Importance of Historical Figures

[thekohser]

You clearly want a closed shop populated by subject matter experts with full editorial control.

When will you re-open the Wikipedia article about Carolyn Doran, since information clearly wants to be free?

[Vocal]

You clearly want a closed shop populated by subject matter experts with full editorial control.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

[Anroth]

You clearly want a closed shop populated by subject matter experts with full editorial control.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

No I am saying it already exists and that complaining that Wikipedia isnt it is a waste of time.

[Vocal]

You clearly want a closed shop populated by subject matter experts with full editorial control.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

No I am saying it already exists and that complaining that Wikipedia isnt it is a waste of time.

It calls itself an 'encyclopedia'. That implies a 'closed shop populated by subject matter experts'. Instead it's a half-closed shop mostly populated by children and man-children.

Either act like an encyclopedia, or stop calling yourself one. It's as simple as that.

[thekohser]

I notice Anroth dodged my question. Let's put it another way -- Anroth, how does Wikipedia having a suitably-documented biography about Carolyn Doran harm the articles about either Optimus Prime or George Washington?

Extra for Wiki-experts: Why have Wikipedia's overlords determined that the world is not permitted to create or read a Wikipedia biography about Carolyn Doran?

[EricBarbour]

I notice Anroth dodged my question. Let's put it another way -- Anroth, how does Wikipedia having a suitably-documented biography about Carolyn Doran harm the articles about either Optimus Prime or George Washington?

Extra for Wiki-experts: Why have Wikipedia's overlords determined that the world is not permitted to create or read a Wikipedia biography about Carolyn Doran?

This helps to highlight a major Wiki-problem: the thing attracts crazy people. Said crazy people only want to talk about whatever trivia they
want to talk about, and have no regard for other content or other authors of content not in their little crazy-area. Even the cover-up of the
Carolyn Doran story is facilitated by the presence of random crazies, obsessing over cartoon robots (or George Washington, whatever).

These people are transparently not there to "write an encyclopedia", they are drug addicts. Wikipedia is a giant lake of scag, and no one must
ever drag them away from the lake of scag. All that talk about an "encyclopedia" is a lie, Wikipedia is as addicted to its addicts as its addicts are
to Wikipedia. Calling it an "educational resource" is comical.

[culeaker]

It's very simple. Wikipedia is not paper. It has no real size limitations; having any number of other articles of any size makes no difference to the size of the George Washington articles. You can argue whether these articles are good enough or long enough, but the existence and length of the Optimus Prime article has no effect at all on these articles.

Nor are the articles in any order, as they are in a paper encyclopedia. It is not as if people interested in George Washington, George Gershwin or Boy George have to wade through a thousand pages that do not interest them before reaching their article.

It is the function of Wikipedia to record information on any sufficiently notable topic. Surely that is a reasonable objective in principle, although of course the notability criteria may be imperfect or even contradictory. How would people here circumscribe the scope of Wikipedia more tightly than the existing rules? Could people even produce a consensus? If this means many topics that have no counterpart in Britannica, so what? It would be absurd to restrict Wikipedia to what is in any one other reference work. Many reputable reference works, such as the Catholic Encyclopedia or Grove's Dictionary, have many articles on subjects not in Britannica.

And of course restricting Wikipedia's coverage would probably not improve the remaining articles. If I deleted Optimus Prime, would its editors go off and edit George Washington, and would people here want them to?

And before you ask, yes there should be an article on Carolyn Doran, but it would need the highest protection against malicious editors.

[EricBarbour]

It is the function of Wikipedia to record information on any sufficiently notable topic.

Which is not happening.

And before you ask, yes there should be an article on Carolyn Doran, but it would need the highest protection against malicious editors.

Which is not happening.

[Peter Damian]

You can argue whether these articles are good enough or long enough, but the existence and length of the Optimus Prime article has no effect at all on these articles.

Yes it does.

42:05 Andrew Keene: My biggest problem with Wikipedia is that it doesn't create a hierarchy of knowledge. There is no one at the heart of Wikipedia saying that the entry on Pamela Anderson should be shorter or longer than that on Hannah Arendt.

42:20 Jimmy: That's a really strange argument. You know, Harry Potter, last I checked, is longer than Hamlet. Should someone have said, actually, Harry Potter's not as important as Hamlet and therefore it should be shorter, the fact that a pop novel is this long and Hamlet is this long, it's no problem. And the same thing - one entry in Wikipedia is longer than another one - they don't compete with each other, they are completely separate entries. It's not like an encyclopedia, where we say, look, we've got 30 volumes, so we have to limit some way.

42:50 [question from audience] Jimmy, someone who's not familiar with American culture or not media savvy or literate, may not understand that Hamlet's more important than Harry Potter. A lot of people use this as serious education.

43:00 Jimmy: Yes ... I'm not really sure what you're saying.

43:05 Andrew Keene: The Pamela Anderson entry on Wikipedia, it's incredibly well researched. It's as detailed and sophisticated as the entry on Hannah Arendt, perhaps the most influential political theorist of the twentieth century. And again, that's fine if you know that there's a difference. But the kinds now coming online, they would think that Pamela Anderson is as important. So this is profoundly subsersive, it's surreal, in its consequences.

43:30 Andrew Keene: All knowledge comes with socio-cultural, historical and economic baggage. That's what media literacy is about. That's why when we read the New York Times we have some context. We know, for example, that the New York Times is culturally and politically liberal or pro-Israel, and we are able to read through those things and the problem with Wikipedia is that we are not able to interpret the context, because we don't know who is producing the information. And ultimately when Jimmy stands back and says, well, that's none of my business, who am I to say that Pamela Anderson is less or more important than the concept of truth, or Marie Curie or Hannah Arendt, ultimately for those people who go to Wikipedia, who have no media literacy, I am fearful that in this open source, free knowledge universe, we are going to be educating people who are not able to evaluate not so much the accuracy of information but the importance of information.

44:30 Jimmy: It's kind of like saying, if we had a debate in the early history of the automobile, and we said, wow you know, the automobile is going to devastate the horseshoe industry, and it's gonna cause pollution and noise and a lot of people are going to be killed in car wrecks and a lot of bad things are going to happen. But of course all this good stuff is going to happen ... well, you can debate about it all you want but that genie's not going back in the bottle, so, er, you know.
From Truth in Numbers

Web 2.0 idiots love saying things like "genie's not going back in the bottle".

[lilburne]

It is a case of false advertising. It presents itself as an educational resource, that it is engaged in writing articles on the sciences, literature, history, etc. Where in reality it is all about cartoon characters, and celebrity.

A fair point, but not exactly false. It can be an educational resource. Its also a resource for people who want to look up recreational stuff. Libraries without a decent selection tend not to attract many visitors... I understand his point. But its a waste of time complaining your apple isnt a banana when you have a grocers next door...

The difference is that whilst the local library may have a large selection of Mills & Boon, celeb biographies, and books about TV shows. They also have a selection of science, history, literature, and philosophy books as well. Books which are of recent scholarship, not 19th century treatise, and which aren't being allowed to disintegrate in the basement due to damp, silverfish, and mice gnawing at the spines.

[EricBarbour]

The difference is that whilst the local library may have a large selection of Mills & Boon, celeb biographies, and books about TV shows. They also have a selection of science, history, literature, and philosophy books as well. Books which are of recent scholarship, not 19th century treatise, and which aren't being allowed to disintegrate in the basement due to damp, silverfish, and mice gnawing at the spines.

The library's books would have a history, and references that you could check because the library probably has some of them as well. It has librarians, who have interlibrary
loan systems to get books they don't have on-site. They have back-catalogs of magazines and local newspapers. Most of all, they have staff who will help you.

What does Wikipedia have? Everything they can Google, articles cribbed from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica (not labeled as such), and other random "stuff".
Plus random volunteers to help -- maybe.

Try posting a probing, obscure question on any of the Reference Desks. Go ahead. Lotsa luck.

[Volunteer Marek]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... s#Articles

List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters (T-H-L) is currently the largest article on Wikipedia. How does that stand up to George Washington and Optimus Prime?

Somebody needs to add a measly 4k bytes to that article to put it over the 400k mark. Then inform somebodies, letting them know of another "Wikipedia Record"

[Ismail]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... s#Articles

List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters (T-H-L) is currently the largest article on Wikipedia. How does that stand up to George Washington and Optimus Prime?

Somebody needs to add a measly 4k bytes to that article to put it over the 400k mark. Then inform somebodies, letting them know of another "Wikipedia Record"

Imagine an exquisitely-sourced 400k article about something of historical importance that's written comprehensibly and informatively.

Granted it'd be way too damn big, but still.

[Kelly Martin]

It's very simple. Wikipedia is not paper. It has no real size limitations; having any number of other articles of any size makes no difference to the size of the George Washington articles. You can argue whether these articles are good enough or long enough, but the existence and length of the Optimus Prime article has no effect at all on these articles.

You can spout off this piece of nonsense, but it's not true. First, every article that exists is an article that can be maintained, and so the more articles there are the more effort has to be spent on maintaining those articles. Wikipedia obviously does not have enough volunteers to even maintain the articles it already has, given the number that even now remain in a persistently vandalized state. Reducing the number of articles to a maintainable level by trimming lower-importance articles would be a reasonable step to take, if Wikipedia actually cared about quality.

There is also the problem that having a unified name space across a wide range of topics results in namespace collisions, meaning that people often do have to "wade through" unrelated content to find the article they want. Wikipedia's "disambiguation pages" are a fairly poor solution to this problem, but since all Wikipedia has is a hammer, they tend to use a lot of nails.

[Anroth]

I notice Anroth dodged my question. Let's put it another way -- Anroth, how does Wikipedia having a suitably-documented biography about Carolyn Doran harm the articles about either Optimus Prime or George Washington?

Extra for Wiki-experts: Why have Wikipedia's overlords determined that the world is not permitted to create or read a Wikipedia biography about Carolyn Doran?

No dodging, I was on my way out to see a viewing of Jurassic Park held in a Zoo surrounded by animatronic dinosaurs and just didnt see it. Will look later.

[thekohser]

Will look later.

...he said several days ago.

[Anroth]

Will look later.

...he said several days ago.

Pfft. I didnt realise my opinion meant that much to you. Its been a busy week. So have not been responding in detail anywhere.

Quick answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... ecember_22 was closed as delete-redirect. Personally having never heard of her before I think she probably rates an article but I doubt you, I, or anyone else will convince consensus at deletion review *now* to allow recreation. Feel free to try. Interesting reading though, shot her boyfriend, police informant on her housemate. Thats before she ended up at the WMF. Had there been a well sourced and well written article at the time of its deletion/redirect, the outcome might have been different. However unless I am looking in the incorrect place, all I see is a single-source stub. Redirecting it to a paragraph at the WMF employees seems a reasonable compromise.

And no I dont think having the article would harm either Optimus Prime or George Washington. It might harm the WMF's reputation but who cares about that.

[thekohser]

However unless I am looking in the incorrect place, all I see is a single-source stub. Redirecting it to a paragraph at the WMF employees seems a reasonable compromise.

I don't remember it as a single-source stub at the time that it was being worked on during the deletion debate, so that's odd.

Regardless, it's spurious to say that Doran was "only" famous for "one event".

It's also fascinating that Wikipedia finds BLP1E to not apply to Michael M. Sears (T-H-L) or to Darleen Druyun (T-H-L).

[The Devil's Advocate]

I am quite impressed that she is closely connected to the CIA. Seems that is the more interesting side note of the story.

[thekohser]

I am curious about why Pauline Kanchanalak (T-H-L) needs a Wikipedia biography, despite the terms of WP:BLP1E, which advise:

We should generally avoid having an article on a person when each of three conditions is met:
* If reliable sources cover the person only in the context of a single event.
* If that person otherwise remains, and is likely to remain, a low-profile individual. Biographies in these cases can give undue weight to the event and conflict with neutral point of view. In such cases, it is usually better to merge the information and redirect the person's name to the event article.
* It is not the case that the event is significant and the individual's role within it is substantial and well-documented – as in the case of John Hinckley, Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

It is interesting to note that the #2 Google hit on her name (after Wikipedia, of course) is a Capitalism Magazine story that begins, "Remember Pauline Kanchanalak? Probably not."

That being said, it is strange how the anti-corporate environmentalists have not enshrined with a Wikipedia biography the former BP vice president of exploration for the Gulf of Mexico, David Rainey, indicted for obstructing a congressional investigation and making false statements to law enforcement officials about the Deepwater Horizon's spill volume.

[Tarc]

Will try a prod deletion, see what happens.

Googling for this person's name now gives a nice, prominent box displaying the first few lines of the Wikipedia entry too, which in this case begins with "Pauline Kanchanalak is a prominent Thai businesswoman who was indicted for illegal campaign contributions to the Democratic National Committee." Lovely.

Created by long-departed editor Chronique55 (T-C-L), who spent most of his brief editing on articles related to the 1996 Chinese-to-Clinton donation "scandal".

[Silent Editor]

I am curious about why Pauline Kanchanalak (T-H-L) needs a Wikipedia biography, despite the terms of WP:BLP1E, which advise:

We should generally avoid having an article on a person when each of three conditions is met:
* If reliable sources cover the person only in the context of a single event.
* If that person otherwise remains, and is likely to remain, a low-profile individual. Biographies in these cases can give undue weight to the event and conflict with neutral point of view. In such cases, it is usually better to merge the information and redirect the person's name to the event article.
* It is not the case that the event is significant and the individual's role within it is substantial and well-documented – as in the case of John Hinckley, Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

It is interesting to note that the #2 Google hit on her name (after Wikipedia, of course) is a Capitalism Magazine story that begins, "Remember Pauline Kanchanalak? Probably not."

Verifiable non-notability?

[SB_Johnny]

I notice Anroth dodged my question. Let's put it another way -- Anroth, how does Wikipedia having a suitably-documented biography about Carolyn Doran harm the articles about either Optimus Prime or George Washington?

Extra for Wiki-experts: Why have Wikipedia's overlords determined that the world is not permitted to create or read a Wikipedia biography about Carolyn Doran?

If someone were to write an article about her which was well-referenced and established "notability" on mywikibiz, I wouldn't see any reason not to import it.