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Comment by mquander | Hacker News Reader

Let's put aside the insanely weird idea that one person has the ability to derail the creation of information unilaterally, without a vote, and without any oversight to focus on the real problem...

Jesus, does Zed Shaw live on another planet? I've never edited a Wikipedia article in my life and even I know that when an article is nominated for deletion, there's a big hullabaloo where everyone votes and argues about it before it's actually deleted.

Also:

It's sort of impossible to say that the Esoteric programming languages page should not have a description of every "notnotable" programming language.

I do not think "impossible" means what you think it means.

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No, I live on the planet where some random dude can "elect" to have a page deleted and poof page gone. I don't care about the bizarre bureaucratic process involved, all I care about is that there's no review process or delay to it.

Also, I do mean "sort of impossible". If you're going to use bad grammar to correct my writing, then at least use quotes properly.

Zed, seriously, calm down. I know this persona gets you a lot of views, but it's seriously grating.

The "bizarre bureaucratic process" is this:

1) Somebody says "I don't think this article should be here.

2) We talk about it for a week.

3) If, after a week, the consensus is that no, we shouldn't have the article, then it gets deleted. If not, it stays.

That's not bizarre, and it's not particularly bureaucratic. Is it flawed? Absolutely. Do we need to fix it? Sure.

Are you helping things with your rants?

No.

Except that's not what happened in this case, and probably many others. De Facto, the process was

1) Somebody says "I don't think this article should be here."

2) We talk about it for a week.

3) Despite there being no votes to delete and clear notability, poof! it's gone.

Perhaps more experienced Wikipedians can correct me, but my understanding is that the vote for deletion isn't actually a vote. At the end of the day, a Wikipedia admin decides based on the arguments presented, not the number of opinions in either direction.

This is true, but there's deletion review for you think the admin made the wrong choice:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review

Alternatively, if you wish to remake the page and improve it, there's nothing stopping you from re-creating it with new sources and information added[1]. The "Be Bold" guideline exists to encourage people to do things like that if you think you can improve it.

[1] Not entirely true, controversial pages that get recreated and deleted back and forth can be blocked from being recreated. At least in the case of Nemerle, it appears that that has yet to happen.

One of the challenges with remaking the page is that you have to start over from scratch. If the page is deleted, it's gone. There's no way for you to see the edit history or anything. So you have to go back to basic research. Get to the library. Sit on Google for an afternoon.

Bureaucrats can bring it back. They (and among others, arbitration committee) can access deleted articles, deletion logs etc. as they please. Undelete has its own process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Undeletion (for articles which were deleted without contest)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review (for contested deletes)

In fi.wikipedia (I am an arbcom member there) both delete and undelete are decided by a 2/3 majority vote.

In en.wikipedia it is not. But in some others, like fi.wikipedia, it is.

> there's a big hullabaloo where everyone votes and argues about it before it's actually deleted.

And it's still often actually deleted, even if consensus isn't reached.

That's true, so maybe it shouldn't really be said that people are "voting" after all. But at least an administrator has to actually agree and delete it; I guess that's what passes for oversight.

Zed Shaw's personal hell: being given a laptop with an internet connection, a browser pointed at Wikipedia, and being asked to complete the article List of things which do not exist.

He could call it "List of things registered in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"

Uh, that makes no sense.

Well, they would have to be very notable things that do not exist. (My next line wants very much to be a joke about God but I'll just leave that up to your individual imaginations.)

How about "List of articles which do not mention themselves"?

List of Articles not listed in a List of Articles.

Would the list contain itself?

Ohhh. Damn you, Bert Russell!

(I kill me.)

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