On 11/6/03 8:37 AM, "Gareth Owen" <wiki(a)gwowen.freeserve.co.uk> wrote: My words are not particularly warm and my principles are not at all fuzzy. Well, I do. Not a very illuminating discussion. That content should be moved to sep11. But if we are to bandy about claims of disingenuousness, I would say it's disingenuous to imply that I was defending the Alvarado article out of a list of 26 entries. Let me pick the second one from that list, and repeat it here in full: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Edward_Bowman,_Jr. Shawn Edward Bowman, Jr. (19XX-September 11, 2001) was a computer specialist and active Eagle Scout. Born and raised in Staten Island, he worked as an information specialist in the human resources department of Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center. He died at age 28 in the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack in the destruction of the World Trade Center. He was survived by his then-pregnant wife Jennifer and his son, Liam (age 2). His son Jack Shawn was born January 2002. He was an Eagle Scout in Troop 43, Staten Island. He was a member of the staff of Camp Aquehonga for 5 years. He worked in various positions, working as the Camp Services Director in 1992. In the summer of 2002, Camp Aquehonga, after raising over $15,000, rebuilt the campfire area as the Shawn E. Bowman, Jr. Ampitheatre. Tributes and Comments See September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Casualties. External Links Shawn E. Bowman, Jr. Ampitheatre ---- and the third: ---- Pamela Boyce (19XX-September 11, 2001) was the assistant vice president of accounting for Carr Futures, Inc. She died at age 43 in the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack in the destruction of the World Trade Center. She was at work in her office on the 92nd floor of Tower One when it was struck by American Airlines Flight 11. She was survived by her life partner of 6 1/2 years, Catherine Anello, and a sister. After Pamela's death, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Catherine remembered conversations they had about death. Pamela said, "Don't mourn my death; celebrate my life. I'm not afraid to die, because where I'm going is beautiful." Pamela lived in Brooklyn, and was a competitive disco dancer. Tributes and Comments ---- and the 19th: --- John Joseph Murray was the founder of Putt for Progress? and a broker in New York City. He was an honor student at Salesianum? and had outstanding character. He was an excellent athlete, playing baseball, basketball, lacrosse, hockey and golf. He was also a strong swimmer, serving as a Long Island lifeguard, often leading dangerous ocean rescues. Following graduation from Boston College in 1990, John began a career as a broker for Cantor Fitzgerald. In 1997, he launched "Putt for Progress," a foundation devoted to raising money for scleroderma research. Following his marriage to Rory Owens, to whom he proposed while jogging across the Brooklyn Bridge, they relocated to the London offices of Cantor Fitzgerald for some time before returning to New York. He was killed in the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack while working in the World Trade Center. He was survived by his wife, their daughter Alyson Rose, born April 2001, and his parents. Tributes and Comments ---- and the 25th: ---- Daniel Thomas Suhr ( -September 11, 2001) was a New York City firefighter. He lived in Nesconset, NY?, and was a member of Engine Company 216 in Williamsburg?. He was killed at age 37 in the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack. He was struck and killed by a falling body outside the south tower of the World Trade Center. Seven firefighters who otherwise would have gone into the tower, including four from his company, came to his aid. Father Mychal F. Judge delivered last rites at the scene; a popular story is that Judge was killed while delivering the last rites, but he was killed later. Suhr was survived by his wife Nancy Suhr. Tributes and comments

Gareth Owen wrote: In wikipedia, I would say 'yes, unquestionably, absolutely'. Wiki Is Not Paper. In wikipedia 1.0 for print/dvd, etc., then we will face constraints that we don't face on wikipedia proper. I wouldn't have much interest in working on such an article, but I see absolutely no problem with it. O.k., there's mine. :-) But I hope that further discussion is not really worthless. --Jimbo

On 11/6/03 11:22 AM, "Gareth Owen" <wiki(a)gwowen.freeserve.co.uk> wrote: The great thing about Wikipedia is that you can IGNORE the entry. It causes you no harm and kills no trees. Moreover, there is now a permanent memorial to this "nonentity". 100 years from now people may come to Wikipedia wondering who the ampitheatre is named for. There is strong interest, and will likely continue to be for generations, in the gay victims of September 11. Their deaths and the succeeding lives of their partners--treated very differently from the heterosexual partners of victims-- are political issues with broad repercussions. Funny, how in your one line description of Mr. Murray, "founder of a sclerodema charity" became "golfing charity worker". I guess Jimbo Wales is a "volunteer website contributor". Not very interesting. And George Bush is a "federal employee". I mean, can't you at least concede that at least John Joseph Murray did something "important"? The entry needs editing for style, but it's not an unreasonable subject, even without the September 11 connection.

Gareth Owen wrote: But if the answer is "no" what does that prove? He *didn't* survive 9/11, and that's what makes him sufficiently noteworthy for someone to have bothered to write the entry in the first place. That's why he's there, right? I mean, I don't understand the point of the hypothetical. You might as well ask "Would you push for having an article about Hitler if he had remained an obscure and failed artist?" Well, no, I suppose we wouldn't, but, uh, he didn't stay an artist, so he's apparently of enough interest for someone to bother writing an article about him. --Jimbo

Gareth Owen wrote: Which in turn means that he does, in fact, have a claim to fame, and should be included, right? Well, I understand where you're coming from here, although I think that's a bit unfair to Cunc. We started sep11.wikipedia.org in an effort to resolve the problem of 'memorials' instead of article. And Cunc was basically supportive of that idea, as I recall. My answer to all of these would hinge on confirmability by other contributors. I personally find the history of ordinary people quite interesting, particularly if placed in the context of a time. Are there newspaper articles about your grandfather? Anything that we could easily verify? *nod* But if your point is that we can't have articles about all those people, I'd say that we're arguing then about a non-existent problem, because no one is trying to add those articles, are they? Think along the lines of Studs Terkel's _Hard Times_, a book about ordinary people during the great depression, oral histories. The people in the book are, arguably, not noteworthy. But reading about them is valuable because they took part in an important time and event (the U.S. Great Depression of the 1930s). --Jimbo

Jimmy Wales wrote: My point about this is that there are plenty of people who have died in noteworthy events. In fact, there are literally millions of them. I strongly oppose one-sentence stub entires reading: "Blah blah was an eagle scout who died in the Sep. 11 attacks." "Blah blah was a plumber who died in the Holocaust." "Blah blah was a shoe salesman who died in WW2." "Blah blah was a computer programmer who died in the Vietnam war." "Blah blah was a farmer who died in the Khmer Rouge genocide." There is plenty of verifiable material to import literally millions of such stubs. There's WW2 combat casualty information available from the US government, for one. If we have all these articles though, Wikipedia will be a joke. -Mark

On 11/6/03 11:46 AM, "Gareth Owen" <wiki(a)gwowen.freeserve.co.uk> wrote: I'd say he's the "founder of Wikipedia, the largest copylefted reference in the world." If someone had bothered to write newspaper articles about him, and someone else had added the entry to Wikipedia, then yes. I've created at least one equivalent entry (with no Sep-11 connection) before. I probably wouldn't have bothered to add the entry unless I knew the guy.

Rick wrote: Is your opinion the same as Gareth's that further discussion is worthless? I hope not, and I hope he'll change his mind about that, too. I'm interested in hearing about just *why* you think such articles "have no place on Wikipedia". What's the harm? How does it negatively impact us? I think the benefits are easily identifiable -- these are topics that are of ongoing interest to people, they have historical relevance in the long run, wiki is not paper so they don't hurt anything, and so on. But the costs are harder for me to identify. These aren't appearing on the front page. They will only been seen by people who are looking for them. Given the mechanics of VfD, it's a lot more work to delete them than to just ignore them or (better) throw in a couple more lines to improve them. --Jimbo

This is from Daniel Quinlan (quinlan(a)pathname.com), not me. ---------------------------------------------------- Before I make a few comments, this should be discussed on the talk page. I don't subscribe to the lists because I already get too much email and I'd rather work on articles and help try to make Wikipedia valuable (which also includes collaborative editing work on VfD and other pages outside of the article space). Deletion is a tool like any other. I don't believe anyone who has voted on VfD to "delete" an article has proposed that *any* bad article be deleted. A few people vote to keep articles nearly 100% of the time, but since there aren't too many in comparison to everyone else, the strategy seems to be to push to end deletion. I suspect they equate deletion with censorship or believe that all information is worthwhile, but before I go too deeply into anti-deletionism, I'd rather talk about why deletion is a valuable tool. Let's talk about bad articles. In evolution, maybe we'd call them unfit individuals. For any Wikipedia article, there are two basic attributes that make it: (1) the title and (2) the content. How do we improve bad articles? 1. we rewrite them (original content becomes history) 2. we redirect them (original title becomes secondary) 3. we delete them (both title and content are destroyed) I'd hate to see one of our most basic tools removed. Using redirection instead of deletion can never fix a POV title, a vandalism title, etc. When someone creates 17 redirects to their own personal article and makes it impossible to find someone with a similar name, redirection can't fix that either. Deletion takes bad articles off of the radar of search engines and that's a good thing. And yes, it destroys really bad content too and that's a good thing. I suspect much of the growing distress of some people over deletion is that as Wikipedia grows, the frequency with which new articles need to be deleted may be increasing, but I don't stress about it. No medium is perfect. There are more people on the internet, more people finding Wikipedia, and making contributions, etc. That has really helped improve Wikipedia and if it side-effect is that more vandals and non-helpful people find us, I think we've dealt with it pretty well. Deletion also exerts a lot of evolutionary pressure on editors. If you write a really inappropriate unencyclopedic article (like "politician So-and-so is evil"), it might be deleted. A lot of horrible articles are rewritten regularly and removed from VfD because there's pressure to delete them. That's good just like having polar bears eat cute baby seals is good. If the content is worthwhile it will come back and it can still be easily undeleted (actually, much more easily than it can be deleted, I helped write both guidelines). Of course, vandals generally don't ask to have their articles undeleted. :-) - Daniel P.S. Please feel free to help with my redirect fix-up project: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump#Fixing_broken_links_… http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Quinlan/redirects ________________________________________________________________________ Want to chat instantly with your online friends? Get the FREE Yahoo! Messenger http://mail.messenger.yahoo.co.uk

Rick wrote: Well, for example, the discussion might clarify for you that no one is advocating that _devotionals_ be included. Is this a specific reference, or a straw man? --Jimbo

On 6 Nov 2003, Gareth Owen wrote: I'm puzzled about this entire discussion. I thought that this collection of biographies of all of the 9/11 victims was one of the jewells in the crown of Wikipedia? Geoff

I included Talossan language on VfD because the article, as written, was nonsense. It has since been modified to make it a legitimate topic. VfD frequently serves such a useful purpose. Putting the title on "Articles needing attention" is useless, because nothing EVER gets fixed that's on that page. RickK Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com> wrote: I"Talossan language" -- a perfectly legitimate topic --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard

Jimmy Wales wrote: I agree. Wikipedia must be well carpeted, if we judge it by the opportunites that we have for people to sweep things under them :-) This line of inquiry begs the question, "How do we make 'Articles needing attention' more functional?" That list does just keep getting longer. Also if I follow a link from there, I'm often left wondering whether it has already been fixed, or maybe it shouldn't have been on that list in the first place. Encouraging people to go there and take time to actually deal with an article of their choice could bring the length of the list down. We perhaps need to update the page that advises newbies about what they can do to contribute so that they can easily go to "Articles needing attention" Ec

I have no problem with the article as it currently exists. At the time that I listed it on VfD, it basically said that it was the language of a nonexistant place created by somebody who the writer said might have been Canadian. The author himself (or herself) didn't even know who created the language, so why put in speculation? There was no mention at the time that it was a conlang, there was no mention that it was anything other than somebody's made up language for a made up place. VfD has served a useful purpose, by pointing out that this article needed work, something that would not have happened if it was listed on "Articles needing attention". RickK Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com> wrote: Rick wrote: There is no reason for a rule which says that all articles have to be either useful or deleted, which is what you're implying. Take for example "Talossan language" which you listed on VfD. This article is a stub, and I guess you're saying that it should be either improved right away or deleted. I think that's mistaken. The most important thing to remember is that if left there, it *doesn't hurt anything*. And since, as it turns out, this is a known topic that several other people have heard about, there's a fair change that someone will stumble on the article at some point and find it useful, even if it stays just the way it is. --Jimbo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard

Delirium wrote: Let's do remember, though, that mass-importing raises a lot of additional issues that are relevant here. One of the checks and balances against triviality is "can it be confirmed?" Another important one is "has anyone bothered to write about it?" Mass-imports defeat this latter check, and so are subject to a higher degree of scrutiny than hand-edited entries. --Jimbo

Let's do remember, though, that mass-importing raises a lot of additional issues that are relevant here. One of the checks and balances against triviality is "can it be confirmed?" Another important one is "has anyone bothered to write about it?" Mass-imports defeat this latter check, and so are subject to a higher degree of scrutiny than hand-edited entries. --Jimbo That is the essence of what is wrong with the Rambot census junk Fred

I stronly object to that information as junk. It is extremely useful, and deserves to be in the Wikipedia, just as much as information about any other location in the world. RickK, the one that's being attacked as a deletionist Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote: Let's do remember, though, that mass-importing raises a lot of additional issues that are relevant here. One of the checks and balances against triviality is "can it be confirmed?" Another important one is "has anyone bothered to write about it?" Mass-imports defeat this latter check, and so are subject to a higher degree of scrutiny than hand-edited entries. --Jimbo That is the essence of what is wrong with the Rambot census junk Fred _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard

Jake Nelson wrote: I suppose that such an option wouldn't hurt anything. I do support keeping these pages, and I'm clearly not alone in that view. Nevertheless, they are constantly mentioned by some of the deletionists as things that should go. That alone makes us inclusionists uncomfortable and suspicious about the other side's motives. Ec

Rick wrote: Yes, I agree. For the purposes of narrowing this discussion and clarifying where everyone stands, I think we should acknowledge that nearly everyone (and I almost wrote 'everyone') agrees that whatever the standards for robot-entries ought to be, it's a different matter than hand-entries. Robot entries need to be held to a higher standard than hand-entries. --Jimbo

It was generally agreed by everyone who responded to this post except for you that Rambot's stuff was very good. Fred

I wrote: In the spirit of concrete examples, does anyone have objections to the automated importing of verifiable stubs (ranging from one sentence to 5 sentences) on the following 160,000 people? http://www.accessgenealogy.com/worldwar/ -Mark