Re: Wikipedia: Conlang articles in danger

Hallo!

And Rosta wrote:

> > [list of endangered Wikipedia articles snup]
>
> I read the Brithenig discussion, & the arrogance & ignorance of some of the
> pro-deletion contributors made me so angry that it made me want to wash my
> hands of the wikipedia project (in the sense of it receiving my goodwill &
> wholly passive support), if the structure of the project is such that
> articles can be vulnerable to the intervention of people like these.
Understandable.

>        One
> of the joys of the internet is that it is free from the deadening effects
> of adherence to cultural norms, received wisdoms, orthodoxies and so forth.
> I had supposed that wikipedia was constructed in a similar spirit, but
> with the added element of the public volunteering their expertise for
> the project, so as to ensure that the content of articles is correct,
> true and fair. But if the project is supposed to also be an arbiter of
> what is 'important' -- well, I considered that to the job of the
> wikipedia *user*; I want the decision about what is important to be
> made by me, when choosing which articles to read, not made by the
> prejudices of particular wikipedia activists, nor even by the aggregated
> prejudices of the rest of society.
It is of course regrettable that articles are culled out of the
Wikipedia because they are not "of general interest", though one
must also see that harddisk space costs money - so there isn't
infinite room in the Wikipedia.  Still, many of the deletion
proposals are short-sighted and unfair.

> To sum up, the very fact that wikipedia can entertain the sort of crap
> spouted by the deletionists makes me think that the wikipedia project
> is bled of much of its value, and hence that battles over the inclusion
> of this or that conlang are not worth fighting.
This is indeed disappointing.  Especially given the fact that there
are indeed loads of stuff in the Wikipedia that are probably of
little interest to the general public yet rather verbose.  An example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigwag

I mean, how many people care about the history and the inner workings
of this particular kind of railroad crossing signal?  Yet, it was
"Today's featured article" a few months ago.  (Otherwise, I would
never have become aware of it.)  Who is to decide what is "relevant"
and what is not?  I also briefly considered requesting the article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_music

to be deleted because it defines a common super-category of two
styles of music (progressive house and progressive rock) which have
absolutely nothing in common except the adjective "progressive"
in their designation.  So far, I didn't; alternatively, I considered
rewriting it completely to point out that the two music styles
in question have nothing to do with each other.  But so far, I did
nothing about it and have no concrete plans to do anything about it.

Henrik Theiling wrote:

> I have the same problems wrt. the spirits of that project concerning
> only the content of some articles.  Even if all articles are kept and
> nothing is ever deleted, some are still so much poisoned with, hmm,
> the current common spirit/attitude/opinion or the biased opion of the
> most active Wiki editors in that area, that it is impossible to stand
> reading those articles.
Very true.  Though what is "impossible to stand reading" is of course
subjective.

>       And further I then come to the same
> conclusion: it's futile editing -- two seconds after my edit someone
> else will 'correct' may corrections.
>
> But how to fix these problems?  Disallowing deletion does not help
> much.  OTOH, it is definitely needed to prevent total garbage.
I have no idea how to solve that problem either.

Greetings,

Jörg.