Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
The Internet

Saving Geek Lore and Other Wikipedia Castoffs 281

Ian Lamont notes an Industry Standard feature on Deletionpedia — a collection of 63,559 deleted Wikipedia pages that range from "vanity entries" or obscure points of reference to heavily edited topics that Wikipedia editors eventually deemed fan fiction, inadequately sourced, or otherwise lacking. Looking through the collection of removed articles, it's apparent that entertaining minutiae are often the target of Wikipedia editors: "Geek lore seems to be a particular target for deletion, with the deleted page of the month a comprehensive guide to 'Weapons of the Imperium (Warhammer 40,000)'. Deletionpedia provides links back to the Wikipedia deletion discussions, which are a lesson in magnification of minutiae; the Warhammer page was removed due to philosophical disagreements over what can be considered credible source material, while a page listing every chalkboard gag in The Simpsons opening credits spent 691 days on the site before being deleted as 'fancruft.'" Note that while Deletionpedia uses MediaWiki, it doesn't have wiki functionality — readers can't alter or update archived entries.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Saving Geek Lore and Other Wikipedia Castoffs

Comments Filter:
  • wiki functionality (Score:4, Insightful)

    by yincrash ( 854885 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @05:50PM (#25045625)
    if it uses mediawiki, it has wiki functionality. just not for you

    also. i think it's slashdotted.
    • by omeomi ( 675045 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:03PM (#25045743) Homepage
      Yup, it's slashdotted. I think this is a fantastic idea, though. As someone who has added a few pages to Wikipedia over the years, and who's had to try to get some page deletions overturned, I can tell you it's a huge pain when some overzealous admin comes along and speedy deletes a page that multiple people have worked on, and has been online for over a year. Wikipedia needs a better deletion review policy. Maybe this site will help illustrate that.
      • by WNight ( 23683 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @08:13PM (#25047573) Homepage

        No, just that many "Wikipedia Admins" (as opposed to active editors who don't seek special status) are sewer rejects who flock to Wikipedia because it lets them abuse power. Deletionists especially are a fucking retarded subclass of the rest, whose sole contribution to society is deleting something someone else did.

        Wikipedia rocks. It's too bad so many people are dedicated to pissing all over it.

        • by Tom ( 822 ) on Thursday September 18, 2008 @02:12AM (#25051017) Homepage Journal

          Wikipedia rocks. It's too bad so many people are dedicated to pissing all over it.

          The concept rocks.

          The actual implementation leaves a lot to be desired. The simple fact that Deletionism has been a hot subject for debate for at least two years (probably longer) and they still haven't implemented a solution, where it took other wikis (say, Citizendium) about three months to do so, is testament to that.

          I stand by my journal entry. As long as any random fucktard can come over and get my article, and thus possibly hours of work, deleted for no good reason, I see no reason to contribute those hours.

          • by Mr Z ( 6791 ) on Thursday September 18, 2008 @02:40AM (#25051173) Homepage Journal

            I stand by my journal entry. As long as any random fucktard can come over and get my article, and thus possibly hours of work, deleted for no good reason, I see no reason to contribute those hours.

            I am inclined to agree. I'd rather have too much stuff and the problem of organizing it than too little. I find Wikipedia's standard of relevance occasionally capricious and arbitrary.

            I'd rather that data that has a narrow and specific audience get factored into subarticles rather than deleted. After all, someone worked to bring the data into a presentable format. Deletion serves nobody except the lazy and uninterested. A "see also" type link which points to the true esoteric information would serve the hard-core.

            There's not even a compelling bandwidth argument. The notion of whether something is encyclopedic might make sense when drawing a cut line for a print edition, but sending an elaborate 404 page isn't much different than sending a narrow-interest article in terms of bandwidth.

            I guess what I am getting at is that filtering for quality is often more likely to be objective than subjective, filtering for relevance is sometimes a bit subjective, and filtering for appeal is much more so. High quality contributions are valuable, regardless of the broadness of their appeal. There are media for which it makes sense to draw a cut line, but a search driven electronic format isn't so constrained.

            I don't see what Wikipedia loses by keeping around narrow-interest articles as long as they're factual and neutral. If I happen to catalog all of the chalkboard gags, that takes nothing away from anything else. Sure, it won't be a featured article of the day. So what?

            Wikipedia does lose when there's a large number of truly worthless or misleading articles. Those should get the axe. But those are worthless or misleading because their data is absent or inaccurate. I imagine sheer peer recognition of their crumminess would force them out of commission.

            • Specialized wikis (Score:4, Insightful)

              by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Thursday September 18, 2008 @09:25AM (#25053693) Homepage

              There's not even a compelling bandwidth argument. The notion of whether something is encyclopedic might make sense when drawing a cut line for a print edition, but sending an elaborate 404 page isn't much different than sending a narrow-interest article in terms of bandwidth.

              Granted, the supporting media isn't a limiting factor on on-line encyclopaedia like it is on dead-tree version. *but* there is still a limiting resource : netizens with enough interests to maintain the article.

              I don't see what Wikipedia loses by keeping around narrow-interest articles as long as they're factual and neutral. If I happen to catalog all of the chalkboard gags, that takes nothing away from anything else. {...} Wikipedia does lose when there's a large number of truly worthless or misleading articles. Those should get the axe. But those are worthless or misleading because their data is absent or inaccurate.

              Well, that's exactly where there's a conflict.
              If you're the only single person interested in writing a list of chalkboard gags for wikipedia, chance are there won't be anyone else to maintain it and make sure it stay accurate and correct.

              When a subjet is *definitely* too narrow, it's best to only leave in wikipedia itself a short summary (as a standalone article or a section in the Simpson's article) explain *what* these gags are, and then reference this list through a link pointing a separate wiki which is specialised in Simpson (I'm not sure but there's bound to be one somewhere).

              That's already the case for lots of other stuff, StarWars universe is only described superficially in wikipedia and everything more detailed goes in Wookipedia. Star Trek doesn't need a full standalone page for every single minor caracter ever mentioned in the show : those usually are better living on Memory Alpha.
              Even "House M.D." episode are shortly summarized with links to external blog which go into deep exhaustive details criticizing the medical accuracy for absolutely every detail.

              Writing an article that mostly nobody does give a damn about doesn't stop at the writing. There's a lot of subsequent maintenance that needs to be done : fixing vandalism, removing spam, keeping it up-to-dat, correcting mistake, etc.
              If a subject isn't popular enough, the article is going to rot.
              There are already thousand of ultra specialised wikis out-there maintained by hard-core fans that are suffisently dedicated and no-lifers to attend correctly to such article as those articles deserve.

              That's also why Deletionpedia plays a capital role : as a temporary graveyard where to store such kind of too much specialised lists, which are too much details and not enough interest for wikipedia. But don't have yet an actively maintained copy somewhere on some hardcore-fan wiki.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by DerWulf ( 782458 )
                While you raise some interessting points on maintenance it's clear that they deflect from the actual discussion about cruft and could be easily addressed by technical measures. For listings it would be easy to require that a "valid until XX.XX.XXXX" notice be added and it would also be easy to automatically tag a page that hasn't been maintained for a while so readers know what value the information has. Bottomline remains that deletion is much too harsh especially since some of us where hoping that wikiped
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Shivetya ( 243324 )

          I used to love Wikipedia, but it has been guided into a ditch. They are have a very distinct world view and anything not fitting into that gets removed completely or edited out. There are certain subjects you cannot keep to their own page if on the site at all even with real sources simply because it does not fit their view of what is right.

          I use Wikipedia to find only stuff I don't lose value with if its wrong
          Like episode names from tv series
          When movies came out
          songs by artist
          people who passed away nearl

  • Slashdotted... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Internal Server Error

    The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

    Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@deletionpedia.dbatley.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

    More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

    Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

    • by Skapare ( 16644 )

      Amazingly fast to be Slashdotted after only one comment is even posted here. Someone must have picked some wimpy hardware.

  • Fancruft (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheSpoom ( 715771 ) * <slashdot@uberm0OPENBSD0.net minus bsd> on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @05:51PM (#25045633) Homepage Journal

    a collection of 63,559 deleted Wikipedia pages that range from "vanity entries" or obscure points of reference to heavily edited topics that Wikipedia administrators eventually deemed fan fiction

    There, fixed that for you.

    I honestly don't get the whole hate that Wikipedia seems to have against sci-fi and geeky topics... I think it's an attack by people who figure that if they have too much of it that Wikipedia won't resemble an old media encylopedia. This argument is pretty stupid, given the nigh-unlimited space in their database (Wikipedia themselves have said not to worry about performance [wikipedia.org]).

    Somoene's going to come in here and say that the problem isn't the topic, it's that the articles are either original research, aren't verifiable, or aren't "notable" (the latter is the worst argument I've heard), but IMNSHO there is a definite bias, especially among admins, against these types of articles.

    Oh, and tell the Wikitruth [wikitruth.info].

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Daimanta ( 1140543 )

      The problem is, if you DO allow it the door will be opened for every trivial matter you can think of.

      I for one, welcome an article about my daily morning routine.

      • Re:Fancruft (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TheSpoom ( 715771 ) * <slashdot@uberm0OPENBSD0.net minus bsd> on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:03PM (#25045745) Homepage Journal

        So here's a question. Other than attacks, racism, unverifiable information and such (which are already banned under other Wikipedia guidelines), what real effect would it have on the encyclopedia other than another record in the database that nobody other than the author would ever access?

        Remember, anyone could take an irrelevant link to the article out of other, more accessed articles where it doesn't belong, so the chances of someone seeing it would be next to nil with the exception of the Random Page button (which itself could weight pages by the number of accesses they've had already, or possibly number of incoming links a page has, in order to make the chances of finding such useless pages next to nil as well).

        Besides, something as personal as a "daily morning routine" would be a perfect candidate to be moved to userspace... they could leave a redirect if you like.

        • Other than attacks, racism, unverifiable information and such (which are already banned under other Wikipedia guidelines), what real effect would it have on the encyclopedia other than another record in the database that nobody other than the author would ever access?

          For one thing, giving too many details about fiction may infringe the copyright in said fiction. Rowling v. RDR Books.

          • IANAL, and I doubt you are either. If this is in fact a problem, Wikimedia's legal team could advise. However, I doubt a short paraphrasing of a plotline or details of a character would count as copyright infringement.

          • But there's already a bunch of strict rules against violating copyrights, so that doesn't really fit into this discussion.

        • Makes me wonder what would happen if someone stated "Megapedia" and threw open the doors to any and every type of information... the stuff Wikipedia doesn't want because it's not "encyclopaedic" enough, and all the things listed on the "What Wikipedia is not" page, welcome it all in with open arms.

          The main problem would be overcoming the automatic "Wikipedia it" response to a need for info... well, I guess that and the amount of inane drivel you'd get posted.

          • I'd do it if I had the money to set up servers/etc. The key is to have hardly any editors, just enough to respond to copyright claims or DCMA notices, everything else is free game-- jerks don't delete articles because there won't be anybody with deletion permissions. IPs get the same permissions as logged-in users, and any of them can post an article on "things Joe Blow ate for breakfast on 4/12/2009" if they like.

          • I have thought about doing this very thing. I think I would keep some of the Wikipedia guidelines, as many are very useful. I would, however, get rid of the notability guideline, and quite possibly the verifiability guideline... I would still ban original research however, since if that guideline were lifted, the site could potentially become purely a blog by different authors.

            It should be noted that Wikipedia did make the great decision early on that all content was under the GFDL and thus it is very for

        • what real effect would it have on the encyclopedia other than another record in the database that nobody other than the author would ever access?

          Well, if nothing else, title collisions would be pretty serious.

          When you're looking for information about "video", and hit search, a list of every single one-man company with "video" in the name, that existed for all of a week, 15 years ago, would be a bitch and a half to wade through... Throw in every single bit of software ever created with "video" in it's name,

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by halcyon1234 ( 834388 )

        The problem is, if you DO allow it the door will be opened for every trivial matter you can think of.

        I'll start an list article for "Every trivial matter you can think of".

    • Re:Fancruft (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mqduck ( 232646 ) <mqduck&mqduck,net> on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:00PM (#25045717)

      Indeed, the most irritating thing about Wikipedia is the whole "notable" requirement that the Powers that Be seem to take very seriously. I can't understand someone who would want to restrict the amount of information available.

    • Re:Fancruft (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:02PM (#25045741)

      The problem is that all the articles become unnavigable messses of shit trivia and geek mastubatry nonsense. The idea is that this should be a usable reference for a general audience, not a competition against other nerds to crap up articles.

      Dont like it? Start your own wiki. Thats the real beauty of the internet. These guys did it and thank god that junk isnt crowding all the pages on wikipedia.

      Also, im just sick of reading a general topic, something unrelated to sci-fi and then seeing links like "He also shares the name of a popular Anime character" or "Nuclear aggression was also a topic on this episode of Star Trek."

      The deletion policies have really saved wikipedia from becoming a horrible testament to nerd memorization skills and boredom.

      • Re:Fancruft (Score:4, Insightful)

        by TheSpoom ( 715771 ) * <slashdot@uberm0OPENBSD0.net minus bsd> on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:05PM (#25045765) Homepage Journal

        So you don't like it [wikipedia.org], then?

      • I mean, for crying out loud, there are already specialized wikis for such topics - you won't even have to start one!, trying to fill wikipedia with that is plain absurd...
        • The vast majority of those specialized wikis exist *because* Wikipedia kicked them out.

      • by Kjella ( 173770 )

        Yes, heavy trivia linking on unrelated pages is annoying. But if you're linking to say the page of simpsons opening liners from within the simpsons page, I'd call that just fine even though it's fancruft because it stays within the simpsons "bubble". On the other hand if you started linking all sorts of other pages to that page every time they happen to use one of those gags, then it's plain old annoying and should be deleted. And fiction &-> fiction is a lot better than non-fiction -> fiction. Ma

      • The deletion policies have really saved wikipedia from becoming a horrible testament to nerd memorization skills and boredom.

        The TV Tropes Wiki [tvtropes.org] puts it the best way I have seen to date: As a consequence of Wikipedia's fame and scale, it's where people put knowledge when they don't know where it should go. This perception is actually at odds with the project's goals: to create a tertiary reference for information and viewpoints published elsewhere. Problem is, they've ended up with more information on Pokemo

        • And of course, the underlying problem: It's an open, user-editable Wiki, but only insofar as those users keep with the goals of the administrators. The second part is never explicitly stated but there's a definite undertone that most editors who have contributed a fair amount have noticed.

      • by geekoid ( 135745 )

        "Nuclear aggression was also a topic on this episode of Star Trek."

        That would actually be notable, especially since there are a lot of people using wikipedia that were not alive during the cold war and may miss a sub text that would seem obvious to those of us old enough to remember duck and cover drills.

        • It would be notable in the article about that particular episode of star trek, it would not be notable in an article about nuclear aggression during the cold war.
          • by afidel ( 530433 )
            Why not? Viewing history through the lens of popular culture is often one of the best ways to understand the issue and the society around the issue. It also informs us in how history shapes the future.
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by phuul ( 997836 )
        So exactly how does removing an article from Wikipedia help improve other articles? I'm trying to follow the logic here, an article on "My Little Pony" will automatically insert "shit trivia and geek mastubatry(sic) nonsense" into unrelated articles? Wow I had no idea that Wikipedia was so fragile! I also didn't realize that those dang Wikipedia pages could get crowded like that. I thought you could just search for things but if you have to flip through them like a regular encyclopedia then that would be ir
      • Who decides that? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Thursday September 18, 2008 @02:13AM (#25051019) Journal

        The problem is that all the articles become unnavigable messses of shit trivia and geek mastubatry nonsense. The idea is that this should be a usable reference for a general audience, not a competition against other nerds to crap up articles.

        Well, so basically it should only contain the list of Britney Spears and Back Street Boys songs, plus the quick answers to high school tests? That's what the general audience is interested in.

        Is quantum physics supposed to even be there, if we're talking about general audiences? As someone who had a genuine passion for physics, I can tell you that that shit is hard. It's abstract thinking at its finest. You can imagine bodies sliding down slopes in your head, or gases expanding in tubes, you can even picture relativistic stuff, but quantum mechanics pretty much requires you to not even try. Any kind of RL intuition you might apply to it is actually _the_ source of misunderstandings and getting it wrong.

        So how many people genuinely need that on Wikipedia? For 99% of the population it's something they'll never really need, and would need more effort to understand than they're willing to put into anything. Some people probably aren't even wired to ever understand it. And I don't even necessarily mean that in an elitist or demeaning way, they're just wired for a whole other class of endeavours.

        And whoever really needs to understand Hawking radiation, already has better sources than that. (And isn't that the mantra anyway? It's not a primary source, you need to check everything you read on Wikipedia.)

        So is it a kind of geek masturbatory exercise too? It's most definitely _not_ for a general audience.

        Seems to me like there isn't that much difference. If you don't want to read something, be it quantum stuff or the list of everything Bart wrote on the blackboard, don't look at those pages, right? It's not like someone drags you kicking and screaming to those pages.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gsslay ( 807818 )

        Also, im just sick of reading a general topic, something unrelated to sci-fi and then seeing links like "He also shares the name of a popular Anime character" or "Nuclear aggression was also a topic on this episode of Star Trek."

        Absolutely.

        A definite pet peeve of mine is the cancerous In popular culture sections that sprout out of innocent articles of all kinds. Invariably they are a random mess of trivia informing us where this subject has been mentioned in various editors' favourite music/tv show/film. Of absolutely no interest to anyone else, completely unreferenced and unverifiable, and of zero significance to the actual subject of the article. It's almost as if people believe that some subjects require a passing mentioned

    • Although only administrators can actually delete articles, contested deletions are decided on the basis of a discussion/vote that anyone with at least a semi-established account, admin or not, can participate in. Some of the more aggressive pro-deletion nominators/voters aren't actually admins at all, in fact.

      • by Whiteox ( 919863 )

        Agree. There are quite a few historical articles that have been argued over by non-admin.
        These are differences of opinions and differences in interpretation of sources.
        I always go to the discussion pages to see what the debate is all about. If it wasn't for these pages, Wikipedia would only have half its value for me.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sockatume ( 732728 )
      "Somoene's going to come in here and say that the problem isn't the topic, it's that the articles are either original research, aren't verifiable, or aren't "notable""

      Hello! Yes, actually the first two issues are a big part of the problem. Most of the Wikipedia fancruft I've seen uses only the original fictional source as a reference, meaning that you're ultimately reading through someone's attempt to wrestle a body of fiction into a coherent self-consistent reality, often an impossible task, and certain
    • by geekoid ( 135745 )

      The administrators are probably some 'die hard' fan of the topic, and we know what assholes those people can be.
      Imagine comic book guy running the pages.

    • I think it's an attack by people who figure that if they have too much of it that Wikipedia won't resemble an old media encylopedia. This argument is pretty stupid, given the nigh-unlimited space in their database
      .

      There is no such thing as unlimited free bandwidth, storage, and processing.

      64,000 fan-cruft pages translates to text and multimedia resources that could and should have allocated elsewhere.

    • This argument is pretty stupid, given the nigh-unlimited space in their database (Wikipedia themselves have said not to worry about performance).

      Agreed. Because the problem is space in the database or performance of the servers. It's the editors - because when the guy maintaining the entry on "$NERDISH_DETAILS in $GEEKY_TOPIC" goes away for what ever reason, the articles become targets of vandalism and minor meddling edits that slowly transform the article in digital compost.

      Somoene's goin

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Blakey Rat ( 99501 )

      Wikipedia has the problem that ... well, tons of things have both virtual and real:

      It's a lot easier to delete work than to create it.

      I mean, it took God-knows how many dozens of people to write that Warhammer guide after God-knows how many man-hours of work researching, typing, and editing it all. And it takes an editor 30 seconds to delete it all, poof, gone.

      And of course, there are lots of a-holes who basically get their only joy in life from deleting somebody else's work; there's more than a little trut

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Braino420 ( 896819 )

        And of course, there are lots of a-holes who basically get their only joy in life from deleting somebody else's work

        Just the other week, I was wondering about bash.org (which has been down for quite some time) and looked it up on wikipedia. It was deleted because it "is not covered in reliable published works". But if you check out the deletion log [wikipedia.org], you'll see in it a user named Bit trollent that has "vowed to destroy Wikipedia" by voting to delete articles. *sigh*

    • by fm6 ( 162816 )

      a collection of 63,559 deleted Wikipedia pages that range from "vanity entries" or obscure points of reference to heavily edited topics that Wikipedia administrators eventually deemed fan fiction

      There, fixed that for you.

      Actually, administrators don't make the decisions about what gets deleted. In theory, a bunch of users discuss the issue until a consensus is reached, and then an administrator implements the consensus.

      Of course, there are a bunch of problems with that model. Consensus in the TWiki community is as hard to find as a competent FEMA official. (Which is exactly why a Wiki is the wrong platform for a user-edited encyclopedia. But that's another issue.) So what ends up happening is that people argue and vote unti

    • Re:Fancruft (Score:4, Insightful)

      by STrinity ( 723872 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @08:49PM (#25048079) Homepage

      Somoene's going to come in here and say that the problem isn't the topic, it's that the articles are either original research, aren't verifiable, or aren't "notable"

      A couple weeks back, someone went through and deleted all the cultural references for Venture Bros. episodes on the grounds that they were all original research and didn't include any quotes from the creators showing that the references were intentional. The deleted references included things like explaining that when a character says, "Like Patty Smyth before me, I am a warrior," he's referencing the hit song "The Warrior" by the band Scandal, of which Patty Smyth was the lead singer. When this was pointed out to him, he said that the episode wasn't a valid source.

      Someone needs to create a new Wikipedia that's more Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy than Encyclopedia Galactica.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TrekkieGod ( 627867 )

      I honestly don't get the whole hate that Wikipedia seems to have against sci-fi and geeky topics... I think it's an attack by people who figure that if they have too much of it that Wikipedia won't resemble an old media encylopedia.

      It's not just sci-fi and geeky topics. It's the whole "low-brow" and "high-brow" battle that has always existed. It's pretty annoying, but anytime people add information that others consider "low-brow" (which happens a lot with pop-culture topics), people complain that it's diminishing wikipedia.

      I personally believe Wikipedia's strength is in how it contains information about a large number of topics traditional encyclopedias wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. All that it needs is one editor that is in

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gsslay ( 807818 )

      I honestly don't get the whole hate that Wikipedia seems to have against sci-fi and geeky topics...

      You have the cause and effect the wrong way around here. It's not that Wikipedia hates sci-fi and geeky topics, it's that sci-fi fans and geeks love Wikipedia. Consequently they are willing to spend hour upon hour of detailing fancruft into Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia doesn't want fancruft, of any sort. Wikipedia is not a fansite. It doesn't care about minor Stargate SG-1 plotline discrepancies that a single obsessive thinks he has noticed and simply must tell the world about. It's not interested in

  • by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @05:53PM (#25045663) Homepage

    I'm certain there is quite a bit of interesting information that's been excised from still-existing topics that should also be explored.

  • Where's the site that has the stuff deleted from Deletionpedia? I guess it'll be Turtles All the Way Down [wikipedia.org] from there...
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:04PM (#25045749)

    a page listing every chalkboard gag in The Simpsons opening credits

    Sad, that's actually a useful list! And surely socially and culturally relevant too.

    I find it childish of Wikipedia to actually delete articles that would be interesting to some people at least.

    • Sad, that's actually a useful list! And surely socially and culturally relevant too.

      I find it childish of Wikipedia to actually delete articles that would be interesting to some people at least.

      I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty. I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty. I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty. I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty. I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by silentbozo ( 542534 )
      For every item deemed not notable on Wikipedia, is some future dissertation topic for some grad student. Remember, nobody knows what is notable in any given time period until long after that time period is past.
    • Often it boils down to "I don't know much about this topic and I don't care about it, thus it's irrelevant". Thus you end up with entire fields of topics automatically getting marked for deletion - as happened to webcomics a couple months ago, with some fairly well-known comics getting tossed out for being not notable, while a page about the TV station the main character of a short-lived 80s TV series worked for [wikipedia.org] survived more than thirty revisions over five years. I agree that Max Headroom was cool, but Net
    • Here's another one: GNU/DOS [dbatley.com]. I never knew this existed, and although it was merged back into FreeDOS later on, it's an interesting tidbit of free software history. I'm a fan of Deltionpedia already.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:04PM (#25045755)

    There used to be an article on the notable unix programmer Norman Waslh before they deleted it. They also deleted the article about "Rubbish, King of the Jumble" as not notable despite being a popular cartoon on CITV in the 1990s. If you want your knowledge to stay, use inclusionist wikis instead. I like websites such as Wikia because they have a lot of articles about what Wikipedia calls cruft and also many independant wikis such as mariowiki and bulbapedia. Remember that all Wikipedia articles have been licenced under the GFDL so transwiki as many articles as you can, exploiting the streisand effect.

    I have also been blocked from Wikipedia for a year because of a vandal sharing my IP address and the admins won't unblock.

  • by jlechem ( 613317 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:04PM (#25045757) Homepage Journal
    Take a look at this article [wikipedia.org]. Half of those lodges get articles deleted all the time and that article itself gets nominated for deletion all the time. Yet articles about Penny Arcade while a very funny cartoon I enjoy stays? WTF, there notion of notable is quite honestly fucked. Yes there is a general article about Freemasonry but each state's Grand Lodge have a long history that is often interlinked to the founding of that state. My own state of Utah has a very long history with freemasons and the Grand Lodge of Utah has a very interesting histroy that can be verified quite easily. So a Lodge with 100+ years of history isn't notable but a comic strip is? Sorry but PA isn't Garfield or Peanuts. It's nothing but a popularity contest and the people with the most amount of time to waste win the notable contest unless and admin (biased quite heavily) does something.
    • Penny Arcade actually runs a large charitable fund [childsplaycharity.org] for children sick in hospitals. While the comics themselves may not be suitable for Wikipedia, they have other notable things they've done.

      While I'll agree that it may be a bit absurd that the Freemasons are left out, you're picking the wrong example to compare against.
    • At the risk of stating the obvious, the articles about lodges that are there list one or two sources, which are invariably websites. For all I know as a reader, the bold history of the Masons in those states has been made the hell up just to provide a reference for an article on Wikipedia. (Not that that's true, of course.) An extensive reference base is a boon for showing that something is notable, for the simple reason that something well-written-about off the Wikipedia is necessarily notable.
  • by argent ( 18001 ) <{moc.agnorat.6002.todhsals} {ta} {retep}> on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:06PM (#25045773) Homepage Journal

    They're about to hit 65536 articles.

  • Another project that's related to Wikipedia through the founder Jimmy Wales is Wikia http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia [wikia.com]

    There are wiki's on many topics and I don't think they kill any submitted pages/wikis/ etc. If you think it's important enough to record, put it up.

    Something that I find as particularly interesting is the "open source" search that they're building there. http://re.search.wikia.com/index.html [wikia.com]

    • Wikia is just a commercial Mediawiki hosting service. Think of it as Wikipedia's for-profit sector. (They're not formally linked, but they're headed by the same guy and much of the same staff.)

      • They're not formally linked, but they're headed by the same guy and much of the same staff.

        Sure, legally and fiscally they are apparently separate entities. They key word there is "apparently". The reality is somewhat different. Nefarious? In the opinion of many, most likely.

    • Another project that's related to Wikipedia through the founder Jimmy Wales is Wikia

      If there was ever a good reason to avoid something, the ownership of "Honest Jimbo" Wales, is as good as it gets on the web. I do hope he fills out his expense reports correctly for Wikia, and I wonder which firms he sells the info to from that site.

      Is there an extremist right-wing Ayn Rand Wikia site?

  • That's a surprisingly low number. I think it's out by at least an order of magnitude. These guys need to try a lot harder. So, so many more pages to delete...

    You can start with almost every single music entry -- virtually all are spam or fansites to some degree.
  • What about Mel's Hole? Is it there?
  • by deathtopaulw ( 1032050 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:23PM (#25045937) Homepage
    This is not a normal encyclopedia where having an entry takes up literal space on a page, and technically slows you down when finding the article you're actually looking for. This is the internet, where if you don't care about the many variations on the RX-78 Gundam, you don't have to ever see them. Unless wikipedia is running their fucking site off of an old 20 gig IDE hard drive, there's no reason to be deleting entries that are well-written and useful to someone.

    Deletionism is just one big stupid power trip.
  • by Spencerian ( 465343 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:25PM (#25045949) Homepage Journal

    A focus.

    Smaller wikis tend to have a very specific focus and, thus, rational reasons to keep or delete. I work on the Battlestar Wiki, which obviously needs an article on Commander Adama but wouldn't keep articles on James Kirk on it...that's the Memory Alpha wiki's job.

    Even Deletionpedia focuses on one thing...and does it so well, it doesn't need editing!

    Wikipedia is trying to catalog the world as a general encyclopedia. But paradoxically they edit out things from the world.

    The result? A reason to post elsewhere.

    • Wikipedia is trying to catalog the world as a general encyclopedia. But paradoxically they edit out things from the world.
      The result? A reason to post elsewhere.

      Amen. Mod parent insightful. It really is time that Wikipedia gets kicked out of its bloated, overrated pagerank. They are stealing focus from many, many better sites.

  • by jcupitt65 ( 68879 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:27PM (#25045977)

    The author Nicholson Baker wrote an interesting piece on the Deleteopedia earlier this year:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/apr/10/wikipedia.internet [guardian.co.uk]

    Worth a read if you've not seen it.

  • Given that the GNAA is the most well-known deletion debated on Wikipedia, having been deleted, restored, and deleted again at least seven times, with huge discussions every time, I'm surprised that it's not there.
    • In fact, over 59,000 words have gone into the deletion discussions alone. That's over one tenth of Atlas Shrugged! This doesn't include the several discussions that led to it being undeleted, likely bringing the wordcount to nearly double that.
  • Wikipedia didn't invent wiki. It's just the most popular. If you don't agree with the administrators start you own wiki.

    Wikipedia was started with a certain idealistic standard. Still I hear people talking about not everything you read on wiki is the truth. I've personally have read a lot of crap on wiki and I think more should be deleted.

    It's cool that someone has archived the delete articles though. I think it would also be cool if continued work on the articles could bring it up to wikipedia's standards

  • by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @07:07PM (#25046521) Homepage

    That's what Wikia is for - to hold all the fancruft. Wikia hosts the Star [Wars|Gate|Trek|Craft] fancruft. It's almost all popular culture. It's become Wikipedia's slush pile. Wikia takes advertising, but since its demographic lives in their parents' basement, the ads aren't worth much.

    Personally, I'd like to kick most of the popular culture out of Wikipedia, because Wikipedia isn't very good at it. Wikipedia is worse at movies than IMDB. It's worse at music than Gracenote. It's worse at fancruft than Wikia. Export the articles for each Pokemon to Wikia and be done with it.

    • Personally, I'd like to kick most of the popular culture out of Wikipedia, because Wikipedia isn't very good at it.

      I have yet to find the topic that WP is good at. It certainly isn't technical topics, which quickly get turned into factually inaccurate misinformation.

      I'd say pop is the closest fit, since WP's policy of "an article can be crap for any length of time" is best suited for topics where accuracy doesn't really matter...

  • Don't know if this is in this archive, but some not entirely together person (I don't think he understands that Star Trek is fiction) wrote a really good timeline of the Mirror Universe, going all the way back to the 20th century and Prince Clinton's assassination of Emperor Reagan. I was participating in Wikipedia deletion discussions at the time, and there was a unanimous vote to delete it, for obvious reasons. But I think everybody who voted felt bad about doing it, it was so carefully thought out.

  • What I don't get is.. why aren't there simply categories to deal with the 'mess' that would 'otherwise' exist?

    I put 'mess' in quotes because, thanks to search engines, there is no such thing as a real mess.

    I put 'otherwise' in quotes because 'minor trivia' still co-exists with main articles as it is.

    For example, try "Quark" at Wikipedia.

    The main article is about the particle. Fair enough.

    But then there's also "Quark (TV Series)", "Quark (Star Trek)". Why isn't the latter in e.g. "star_trek.en.wikipedia.or

  • by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @09:05PM (#25048303) Homepage

    See if that doesn't convince you of the soundness of Wikipedia's judgments (which, perhaps I should say, are not made by administrators, but hashed out in group discussions to which all Wikipedia editors may contribute).

    "Sean Cragg is the coolest dude alive. he thinks. And he sneezes like he is Vomiting :P"

    "Normo: A derogatory term to refer a person (Normal) who fears people with mental disabilities"

    "Josh Himberg the man. He runs the NHS like its his bisnuss."

    These are buried treasure?

  • by Caraig ( 186934 ) * on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @10:41PM (#25049327)

    Basically, the admins of Wikipedia are trying to make WP into a 'legitimate' encyclopedia. Unfortunately, no high school or college prof in their right mind is ever, ever going to allow Wikipedia as a source in any sort of assignment. WP is useful for a quick lookup of something but considering it's about as reliable as Tom Cruise's sanity, anyone who relies on it is getting what they asked for.

    So all these attempts to make Wikipedia a 'legitimate' information source are hilarious at best and sad at worst. Being a 'wikipedia admin' is not going to give you academia cred, ever, and it's not going to make for any sort of remotely useful e-peen. These deletions are just people trying, desperately, to make Wiki into something it never will be.

    Whatever happened to Wikipedia being 'Everything about Everything?'

  • by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @10:47PM (#25049391) Homepage
    Well, it seems Deletionpedia is notable, so I wrote a Wikipedia page for it [wikipedia.org].

    Better check it fast, though-- within one minute of writing it, I notice it's tagged for Speedy deletion!

Memory fault - where am I?

Working...