About 6:00 today, a wikipedia administrator went through and deleted about 16 articles I had recently created. One of these clearly fit stated guidelines for notability, and another quite probably did, and some more I think a case for notability could have been made. The whole process has caused me to be very frustrated with wikipedia.
I guess I should have suspected I was having all too much success in creating articles on BYU professors. However the editor of the prestigious Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion is notable in my estimation, and George W Givens In Old Nauvoo seems to be widely recognized enough to give him notability. Whether Ugo Perego's studies on the Y-chromosome of Joseph Smith make him notable might be open to discussion, but it should have been discussed and not resolved by fiat.
Personally I think the Saints at War series are notable enough to give their authors notability. Richard I. Kimball's studies on the history of sport are clearly a far cry from Baron von Radke and his view of history as a study of political history, but I think they are notable none the less.
At least the deleter should have given me warning enough so I could transport the articles in question before they were deleted. The whole process has left me very frsutrated with wikipedia and its often contradictory rules.
The deleting spree probably would never have happened had I not asked Ryulong a question about why he deleted the wikipedia category "Southern Baptists". In his response he admited he knowns nothing about American protestant denominations, the type of admission that should have caused him to not dable in matters he knows nothing about.
My vision of wikipedia as a collection of useful knowledge is constantly coming into conflict with those who want to limit the size of wikipedia. If it does reach 3 million articles in July as I have predicted it will be despite the best attempts to halt its growth at all costs by many misguided editors and more often administrators.
I also think that qikipedia has given too much power to people who really have no sense of balancing actions against even the most limited level of understanding of the subject they are considering.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
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1 comments:
How terribly frustrating for you! And they gave you no reason for deleting the articles? Wow! Surely there must be some process to contest their actions or some way to retrieve all the work that you did. I think you're right - some people have too much power and don't use it properly.
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