User talk:Jimbo Wales

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Regarding the nauseating and cowardly remarks made by Wikiconference USA attendees

I hope those attendees of the recent Wikiconference USA in New York who were discussing LilaTretikov and Wllm behind their backs, suggesting that the WMF's new ED should dump her partner, or banish him from the WMF world, are proud of themselves. "Multiple influential people", says Kevin Gorman. If any of them are reading this, I'll eat my hat if they have the spine to identify themselves in public and stand behind their grotesquely inappropriate comments. — Scott • talk 20:52, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Grotesquely inappropriate is exactly right, under any circumstances. – SJ + 00:51, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

I was present for the conference and heard no such remarks at all. What is the source for this gossip? Did you attend the conference, Scott? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:25, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

There's a link in my post. Try clicking it. — Scott • talk 17:56, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Is anyone else getting "PirritSuggester" malware ads after accessing the Wikipediocracy site? I just did a system restore going back 3 weeks, and it seemed to get rid of them, but as soon as I access Wikipediocracy, the adware starts to appear, and my privacy settings show a huge of cookies being added. I'm seeing the same thing on wllm's personal blog. adnxs.com and pirrit.com seems to be the more intrusive ones, adding links and ads in the middle of text I am trying to read. —Neotarf (talk) 21:22, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Nope, never had anything like that from either site. 'Course, I use Firefox... 28bytes (talk) 21:35, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

So do I. And I have Windows Essentials enabled. This is something new. —Neotarf (talk) 21:39, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Nope. Must be somewhere else you've been. John lilburne (talk) 21:43, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Okay, thanks, I'm getting it now on other sites, where I might be expected to use a credit card online. <sigh> —Neotarf (talk) 22:00, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

• /Sigh - sad to see this come up here. Wllm, none of my emails to you were unsolicited except the very first which you responded warmly to, and I'm disappointed that you chose to post a chunk of an email from me related to sensitive issues publicly. To those wondering, yes, I did send Wil an email where that was part of a longer chunk. I don't want to say what he posted was 100% accurate because I haven't compared them side by side, but it can probably be assumed to be. I would have responded to your post on the talk page if I had seen it, but haven't been monitoring the talk page regularly as I'm only now finally fully back to having internet access, being thoroughly in the bay, etc.

I have never tried to meddle in Wil's relationship, except to point out to him that some of his actions were actively sabotaging the impressions movement members were forming of Lila in her first few weeks on her new job, and by asking him to reconsider how hard and how fast he was diving in to certain controversial areas. Though now restored to internet access, I'm pretty much going to stay away from this thread except to say that I think Lila's performance so far shows that she holds a lot of promise as a replacement for Sue, something that took a bloody hard search to find. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:39, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

And why would it be any of their business, and why would it be any of your business to play tattletale and convey idle gossip? John lilburne (talk) 21:45, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like we could all use a bit more clarity here, Kevin. Do you mind if I release all of the emails you sent me? Could be either on-wiki or WPO, up to you. ,Wil (talk) 21:55, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes Wil, I do object, and for a pretty simple reason: doing so is not in the interests of, bluntly, anyone. You've already picked out about the worst sounding quote you could've in terms of effecting my reputation, let those who enjoy drama bask in that while they must, instead of drawing anything else in. I do have a couple things to point out: my email to you was not unsolicited, and my response to your request to not interfere with your personal life was to clarify that that was the last thing I wanted to do, emphasize that you had brought up a *lot* of points that needed to be addressed sooner or later, invite you out to dinner to meet in person and hopefully in the process convince you that I did in fact have your best interests in mind, and start talking about how to make productive change while stressing that not everything could be addressed instantly. Do you want to watch the world burn because fire is pretty, or do you prefer construction? If you want something constructive to come out of your engagement with Wikimedia, that can only happen if you engage with Wikimedia's community in a different way than you have so far. Please note that I'm only responding to pings from Wil and a handful of others in this section, rather than monitoring it proactively. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:03, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

"If you want something constructive to come out of your engagement with Wikimedia, that can only happen if you engage with Wikimedia's community in a different way than you have so far." "Morning and evening Maids heard the goblins cry: "Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy." Imbibe, imbibe! Say the words!Dan Murphy (talk) 23:13, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Kevin, I don't think that quote was designed particularly to affect your reputation; though the best thing to do with offensive, ridiculous gossip is to stop it at the source and not pass it on. Repeating awful things that others have said is not quite as bad as the initial insult, but still hurts. As Wil seems to have been offended, an apology would not be remiss. – SJ + 00:51, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

If, as appears, tasteless remarks were made, I am not sure that one helps alleviate the tastelessness by publicizing them extensively. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:20, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

NYB, here's where I think you and I fundamentally disagree with how to handle matters like this. There is a good reason to hold people to their words and deeds. If we just sweep this stuff under the carpet, then Kevin's exactly right: the Wikimedia community tolerates this kind of behavior. I'm not interested in damaging the Wikipedia community or its reputation- just the opposite. I want this kind of stuff to stop. And it won't stop unless we admit we could have done better and learn our lessons well. So, I propose that we own our mistakes, learn from them, and better ourselves. And we should encourage others to learn from mistakes. If, for example, Kevin were to apologize to me and Lila, I would consider it a sign of strength, not weakness, and I would tell him so. ,Wil (talk) 02:15, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Wil: I've sincerely apologized to Lila, multiple times, over situations related to our interactions. When you expressed concern that I was trying to interfere with your personal life, I emphatically stressed that I had absolutely no desire to interfere in your personal life. (And, except for introducing myself, I have not sent you a single unsolicited email. If you took offense at me relaying how people viewed your behavior: I'm sorry, but sincerely hope you reread that whole line of emails to find and consider the point I made within them. I doubt leaking every email I've sent you would hurt my reputation to a greater degree than the initial offensive nugget you posted - but it would hurt likely hurt both your standing and Lila's, so I hope you have the sense not to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kevin Gorman (talk • contribs) 02:41, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Accepted. This is where we could use some practice, however. An apology that follows the pattern "If *, I'm sorry, but *" is a weak apology. I simple "I'm sorry" is much more effective. I'd very much appreciate a chance to accept a strong apology from you, because I believe that it is warranted. But I'm not about to force it out of you; if you don't truly regret what you've said, then I'd prefer you don't apologize at all. And, Kevin, sincerely, you can stop worrying about my reputation. It will build naturally as I do what I believe is right. And, if you haven't caught on to this yet, I really don't care that much what people think of me. I'm interested in their ideas. And I've found no lack of good ideas voiced by good people here. I'm making a lot of friends and enjoying myself. I'm gonna stay the course. If you have concerns about Lila's reputation, I suggest you take it up with her. ,Wil (talk) 04:19, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

It looks like that's the strongest apology I'm going to get. :( ,Wil (talk) 01:06, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

• This food fight is getting pretty silly. (1) Kohs shouldn't have been banned from WikiconNYC14 at all. (2) If there was a legitimate reason to ban him, it should have been stated. And it still should be, he's waiting. (3) The conference organizers owe him $5.30 and an apology, in my opinion. All the rest of this is so much noise. Carrite (talk) 23:44, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

  Off-topic for this thread, but yes. People running events can set whatever guidelines they like, and can choose their attendance list to realize the type of event they have in mind; but this should be clear up front. – SJ + 00:51, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

  Sj's right. It's OT, but there is a common theme here. It sounds like there were lots of learning opportunities at WikiCon USA. No biggies. This kind of stuff happens. I think if we practiced apologizing and forgiving, we would all move on and do it better the next time.

  I can guarantee one thing, however; if one chooses to hide their missteps and waste everyone's time- or, worse yet, reputations- by trying to save face, I'm not the only one who will persist in holding everyone accountable. But make no mistake, I do it so diligently because I don't want to have to do it next time. ,Wil (talk) 02:15, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

• I'd disagree, with that, Brad. If such remarks were made that Scott alleges in the original post, they should be publicised here, and if they are as offensive as has been suggested, the offenders swiftly removed from any position of authority or importance. (And, to be honest, anyone in authority who didn't do anything about it / didn't condemn it, possibly including people further up this thread). Black Kite kite (talk) 23:49, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Would someone please Rev Del this thread? It's entheta that draws attention to a potential trouble source who's under the influence of suppressive persons, and I'm sure the sole source of Wikipedia has more important things to attend to. Wikipedia is a safe space. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:28, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole: Didn't you mean to say "Wikipedia is a safe space opera"? ;) ,Wil (talk) 02:21, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole:, I believe you're a squirrel.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 00:05, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

"suppressive persons"? "sole source of Wikipedia"? "Wikipedia is a safe space"? Not seeing anything RevDel-able here, but then your statement doesn't really make much sense to me. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:39, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Scientology and Sarcasm. Today is brought to you by the letter S. :D ,Wil (talk) 01:06, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Kohs is not convincing me with this argument. While arguing around the idea that he not be banned from a Wikimedia conference, "thekohser" posted that "... got his panties in such a twist over this "blackmail thread", he spent exactly 1 hour, 42 minutes, 29 seconds on MyWikiBiz last night, even searching the database for [his username], just to make sure I haven't said anything mean about him. I'm pleased that he spent some time on the Sophismata page, though..." Now, this idea that someone is going to make opinions known for the Wikimedia community, encourage them to come and hear his banned words of wisdom, only to invade readers' privacy and use their browsing for opposition research, is not something I approve of. I have to limit my reaction in light of my opinion that every user ban should have a fixed maximum duration, and also in consideration that this wasn't directly done on Wikipedia; nonetheless, this is an argument he was making specifically for our benefit in lieu of access to edit here, and it makes me more willing to believe that his activities using any data he might collect at the conference could be problematic. As for the comments the OP was talking about, I haven't heard them, they may be unwise, but not every silly thing said has to lead to somebody getting voted off the island. Wnt (talk) 06:41, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

He may have said that in the thread about the conference, but I thought that comment was completely unrelated to WikiConference USA itself. For what it's worth, I told them today that I didn't think such doxxing behavior was OK for cases where they aren't exposing abuse (YMMV) and some of them did not like it at all. Then I reasserted that they are being asshats when they're making snarky comments about others. And, surprisingly enough, for completely separate reasons, I've stopped posting on WO altogether. It's been a busy day. But I still think that Wikipedia conferences that are open to all members must not exclude any participants who don't pose a threat. The matter that this section was created to discuss, however, has been resolved by Kevin's apology, although (and I really hate to criticize any apology; in fact, it's my first time doing so) it's mixed with more excuses and inaccuracies. In any case, I've decided not to release the rest of Kevin's mails. I don't think he was acting in bad faith, and he certainly assumed privacy. He just wasn't acting with prudence. I think he got the message that I'd rather not hear from him privately anymore. ,Wil (talk) 07:51, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

@Wil. I don't think the following representation of the dialog on WPO is accurate: "I told them today that I didn't think such doxxing behavior was OK for cases where they aren't exposing abuse (YMMV) and some of them did not like it at all." I think that a big majority of the wide range of people posting at Wikipediocracy would agree that real life identification of those abusing Wikipedia through anonymous accounts is OK, with the main difference of opinion being a big majority feeling that this should be limited to the manipulation of content and a small minority feeling that this should also apply to administrators and others making abusive use of site rules against their enemies. Essentially ALL feel there MUST be some purpose to such identifications. I think that's a reasonable reflection of actual sentiment there, whether one actively participates in such public identifications or one does not. This again gets back to the question that you yourself dodged on WPO when I directly asked it of you twice: in the matter of accuracy of Wikipedia content and transparency of contributors on the one hand vs. the perceived right of Wikipedia contributors to online anonymity, where do you land? Carrite (talk) 15:05, 16 June 2014 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 15:07, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

OK, I'm answering your question with many witnesses present: This question is leading because it assumes a correlation between accuracy of Wikipedia content and transparency of contributors, which, to my knowledge, hasn't been proven. I could stop right here. But it seems like you're more interested in the seemingly mutually exclusive issue of transparency and anonymity. First, IP edits seem to make less sense as a wiki matures, and, IMO en.Wiki grew out of them long ago. Next, we should provide means for users to give Wikipedia as much information as they want, including linking accounts at other well known sites. This information should be opt-in and should not be relied on to establish RL identities. The only sure-fire way to establish RL identities is to have the contributor disclose their WP identity in a trusted and verified source. Otherwise, we can only rely on a mound of circumstantial evidence- much of which can be faked. So here's where we enter a fairyland of hypotheticals, because it isn't possible or practical to get the necessary information. If it were possible, I like the idea of a final promotion of our most mature articles to an expert-curated status, but only under the conditions that there are checks and balances established so that a verified and elected expert cannot abuse his or her power. Next, should we require more information of admins and others who govern the site if we could get it? Asking those who want these responsibilities to verify their RL identities might help curb abuses, but this information shouldn't be shared outside of the WMF. For the regular contributor, I think that connecting to RL identities isn't practical unless we are willing to decimate our editing population. The bar would be far higher for new editors. I think this is against the spirit of Wikipedia. The Wikipedia whistleblower's dilemma is the morality of publishing information that the contributor hasn't proffered. That's the individual whistleblower's call, whether we like it or not. I personally would like to see the WMF build even closer connections in the community, while establishing effective, trusted procedures for whistleblowers so that publishing private information is uncool under any circumstances. But this is just one contributor's opinion. It's really up to the community working with the WMF, and I hope that more of the community will get involved in decisions like these.

If this were dodgeball, I could tell you exactly where I land. On the floor, after getting hit in the face with a fastball. So I'm pretty sure I didn't dodge anything this time. ;) ,Wil (talk) 06:26, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Hey tim, are you saying that every piece of personal information posted at Wikipediocracy serves a purpose? What purpose did Lila's and my private address serve? I thank the moderators who took it down, but it was still posted. For that matter, why did everyone need to know the name of our ISP? I won't speak for others on Wikipedia who have similar stories, but I believe my own is enough to make it clear that not all personal information posted there accomplishes anything other than making people uncomfortable. That said, I'm very open with my personal info as long as it doesn't endanger my family. Others don't feel as comfortable with this, however. I can't force anybody at Wikipediocracy- or anywhere else, for that matter- to not engage in these activities; I can only encourage everyone to ask themselves how they can be kind to others and act accordingly. ,Wil (talk) 02:52, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that every prospective post at WPO be pre-moderated? Two words for you: prior restraint. All sorts of inappropriate stuff gets posted on the internet and inappropriate material gets posted periodically and taken down at Wikipedia and Wikipediocracy alike. It seems disingenuous for you to single out the latter. Whatever happened to the love of free speech in the saloon, etc.??? There's an enormous difference between making clear Real Life IDs of anonymous editors who abuse WP rules and honest editing practices on the one hand (identification of undeclared POV editors, in other words — what He Who Can Not Be Named does all the time) and those who post addresses, phone numbers, and employer contact info — or who contact or encourage others to contact employers — of enemies. The latter sort of behavior is moderated away at WPO if anybody pipes up, and I for one pipe up as soon as I see it. And I'm not alone. Carrite (talk) 04:29, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

P.S. So far this year it is Wikipedia 1, Wikipediocracy 0 in the tally of "encouragement of others to contact employers of enemies" violations. Just sayin'... Carrite (talk) 04:37, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

TIm, two words for you: I'm not. :) I've expressed my opinion on censorship from day one on Wikipediocracy. I'm not necessarily singling out Wikipediocracy, I simply haven't seen it on-wiki yet. You've always been honest and forthcoming; I believe you when you say it happens. So let's start by pretending censorship works. FWIW, I believe it never works in the long run. We both know there's no bright line here; we're talking about nothing less than the whistleblower's dilemma. I appeal directly to individuals to make the right decision, because the decision to publicize always lies with them. When they decide to publish information in good faith, they have usually thought through the benefits. I want to make sure they are also aware of how it can impact others' lives. And, let's face it, there has been some doxxing in bad faith on Wikipediocracy and, no doubt, Wikipedia. This practice should be discouraged in the strongest terms, possibly punished, but never censored. My MO is to make it clear to everyone what kind of impact this can have on another human being. I consistently followed these practices throughout my time at Wikipediocracy. And I will continue to do so here. ,Wil (talk) 02:31, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

You know that when it comes to WP and WO, I'm not keeping score. :) I'm just waiting for the game to end, when they all line up for high-fives. How's that for optimism? :P ,Wil (talk) 02:31, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

I thought I answered the question about transparency vs. anonymity pretty directly before, but if you'd like me to repeat my viewpoint here, no biggies. Please give me a day or so. I'm having a hard time keeping up with mails, blog comments, talk page edits, etc. A lot of people have a lot of great suggestions on how we can be kinder to each other here on Wikipedia, and I'd like to set aside an uninterrupted chunk of time to address your question as directly as I can. ,Wil (talk) 02:52, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

• Fascinating, fascinating. Every now and then I am drawn to poor Jimbo's talk page through one link or another, and every time it's like falling into the middle of a soap opera, where everyone is up in arms over nothing that appears to be of any consequence. How do you all find the time to edit articles? Remember editing articles? I wrote one the other day, on a Dutch journalist who spent a couple of years reporting stuff while Serbian shells were falling everywhere. It was great fun, and it's what I came here for. Not to see you all, the usual suspects, fighting over God knows what as if it really matters if someone was disinvited to some conference or other. Christ, it's hardly like getting kicked out of heaven for having dog poop on your shoe. Why don't you all keep your emails and your accusations and your gossip and your allegiances and your IRCs to yourself, or to a dedicated IRC channel, so that Jimbo and I can use this talk page to discuss things that really matter, like beer and Wikipedia articles? Drmies (talk) 00:47, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

It's a shame you're so consistently enticed to the wrong threads. I promise you there are productive discussions covering timely topics chock full of wholesome counsel and examples of emuable conduct. Perhaps you're a drama monger in disguise, for the subject heading gives ample clue of what to expect; and what to avoid, might I add.—John Cline (talk) 01:15, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

MONGO supports the BEER discussion option!--MONGO 01:49, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

I can't really drink beer.....but I am up for discussing it. ;-)--Mark Miller (talk) 05:31, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Drmies is right and I'm as guilty as the next person. And btw (1) that's an excellent piece on the Dutch journalist and (2) bourbon would work for me. Writegeist (talk) 05:40, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

.......this coming from a guy who has a free-ranging, widely trafficked user talk page with about 68 archivings listed. Ummmm, why not just put up a link??? ;) —Tim /// Carrite (talk) 16:28, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

is Wikipedia dying?

just few years ago I could find artciles about everything new, but now I can't:

• King's Bounty: Warrior of North is just still redirection
• Ironclad: Battle for Blood - no article yet

What is happening to Wikipedia?
Deleters are claiming that "wikipedia already has articles about evering and no new articles are needed", but I see THAT'S A LIE! Why do they become so POWERFULL? Why metapedists who do nothing just delete are more equal the those who write articles? Why no one see the AGONY of Wikipedia? Why no one tries to save it? (Idot (talk) 06:40, 15 June 2014 (UTC))

Maybe priorities change? Years ago, you couldn't articles on most of the Fortune 500 companies but you could on every Pokemon out there. Does the fact that you can't find information on two video games tell you that the website is "dying"? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:02, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

The editors above both raise valid questions regarding missing articles. Another example: no article about Gado Badzere yet! However, we do have Mbilé, Lolo, Garoua-Boulaï, Gbiti, and Kentzou, which puts Wikipedia way ahead of anything else currently available in the major US press about the emerging Cameroon refugee crisis ... ;) Djembayz (talk) 22:58, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia has articles about *almost* everything, but some video games, films, books, pop albums etc may not meet WP:GNG, which is the requirement for a standalone article. In these cases, they can be included as part of other articles. Plus there is a need for someone to take the time to write the article.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:07, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Just few years ago we used to have enough people to write articles that cover everyithing... (Idot (talk) 09:01, 15 June 2014 (UTC))

The media claimed a decline in editor numbers in 2013, but that is not the real issue here. The rules for article creation are stricter now than they were a few years ago, and a stub class article about a video game sourced to a couple of online reviews would probably face WP:AFD.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 09:10, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Both are related, 'coz there is a GREAT DISINCETIVE and GREAT DISCOURAGE to editors, 'coz everyone are equal, but Herostrates are more equal then others, just 'coz
if a writer has a couple of hours to spent Wilipedia, he or she is forced to spend such time for arguing in AFD, not for writing articles and as as result the writer gets no pleasure from writing articles, but great displeasure, so if the writer is not a masochist the best choise is not to waste free time for displeasant Wikipedia, but to spent for something else
while a Herostrate may spent his or her couple of hours of free time in AFD, and gets lots of pleasure, and Wikipedia is very pleasent place for Herostrates, so Herostrates are more equal than editors, 'coz only Herostrates are able to spend their time for pleasant activity (Idot (talk) 09:45, 15 June 2014 (UTC))

While our fellow Idot here may be easy to ignore because of their not-so-good English and apparently frivolous complain, I wouldn't shrug and move on so fast. It is true that most of our readership is more inclusionist than we are. Readers expect to find information when they look for something on WP. Whenever we don't do that, it is a failure. Now, it is true that on some subject we simply cannot do that (e.g. if there is a lack of RS). But I often have the feeling that we draft tighter and tighter notability/inclusion guidelines only for the sake of ourselves as editors, without thinking about the readers outside. In fact the declining number of editors means that we are alienating more and more people, preventing them from becoming editors as well. I strongly urge everyone to consider that we are here for the readers. Maybe relaxing our inclusion criteria a bit, sometimes, would make this thing a bit uglier than we would like, but probably our readers would be much happier. This is not a new issue, actually. Media have often a dim view of our deletionist approach, and they already had several years ago: [1],[2],[3],[4]. Meanwhile the problem has only got worse.--cyclopia^speak! 10:57, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

One person's "important information" is another person's "useless trivia" (and vise versa). The debate between inclusionists and deletionists has been going on since the earliest days of Wikipedia, and it won't end with this discussion. Deletion is only a "problem" if you are an inclusionist. The deletionists, of course, don't consider it a "problem" at all. It may be that most of our editors are deletionists... when the article under consideration is about a topic they have no interest in. They suddenly turn into rabid inclusionists when the article is about a topic they care about. Like I said... one person's useless trivia is another person's important information (and vise versa). Blueboar (talk) 11:37, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

you don't see the crucial point: deleters usually DO NOT write articles id est (in general) deleters ARE NOT writers, typicall they DO NOT improve articles, because they don't do anything to improve articles, but they have greater POWER than thouse who write articles, 'coz they could spend all free time for deletion, while writer are forced to spend lots of time not for writing articles, but for arguing with deleters - it means lots of time are WASTED not for improving articles, but just for arguing with deleters. while deleters do not have filling of waste of time (they have only pleasure of deleting and arguing), writers have fillings that writing in Wikipedia is waste of time and efforts, 'coz whatever they did might be easily wasted by deleters (Idot (talk) 12:07, 15 June 2014 (UTC))

The counter point, of course, is this: While deletionists do not improve any specific article... the see their activities as improving the entire project (ie Wikipedia as a whole). Remember, there are two ways to improve a written work... one is to add more to it... the other is to edit out what isn't needed. It's what editors do (there is a reason we are called editors, not writers). Blueboar (talk) 14:08, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you User:Idot for asking such a brilliant and perceptive set of questions. They get right to the heart of the problems preventing Wikipedia from achieving it's potential for good. To answer each in turn:

• Is Wikipedia dying?

Not yet, but it is inflicted with a sickness. And until that sickness is cured, Wikipedia is increasingly at risk of going the way of Citizendium. Venture capitalists have long expressed a wish to fund a more open alternative to Wikipedia. Even back in 2008 they recognised that "Deletionists rule Wikipedia" . Almost every month here in London alone, there's a conferences on Inclusive capitalism. Im expecting to attend one on 3rd July with folk like Andrew Witty, Charlie Mayfield, Sir Roger Carr, Frances O’Grady, Sir John Armitt, Katja Hall and Mike Wright. While inclusionism is generally talked about in a broader sense than its typically used here on Wikipedia, options for a replacement are sometimes discussed. With good SEO, leveraging of social media and perhaps a little inside help from one or two of the tech giants, it would not be hard to engineer. So far, those with the knowledge to help implement the project have demurred, out of loyalty to Wikipedia. But this may not be the case forever. Once it happens it will happen fast. Wikipedia will drop like a stone in the search rankings, and there will be nothing the Foundation or community could do about it.

• What happened to Wikipedia?

As you clearly already know, its been largely taken over by deletionists.

• Why have Deletionists became so powerful?

There lots of reasons for this. As per your insightful opening post, one of the reasons is the powerful myth about article saturation. The assertion that we close to the point where we have articles on almost everything worthy of coverage in an encyclopedia is not just wrong, but breathtakingly wrong. Back when the famous 1911 Encyclopedia was written, it was reasonable to say that human knowledge increased at such a slow rate that it took about a century to double. Now human knowledge is increasingly at an exponential rate. This is a totally mainstream idea and not to my knowledge challenged by any serious academic. Human knowledge is now likely doubling in less than a year, accordingly to IBM, it may soon start to double in only 12 hours. Wikipedia took well over 10 years to reach 4.5 million articles. What's most concerning is the second derivative of the rate of increase, which is close to zero even in terms of bytes being added to the database, and clearly negative with regards to new articles. Millions of potential new topics are arising each year, receiving abundant coverage in reliable sources, and only an increasingly tiny fraction get included in Wikipedia.

I can't believe someones tried to defend this by saying at least we now have good coverage of Fortune 500 companies. Since Wikipedia became the world's leading source of information, the larger companies are naturally going to ensure they have articles. But what about topics of huge social importance but with less CoI reason to encourage editing?

Over the last few years, in the field of hunger relief and development, I've been painfully aware there are literally tens of thousands of high impact topics that aren't even mentioned in Wikipedia, despite being abundantly covered in reliable sources. I myself have expanded or created articles on a few dozen of these topics: e.g. Seoul Development Consensus , Hunger in the United States, School breakfast club , The World Development Report 2011 , but the efforts of myself and the few others who work in this topic class are just tiny drops in an ocean of omission. The same could be said about countless other topic classes. Huh, even many topics one might expect to appeal to Wikipedia's young male demographic are poorly covered. As a specific example, this May the United Nations held its first ever conference on autonomous weapons, and this attracted huge coverage in the main stream press. But not only is there no article for the conference, the fact it occurred doesn't seem to be mentioned on Wikipedia at all!

Again, not only are we no where near achieving article Saturation , Wikipedia is falling behind the saturation point at an exponentiation rate, and this includes omission not just of important computer games, but of countless events with massive coverage in both mainstream press and scholarly journals, and which any well balanced person would agree are of world historical significance.

Another equally destructive myth is the thinking behind the various methods used to promote quality. Aside from directly destroying content in the name of quality, adding ugly maintenance tags to the top of articles is perhaps the most self defeating. The sort of people best able to create quality content have many other platforms on which to contribute to other than Wikipedia. They also often have a well developed sense of aesthetics, and are repelled away from Wikipedia by the excessive tagging. This also ties in with what you've just suggested about content creators seeing contributing here as a waste of time, due to the power of deletionists.

Yet another reason for deletionists becoming so powerful is the way the RfA process favors them. Almost by definition, Inclusionists tend to be tolerant, and its relatively rare for them to oppose a half decent deletionist candidate. Whereas deletionists are much more likely to oppose an inclusionist candidate. So over the years, the admin corps has became progressively more deletionists in character, and the deletionist ideology has effectively became normalized throughout the politically active section of the community (i.e. those who frequently participate in the meta processes like XfD, RfA, ANI, policy discussions).

• Why are deletionists favored over article writers?

You've already answered this, but its worth repeating. The short answer is the prevailing social dynamics on Wikipedia make it so.

Some come to Wikipedia because they want to add to the sum of humanities knowledge. This is hard work. Others seem to come to Wikipedia as its a good opportunity for them to exercise power. Everyone likes to have power, and the need to do so is generally proportional to one's strength of character (but not sadly ones ability to achieve or even perceive the good). Power is often defined as the ability to dispose. As Hegel revealed, the desire for recognition is a primary human drive, and achieving it often involves negating the other. Wikipedia is perfect for those who like to exercise power by destroying other peoples work. As you rightly point out, it is far easier to achieve pleasure here as a deletionist than as a content creator. This is also a fourth way to answer your question about why deletionists have became so powerful.

Moving on to a possible solution, a classic way societies have responded to destructive and intolerant elites is raise up a King. In Christendom especially, one of the roles of the King was to stand up on the side of the people against the nobility (or the power hungry middle class) if they became to oppressive to the people. (To be non sexist, I should point out good Queen Beth I was probably the very best recent monarch in this regard). In the early days of Wikipedia, Jimbo was effectively a good inclusionist King figure, but after years of aggressive lobbying by deletionists, he has progressively retreated from this role, both as he prefers the community to run itself, and as he's been sympathetic to deletionist propaganda when they present it as a way to increase quality.

The more modern solution to the problem of oppressive elites is strong and inclusive institutions. The simplest way a reform along these lines could be implemented on Wikipedia might be to give Arbcom the power to change policy, and create life long seats for our best inclusionist editors like Casliber, Hobbit, cyclopia, MSQ, Milowent, Dream and the Colonel. Only Jimbo would have the authority to bring this about.

• Why do none see the AGONY of Wikipedia?

A great many do, it's just most are paralyzed by the horror of it all and so rarely express it.

• Why do none try to save it?

Many have, but those who try to effectively oppose deletionists on Wikipedia rarely last. A few years back we had several editors of indomitable character, who heroically tried to save vast quantities of articles. The rescue Titan Anobody, the heroic Benji, the master strategist Ikip. But all have been permabanned, often after having threads started against them on off wiki sites, allowing hordes of deletionists to descend on ANI en mass and create an unstoppable illusion of consensus.

Deletionists are so powerful that only Jimbo could possibly oppose them. Despite the glaring flaws you've spotlighted, Wikipedia is still a monumental achievement, and Jimbos very success in founding it may mean he's not the best person to nurture his idea to its full fruition.

If you read this entire post though, I hope you'll see that some of the needed prep work is already being done off wiki. It make take several years, maybe two decades at the outside, but sooner or later inclusionism will rightly return as the prevailing ideology for the world's number one encyclopedia. This is inevitable. The question is whether it will be achieved with Wikipedia and the Wikimedia foundation, or against them. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:20, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

• I am rather proud to be known as a "deletionist", actually. I and others serve here as "editors" more in line with what a copy editor does at a newspaper, i.e. formatting, grammar, fact-check, and ensure balance. We curate the content of others, basically. Part of that does involve working to delete content deemed ill-suited to this project. Not every Transformer needs his/her exhaustive history and abilities spelled out in detail, not every 4th-rate politician needs a biography, and not every video game gets a plot analysis and strategy guide. Unless there is something egregiously wrong (e.g. copyright violation) with an article, such things are always put up for a community discussion, where you can have your say. And Feyd, thanks for the early-morning chuckle. Titans, heroes, and master strategists? You identified 3 of the worst scourges to ever infest this project there. Tarc (talk) 12:29, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

You're welcome Tarc, and thanks for having the honesty to demonstrate the extent of the problem by openly admitting you're proud to be deletionist. The flip side of that pride is the much more common editor who denies being a deletionist yet still clearly acts on that philosophy. That’s what I meant about deletionism being normalized. We're not just talking about articles for 4th rate politicians being destroyed. On the subject of politics, even global phenomena like the 2008–09 Keynesian resurgence have been put up for deletion. A world wide policy shift that arguably effected everyone on the planet, and which attracted thousands of dedicated articles in the mainstream media, financial press, and the journals, and which had even had several whole books written entirely about it from the world's leading universities (including Harvard, Cambridge and MIT). Despite all this being patiently explained, the article was still put up for deletion! As you well know, topics that have attracted wall to wall media coverage relating to royal weddings or tragedies like the death of Amanda Todd have also been repeatedly put for deletion. No wonder fewer and fewer content creators want to contribute here. It's not just trivial articles that are being attacked. And to fulfill our m:vision , even the most minor Transformer character deserve an article. Why can't obviously intelligent people like yourself not see that deletionism is out of control, and ultimately threatens the very existence of Wikipedia? FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:57, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for that flip reply. I didnt mean to suggest there's something wrong in being a deletionists. As you say, deleting is a necessary part of presenting a useful encyclopedia. There's lots of reasons from op positional theory why its even desirable for the role to be personified by individuals. Folk being proud to be a deletionist is not the problem. The problem is one of balance, as Idot correctly says, deletionism is a problem because its become too powerful. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:32, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm somewhere between an inclusionist and a deletionist.

The inclusionist within me says:

• Deleting an article that a new editor started working on is going to demoralize and confuse the newbie and likely scare him/her off from ever working here again.
• We could benefit from articles on some subjects that are considered too insignificant to be encyclopeadic right now. If someone comes here to find some information, and it's not here because it's "insignificant" - then we failed to give that person the information (albeit obscure) that they needed...we failed in our role as "repository of all human knowledge".
• What does "encyclopeadic" mean anyway? It means "suitable for inclusion into an encyclopedia". As we are now by far the biggest and best encyclopedia in the world, Wikipedia defines what an encyclopedia is. What is "encylopeadic" is now, by definition, "whatever Wikipedia chooses to accept". So we have a circular argument.
• Disk space is cheap - so why not have articles about more obscure subjects?

But then the deletionist in me rears up his ugly head:

• Allowing people to create articles that are truly too insignificant is a bad thing because it will result in a huge increase in the number of articles without a corresponding increase in people who stay here to maintain them. We truly don't have enough editors to maintain a much larger body of articles.
• Wikipedia can only maintain the "encyclopedia that everyone can edit" mantra because, when spam is added to an article, it gets cleaned up in minutes - or when mis-information is put into an article by some random bad guy, it gets corrected by the people who have that article on their watchlists. That's certainly true for articles like Physics that have hundreds of watchers - but if we allow people to create articles about their barely-notable relatives, how can we be sure that they'll maintain them off into the infinite future? There is a risk that widening the scope of the encyclopedia will make it unmaintainable. You can certainly argue that only the unimportant articles will fall foul of spammers, vandals and so forth - but can we expect our readers to understand that reading an article on a barely notable topic exposes them to a vastly higher risk that what they are reading is nonsense. The effect that this might have on our reputation would certainly diminish our readership - and that's a much bigger threat to the encyclopedia than a diminution of the number of editors.

So who is right? I don't know...hence I oscillate between inclusionist and deletionist ideals. Hence, I subscribe to the Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgments About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who Are in Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn't Mean They Are Deletionists.

When we had that rash of Pokemon articles, I felt that it was too much to have an article about every single Pokemon. But, they mostly turned out to be well-referenced, and a lot of them made it to Featured Article status, and a fair number of people read them too. I've even had need to read one or two of them over the years.

My thought is that the gold standard for article acceptance should be:

1. Is it referenced? Although we should give time for new editors to understand the need for references and to track them down and add them to their new articles before we leap in and delete those articles.
2. Is it actively being maintained? Maybe we should have a bot that randomly inserts "PLEASE DELETE THIS SENTENCE!" into articles at random and watches to see how long it is before the article is fixed. If the time exceeds some threshold - then the article clearly isn't being actively maintained, and we should review it for deletion.
3. Deleting articles that are unmaintained is a victimless crime because if a newbie creates an article and doesn't look in on it after several months, then if we delete it, we're not likely to deter him/her from becoming a new editor. But if he/she has been working hard on the article for days or weeks, then instead of deleting it, let's move in and help with it...even if it is kinda obscure. Then, if we have to delete the article later, we've already established a friendly working relationship with the new editor - and it's much more likely that they'll stay.
4. Is it more than just a stub? The consideration and caution displayed when deciding whether to delete an article should be in proportion to the amount of work that went into creating it.
5. Consider that (especially with first-articles-by-new-editors), it's not the article that we're deleting - it's the editor.

With those considerations in place, I don't see why we shouldn't allow much less notable subjects to be included here. Disk space is cheap - and who is really harmed if a well-maintained, nicely referenced article about some very obscure person is created here?

SteveBaker (talk) 13:25, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Interesting compromise, but while deleting unmaintained articles might not hurt the creator(s) in the sense that they'd be less likely know their work was destroyed, we'd still victimize all the present and future readers who would want to see encyclopedic coverage of the topic. Much better to only allow the destruction of hoaxes, attack pages and non notable BLPs. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:32, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm surprised that anyone, anywhere, considers Wikipedia nearly done. There are about 300 German electoral districts currently missing articles, at least 500 members of the current German parliament don't have articles. Go back to 1949 and there must be 8000-9000 members without articles. In Spain over 2,000 members of parliament elected since 1977 don't have articles here. Add the members of regional assemblies in both those countries and you easily have over 50,000 articles uncreated which have presumptive notability. That's just for two rich western democracies with a lot of people who've had the money to put themselves through decent universities with every day computer access. How many electoral districts and members of regional and national parliaments around the world are missing? I don't think it's an exaggeration to say it must be close on a million. For all that, I'm not totally convinced about the Transformers characters and so on. I believe we should be making more use of mergers and redirects so that they have some mention here until the sources exist to spin them out into their own articles. I found that in the case of the politicians. I had a look before with a thought to creating articles on members of the Valencian regional assembly, but the sources just aren't there. In such cases I think "list of X" articles are better and are much easier for editors to monitor for vandalism, POV and misinfo than 2 or 3 sentence permanent stubs. Valenciano (talk) 13:40, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

• Well, strangely enough, if we look at the two articles that Idot complains about at the start of this very odd thread'

• "King's Bounty: Warrior of North is just still redirection" - well, yes, because it's never been more than a one-line stub. And "Ironclad: Battle for Blood - no article yet" ... as far as I can see, this has never had an article. So, Idot, if you want these things to have articles, you could also try writing them instead of complaining about it. Black Kite kite (talk) 14:47, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Black Kite, you don't get the point unfortunatelly, just few years ago articles of same topic would be have been already written! just few years ago I would had 'em already as a reader (Idot (talk) 15:32, 15 June 2014 (UTC))
    • Well, that's as maybe, but how does it stand with the stuff about "deletionists" if the articles have never even existed? Articles will exist if there are people sufficiently interested to write them. I can only assume, in the case of these two games, that there - as yet - haven't been. Black Kite kite (talk) 17:46, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
      • if writers were not discouraged the artciles would be already have been written. but we have the sad situation when writers are DO discouraged, so they choose do not waste time and efforts in Wikipedia by writing articles - the choose another pleasant activity, but not discpleasant and frustating athmosphere of Wikipedia which is not as frendly as used to be few years ago. 'coz whatever you do could be easily wasted by Herostrates, so writing articles become useless waste of time and efforts (Idot (talk) 18:03, 15 June 2014 (UTC))

Very true Idot. Appalling as the direct destruction wrought by deletionists is, it's small compared to their indirect damage. Due to deletionist dominance, countless millions of articles are never written as creative editors are too discouraged to start them in the first place.

Survey after survey from the Foundation has confirmed deletionism is a leading reason for the decline in active editors. For years nothing has been done, as it's been seen as the inevitable consequence of a wikipedia's maturation, a terrible pattern that plays out across all the difference languages.

Many good outside academics have tried to analyse the reason for the fall off in active editors. Without exception they've all been seduced by the false narrative of article saturation and nonsense about low hanging fruit. It took your genius to divine the true reason: the social dynamics implicit in the DNA for a wikimedia project are too favorable to deletionists.

After inclusionist trailblazers grow a new wikipiedia to a critical mass, it becomes attractive to deletionists who derive pleasure from exerting power over article creators and their work. They turn inclusionist's great virtue - tolerance - into a weakness. Jimbo and Jimbo alone has the power to turn the tide against deletionism. I doubt it will happen, but you've certainly started your thread in the right place. Thank you so much for giving us hope! FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:52, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

During 2004/2005, it took months after the announcement of a massive, high profile film for an article to be created about it. As of right now, a video game that gets announced at E3 has an article created within ten minutes. It's the same with most films and television series bar a very tiny minority of them. Article creation may well have slowed down but I do not believe pop culture topics have anything to worry about. —Xezbeth (talk) 14:46, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I completely reject the point of deleting articles without people watching them. It is precisely the most "academic" topics the ones that will have less people watching or editing them, and the things from popular culture and/or modern times the ones with most activity. Cambalachero (talk) 17:56, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

• Is Wikipedia the site for the description of what some of the complaints? I mean, gamers and such don't go to Wikipedia to learn about video games. They go to walk-through sites, or cheat sites. Or more like Wikia. I use Wikia all the time for Walking Dead info. The TV, game and comic. I don't know if an encyclopedia is the venue here. I don't know if it isn't either. It might be a good idea to quasi-merge some of the material provided in Wikia and Wikipedia. Both are run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Dave Dial (talk) 18:33, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

• It's an issue of scope. Wikipedia is trying to be more general and as such, is more concerned about more general topics. The Wikia page has more details on about the Walking Dead game but I'm certain Wikipedia has more details about the actors, the writers, the company, etc. Rather than both get bloated and unwieldy, let each community exist on its own. Wouldn't you rather the administrators at the Wikia page be people who know more about the Walking Dead series rather than just 'regular' people who may have no interest and cause fighting because they just aren't a part of that community? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 18:40, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

It's not a WMF project. It's run by a separate company, Wikia, Inc. See here and the WP article - it's a for-profit venture, hence the ads. BethNaught (talk) 18:42, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, ok. I thought since it was founded by Jimbo and Angie that it was part of the Foundation. And yes, I would rather go to Wikia to get more in depth info on games. In fact, I do. In any case, I don't think Wikipedia is dying, just evolving. Dave Dial (talk) 18:53, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I'd like to thank Idot for starting this conversation, though I don't think video games are underrepresented relative to other items ... indeed, they seem to get front page product placements far out of proportion to their importance. And I especially thank FeydHuxtable for cogently saying things I could practically have written myself. But I should emphasize that the rules haven't changed. WP:GNG is still the "basic notability criterion" for everything, and it reads the same as ever. What has happened is that a lot of people just make a point of intentionally ignoring the guidelines we have, saying that such-and-such an article fails Notability (cartoon characters) or whatever. One things deletionists will never delete is notability guidelines, studded with some carefully lobbied-for set of things that, nominally, represent additions to the articles we can have, but which end up being voted as if they were limitations on them.

The larger problem that is a part of is that adding content is subject to all sorts of rules - "original research", NPOV, COI and so forth. But the people who come around to delete content don't follow rules. They basically say, this source doesn't match my impression of what is true, so it's out. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and extraordinary means anything I don't believe in. Or they wave a bundle of ethics at you, claiming violations of innumerable policies or just whatever they say doesn't seem right for us to cover. Even when they are not deleting to favor a POV, their notion of "balancing" an article is to chop down whichever view was best documented to match the physical length of whatever view was least worked on. There's no penalty for coming up with five different reasons, all clearly bogus from even a quick skim of the policy text, why an article has to be deleted. They perfect a make-work routine, understanding that victory involves spending a bare minimum of time to revert, a brief citation of a random policy if challenged, and a move on to the next policy when necessary. By moving quickly and spending little time, they can move in herds and achieve "consensus", at which point they can say the policy is defined by what they do.

I am not sure, but I think that Wikipedia can be saved by fusing it with one of the Internet's other forgotten pillars, Usenet. I understand, of course, that as implemented that network is vastly insufficient. However, I think we could formulate a general idea of decentralized storage, using the history old-id as the posting identifier, enabling Mediawiki markup, especially transclusion, in reading of the individual posts, and replacing the burdensome administrative and editing structure of Wikipedia and the obsolete and oversimplified newsgroup structure of Usenet with an after-the-fact choice of preferred versions by multiple independent authorities, and empowering the individual reader with the ability to archive some set of specific article versions to be served in a decentralized torrent-like network. I don't think it would be easy to design, and far harder to get people involved in, but we should think about ideas like this seriously in the expectation of the time when Wikipedia really does go under. I do not want this whole public enterprise getting taken over, censored, and all but owned by some creepy spy like company like Facebook or Quora because they're the only ones who had a dream, even though a dark one. Wnt (talk) 23:43, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Merging with USENET - the famed copyright/child-porn/spam service would be like taking a cyanide pill for Wikipedia. Not to mention the wonderful tens of thousands of lawsuits waiting to happen in such a "fusion." IMO of course. Collect (talk) 00:11, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't usually agree with Collect, but I agree that merging Wikipedia with Usenet is one of the genuinely worst ideas ever to be expressed in Wikipedia. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:50, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

People file all these sorts of edits in Wikipedia. These are the accusations made against anything that "anyone can edit". Of course, as I said, we would need better than the simple newsgroup structure; as with Wikipedia, something should point to mark a "current version". The fact that Usenet is a venerable and ongoing institution demonstrates that indeed it is legal (especially something equivalent to "wiki.rec.games.computer.pokemon"!), so instead of worrying about how to beef up censorship we can worry about how to keep powerful people with POVs from skewing the content, by giving people a choice. I do recognize that spam is a huge problem on Usenet, but if we have a dozen people choosing their own "current versions" of a given article, only those 12 have to wade through it all. The rest would just see it transcluded from an index file the others would generate and post. Of course, it's vital to have a lot of development there so that people aren't wading through all this except by setting some preferences or choosing authorities to follow while reading, but see the technical aspects handle themselves as they ought. I suppose it will take more convincing and some specifics, even some mock-ups, to make this clear. I'm still trying to think of a good way to make the distribution sites self-funding (I admit, that's a tough one, but I think there should be a way). Wnt (talk) 00:59, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I always find it interesting that while 'anyone can edit', if they add something, they are doing great work but if they remove something, it's a problem. Adding a ton of text that is in not comprehensible does not help. Editing is both. The truth is the best prose and writing is concise and that means stuff goes away (or else, you have indecipherable mess like this was). Is the real problem a lack of new people creating articles? I thought actual article creation was rarely by new users (other than those who wanted to create one article and that's it). Most new users I see start off with copyediting, correcting or revising the work of others and that's not a deletionist/inclusionist problem, that's a problem we have of creating massing walled gardens so that it's difficult to figure out what's right or what's wrong to do. I'm probably a rabid deletionist but I'm also trying to get rid of the mass of complicated templates people have created so that a user can actually see regular text when they edit a page and not get in trouble for ruining everything by forgetting a brace somewhere. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:50, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

• Deletionism puffs your heart up for a little while. It may not benefit mankind at all, but at least the deletionist gets LULZ -- even better than kicking down sand castles on the beach. That's about it. 71.246.147.13 (talk) 10:48, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Try comparing Joseph Widney with (Joseph Widney article as of 27 November 2008). Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:45, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

All I have to note, is this →.

Michelangelo took a perfectly good piece of marble and threw most of it away. More is not always better. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:58, 16 June 2014 (UTC) ::This is not art but agriculture. We don't care much about how the oranges are stacked, only that there is one when we get one. Which is good because many people can do agriculture together but who can carve a statue that way? Wnt (talk) 19:04, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Your rhetorical comparison, TenOfAllTrades, is a perfect example of what is wrong with deletionist culture.

Wikipedia is not used by readers as a whole. Readers don't print Wikipedia from the first article to the last, read it, ponder on its overall structure and decide if it was a good or bad read, if it was balanced or not. That's exactly the point. Wikipedia is not an overall finished work that has to be savoured whole. Wikipedia is a resource. It is akin to a library. When I look for a book in the library, I want to find it. A librarian that throws away otherwise useful or interesting books because they don't fit his notion of a library is not a good librarian. A library is there to service readers.

Deletionist culture sees WP as a goal per se. That makes it sterile and worthless. Readers do not care about how your great careful crafting of notability guidelines makes it rival the editorial committee of Britannica. Readers want to find information. They have been promised the sum of human knowledge, and rightly so they expect it.--cyclopia^speak! 14:30, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

That's a weak argument Cyclopia. Everyone is a deletionist, whether they admit it or not. They simply draw the line in a different place. I don't think anyone would say "Well, the sum of human knowledge includes what my neighbor had for breakfast yesterday, so let's start a List of breakfast foods consumed by Obiwan's neighbor in June 2014. The library analogy would work if we were simply importing work that was already published, which is what a library does. Thus, for wikisource, we can take any primary source, I doubt they are as picky as we are for what they accept, and commons as we know pretty much accepts any image as long as the licensing is ok. But we're not a library, we're nothing like a library, in fact we're so far from a library it's not even funny. We're not curating a collection of works that have editorial expertise and publication houses and book reviews and so on behind them. We're curing self-created content, we have a limited number of editors, and we should thus have a limited number of articles, because the fewer editors per article the more likely such articles are to be vandalized, thus resulting in crap for the reader. I'd much rather we had 1,000,000 high quality articles watched by hundreds than 4,000,000 articles of middling quality, some of which have no watchers at all. I would support any move to drastically strengthen the inclusion/notability requirements for articles, especially BLPs.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 14:39, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Great point, I don't want something like the two border-line NN video games tarnishing the good name of the encyclopedia. We're not an aggregate, we discriminate at notability for every topic. If it's notable, it's in, and if it's not, it is merged or deleted. Simple, no palaver needed. Seattle (talk) 15:02, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

The problem being, reasonable people disagree on "notable", but IMHO as it stands the overall definition of "notability" is too inclusive to be ultimately manageable by a (perhaps declining) editorial corps.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:06, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

This imaginary bogeyman of a monolithic "deletionist culture" is why I should know better than to get into these types of discussions. If people who believe we should follow WP:BLP or WP:MEDRS are "deletionists", I guess I'm a library-burning "deletionist". Heck, Cyclopia, you were involved in an edit war just ten days ago at Olbers' paradox (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), where you removed content from that article three times in rapid succession because you didn't think the sourcing was good enough. You couldn't even be bothered to go to the talk page. Guess you're a damn dirty deletionist, too.

...Or maybe – just maybe – you should consider restating your position with a little less us-versus-them and a little more nuance. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:02, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

• Obi-Wan Kenobi, your words "I'd much rather we had 1,000,000 high quality articles" sounds like "deletionsists looks for sources and improve artiles to high standards", however they DO NOT, deletions DO NOT improve quality of articles, they just delete 'em! they don't even give a chance to improve it. high quality article is not created in one day, it even not created in seven days, but deleters behave like a slave driver they tell to voluteers who write articles "create high quality article by tommorow otherwise it will be deleted!", but We ARE NOT Slaves! we are free voluteers! (Idot (talk) 15:33, 16 June 2014 (UTC))

some topics will never be worthy here. And I don't think it's the deletionists job to improve articles that are hopeless. Nothing prevents a deleted article from being recreated, and there's no rush, you can dawdle in draft space or user space for years. But if it's not ready for prime time it's not ready.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:14, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Obi-Wan Kenobi, you again thinking like a slave driver, who proud by deeds that he didn't do like he did that deeds - it's really sad :-( Idot (talk) 16:28, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Everyone is a deletionist, whether they admit it or not. They simply draw the line in a different place. - I am talking of a line that is still more or less around WP:GNG, with perhaps a few inclusive exceptions (just for the sake of example, astronomical objects).
• But we're not a library, we're nothing like a library, in fact we're so far from a library it's not even funny. - Way to miss the point of my analogy, Obiwankenobi, but I guess it is my fault. The issue is not in what WP is made of, I am aware it is not made of original books, thanks. The issue is the way it is accessed. Readers access WP more or less like students in a library, looking for a resource explaining a subject. Deletionists are those who perceive it as a book instead, something which only makes sense as a whole. Which is extremly elegant, but it is far removed from our readers' perspective.
• because the fewer editors per article the more likely such articles are to be vandalized, thus resulting in crap for the reader. - That's a good objection; that's probably the only good objection. Yes, if more articles mean a sea of vandalized articles, that is bad. But look, the more we're tightening the criteria to include articles, the more we lose editors. Correlation is not causation, sure; but in this case I see some causation. When most new articles begin to be bombed by PROD/AFD tags; when we make the article creation process more and more difficult (see the Articles for Creations monster), we make the entry into WP more and more complicated exactly for the people we should attract more than anyone else: content writers.
• This imaginary bogeyman of a monolithic "deletionist culture" is why I should know better than to get into these types of discussions. - Only if, in turn, it is accompanied by an imaginary bogeyman of a caricatural "inclusionism" that is often portrayed as "everything goes", as the silly breakfast example of Obiwankenobi above shows. Inclusionism does not mean I want an article for each grain of sand in the beach (poetic as it would be). It means that, very broadly speaking, we should have no further bias/barrier in including content than the availability of (possibly secondary) reliable sources. Yeah, I do remove stuff which is unsourced, I do remove WP:OR, I do want a lot of stuff deleted. What I do not want deleted is, in general, reliably sourced information.
• I am sorry if it looked, simplistically as an "us-vs-them". But there is a clash of cultures. While the terms "inclusionist" and "deletionist" denote each a broad spectrum of different positions, with lots of space in the middle, a bit like "left" and "right" in politics, they still have a meaning. And I think the difference is exactly in: do we see WP as a resource, where the existence of an article does not taint the existence of others; or do we see it as a monolith to consider always as a whole? Do we think of giving readers information, or of building something for the sake of us editing and having a cute Internet hobby?--cyclopia^speak! 15:34, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I am not of the camp that sees Wikipedia as a book, nor do I feel it needs to form some sort of cohesive whole. However, I am of the camp that says GNG is actually not enough, since the worlds press is full of topics which easily pass GNG but the maintenance of which is literally impossible with our current editor corps - hence policies like WP:LASTING to ensure we don't report every football game and every rain storm. Take a look at biographies - I've been involved in editing a number of biographies that flash into the public eye and attract a great deal of attention, and then like all things, burn out. Now, if this is a dead person, not much damage, as the person isn't doing more stuff - but if it's a living person over time their biography becomes ossified in a particular state that no longer represents them, or at least represents a very incomplete picture. This doesn't happen with Obama but it does happen to hundreds of thousands of other biographies which remain of poor quality. As we all know, vicious people can modify these Unwatched biographies with pseudofacts that can persist for years. The net result is that, as a person of marginal note, it's often better to not have a biography here - indeed some people are calling for people to be able to opt out of having a biography here. How good of a resource are we if we can't keep up with the articles we have, much less many more? As for editors, I think the relationship between deletion criteria and editor retention is a complex one - I also think though that if Wikipedia were of much better quality overall we'd attract a different type of editor that would perhaps be more beneficial to the project.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:14, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree that for BLPs the balance of advantages/disadvantages may be tilted, even if I feel our guidelines in that respect are more or less OK as they are (I am vehemently opposed to opt-out, but that is another matter).

As for a different type of editors, in theory what you conjecture would be awesome. In practice, with hindsight, we know that projects like Nupedia and Citizendium failed miserably. The low to no barrier to start collaboration is what made Wikipedia successful. When this barrier begun to rise, our editor numbers plummeted (while average editor quality didn't improve significantly, I suspect).--cyclopia^speak! 16:27, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

• Obi-Wan Kenobi, thanks for arising another problem! as we have less editiors and less new artilces, there are not enogh new articles to satisfy predatory berhavior of deleters since there are not enogh new articles to satisfy hunger to delete of deleters, now it's a commond to delete not only stubs, but articles that were good enogh few years ago to be not stubs are deleted too, they call it as "improving quality standards", however it is just satifiying their will to delete, not improving quality of existing articles (Idot (talk) 16:54, 16 June 2014 (UTC))

I honestly don't know if I have ever seen a thread as long and dare I say tendentious as this one about so little. The original complaint seems to be almost exclusively about how we don't have articles on video games immediately, apparently without regard to whether those games have risen to our comparatively low standards of notability or not. And in the last edit above, we now have a rather amusing unsupported allegation that "deletionists" are somehow absolutely committed to deletionist tendencies that they do nothing else, and languish without anything to do if they can't delete things.

The unfortunate fact is that, if we are, like I think we are, trying to be really encyclopedic like in the Wikipedia:Five pillars, we cannot be an indiscriminate collection of information. There is a great deal of indiscriminate information out there to be collected, unfortunately, and not all of it is suitable here. That is however not to say that some such information might not be appropriate for other WF entities. Also, if one were to want to look at Category:WikiProject lists of encyclopedic articles, which contains pages listing at least some groups of topics which have articles in other reference sources, one would see just how many redlinks and thus missing articles in other reference works we still don't have. May I suggest that perhaps one way to counter what seems to be one editor's primary complaint, that we don't have enough articles on video games, would be to collect together some lists of encyclopedic sources on video games which could be used to provide evidence of notability? I tend to think doing so would be much more productive and useful than at least some of the comments above. John Carter (talk) 17:15, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

John Carter, don't jumb the gun! if google for reviews you'll see that articles could meet or standards of noticeabilty, just writers so terrorized by deleters that were afraid of creating new articles, they just don't want to waste time and efforts by writing something for Wikipedia - the place were all their efforts could be easily wasted just for pleasure of deleters (Idot (talk) 19:53, 16 June 2014 (UTC))

Here's an idea then. How about using those articles, assuming they all meet RS standards, to develop the articles rather than wasting time here in such comments? WP:BURDEN still applies to all, of course, but if you are so overwhelming concerned with these articles, why don't you use the reliable sources available and develop the content based on them than continue to waste time here. Honestly, I have to say paranoically complaining about the great deletionist cabal is probably a worse waste of time than many other things. And, considering that at least one of the "articles" in question has never been more than a one-sentence stub, isn't jumping the gun with an assumption to assume that if the subject was clearly established in the article with reliable sources and sufficient content, possibly worse than accusing others of "jumping the gun"? John Carter (talk) 20:24, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

John Carter, whether you simply don't understand, or pretending to not understand, the discussion is not about these two articles, the discussion is about overal situation in Wikipedia, I could choose another random topics of realatively new events, and see the same picture - writers are afraid to create new articles, while few years ago they were not afraid to start new articles (Idot (talk) 20:34, 16 June 2014 (UTC))

Well, good, then; we've weeded out bad editors who would have written about non-notable and likely-to-be-deleted topics. The thing here is that too many people get caught up in writing new articles much in the same way they get caught up in how many orcs they kill in an MMORPG. The quality of articles is more important than the quantity, so new editors should be steered towards expanding existing articles, partaking in talk page discussions about content, and so on. After a bit of time and experience under the belt, they will be better informed as to what the project's standard for notability is, and will produce higher-quality articles once they actually do get around to new creation. Tarc (talk) 20:49, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

The quality of articles is more important than the quantity, - This is often repeated but it is only partially true. Is it better to have 1 FA or 10 GA? I would go with the second, absolutely. Because -again- we're not here to look at ourselves and tell each other "shit, look at how good I am at writing encyclopedias as a hobby". We're here to provide a service to readers, that is, giving them compact and structured information on topics they look about. I prefer to find not-so-polished drafts on many subjects than excellent articles on a few subjects while being completely in the dark on the others. What matters is that we have articles that are properly referenced and factual and somewhat complete. All the rest is good, but secondary.

Also, it is much easier to create a new article, for a new editor, than to start editing an already complex one. You are less likely to get into conflicts with people who feel like owning the article, you feel more gratification. It's a gentler and more satisfying introduction. --cyclopia^speak! 21:07, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Tarc, I'm repating again the topics that sampled ARE DO NOTABLE, you can easily check by google, the is that writers are disatrrackted from Wikipedia, few years ago writers created article about all new noticable topics, now they don't do it (Idot (talk) 21:09, 16 June 2014 (UTC))

(e-c) FWIW, there are a huge number of articles around here are Stub or Start class article, and it is kind of hard to imagine many people would seriously object to their development. And, for all that you say the discussion isn't about the two articles you mention, they seem to be the only ones you are really concerned with, as per the last comment above. And, honestly, in a lot of the pages I linked to above of encyclopedic articles, there are still a large number of articles covered at serious length in encyclopedic sources which don't yet exist here. Also, I guess I have to apologize for Idot for having the arrogance and effrontery of assuming the comments with which he started this thread were what he was talking about. I fervently apologize for not using my mind-reading powers to realize his initial comments, which one generally assumes are the topic of a thread, were not in fact the topic of the thread. My deepest apologies for not being able to understand that I should not have based my understanding of this thread on the comments made to start it, but rather on the broader ideas which were at no point mentioned in them. Also, FWIW, regularly screaming in all-caps as you do is something most people have learned not to do early on, and the fact that you seem to be so fond of persisting in that behavior really does not reflect well on you. John Carter (talk) 21:19, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

You keep repeating this weak and fundamentally unprovable canard about "these articles would've been created years ago", but it is a ridiculous and foolish argument. If an article doesn't exist on a topic and you feel it should exist, stop whining on Jimbo's talk page and go flippin write it already YOURSELF. You keep saying "that's not my point", well I'm sorry bro, but it IS the point. Articles are written by people who come along and see a gap; if a gap exists, then perhaps the right person simply hasn't taken notice of that gap yet. I have only created a handful of articles myself over the years, because I am usually not terribly motivated to do so. Best Friends? now exists, though, as does Mut@ge.Mix@ge and the Internet Defense League. If I didn't do them then someone else likely would have...or maybe not, we cannot really say. Having a Wikipedia article on a topic does not validate the topic's existence, nor does the absence of an article diminish the topic's importance. This is an ongoing, always-growing (though sometimes shrinking by deletion, as needed) project. If you wish to contribute to it, then complain less and be more proactive. Tarc (talk) 21:21, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Tarc, deleters are telling they do improve articles, but you don't notice that now you demonstration a typical demonstrating a typical behavior of deleter - whiping by whip like a slave driver and giving order to write something (Idot (talk) 21:29, 16 June 2014 (UTC))

Well, who else is going to write them? I certainly couldn't - I don't know anything about the subject. The ironic thing is that such articles actually wouldn't have existed years ago. There were more gaps in the encyclopedia then. These days, any half-notable video game has an article about five nano-seconds after it's announced. So let's face it, if a 2008 video games article hasn't been written by now, that suggests two things to me - (a) it's so obscure that no Wikipedia editor who is familiar with it has written one, or (b) no-one actually cares. Yet go and look at Special:Newpages - there are pages being created there every minute about the notable, non-notable, and complete nonsense, some of which is filling those gaps. So take Tarc's advice and go and write it yourself, or stop complaining about some completely nonsensical idea that mystical "deletionists" are stopping people from writing such articles. It's bollocks, and always has been. If the subject is notable, it will not be deleted. Thanks, Black Kite kite (talk) 21:32, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Black Kite, the fact is few years ago was possible to find info about any new notciable film or game, now no it is not possible. do you have any other explanation except that "Idot should write article about all new noticable films and games?", few years ago I did not such things, but I could find info (Idot (talk) 21:40, 16 June 2014 (UTC))

I'm not saying "you should write them", I'm merely pointing out that no one has written them. If the subjects are notable there's absolutely no way whatsoever you can blame that on some mythical "deleters", it simply means that no-one has done so. There's probably hundreds of thousands of equally notable articles that haven't been written as well. Where I find obvious gaps that I can write about, I create those articles. So do other people. But that doesn't mean that Wikipedia is ever going to include everything that's ever existed. Black Kite kite (talk) 21:44, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Tarc, you jumping the gun again! the question is not "why I didn't write these articles", the question is "why writers did't write these articles, while few years ago they always covered new noticable topics?" personally I visit en-Wiki as a reader not as writer, and few years ago I could easily find info about any new noticable event (Idot (talk) 21:35, 16 June 2014 (UTC))

Again with the "while few years ago they always covered new noticable topics" canard. No, the project has never had a period of time when things were "always covered". Yes there are issues with editor retention these days, but you are not making an informed or even a really coherent argument to address it. Tarc (talk) 22:51, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

• Hell, maybe for some of us, deleting things is our raison d'être. We sit in our Gargamelian lair, practicing our cackling and our nefariousness, on the look out for fresh meat to delete. The apprentices to the Deletionists' Guild hit F5 at Special:NewPages, squashing the dreams of the "me and my friends play emo/rap-core in the garage, we even have a MySpace page, here's our article!" crowd, which may be an immediate rush, but it isn't sustaining for long. The journeyman will peruse the TMZs, the Daily Mails, and the like looking for the news-of-the-moment people and things...the hiccuping girls, the helicopter cats, the fountain-walkers...see if an article has been created yet, and if so, ruthlessly lay into it with the hallowed Blade of One Soul or the mighty Cudgel of a Single Happening. But the guildmasters, lo! The crafty folk. They are weary of such simple fare, and nothing but felling of a Wiki-Redwood will slake their thirst. The felling of a high-profile smear biography or a racist meme, the true nectar of the gods. Tarc (talk) 17:11, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

• So where's the payoff for the clueless deletionists, going after Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/VR6 engine Volkswagen engines that VW have produced a million of over twenty years and can be seen on most European town corners? Or the most harmful of all, bureaucracy-obsessed deletionist admins who delight in finding a WP:FUR with a typo in it, so that they can speedy delete an obscure image Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2014_June_19#File:Fredcopeman.jpg?

Maybe you see deletionism, and your brand of deletionism, as finely honed editing of dross - but there's a whole load of negative WP:RANDY out there, and it's destroying the impetus for those who want to build something instead. Andy Dingley (talk) 01:12, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

* I think it's inappropriate to compare deletionists to slave drivers. Though I'm not sure - can you believe we don't have any article on slave driver, only a redirect to a remarkably short and incomplete article on slavery? I mean, there was a time when it was a profession, no? But I think the deletionist pictures himself as the Editor In Chief in the big fancy office at one end of the building smoking his cigar, looking out through the glass panels at a big open factory floor with a sea of schmucks all scrambling, trying to figure out what their big boss is looking for, hoping that maybe this time their copy will be up to snuff, and they can eventually use their time at this unpaid internship to get a letter of recommendation for a better unpaid internship somewhere else. After all, Wikipedia is a fancy marble statue, and you can't have more than one Sculptor deciding what a statue is going to look like. And of course, as with all the fancy editors in all the fancy offices of the world, there are always those "compromises" to be made that the poor little schmucks scurrying around in the dirt below can't understand, stories that have to be spiked to reward the advertisers or mollify the government. The whole point of being the Editor In Chief is to make money, after all. Wnt (talk) 19:15, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

• about the readers: Wikipedia is donated mainly by readers! deleters are not main donators => thefore if readers cannot find that they look for they are less likely to donate
  if Wikipedia exists for pleasure of deleters, they ought to pay for every article that they delete, only in this case their pleasure of delete become more important then satisfaction of readers (Idot (talk) 21:19, 16 June 2014 (UTC))

This conversation has become farcical. I'm moving on; and I would suggest other editors do the same. Seattle (talk) 22:26, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

• let me explain the problem which Wikipedia has step-by-step:
  both Ironclad and Ironclad: Battle for Blood are noticable - you can check it by Google
  the same is about King's Bounty: The Legend and King's Bounty: Warrior of North - you can check it too
  so no doubt about noticeability => deleters argument about noticability is WRONG!
  
  if we compare situation now and few years ago we will see that:
  few years ago: Ironclad and King's Bounty: The Legend - were created and succesfully developed, they are not stubs and quality is not bad
  but nowadays we see that both Ironclad: Battle for Blood and King's Bounty: Warrior of North(redirect) were not written!
  it shows modern tendency: writers DO NOT create new articles, of the same noticabily which few years ago was enogh to create articles, so reader cannot find information that they look for
  and deleters do not have any reasonble explanation for that (Idot (talk) 07:50, 17 June 2014 (UTC))

• It shows nothing of the sort; read up on confirmation bias at your leisure. If the project does not have an article on a B-grade movie and a 4th-rate video game, no one will lose much sleep at night. Tarc (talk) 12:16, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
  • King's Bounty-franchise IS NOT 4th-grade game, the games franchise is known as Cult video game! so few years ago Wikipedia had articles about the franchise on time, but not now. do you have a resonable explanation of it? as I see not, 'coz you don't want to confess the fact that it is a clear result of deletionists actiuty, that lead to decrease of number of editors and new articles (Idot (talk) 12:44, 17 June 2014 (UTC))

Here's my take on your examples... we do want to cover these video games... but, I don't think we need separate articles on both King's Bounty: The Legend and King's Bounty: Warrior of North ... the two games are part of a series, and so are best covered by having one single article (perhaps called: King's Bounty (video game series), or something similar). The same would be true for the Ironclad games... I would suggest one single Ironclad (video game series) article that covers all of the games in the series.

I am often frustrated by the dualistic battle between Inclusionists and Deletionists... the arguments are flawed on both sides... because both "factions" forget that there is a third option: Inclusion in a related article. I don't consider myself an Inclusionist or a Deletionist... I am a "Mergerist". Blueboar (talk) 12:37, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

I already confessed the other day that you're right, it is all a part of our master plan to destroy the Wikipedia. We're still awaiting funding for the underwater lair and for the sharks with frikkin' laser beams, though. Tarc (talk) 12:48, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top.
The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to).. If proper sources do exist for these games and movies, you could have written an article in less time than it would have taken to complain repeatedly about reverse vampires supposedly deleting large tracts of articles. Resolute 13:17, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

• the souce of the problem of overpowered deletions is: in Wikipedia have power metapedits, that means:
  while writer having 2 hours of free time spend 1.5 hour for writing articles and reading sources it means that a writer has less then a-half-an-hour a day for metapedism
  however deleter having 2 hours of free time feel enough to spend for deleting about ~40 minutes it means that a deleter has more than an hour a day for metapedism
  that mean a deleter more than twice metapedically stronger than writer - that is the ROOT of all problems in Wikipedia (Idot (talk) 13:15, 18 June 2014 (UTC))

  I suggest a steady diet of uppers for the content creators, then they can squeeze 3 hours worth of writing into that 1.5 hour time slot. Tarc (talk) 14:26, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Side-stepping the arguments above rehashing the deletionism/inclusionism & beginners/experienced arguments, I'd like to state that there are many reasons why fewer new articles are being written. One reason not discussed here is that because there are too many stubs, experienced editors are less inclined to create a new article. Unless it can be written as a Start Class article or better -- which requires more work than simply writing a paragraph on a given topic, press the "Save page" button, & expect someone will come by & improve the article. Which is happening less often, also for multiple reasons. (A very obvious one is that with roughly half of the 4.5 million articles being stubs, there are too many needing improvement to Start Class or better for the few editors currently contributing to work on.) Thus the de facto bar for creating a new article is much higher than it used to be, making it easier & more satisfying to improve existing articles than creating them. And I will say that this is a good thing: having a few million useful articles is far better for our readers than having ten million half-assed articles. -- llywrch (talk) 19:29, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

— Like user:Idot/user:cyclopia/user: FeydHuxtable/user:Wnt I am an inclusionist. Unlike other editors I do not spend much time “talking” and am humbled and encouraged to see these brilliiant writers talk about the effects deletionism has on Wikipedia.

I have been around since 2007 and I find it increasingly more difficult to contribute content here. Many of my own edits have been deleted (and I do mean deleted, not reverted). Sometimes I can find out ahead of time which edits are on the potential chopping block, but only if I am the page creator. If I added content to a page created by someone else the only deletion indication I get is the Deleted edits counter available at tools.wmflabs.org/supercount. It is very demoralizing to find out that over 2,000 of my donated edits to Wikipedia have been deleted.

I have been told that it is my own fault that pages I created are deleted, saying it is up to me to show up and defend them in deletion discussions. At the same time, I have also been criticized for “owning” behavior on article talk pages. Like everyone else here, the time I can devote to editing is limited and participating in “talk” comes at the expense of content contributions. When I contribute on talk pages I am unable to contribute content elsewhere. I believe the typical inclusionist on Wikipedia spends less time “talking” and more time building content, while the typical deletionist is the opposite. You cannot be a successful deletionist without spending time at the deletion talk pages. I agree with the sentiment expressed here that delitionists are becoming more prevalent at Wikipedia while inclusionists are leaving and that most new admins tend to be deletionist.

Some here have claimed that we have no choice but to limit the number of pages so that the ones that remain get more attention. However, in order to achieve this goal more and more energy is being diverted to an increasingly convoluted set of inclusion criteria that requires expert knowledge to navigate. this takes time and energy away from content creation and one of the unfortunate side effects of this is the growth of paid-editing on Wikipedia, another area that is sucking much time and energy of volunteers. Just my $.02 XOttawahitech (talk) 19:37, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

The link you cite with paid editing is worth considering further. There is a link between deletionism and "editorial discretion" or "editorial judgment", phrases which sound like they are a good thing but which are definitely not a good thing. Whenever people put aside a fairly clear-cut criterion like GNG and say that "well, that's only a presumption we can have an article, but we can decide every one on a case by case basis", that does not create freedom for the Wikipedia reader or the Wikipedia editor. Rather, it creates freedom for those sitting at the deletion discussions and acting, essentially, as government officials -- and freedom for government officials to decide what they please on a case by case basis is never a good thing. We know too well what happens when government officials have freedom, whether it is officials giving out liquor licenses in the U.S. or officials deciding whether a movie is legal to watch in some Third World regime. What happens is that you had better have some way to earn good will with that official, sometimes a social or in-kind connection, sometimes a brown paper bag full of cash, but there has to be some interest for him to act in your favor. The flip side of that is that he has to have a sackful of lame excuses why an application has to be denied whenever he performs his duties without gratuity. Wnt (talk) 22:25, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

A few comments. First my thanks to Wnt for making a coherent position of one case. Second my thanks to Llywrch for addressing what seems to me to be a closely related problem that so many of our articles are basically bad stubs. Blueboar probably presents what I think may be the most reasonable approach to merge bad stubs into a maybe no better longer page which at least reduces the number of crappy stubs. What I personally think from my exalted ivory tower is that what we need most is some idea what we want to have in wikipedia, and that I think the best and easiest way to get to that point is to use the databanks we have access to and the PD sources at archive.org and elsewhere to develop the pagest that can be sourced from them, and also try to get more "prospectus" pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Encyclopedic articles to make it easier for editors to know what topics we have and don't have and which are given the most weight elsewhere to help us more easily improve the content here. Sadly there doesn't seem much interest in such infrastructure editing. John Carter (talk) 23:01, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually, a perennial complaint in the United States is the application of zero-tolerance policy in schools, where a local government official claims to lack discretionary power to mitigate some manifestly stupid punishment they've just handed down. But do carry on. Choess (talk) 01:28, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

@Choess: Zero tolerance is a better policy when dealing with violations of fundamental rights than violations of law, because rights are simpler, better, and truer than positive law; when they are correctly stated, they simply can't be granted too excessively. Nonetheless, zero tolerance policies were advanced for a reason, namely that school administrators can be corrupted also and let their favorites get away with anything. Here GNG and a low threshold of notability is more akin to a right than a law, because allowing anyone to edit about anything, when it can be done verifiably, is Wikipedia's purpose. Permitting discretion is more reasonable when it allows administrators to show mercy and understanding than when it permits them to go after someone doing what he ought to be able to. Wnt (talk) 05:30, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

• please do not forget: Wikipedia become much popular that Encarta and Britannica because it was used to be possible easily to find up to date information, but now as my examples show Wikipedia is not up to date any more!
  Wikipedia is made for readers to make fun for deleters, the main donators are readers not deleters, so if readers will not find Up to Date info overall donates for Wikipedia will decrease, 'coz donates of deleters cannot compensate falling of donates of readers who cannot find up to date info, so become frustrated by Wikipedia (Idot (talk) 07:03, 20 June 2014 (UTC))

New York Law School

This conversation appears to have run its course. I am very strongly supportive of the decision taken to exclude Gregory Kohs from WikiConference USA. I know nothing about the other editors he is complaining about and I'm not likely to take any interest in it. My position on conflict of interest editing is well known and has been explained many times, so there should be nothing else for me to say about that in this context.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:10, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Jimbo, are you aware that the New York Law School provided for free much of the meeting space for three days to the WikiConference USA that was recently held in Tribeca? (This was the conference that banned one planned attendee, only 18 hours before the sessions began, despite the conference being advertised as "open" even to those who are "skeptical" of the Wikimedia movement's work.) The conference space was worth $40,000, the conference committee reports. Anyway, the head of the NYLS, Anthony Crowell is reported to have said "this conference was organized by an independent organization, independent individuals, and for an independent purpose uncoordinated with the Law School". However, the conference director was Jennifer Baek, who attended New York Law School for four years, and has been an employed Fellow of the institution for the past 11 months. The Wikipedia articles about New York Law School, Anthony Crowell, and Carole Post (Executive Vice President at New York Law School) have been heavily tended to by Wikipedia Users Ajuncos and Leonora1805. Andrea Juncos is the Communications Director of New York Law School. Still researching how Leonora may have a conflict of interest, so we'll see. Anyway, just the usual vibe here -- I am looking to politely notify you of this (as it could potentially begin to look worse for the Wikimedia movement, if it's not addressed in an open and transparent way), and to see if you have any personal comment on the situation? Note, I am not really interested in the predictable commentary from Smallbones and Coretheapple, since they are not official representatives of the Wikimedia Foundation, while you are. - 2001:558:1400:10:DC33:3186:3BC3:3AEF (talk) 17:08, 16 June 2014 (UTC) No, I have no personal comment on the situation. My views on these and related matters are well known. If you have a genuine question, please ask.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:43, 16 June 2014 (UTC) The internet community is a bit confused: you say you are a supporter of free-speech and say you're a "free-speech" activist, yet "one planned attendee" gets banned and therefore is berobbed of his free speech, "only 18 hours before the sessions began, despite the conference being advertised as "open" even to those who are "skeptical" of the Wikimedia movement's work." How does your stance on free speech match the actions taken during that conference, if I may ask?--37.230.21.79 (talk) 22:10, 16 June 2014 (UTC) I might add that noone, including you and me knows what has happened, but given the way the OP has posed his question, it doesn't seem like he's an individual that is a menace to society and needs to be freed of his freedom to speak up? Maybe you could just ask the people responsible for this decision about their reasoning and the world may be a better place (understanding you and Wikipedia?)--37.230.21.79 (talk) 22:20, 16 June 2014 (UTC) Just as a passing comment, universities often provide "in kind" sponsorship by providing unused space for conferences. The value is a bit arbitrary - the cost of hiring an equivalent space can be very high, but the cost to an institution is generally very low. Especially if they don't need to employ any additional staff or security for the event. Providing this sort of in-kind sponsorship doesn't necessarily entail any additional relationship between the institution and the content or organisation of the conference, which is normally not something for which the university is responsible, although you would expect that they would have a degree of responsibility of they were aware of issues prior to agreeing to the in kind sponsorship. - Bilby (talk) 03:37, 17 June 2014 (UTC) Even if we take discount heavily for the rather tendentious formulation of the above question, there remains a big issue here: is it okay for this Wikimedia-sanctioned event or that official Wikimedia conference to preemptively ban participation by a given individual? WMNY's 2014 Conference set a really bad precedent: not satisfied with their lengthy set of behavioral rules creepily designated the "Friendly Space Policy," they additionally refused admission to someone who planned on attending despite their catalog of proscriptions... Continuance of this ugly precedent can only lead to more ideological warfare down the road, I think... There have been a few stupid issues which have been talked to death about this conference: whether an interviewee was ambushed or misquoted by a reporter or whether he made a klutzy speaking blunder; the hubbub about catty conversations about the personal life of a WMF employee and the hurt feelings which resulted, etc. This, on the other hand, seems a really big issue — whether people banned from editing at En-WP can be made into unpersons and denied participation at WMF functions on an ad hominem basis. Carrite (talk) 03:20, 17 June 2014 (UTC) I have nothing to do with the conference, and I have no idea of the validity of the ban nor the reasoning behind it. In general, though, these friendly space policies are a very good idea. Conferences have been using them to formally handle cases of harassment, which traditionally they haven't all been handling well. It has been a step forward overall. The question as to whether those policies are always well used is a different matter, but it is good to see them in place. - Bilby (talk) 03:37, 17 June 2014 (UTC) Why is Friendly space a red-link? I'm interested in reading more about this topic. What other organizations have felt the need to implement such policies, and what are the reasons for them? Presumably event organizers have decided that federal and state laws regarding assault or harassment are insufficient, so they need to implement policies that go above and beyond those. I'd like to see stories about incidents where organizers wished that they had such a policy, but felt unempowered to do anything about a problem because they lacked the authority such a policy would have given them. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:31, 17 June 2014 (UTC) Here's the document in question, which I uploaded to Archive.org. LINK Carrite (talk) 15:49, 17 June 2014 (UTC) Right, I saw that before. I just don't understand why all of that isn't just implicitly understood. Why all public space in the USA isn't just "understood" to be that? Why it needs to be put in writing. It leads me to the conclusion that some participants at past conferences have not been "friendly", and need to be instructed to be friendly. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:22, 17 June 2014 (UTC) Yes, that is very much what happened in some (non-WP) conferences, and are often simply referred to as anti-harassment policies. The push to codify what should have been common sense has grown as a reaction to harassment at various conferences and conventions. My understanding is that the Wikimedia friendly space policy has been in place for some time: [5]. - Bilby (talk) 00:39, 18 June 2014 (UTC) Thanks for the link. Here's the permalink to the first version of the policy, which was written by Sumana Harihareswara of the WMF in January 2012. I'm curious to learn more about the "harassment at various conferences and conventions" which made this necessary, can you provide some of that backstory? Carrite (talk) 05:06, 18 June 2014 (UTC) I'm troubled by this clause, harassment includes, but shall not be limited to... which seems to give the event organizers carte blanche to define anything as harassment. So, what if, I rolled my eyes at someone's comment, and in response, the organizers publicly expelled me for harassment without giving any specific reason why, thus impugning my character because I "harassed" someone at the conference, all because I rolled my eyes. I might be afraid to attend such a conference that might put my reputation at risk just because I momentarily forgot to be polite. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:37, 17 June 2014 (UTC) Despite all evidence to the contrary, people generally expect any statement, such as you quote, to be read with some common sense. Or, if you want a more technical rule, see ejusdem generis. If we worried about things like rolling our eyes in public, we would never leave the house. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:53, 18 June 2014 (UTC) Thanks for the link to that legal term. That makes sense. No, I'm not really be afraid to leave the house or attend a non-virtual Wiki-event, though I have yet to do the latter. I think hypotheticals like this help to advance the discussion though. I think that it boils down to trust that the organizers will abide by ejusdem generis in applying anti-harassment policies, and if they don't, they will be held accountable. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:22, 18 June 2014 (UTC) This section was started by a banned editor....it should be hatted.--MONGO 20:39, 17 June 2014 (UTC) If you have evidence, SPI is thattaway... ------> Carrite (talk) 20:50, 17 June 2014 (UTC) Even if Mr. Wales thinks his "views on these and related matters are well known" (and they're not to me), I don't see why he didn't respond to the OP's genuine question with a genuine, open, and even courageously honest answer along the following lines: "Yes, there's this "Friendly Space Policy" thing ("The Conference will be a friendly, supportive and accommodating space for everyone"), along with the "open to all, even skeptics" thing, which amount to nothing more than manipulative marketing tropes unless they translate into commensurate action. And then there are the realities: the unfriendly, closed-space thing when when we don't like the cut of someone's jib, and the secret-squirrelly thing when we refuse to openly disclose what it is we don't like about it. So there's hypocrisy, and I want it gone. And then we have NYLS in bed with the WMF, with NYLS donating tens of thousands of dollars in free venue space to the WMF and having NYLS branding prominently displayed there so that NYLS can publicize its cosiness with, and support of, the WMF. And we have a conference director who is an NYLS graduate and current NYLS employee. So the thing with the head of NYLS saying the conference was organized by "independent individuals" and an "independent organization", and saying the NYLS has "no power" over the individuals concerned is also highly (and genuinely) questionable, not least in light of the conference director's NYLS employment. And so on. As someone who considers myself reasonably intelligent, I can see how this all sucks. And as an official of the WMF, I'm really pissed because the suckiness discredits the Wikimedia movement." It would have been encouraging to read an answer that conveyed genuinely open engagement with the concerns expressed. And even perhaps an intention to act. Writegeist (talk) 20:47, 18 June 2014 (UTC) I dunno...he could have responded as I did, which would have been to remove this nonsense from his page as soon as he saw it. I don't see any reason to give a banned editor and or his meatpuppets a place to post their conspiracy theories. Like I stated above...this should be hatted.--MONGO 01:43, 19 June 2014 (UTC) A banned editor, meatpuppets, a bonehead---takes all sorts, huh? Writegeist (talk) 06:00, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Putin khuilo!

Hallo Jimmy, normalerweise würde ich dich nicht belästigen, da du sicher genügend zu tun hast, aber vielleicht könntest du dir diesen Artikel einmal selber anschauen: hier wird massiv versucht Wikipedia für Agitprop zu mißbrauchen. MfG --Jack User (talk) 13:45, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Jimmy, I wouldn't normally bother you, because you sure enough to do, but maybe you could you this article look: here is a massive attempt to abuse Wikipedia for Agitprop. Sincerely --Jack User (talk) 13:45, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

This article/its deletion or lack thereof is being discussed in at least three different places (WP:ANI, WP:HD, here, etc. (brought up by different users, including OP, for different reasons)). It currently has an open AFD discussion (that was briefly overtaken by SPAs and socks looking to tilt the discussion to keep, but that's been taken care of). Maybe it would be best to let that discussion run its course, Jack User. - Purplewowies (talk) 16:57, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

@Purplewowies: Maybe, but it is such a blatant violation of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons: Pages that are unsourced and negative in tone, especially when they appear to have been created to disparage the subject, should be deleted at once if there is no policy-compliant version to revert to; see below. Non-administrators should tag them with {{db-attack}}. Creation of such pages, especially when repeated or in bad faith, is grounds for immediate blocking., that I am forced to speak about this to " a higher authority". :) Meanwhile, this malady has spread to 14 Interwikis and really really: We are not the Ministry of Truth for Ukrainian hate preachers. Btw: Putin means nothing to me. --Jack User (talk) 14:39, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

When it comes to content disputes like this, Jimmy is not a higher authority (by his own choosing). The community has ways to deal with such things, and such ways appear to be working satisfactorily as far as I can see. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:00, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

(Oh, and in what way is the article unsourced? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:06, 18 June 2014 (UTC))

Do you think a sourced hate speech is a good hate speech? Source it, and you can preach everything and Wikipedia helps to improve this crap? Only artists should be allowed to bring their shit into the Wikipedia: Artist's Shit, not nationalists for propaganda purposes. But: strange kind of thinking and really not my kind of thinking. But it seems i am right: Engwiki accepts a really low level of (p)articles, here less than zero. EOD. Have Fun @ making Engwiki a propaganda platform for nationalists. --Jack User (talk) 15:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Hate speech is typically defined as being based on a number of protected criteria such as race or nationality. True, some of the countries that enforce bans on hate speech probably would find a way to charge almost anyone they wanted with it if they really wanted to, (<--- is that hate speech?) but in common parlance, it would matter for the definition that people are singing "Putin huylo", not "Russians huylo". Even if they were speaking of all Russians (or perhaps you believe Putin is Russia), I have the deepest skepticism for the sort of ethics that would tell people they should worry about whether Ukrainians are saying epithets about the Russians while the Russians are smuggling tanks and soldiers of fortune into their country with the intent of taking half of it. Is it really a fundamental human right to be able to invade a place without complaints? Fortunately, Wikipedia can follow the American position on hate speech per the article, which dismisses prohibitions; even if it did not, some would say there is a difference between encyclopedic coverage of an idea and espousal of the idea. (That said, I imagine that if the encyclopedia were based in Germany, there would have been more pressure to cut out media and background on some aspects of the Nazi Party. Even though that would have nothing but harmful effect on efforts to prevent a resurgence) Wnt (talk) 16:37, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

@Jack User: "Do you think a sourced hate speech is a good hate speech?" - Why would you think I'd think that? Please don't accuse me of saying things I clearly have not! -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:38, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Nominated for deletion: vi:Putin khuilo!, tr:Putin huylo!, rue:Путін — хуйло, [[::ja:プーチンのペニス]], eo:Putin ĥujlo!, da:Putin huylo!, ca:Putin huylo!, be-x-old:Путін — хуйло! and be:Пуцін хуйло!, песня. More or less in lt:Putin chuilo!, fr:Poutine khouïlo ! Spainwiki says here in es:Putin huylo! Crosswiki Spam. A crusade against Putin and, btw, also the Ukrainian people: or should we think this people is as stupid as some of them? --Jack User (talk) 22:27, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

The .es version is an inferior version, very short, which the same IP address that started it then put the equivalent of a "7-day WP:PROD" on. I have no idea what contorted political plots are going on here but this is an encyclopedia, we cover (or should) whatever there are sources to tell us about. Wnt (talk) 23:58, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Deletion decisions made on other wikis are not binding here, I'm afraid. Tarc (talk) 00:21, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

I know: Engwiki must defend a low level. I'm just glad, that Germanwiki (my Homewiki) does not accept this "Eintagsfliege", english about "a seven-day wonder". We are not a newspaper for this harassment. WWJS, when he sees his discussion page? Sorry, Jimmy, it is your disc. --Jack User (talk) 01:12, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

lawsuit?

See [6]. Comments thereon are welcomed. Collect (talk) 18:02, 20 June 2014 (UTC)