This really highlights what is wrong with Wikipedia: | Hacker News Reader

This really highlights what is wrong with Wikipedia:

en.wikipedia.org

4 pointsarmored4 comments

If you dig a little, the decision to delete the article on MogileFS was made by an editor with "schizoaffective disorder", despite plenty of great argument in favor of keeping the page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Secret

I also would have voted "delete". Not even the agenda-driven proponents could actually cite solid secondary sources that do more than name-dropping. Most of them seemed to think they were trying to win some kind of popularity contest (do they think bigger numbers matter?) or debate (do they think "we use it, it's great" is verifiable?), not at all what http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:N calls for. And that ad hominem you felt the need to dredge up is telling.

Did you take the time to read the arguments? They cited several books. By the same notability standards you could delete the articles on Ceph and GlusterFS.

Ad hominem or not, my point is that some 20 something year old kid, living at home, suffering from mental issues should not be "the decider". Wikipedia isn't about "the best argument wins" it's about who has the most free time.

The only book actually cited by name (as opposed to "if you do a search we think you'll find something") was Building Scalable Websites, and the related content in its entirety was

> There are existing products that perform similar roles to this system, including MogileFS (http://www.danga.com/mogilefs/), which implements server and client component software and uses an HTTP interface.

Not only is one sentence way too little to base an entire article on, but it didn't even merit a reference in the book's index. Another admin objected "Books results yield only trivial mentions" and it looks to me like he was right—nobody managed to find a verifiable article or book section by a disinterested third party that said anything at length about MogileFS. Wikipedia is not about "if the press mentions the product at all, we can start writing whatever we want about it." Wikipedia is about "show secondary sources for what you write" but instead proponents tried to handwave and argue their way past some "kid" who made the right call.

As for those other systems, well, GlusterFS looks similarly obscure and unsourced and probably also isn't ready for its own article. However, Usenix gave Ceph eleven pages in ;login: which pretty much anchors its notoriety in the industry.

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