 2007 at 9:41 am
xyzzy_n: I’m talking about ARTICLE authors, not authors of the article’s subject matter. Others may have been talking about cases where the two are the same.
I’ve edited my article from time to time in order to correct facts and remove misrepresentations. I’ve also cleaned up sloppy, casual wording. But the author ain’t me.
February 14th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Oh, in that case, sorry about the misunderstanding. There is no policy requirement to notify the article creator; this is generally left as an option for the nominator. Editors who are interested in the article are usually expected to notice the nomination.
Personally, I only notify editors if I have previously discussed the article with them elsewhere, to make sure they know the discussion has moved.
February 15th, 2007 at 7:50 am
Speaking of conflicts of interest: http://www.halfpixel.com/2007/02/15/delete-wikipedia/
February 15th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
“Well, it would have been NICE to use Wikipedia for an initial research on the matter, but they have a stick too far up their butt to be bothered.”
But Mike, if there are no sources about the forum in question, how would you know whether the hypothetical article in Wikipedia was reliable or not? The article might say that it’s about birds, but when you check, you get hit with a bunch of b00bies! Or vice-versa, whatever.
By requiring evidence of verifiability and notability, all Wikipedia is doing is saying that if they can’t do a good job of covering it, they don’t want to touch it at all. What’s wrong with that?
“I’ve edited my article from time to time in order to correct facts and remove misrepresentations. I’ve also cleaned up sloppy, casual wording.”
Just so you know, these are both A-OK according to WP: AUTO. The only issue with article subjects editing their own articles is when they try to convert them into a hagiography, as John Byrne did with his.
February 15th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
FYI, Starslip Crisis has been resoundingly undeleted.
If they’re smart, they’ll de-admin Brenneman, Nearly Headless Nick, and any other admins running around trying to be petty tyrants.
February 16th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Vlad, the problem is that two newspaper articles don’t make it any easier to verify anything.
I know what the point of notability is, but the way it is implemented it serves no purpose, you may as well allow wrong information that can be corrected, rather then simply say “Unless you’ve been mentioned in newspaper articles, which often get details wrong, you aren’t welcome here.”
Actually, no, that’s wrong, since notability does nothing to ensure accuracy. So all you’re saying is “It’s OK to be wrong, so long as you get other people to agree with you.”
February 21st, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Too good to pass up.
http://www.beevnicks.com/d/20070209.html
and it only gets better from there.
I’ll have to try that my next hotel stay. Comfort Inn gave me a 10% Eye-Dee 10-Tee membership discount once so it’s worth the effort.
September 30th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Wikipedia vs. Webcomics
For those who haven’t heard, it seems that Wikipedia has decided that webcomics aren’t an important enough part of culture to be in their encyclopedia.
As I strongly disagree, I have saved one article that hasn’t been deleted yet and …