[WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

Tue Nov 28 21:46:29 UTC 2006

Tony wrote:
> Steve Summit wrote:
>> ...As I wrote in my very first contribution as a registered user,
>> during the July 2005 deletion nomination,
>>	...true story: this morning I was idly curious about GNAA,
>>	and was pleased to discover the Wikipedia article, so
>>	that I didn't have to favor GNAA's site with an undeserved
>>	hit.  Trolls they certainly are, and sad it is that
>>	they've become "notable", but like it or not, they are,
>>	and the article is wholly appropriate.
>
> What definition of "notable" are you using?  The only definition of
> that word that matters at Wikipedia is...

It's not so much what definition I am using, but rather, which
one I *was* using in that discussion, last year.  It was clearly
different from the definition (as you say, the only definition)
that matters today.

I do not want to re-open the deletion debate on this mailing list.
Skimming the votes (and unless there was some vote-stacking),
they look pretty convincing, in their way.  I am not trying to
dispute the result; I am merely lamenting it.

The point of my first-person account, in that discussion last year,
was an empirical one: all speculation and armchair philosophy
(about what Wikipedia "ought" to contain) aside, I was a reader
who had come to Wikipedia looking for an answer, and was pleased
to have found it.  I saluted, then, the courage that allowed
Wikipedia to supply that answer, contentious and unpopular though
it may have been.  On this point, I fear the project is the less,
for lacking such courage today.