Comment by glasshug | Hacker News Reader

Comment by glasshug | Hacker News Reader

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Wikipedia's notability guideline does not pass judgement on the importance of Oscars or "CLIOs," both of which are notable and have their own pages.

Wikipedia's guideline for the notability of voice actors is:[1]

> 1. Has had significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions; or

> 2. Has made unique, prolific or innovative contributions to a field of entertainment.

This can be difficult to define. I'd suggest you instead follow the guideline of notability for people generally, which is:[2]

> A person is presumed to be notable if they have received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject.

I'm always sorry to hear about someone that has gotten frustrated editing Wikipedia. Even though I'd discourage it as a conflict of interest, editors have successfully created articles for friends by simply citing reliable secondary sources that cover them. I'd suggest you give it another try if such sources exist and reach out in the Teahouse[3] if you need help.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse

The problem isn't with the editors, but admins who spuriously make these judgment calls. It takes hours to create a new article and seconds to delete it. Not going to spend hours more in the silly appeals process.

The bar on deletion should be as high or higher than the bar on creation (spam aside, of course) or you're just going to keep losing editors. Nobody has time to play these stupid games with the juvenile admins.

> The problem isn't with the editors, but admins who spuriously make these judgment calls.

Deletion decisions are made by editors, not admins. See, for example, the decision referenced by the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...

> It takes hours to create a new article and seconds to delete it.

I think the "seconds to delete it" process you're describing is PROD[1], which is for "non-controversial" deletions and there's no appeals process—it can be added back with no justification at any time if any editor disagrees with the deletion. The full deletion process that takes time to appeal is "Articles for Deletion,"[2] through which articles are deleted only through 7 days of consensus-building. This is the process "Bruce Faulconer" went through.

I know it's confusing, and often really frustrating. I'd encourage you to try contesting your PROD deletion if you're willing to give it another try, because it really will bring the article back instantly. It can be difficult for new editors, but users of this forum are a bit better than the average person at source editing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Proposed_deletion

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...

Can I just say... no thanks? I've gone through that process and successfully appealed a deletion before, but it's a dumb policy to begin with. I'm already volunteering my time to create articles for a supposedly open encyclopedia. I'm not going to waste my time arguing with your bureaucrats about whether it's noteworthy enough.

Either Wikipedia culturally decides in favor of openness or you just drive away editors. No ifs and buts about it. Its bureaucracy sucks and has gotten worse over time.

You speak for a lot of people.

That's the problem right there. Advertising is not even included. The number one employer of voice actors (advertisements) and they're not even included in Wikipedia's guideline for the notability of voice actors. I suggest a major revision in that Wikipedia guideline.

> significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions

- this shows the Wikipedia bias against commercial enterprise and success.

The voice actor who was not "notable" only won over 700 awards, including most of the BIG awards – from Clio, IBA, ADDY, Hatch, New York International, Sunny, Silver Microphone, Mobius, RAC, London International, ANDY, EFFIE, The One Show, and hundreds of regional awards.

Wikipedia serves the public, and its notability heuristic is demand-driven. It doesn't matter how famous someone is within their own domain, if a member of the public outside of that domain would never have reason to look that person up, and therefore would get no marginal value out of Wikipedia having that page.

Personally, I don't know the name of a single advertising voice actor. Nor would anyone even three steps removed within my social circle. I suspect nobody would, save for people in the advertising industry. Ads don't have credits rolls; there's no distinctive visual to recognize voice-actors by, like there is for pitch-men; and voice actors even often sell themselves on their ability to imitate popular ad voices, so "that voice" isn't necessarily just one person. The dynamics of the ad audio industry are stacked against building public recognition.

This is the perfect use-case for a domain-specific wiki about advertisements (which tbh would be a really good idea for several reasons; there isn't much centralized effort currently to do presevation/cataloguing/history on ad media.)

I disagree. Information today is a unified field across all domains - wikipedia has done better than most at addressing that - you may search for something thinking of it in one domain only to find it relevant in another domain. A domain-specific wiki would not deliver that. The first thought that comes to mind is millions of (public) entrepreneurs who in search of a business / domain / trademark name invariably include in their search a peek on Wikipedia. Such searches cross-fertilize so much creativity.

And I also disagree. I'll bet you know James Earl Jones not just as Darth Vader but also because of his instantly recognized voice. In the past 30 days, commercials featuring James Earl Jones have had 28,635 airings. [0]

> The dynamics of the ad audio industry are stacked against building public recognition

While that is true, the opposite is equally true. Advertisers pay top dollar for instantly recognized voices, which are countless in number.

[0] https://www.ispot.tv/topic/actor-actress/kes/james-earl-jone...

> While that is true, the opposite is equally true. Advertisers pay top dollar for instantly recognized voices, which are countless in number.

People recognize the voice, but they don't put a name to it. And that's the thing about Wikipedia, or the Internet in general: you need a textual handle onto something to be able to find it. Even if I recognize a voice actor, I can't search them "by their voice"; I have to figure out how to name something they appeared in, and then search for that.

And advertisements don't have (viewer-visible) names either! So how do I even search for the ad, other than by struggling to describe what happened in it? (This is much of why commercials are "lost media": there's no explicit name to use as a Schelling point to gather people onto the same forum post looking for it.)

> Wikipedia serves the public, and its notability heuristic is demand-driven.

This sentence seems to be incompatible with itself.

> the public

This constitutes all public groups, including the advertising industry.

> its notability heuristic is demand-driven

Driven by who? The editors at Wikipedia? Depending on which domain they reside in, they may have a very skewed perception of what the demand in a particular area is. Donald Knuth is certainly a notable person in computing, but if I ask any of my non-CS friends (and even several CS friends) whether they would consider him notable, most would respond that they don't even know the man.

So it's hard for me to buy this argument since there are certain domains with their own experts and notable figures that are relatively, if not completely, unknown in tangential domains.

> This constitutes all public groups, including the advertising industry.

You're making a useless semiotic distinction. The default English-language connotation of the words "the public" is to refer to "lay-people; civilians; people with a non-vocational interest in a subject." As in, Wikipedia is not an academic publication, nor is it an industrial publication, nor is it an esoteric publication. When such interests are incompatible with the interests of people outside of those groups, Wikipedia chooses the interests of the people outside of the niche ("the public") over the interests of the people in the niche. Niches can go make their own websites. Wikipedia is for the average human being — one who isn't thinking "in" the context of a domain, but rather in the context of "common knowledge." One who can't just take a step back and search for "[domain] wiki" and then use that, because they wouldn't know what to plug in for the [domain] part.

See also: the job of a dictionary in defining words, vs. the job of an academic or industrial or esoteric text in defining jargon terms.

> Driven by who? The editors at Wikipedia?

Like I said — demand. As in, analytics data of what users are trying to look up — Google Analytics traffic for "[topic] wikipedia"; things typed into Wikipedia's own search box; etc. The aggregate measure of humanity's expectation of a particular Wikipedia article existing; and the generalization of that into an expectation on whether Wikipedia will cover particular classes of topics.

> Like I said — demand. As in, analytics data of what users are trying to look up — Google Analytics traffic for "[topic] wikipedia"; things typed into Wikipedia's own search box; etc

Yeah, no. That's literally never cited as a reason to keep or delete a page.

Disagree completely, with respect. Suppose you hear someone with an exceptional voice on a commercial for Toyota or whatever. Why wouldn’t you want to find it on Wikipedia even if it’s the only commercial that person that has ever done it? You may not know about the existence of specialized wikis.

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