[WikiEN-l] help me

Wed May 19 11:23:27 UTC 2004

A piece of advice - don't be rude to people. It gets their backs up. Phrases that include "moron" should be avoided. 

I understand how you feel I really do. The first page I created was listed on VfD (although it was not deleted) It feels like a slap in the face, all your hard work, and they want to delete it. It's not a nice feeling but I survived as did many others. 

Lot's of people have suggested a move to wikibooks. If you re read the page it reads like the page of a textbook, so IMO wikibooks is perfect. Note that wikibooks is a sister project of wikipedia set up to cater for the sort of things that are considered "un encyclopedic" on wikipedia. I think you will be much more warmly welcomed there (Actually I know it, I'm an admin there).Check out this page http://wikibooks.org/wiki/IT_bookshelf as you can see there is lot's of work to do, and help out wherever you want.

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric B. Rakim [mailto:eric_b_and_rakim at hotmail.com] 
Sent: 19 May 2004 11:44
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

Dear mailing list readers,

I don't know if this is the proper place to turn for
help. If it isn't, then please tell me because the matter is
urgent. Wikipedia is a fine resource and contains very much
useful information. Reading Wikipedia is fun, and every day
since I discovered it I've learnt a thing or two by reading
it. But its coverage about programming and computer software
is a little thin I think. Well, I'm quite knowledgeable when
it comes to computer related topics and I love to write. So,
therefore I took it upon me to fix this defiancy.

Big mistake it seems, some people didn't like that at all.

Especially not a user by the name RickK, who a few minutes
after I had written an initial version of "XFree86 logfile"
added it to a page "Votes for Deletion" on which he is
currently holding a vote whether that page should be destroyed
or not. Naturally, I protested strongly, because I couldn't
and still cannot understand why he wants to delete that
page. He didn't try to communicate with me and just wrote
"Huh?" and then when I asked him why he thought that that
page should be deleted he answered "It isn't discussing
anything encyclopedic. I THINK it describes a file format,
but I'm not really sure."

>From that it became obvious to me that he hadn't even read
the article because it should be pretty damn obvious to
anyone that an article titled "XFree86 logfile" is about the
XFree86 logfile. And that I told him that, whereafter he
listed all other six articles I had written:

glDrawElements, glVertexPointer, glDrawArrays, glEnable,
GL_QUADS, fbdevhw

And wrote: "I'll ask again. Do we really want articles on
subroutines?" Which is really funny since only the four
first documents subroutines.

Then quite a few other users also said that they wanted
those articles destroyed. No reasons where given except for
pointless platitudes like "not encyclopedia material" and
"Wikipedia is not (should not be) an API reference".

I tryid arguing and, no offense intened, but it was totally
wasted time. Those functions are the essential cornerstones
for modern 3d graphics.. Have to realize that some people
just have a very different view of things than me. However,
I refuse to accept that Wikipedia in general would have such
a twisted view of things because then there wouldn't be
250,000+ articles here.

Then I wrote the beginning of an article named pcidata,
which is a X module for displaying PCI information. Two
minutes after it was submitted a user named Beelzebubs wrote
"Speedy deletion" on it and a minute later it was destroyed
by DavidWBrooks. It made me quite angry because I had no way
whatsoever to even object. And from looking at their
respective user pages I deducted that none of them is
interested in Linux and therefore (probably) has no idea
what pcidata is.

It seems like Wikipedia really isn't a very newbie friendly
page. Well, I can't exclude UtherSRG's very friendly
message on my talk page. Is this some kind of hazing or are
regular users treated like this too? Seems like a calculated
move - tease the new guy til they fight back and then accuse
them. Especially this little gem by the same user that also
accused me of being rude:

"But I'd recommend you leave listing them to users with good
contribution records, and the same with discussing this
one. AFAIK all the many articles you have written so far
have been listed for deletion and will be deleted as
unencyclopedic. IMO you aren't entitled to vote on
VfD. Sorry." Andrewa....

I need help. Because I don't know what I should do. Either
it is so that my work and expertise isn't appreciated or
even accepted by Wikipedia. If so, I will leave peacefully
and not return. If not so, I would expect an apology from
the perpetrators and that my work is not destroyed.

//Björn (aka. Eric B. and Rakim)

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