Perl articles are being memory wiped from Wikipedia

https://old.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/1psj81k/perlmonks_is_being_memory_wiped_on_https_and/

by leejo • 7 months ago

43 51 7 months ago

old.reddit.com

Philpax• 7 months ago

The reasons for deletion don't seem that outlandish to me. I'd rather not see them deleted, but I also don't think this outcome is that surprising, nor would I describe it as a "memory wipe."

leejo6• 7 months ago

The CPAN page on Wikipedia has existed for 24 years, has dozens of references, yet an editor nominated it for deletion - I can't help but feel that as hostile. Fortunately this one has been voted "keep", but still...

Telaneo8• 7 months ago

The person who nominated it for deletion changed their opinion after suitable sources were found, and the article was thus kept within a day. That hardly seems hostile to me, but rather just someone trying to uphold Wikipedia's sourcing and notability requirements.

dpark3• 7 months ago

Deleted pages are no longer accessible, meaning the history of changes is gone. “Memory wipe” seems reasonable.

Telaneo8• 7 months ago

The changelog is still there on the servers and can be accessed by the Wikipedia administrators. The page can also be restored with it's full changelog, although I don't think that's done very often.

pella4• 7 months ago

The new rule of notability: if it’s no longer in Google’s index, it basically doesn't meet Wikipedia's notability criteria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion...

"From a Google search, I wasn’t able to find" appears multiple times on that page alone.

jorams• 7 months ago

The relevant part is before that:

This article is exclusively sourced on primary sources.

The Google search is the nominator looking for an alternative source that could make it notable, something earlier editors failed to establish.

snvzz3• 7 months ago

In short, Google decides what stays in Wikipedia.

Neat. Not.

orwin2• 7 months ago

Not really,if that thing is cited on notable papers or books, it stays too.

smonff6• 7 months ago

This « rule » is infuriating. Google searches are tailored to serve us content that might interest us. In this case, Google search first page returns plenty of notable results for me. Might not be the case for a person interested in geology and dogs, though.

How could such a biased thing be a valid WikiPedia criteria?

cedilla• 7 months ago

I'll never understand the amount of vitriol Wikipedia volunteers must receive. Why is the deletion (or even deletion proposal) regarded as such a heinous act that people feel the need to attack and bully others?

I find this kind of behaviour and rethoric wholly unacceptable.

pella4• 7 months ago

Consider the other perspective: how should Perl programmers feel when Google's index becomes the main criterion for what is considered important or not? This creates a circular dependency that can erase genuine technical contributions from the historical record.

smonff6• 7 months ago

Google index is tailored for each individual. Persons with interest in breeding cats won’t be served Perl results.

If Google index becomes a criterion of notability, we are in a deep deep shit.

leejo6• 7 months ago

Why is the deletion (or even deletion proposal) regarded as such a heinous act that people feel the need to attack and bully others?

FWIW I don't see this as an attack (with, perhaps, the exception of a couple of comments in the linked thread) and posted the link to the reddit thread as I see it more as an interesting observation around the myriad issues facing "legacy" languages and communities. To wit:

* Google appears to be canon for finding secondary sources, according to the various arguments in the deletion proposals, yet we're all aware of how abysmal Google's search has been for a while now.

* What's the future of this policy given the fractured nature of the web these days, walled gardens, and now LLMs?

* An article's history appears to be irrelevant in the deletion discussion: the CPAN page (now kept) had 24 years of history on Wikipedia, with dozens of sources, yet was nominated for deletion.

* Link rot is pervasive, we all knew this, but just how much of Wikipedia is being held up by the waybackmachine?

* Doesn't this become a negative feedback cycle? Few sources exist, therefore we remove sources, therefore fewer sources exist.

pwdisswordfishy2• 7 months ago

Google appears to be canon for finding secondary sources, according to the various arguments in the deletion proposals, yet we're all aware of how abysmal Google's search has been for a while now.

Nobody is forcing you to use Google. If you can provide an acceptable source without the help of Google, go ahead. But the burden of proof is on the one who claims sources exist.

An article's history appears to be irrelevant in the deletion discussion: the CPAN page (now kept) had 24 years of history on Wikipedia, with dozens of sources, yet was nominated for deletion.

Such is life when anyone can nominate anything at any moment... and when many articles that should have never been submitted in the first place slip through cracks of haphazard volunteer quality control. (Stack Overflow also suffers from the latter.)

The sources is the only part that matters. And they sufficed to keep the CPAN article on site, so the system works.

Doesn't this become a negative feedback cycle? Few sources exist, therefore we remove sources, therefore fewer sources exist.

It was wrong to submit the article without sourcing in the first place. Circular sourcing is not allowed.

ptrl600• 7 months ago

Because it puts the history of the article behind a lock

I wonder if there are any privileged Wikipedia accounts who have defected and are doing a sci-hub thing.

dpark3• 7 months ago

People get extremely frustrated and upset about arbitrary rules, especially when they are imposed inconsistently.

From the talk page it seems like exactly three people were involved in deciding if this was worth deleting and they indicated they could not find evidence of notability. Meanwhile I found a Register article about PerlMonks in minutes and there are pointers here to Google Scholar references as well.

When the bar for deletion is “a couple of people who didn’t try very hard didn’t find notability” is it any wonder that there’s pushback? This feels entirely arbitrary.

hulitu• 7 months ago

Why is the deletion (or even deletion proposal) regarded as such a heinous act

"Those who control the past, control the future"

DrScientist2• 7 months ago

Wikipedia has a page for an Egyptian King that ruled for perhaps only 10 years 5000 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anedjib

Why is that still relevant?

Or to put it another way when does the contemporary move into interesting history?

pwdisswordfishy2• 7 months ago

The deletion proposals do not mention "interesting" anywhere.

TZubiri• 7 months ago

Correct, the cited factor is lack of significant coverage.

EdwardDiego• 7 months ago

When did the Perl Monks run a kingdom?

Apples and oranges.

skylurk• 7 months ago

Or more importantly, when did the Perl Monks build a pyramid? Plenty of rulers are long forgotten.

smonff6• 7 months ago

It’s not a kingdom, but a monestary, and that’s exactly what the WikiPedia article explained.

https://www.perlmonks.com/?node_id=3559

mrjay42• 7 months ago

So this is about PerlMonks, which I knew nothing about until today.

I searched it, the site is down The Wikipedia article is deleted

This is pure loss of information somehow.

I and a lot of other people in the future will never know what "perlmonks" is/are, how important it was?, etc. etc.

The logic seems to be: if tomorrow Stack Exchange disappears, the Wikipedia article will be deleted? If yes, then that makes zero sense.

card_zero• 7 months ago

That article wouldn't be deleted, because I can find 20 or so references in paper publications saying things like "The Stack Exchange family of websites is a Q&A service for developers and other technical roles. If you’re stuck on a problem, the chances are someone else was too and turned to Stack Exchange for help", or in some cases doing a quick bio of Jeff Atwood or mentioning codinghorror.

Hmm, OTOH I can also find multiple paper references to perlmonks, such as "Perlmonks is a web bulletin board dedicated to Perl. It’s not specifically a help desk, but if you’ve done your homework and ask a good question, you’re likely to get top-notch help very quickly" - that's from the O'Reilly Perl book. Sometimes I'm overoptimistic about these things, because I want to keep every obscure article.

Well, Perlmonks is still mentioned on the articles for Perl, Outline of the Perl programming language, Perl language structure, and Perl Foundation. (This is because deletionists are lazy and don't actually like doing a thorough job.) So I could see Perlmonks becoming a redirect to one of those pages, which could describe it in a section. Similarly, if Stack Exchange faded into obscurity, it might be rolled into a section of Jeff Atwood's page (or vice versa).

pella4• 7 months ago

perlmonks

HN https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=perlmonks.org

HN-Search: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=perlmonks

csvance• 7 months ago

The PerlMonks page was in death as it was in life: completely unreadable.

smonff6• 7 months ago

Still active and relevant for some people from those communities, though. Without mentioning the historic value.

pella4• 7 months ago

"Self-Organizing Social Learning Through the Monastery Gates" ( Rose M. Baker & David L. Passmore : The Pennsylvania State University ; 2005 )

"Abstract

An example of an emergent, self-organizing on-line social learning system is available at the PerlMonks site at http://perlmonks.org/. Perl is a scripting language commonly used to as an interface between databases and web pages. Provided in this paper is a review of principles of emergent, self-organizing systems from a perspective of learning systems as well as case study of PerlMonks as self-organizing eLearning."

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rose-Baker/publication/...

via google scholar:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22perlmonks.org%22

Perl articles are being memory wiped from Wikipedia

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