Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:45, 17 April 2010

Welcome!

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

• The five pillars of Misplaced Pages
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Manual of Style

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 Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Laurinavicius (talk) 15:19, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi to you too!

Re Notability of individual band members

Hello Active Banana. With all due respect, when a newly registered user suddenly blanks and redirects several related articles at once, it's usually labelled as vandalism... which I stopped short of doing myself. Those were major changes you made, and most major changes as such, are expected to be the result of discussion and consensus to move forward with a new plan. Though I agree with you that those articles are in desperate need of references, I strongly disagree with your claim that the subjects aren't notable. We are not just talking about any run-of-the-mill bar-band here, we are talking about The Tragically Hip, and I severely doubt there would be any shortage of source material available, if one would just take time to Google it up. If you disagree, and still feel that you have a better plan, I'd highly recommend that you start a discussion thread either on the talk pages of those articles, or centrally on the main Hip-article talk page. You may also wish to go a step further and take those articles to AfD, which would form a solid consensus through discussion over a seven day period. I personally would not support such an AfD, but would happily agree with its final decision, whatever that might be. Without consensus to make such drastic changes however, I can only view page blanking as abusive editing. I hope this addresses your questions. Have yourself a great day, and welcome to Misplaced Pages :) -- WikHead (talk) 20:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I've already addressed your further comments above. Please take major changes as such, to the proper discussion venue. Regards -- WikHead (talk) 23:40, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

February 2010

Welcome to Misplaced Pages. The recent edit you made to Landshark has been reverted, as it appears to have removed content from the page without explanation. Use the sandbox for testing; if you believe the edit was constructive, please ensure that you provide an informative edit summary. You may also wish to read the introduction to editing. Thank you. Samwb123 17:14, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Damage of deletionism

Hi, you asked about evidence of damage done by deleting unsourced BLPs. Please see the reply I posted today to Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people. Basically

• loss of many articles on notable persons. See e.g. an analysis by Ikip/Okip of several hundred "unsourced BLPs" that were or would be deleted in the recent drive. (Section 21.3 Comments in Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Archive.)
• loss of many valid articles on non-notable subjects. Whatever little value they may have to readers, it is greater than zero.
• waste of editors work, namely the work of nominating, evaluating, voting and deleting the article, and replying to complaints about the deletion.
• iritation of the editors who created and worked on those articles, as they discover that their work has been deleted.
• loss of potential BLPs as editors become wary of creating BLPs.

There is also a long-term ethical problem with the "notability rule" itself, namely what authority does Misplaced Pages have to decide who is "notable" and who is "non-notable"? (Actually this decision is being made by a very small minority of admins who have no particular authority on the matter, and who were self-selected by their irritation with what they consider "unworthy" articles.) Imagine the situation where two professors are running for tenure, or two candidates are competing for mayor in a a small town — and one of them has a Misplaced Pages article, while the other has been declared "non-notable" by the Misplaced Pages staff. See the problem there? All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 22:22, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages has the full right to decide what the criteria are for being included. And, no, I do not see any problems with Misplaced Pages having an article about one person who has been covered by reliable third party sources and not having an article about another person who has not been covered by reliable third party sources. Active Banana (talk) 14:45, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages has the full right to decide what the criteria are for being included: Yes, but who is Misplaced Pages? It seems implicit in the deletionist ideology that the deletionists — specifically, those editors who wrote the notability rule, tag articles, and have the AfD in their watchlist — are "more Misplaced Pages" than the inclsionists — specifically, those editors who create articles on non-notable topics or lacking explicit refs. Even though the latter vastly outnumber the former. That is where Misplaced Pages ends and Bullypedia begins.

covered by reliable third party sources: That is not what the notability guidelines say. Individual streets, schools, university professors, obscure movie actors, etc. are all covered by very reliable third party sources and could have valid articles (sometimes even *good* articles) with fully verifiable contents. Yet the deletionists have been deleting such articles, just because *they* don't like them.

Moreover, the notability guidelines are extremely arbitrary and illogical. For example, why is the New York Times more reliable than the IMBD when it comes to movies? (Before replying, think: where will the NYT reporter look for information about movies?)

I have seen many cases of articles that were improperly deleted or tagged only because the deletionist were just too lazy (or too stupid) when looking for sources and evaluating them. Unfortunately deletion is almost impossible to undo, and the wikinazis will not let tags to be removed without their demands being met.

All the best (one vaguely hopes), --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 02:12, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if "wikinazi" was too strong. Is "wikitaliban" better? "Wikihutu" perhaps?

Deletionism is the belief that one can make Misplaced Pages better by deleting articles that "do not belong", where the definition of "belongs" was made up by the deletionists themselves and passed as law by a "consensus" process that, in any other context, would be called "ballot fraud". It is exactly the same ideology that led the Taliban to blow up those old Buddhas (and to countless other similar incidents all over the world), and that leads a first-grade bully to destroy the homework of other kids.

Implicit in that idelology is the assumption that those who do not accept that particular definition of "belongs" do not themselves "belong", and therefore their opinion counts for nothing. When a certain deletionist refers to tens of thousands of valid but unsourced BLPs as "crap", one must infer that the editors who created them are "crap" too.

Every article that has been deleted because of the notabiliy rule is obviously a vote against the notability rule. But try suggesting to a deletionists that those votes be counted. It is like saying that the nazis should have asked the jews what they they thought of the racial laws, or that the Taliban should have sought the opinion of the rest of the world before deciding what to do with the Buddhas.

I used to think that deletionists did not care for the feelings of those editors who had their work deleted. Now I believe that they *do* care, in the same sense that the Taliban cared for the Buddhists' feelings. In both cases, "deleting what does not belong" may have been the ostensive conscious justification for the act; but the real subconscious motive was to irritate all those who were fond of the thing destroyed. The purpose of the act was to send a message to those who did not recognize the authority of the destroyers: "look, we are the bosses here, we can do this even though you hate it". The feeling of impotent anger that the bulies inflict on their victims is not an incidental side effect, but the very point of bullying. Those Buddhas would not have been destroyed, if they were not dear to anyone.

I know that feeling of frustrated anger quite well. In spite of my years of experience and understanding of the rules, I could not avoid having hours of my work being deleted simply because it did not fit some set of stupid criteria that were unfairly passed and ineptly applied by a handful of lazy and arrogant deletionists. Whatever your opinion on the merit of articles deletions, you must be aware of their effect on the victims. So, hopefully my use of the term "wikinazis" will give you an idea of how I — and tens of thousands of other editors — felt in those cases. And, seeing how the RfC has been handled, it is clear to me that my opinion — and that of all those other offended editors — will not be counted anyway, whatever words I may use. Just for being an "inclusionist", my opinion is automatically irrelevant.

The discussion about unsourced BLPs has made it clear that Misplaced Pages does not have an "unsourced BLP problem". It has been shown that those articles are no more problematic than any other kind of article; and that a large fraction of them are valid — even by the deletionists' notability criteria. Therefore, simply deleting the unsourced BLPs is not an option. Sure it would be nice if all BLPs had references, just as it would be nice if all stubs were expanded and all badly written articles were cleaned up. But deleting a BLP because it has been sitting there unsourced for years is as absurd as deleting a stub because it has not been expanded in years. The *only* proper way of handling an unsourced BLP (or a stub, or a badly written article) is to look for sources and edit it accordingly. Of course, that takes at least 15 minutes per article, if not several hours. If we have 50,000 unsourced BLPs, it is for the same reason that we have 1,500,000 stubs: no editor had yet the time or motivation to work on them. But that is inevitable. Misplaced Pages will *always* have millions of "need urgent work" articles that will remain in that state for years. We must either accept that as an essential part of the nature of Misplaced Pages, or go insane.

The "unsourced BLP problem" was created by the deletionists themselves, who took that non-problem and unilaterally defined it as a "top priority problem". Presumably they picked those articles because they were an easily identified category of Buddhas articles that did not "belong" in their view, and wich could be identified and blown up deleted with very little effort.

If it were only a matter of *my* feelings, I would either put up or give up. But deletionism is not bad *for me*, it is bad *for Misplaced Pages*, in a big way. Perhaps a million Misplaced Pages articles are now defaced by stupid article-side tags, inserted by arrogant deletionists who think that their crusade is worth violating the most basic editing principles. Thanks to the people who have actually looked at those BLPs, we know that deletionism has resulted in the destruction of thousands of valid articles. (Unfortuntely we do not know how many, because deletion is so absolute). Worse, taggings and deletions has probably caused thousands of editors to leave: not just lay newbies, but *expert* and *experienced* editors — the kind we desperately need to cleanup articles like Thebes, Egypt or Subroutine. And, worse still, deletonists are giving Misplaced Pages some very bad press: this time not by lay journalists, but by veteran and net-savy former editors who once loved Misplaced Pages and are very upset by what the deletionists and taggers are doing to it.

Eighty years ago some Germans decided to "improve" their country by first tagging and then deleting certain people who, in their view, did not "belong" in it. (Again, nothing particular about Germany: this has happened and is happening countless other times, among all nations of the world.) When it was all over, and deaths and damages had been counted, it became clear that the worst enemies that the German people ever had, in all their history, were precisely those who claimed — and perhaps even believed — to be their most genuine members and their most determined saviors. Let's hope that Misplaced Pages fares better.

All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 04:51, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Vandal report

Thanks for your note on the IP vandal's talk page just now pointing to Chrispreston20 (talk · contribs); fortunately your warnings seem to have done the trick and he has stopped, at least for now. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 17:03, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Sticky prods

Hi Active Banana'! You participated earlier in the sticky prod workshop. The sticky prods are now in use, but there are still a few points of contention.
There are now a few proposals on the table to conclude the process. I encourage your input, whatever it might be. Thanks. --Maurreen (talk) 06:52, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Hello

Hi, I just noticed that you're a fairly new account, and are participating in some of the big policy-related issues here. I applaud your bravery, but I know it can sometimes be confusing even with small issues. Hell, I've been here for 5 years and I still get lost in the walls of text. So, I just wanted to let you know that if you need any help with anything around the wiki, please don't hesitate to drop me a note. The Wordsmith 15:16, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

re:Thanks

no problem! cheers--  LYKANTROP  ✉ 22:17, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

April 2010

Please do not delete content or templates from pages on Misplaced Pages, as you did to Pinoy Big Brother: Teen Clash 2010, without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear constructive, and has been reverted. Please make use of the sandbox if you'd like to experiment with test edits. It would be appreciated if you stop your deletionist activity, especially if it's about a show you may or may not even watch.--Eaglestorm (talk) 16:45, 17 April 2010 (UTC)