Welcome!

Hello, Rodomontade, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! TomStar81 (Talk) 23:13, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rod, I'd be happy to answer some questions. --JayHenry (talk) 00:51, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Contact me via Cruzmail -- see if you can guess what my username is. ;) It's fairly obvious. --Dynaflow babble 05:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose I could answer a few questions for a research project. Bare in mind though that as a fellow student I do have schoolwork to deal with. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:25, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome! First I'd ask you guys how you got exposed to/why you started editing on Wikipedia Rodomontade (talk) 01:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure I became aware of the site while looking stuff up on Google during college. Probably 2004. Like many editors, I'm sure my earliest edits were anonymous vandalism, but when I saw that the vandalism never lasted I became intrigued. I started fixing typos when I found them, and about three years ago created an account. I didn't become an active editor for months. When I did it was for three reasons. The first is rather silly: I realized I knew a lot more about hippos than Wikipedia did; it was when I first realized I really had something to contribute. So I started working on all the hippo articles. The second thing was I had a good amount of downtime at my then-job, and it was a fun way to pass the time. The third catalyst was I became aware of deletionism and this effort (some of it well-meaning; much of it not) to destroy human knowledge. I was stunned and aghast -- this may sound silly, but I felt like I was watching men with torches outside the Library of Alexandria. I realized that if I were to have a voice in advocating for the preservation of human knowledge I needed to have an account with a track record because that's just how Wikipedia works. I eventually became involved with the WP:DYK and WP:FAC projects and have stuck around. --JayHenry (talk) 22:38, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• I see. So in your opinion what made people deletionistic? What about yourself made you disagree with them? Rodomontade (talk) 23:51, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've added your talk page to my watchlist, so no need to drop a note with each new question.

So, I think there are four basic types of deletionists (I should note that I don't consider it deletionist to remove unverified or unverifiable information -- I'm talking mostly about people who seek to delete information that's indisputably true):

1. The largest group is teenagers and the uneducated or only nominally educated who have no epistemological framework. They've never thought about knowledge, what it means, what it's value is to society, to humanity. They see a cobweb of Wikipedia guidelines, however, and they want to participate. The rules about notability are fairly vague and so a person with no intellectual underpinning may arbitrarily decide that certain types of knowledge have no value. I suppose in a way it makes them feel important, that they are a gatekeeper for which knowledge has value and which knowledge does not. That's precisely the judgment call that was made when torching the Library of Alexandria, incidentally. (It's of course true that someone with no intellectual underpinning might end up an inclusionist, although the rules are written toward finding reasons to delete, so this is somewhat less likely. Look at WP:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which perversely is a list of what an encyclopedia is not.) These are the sort of people who will see some guideline written with fictional TV show characters in mind and brainlessly seek to apply it to an almanac-style entry about American presidents. Nevermind that it's not an intellectually defensible position to begin with that information about pop-culture has no value.
2. The second largest group is the pathologically destructive. There are very few outlets on the Internet where you can actually destroy something. You can vote on lots of sites, but on very few of these sites can you actually vote something off the island entirely. If you want to go online and destroy something that some people actually care about Wikipedia one of your only outlets. Because of the site's huge audience it's a magnet for a lot of unbalanced and obsessive individuals.
3. Why did the people in charge never stop it? Supposedly Wikipedia is aiming to document "the sum of all human knowledge" or something like this. It's our third group of passive deletionists. One reason the higher-ups never did anything is that deletionism forces fictional content off of the non-profit Wikipedia and on to the for-profit Wikia. I don't think people delete articles seeking direct financial gain, but I think the presence of the for-profit Wikia is the reason that the project's leaders stayed silent.
4. The fourth group is people who sincerely see it as a quality issue. This group is more diverse than the other three. Several years ago nearly every article had an "In popular culture" section. Sadly, for many articles, this consisted primarily of Simpsons and Family Guy references. This was a legitimate quality issue, but the response to purge pop-culture type articles was only a tangentially-related and thus bizarre over-reaction. Some people think there's a perception problem, ie, that Wikipedia is too focused on trivial stuff and not focused enough on important stuff. This is true, actually. But again it's somewhat bizarre to believe that deleting Pokemon articles will improve the Shakespeare articles; an irrelevant solution to a genuine problem. Some are perturbed by, of all things, the Random article button. As the encyclopedia grows, the likelihood of this button taking an editor to a topic of their interest (a subset of articles that does not grow as quickly as the encyclopedia) therefore decreases. These editors have the perception that the encyclopedia is "filling up" with "cruft". This is ridiculous on its face, as there's nothing to "fill" for an online encyclopedia. This is a sort of a mental-analogy failure to think it makes sense to have exclusion criteria comparable to a bound, physical encyclopedia.

Most problems on Wikipedia amount to some variation of these four problems: ignorance, malice, conflict-of-interest, and logical errors (particularly when someone identifies a problem, proposes a solution, but fails to evaluate if the solution actually addresses the problem). That might be most problems in the world, in fact. --JayHenry (talk) 00:53, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, Jay sums it up well, especially the destructive ones. There are editors that seem to value collecting scalps (i.e. deleted articles). It also doesn't help that much of the fiction is not well formatted or referenced, and so can be and is removed fairly commonly. It is quite hard to hunt around for sources sometimes, and compounding this is a mentality that if it isn't googlable then there mustn't be decent references. Trying to explain ot folks that the internet is really the tip of the iceberg over and over is frustrating. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:34, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I first stumbled across wikipedia after the site return a "no articles by this name exists" statement when I was looking for research information on the Magellan class battleships of the Universal Century Gundam (anime) series. After reading through the then current policies and guidelines I decided to create the article for the Magellan class battleships since I had the information needed to do so. After hitting save and coming back in an hour I saw that my work was in fact still on the net, and since I was immediately intrigued and the possibility of creating or improve articles that would be instantly available on the internet I started creating articles for all of the UC era ships. After a helpful conversation with Aqua008 (talk · contribs) I decided to register an account, and have been around ever since. Owing to the ever stricter and in my opinion unjustly bias restrictions on fiction-based articles here, my main focus shifted to the MilHist project since its hard to delete an article with citations and pictures and references from that project due to "notability" issues, and because I have a vested interest in military history, notably battleships. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:35, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• What do you mean by bias against fiction? Is this a common thing on Wikipedia? Rodomontade (talk) 23:51, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I regret to inform that I can not in good faith answer these two questions; having written so many fictional articles that were deleted for various reasons, and having been the victim of non-notification by users who for various reasons never bothered to leave a message, my mind now lacks the capacity to look upon this aspect of wikipedia without applying my bias to what may or may not be a fair and working system. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:18, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Of course. No inconvenience, I understand. So let me ask about your non-fiction work instead. How would you describe your experience with that editing process? Rodomontade (talk) 02:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Frustrating, yet rewarding at the same time. Frustration in the process stems from the time needed to get familiar with material, or if one is already familiar with the material, then the time needed to read through the reliable sources to improve an article. For students like myself, this is hard since the US education system provides little time for us to research independent subjects such as Wikipedia articles in addition to homework and other real life matters that require our attention. Another frustrating process is that Wikipedia is very much an information highway unto itself, thus any effort that one makes to improve an article must be taken with a grain of salt since any attempt to improve an article and introduce it to Wikipedia require that one first match the mood at which Wikipedia currently moves with regards to its policy and guidelines and then attempt to merge into this flow with whatever article you were working on. If one succeeds though then it can be a very rewarding experience, an improved article is an article that can move up, maybe even to featured status, and that helps ones reputation and ones credibility, which in turn opens up doors on Wikipedia, among the more notable doors opened are the doors that can lead to upgraded user rights, such as adminship. I have to my credit something like ten featured articles, and each of those articles I worked on helped open more doors here. In addition, there is the insite one gains with right such articles that allows one to assist others who have not yet walked the path. Along the way, one becomes enlightened to areas that require improvement, and as a result you can suggest new things to help make the process that much easier for others. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:53, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Is there anything you were add to or see definitely from JayHenry's list of deletionists above? Rodomontade (talk) 17:50, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think he missed a major group: the apathetic. There are lots of people who visit and lots who register accounts here, yet for all this the fate of any given article - fiction in particular - is usually decided by less than 10 people. I am therefore of the opinion that most visitors and users just don't care. Ignorance and evil prevail when good men and women do nothing. TomStar81 (Talk) 18:23, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this is an interesting point. I don't know that I'd say the apathetic are deletionist, but the broader point is this: There's a small group of extremely aggressive deletionists who are responsible for an enormous share of what gets deleted. There's an extreme Pareto principle in play, and rather than 20 percent of editors being responsible for 80 percent of deletions, it's more like 2 percent responsible for 98 percent. It's a very disturbing situation. --JayHenry (talk) 03:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For many reasons there can be alot of animosity directed towards inclusionists, hence it is often easier to stay clear. They are often outnumbered in deletion debates and so are more likely to be labelled as badgering opponents, and get involved in revert warring. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:37, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good points. I for one rarely bother with afd because I haven't the stomach for it; one could liken it to being a jury member in a death penalty case, and that weighs on me at the end of the day. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:53, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I had known about WP sometime in 2004-05, and I recall somehow ending up on a talk page having a chuckle on two or more editors arguing heatedly on the evidence for homosexuality of Hitler. I recall finally learning that the 3rd book of the bible was Leviticus (I am an atheist who never went to Scripture in school), which I had never known before, while studying for a game show too, and was infact asked that question but someone beat the buzzer (d'oh!).

I never edited at this time though. Later I was due to go on a game show here - The Einstein Factor - and I selected horned dinosaurs as a special subject, and figured active editing was a better way to learn than passive reading. This got me started...I am also a mad enthusiast on banksias as well as fungi and a birdwatcher. I just fell into it an loved it. Part of the attraction is to create a nexus between most popular books, which are too light and simple, and scientific works. People deserve to be and need to be challenged and extended, this articles on Banksia ericifolia, Amanita phalloides, Sirius (well, I like astronomy too but am not as well-versed in this as others) and the Common Raven are more detailed than you will see in any guidebook or coffeetable book, and this shouldn't be so. Anyway, it is a relaxation with me. I am a psychiatrist and avoided editing work related articles for some time but eventually got involved there as well with those sorts of articles too - less relaxing but very challenging in a good way too.

I agree with others about the way fictional material is treated here, and have generally kept away for the same reasons. This is a long story....

I will add some other stuff later. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:04, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Hey Casliber. I was wondering if you have anything to say about recentism? This is a new concept for me around here. Wikipedia usually has documentation about definitions—sometimes it's kind of dry on the connotations. I appreciate anything you can tell me! ☯ Rodomontade (talk) ☯ 04:27, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

First I want to thank those of you who have responded to my research-based call for help. :-) You've all been so descriptive, and I started a new section here because I wanted you guys to know I would love it if you felt free to engage with one another and not just me. I assume you all have interesting and unique perspectives, and that I won't have some set of questions superior to what a discussion between all of you could yield. For anyone who might be unfamiliar, the goal of an ethnography is more to participate and observe and not necessarily to lead journalistic interviews. In this sense, it would be ideal to edit an article all of you except that the prolific editors here all have such divergent interests ;-)

I really appreciate how thoughtful all of you are. Rodomontade (talk) 03:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed in my own exploration of wikipedia that there is some minor differences in how people believe wikipedia should function. JayHenry above mentioned Deletionism which led me to this article on Wikimedian philosophy. If you look back far enough in my history one of the first conversations I actually chimed in on had to do with the proposed deletion of an article about a Major League Gamer, which was deemed some nerdy dude hanging out in his basement.

Now that article wasn't "fictional" exactly, and I know Wikipedia has standards about notability, but on the ground in the field, how do you all perceive the implementation of policies like notability? Do you perceive a stigma towards documentation of the fictional? Rodomontade (talk) 03:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To me, notability is a blank check for deletionists: if you can make even a circumstantial case that something may be non notable then you are cleared to initiate the procees needed for deletion. Those deletion hawks then circle the article in question and usually agree that it ought to be deleted, and then it is deleted, and once gone its almost impossible to get back. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Salut monsieur l'anthropologist!

I'm thrilled that an anthropologist is interested in attempting to describe the human interactions involved in Wikipedia, thank you, in advance, for your observations, which I trust I shall some day have the pleasure of reading.

At one level, I find Wikipedia to be the ultimate social networking site for the incurably nerdy. However obscure one's interests, there's a real chance one can find others that share them, and even to the point of being able to disagree passionately about details of that obscure topic! ;) Actually, it's unfair to suggest that conflict is inevitable, it's just that it has a way of being the memorable aspect of what goes on. None the less, I have found it amazing how people can express such knowledgable disagreement with one another on topics I'd never heard of until responding to a third opinion request. In the effort to understand such disagreements, I frequently find I learn a whole range of new things, and with the added excitement of all the human interest of the aroused emotions of the two unfortunates who have come to an impasse.

In other places, Wikipedia can be like the ultimate encyclopedia—it talks back! I love butterflies, am fascinated by astronomy and retain a long standing interest in Napoleonic military history. But I am grossly ignorant in all these areas. However, I find that as I read articles to learn from them, I sometime copyedit or add additional references. Sometimes such edits draw the attention of a subject area expert, and I learn even more as my attention is directed to matters I hadn't even thought of considering.

But I am focussing on some of the content production process and how worthwhile an investment of time it is for people of certain personality types. However, another interesting aspect of Wikipedia is the inevitable necessity of political processes. These are particularly interesting for someone like myself to watch, because they bear all the hallmarks of large volunteer societies, which I have studied as involved church-goer. Like churches, the Wiki community is comprised of idealistic individuals contributing skillfully and diligently, no matter that they are unpaid. Such communities lack the usual economic motivations to develop strict accountability hierarchies. Instead, there is more of a, sometimes messy, "peer" review type system—like the text of the encyclopedia itself, refine this appears to be a "work in progress".

I'll be watching discussion and comments on your page with interest, and hope to interact or comment further as time permits. Suffice it to conclude at this point, that I have wondered what Isaac Asimov might think of Wikipedia, given the prominent role of encyclopedists in rescuing the universe, no less, in his science fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series.

Bonne chance, mon ami, au revoir, Alastair Haines (talk) 05:11, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Salut Alastair! Et merci beaucoup. As an editor who describes yourself as predominantly interested in non-fiction (Napoleonic history, astronomy, butterflies), do you have any perspective about with the 'fiction bias' described by some so far? Chime in above. Rodomontade (talk) 17:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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I find it sort of funny in an ironic way that after all the talk of deletions here on the talk page an anti-deletion template is now a part of your user page. Did you have bad experience at afd, or was it the sum of the discussions on the matter here that prompted its addition? TomStar81 (Talk) 21:48, 15 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Haha—Yeah it definitely does have its humorous aspect. I've been watching AfD talks for a few days now, and I got particularly sucked into Jim Cramer's appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (which by the way is totally awesome if you guys want to help edit). It was interesting taking part in a conversation about the notability of a media event, because it's so subjective. Lots of people were saying things like, 'This is just an overblown media nothing', etc. I think I appreciate some aspects of Deletionist policy, but I do feel like I've witnessed a lot of 'I don't like it' and 'crystal ball'. I guess you would say I have a loose philosophy of deletion. Rodomontade (talk) 23:04, 15 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

At the same time, I wonder if AfD doesn't play a significant role in drawing attention to new articles. A wikidarwinist would probably say that AfD is where some articles take off and others die on the chopping block? Rodomontade (talk) 23:04, 15 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For new articles CsD does a better job since its mostly tweaked for the new articles. Afd is for articles that have surivied for a few hours on wiki, yet it can not be denied that afd is where many articles added to the wiki go to die. Those few fortuitous enough to survive the process are usually improved enough during the afd to remain here, though some that survive round one die in later rounds at afd. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:37, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am unfamiliar with this—what is CsD? Rodomontade (talk) 14:42, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

CsD is short for Criteria for Speedy Deletion. The term itself is applied to situations in which the normal afd avenue is bypassed bacuase the article in question is judged to be in open violation of at least one or wikipedia's policies or rules or guidleines or other material of a legal or official status. CSD, or "speedy deletion", forms the first line of defense against articles added to wikipedia that are deemed to have no use what so ever to the encyclopedia. TomStar81 (Talk) 17:14, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh—haha, so excuse my humorous example, but CsD is for articles like, "My Gym Teacher is Gay" for instance? Rodomontade (talk) 18:09, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. Anything of that nature is netted by so called "recent change patrollers" (Users who repeatedly refrash the list of recent changes to look for vandalism) and tagged for admins so we can remove them, hence the comment about time: if an iffy article survives a few hours on wiki then it may get afd'd rather than csd'd but the result is almost always the same: deleted. If you want we can look at Wikipedia:Template_messages/Deletion#Speedy_deletion to get a better idea of what get deleted through csd. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:28, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Heya! Did you see the Daily Show tonight? It corresponded directly with the Roger Cohen piece you added earlier. Thought it was amusing and ironic. =) DP76764 (Talk) 03:25, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Ha—I'm on the West Coast actually. New one hasn't even aired here yet (laughs) ☯ Rodomontade (talk) ☯ 03:51, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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