Overrepresented Content on Wikipedia

[Johnny Au]

This is the inverse of the Missing Articles thread.

Instead of discussing articles that should be on Wikipedia but are not, we discuss articles that are on Wikipedia but should not.

First and foremost, each and every single episode of [insert American adult-oriented animated comedy here] has an article, many of which are much longer than stubs and some are given "Good Article" status.

More have been written about Middle-earth (and other fantasy worlds) than about sub-Saharan Africa for example.

Wikipedia topics are rather heavily skewed to frat boy media, given that the demographics of Wikipedians are very close to that of an average frat boy.

[mac]

Simon Pulsifer (T-H-L)
James Heilman (T-H-L)
Ting Chen (T-H-L)
Adrianne Wadewitz (T-H-L)
Rémi Mathis (T-H-L)
Justin Knapp (T-H-L) (good job getting it restored, Justin)
Martin Haase (T-H-L)
Florence Devouard (T-H-L)
Oscar van Dillen (T-H-L)
Jan-Bart de Vreede (T-H-L)

[Mancunium]

The BLP of Rémi_Mathis (T-H-L) fails to mention this: link

HADOPI (Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet) is the French government's High Authority intended to promote the distribution and protection of creative works on the internet. It no longer functions: HADOPI_law (T-H-L).

This is the reason why:

Hadopi : Rémi Mathis (Wikipedia) devait intégrer l'institution !
Selon un courrier envoyé à Manuel Valls dont Numerama a obtenu copie, le président de Wikimedia France était pressenti pour intégrer le Collège de l'Hadopi. C'est son nom, rejeté par des ayants droits, qui expliquerait que la Haute Autorité est virtuellement morte depuis la fin de l'année dernière.
Numerama, 30 April 2014 link

Google-translation from French link

Hadopi: Rémi Mathis (Wikipedia) should be part of the institution!
According to a letter sent to Manuel Valls, Numerama which obtained a copy, the president of Wikimedia France was tipped to join the College of Hadopi. That's his name, rejected by rights holders, which would explain why the High Authority is virtually dead since the end of last year. Is this the reason for hesitation and back and forth that we reported last week, revealing that the Hadopi had to submit its accounts illegally because they have a college validly formed by nine members, as required by the law? We then found out that: the decree to appoint new members had been blocked under pressure from rights holders, as well exerted on the Ministry of Culture at the Elysee. The same day that the act college official decisions of the High Authority would meet on Wednesday, April 23, the president of the Hadopi Marie-Françoise Marais sent to the Prime Minister Manuel Valls an email we obtained a copy (see below), to offend the delay in the publication of the decree.

"For four months, the High Authority for the Dissemination of Works and Protection of Rights on the Internet (Hadopi) expects the Government's publication of the decree on the renewal of three members of the college whose mandate expired on December 26, renewal requested by me October 14, 2013, "she wrote, before confirming our analysis that Hadopi is now undead . "The failure to appoint three of the nine members of the college under the Act creates an institutional situation undermining the actions of the institution (...) This situation, where the College is not properly constituted, prevents us to take in formal legal requirements. "

Pressure rightholders concerned

The president of the Hadopi revealed in this letter the names of three new members who were approached. Alongside Denis Rapone (State Councilor) and Bernard Tranchand (Vice-President of the UNAF), the Ministry of Culture had proposed the appointment of Rémi Mathis , president of Wikimedia France! A surprise appointment that sent a positive sign for the consideration of the importance of Internet sharing, especially when the Hadopi considering a draft legalization of non-market exchanges . Librarian and historian, activist of the free dissemination of knowledge, Rémi Mathis is good thanks to the Ministry of Culture, who made ​​a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters January 16, 2014. But it seems that when his name was circulated, a powerful lobby of French culture in France has exercised its influence to the decree not be published, lest Rémi Mathis earns himself too much influence ... His actual appointment is therefore currently nothing assured.

Letter from Hadopi to the Prime Minister of France, noting that the proposed appointment
to the High Authority of the President of Wikimedia France has paralyzed the agency


Rémi Mathis, Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, President of Wikimedia France, and cultural pariah

Hadopi : Rémi Mathis (Wikipedia) devait intégrer l'institution !
Numerama, 30 April 2014 link

Damn, this is actually an important story. It needs more exposure. The president of Wikimedia France is proposed for the "College" of HADOPI, the French intellectual property agency. The other members refuse to seat him, causing their organization to "stop functioning".

Also, Mathis was knighted recently. Disgusting.

[Johnny Au]

Simon Pulsifer (T-H-L)
James Heilman (T-H-L)
Ting Chen (T-H-L)
Adrianne Wadewitz (T-H-L)
Rémi Mathis (T-H-L)
Justin Knapp (T-H-L) (good job getting it restored, Justin)
Martin Haase (T-H-L)
Florence Devouard (T-H-L)
Oscar van Dillen (T-H-L)
Jan-Bart de Vreede (T-H-L)

The first person on the list is my good friend.

There is no doubt Wikipedians love to write about themselves. Not me though. I am not notable for good reasons (as of this post).

Many articles with "In popular culture" sections make references to an American comedy from the 1990s or later, may it be animated or live action, but more likely animated. No one would care to know (aside from pop culture junkies) that the Simpsons made a reference to a particular topic in the article about said topic.

List of family trees (T-H-L) includes fictional family trees as well (and many of those examples are from "nerdy" media with all sorts of WP:CRUFT (T-H-L)).

[eagle]

Wikipedia is blessed with these articles which were written by a graduate student who was neither a fan nor an expert on the subject of Netball (T-H-L) and a few of her friends:
Netball and the Olympic Movement (T-H-L) (Originally called "Netball at the Olympics")
Netball in Australia (T-H-L)
Australia national netball team (T-H-L)
Barbados national netball team (T-H-L)
Netball in Botswana (T-H-L)
Netball in Brunei (T-H-L)
Canada national netball team (T-H-L)
Netball in the Cook Islands (T-H-L)
Cook Islands national netball team (T-H-L)
Cook Islands Netball Association (T-H-L)
Netball in England (T-H-L)
England Netball (T-H-L) (yes, she felt the need to create both articles)
Netball in Fiji (T-H-L)
Netball in Hong Kong (T-H-L)
Netball in India (T-H-L)
India national netball team (T-H-L)
Netball Federation of India (T-H-L)
Netball in Indonesia (T-H-L)
Ireland national netball team (T-H-L)
Jamaica national netball team (T-H-L)
Netball in Kenya (T-H-L)
Netball in Lesotho (T-H-L)
Netball in Malawi (T-H-L)
Malawi national netball team (T-H-L)
Netball in Malaysia (T-H-L)
Malaysia national netball team (T-H-L)
Malaysian Netball Association (T-H-L)
Netball in the Maldives (T-H-L)
Netball in Namibia (T-H-L)
Namibia national netball team (T-H-L)
Netball in New Zealand (T-H-L)
Netball New Zealand (T-H-L)
Netball in Niue (T-H-L)
Northern Ireland national netball team (T-H-L)
Netball in Pakistan (T-H-L)
Pakistan Netball Federation (T-H-L)
Netball in Papua New Guinea (T-H-L)
Papua New Guinea national netball team (T-H-L)
Saint Lucia national netball team‎ (T-H-L)
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines national netball team‎ (T-H-L)
Netball in Samoa‎ (T-H-L)
Samoa national netball team‎ (T-H-L)
Netball in Scotland (T-H-L)
Scotland national netball team (T-H-L)
Netball in Singapore (T-H-L)
Netball in Solomon Islands (T-H-L)
Netball in South Africa (T-H-L)
Netball in Sri Lanka (T-H-L)
Netball in Sweden (T-H-L)
Netball Switzerland (T-H-L)
Netball in Tanzania (T-H-L)
Netball in Thailand (T-H-L)
Netball in Tokelau (T-H-L) (later merged with Tokelau)
Netball in Tonga (T-H-L)
Netball in Trinidad and Tobago (T-H-L)
Netball in Vanuatu (T-H-L)
Vanuatu national netball team (T-H-L)
Netball in Wales (T-H-L)
Netball in Zimbabwe (T-H-L)
Zimbabwe national netball team (T-H-L)
Believe it or not, there are more articles. There are also many categories, many with only one article. Perhaps this is all an attempt to protest the male-dominated world of sports which has unjustly relegated Netball to an obscure corner. Yet, given the minimal nature of some of these articles, the reader will not be impressed with the claimed international popularity of the sport.

[Jim]

Somebody has missed an opportunity, here, though...

Sport in Gibraltar (T-H-L) mentions netball, yet Netball in Gibraltar (T-H-L) is a redlink.

[Jim]

List of family trees (T-H-L) includes fictional family trees as well (and many of those examples are from "nerdy" media with all sorts of WP:CRUFT (T-H-L)).

Which led me, in a roundabout way, to the glorious Category:List-Class Comics articles of Bottom-importance

From there, I visited List of fictional frogs and toads in animation (T-H-L) and List of squid-faced humanoids (T-H-L)

I should have stopped at that point, but no, I just had to go onto List of nekomimi wearers (T-H-L), didn't I?
Comprehensive little number, including section titles:

• Catgirls who are always in possession of cat ears and a cat tail
  ...
  Catgirls who are always in possession of cat ears but who are either seldom or never in possession of a cat tail
  Non-catgirls who transform into catgirls
  Non-catgirls who are witnessed wearing catgirl costumes on a regular basis
  Catboys
  ...

On the talkpage, an IP user says:

This is the stupidest Goddamned page on wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.228.130.101 (talk) 06:34, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Now, obviously, that's a huge claim, given the competition, but you have to kind of see his point...

[EricBarbour]

I should have stopped at that point, but no, I just had to go onto List of nekomimi wearers (T-H-L), didn't I?

Don't forget Category:Furry fandom (T-H-L). I count 442 articles therein.

Wikipedia is blessed with these articles which were written by a graduate student who was neither a fan nor an expert on the subject of Netball (T-H-L) and a few of her friends:

C'mon, you can say her name.

Because she's also the lunatic who almost destroyed Wikimedia Australia a couple of years ago; Laura Hale (T-C-L).

[Poetlister]

You could get rid of most of the articles on female porn stars. A catch-all "Photographs of female porn stars" article would suffice.

[Johnny Au]

List of fictional extraterrestrials (T-H-L) and the list of alien species by each letter of the alphabet

See here as well: Template:Fictional biology navbox (T-H-L)

Wikipedia is not supposed to be an indiscriminate collection of every single species ever created in fiction

[mac]

Simon Pulsifer (T-H-L)
<snip>
The first person on the list is my good friend.
<snip>

His expression reminds me of this:



(cat image is linked to ED, which is NSFW)

[eagle]

Grocho Marx famously said that he would never join a country club that would have him as a member.

Using that same logic, perhaps Wikipedia should issue an exception to GNG to the effect that "If a person is sufficiently stupid to waste a substantial amount of his or her time with the WMF and Wikipedia, he or she is by definition not notable." That would eliminate all of the quality and COI problems Wikipedia has with biographies of Wikipedians.

[Poetlister]

Grocho Marx famously said that he would never join a country club that would have him as a member.

Using that same logic, perhaps Wikipedia should issue an exception to GNG to the effect that "If a person is sufficiently stupid to waste a substantial amount of his or her time with the WMF and Wikipedia, he or she is by definition not notable." That would eliminate all of the quality and COI problems Wikipedia has with biographies of Wikipedians.

What about Wikipedians who are anonymous? For greater obscurity, they would club together and edit each other's BLPs, not their own.

[eagle]

Grocho Marx famously said that he would never join a country club that would have him as a member.

Using that same logic, perhaps Wikipedia should issue an exception to GNG to the effect that "If a person is sufficiently stupid to waste a substantial amount of his or her time with the WMF and Wikipedia, he or she is by definition not notable." That would eliminate all of the quality and COI problems Wikipedia has with biographies of Wikipedians.

What about Wikipedians who are anonymous? For greater obscurity, they would club together and edit each other's BLPs, not their own.

I think that Grocho would have been wise enough to say, "I would never join a country club that would maintain the complete anonymity of its membership list."

[Johnny Au]

Poetlister suggested that footballers are overrepresented on Wikipedia.

There is also so much detail about the Brazil vs. Germany match in the 2014 FIFA World Cup, especially given the great reactions over Germany pulling a major upset on the hosts.

[Tippi Hadron]

Wikipedia is blessed with these articles which were written by a graduate student who was neither a fan nor an expert on the subject of Netball (T-H-L) and a few of her friends:

C'mon, you can say her name.

Because she's also the lunatic who almost destroyed Wikimedia Australia a couple of years ago; Laura Hale (T-C-L).

That would be LauraHale (T-C-L). And how dare you speak badly about one of the few dedicated female (as opposed to pretending to be female) WP participants (who is rumoured to be a current WMF board member's significant other)? Next thing you know, somebody will bring up the messy history of the WikiWomenCamp conference in Buenos Aires and Ms Hale's part in "organizing" it.

To the organizing team: could you clarify what attempts were made to announce this planned event beyond the circle of chapter activists and the gender gap mailing list, to the wider public? For example, were sitenotices used at all? The attendance so far does not seem to include many people outside chapter membership. Thanks. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 23:45, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

[Zoloft]

Wikipedia is blessed with these articles which were written by a graduate student who was neither a fan nor an expert on the subject of Netball (T-H-L) and a few of her friends:

C'mon, you can say her name.

Because she's also the lunatic who almost destroyed Wikimedia Australia a couple of years ago; Laura Hale (T-C-L).

That would be LauraHale (T-C-L). And how dare you speak badly about one of the few dedicated female (as opposed to pretending to be female) WP participants (who is rumoured to be a current WMF board member's significant other)? Next thing you know, somebody will bring up the messy history of the WikiWomenCamp conference in Buenos Aires and Ms Hale's part in "organizing" it.

To the organizing team: could you clarify what attempts were made to announce this planned event beyond the circle of chapter activists and the gender gap mailing list, to the wider public? For example, were sitenotices used at all? The attendance so far does not seem to include many people outside chapter membership. Thanks. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 23:45, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Only eighteen people? Almost all subsidized from donations? I'll bet we have more folks show up for WikipedioPsychos 2015 at Peppermill Resort in Reno.
Yes of course I'm joking. Although it would be fun.

[Versus]

The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix articles are both vastly over-represented on Wikipedia.

[snowskarlet]

I should have stopped at that point, but no, I just had to go onto List of nekomimi wearers (T-H-L), didn't I?
Comprehensive little number, including section titles:

• Catgirls who are always in possession of cat ears and a cat tail
  ...
  Catgirls who are always in possession of cat ears but who are either seldom or never in possession of a cat tail
  Non-catgirls who transform into catgirls
  Non-catgirls who are witnessed wearing catgirl costumes on a regular basis
  Catboys
  ...

On the talkpage, an IP user says:

This is the stupidest Goddamned page on wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.228.130.101 (talk) 06:34, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Now, obviously, that's a huge claim, given the competition, but you have to kind of see his point...

I would love to do some damage to begin to dismantle that article cat tail by cat tail. The page has 52 stalkers. I wonder how attentive they are?

I am all for real cats, but this is too retarded. Once again, we have no encyclopedia. This is a fan page.

[eagle]

The compulsive need to have an article on each numbered highway in every state has lead to some very strange articles:

Wyoming Highway 74 (T-H-L) is a 0.13 mile-long portion of Bridge Street that crossed the North Platte River in Saratoga, Wyoming. It is unsigned, so that drivers who use the road do not know its number. A Google search could not locate reliable sources covering it (other than primary sources from WDOT or "fan" sites.)
Wyoming Highway 14 (T-H-L) is a 0.36 mile-long entrance road that connects WYO 130 with the Laramie airport. No reliable secondary sources with a Google search.
Louisiana Highway 3220 (T-H-L) is a 0.22 mile-long road across a bridge over Bayou Lafourche. No reliable secondary sources with a Google search. One of the three external links in the article is dead.
Louisiana Highway 3285 (T-H-L) is a 0.80 mile-long road that was previously called "Spur Louisiana Highway 16." No reliable secondary sources with a Google search. One of the three external links in the article is dead.
Pennsylvania Route 760 (T-H-L) is a 5.5 mile-long road that has sourcing problems.
Ohio State Route 372 (T-H-L), a 0.68 mile-long driveway into the state forest was nominated for GA.
Ohio State Route 369 (T-H-L), a 2.50 mile-long spur to connect a state road with an interchange to a parallel freeway, was nominated for GA.
Ohio State Route 253 (T-H-L) is a 0.56 mile-long portion of the Jesse Stuart Memorial Bridge (T-H-L), which crosses over the Ohio River near Franklin Furnace. It was nominated for GA. I do not see what it adds beyond the main article about the bridge.
Ohio State Route 319 (T-H-L) is a 0.56 mile-long road nominated for GA.
Ohio State Route 716 (T-H-L) is a 6.7 mile-long road nominated for GA.

These highways are probably not notable under the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... y_highways test:

Secondary state highways and county highways that are part of a statewide system (i.e. the highway numbers do not repeat themselves across the state) may or may not be sufficiently notable to merit a unique article. Highways that have very little to say about them (i.e. those that are extremely short and have no historical significance) are better suited to a list.

[The Garbage Scow]

Football (soccer) players.

There must be hundreds of thousands of 3 line stubs about every person who ever played professional footy for some local football club in Wales nobody has ever heard of. In some cases, there are footy player articles that totaled together comprise far more content than the total of every other article about the country their team plays in.

And more are created every day. They're like tribbles.

[EricBarbour]

There must be hundreds of thousands of 3 line stubs about every person who ever played professional footy for some local football club in Wales nobody has ever heard of. In some cases, there are footy player articles that totaled together comprise far more content than the total of every other article about the country their team plays in.

And more are created every day. They're like tribbles.

You are correct. In 2012 I estimated that en-WP contained 160,000 such bios, nearly all stubs and nearly all containing whatever miserable bits of material were to be filched from sports references websites, and nothing else, because there is nothing else. Thousands were generated by bots and no one ever looks at them. It's the largest single profession category in English Wikipedia, close to 13% of all biographies, and apparently that also applies to French, German, Spanish and most other major Wikipedias. No one cared and no one still cares.

[Scott5114]

Apologies in advance if this is incoherent or rambling, since I'm currently battling a cold...

The compulsive need to have an article on each numbered highway in every state has lead to some very strange articles:

Wyoming Highway 74 (T-H-L) is a 0.13 mile-long portion of Bridge Street that crossed the North Platte River in Saratoga, Wyoming. It is unsigned, so that drivers who use the road do not know its number. A Google search could not locate reliable sources covering it (other than primary sources from WDOT or "fan" sites.)
Wyoming Highway 14 (T-H-L) is a 0.36 mile-long entrance road that connects WYO 130 with the Laramie airport. No reliable secondary sources with a Google search.
Louisiana Highway 3220 (T-H-L) is a 0.22 mile-long road across a bridge over Bayou Lafourche. No reliable secondary sources with a Google search. One of the three external links in the article is dead.
Louisiana Highway 3285 (T-H-L) is a 0.80 mile-long road that was previously called "Spur Louisiana Highway 16." No reliable secondary sources with a Google search. One of the three external links in the article is dead.
Pennsylvania Route 760 (T-H-L) is a 5.5 mile-long road that has sourcing problems.
Ohio State Route 372 (T-H-L), a 0.68 mile-long driveway into the state forest was nominated for GA.
Ohio State Route 369 (T-H-L), a 2.50 mile-long spur to connect a state road with an interchange to a parallel freeway, was nominated for GA.
Ohio State Route 253 (T-H-L) is a 0.56 mile-long portion of the Jesse Stuart Memorial Bridge (T-H-L), which crosses over the Ohio River near Franklin Furnace. It was nominated for GA. I do not see what it adds beyond the main article about the bridge.
Ohio State Route 319 (T-H-L) is a 0.56 mile-long road nominated for GA.
Ohio State Route 716 (T-H-L) is a 6.7 mile-long road nominated for GA.

These highways are probably not notable under the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... y_highways test:

Secondary state highways and county highways that are part of a statewide system (i.e. the highway numbers do not repeat themselves across the state) may or may not be sufficiently notable to merit a unique article. Highways that have very little to say about them (i.e. those that are extremely short and have no historical significance) are better suited to a list.

None of the routes listed are actually secondary routes—that term refers to a lower-class designation that many states give to lower-importance state routes. The most easily understood example of this is Missouri, which gives numbers to primary routes and letters to secondary routes. Another example is Oklahoma, which gives primary routes a number and secondary routes a letter suffix to the number of a route that they connect to (e.g. 99 is a primary route, 99A is a secondary route branching from 99). For the most part, you won't find articles on Missouri lettered routes or Oklahoma letter-suffix routes (there are some particularly important examples of both that do have articles). Wyoming and Ohio simply do not make any such distinction in their highway system. Pennsylvania and Louisiana do (Louisiana in the form of a strange system of hyphenated routes of the form "LA 2112-5") but neither of them have elected to classify the listed articles as secondary routes.

Why rely on the DOT to make the distinction instead of Wikipedians doing it? Because without doing so, there is no way to reliably determine what "should" and "should not" be covered. Length? At what point do you draw the line that something is "too short"? Going back to Missouri—Route 744 is only 11 miles long, yet is a major thoroughfare in Springfield, probably worthy of coverage. Yet there are lettered secondary routes of that length in rural areas which clearly don't need an article. Looking at length alone is clearly not a tenable solution. So you are left to judge the highway as a whole based on things like relative importance, which is often in the eye of the beholder. You also can't use things like traffic counts, because those vary wildly from region to region (a backroad in New York will probably get the same traffic as a major highway in Wyoming, simply because more people live in New York). It is also difficult to judge from sources alone whether something is "important" or not—something may appear to be a dead-end spur on a map, but connect to some critical infrastructure facility like a prison or a bridge or a port. There is also the fact that these are state highways—in most states, a road has to be specifically selected to be such, and many states have a mileage cap limiting them to X total miles of state road, so the state is required to be somewhat selective of what goes into the system. By maintaining the road as such, the state is asserting that the road is worthy of such maintenance, which differentiates a state road from the vast bulk of roadways, which is composed of county and town roads.

In any event, there's little reason to not cover these, other than a desire to focus editor effort on more important roads. Unlike BLPs, a marginally-notable road article will not cause undue harm to its subject.

[eagle]

There is also the fact that these are state highways—in most states, a road has to be specifically selected to be such, and many states have a mileage cap limiting them to X total miles of state road, so the state is required to be somewhat selective of what goes into the system. By maintaining the road as such, the state is asserting that the road is worthy of such maintenance, which differentiates a state road from the vast bulk of roadways, which is composed of county and town roads.

In any event, there's little reason to not cover these, other than a desire to focus editor effort on more important roads. Unlike BLPs, a marginally-notable road article will not cause undue harm to its subject.

Thank you for the clarification of "secondary road." However, the basic concept of notability and original research are important. If a route is just the driveway to X state park, why not just cover what needs to be said in the article on X state park? If the route is just the half of a bridge that is over the Ohio side of the river, why not just cover it in the article about the bridge? If a route is unmarked, the public will not know its Route Number, so why treat it as a encyclopedia topic at all?

These articles have "route descriptions" which are based on reading various maps. The authors engage in Original Research, and include facts and descriptions that are not available from any secondary source. The concept of Wikipedia is to write an encyclopedia based on articles that anyone could replicate if they took enough time to research all of the reliable secondary sources available. Content is over-represented when it gets down into the weeds of detail beyond what secondary sources can provide.

In any event, there's little reason to not cover these, other than a desire to focus editor effort on more important roads. Unlike BLPs, a marginally-notable road article will not cause undue harm to its subject.

They take up great volunteer resources to maintain them as up-to-date and accurate. They also clog up the Good Article Nomination process. While a road article is not like a BLP, readers can rely upon their accuracy to their own detriment. All over-represented content is burden upon Wikipedia, and road articles are no exception.

[Johnny Au]

Take a look at some of these Ontario highways: Highways in Ontario (T-H-L) There are a few articles on specific tertiary highways in Ontario such as Ontario Highway 802 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 804 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 805 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 808 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 810 (T-H-L), and Ontario Highway 811 (T-H-L).

[eagle]

Take a look at some of these Ontario highways: Highways in Ontario (T-H-L) There are a few articles on specific tertiary highways in Ontario such as Ontario Highway 802 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 804 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 805 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 808 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 810 (T-H-L), and Ontario Highway 811 (T-H-L).

Ontario has the 7000-series highways, which are similar to the highways I posted above. They are unposted and the numbers not generally known to the public. Unlike Wikiproject US Roads which created separate articles for each such highway, the editors covering Canadian roads redirected each to a larger road or a separate article covering a bridge or tunnel.

[Vigilant]

Take a look at some of these Ontario highways: Highways in Ontario (T-H-L) There are a few articles on specific tertiary highways in Ontario such as Ontario Highway 802 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 804 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 805 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 808 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 810 (T-H-L), and Ontario Highway 811 (T-H-L).

Ontario has the 7000-series highways, which are similar to the highways I posted above. They are unposted and the numbers not generally known to the public. Unlike Wikiproject US Roads which created separate articles for each such highway, the editors covering Canadian roads redirected each to a larger road or a separate article covering a bridge or tunnel.

Road groupies might be even lower on the totem pole than furries.

[Johnny Au]

Take a look at some of these Ontario highways: Highways in Ontario (T-H-L) There are a few articles on specific tertiary highways in Ontario such as Ontario Highway 802 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 804 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 805 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 808 (T-H-L), Ontario Highway 810 (T-H-L), and Ontario Highway 811 (T-H-L).

Ontario has the 7000-series highways, which are similar to the highways I posted above. They are unposted and the numbers not generally known to the public. Unlike Wikiproject US Roads which created separate articles for each such highway, the editors covering Canadian roads redirected each to a larger road or a separate article covering a bridge or tunnel.

Road groupies might be even lower on the totem pole than furries.

The US Roads people really need to learn how the Canadian Roads people create and maintain articles. This way, there won't be perma-microstubs barely longer than a tweet.

[Johnny Au]

See here: Wikipedia:Route_diagram_template/Catalog_of_pictograms/others (T-H-L) (see the Miscellaneous transportation and line-side features section)
If you take a look at some of these icons, they are based on Toronto Transit Commission (T-H-L) (TTC) vehicles, such as SUBWAY, ICTS, CLRV, PCC, OBUS, and BUS1.

At least this does not show up on Wikipedia:


It is the official TTC pictogram of the Flexity Outlook (Toronto streetcar) (T-H-L) that the TTC tweeted.

Note that I don't use Twitter; I just scraped that image from another website that embedded the image.

[eagle]

Wikipedia administrator SchuminWeb (T-C-L) was quite the fan of the Washington DC subway as well as mass transit systems in other cities. He developed his own extensive fan website and then worked to transfer detailed content to Wikipedia. In many cases he would cite his own website as a source. The result was very detailed articles on each aspect of mass transit systems.

However, admins objected to his sourcing back to his own website, and the ensuing drama as well as other harassment led him to retire in November 2012.http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =525251607. His legacy is detailed articles on transportation infrastructure.

[Jim]

In any event, there's little reason to not cover these, other than a desire to focus editor effort on more important roads.

Heh. You're not really a "big-picture" kind of guy, are you?

Unless it's a picture like this, I guess:

[Hex]

Many articles with "In popular culture" sections make references to an American comedy from the 1990s or later, may it be animated or live action, but more likely animated. No one would care to know (aside from pop culture junkies) that the Simpsons made a reference to a particular topic in the article about said topic.

The problem isn't "pop culture junkies". It's editors with autistic spectrum disorders who are chronically incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of a reader that doesn't share their specific interests - an absolutely key skill in writing encyclopedia articles for a general audience.

[Poetlister]

There must be hundreds of thousands of 3 line stubs about every person who ever played professional footy for some local football club in Wales nobody has ever heard of. In some cases, there are footy player articles that totaled together comprise far more content than the total of every other article about the country their team plays in.

And more are created every day. They're like tribbles.

You are correct. In 2012 I estimated that en-WP contained 160,000 such bios, nearly all stubs and nearly all containing whatever miserable bits of material were to be filched from sports references websites, and nothing else, because there is nothing else. Thousands were generated by bots and no one ever looks at them. It's the largest single profession category in English Wikipedia, close to 13% of all biographies, and apparently that also applies to French, German, Spanish and most other major Wikipedias. No one cared and no one still cares.

If this were brought up on Wikipedia, you'd get swamped by "Wikipedia ISNOTPAPER" and "Sum of all human knowledge". If (and it is a big if, given that probably most of them aren't properly watched) none of these myriads of articles is vandalised to defame the subject, it's fairly harmless.

[eagle]

If this were brought up on Wikipedia, you'd get swamped by "Wikipedia ISNOTPAPER" and "Sum of all human knowledge". If (and it is a big if, given that probably most of them aren't properly watched) none of these myriads of articles is vandalised to defame the subject, it's fairly harmless.

I believe you are correct. The solution is to write a new bot that scans for users that insert "Wikipedia ISNOTPAPER" or "Sum of all human knowledge" into any talk page, and then to add 1,000 randomly-selected low-traffic articles onto the user's watch-list. Alternatively, just add 10 random articles to every user's watch-list. I'd bet that the number of AfD's and quick-deletes would rise geometrically and then the need for this thread would disappear.

A year ago, I would never have suggested such a feature because of the obvious problem with community acceptance, but now all we need to do is to convince just one WMF programmer of the impressive nature of the challenge of coding it. Whether the code works as intended is not a barrier to deploying this plan.

[Johnny Au]

Many articles with "In popular culture" sections make references to an American comedy from the 1990s or later, may it be animated or live action, but more likely animated. No one would care to know (aside from pop culture junkies) that the Simpsons made a reference to a particular topic in the article about said topic.

The problem isn't "pop culture junkies". It's editors with autistic spectrum disorders who are chronically incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of a reader that doesn't share their specific interests - an absolutely key skill in writing encyclopedia articles for a general audience.

As someone with Aspergers Syndrome, I know this too well (and at least 95% of my edits are Toronto-related). Yes, I also notice such bias. There is no doubt Wikipedia is attractive to those with autism spectrum disorders, especially given how difficult they can socialize with those with multiple unrelated interests (especially the neurotypicals).

[Jim]

Many articles with "In popular culture" sections make references to an American comedy from the 1990s or later, may it be animated or live action, but more likely animated. No one would care to know (aside from pop culture junkies) that the Simpsons made a reference to a particular topic in the article about said topic.

The problem isn't "pop culture junkies". It's editors with autistic spectrum disorders who are chronically incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of a reader that doesn't share their specific interests - an absolutely key skill in writing encyclopedia articles for a general audience.

As someone with Aspergers Syndrome, I know this too well (and at least 95% of my edits are Toronto-related). Yes, I also notice such bias. There is no doubt Wikipedia is attractive to those with autism spectrum disorders, especially given how difficult they can socialize with those with multiple unrelated interests (especially the neurotypicals).

And do you think this is a "good" or "bad" thing? Or irrelevant/unimportant/inevitable?

[Scott5114]

In any event, there's little reason to not cover these, other than a desire to focus editor effort on more important roads.

Heh. You're not really a "big-picture" kind of guy, are you?

Unless it's a picture like this, I guess:

I simply differ from you on what I'd like the big picture to resemble. Don't see why that's worthy of ridicule. In any event, Wikipedia is basically just a platform for USRD at this point. If the WMF were to go down the tubes and take Wikipedia with it, USRD would simply carry on somewhere else.

I agree that spending undue amounts of time on very minor articles is kind of silly, especially to get them up to GA. The users that tend to do such things, when asked about it, say that they focus on minor articles because they lack the confidence to work on something of more importance. But there's no accounting for taste, and we can't force people to edit or not edit something without deleting the content. C'est la vie. I've personally focused my major efforts on turnpikes, two of which are major, high-volume highways and one of which is not but is a fascinating political side effect of one of the former two.

See here: Wikipedia:Route_diagram_template/Catalog_of_pictograms/others (T-H-L) (see the Miscellaneous transportation and line-side features section)
If you take a look at some of these icons, they are based on Toronto Transit Commission (T-H-L) (TTC) vehicles, such as SUBWAY, ICTS, CLRV, PCC, OBUS, and BUS1.

At least this does not show up on Wikipedia:
[snip]

It is the official TTC pictogram of the Flexity Outlook (Toronto streetcar) (T-H-L) that the TTC tweeted.

Note that I don't use Twitter; I just scraped that image from another website that embedded the image.

I'm not sure whether this is meant as an endorsement of this style of icon/diagram or not, but they have been considered and rejected by USRD because they are not accessible to all users (such as visually-impaired readers using screen-readers). It is also difficult to ensure that the diagram will display correctly on all browsers, especially mobile browsers. Basically, such things bring us uncomfortably into the realm of web design, when we would rather be writing content.

[Jim]

Don't see why that's worthy of ridicule.

Oh, sorry.

I didn't mean to ridicule you.

I just found it funny that your only alternative to someone writing unwanted articles about roads in Bumfuck, Arizona was that they need to write articles about roads somewhere else instead. They could always, you know, write about stuff that isn't roads at all.

Other subjects exist. Sorry if that's offensive, or unthinkable.

[eagle]

In any event, Wikipedia is basically just a platform for USRD at this point. If the WMF were to go down the tubes and take Wikipedia with it, USRD would simply carry on somewhere else.

Your statement accurately reflects the attitude of the typical USRD editor, which is comparable to the typical Pokemon editor, etc.

The problem is that USRD articles, Pokemon articles, female porn star biographies, WWE biographies, soccer biographies etc. have all become "Wikipedia:Walled garden (T-H-L)s." Each group has its own political leaders who guard the gates in its walls to repel intrusion by outsiders. This leads to a breading ground for power-hungry folks like Rschen7754 (T-C-L) who go on to publish voter guides in Arbcom elections, become sockpuppet investigation clerks and then get elected Steward. So, the life-cycle harm of over-represented content areas is more than just the burden of maintaining that content, it is the contribution of the battle-oriented leaders of these walled subcommunities to the overall toxic culture of Wikipedia.

[Kiefer.Wolfowitz]

This leads to a breading ground for power-hungry folks like Rschen7754 (T-C-L) who go on to publish voter guides in Arbcom elections, become sockpuppet investigation clerks and then get elected Steward.

Rschen7754 is a good guy who often takes principled stands regardless of the political winds. He can be flaky also, but Wikipedia is a good place for eccentrics.

Mocking US Roads editors reminds me of bear baiting.
The Puritans banned bear-baiting primarily to reduce the audience's temptations toward malice and cruelty. Nowadays, most of us regard bear baiting as cruel to the bears, also.

[Ming]

Wikipedia administrator SchuminWeb (T-C-L) was quite the fan of the Washington DC subway as well as mass transit systems in other cities. He developed his own extensive fan website and then worked to transfer detailed content to Wikipedia. In many cases he would cite his own website as a source. The result was very detailed articles on each aspect of mass transit systems.

However, admins objected to his sourcing back to his own website, and the ensuing drama as well as other harassment led him to retire in November 2012.http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =525251607. His legacy is detailed articles on transportation infrastructure.

SchuminWeb got himself canned in absentia because, after years of officious and dickish deletions of images according to his imperious whim, he got hauled off towards ARBCOM. Self-sourcing didn't even begin to enter into that. Grab some popcorn and head over to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/SchuminWeb (T-H-L) and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/SchuminWeb (T-H-L).

[EricBarbour]

Wikipedia administrator SchuminWeb (T-C-L) was quite the fan of the Washington DC subway as well as mass transit systems in other cities. He developed his own extensive fan website and then worked to transfer detailed content to Wikipedia. In many cases he would cite his own website as a source. The result was very detailed articles on each aspect of mass transit systems.

However, admins objected to his sourcing back to his own website, and the ensuing drama as well as other harassment led him to retire in November 2012.http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =525251607. His legacy is detailed articles on transportation infrastructure.

SchuminWeb got himself canned in absentia because, after years of officious and dickish deletions of images according to his imperious whim, he got hauled off towards ARBCOM. Self-sourcing didn't even begin to enter into that. Grab some popcorn and head over to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/SchuminWeb (T-H-L) and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/SchuminWeb (T-H-L).

Mr. Schumin was an embarrassment, right from his first appearance on Wikipedia. Few things prove the failure of WP's administration better than one simple thing: they made Ben Schumin an administrator, knowing fully well what a flake he is. It wasn't enough that he was a deletionist patroller and biased as hell, he was also quite incompetent. They loved him because he is an Anonymous member and hates Scientology.

Look at his website. It's enormous and has been online since 1996. There is your "fetid-basement-dweller". And just btw, Schumin did in fact use links to his website as references on Wikipedia. At one time there were several hundred of them. This list is now down to 30 links, mostly minor things. Why was Wikipedia allowing this jerk to use his personal blog as a "reference"? Because he talked them into whitelisting it.

[Johnny Au]

Many articles with "In popular culture" sections make references to an American comedy from the 1990s or later, may it be animated or live action, but more likely animated. No one would care to know (aside from pop culture junkies) that the Simpsons made a reference to a particular topic in the article about said topic.

The problem isn't "pop culture junkies". It's editors with autistic spectrum disorders who are chronically incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of a reader that doesn't share their specific interests - an absolutely key skill in writing encyclopedia articles for a general audience.

As someone with Aspergers Syndrome, I know this too well (and at least 95% of my edits are Toronto-related). Yes, I also notice such bias. There is no doubt Wikipedia is attractive to those with autism spectrum disorders, especially given how difficult they can socialize with those with multiple unrelated interests (especially the neurotypicals).

And do you think this is a "good" or "bad" thing? Or irrelevant/unimportant/inevitable?

That, I am neutral, though it is bound to happen.

[Poetlister]

Whether the code works as intended is not a barrier to deploying this plan.

It might mean that the plan doesn't work. It may not affect whether the software change is implemented.

[eagle]

Mr. Schumin was an embarrassment, right from his first appearance on Wikipedia. Few things prove the failure of WP's administration better than one simple thing: they made Ben Schumin an administrator, knowing fully well what a flake he is. It wasn't enough that he was a deletionist patroller and biased as hell, he was also quite incompetent.

His personal appearance suggested that he was a troubled soul, but his knowledge of Washington area infrastructure was quite impressive. He was an early active member of Wikimedia DC, but disappeared from that group at the same time that he retired from Wikipedia.

This list is now down to 30 links, mostly minor things. Why was Wikipedia allowing this jerk to use his personal blog as a "reference"? Because he talked them into whitelisting it.

I was not aware of this. I had assumed that the links had been added before the blacklist - whitelist filter had been established. It looks as though there are only 3 remaining article space links to his website.

Again, what does this example say about the more general problem of overrepresented content on Wikipedia? There is also irony in the fact that his departure was hastened by a battle in another overrepresented content area - gaming software.

[Scott5114]

Don't see why that's worthy of ridicule.

Oh, sorry.

I didn't mean to ridicule you.

I just found it funny that your only alternative to someone writing unwanted articles about roads in Bumfuck, Arizona was that they need to write articles about roads somewhere else instead. They could always, you know, write about stuff that isn't roads at all.

Other subjects exist. Sorry if that's offensive, or unthinkable.

No offense taken. The underlying problem here, though, is one of management, and of motivation. Were this a professional encyclopedia, the motivation would be money—management pays you $X per year to work whatever article we tell you to and if you won't, you lose that money. On Wikipedia, nobody (aside from the WMF and those cozied up to them!) is making any money, so there has to be another motivation for their behavior.

So what is the motivation? The love of the Wikipedia project? Surely you jest. For people who do admin work, motivation is probably some combination ego and importance (which leads to power-tripping). For content creators it is passion about the subject they are writing. People write about Pokemon because they like Pokemon; people write about roads because they like roads. Content creation done well requires a lot of effort; you don't just type stream-of-consciousness knowledge into the edit box. There's a lot of research and writing and revising and defending. If someone isn't interested in what they are writing about, none of that effort feels justified and they lose interest. If you remove something like roads from the gamut of article subjects, you're more likely to lose the road editors from the editor pool than you are to transition them to editing a different subject.

You might argue that they would be no great loss if the project were to lose an editor that was focused on an unimportant subject, but such editors accrue side benefits to the project—typo fixes, link additions and corrections, and things like that—to other, more important articles that they may encounter.

In a volunteer effort, nobody is an interchangeable cog. You have to make them want to volunteer.

[Jim]

No offense taken.

Thanks. I'm glad you didn't take offence. None was meant.
I also am aware of Kiefer's comments above about bear-baiting, and he makes a fair point, there.
So I'll leave it there. That seems best. all considered.

[eagle]

[There's a lot of research and writing and revising and defending. If someone isn't interested in what they are writing about, none of that effort feels justified and they lose interest. If you remove something like roads from the gamut of article subjects, you're more likely to lose the road editors from the editor pool than you are to transition them to editing a different subject.

You might argue that they would be no great loss if the project were to lose an editor that was focused on an unimportant subject, but such editors accrue side benefits to the project—typo fixes, link additions and corrections, and things like that—to other, more important articles that they may encounter.

In a volunteer effort, nobody is an interchangeable cog. You have to make them want to volunteer.

There are various motivational techniques, many of which relate to the editor's self-image. If Wikipedia could attract people who aspire to be a "Renaissance Man/Woman" or an "encyclopediaist" then this would be less of a problem. I have always had an interest in roads, but not limited to the narrow definition of USRD. I understand that there are environmental, social, political and legal impacts of roads and even (gasp) a do-not-build-that-road point of view. But USRD will allow none of that. There is a highway in Maryland called the Intercounty Connector http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =453979659 which came from a political fight and litigation that lasted more than three decades. It was a major issue in the campaign for Governor. Once the state assigned a number to the Route, USRD took it over, cut out all of the interesting stuff and sought the deletion of a "History of..." fork because such detailed coverage did not meet the prototype article design.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... _Route_200 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... _Route_200 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... on=history They force a merge of the related articles into an MD 200 article and proceeded to hack away at long-standing content. Many Road Fans refuse to see that roads are much more than lines on a map. Having Wikipedia's road coverage dictated by a POV-pushing philosoply that directly contradicts the rest of the encyclopedia is not heathy.

One way to get around this isolation of USRD would be to require contestants to review non-road articles for GA as a part of the Highway Cup, and to require non-road editors to review road articles when they are nominated for GA. There are many other ways to keep road editors from evolving into a separate species isolated from the general editor corps.

This problem extends to many areas of overrepresented content. For example, did you know that a Donald Duck Comic Book was once cited as prior art by the US Patent Office? Although that is the type of interesting fact that a Wikipedia reader may want to know, it is beyond the keen of the comic book editing crowd.

Wikipedia needs Chemists reading and editing History articles and Architects reading and editing Botany articles. Wikipedia does not need walled gardens.

[EricBarbour]

One way to get around this isolation of USRD would be to require contestants to review non-road articles for GA as a part of the Highway Cup, and to require non-road editors to review road articles when they are nominated for GA. There are many other ways to keep road editors from evolving into a separate species isolated from the general editor corps.

Gentlefolk, this is not Wikipedia and you're using it to propose changes to insane Wikipedia policies. Do it on Wikipedia.

And quite frankly, what you're proposing will never happen anyway. USRD is a mess because it is dominated by people with a chronic inability to cooperate with outsiders. The same problem occurs in hurricanes, Doctor Who, anime and manga, videogames, military history (to a lesser extent), and a few other areas that attract especially ADHD personalities.

This problem is now permanently baked into Wikipedia culture, and it won't go away just because WP:IDONTLIKEIT.

[eagle]

I appreciate the guidance. I tried to give a specific suggestion to show that something could be done, not to advocate its adoption. There are two conflicting basic views: overrepresented content is associated with special breeds of Wikipedia editors who have no desire to edit in other areas and consider themselves as being apart from, and not dependent upon, Wikipedia and the WMF. The other view is that for Wikipedia to survive and build a reputation, its needs quality control and improvement efforts that span all subject areas, even if not welcomed by the editors of the overrepresented content.

The simple answer is that unlike Wikia that hosts a number of descrete projects, Wikipedia gets its traffic and Google Juice from the fact that it has a very broad scope. So, to keep the Google Juice flowing and the reputation on an upward trajectory, Wikipedia will have to find a way to bring everyone under the same happy tent.

Of course, the fact that Wikipedia does not allow the open discussion important topics such as this is not a good sign for the future.