Lots of Hackerspaces on Wikipedia are suggested for deletion

http://www.technomancy.org/hackerspace-wikipedia-delete/

by rmc • 15 years ago

27 29 15 years ago

tptacek4• 15 years ago

Without repeating the same boring arguments about whether everything should be covered on Wikipedia, and just stipulating, whether you truly agree with them or not, that we'll confine ourselves to Wikipedia's policy of requiring that articles both assert and document notability:

Doesn't it stand to reason that most "hackerspaces" aren't notable?

Wikipedia doesn't even have coverage for every major office building in Chicago. A typical hackerspace wouldn't even take a single floor in a typical Chicago high-rise.

arctangent• 15 years ago

Perhaps the test of notability for something like a hackerspace should be whether a successful (and thus de facto notable) company emerged from it?

I imagine that Y Combinator wouldn't be deserving of its own Wikipedia page if nothing had yet come of it. Why should other incubators be treated differently?

_delirium5• 15 years ago

Well, it's more whether there are decent sources to document it, but yeah, that's probably most likely if some well-known company emerged from it.

Once upon a time there was something like a philosophical "notability" test, but since that led to interminable arguments, it's these days a lot closer to a descriptive "has been noted" test, which boils down to, "if someone says [citation needed], do you have one?". Where to draw the line is still controversial, but it's somewhere between, on the one hand, "is in every history book", and on the other, "has never been mentioned anywhere except on its founder's blog".

A decent number of the hackerspace articles do seem uncomfortably close to the 2nd case, with the articles actually being created by the people who run the hackerspace or are closely associated with it, and not citing any third-party sources for the information (i.e. something other than the hackerspace's own website or blog).

I must say I do find this rally-people-into-a-mob-to-defend-my-page aspect pretty distasteful, though. If you want to be part of Wikipedia, anyone can and should go and start helping out. If you don't, also fine. But a bunch of people who have no real interest in improving Wikipedia only showing up to promote things they're a fan of is a bit lame, especially when it reeks of people being mainly interested in the SEO. (Also happens on the other side, when occasionally there's mobs that show up demanding that Wikipedia delete something; those mobs also have no real interest in improving the encyclopedia more generally, or even familiarizing themselves with how and why things work as they do.)

tptacek4• 15 years ago

YC startup people drink a lot of coffee. Should we have an article on each coffee shop frequented by founders of successful YC companies?

There are notable hackerspaces. Notable hackerspaces should get coverage on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is very up-front about its definition of "notability".

c3o• 15 years ago

Hackerspaces are something very different from incubators, so that's not a fair comparison. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace

rmc2• 15 years ago

There are much less hackerspaces per city (usually 1) than office blocks per city.

SwellJoe• 15 years ago

There's only one SwellJoe in the entire world. Shall I add myself to WikiPedia?

esad• 15 years ago

Why is inclusionism so bad? So what if we had a wikipedia article for every office building in Chicago or every Pokemon out there?

_delirium5• 15 years ago

I'm in favor of that, but only for stuff that has existing material to cite (does that count as inclusionism? it used to...).

If you create a new article about a random office building in Chicago, and you cite all the information in the article to architecture books, journal articles, newspaper articles, etc., and the result is more than one sentence, nobody will delete it, so that basically is the current policy.

But if you personally interview architects, dig through archives of blueprints, etc., to construct a new piece of historical research on a building that the existing historical literature doesn't document, Wikipedia isn't quite the right place to publish that. Either there should be a separate wiki dedicated to researching/documenting the history of Chicago, or you could write up your results, present them at a history conference, and then cite that paper once it's published.

alexeiz2• 15 years ago

Wait a second, we do have a Wikipedia article for every Pokemon out there!

tptacek4• 15 years ago

We probably should have a Wikipedia article for every office building in Chicago.

We probably should not have a Wikipedia article for every hackerspace in the world.

We may want more articles about hackerspaces on Wikipedia.

If we do, it does not help that almost everybody who has ever gone so far as to give their planned hackerspace a name has probably also added a (crappy) page to Wikipedia about their planned project.

olalonde• 15 years ago

There's already such a Wikipedia and it's called the Web. Not sure we need another one...

nivertech• 15 years ago

I think, that Wikipedia should have "Donate to prevent deletion" button on every article ;)

dot• 15 years ago

wow, that sounds like a really good idea. at least for things that i feel should stay on wikipedia. :)

pangram• 15 years ago

Yes, this is brilliant -- and could take care of Wikipedia's funding problems is one stroke.

thwarted2• 15 years ago

As long as it was easy to see who had donated how much to keep an article alive (still have puppet accounts though, I guess).

tptacek4• 15 years ago

Yes! Wikipedia could definitely fund itself by selling links on the top of every Google SERP! Why didn't they think of that? :)

alexeiz2• 15 years ago

Right. And under each such button there should be this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion

thwarted2• 15 years ago

I don't understand the include everything mindset, and I think I'm in the inclusionist camp. If you encourage other people to put data on Wikipedia, the value of the data drops to zero from an economic and reputation exploitation standpoint.

For example, if you think there is value in having a comprehensive list of hacker spaces, set up a site that lists them and maintain it. You'll be known as the person who maintains that valuable resource, and since you homesteaded it, you can economically exploit it by putting ads on it, or taking signups. And no one else can take it down because of some kind requirements about its appropriateness for the internet.

I appreciate that every Star Trek episode is listed on Wikipedia, but it seemed more like a labor of love, more comprehensive, and more interesting (less sterile) when it was some backwater part of the internet where some hardcore fan personally maintained some massive compendium of Star Trek information. Now there is less of a reason, and requiries more dedication, to want to compete with Wikipedia's SEO authority. I mean, there are specialist sites like Star Trek wikis, LOtR wikis, and Wookipedia, but Wikipedia is comprehensive just enough to not want me seek more detailed info. (Nevermind that some of them have taken the economic exploitation to the extreme with the same shitty online gaming ad, we all know there is a sweet spot of the content:advertising ratio).

I mean who thought that Wikipedia would be the first place anyone would go for information on hacker spaces or information about a specific hacker space? It's a piggyback-on-Wikipedia's-SEO-only play.

_delirium5• 15 years ago

Yes! I really wish there were more documentation projects elsewhere on the internet. I'd even contribute to more if they had some community-contribution process (whether through a wiki or other thing).

In particular, Wikipedia's an encyclopedia; that means it's a tertiary source, which means everything it includes should ideally be cited to secondary sources (books, journal articles, newspaper reports, etc.). There's lots of interesting information you could document that doesn't work in that tertiary-source manner, because the secondary sources don't yet exist. So a project to do original research/compilation/etc. in an area where its contributors are knowledgeable is great. Know Your Meme is actually a pretty good example of that. A hackerspace directory would also be useful. Something like http://www.killfromtheheart.com/, also great.

Pyrodogg• 15 years ago

Wikipedia doesn't have to be the definition of all human knowledge. There is a perfectly good wiki for documenting hackerspaces at http://hackerspaces.org just waiting for more information on every space past, present, and those still planning.

Lots of Hackerspaces on Wikipedia are suggested for deletion

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