[WikiEN-l] One Where We Blew It

Mon Sep 5 20:06:44 UTC 2005

I thought people should be aware of the recent creation of a fork off  
of Wikipedia at www.comixpedia.org.

This is a wiki intended for webcomics.

It exists separate from Wikipedia because we blew it big time with  
the webcomics community.

We blew it by creating webcomics inclusion guidelines that were just  
plain stupid, based on Alexa rankings and not on any sort of artistic  
or critical notability. That meant that comics that lots of people  
cited as influences were getting ignored. We blew it with moronic  
votes for deletion debates that drove people who wanted to write  
good, detailed articles on things away by telling them their work was  
"fanwank." We blew it, in short, because of the mob of pissy  
deletionists who dominate VfD, and who have gotten plenty of people  
to call VfD a pit that's hurting Wikipedia.

If you want an example of this, I encourage you to look at the case  
of [[Elf Only Inn]]. Elf Only Inn is a webcomic on a syndicate called  
Keenspot. Keenspot is a business. Keenspot makes its money publishing  
webcomics. They are an online publisher. Being published by Keenspot  
is a big deal, and I would argue should be grounds for notability.

It turns out my argument wasn't the prevailing one on VfD, and the  
article got deleted. What really sticks in my craw, though, is that  
the webcomic inclusion guidelines say that the top twenty comics on  
Keenspace are notable enough for inclusion. What's wrong with this?  
Keenspace is a free webcomic hosting service offered by Keenspot.  
It's also one of Keenspot's main talent pools - they move comics out  
of Keenspace and into the main Keenspot. So, in theory, every comic  
in Keenspace is less notable than any comic in Keenspot.

But following these frankly idiotic guidelines, the comic was  
deleted. It got recreated later, but still - it NEVER should have  
been deleted. The guidelines would also have us delete [[Athena  
Voltaire]], which is on Graphic Smash, a webcomics syndicate that  
doesn't pass the Alexa test of top 200,000 sites. Athena Voltaire was  
nominated for an Eisner award. There is something wrong when a comic  
that can get an Eisner nomination could be deleted. [[Digger]] is  
similarly indisputably notable - except for the fact that it fails  
the Alexa test.

Equally annoying was the deletion of [[Gossamer Commons]], nominated  
with a simple "nn four-month-old webcomic" nomination. A case can be  
made for deletion - the webcomic's creator even made it. But the case  
for its deletion is not as simple as "nn four-month-old webcomic,"  
especially considering that we have an article on the comics' writer  
already, that the comic has attracted considerable praise and  
attention among notable webcomics artists, and that the comic as a  
whole was something of a Big Deal at its launch.

And it's not enough to say, "Oh,  [[Gossamer Commons should have been  
kept." The point is that there shouldn't be endless deletion debates  
on articles where people wave guidelines around that are  
transparently crap. Deletionists should not be running rougshod over  
a substantial group of people who want to contribute on a topic.  
There should not be a webcomics fork born out of frustration about  
how unfriendly we are to people who want to contribute on webcomics.  
A fork born of a desire to have even more detailed coverage than is  
appropriate for Wikipedia, and that wants to supplement Wikipedia's  
coverage? Fine. Neat. That would be cool. But this isn't that. This  
is a fork. This is good people taking their ball and going home,  
because of the toxic culture on VfD.

We blew this one.

-Snowspinner