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internetter 2 days ago [-]
> A Wikipedia editor can tag an article for deletion, and unless satisfactory edits are made within a certain timeframe, the page will disappear. Simeonovski didn’t do this—he referred the article for debate among his fellow editors.
Only in uncontroversial cases. In most cases, there is a debate where consensus is formed on if there is enough information about a person / topic to warrant an encyclopedia article. Wikipedia is struggling as is with the amount of content. An article cannot be written for every person under the son.
> Wikipedia pages, for better or worse, matter to people. To be included is a validation of a life.
There are billionares without wikipedia articles. There are people who have saved thousands of people from death without wikipedia articles. The only thing that matters in getting a wikipedia article is sufficient coverage by reputable 3rd party sources, such that there is enough material to write an accurate, informative, and neutral article. You should not derive your worth by this metric.
Storage is cheap and I'd rather have an article marked as poor, short, stub but with some reference than no article.
crazygringo 2 days ago [-]
But Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a reference for all knowledge.
Thus, it draws the line at things and people that are notable.
Maybe you think it shouldn't be an encyclopedia, but should be some larger project that indexes every product UPC, every person born, and every website ever registered, but that's not what it is.
And the primary obstacle here isn't storage. It's quality. You need a sufficient number of eyeballs and editors per page to ensure that the crowdsourcing is actually passing a minimal quality bar. Millions of short, low-quality articles means millions of opportunity for spam, abuse, and other problems.
TFNA 2 days ago [-]
I was active in Wikipedia from 2002, and there was a lot of idealism back then among editors that it would be a "reference for all knowledge". Those wishing for a more constrained site eventually won the day, and they had good arguments like yours. But even today, you can find certain pop-culture lore, for example, covered in insane depth on Wikipedia; not everything was sent away to Fandom wikis as Wikipedia's policies evolved. So, it doesn't surprise me that people continue to ask, like here, why WP can't be more ambitious.
vintermann 4 hours ago [-]
You touch on it, but I think the reason the deletionists won out was that Wikia was Jimmy Wales' for-profit alternative, and Jimmy Wales was the Nexus of soft power on Wikipedia.
He didn't have to tell anyone "Get as much stuff out of Wikipedia as possible so I can make money off it", that was just going to happen institutionally as a result of his clout and conflict of interest. People would obey in advance, and people without enough radar to realize they should would lose out against those who did.
californical 2 days ago [-]
> you can find certain pop-culture lore, for example, covered in insane depth on Wikipedia; not everything was sent away to Fandom wikis
But if the pop culture lore has insane depth then it’s probably valuable enough to keep, yeah? If it has a few limited snippets and very few people writing about it as sources, then it’s a lot more questionable
Xirdus 2 days ago [-]
Insanely deep lore is a dime a dozen these days. Every other fantasy book series has one. Every other video game has one. Not to mention fanfics, especially shared universe fanfics. Being deep lore should be a reason to delete, not to add a page.
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for Mr. Tik-tok from Oz to have his own Wikipedia page. He's less notable than, say, Knight Artorias, and I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue Knight Artorias deserves one.
Then again, neither does the Great Grey Wolf Sif, yet here we are.
crooked-v 17 hours ago [-]
Tik-Tok was a main character in a live-action film in the 1980s and the title character of a stage musical 1910s, along with appearing in about a bajillion sequel books and cartoon adaptations by many different people.
A minor fun fact: Playing Tik-Tok on stage was one the early roles of James C. Morton, who appeared in a truly ridiculous number of comedy films from the 20s thorugh the 40s alongside the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, and others.
cowlevel 2 days ago [-]
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NoMoreNicksLeft 2 days ago [-]
The only reason that it wasn't more ambitious back then was because they wanted to be thought of as a grown-up encyclopedia and that meant aping Britannica. Britannica's dead, no one will remember it in 50 years, but now what was a capricious strategy is unquestionable dogma.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, the only one left, and it gets to define what an encyclopedia will be to everyone from this day forward. Excuses for my it must limit itself are inane.
kazinator 16 hours ago [-]
The argument can be made, though, that information about subjects (such as people) that are not notable is just data, not "knowledge".
suddenlybananas 13 hours ago [-]
What on earth is that argument?
kazinator 10 hours ago [-]
For instance, I'm in a room that has a "popcorn" textured ceiling. Suppose I take detailed pictures of it, and start making maps, giving names to the numerous bumps. Would that really be knowledge? There is no doubt that it would be data.
suddenlybananas 1 hours ago [-]
Just because something is completely pointless and uninteresting doesn't mean it's not knowledge. It's more or less just justified true belief (with some caveats)
psychoslave 8 hours ago [-]
Of course it would be knowledge, including knowledge about how some human would process to map that kind of phenomenon, as well as his they name things. As soon as someone put some attention to some information, it becomes some kind of knowledge.
8n4vidtmkvmk 5 hours ago [-]
Useless hyper specific knowledge though. Worth preserving and sharing? Probably not.
psychoslave 3 hours ago [-]
If one consider to know in advance what will be useful or not, it's fair to categorize that as fortune telling.
Now there can be other relevant limitations, like physical constraints such as how much data storage is available, or social concerns like not divulging the physical address when some threats and hurts are very plausible consequences.
hluska 12 hours ago [-]
I’m glad you’re struggling too. I was starting to wonder if I was having a stroke.
psychoslave 8 hours ago [-]
More ambitious is not necessarily aiming at covering with less discrimination.
I would find an encyclopedia with exactly zero article about any individual biography far more ambitious than one that cover only some, provided it would explain everything in term of structuralist perspective and consider names of actual people involved as relevant as the names of cells in a macrosized living form.
Or indeed the other way around, covering every single individual with an equal level of details, should it be done with first hand done investigation.
The middle ground that let enter only articles about people whose personal information passed the selection bias of other institutions is the lowest ambition of them all.
FDEUp 9 hours ago [-]
> ...Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a reference for all knowledge.
Correct. In contrast stands the Internet Archive, whose mission has been described as "universal access to all human knowledge" [0].
When disambiguation of "John Smith" fails, Authority Control is there to help!
hluska 16 hours ago [-]
> Maybe you think it shouldn't be an encyclopedia, but should be some larger project that indexes every product UPC, every person born, and every website ever registered, but that's not what it is.
Can you point out where the parent (or anyone else on this thread) has suggested this? Or are you just using a cheap persuasion technique?
kazinator 16 hours ago [-]
Anyone who disagrees with the notability guidelines must either propose revised notability guidelines which are more inclusive, but not absolutely so, or else accept that their position of opposing notability is tantamount to arguing for the inclusion of all data about anything whatsoever.
If you don't think that information about every UPC code or person who ever existed is fair game for inclusion in the Wikipedia it means you have some notion of notability. If so you should articulate it exactly and say, "this is what notability should be".
psychoslave 8 hours ago [-]
Of course we should record it all. How we articulate them into relevant encyclopedic article or some pedagogical book or something else (Wikimedia ecosystem don't need to limit to Wikipedia) is a distinct matter. The underlying goal was indeed "imagine a world where everyone as access to the sum of all knowledge" and not something shrinked to whatever notability definition is in fashion in this or that context.
hluska 12 hours ago [-]
I’m really struggling to understand why this is relevant. I quoted a section the original commenter wrote and asked a question. I have zero involvement with Wikipedia shy a few proposed edits when I published and had sources to add. But that was nearly twenty years ago and I have less than no interest in getting involved again for reasons that are even more irrelevant than this comment.
I have no interest in notability guidelines or in getting involved and proposing anything. But I would like some actual discussion about things that people say as opposed to wild claims about how every UPC should have a Wikipedia page. That is fucking insane… but if you impose insane arguments upon those you disagree with, you’re not engaging, you’re obfuscating.
I have nothing against you whatsoever, but are you sure you hit reply to the right comment?
The reason why this very very silly article can continue to exist is that Reliable Sources have deemed this to be notable by repeatedly writing about its subject. If you want to complain about it, you should complain to them.
Wikipedia is a mirror of the world, not an authority that defines it.
SchemaLoad 2 days ago [-]
The deleted articles aren't actually removed from the storage, they just get delisted. Articles get removed because there isn't enough reputable sources to create an article.
Wikipedia would rather you create a blog post or any other method of getting information on the internet than to host unverifiable information under their trusted brand name.
qingcharles 16 hours ago [-]
This. I had one deleted because it needed more editing and I didn't get back to it in time, but you can just edit it and request it be put back, IIRC. It's like one button click.
bawolff 16 hours ago [-]
Storage is cheap, but low quality articles, especially those on obscure enough topics that they are impossible to verify, have a real reputational cost.
vintermann 4 hours ago [-]
In my opinion Wikipedia cares way, way WAY too much about prestige and its "reputation". What's the point? What are the rivals it has to rise above? Who are you trying to impress?
I do see what is in it for the leadership, though, and I don't like what I see.
internetter 2 days ago [-]
Wikipedia has other concerns, such as maintaining a neutral pov (avoiding the perception of advertising/endorsement, and likewise avoiding being a platform for libel and the lawsuits that come with that).
nullc 12 hours ago [-]
> likewise avoiding being a platform for libel and the lawsuits that come with that
I'd state that differently. The law is the limit on how bad you can act and get away with it. Wikipedia shouldn't be smearing people because it's an evil thing to do, not because its a potential tort.
This is particularly important because not libeling someone is not sufficient to prevent them from suing you anyways in any case. :) ... and focus on legal limits results in outcomes like telling people reporting serious crimes that you don't care because you're not obligated to under S230.
In any case compared to practically every other large internet site Wikipedia does a much better job behaving ethically. I've wasted weeks trying to get reddit to take down posts of hacked nudes on a subreddit specifically about posting hacked nudes and sending them to the victim's coworkers. Google does nothing about scam videos/adds reported to them, etc. With english wikipedia, you can hop into a chat channel or mailing list and reliably something which is obviously wildly inappropriate will be immediately handled. 95% of this is because whatever their flaws the site is operated by human beings that care about doing the right thing, rather than some accountability free corporate human-centipede. The remaining 5% is because Wikipedia Is An Encyclopedia, and so some of the free expression tradeoffs that might show up elsewhere just don't apply.
crote 2 days ago [-]
Wikipedia isn't a database. There shouldn't be a Wikipedia page about every single grain of sand, and neither should there be one about every single person. If you aren't notable enough to have a bunch of journalists write articles about you, then what you are doing isn't impactful enough to warrant an encyclopedia entry.
The disambiguation page of "John Smith" already contains 287 people. You're looking for the John Smith who was a US Navy sailor and received the Medal of Honor in the second half of the 19th century? There's three of them with a page already, and they have to be distinguished by year of birth. No need to make that page hundreds of thousands of non-noteworthy people long, having to be distinguished by SSN.
jmm5 8 hours ago [-]
The issue is that all of those articles have to be maintained. Every so often some insignificant professor has their article edited by a student to say that they were sanctioned by the university for sexual misconduct when they were not. That's just one example, as it's easy to meet notability guidelines as an academic. It's a problematic to have tons of biographies for living people with marginal notability. On the other hand, any random hurricane or rural highway merrits an article because these pages don't lead to the same problems.
Vaushite 2 days ago [-]
Storage isn't the expensive part of running a large store of information.
arjie 2 days ago [-]
I've agreed with occasional deletions. Without that mechanism you just get self-promotional content. That stuff still makes it, but I think it makes Wikipedia poorer to be a Forbes 500,000 Under 500,000 explicitly. It's probably worth it to run a separate deletopedia that preserves the content but I don't think Wikipedia should be exhaustive. It's pretty good at only containing sufficiently notable things. One could argue that more things should move to fandom-style wikis and I think perhaps the Pokemon are better on bulbapedia etc.
We don't have a neat interwiki search yet that makes federation work well, but in time perhaps something like that will develop.
nextaccountic 15 hours ago [-]
If there are no sources, how do you ensure the contents are factual?
alexey-salmin 2 days ago [-]
That still worsens the signal/noise ratio and that's the only thing that matters in the modern age
guelo 15 hours ago [-]
What is not cheap these days is authoritative trustable curated information.
internetter 2 days ago [-]
"“Even though dodgeball is not considered a mainstream sport, competing at the highest level in any sport is a significant accomplishment,” Burton told me. “Given the ongoing attempts to erase transgender people, along with infringements on our rights and our ability to live normal lives, this action is not surprising.”"
Do you see any attempts at erasure here? It looks to me like the process of consensus working well. Original nominator makes a well reasoned but poorly researched claim, leading to article improvement, a clear establishment that Savannah is indeed notable enough for inclusion, and the original nominator learning something new about the deletions process.
> There is, when you look for it, a careless and cocky tone that can creep into the verdicts of Wikipedia editors who have been doing the job for a long time. “This guy is a nobody. Delete him.” “I’ve got more followers on Instagram than he does.” “All we have here are stand-up comedy, opinion columns, being a guest or collaborator on some non-notable podcasts … This is more or less every twentieth person who lives in NYC.”
This tone could be improved, however looking at the surrounding context, I imagine the editors participating in these discussions are frustrated by the hundreds of articles on obviously non-notable people made by themselves or their publicist with no regard for the notability policies. I do not have access to the deleted pages as I am not an admin, however I speak from experience participating in many many AfDs and everything I've seen described in this wired article is consistent with my experience. Here are the pertinent discussions that the author fails to link, perhaps because it undermines their point:
> One month after Simeonovski nominated Dimoska’s biography for deletion, he lost. The page was kept. “Given the bludgeoning, canvassing, and sockpuppetry evident here, this is a no consensus closure without prejudice against speedy renomination,” wrote an editor in a determination. “The arguments to delete here are stronger on the merits, but sufficient reasoned opposition exists that I do not see a consensus for deletion.” Obstinacy won the day, though Dimoska’s page now carries a disclaimer that it contains “promotional content.”
Again, seems as if the process is working as intended.
thebeardisred 2 days ago [-]
Thanks for linking that essay from wikipedia. People seem to forget the burden of fame/infamy.
kazinator 16 hours ago [-]
> You should not derive your worth by this metric.
Ted Bundy and Adolf Hitler are notable for the purposes of the Wikipedia. So, yeah ...
Also, another way to be notable enough for the Wikipedia is to end up in the "Notable Winners" section of this page:
multiple ordinary blowhards have their own puff pages because they did it early enough
internetter 2 days ago [-]
you should nominate these pages for deletion when you come across them
aaron695 11 hours ago [-]
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tonymet 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
internetter 2 days ago [-]
Deletion discussions frequently span weeks and sometimes months with dozens or hundreds of people. You are also right that consensus can fail. The article fails to produce an obvious case of it failing to support their argument, nor a suggestion as to what a better process could be.
rwmj 22 hours ago [-]
"frequently span weeks" except when it doesn't. I tried adding an English article about a Chinese singer (who has her own Chinese WP page already), and it was speedy deleted seconds later.
> Every day, Wikipedia biographies of living people are flagged for deletion because the subjects are not “notable” enough. How do these poor souls take the news?
How entitled must one be to assume they are owed a page in Wikipedia?
Whoppertime 2 days ago [-]
I'm not sure it's coming from entitlement.
It's like your highschool having a wall of notable graduates, and having your likeness taken down while you are still alive. It's a negative insulting signal
caaqil 2 days ago [-]
> It's like your highschool having a wall of notable graduates, and having your likeness taken down
So, basically inconsequential stuff only the juvenile should worry about? Agreed.
vintermann 4 hours ago [-]
If caring about prestige is juvenile... Wikipedia as an institution cares ridiculously much what people think of it.
andai 14 hours ago [-]
Wait til you hear about the rest of human psychology...
lirolero 2 days ago [-]
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qingcharles 16 hours ago [-]
I know a certain Hollywood fellow who paid to get his page written, massaged and inserted when he was up-and-coming. I didn't know that was a thing, but apparently some of the more well-regarded editors on Wikipedia take paid gigs. It's right there on their profile pages. I think some even list the pages they were paid to write. They're not technically doing anything wrong, they just know how to write the article and know all the rules for getting it through the editorial process without a hitch.
Here's an example of the tag the user has on their profile page to declare which pages they have been paid to write:
There are groups that brag about controlling the narrative for their cause on Wikipedia, including for having articles removed, using techniques like "not notable enough" as a cover.
When reading Wikipedia, it's a bit inconvenient — I like my reading to be leisurely! — but I always have to remind myself, okay, who is incentivized in me receiving this particular narrative, rather than a different one?
tourmalinetaco 9 hours ago [-]
It’s especially bad when you look at the sources, and realize so many “high quality” sources have no concrete information to their claims, and there aren’t additional sources backing them because Wikipedia is not meant for “independent research”.
Wikipedia is, at best, a novelty for quick pop cult info, and as an adult I finally understand the horrors my middle school teachers warned me about.
CookieCrisp 2 days ago [-]
I don't think it has to be entitlement. It could be a sign that you were "up and coming" and now you're not. I can see how that'd still sting a bit even to have external validation of your own anxieties.
internetter 2 days ago [-]
"up and coming" does not exist. you either meet the wikipedia notability criteria or you do not.
andai 14 hours ago [-]
That's true, but also, either there are people willing to defend the article's deletion, or there are not.
john_strinlai 16 hours ago [-]
i dont have a wikipedia page, and dont feel like i should.
but, if i did, that would be kind of cool! and then if it was later voted for deletion, i'd feel some things about it. having feelings doesn't automatically make you an entitled brat.
nullc 15 hours ago [-]
having one is truly bad news for a lot of people.
For many people no one cares about the page except some rando that has some grudge against you because you dated the girl they liked 30 years ago or even no reason at all-- some internet malcontent you've never met might just randomly decide that you're whats wrong with the world.
And because you're obscure there is nothing about you online except that one article they got their buddy to run about you in some obscure publication that implies you hate pets. So inevitably that's what the article will be-- Three sentences of biographic details and four paragraphs about how you hate pets.
This is generally a bias wikpedia has: 99% of the substance of a person isn't remarkable by the standards of the tabloids wikipedia counts on as the factual basis of most of its material-- your hopes, your dreams, most of your accomplishments, that time you helped a stranger change a tire,... almost everything that makes you who you are--, so it doesn't show up in any citations and has no chance of staying in an article if someone who knows the game wants it gone. But that one time you said something dumb on the internet-- it's notable specifically because it's unusual, it's well cited so good luck keeping it out if anyone wants it in. So that's what exists and that's what the article will be about at least as soon as a single person wants that. For truly famous people there are biographies and such, and those articles at least have a chance of being well rounded. For everyone else, a WP article about them is just a coat-rack for a piece of the most unusual part of their life that some hater could dig up, or at least one of those just waiting to happen.
It's like the Bill Murray quote: "I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it.". Having a WP article often turns out to have many of the downsides of being famous, without the upsides that normally come with other processes for being famous.
andai 14 hours ago [-]
Sounds like this deserves a Law... it's much easier to be notable for doing something wrong, than for doing something right.
And of course "right" is very subjective, a function of the dominant culture, and of course Wikipedia has no bias at all in that department :) ... neither organic nor synthetic!
nullc 12 hours ago [-]
Notable means unusual/unexpected. The engineer(s) that invented the energy absorptive highway railing has probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives-- but finding their name(s) would be a serious research task, they were just doing their jobs. The man who bites a dog is an irrelevant trivia that has no consequence outside of himself and the dog's owner-- but there will be a hundred stories on it.
Fundamentally it's a flaw in Wikipedia's heavy reliance on media coverage which exhibits this bias most strongly. It's a total mismatch: the media is fixated on the unexpected and irregular, but an encyclopedia is about how things are-- not primarily about the exceptions.
Of course, Wikipedia is also perfectly happy to cite reference works ... but tabloid crap out volumes it be a huge factor and is also a lot less accessible.
I think sometimes about an alternative history where we prohibited newspapers and other current events media publications as citations for WP-- these problems would be diminished but I think the result would be a lot less good for the world.
It's okay that things are flawed... it's just important to be aware of the flaws. One of the ways Wikipedia deals with this is by having a higher bar for inclusion in pages about living people.
pvaldes 2 days ago [-]
> How entitled must one be to assume they are owed a page in Wikipedia?
FIFA Peace Prize level of entitled at least, it seems
I had experience with Wikipedia editors over a company page years ago. Back then it was much easier to get a page for pretty much any private company. At some point the rules got a lot stricter. Some of the editors were a genuine pain to deal with.
However, they’re doing useful work. Without that gatekeeping, Wikipedia would turn into a directory of self-promoted pages.
Besides that, there are dozens of other opportunities for a distinguished person to promote themselves. Not having a Wikipedia page doesn’t make anyone’s work less real. How about a simple personal site with a bio and links to your work? Does the job just fine, and you control it. 10 USD/year for a domain name and maybe even a free cloud hosting.
cmiles8 2 days ago [-]
It’s a not very well kept secret that many of these pages for less-than-notable people were created by the person themselves or their “publicist.”
beedeebeedee 2 days ago [-]
I can confirm this. I am not proud of it because, not only does it break Wikipedia policy but was unethical and done for an unethical person, but one of the first tasks I was given at my first salaried job was to make a wikipedia page for the boss (he said that his publicist told him to get one done). The safeguards at Wikipedia almost held, but he had me battle the editors for weeks until it finally got done. I left a couple months later because he kept doing (and asking me do) unethical things, and wish I had the wisdom and courage then to have said no and quit on day one.
jacobolus 2 days ago [-]
You might consider revisiting this on Wikipedia. It's probably not too late to remove the boss's promotional page.
beng-nl 17 hours ago [-]
How about, instead of removing it, this primary source piece of character witness story is added :-)
ksndoenxoen 15 hours ago [-]
Indeed, it’s always good to have unproven and unprovable anecdotes added to Wikipedia. Even better if there’s no source or names involved.
rafabulsing 16 hours ago [-]
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randycupertino 2 days ago [-]
My company has an entire PR team to get our execs in 30 under 30 and 40 under 40 as well as update their wiki pages!
qingcharles 16 hours ago [-]
I know one chap who was absolutely not notable when he paid to have his made, but I won't out him because he rode the Hollywood meat grinder all the way to the top.
My dad has the opposite problem: he wants his German Wikipedia page deleted, but he's considered too relevant.
He worked as a film director decades ago and won prestigious awards. Today he works as a janitor, living out of the public eye and largely forgotten by it.
The page is like an echo from the past and includes private information he shared in an interview years ago. Still, he's deemed too relevant for it to be deleted.
I have lots of links to people on wikipedia because I considered them most resilient against link rot, but it seems that I am mistaken in that regard. How long would it take for Patrick Steward to be removed from Wikipedia? I mean the actor who played Picard. Will that still be include in an encylopedia in the year 10,000?
itanalot 6 hours ago [-]
As a deletionist on wikipedia, i regularly !vote delete and propose/nominate articles for deletion for several reasons, chiefly among them to preserve the perception of the project. many times these "articles" are nothing more than publicistslop the subject can then show others how important they are. not to mention having an article about you is a double edged sword, if you get any bad publicity it's essentially set in stone.
throwaway81523 2 days ago [-]
I was subjected to one of those once. I nominated it for deletion myself. I'm glad it's gone.
bawolff 16 hours ago [-]
People are so entitled. Nobody deserves a wikipedia article. If you dont like it start your own website.
anonreplier 2 days ago [-]
This took me down a rabbithole of randoms who have wikipedia pages. "Spacetrail" who created Dimoska's page also created one for Rajinder Singh Tumber who seems completely unremarkable but has somehow wangled an MBE, presumably due to his ability for self-promotion.
DonHopkins 2 days ago [-]
I'd hate to be the last Guy Standing on Wikipedia.
>Beginning February 2015,[286] there was an ongoing edit war over the image caption for Guy Standing's English Wikipedia article. The debate was over if the word "sitting" should be added to the caption, since he was sitting in the photo.[287] A screenshot of the caption describing him as "Guy Standing sitting" has become a viral internet meme.[286] At one point in the edit war, the caption read "Guy Standing on a chair."[288] As of 2026, the consensus is to exclude the word "sitting".[286][287] In May 2022, Standing was invited to the American podcast Reply All to discuss the "Guy Standing sitting" joke.[286]
I am also scared to see that the list is now full of photos, only one "cetacean needed" remains.
2 days ago [-]
andai 15 hours ago [-]
I often find pages that used to be up, and were then deleted. I read them thru the web archive (so it would be nice if wikipedia would let me read it thru their own UI, instead of relying on fragile 3rd party infra), or very often, the version on French Wikipedia is still online (who apparently have less strict notability criteria!), and then I put it in Google Translate... it would be funny, if it weren't so dumb.
slopinthebag 2 days ago [-]
to desire and then mourn the loss of a personal wikipedia page constitutes a biblical amount of ego
2 days ago [-]
fancyfredbot 2 days ago [-]
Some great writing here. The irony of the guy campaigning to delete a personal page having had his own page deleted is poignant. It's hard not to read something like identification with the aggressor into this.
fortran77 11 hours ago [-]
Every year or so I check my Wikipedia bio page, which has been there for years. I guess I have enough "geek cred" to keep it going.
vik0 15 hours ago [-]
As someone else said in this discussion, there are literal billionaires and people who have saved thousands of people from death without Wikipedia articles. This person is a nobody and is very clear she or someone she paid made this article for her. I for one don't get the fascination with having your own Wikipedia article, though I understand there are many people whose only source of self-worth comes from trite things like these, this person very much included - I hope nobody ever makes an article of me
7 hours ago [-]
nullc 15 hours ago [-]
Having a wikipedia page is no kindness particularly as a relatively obscure person, unless you're some raging narcissist that values the attention over all the downsides.
Sufficiently obscure pages are dumping ground for random defamation, delusions, and pranks. The flip side is that they turn into self-promotional orgies-- and fund the operation of PR firms shitting on the project's content to support their clients. None of it is good.
MisterMunchkin 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
colechristensen 2 days ago [-]
Wikipedia is not for primary sources to write in. "I know things!" is not an acceptable source.
cowlevel 2 days ago [-]
But then what's the actual process to get a factual inaccuracy corrected?
jacobolus 2 days ago [-]
This depends somewhat on the nature of the factual inaccuracy and how easy it is to verify the truth of the matter.
If the inaccuracy is provable by evidence found in what Wikipedians consider to be reliable sources, then you can just remove or correct the claim, citing the appropriate source, and if there is a dispute it gets discussed on the talk page or, if consensus is not reached there, at some other discussion page where there are more eyeballs.
If the inaccurate version is the mainstream story as found in the bulk of recent reliable sources (like scholarly books and newspaper stories), then correcting it is harder: you need to find sources that are even better than those, e.g. by a respected historian who specializes in something topical writing a peer-reviewed journal paper. It works even better if you wait for a scholarly consensus to crystallize around the improved version of the story. In the mean time, the language of the article can usually be changed to present something neutral to readers, e.g. saying that the traditional story as presented by scholars X and Y is A, but that scholar Z disputes this and proposes B instead.
minutillo 2 days ago [-]
Publish a blog post or a tweet. Then you can cite that.
cowlevel 2 days ago [-]
Wouldn't your blog post or tweet be considered a non-notable or unreliable source?
Viliam1234 12 hours ago [-]
Contact a journalist friend and have them write a story about your blog post or tweet.
colechristensen 1 days ago [-]
Correct.
gwbas1c 15 hours ago [-]
Considering it was a school, they could probably update their webpage.
power78 17 hours ago [-]
Is that surprising? You need an actual source to refer to. You being "physically inside the school" is not a source.
bawolff 16 hours ago [-]
Wikipedia does not operate on "just trust me bro".
Only in uncontroversial cases. In most cases, there is a debate where consensus is formed on if there is enough information about a person / topic to warrant an encyclopedia article. Wikipedia is struggling as is with the amount of content. An article cannot be written for every person under the son.
> Wikipedia pages, for better or worse, matter to people. To be included is a validation of a life.
There are billionares without wikipedia articles. There are people who have saved thousands of people from death without wikipedia articles. The only thing that matters in getting a wikipedia article is sufficient coverage by reputable 3rd party sources, such that there is enough material to write an accurate, informative, and neutral article. You should not derive your worth by this metric.
Furthermore, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:An_article_about_you...
Thus, it draws the line at things and people that are notable.
Maybe you think it shouldn't be an encyclopedia, but should be some larger project that indexes every product UPC, every person born, and every website ever registered, but that's not what it is.
And the primary obstacle here isn't storage. It's quality. You need a sufficient number of eyeballs and editors per page to ensure that the crowdsourcing is actually passing a minimal quality bar. Millions of short, low-quality articles means millions of opportunity for spam, abuse, and other problems.
He didn't have to tell anyone "Get as much stuff out of Wikipedia as possible so I can make money off it", that was just going to happen institutionally as a result of his clout and conflict of interest. People would obey in advance, and people without enough radar to realize they should would lose out against those who did.
But if the pop culture lore has insane depth then it’s probably valuable enough to keep, yeah? If it has a few limited snippets and very few people writing about it as sources, then it’s a lot more questionable
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for Mr. Tik-tok from Oz to have his own Wikipedia page. He's less notable than, say, Knight Artorias, and I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue Knight Artorias deserves one.
Then again, neither does the Great Grey Wolf Sif, yet here we are.
A minor fun fact: Playing Tik-Tok on stage was one the early roles of James C. Morton, who appeared in a truly ridiculous number of comedy films from the 20s thorugh the 40s alongside the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, and others.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, the only one left, and it gets to define what an encyclopedia will be to everyone from this day forward. Excuses for my it must limit itself are inane.
Now there can be other relevant limitations, like physical constraints such as how much data storage is available, or social concerns like not divulging the physical address when some threats and hurts are very plausible consequences.
I would find an encyclopedia with exactly zero article about any individual biography far more ambitious than one that cover only some, provided it would explain everything in term of structuralist perspective and consider names of actual people involved as relevant as the names of cells in a macrosized living form.
Or indeed the other way around, covering every single individual with an equal level of details, should it be done with first hand done investigation.
The middle ground that let enter only articles about people whose personal information passed the selection bias of other institutions is the lowest ambition of them all.
Correct. In contrast stands the Internet Archive, whose mission has been described as "universal access to all human knowledge" [0].
[0] https://blog.archive.org/2016/02/24/fair-use-access-to-all-h...
Wikipedia can link to that stuff. Authority Control databases are mostly concerned with notable people and unique creative works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Authority_control
When disambiguation of "John Smith" fails, Authority Control is there to help!
Can you point out where the parent (or anyone else on this thread) has suggested this? Or are you just using a cheap persuasion technique?
If you don't think that information about every UPC code or person who ever existed is fair game for inclusion in the Wikipedia it means you have some notion of notability. If so you should articulate it exactly and say, "this is what notability should be".
I have no interest in notability guidelines or in getting involved and proposing anything. But I would like some actual discussion about things that people say as opposed to wild claims about how every UPC should have a Wikipedia page. That is fucking insane… but if you impose insane arguments upon those you disagree with, you’re not engaging, you’re obfuscating.
I have nothing against you whatsoever, but are you sure you hit reply to the right comment?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_of_Caerbannog
Wikipedia is a mirror of the world, not an authority that defines it.
Wikipedia would rather you create a blog post or any other method of getting information on the internet than to host unverifiable information under their trusted brand name.
I do see what is in it for the leadership, though, and I don't like what I see.
I'd state that differently. The law is the limit on how bad you can act and get away with it. Wikipedia shouldn't be smearing people because it's an evil thing to do, not because its a potential tort.
This is particularly important because not libeling someone is not sufficient to prevent them from suing you anyways in any case. :) ... and focus on legal limits results in outcomes like telling people reporting serious crimes that you don't care because you're not obligated to under S230.
In any case compared to practically every other large internet site Wikipedia does a much better job behaving ethically. I've wasted weeks trying to get reddit to take down posts of hacked nudes on a subreddit specifically about posting hacked nudes and sending them to the victim's coworkers. Google does nothing about scam videos/adds reported to them, etc. With english wikipedia, you can hop into a chat channel or mailing list and reliably something which is obviously wildly inappropriate will be immediately handled. 95% of this is because whatever their flaws the site is operated by human beings that care about doing the right thing, rather than some accountability free corporate human-centipede. The remaining 5% is because Wikipedia Is An Encyclopedia, and so some of the free expression tradeoffs that might show up elsewhere just don't apply.
The disambiguation page of "John Smith" already contains 287 people. You're looking for the John Smith who was a US Navy sailor and received the Medal of Honor in the second half of the 19th century? There's three of them with a page already, and they have to be distinguished by year of birth. No need to make that page hundreds of thousands of non-noteworthy people long, having to be distinguished by SSN.
We don't have a neat interwiki search yet that makes federation work well, but in time perhaps something like that will develop.
This is the discussion for the deletion of this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
Do you see any attempts at erasure here? It looks to me like the process of consensus working well. Original nominator makes a well reasoned but poorly researched claim, leading to article improvement, a clear establishment that Savannah is indeed notable enough for inclusion, and the original nominator learning something new about the deletions process.
> There is, when you look for it, a careless and cocky tone that can creep into the verdicts of Wikipedia editors who have been doing the job for a long time. “This guy is a nobody. Delete him.” “I’ve got more followers on Instagram than he does.” “All we have here are stand-up comedy, opinion columns, being a guest or collaborator on some non-notable podcasts … This is more or less every twentieth person who lives in NYC.”
This tone could be improved, however looking at the surrounding context, I imagine the editors participating in these discussions are frustrated by the hundreds of articles on obviously non-notable people made by themselves or their publicist with no regard for the notability policies. I do not have access to the deleted pages as I am not an admin, however I speak from experience participating in many many AfDs and everything I've seen described in this wired article is consistent with my experience. Here are the pertinent discussions that the author fails to link, perhaps because it undermines their point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Bio...
> One month after Simeonovski nominated Dimoska’s biography for deletion, he lost. The page was kept. “Given the bludgeoning, canvassing, and sockpuppetry evident here, this is a no consensus closure without prejudice against speedy renomination,” wrote an editor in a determination. “The arguments to delete here are stronger on the merits, but sufficient reasoned opposition exists that I do not see a consensus for deletion.” Obstinacy won the day, though Dimoska’s page now carries a disclaimer that it contains “promotional content.”
Again, seems as if the process is working as intended.
Ted Bundy and Adolf Hitler are notable for the purposes of the Wikipedia. So, yeah ...
Also, another way to be notable enough for the Wikipedia is to end up in the "Notable Winners" section of this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards
How entitled must one be to assume they are owed a page in Wikipedia?
So, basically inconsequential stuff only the juvenile should worry about? Agreed.
Here's an example of the tag the user has on their profile page to declare which pages they have been paid to write:
{{paid|employer=First Last|userbox=yes|article=[[First Last]]}}
When reading Wikipedia, it's a bit inconvenient — I like my reading to be leisurely! — but I always have to remind myself, okay, who is incentivized in me receiving this particular narrative, rather than a different one?
Wikipedia is, at best, a novelty for quick pop cult info, and as an adult I finally understand the horrors my middle school teachers warned me about.
but, if i did, that would be kind of cool! and then if it was later voted for deletion, i'd feel some things about it. having feelings doesn't automatically make you an entitled brat.
For many people no one cares about the page except some rando that has some grudge against you because you dated the girl they liked 30 years ago or even no reason at all-- some internet malcontent you've never met might just randomly decide that you're whats wrong with the world.
And because you're obscure there is nothing about you online except that one article they got their buddy to run about you in some obscure publication that implies you hate pets. So inevitably that's what the article will be-- Three sentences of biographic details and four paragraphs about how you hate pets.
This is generally a bias wikpedia has: 99% of the substance of a person isn't remarkable by the standards of the tabloids wikipedia counts on as the factual basis of most of its material-- your hopes, your dreams, most of your accomplishments, that time you helped a stranger change a tire,... almost everything that makes you who you are--, so it doesn't show up in any citations and has no chance of staying in an article if someone who knows the game wants it gone. But that one time you said something dumb on the internet-- it's notable specifically because it's unusual, it's well cited so good luck keeping it out if anyone wants it in. So that's what exists and that's what the article will be about at least as soon as a single person wants that. For truly famous people there are biographies and such, and those articles at least have a chance of being well rounded. For everyone else, a WP article about them is just a coat-rack for a piece of the most unusual part of their life that some hater could dig up, or at least one of those just waiting to happen.
It's like the Bill Murray quote: "I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it.". Having a WP article often turns out to have many of the downsides of being famous, without the upsides that normally come with other processes for being famous.
And of course "right" is very subjective, a function of the dominant culture, and of course Wikipedia has no bias at all in that department :) ... neither organic nor synthetic!
Fundamentally it's a flaw in Wikipedia's heavy reliance on media coverage which exhibits this bias most strongly. It's a total mismatch: the media is fixated on the unexpected and irregular, but an encyclopedia is about how things are-- not primarily about the exceptions.
Of course, Wikipedia is also perfectly happy to cite reference works ... but tabloid crap out volumes it be a huge factor and is also a lot less accessible.
I think sometimes about an alternative history where we prohibited newspapers and other current events media publications as citations for WP-- these problems would be diminished but I think the result would be a lot less good for the world.
It's okay that things are flawed... it's just important to be aware of the flaws. One of the ways Wikipedia deals with this is by having a higher bar for inclusion in pages about living people.
FIFA Peace Prize level of entitled at least, it seems
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premio_de_la_Paz_de_la_FIFA
However, they’re doing useful work. Without that gatekeeping, Wikipedia would turn into a directory of self-promoted pages.
Besides that, there are dozens of other opportunities for a distinguished person to promote themselves. Not having a Wikipedia page doesn’t make anyone’s work less real. How about a simple personal site with a bio and links to your work? Does the job just fine, and you control it. 10 USD/year for a domain name and maybe even a free cloud hosting.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50295556
He worked as a film director decades ago and won prestigious awards. Today he works as a janitor, living out of the public eye and largely forgotten by it.
The page is like an echo from the past and includes private information he shared in an interview years ago. Still, he's deemed too relevant for it to be deleted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie...
>Beginning February 2015,[286] there was an ongoing edit war over the image caption for Guy Standing's English Wikipedia article. The debate was over if the word "sitting" should be added to the caption, since he was sitting in the photo.[287] A screenshot of the caption describing him as "Guy Standing sitting" has become a viral internet meme.[286] At one point in the edit war, the caption read "Guy Standing on a chair."[288] As of 2026, the consensus is to exclude the word "sitting".[286][287] In May 2022, Standing was invited to the American podcast Reply All to discuss the "Guy Standing sitting" joke.[286]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie...
I am also scared to see that the list is now full of photos, only one "cetacean needed" remains.
Sufficiently obscure pages are dumping ground for random defamation, delusions, and pranks. The flip side is that they turn into self-promotional orgies-- and fund the operation of PR firms shitting on the project's content to support their clients. None of it is good.
If the inaccuracy is provable by evidence found in what Wikipedians consider to be reliable sources, then you can just remove or correct the claim, citing the appropriate source, and if there is a dispute it gets discussed on the talk page or, if consensus is not reached there, at some other discussion page where there are more eyeballs.
If the inaccurate version is the mainstream story as found in the bulk of recent reliable sources (like scholarly books and newspaper stories), then correcting it is harder: you need to find sources that are even better than those, e.g. by a respected historian who specializes in something topical writing a peer-reviewed journal paper. It works even better if you wait for a scholarly consensus to crystallize around the improved version of the story. In the mean time, the language of the article can usually be changed to present something neutral to readers, e.g. saying that the traditional story as presented by scholars X and Y is A, but that scholar Z disputes this and proposes B instead.
On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.