Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias aren’t primary sources. Having primary-source information in it, even if it’s true and relevant, goes against the purpose of the site. It would be useful for all gas stations to sell groceries, but that’s not the purpose of a gas station.
Wikipedia has a very basic set of rules which they repeat over and over again on almost every “help” page. If you think the rules should be changed, lobby to have the rules changed, but until then, you’re breaking them. You’re free to start your own site where people publish their own research.
Your post was about the dumb policy, his was explaining the “dumb policy”. How was that ignoring your post? Because he disagreed with your conclusion?
You did the research and you know you’re reliable, but I don’t. I’d rather read that “Scientific American” did a study of octave ranges of popular singers or something than “Yeah so I analyzed it with my computer and they’re wrong”.
I find the “notability” requirements to be capricious and subjective. Some articles are deleted solely on the basis of the personal whims of deletion goons who hang out at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and review every nominated article for “notability” based solely on the argument, “I never heard of that before”.
What is the point of deleting non-notable articles, anyway? It is a virtual encyclopedia; it cannot become cluttered, because no one sees articles they aren’t searching for. What I find notable and interesting may not fit your standard; should it be deleted for that reason alone?
I think the deletion policy is exercised needlessly and far too often.
What is the limit of cites out of wonder? Is it anything that looks reasonable? I.E. said I did some hard-hitting original research, could I, say, create a geocities page with all this stuff dumped there and then cite my own page to get around the rule? Or would that citation be considered non-reputable and deleted?
Then they’re breaking the rules. Wikipedia has exactly one rule defining notability: “If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be notable” -Wikipedia:Notability. If an admin deletes an article that meets this standard, it should be contested. It’s a wiki; if people are breaking the rules, do something about it.
“Interesting” has nothing to do with it. The rule above is fairly objective. If there are multiple reliable sources with information on the subject, it is considered notable and will not be deleted. If there aren’t any, then it doesn’t belong on the site.
This is really just an extension of the “verifiability” requirement. If a fact does not have a source, it will be removed.* It follows, naturally, that an article consisting entirely of unsourced facts will be removed, since there’s nothing left.
“Cluttering” isn’t the issue. It’s not about quality, it’s about quantity. Infinitely many articles are allowed, but they need to be good articles. Wikipedia has defined five criteria that the site revolves around: “Wikipedia content is intended to be factual, notable, verifiable with external sources, and neutrally presented, with external sources cited.” The site has been founded on those five points since day one.
Wikipedia detractors should know that there are many similar sites with their own goals; you can go to one of those. For example, one group didn’t like the neutrality requirement, so they did away with that and started Conservapedia. If you and SisterCoyote don’t like the “external sources” requirement, start your own site. But don’t act like Wikipedia editors are being unfair or irrational; the purpose of Wikipedia is spelled out simply and clearly.
It’s an uphill battle to enforce this, of course, and the majority of articles have at least some unsourced statements “pending” a citation. But in theory all unsourced statements will be removed in the long run.
Wow. That’s some sad reading. They really did go for the “it’s incomplete” reason.* I wonder how long it will be until somebody nominates the entire Wikipedia for deletion. I fear the termites will win in the end.
*Actually, as with most calls for deletion, the majority of delete votes said they agreed with deletion for whatever the reasons were. I’m sure if I proposed deleting an article because it contained vowels, I’d get a bunch of people to back me on it. If you go to the deletion pages, you’ll see people who vote yes to every single deletion proposal.
There was one interesting vote however. One guy said the index should be deleted because it was original research. I’ll admit nobody was able to provide an offsite cite to prove him wrong.
Is anyone else at all bothered by the removals of Trivia sections? I used to love reading the Trivia sections; I thought it was one of the neatest parts of Wikipedia. Now they’re either being deleted or they have the “scare message” that the trivia should be incorporated into the article. So then when you do that, someone trims it out because the article is “too long” or something. Oh well…
Well, there’s two halves to the requirement. The objective half is that an external citation is required (gaffa broke this rule, hence the immediate, uncontestable removal).
The subjective half is that it must be reliable. This, like all subjective debates on Wikipedia, comes down simply to majority consensus. For example, if gaffa published the research on the singer on a geocities page, it would almost certainly be allowed as a reference and added to the article since there’s nothing outrageous about it (and sounded well thought-out the way gaffa described it). But it would depend on the other editors’ agreement. If someone thought gaffa was full of crap, they’d start a debate on the article’s “talk” page and take a straw poll to see whether it was an acceptable conclusion.
If you started a competing geocities page with nothing more than “OPRAH WINFREY IS A TRANSEXUAL” in bold letters, editors would probably not accept it as a reference.
I agree, I also dislike how “references in popular culture” are considered trivia sections, they have their own flavour that really polish the article and add to it in a way that can’t be accomplished by integrating it into the body oftentimes.
I’ve been involved in some pretty heated discussions about whether or not firearm appearances in movies should be noted in a WP article. I say they should be- within reason (for example, a WWII film is obviously going to have people with Lee-Enfields, M1 Garands, and K98 Mausers, so there’s no need to mention them in the relevant rifle’s article).
Trivia is very interesting, and one of the things I used to love finding in Wikipedia. The current crusade to rid articles of them is regrettable, IMHO, and I hope they reverse the policy eventually.
Exactly. The termites just want to delete things - reasons are not important. A few years back, the termites went into a tizzy about list pages. They decided that list pages were somehow wrong. They didn’t actually violate any established rules, but they offended the termites just by existing. So the termites invented a new rule that list pages weren’t allowed and started a crusade to delete them. The admins caved in and created the category system as an alternative.
To nobody’s surprise, within six months the termites were complaining about the categories and claiming they should be deleted.
This discussion has been had here a few times previously. The problem with “trivia” and “in popular culture” sections and articles is that they routinely grow out of control from editors adding every time a thing is seen or mentioned in a movie or TV show. It doesn’t add anything encyclopedic to put that Chandler said “doorknob” on Friends or whatever.
There are 446,819 list articles on Wikipedia at the moment. There is no rule against list articles.
Can you possibly link to the discussion in which it was advocated that all categories be deleted?
And that gets out of hand, I agree. But wouldn’t a better solution be to have editors use discretion when putting up and equal discretion when taking out points (“this is a little too unimpressive, sorry”) rather than doing away with the sections altogether? When you have an encyclopedia with the potential number of editors equal to the number of people that have access to the internet it’s not really nescessary to cut corners to avoid complications like unimpressive bullet points when the editors can duke it out.
