The Incoherence of the Incoherence: now further discussed here by the incoherent. Options

[-DS-]

Ever needed to find out the exact names of every shopping mall in Country X?!

Just go to Wikipedia.

[CharlotteWebb]

Ever needed to find out the exact names of every shopping mall in Country X?!

Just go to Wikipedia.

Not yet, but I'll bookmark it.

Actually I should save a copy as it might be deleted by the time I do need it.

[Doc glasgow]

Ever needed to find out the exact names of every shopping mall in Country X?!

Just go to Wikipedia.

Not yet, but I'll bookmark it.

Actually I should save a copy as it might be deleted by the time I do need it.

Actually, this is one of the most harmless articles Wikipedia has. Is it useful? I suspect more than the average pokemon stub, yes.

[-DS-]

Ever needed to find out the exact names of every shopping mall in Country X?!

Just go to Wikipedia.

Not yet, but I'll bookmark it.

Actually I should save a copy as it might be deleted by the time I do need it.

Actually, this is one of the most harmless articles Wikipedia has. Is it useful? I suspect more than the average pokemon stub, yes.

I have no doubt that it is harmless.

It is also worthless to an encyclopedia.

Then again Wikipedia cannot be called an encyclopedia.

[thekohser]

Bah, that's nothing. What about List of out-of-town shopping centres in the United Kingdom?

[-DS-]

Bah, that's nothing. What about List of out-of-town shopping centres in the United Kingdom?

One of my socks nominated that for deletion, but failed.

[Kelly Martin]

I have no doubt that it is harmless.

It is also worthless to an encyclopedia.

Then again Wikipedia cannot be called an encyclopedia.

How is that "unencyclopedic"? An encyclopedia is an organized collection of information; seems to me that it fits that description.

Why don't you go deal with one of Wikipedia's real problems and stop trying to enforce your addled notions of what constitutes "encyclopedic content"?

[Peter Damian]

An encyclopedia is an organized collection of information

A phone book is an organized collection of information.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Sun 30th January 2011, 3:52pm

[thekohser]

An encyclopedia is an organized collection of information

A phone book is an organized collection of information.

The pile of receipts in my wallet is an organized collection of information.

[Doc glasgow]

An encyclopedia is an organized collection of information

A phone book is an organized collection of information.

The pile of receipts in my wallet is an organized collection of information.

Actually, arguing about what is "encyclopedic" or not is pointless.

The argument only works by saying "this isn't the type of thing that appears in other encyclopedias". But Wikipedia is actually sui generis . All other encyclopedias have space limitations of some nature, and therefore require to make decisions over importance and reject some material as too trivial. Wikipedia does not have to make that choice.

In theory all material that's verifiable and neutral could be included. In practice the only limitation there ought to be (although most Wikipedians deny it) is what the community and its processes have a hope of maintaining. However, given damage done by a list like this if badly maintained is negligible (unlike a BLP) there's no particular reason to exclude it.

The receipts in your pocket fall foul of verifiability, and the telephone directory falls foul of maintainability - encyclopedic doesn't come into it.

We'd be better using the term "Wikipedic" rather than "encyclopaedic". While Wikipedia shares an encyclopedia's goal of neutral description of organised verifiable facts, beyond that, any comparison is worthless.

[Somey]

We'd be better using the term "Wikipedic" rather than "encyclopaedic". While Wikipedia shares an encyclopedia's goal of neutral description of organised verifiable facts, beyond that, any comparison is worthless.

Is good point.

Does anybody remember The Book of Lists (T-H-L-K-D), a series of three reference works assembled by David Wallechinsky and his dad, Irving Wallace, and his sister, Amy Wallace? I bought all three, and actually read them, cover to cover - I actually thought they were fascinating, and they probably were more responsible for my later interest in reference-publication development than anything else. Wallechinsky had a real talent for list-making, for choosing what sort of lists might be deemed interesting to the general public, and for making reference materials both useful and entertaining. Wikipedia has few, if any, people with even close to that level of editorial talent, and what few they do have are hardly going to spend much time on lists - which are generally considered a kind of "content ghetto" by most established Wikipedia folks.

Wikipedia would be taken more seriously as an encyclopedia if it actually "forked" the lists off into a separate "WikiLists.org" domain, but they would never do that - lists are easy to edit and low-value in terms of POV ownership, so they're too useful to them as convenient battlegrounds where they can attract, identify, and eventually try to eliminate opposing POVs.

[Milton Roe]

Actually, arguing about what is "encyclopedic" or not is pointless.

The argument only works by saying "this isn't the type of thing that appears in other encyclopedias". But Wikipedia is actually sui generis . All other encyclopedias have space limitations of some nature, and therefore require to make decisions over importance and reject some material as too trivial. Wikipedia does not have to make that choice.

In theory all material that's verifiable and neutral could be included. In practice the only limitation there ought to be (although most Wikipedians deny it) is what the community and its processes have a hope of maintaining. However, given damage done by a list like this if badly maintained is negligible (unlike a BLP) there's no particular reason to exclude it.

The receipts in your pocket fall foul of verifiability, and the telephone directory falls foul of maintainability - encyclopedic doesn't come into it.

We'd be better using the term "Wikipedic" rather than "encyclopaedic". While Wikipedia shares an encyclopedia's goal of neutral description of organised verifiable facts, beyond that, any comparison is worthless.

Absolutely. Being a completely new kind of thing, an encyclopedia without space limitations, makes Wikipedia a new thing that has no perfect comparisons in the real world. "Quantity has a quality all its own" as Napoleon notes. A collection of encyclopedias without bound can look like all the encyclopedias in your paper library, including Encyclopedia of Woodworking, and The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. (Do a Google search on "Encyclopedia", and you'll find more than one subject that has been fought over by inclusionists and deletionists in WP, and yet it's already out there in paper. Consider: New Encyclopedia of Paper Folding Designs. We had problems with toilet paper role end folding and this is something seen in every hotel in the world. What about an encyclopedia of artistic origami designs which are far less notable. And yet, here is it is in print, from Amazon, as a coffee table book.

And if you go to "online," you get the damndest things--- like The On-line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. which is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of sequences of integers generated by various mathematical algorithms, like the number of trees with n unlabled nodes (1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 11, 23, 47, 106, 235, 551, 1301...). That sequences has its own page, as you see by hitting "search" on the main page, as an example. An it's heavily cited in journals of combinatorics. As are thousands of others.

How The Encyclopedia of Associations , a comprehensive source of detailed information on over 162,000 nonprofit membership organizations worldwide.

In spite of WP:NOTALMANAC it is clear that WP is already a fine almanac and much more, and there's nothing in the world standing in the way of WP:going all the way and including every single type of information you find in an almanac. That includes tide table and ephemera.

Which brings us to the idea of "maintenence." Sorry, Doc, but I have to disagree with you, there. The worst maintainability problen on WP has to do with vandalism, and so long as the site refuses to do anything about THAT, it's pointless to complain about inability to keep up with changes in valid information that need to be made as a result of natural changes in truth over time, like the state of the snowfall in New York City, but also the current weather in Weedpatch, California. The badness of WP giving access to a Bronx Telephone Directory of 2011 is not the fact that many numbers will have changed by 2012: that goes without saying. The badness is in allowing WP to become an indistriminate big brother that helps the web keep track of individuals over time. We probably can't stop that, but there's no point in encouraging sites that help it, either, and we all know that telephone numbers get published by phone companies to get ad revenue, and that you need to pay to be UNLISTED. Of all the outrages that are Wikipedia, they all have their genesis in people not being able to request ommission from phone-books and databases for free, simply because databases (unlike WP) make ad money on how many entries the have.

Any bit of data is a bit of history as soon as you commit it to media. The census of 1880 is not worth erasing simply because none of it is true NOW. Nor the Bronx telephone directory of 1920, which has its own interests and charms. Wikipedia simply needs somewhat better mechanisms to keep track of the last time a bit of information was "updated," is all. So long as the telephone directory of 2000 doesn't CLAIM to be the telephone directory of 2011, what's the problem? WP long ago passed the point of not bothering with information that is changable at any moment (WP:NOTNEWS is another total joke), so that horse is LOOOOONG out of the barn. Arguing about it now is silly. We need to get back on track with the badness of invasion of personal privacy, and let the rest of the stuff go back to its position of being an issue of updating "news." And that's not just some celebrity's new "romance" but also new CODATA values for the "constants" of nature. One type of info changes more slowly than the other, but there's really no bright line.

The bright line, if there is one, is in the badness of "maintennence" of personal info, in BLP. If we can't maintain information about weather in Weedpatch, no damage is done.

[lilburne]

We'd be better using the term "Wikipedic" rather than "encyclopaedic". While Wikipedia shares an encyclopedia's goal of neutral description of organised verifiable facts, beyond that, any comparison is worthless.

Is good point.

Does anybody remember The Book of Lists (T-H-L-K-D), a series of three reference works assembled by David Wallechinsky and his dad, Irving Wallace, and his sister, Amy Wallace? I bought all three, and actually read them, cover to cover - I actually thought they were fascinating, and they probably were more responsible for my later interest in reference-publication development than anything else. Wallechinsky had a real talent for list-making, for choosing what sort of lists might be deemed interesting to the general public, and for making reference materials both useful and entertaining. Wikipedia has few, if any, people with even close to that level of editorial talent, and what few they do have are hardly going to spend much time on lists - which are generally considered a kind of "content ghetto" by most established Wikipedia folks.

Wikipedia would be taken more seriously as an encyclopedia if it actually "forked" the lists off into a separate "WikiLists.org" domain, but they would never do that - lists are easy to edit and low-value in terms of POV ownership, so they're too useful to them as convenient battlegrounds where they can attract, identify, and eventually try to eliminate opposing POVs.

Yep I mentioned those a couple of weeks ago in a deletion discussion. The popint being that those lists were informative and entertaining and those listed were notable for the thing listed, not simply because they were or had done the thing listed. IOW you had Billy Holiday listed under people that had injected heroine because her addiction was an import part of her life, one didn't simply list every addict.

[Kelly Martin]

Any bit of data is a bit of history as soon as you commit it to media. The census of 1880 is not worth erasing simply because none of it is true NOW. Nor the Bronx telephone directory of 1920, which has its own interests and charms. Wikipedia simply needs somewhat better mechanisms to keep track of the last time a bit of information was "updated," is all. So long as the telephone directory of 2000 doesn't CLAIM to be the telephone directory of 2011, what's the problem? WP long ago passed the point of not bothering with information that is changable at any moment (WP:NOTNEWS is another total joke), so that horse is LOOOOONG out of the barn.

Indeed. I see one of Wikipedia's potential strong points as being a place to store, organize, and index large bits of what may appear to be trivia, because at some future point such trivia can be incredibly useful to someone researching stuff we can't even think of right now. Old mail order catalogues can be of great use for establishing historical price points for common commodities. Telephone books can be used to estimate the number of businesses in a given area at a given time. There's incredible amounts of data floating about out there, being destroyed through lassitude, and Wikipedia could be a force against that erosion if it so chose.

But it doesn't, because that's "unencyclopedic". Whatever the fuck that means.

[Silver seren]

I still feel that the best way to lessen vandalism is to require an account to edit. True, it wouldn't get rid of all of it, but it would probably deter a good chunk.

[Alison]

I still feel that the best way to lessen vandalism is to require an account to edit. True, it wouldn't get rid of all of it, but it would probably deter a good chunk.

More specifically, to require an account that was connected to your validated RL identity. That'll put a stop to the Mantanmorelands of the world and would also serve to curb rabid inclusionists (such as yourself) from adding all sorts of garbage to BLPs.

[Doc glasgow]

The maintainability problem hasn't much to do with vandalism. Vandalism, even if not spotted at the time, is usually easy to spot on review, and the pre-vandalised material is still always available in the history.

The problem is rather a different metric of quality control. It is simply this - a certain amount of material uploaded onto an open project will be credible but false. That is it is mistaken, invented, disingenuous, or heavily (and not obviously) biased. Such material does not inform the reader - it misinforms the reader. Simple vandalism doesn't count here, since "George Bush is a cocksucker" was never likely to mislead anyone. Material which is obviously out of date doesn't count either, since it tells people what was factual at some point in the past.

"Maintenance", is the likelihood of any misleading material being identified and removed. Overtime it is a question of what proportion of the database is misleading, and thus to what degree a reader ought to trust any information.

On the whole, the chance of an article being misleading will vary according to how much it is reviewed by people who are either a) informed on the subject b) cautious enough to fact-check. More heavy traffic articles will may be a mess, but have less chance of being misleading. Lower-interest articles have little quality control, and you are at the mercy and chance of the author's accuracy.

[Theanima]

I think that there are far worse articles on WP that mindless inclusionists would bend over backwards to keep. Inclusionism is a huge problem on Wikipedia. Deletion never actually removes the article, only hides it from public view. If a mistake is made, it can easily be brought back and no harm is done (other than it being missing, along with the other infinite amount of article that are). When an article is mistakenly kept, it is there for all to see and the number of shoddy, poorly written articles is great and gives WP a bad reputation.

In short, mistakenly kept articles are far worse than mistakenly deleted ones.

[CharlotteWebb]

Deletion never actually removes the article, only hides it from public view. If a mistake is made, it can easily be brought back and no harm is done (other than it being missing, along with the other infinite amount of article that are).

Should we conclude you are in fact an admin (or have one or more in your back pocket)?

Anyone else must take a cold potato and wait.

[Milton Roe]

I think that there are far worse articles on WP that mindless inclusionists would bend over backwards to keep. Inclusionism is a huge problem on Wikipedia. Deletion never actually removes the article, only hides it from public view. If a mistake is made, it can easily be brought back and no harm is done (other than it being missing, along with the other infinite amount of article that are). When an article is mistakenly kept, it is there for all to see and the number of shoddy, poorly written articles is great and gives WP a bad reputation.

Riiiight! The defamation of biographical subjects, school kid vandalism, gratuitous vulgarity, porn, sexual perversion, and just plain nastiness that run as currents through WP's articles and their editing processes and records of them, aren't going to harm its reputation. No. Instead, it's the great numbers of shoddy, poorly written articles that threaten to give WP a bad reputation! Whoever suffers one of them to remain without deletion-- how can they sleep at night?

In short, mistakenly kept articles are far worse than mistakenly deleted ones.

I'm going to start calling you TheTrollima. It should really be a Jungian term for a basic part of the psyche that derives from the psychological drive that prompts children to bug adults enough so that will have their basic emotional and interactive social needs are met. Trolling as emotional squeeky-wheel-ism.

Tell you what, TheTrollima. How about you pay attention to the libel and perversion and porn and skullduggery on WP, and let the poorly-written articles (so long as they aren't nasty or evil articles) take care of themselves? Hey, we could crowdsource that, don't you think? So long as the "crowd" has something to work on. As it is, we see articles created over and over and over again, and deleted by administrators who say (with straight faces) "No, no, no, there's no interest in that non-notable subject, so for the tenth time would you all just STOP trying to create an article about it?"

Deleting non-nasty articles, and sometimes even salting them, is rather like the company that has a sheaf of form letters that tells every person who complains about a product. that they are the first and only one ever to do so. A wikified database keeps that process honest. But ONLY if you leave it public, and don't hide it in your corporate files.