...And now they want the Oolite entry removed from Wikipedia

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 6:54 am

Rxke wrote:
People are voting to keep it. :D

I should have pointed this out earlier, but remember that Wikipedia discussions are not ballots. Joining up to “vote” keep would not be helpful, unless you have evidence of notability to add.

Rxke · Post by **Rxke** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 7:04 am

No, I know. But the notability seems to be established thanks to the searchwork of all the nice people who came up with reviews etc.

Adding a "me,too" to the discussion wouldn't be helpful at this point IMHO

TGHC · Post by **TGHC** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 7:37 am

Can/Do they measure the hits on the Wiki, if so we can help there.

BTW is it just the Oolite section of the Elite wiki, that is under threat?

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 8:29 am

TGHC wrote:
Can/Do they measure the hits on the Wiki, if so we can help there.

No. Weight of numbers is not helpful.

TGHC wrote:
BTW is it just the Oolite section of the Elite wiki, that is under threat?

It is the Oolite page on Wikipedia. Elite Wiki is not affected. :-)

Frame · Post by **Frame** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:46 pm

On a side onte, one should think people has better things to do, than recommending wikipedia entries for deletion...

That marty goldberg IMO seems hell bend on getting rid of anything Oolite related on wikipedia... would be interresting to find out if some of us pissed him off in the past, here on this bb..

Btw he does not have to be a member to read the articles..

JohnnyBoy · Post by **JohnnyBoy** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 2:03 pm

Frame wrote:
On a side onte, one should think people has better things to do, than recommending wikipedia entries for deletion...

I'm with you on that one Frame. What's the story behind this sudden obsession with deleting stuff? Are the Wikipedia servers short of HD space?

Captain Hesperus · Post by **Captain Hesperus** » Fri Aug 08, 2008 9:16 pm

JohnnyBoy wrote:
Frame wrote:
On a side onte, one should think people has better things to do, than recommending wikipedia entries for deletion...
I'm with you on that one Frame. What's the story behind this sudden obsession with deleting stuff? Are the Wikipedia servers short of HD space?

No, they've just had a glut of people who enjoy exerting their 'power'.
Most likely, the editor tried Oolite, got vaped on his first Milk Run, couldn't figure how to hack the savefile and had a paddy....

Captain Hesperus
"Meeow! Kitty got claws..."

JohnnyBoy · Post by **JohnnyBoy** » Fri Aug 08, 2008 9:25 pm

Captain Hesperus wrote:
No, they've just had a glut of people who enjoy exerting their 'power'.

Good grief. So much for the 'democratisation of the web'....

Captain Hesperus · Post by **Captain Hesperus** » Fri Aug 08, 2008 11:02 pm

JohnnyBoy wrote:
Captain Hesperus wrote:
No, they've just had a glut of people who enjoy exerting their 'power'.
Good grief. So much for the 'democratisation of the web'....

Oh, there is democracy. The whole 'One Man, One Vote' thing. It's just They are the Men and They have the Votes.....

Captain Hesperus
....not to be mistaken for a bitter cynic.

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Fri Aug 08, 2008 11:14 pm

"one man, one vote"

"I am that man, this is my vote" (Mugabe's approach to elections)

Post by **Cmdr James** » Fri Aug 08, 2008 11:23 pm

Wikipedia isnt meant to be a democracy. It is meant to follow its rules regardless of the populatity. Of course it isnt perfect, and there are a lot of people who think the rules are not ideal. But I dont think its fair to complain that wikipedia isnt a democrac, because it isnt. Deliberately so.

They do have votes on things like AfD, but it is never too clear to me how they are counted. They seem to be debates rather than strict votes.

Because it is largely voluntary, wikipedia tends to have waves of changes. One guy decides to clean up articles about emulators, and hundreds of game pages get changed according to his interpretation of the rules. The he goes off and does something else, and the rules are not enforced for ages, until someone else gets a bee in their bonnet and changes things again.

I think its a shame that oolite may be (permanently?) removed from the elite article on wikipedia, but I dont think its worth getting upset over. Largely, I think its a shame as it is one of the very few retro games that you can still play in a form very similar to the original without emulation.

JohnnyBoy · Post by **JohnnyBoy** » Fri Aug 08, 2008 11:40 pm

You're absolutely right, Cmdr James. I didn't mean it literally.

I'm referring to the hype from the mid-90s which talked about the internet "revolution" in which those people who controlled the media from their ivory towers would be completely circumvented because the power to create, edit and publish would be put into the hands of the masses of ordinary 'netizens', blah, blah, blah....

But alas, this Wikipedia episode seems to indicate that a different kind of self-appointed elite is trying to control the flow of information...

Humans, eh?

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Fri Aug 08, 2008 11:48 pm

Cmdr James wrote:
They do have votes on things like AfD, but it is never too clear to me how they are counted. They seem to be debates rather than strict votes.

After at least five days have passed and debate has died down, an admin looks at the Article for Deletion entry and judges whether there is a “rough consensus” among participating editors that the article should be deleted.

In this case, there does not seem to be a consensus to that effect, and I have no reason to expect this particular article to be treated unfairly.

Being nominated for deletion and surviving is a good thing; it validates that the article is at least somewhat relevant to its topic and the topic is notable. (The original nominator is absolutely right in that there are many tiny game projects that are not notable.) It can also act a catalyst for improvement on the article which has, to some extent, been the case here.

A democratization of the net (which doesn’t necessarily mean a proportional election system) means a democratic approach to content selection as well as to content creation. This means that people may suggest deletions you don’t agree with. It also means that said people are not the sole arbiters, and their opinions can be contested. While Wikipedia is far from perfect, its processes seem to work reasonably well as long as people aren’t going out of their way to abuse them. One might disagree with particular policies and guidelines, and they’re definitely applied differently by different wikiprojects, but that’s the downside of a decentralized and democraticish system. A central dictatorship is always more efficient and even-handed, as long as all the people in power are clones of you.

polyh · Post by **polyh** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 1:20 am

As much as I like wikipedia as an idea, as much I hate many of the participants. Rewriting completely speculative articles to make them at least close to something reasonable gets you an revert because you are not citing any sources. You can't cite reliable sources when speculating, because there aren't any. But you could use some common sense. Specifically I am talking about the rumor that the upcoming Porsche Panamera would get the Carrera GTs V10. It was obvious from the first second that the car would not receive the V10. It would ruin the balance of a front engined four-seater, it lacks torque for such a heavy car, it's the exact opposite of cheap, it doesn't comply with todays emission regulations, fitting it to a front engined car would require further development over the Cayenne engiens (exhaust, intake, cooling, behaviour under lateral acceleration) and the list goes on and on and on. But they don't care. All they care about are rules and the strict use of them. Occasionally nobody sees what you've wrote in time and even complete BS will stay untouched (like those Panamera articles). May be I am pissed off because some fourteen year old deleted my well written contribution and started patronizing me, but it is also possible that there is something deeply wrong with wikipedia. And may be that's why one of the founders left. The one with money, to be precise. Reminds me of Bell and Braben. Humans, eh?

Regarding the Oolite article: I don't think it will be deleted. With all the added links to major magazines (web and with Macworld even print) it's relevancy is well established.

JohnnyBoy · Post by **JohnnyBoy** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 8:07 am

Ahruman wrote:
A democratization of the net (which doesn’t necessarily mean a proportional election system) means a democratic approach to content selection as well as to content creation. This means that people may suggest deletions you don’t agree with.

Very well expressed, Ahruman. But unless the article is incorrect or a blatent advertisement, why delete at all? A while back, there was a Wikipedia article about the suburb of the town that I live in. Then suddenly, it was deleted because somebody decided that it wasn't important enough. Well, publishing that article certainly wasn't wasting any paper - so why couldn't it stay there?

To me, a 'democratic approach' means that I'm informed when an election is taking place so that I get a chance to cast my vote. Does Wikipedia expect me to devote a slice of my time to regularly checking that certain articles are still in existence, just in case the 'democracy' has decided to delete them?

I don't understand what is happening here. Are people using the number of citations to measure relevance as well as accuracy? That doesn't seem logical, Captain.