Old Man Murray Entry Deleted From Wikipedia 432
shoptroll writes "In what can be best described as an unfortunate interpretation of the 'notability standards' at Wikipedia, Rock, Paper, Shotgun reports that the entry for Old Man Murray, once a mainstay of PC Gaming reviews and commentary, has been deleted. A sad day for gaming journalism everywhere." This is notable both because Old Man Murray was completely and totally awesome, but also because it was notable and influential on countless writers.
Who? (Score:3, Insightful)
Never heard of OldmanMurray.com?
I don't see any wiki articles about PSXnation.com or scifi.com either.
Never heard of it (Score:4, Insightful)
I've never heard of Old Man Murray but that doesn't mean it should be deleted. This all got argued about last time over obscure programming languages but, why are we deleting history? Are we running out of disk space? I think not.
Sounds like someone with an axe to grind. (Score:4, Insightful)
Eric Wolpaw and Chet Faliszek have worked in the gaming industry, and the site itself is referenced in numerous interviews, articles, quotations, and even in games. All valid reasons for a Wikipedia entry, I'd think.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Moderation (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia needs a better moderation system.
Articles that are not verified or not notable can go into a second tier where they have to be searched for by specifically requesting second tier access.
As it stands now, I've seen articles deleted because their sources have started falling off the net. This makes Wikipedia one of the absolute worst encyclopedias for anything outside of standard historic events.
Re:Notability (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually it's the opinion of the concensus of contributors who bother to contribute to deletion discussions. Which is just such a small group, in numbers and experience. The key to solving this is appreciating that Wikipedia is not a machine where you put in good information and get out the encyclopedia you want to see, it's about actually dealing with human beings on a large-scale collaborative project which has differences of opinion. Wikipedia needs more internal bickering, not snide remarks on the outside. You, you reading this, are the potential source of that bickering.
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:4, Insightful)
It was deleted by some halfwit called Ben Schumin who appears to have a grudge against OMM.
He should be permanently removed from Wiki staff for being an absolute butt devastated ass of a manchild.
Oh, also, Delete This Ben. Oh wait.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SchuminWeb
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Never heard of it (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed.
Imagine an encyclopedia that only contained information you already knew.
Feh... (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the neat things about Wikipedia early on was that you could find entries on obscure people or places or things. That was one of the charming things about it. No matter how peripheral an item or event, there was someone, somewhere who could write an article about it.
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:2, Insightful)
Also: good lord, do we really need a Slashdot front page story every time Wikipedia does something suboptimal?
Also 2: When an article is up for deletion and someone posts a link on some forum to get a bunch of fanboys to come in and flood the deletion debate (or any other debate), that's Generally Considered Lame and not really effective at building consensus. Slashdot too.
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:5, Insightful)
do we really need a Slashdot front page story every time Wikipedia does something suboptimal?
Yes, without public pressure ego-tripping editors could do "suboptimal" AKA wrong things with impunity. Transparency is supposed to be Wikipedia's strength, and good decisions should have nothing to fear from public knowledge.
Generally Considered Lame and not really effective at building consensus
Which is a euphemism for "all the deletionists get butthurt when they can't hide from the public backlash".
Re:Moderation (Score:5, Insightful)
In this instance, if the content was unverified / unsourced, then the individual who deleted the article should have "contributed" by providing sources (via wayback.org, if need be); but, the deletionists have no interest in contributing, and so they delete the content and then hide behind WP rules in defence of their laziness.
Indeed, this is the real problem: people who would rather delete things than fix them. What's worse are the bots which go around posting deletion notices based purely on whether the page has some tags missing, when the bot has absolutely no idea whether the page is actually within Wikipedia policies.
IMHO rampant deletionism has caused far more harm and driven away far more editors from Wikipedia than poorly referenced articles ever will.
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Moderation (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia needs a better moderation system. Articles that are not verified or not notable can go into a second tier where they have to be searched for by specifically requesting second tier access.
Why is anything (any established article) being deleted from Wikipedia? Is the world suddenly running out of bits? Is Jimmy Wales really so hard up for storage that individual text pages will make a difference? It's not as if they have to print and bind books with it like a traditional encyclopaedia.
At the very least, it should be pretty simple to measure notability by access statistics. But that begs the question that if nobody is accessing it, it isn't even costing you in bandwidth to hang onto it, so you might as well not delete it even then.
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish I could mod you up. They kept using the slang term "meatpuppets" which is apparently somebody who enters the discussion after being tipped off on it taking place. They might as well say outsider.
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:5, Insightful)
If Wikipedia had to be consistent, then nothing would ever get done. There are millions of articles, so you'd need to make a million edits all at once if every editorial policy (e.g. establishing notability) had to be applied to all articles consistently. So, when someone with an interest in gaming reviews makes a call on whether Old Man Murray has sufficient notability, there is no expectation that he should therefore have to go looking for animé articles to delete.
Re:Moderation (Score:3, Insightful)
This makes Wikipedia one of the absolute worst encyclopedias for anything outside of standard historic events.
and porn stars, manga characters and Star Trek episodes. Don't forget about the really important stuff, will you?
Re:Welcome to Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you should go back through - they've become very good at culling crap about anime and the like as a secondarly consequence of the push for citations.
So... does this make Wikipedia a better source for anime-related things? Does it make it a better source for non- anime-related things? Or does it simply make it worse?
The only thing made better by deleting information are page summaries.
Re:Notability (Score:5, Insightful)
So you run out of 'good-faith contributors' well before you run out of asshats.
This is so true. It seems like every time there is a "Wiki screws the pooch" article there are a dozen comments containing stories of occasional contributors who after witnessing or being involved in some kind of editing drama that always end with "and that's why I stopped contributing to Wiki". It stands to reason that if this sort of antagonism is allowed to fester then the only people who will be left will be those content to engage in it.
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Somewhere, a professional historian is weeping.
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
But on the other hand, apparently dedicating a whole page to some Manga character or obscure comic book sidekick is, of course, relevant and worth the space, right?
Random example include
- Guts [wikipedia.org] from Berserk [wikipedia.org], who obviously deserves a page of his own. (Along with a couple of other characters that get their own pages.)
- Brainy Smurf [wikipedia.org]
- Penelope Pitstop [wikipedia.org], Muttley [wikipedia.org], and generally the whole cast of Wacky Races. Because, you know, it's not enough to know that there was a plot-less and story-less slapstick cartoon series that took the piss out of car racing, you need a whole page about each unidimensional character embodying a stereotype .
- Dino [wikipedia.org] from the Flintstones, along with every single other character, because the fucking dog of a cartoon show not centered around said dog is notable enough to have its own page on Wikipedia
- Pants Ant [wikipedia.org]. Really? Who the fuck is Pants Ant? Oh, right, it appeared in exactly 4 comic books nobody ever heard about, between 1998 and 2001, and didn't influence anything. Right, silly me, that must pass the notability standards.
- Minsc [wikipedia.org] from Baldur's Gate. A character only appearing in a secondary role in a computer game, and memorable only by being batshit crazy and talking to his "miniature giant space hamster" and asking him for advice. And he's not even the only one. There are pages upon pages about every single fucking character ever used in a D&D Forgotten Realms setting [wikipedia.org]. (And Greyhawk [wikipedia.org], and Ravenloft [wikipedia.org], and so on...)
- Bayonetta [wikipedia.org], the character of one action game, obviously deserving her own page separate from that of the game itself. And for that matter Tifa [wikipedia.org] from FF7, and Aeris [wikipedia.org] of "why the fuck can't I use a Phoenix Down NOW?" fame, i.e., a character which didn't even make it past the first CD in FF7, etc. And such fighting game characters as Sophitia [wikipedia.org] from Soul Calibur, or Kitana [wikipedia.org] and Mileena [wikipedia.org] from Mortal Kombat, who, you know, didn't actually have more of a role than generic combatant and drool fodder for geeks even in the movie. And generally every single female character that some editor whacked off to. Because, you know, a character that even the game makers couldn't be arsed to give more than the mandatory half-arsed description or a personality, is something that I need a whole page in an encyclopaedia for.
Etc. etc. etc.
I'm sorry, but if _those_ make the cut as notable enough to have their own page, then so does OMM. Note that I'm not even saying to delete those too. But the circle-jerk gang at Wiki needs to choose one or the other, really.
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to be honest; at first when I read this reply, I was pretty convinced you were just another Wikipedia deletion whiner, bitching about how your all-time favoritest web site EVAR was deleted by some obviously incompetent and unfit-for-duty Wikipedia editor. I was just about ready to dismiss this entire thing as "bitch, bitch, bitch, nerd rage is hilarious".
Then I actually read over the AfD for Old Man Murray, and it turns out you're absolutely right. This Schumin character IS a little bitch, isn't he*? I'm seeing citation after citation in that discussion, each following Wikipedia's standards for notability (in terms of video games and video game sites), and he's confidently and smugly ignoring each one just to push his agenda. Wow. There's reasons I stopped trying to edit Wikipedia a while back.
*: Yes, you may cite this post as need be in future discussions, Wikipedia or not, as to the degree to which Ben Schumin is a little bitch.
Re:Sad state of deletionist wankers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:4, Insightful)
A meatpuppet isn't slang, it's jargon.
The definition is anyone who is recruited by a person party to a dispute for the sole or primary purpose of attracting support. This would include stirring the pot at slashdot or any other popular website with a provocative link.
Frowned upon because it turns a discussion into a dumb numbers game. It's basically the wikipedia version of a proxy fight.
The reference to puppet, as in sockpuppet, is because someone who is buzzed into a discussion is deemed to be acting on behalf of the person who summoned him.
Re:Sad state of deletionist wankers (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't doomed from the beginning. It was doomed by it's cultural choices. Generally, there are more decent people in the world than douchebags. But the douchebags tend to be louder. Still, it takes a special set of circumstances to let the douchebags dominate. Usually this involves a critical mass of douchebags at high levels poisoning the culture of institution. The douchebags think everyone is out to get them, because everyone IS out to get them, because they are douchebags. And so the douchebags take great pains to alienate every non-douchebag they see, by engaging in petty slap fights, which douchebags enjoy but normal people despise. In the end, the institution in question devolves into a bunch of whiny self important douchebags running about screeching at each other and just pinching and slapping anyone they can get their doughy, clammy little hands on. These are people to whom a petty argument represents the most rewarding social interaction they are likely to have that day.
Re:Welcome to Wikipedia (Score:2, Insightful)
Hint: If your "friend" is "in the media" under a "pseudonym", and some Wikipedia drone discovered her real identity, anyone else can, too. Scrubbing Wikipedia does nothing to solve that problem.
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:4, Insightful)
I actually like all those - and do use wikipedia to find out info about such stuff.
But I also want the "old man murray" type of articles because in the future Google might not find anything:
That's why you get links to a few semi-reliable gaming sites that don't inhibit short-term memory. For example, gaming.wikia.com allows you to put in anything about games without too much worry about notability. Another site, bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net, allows you to be as detailed about Pokémon as you want.
In fact, "Wikipedia syndrome" is a bad thing. Some sites packed up thinking that they would be stored on Wikipedia, while Wikipedia was citing them as one of their critical resources. Once the site dropped, [citation needed].
a) The rest of the web often has a short memory
I wonder why... perhaps there's a metric ton of stuff being posted that floods whatever is being discussed, complete with a sub-par archive search. Not even a "random article" or "random date" to scour anything special in the archives.
b) I might get a whole bunch of spam sites instead.
That's already happening.
Re:So why was it deleted? (Score:5, Insightful)
That the term exists is yet more proof that wikipedia is NOT open to all, that wikipedia admins have fostered an us versus them mentality, that wikipedians see wikipedia as a fortress of facts besieged by foreign devils, and that many if not most core wikipedia admins view wikipedia as their personal plaything. Wikipedia admins disgust me, they appear to be entirely composed of petty junior high school students who weren't smart enough to make the chess club or popular enough to get into the A/V club.
Re:Notability (Score:4, Insightful)
Great. So I say fuck you Wikipedia, and my chances of ever editing an article go down even further.
And wikipedia admins rejoice. They don't want any more opinions diluting their own. The more reasonable people they can chase away, the better, from their point of view. If wikipedia really were open to all, they would not be that important. They would not have as much control. No, wikipedia admins, for the most part, do not want to share their toy with you.
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
The person Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is AFAICT: IS DEAD AS A DOORNAIL since 1791!
Tons of notable stuff has been dead as a doornail for quite some time.
Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
If real historians and assorted worked as these amateurs then we would be missing an awful lot of history. For instance Atlantis... only mentioned ONCE in history and it didn't cite sources, so BYE BYE Atlantis. A REAL historian simply notes the mention of Atlantis and that there is only one source with no references for it AND THAT IS IT.
That is where Wikipedia fails utterly. Mentioning that something is NOT sourced IS ENOUGH. A full record INCLUDES personal remarks and unverified claim and that is perfectly valid AS LONG as you note this. Yes, some pruning can be needed in extreme cases but the anal retentive "citation needed" is making a joke out the site. A normal encyclopedia would have no trouble saying the Hindenburg was a disaster. Wikipedia requires a citation. So? Well, they NEVER then check that the citation is ACCURATE.
So by Wikipedia and article claiming Nazi propoganda is correct would pass since there are PLENTY of sources to cite from. Just because you can cite from something does NOT make it fact.
Wikipedia is an intresting experiment but ultimately shows why volunteer work and crowdsourcing just don't work for anything important. The type of person to volunteer all to often tends to filter down eventually to the completly incompetent power hungry assholes.
Why do you think Gentoo is failing and Ubuntu is rising? Complete freedom is a bad way to get something done. And the Wikipedia editors are far to free.