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March 28, 2024, 03:21:25 PM

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Wikipedia nukes Old Man Murray

Started by Mister Six, March 03, 2011, 01:33:18 PM

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Mister Six

The article on Old Man Murray has been nuked from Wikipedia for notability reasons, much to the ire of RPS.

For those that have never had the pleasure of reading OMM, it's a now defunct comedy website about videogaming but still well worth a read. One of the site's two writers was Portal's Erik Wolpaw.

Isn't wikipedia a crushing bore these days? Such a wonderful idea brought low by a hivemind of small-dicked neckbeards incapable of achieving sexual climax unless they are deleting hours of hard work.

jutl

Quote from: Mister Six on March 03, 2011, 01:33:18 PMIsn't wikipedia a crushing bore these days? Such a wonderful idea brought low by a hivemind of small-dicked neckbeards incapable of achieving sexual climax unless they are deleting hours of hard work.

Wikipedia needs notability guidelines to avoid becoming technically unmanageable due to daft cunts adding pages about useless shit no-one cares about. So while you might argue with the application or exact delineation of the rules, they do have to exist.

Uncle TechTip

Yeah, if there's one thing worse than overzealous WP editors it's people moaning that their particular brand of obscure nonsense has been deemed unworthy of inclusion. As jutl says, there are rules, if they are followed then, whatever - peeking at the discussion page, this would appear so.

What's the origin of the idea that WP is some kind of public playground where everyone can have an article on anything they choose because they deem it significant, even if nobody else does?

A crushing bore... really. Go and set up your own obscure gaming journalism encyclopaedia funded by public donation and edited by thousands for no return at all.

Jemble Fred

Quote from: Uncle TechTip on March 03, 2011, 02:21:52 PM
Go and set up your own obscure gaming journalism encyclopaedia funded by public donation and edited by thousands for no return at all.

Right now there seems to be on average about five different gaming websites aiming to be the ultimate renegade gaming oracle, all set up by loosely-allied self-styled über-gamers, every single day. They're popping up like skiffle groups in the late 50s.

Neil

Obviously they need rules, it's just that they tend to be enforced by power-tripping little cunts with a grudge.  So, a link to CaB is deemed invalid, whereas the British Comedy Guide can have links on every single page going, simply because someone from the site does a lot of editing there.

jutl

Quote from: Neil on March 03, 2011, 02:37:47 PM
Obviously they need rules, it's just that they tend to be enforced by power-tripping little cunts with a grudge.  So, a link to CaB is deemed invalid, whereas the British Comedy Guide can have links on every single page going, simply because someone from the site does a lot of editing there.

The specific example of CaB link on the Morris page is unfortunate, but it comes from the dual nature of this site I think. They mistakenly assumed it is just a fan site, while it is a fan site as well as being an archive. I can see why they don't want links to things which are just fan sites. It's a shame it got so ugly, though

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Uncle TechTip on March 03, 2011, 02:21:52 PM
Yeah, if there's one thing worse than overzealous WP editors....

Looking at the discussion, the RPS story and a few more resources, at the heart of this matter, there's a claim that an editor was abusing their position for personal reasons and circumventing clear guidelines about when there is a conflict of interest – it's a bit more than being just overzealous.

Neil

Quote from: jutl on March 03, 2011, 03:18:29 PM
The specific example of CaB link on the Morris page is unfortunate, but it comes from the dual nature of this site I think. They mistakenly assumed it is just a fan site, while it is a fan site as well as being an archive. I can see why they don't want links to things which are just fan sites. It's a shame it got so ugly, though

Yes, hard not to rise to it, when there's a complete lack of fairness.  There was a whole run-up, too, where I'd spotted that someone had helpfully removed the link to CaB just before Four Lions came out, and then I used a different account to try and get it reinstated.  I went by all of their rules, but you just end up running up against some fucker who has decided he rules the page, and will then leave snotty messages on your user page, and remove your privileges etc. 

Mister Six

Quote from: Uncle TechTip on March 03, 2011, 02:21:52 PM
Yeah, if there's one thing worse than overzealous WP editors it's people moaning that their particular brand of obscure nonsense has been deemed unworthy of inclusion.

It's not a case of it not being deemed worthy of inclusion, it's a case of something which had been deemed worthy of inclusion having that value revoked despite articles about it in Wired, PC Gamer, Kotaku and other publications being shown in its defence, and despite one of its writers going on to become the guy who put the funny in Portal. Old Man Murray was one of the most influential PC gaming and journalism sites of the early 2000s. Saying that it should be deleted now is like saying that one should destroy all evidence of The Frost Report because John Cleese, the Ronnies and David Frost ended up moving on to bigger things.

QuoteAs jutl says, there are rules, if they are followed then, whatever - peeking at the discussion page, this would appear so.

The problem is that those rules are:

A: Too vague, thus exploitable by grudge-bearing cunts like the fella who had the OMM article nuked.
B: Policed by far too many self-righteous twazzocks who are quick to pull the trigger on a deletion even though fixing it is supposed to be the first port of call.
C: Carried out by cliques who use mailing lists to enact petty revenge and political manoeuvring.
D: Overseen by chumps who have no knowledge or experience of half the shit on WP and are therefore in no position to understand whether or not a subject is indeed relevant, notable or historically significant.
E: Rendering the entire exercise pointless. A web-based, infinitely editable encyclopaedia's USP is that it's big enough to contain everything. Yes, including episode guides to Obscure Sitcom X or synopses of Out of Print Book Y. Or, indeed, articles about Classic But No Longer Updated Website Z. Text takes up no space at all in the database, and it's not like having many articles will make it impossible to navigate. Deleting things like the OMM article don't improve Wikipedia for anyone - all they do is make it slightly less useful for the next guy who hears an old-timer recall the happy days of Old Man Murray and wonders what that was all about.

I'm not saying that Wikipedia should be full of articles about Fluffy the Dog or something. But a published, still extant (if no longer updated) website that is cited by journalists all over the world as an inspiration, still quoted and played an important part in the career of a prominent videogame designer? If your rules make it possible for something like that to be deleted then your rules are shit and really need looking at.

QuoteWhat's the origin of the idea that WP is some kind of public playground where everyone can have an article on anything they choose because they deem it significant, even if nobody else does?

Wikipedia definitely used to be more relaxed about this stuff when it started, before the number of self-righteous saddo admins reached critical mass and suddenly it was about being a serious encyclopedia where trivia (even sourced and provable stuff) was no longer allowed, tech-related articles were to be kept to a minimum and long (but sourced) articles about obscure bands would be edited down because said band wasn't as notable as, say, The Beatles. As though notability should affect the size of an article at all.

In any case, in this particular instance it was important. PC Gamer, Kotaku, Wired et al all agree. Some wiki-editing schmuck didn't, though, so OMM lost out.

QuoteA crushing bore... really. Go and set up your own obscure gaming journalism encyclopaedia funded by public donation and edited by thousands for no return at all.

Because I haven't done it I can't criticise it? Suck my cock. And stop being so defensive about what is an increasingly irrelevant, inaccurate, self-obsessed compromised website. Wikipedia could have been something extraordinary, but as usual stupid, insular nerds got in and spoiled it for everyone. Cf. MAME and got knows how many other open-source resources that end up being hidebound by the small-minded and petty.


Uncle TechTip

Quote from: Mister Six on March 03, 2011, 06:13:41 PM
Because I haven't done it I can't criticise it? Suck my cock. And stop being so defensive about what is an increasingly irrelevant, inaccurate, self-obsessed compromised website. Wikipedia could have been something extraordinary

Ok, that didn't come across very well, what I was driving at was, set these kinds of less notable areas to one side and put them in their own wiki. It's dead easy. WP shouldn't have to be a record of every breath ever taken by humans. As a site funded by charity it has to define some limits, resource is not infinite. If you want to change WP, get involved and help.

And you don't think it's still extraordinary? Just look at the info it does have, I don't see how eliminating such subjects makes it any less that what it is.

I do read lots of claims of inaccuracy but never the nature of such inaccuracy. Where is all this incorrect information hiding?

Still Not George

Wikipedia is the victim of its own success. Stephen Colbert was kind of in the right ballpark when he talked about Wikiality - the idea that since everyone uses Wikipedia as their first port of call when researching (although one would hope not their last), that therefore changing Wikipedia changes reality for very large numbers of people. But the upshot of this is that control over Wikipedia - especially control over what goes into Wikipedia - becomes a source of power. The term "little Hitlers" gets thrown around about Wikipedia editors, and the hyperbole doesn't help, but the fact is that Wikipedia editors, especially those sufficiently hooked to become editors, are all to some degree addicted to the idea that their actions have serious influence.

The result? Firstly an inflated sense of self-importance, and secondly, an ever-increasing tendency to mistake any action for good action. After all, since every edit, lock and RfD gives the same power-thrill, why not just keep making them? It becomes a self-reinforcing trait, as the actions of the power-gobblers increasingly stains the more level-headed admins and editors, which leads to them leaving the project, which leads to even MORE of the editors being masturbatory idiots. And the longer Wikipedia continues being influential, the stronger this tendency becomes.

By now, all of the Notability guidelines have been nitpicked and argued over so much that they're virtually meaningless. Verifiability means "whatever an admin says is a trusted source this week." WP:OR is routinely broken by admins and their pets. Editing a wiki page actively monitored by an admin is pretty much automatically a banning offence. Talk pages routinely hold in-depth conversations about edits to be made once some admin gets around to lifting the lock on the page that was put there during a "vandalism attack" which most likely consisted of someone re-adding something they deleted.

In short, Wikipedia has shoved its electronic head right up its digital arse and all that remains is for the whole thing to disappear into the ether with a "FNLWUUURP" sound, along with traces of some dipshit arguing about whether this post should be under "Reception" or "Criticism".

Zetetic

Quote from: Uncle TechTip on March 03, 2011, 08:35:13 PMAs a site funded by charity it has to define some limits, resource is not infinite.
How does this claim work in the case of notability? I've always assumed that the significant resource in hosting Wikipedia is bandwidth (not storage), and obviously low notability articles are unlikely to increase this. (Bandwidth, rather than storage, has at least always been the concern regarding video content.)
(It's also worth noting that the Wikimedia Foundation spends much more on salaries than internet hosting, by a factor between 2 and 3 for the last two years. I can't imagine that this figure would be much affected by notability concerns.)

SNG, and MisterSix seem pretty spot on. I tend to a couple of articles on Wikipedia (I hope in manner far less possessive and aggressive than most, by virtue of my having no special powers and no-one being interested in the articles anyway), but almost any experience editing beyond those can very quickly devolve into frustration.

jutl

Quote from: Zetetic on March 03, 2011, 09:28:43 PM
How does this claim work in the case of notability? I've always assumed that the significant resource in hosting Wikipedia is bandwidth (not storage), and obviously low notability articles are unlikely to increase this.

Mediawiki uses MySQL as a backend, which is not the best performing database out there. So it's not so much storage-limited as memory- and CPU-limited. Queries have to come back in a timely fashion, so you have to keep a handle on article creation rates.

Ambient Sheep

Following all the hoo-hah on the Deletion Review page (click "Show" on the pink strip to see the hoo-hah), the decision's been reversed, and the OMM page is back up.

EDIT: and it now has 46 references and counting! :-)

Mister Six

Quote from: Uncle TechTip on March 03, 2011, 08:35:13 PM
Ok, that didn't come across very well, what I was driving at was, set these kinds of less notable areas to one side and put them in their own wiki. It's dead easy. WP shouldn't have to be a record of every breath ever taken by humans.

You're not helping yourself writing like this. Clearly the deleted article (which has been reinstated and now has 46 references) is notable and of considerably more importance than 'every breath ever taken by humans'. I've explained this several times so disingenuous remarks like that are really quite annoying.

Also, as I said above I'm not in favour of removing the notability requirement, only in tightening up the rules to ensure that notability is better defined and less restrictive. Stopping people from making pages about their dogs or the band they had for three weeks back in school is one thing; stopping people from creating pages about a site that has influenced countless developers and journalists (and kicked off the careers of two celebrated videogame designers) is clearly wrong.

QuoteAs a site funded by charity it has to define some limits, resource is not infinite.

Then it should put limits on the number of pictures, videos and sound samples someone can upload. Those are a much bigger drain on bandwidth and storage space than actual articles, which are - of course - the whole purpose for the site's creation. Does the threesome page really need three amateur drawings of possible threesome positions?

QuoteIf you want to change WP, get involved and help.

That's the thing, though - it's so cliquey that it's not really worth bothering with. I have an account on there that I use on occasion to correct grammar and spelling, or markup errors, but I'll never bother doing any sustained editing or writing on the thing. Why? Because it's not worth putting hours of effort into something that might be deleted or reversed at any point between now and infinity by someone who's just looking for stuff to destroy. Especially when you don't have the connections or influence - or time, because not everyone can patrol wikipedia for hours on end - to fight your case in the other direction.

I mean, look at that 'meatpuppet' schtick: admins, as a matter of course, ignore the opinions of users without significant edits to their name on the assumption that they're being corralled by outsiders. Except, of course, that most people - including those who can weigh in on these discussions with genuine expertise - don't find out about AfD discussions until an outside source like RPS publishes something about it. As a result the only people who can actually weigh in on discussions are the sort of people who trawl through Wikipedia looking for things to 'correct', delete or argue about. Ie: people whose primary body of interest and knowledge is wikipedia itself, not the subject under discussion. It's like having a trial where the judges and lawyers are as clueless about the legal and judicial system as the jury, and trained professionals are only allowed into the gallery.

And that leads to people like me, who might be able to help in situations like this both now and in the future, just not bothering - further cementing the existing hierarchy of jobsworths and petty hair-splitters who define themselves through their association with wikipedia and thus feel the need to act like cock of the fucking walk. Because let's face it: if you're going to dedicate your free time to 'maintaining standards' in wikipedia you are, in all likeliness, going to be a very specific kind of person - the kind of person who doesn't have much else going for them.

Not that this is true of every admin, but it certainly seems to be true of most in my dispiriting wanders through the wiki.

QuoteAnd you don't think it's still extraordinary? Just look at the info it does have, I don't see how eliminating such subjects makes it any less that what it is.

That's because you don't see what it is, or what it could be. What Wikipedia is not is a traditional encyclopaedia that condenses the knowledge of experts on subjects of import and verifies them using equally knowledgeable peers.

What wikipedia is - or what it started as, before insecure nerds went on a drive to gain it the academic R-E-S-P-E-C-T that it will never, ever achieve - is a potential source of information on everything that matters, even if it doesn't matter to you. The internet is fragmented, mutable and unreliable, so what Wikipedia ought to offer, and did offer in the beginning, is a solid rock upon which a glorious, proliferating, mind-blowing labyrinth of information could be built. Somewhere that everyone, from philosophers to engineers, to trainspotters to football fans to video game journalists could go to learn about - but also teach about - their chosen corner of the universe. Far from being pimples on the taut buttocks of wikipedia, articles on obscure shit (not that OMM is that obscure, really) ought to be its raison d'etre. I can find out about Julius Caesar from Encarta, or Britannica, or just from books on the guy. But who's going to tell me the history of Old Man Murray?

And that's the worst thing, I think. Through mismanagement and the worst aspects of human nature Wikipedia's horizons have narrowed and narrowed with each successive year. A once fluid and glorious thing has solidified into a dick-waving contest for cliquey admins who oversee wikipedia not because they believe in the wonder of the web and the importance of information, but because they like enforcing rules and feeling like Kings of the Web - even when those rules and their enforcement reduce the usefulness of the project for future users.

QuoteI do read lots of claims of inaccuracy but never the nature of such inaccuracy. Where is all this incorrect information hiding?

In wikipedia, apparently. Google it up.

Desi Rascal

QuoteDoes the threesome page really need three amateur drawings of possible threesome positions?

No, but i am so tempted to cerlick that link