User:Geogre/Talk archive 3

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This is my third archive. It is not my second archive or my first.

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[edit] Conquest of Granada

Sorry about Lillo, I was just fiddling around here, waiting for a student who didn't turn up. It's good to hear a credible witness admit that books change their claims in the night, I always thought they did. Hey, you've taken on old conflict-between-love-and-duty, the mighty Almanzor! Cool! I was just thinking maybe I'd do a short entry on She-tragedy. Supposedly the comedy and the she-tragedy between them killed the heroic play (good, good riddance). At least, so I claim in Elizabeth Barry, so it must be true. I'd better hurry up if I'm gonna do that, because soon there will be no articles left to create: somebody seems to have unleashed a very, very advanced geogrebot on us. Anyway, I'm about to go home now, see ya.--Bishonen 13:59, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • I'm slowing down. I did think I did a fair job with the Proverbs of Alfred, but you'd have to know what I was working with to see. Anyway, I care less all the time, day by day. The James one I did today could have been merged and redirected, except that it has significance as an entity on its own (a king arguing divine right). It's just that not that many people refer to it by name, so it's iffy.
  • Yeah, Lillo got an L in the night. Sad, really.
  • You know, on the Almanzor thing it was all I could do to avoid mentioning the specific jokes that Fielding told about it. For that matter, I've been tempted to write about the historical, and then the literary, Sophonisba O. (O Jemmy Thomson Jemmy Thomson O.) I saw that an article existed on Tom Durfey (as Thomas D'Urfey, so I tossed in a bit. He's an under-studied figure. I'm trying to recall if it was Tom Browne he satirized. "Still he wrote, and on his reader slept/ For Tom took opium, and opiates the reader took." Something like that. Anyhow, I'm pretty lumpen. About time to just sit on the couch and watch Fox News and give up all hope of ever thinking again. Geogre 01:09, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I ought to never, ever, save anything I write in the small hours. I just created some VfD bait that's, uh, not getting mentioned on my userpage. See, I was writing a bit about Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift, and then a sentence or two about Richardson's Pamela (these contributions aren't out there, they're in my text editor still), and uh, something struck me. And I thought about all the dumbass lists on Wikipedia... well, anyway. Feel free to speedy my list if you want. :-)
Anyway, Geogre, you just have to write an article about The Rehearsal, you know. Oh, you think it already exists, because that came up blue? No, it doesn't, go ahead and check out what the existing one is.--Bishonen 01:53, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • The Rehearsal was what is now The Rehearsal (film), so I had to move that article to the new title, then create The Rehearsal as a disambiguation, then write The Rehearsal (play). I wish I had read the play recently or knew off the top of my head whether Dryden was laureate in 1671. I know he was soon, but I really don't think that D'Avenant is the primary target. Normally, people regard him as no kind of target at all, but those people haven't read The Seige of Rhodes. He is too a target. However, the acting must have told theater-goers that Bayes was Dryden. One assumes he *acted* like Dryden. I didn't get into the plot much or characters, and I wish I could have without much work. I enjoyed "The Rehearsal" a lot more than Sheridan's "The Critic" at any rate. You've been writing like a crazy person, yourself, you know. Geogre 14:02, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Dryden was laureate from 1668 to 1688. Somewhat I have, by my standards, though you haven't seen it. New John Vanbrugh article isn't quite ready to be posted yet. :-) How people can paste in that 1911 EB stuff without at least cleaning it down by two thirds is beyond me. Oh, and if I had my own copies of The London Stage and the Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800 in 16 volumes, you'd see me go on a rampage. I'd have me a ball. I've looked several times (again last night!) all over the web for a second-hand copy of Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. I love that sucker, I'd gladly bankrupt myself to have it. Can't be done, though. Searches keep bringing it up, but it's always just the one odd volume, and it's rarely even possible to figure which odd volume. Amazon is stoopid. The London Stage is even more frustrating, because it's just one particular volume of that that I lust after and never find. Hey, guess what? There seems to be a special serial Wikipedia thing for laureate articles. There's a kind of box at the bottom of Colley Cibber, whereby you can go in both directions from him from him. You can check out the next guy and so on by moving forwards via that. That'll be because laureateship was orgasmically important to the 1911 EB.
Oh, your talk page got vandalized again? Sorry. Got tired of scrolling down it again, just revert the archiving if you no likee.--Bishonen 16:50, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • You know, I thought it really had been vandalized, at first. Then I saw your note. You were right. The length was far too great.
  • You ever thought of checking out a book like one of those and then "losing" it, knowing that the lost book fee is less than the purchase price by a long way? I've never done it, but I've sure thought of it. There are certain books where it's really worth it. The London Stage is one of those monuments. The whole set is more than a king's ransom. As for the biography of actors, you're the only scholar I've known who has referred to it. It sounds very important in the field. Shoot, though, I'd love to get my hands on a full DNB after the new one comes out (or is it out now?), for libraries are surely going to dump their old copies. No matter what I think of the fusty bias in some of the articles, it's an accomplishment of scholarship on par with the OED. Staggeringly complete, and there are times when you want your reference book to say too much, rather than too little. Let the desktop compendium give quick hits. When it's in an Oxford blue cover, you want it to tell you more than you need. That's my thinking, anyway. The problem I find with the 1911 text is the political bias and the inflated, valuative language in general. It usually doesn't say a person did a thing, but that a person "wisely" or "rashly" did a thing. Still, there are worse things. It's just that the 1911 is online now, so there's not much need for pastings. Geogre 18:35, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] She-tragedy

She-tragedy lasts longer than 5 years. It goes from Otway in the 1680s into the 18th c. Grr, I'm hampered at every turn by a lack of ref books here, I'm going by KB to pick up a truckful tomorrow. Anyway, I guess the most famous she-tragedy is Lady Jane Grey (1715) by Nicholas Rowe. The book by Elizabeth Howe that I refer to in Elizabeth Barry says that she-tragedy was all about voyeurism and the pleasures of watching a woman in a combination of distress and undress. Howe makes a good case IMO, always remembering how new and fascinating it was to be able to see women on the stage at all. (Pepys wasn't a she-tragedy man, but a major butt man, always saying how much he enjoys seeing the actresses cross-dress. "Went again to the play to see Mrs. Verbruggen wearing breeches.") Anyway, it was very sweet of you to twist your text around to un-orphan Barry. :-) And I also can't believe you wikilinked my nutty list instead of speedying it. :-D Did you see that Deb added a fourth "Virtue Rewarded"? Four is a respectable length for a list. How ya doing, you de novo maniac? I love The classical unities!--Bishonen 17:41, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] The Beggar's Opera

You did The Beggar's Opera! Geogre, you are brilliant! You truly are. I can't believe you got to do The Beggar's Opera de novo. Talk about the Wikipedian 18th century being a crying scandal. I'm very glad you un-scandaled this gap, it must have been one of the very worst. Maybe the worst? Great article, anyway!

The 1911 EB bit about the Haymarket venture in John Vanbrugh is positively chuckling. One clubbish gentleman to another. Bah. How I hate that fruity, mellow, pipe-puffing tone. I'm gonna clean it up, I'm gonna kill it dead.--Bishonen 20:29, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Oh, but I didn't! Did I? I don't think I did. I haven't done it recently, that's for sure. The "Synopsis" section of it is dreadful anyway. No, but I did do John Rich. In fact, I forbore much in that article that I had hints and memories of because I knew you'd know a ton more about it. All the rivalry, all the stuff from the Apology, is stuff I know you know far better than I. When I read the Apology, I read only bits, using the index, to find his "scandalous" comment on Pope that made Pope so angry. I read by index again to find the discussion of "spectacle," which I was interested in for some reason I can no longer recall -- I think because of my once-idea of writing on D'Avenant (Charles, not William). Anyway, there are gobs and gobs to say about Rich that I didn't say. Also, I did some big time improvements of the Percy Folio and found out new things about it (like how poorly Percy treated it). I know some things about Percy that I could write, if I wrote the Percy article, that put him in a quotidian context, but I need to check my Poems of Samuel Johnson again and try to remember a paper I wrote back in grad school on the parodies. Percy was trying to write an epic ballad on the Percies -- the noble ones -- to curry favor, and that's how he got into reading ballads, and that's how he got into collecting. Very accidental and non-lofty, after all. Geogre 20:58, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • Finally my brain works: No, I created a redirect of Beggar's Opera to The Beggar's Opera. Whew. Geogre 20:59, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      • Aaahh. I saw that the redirect was yours, but then I must have gotten confused between the cup and the lip. Whew. I know daddy Christopher Rich, but John is lost in a haze. (I only remembered that the Beggar's Opera made Rich gay, who could forget that? :-)) Who can keep track of all that theatre history after 1700? There's too much of it. Suddenly they started printing playbills, and hoarding them, and hanging on to records altogether, in a very anal way. There's a ton. In the 1690s people had the good sense to throw that stuff away, and so you have to try to figger what's going on by puzzling over references in some accidentally preserved private letter or Lord Chancellor's order against seducing actors. (Hmmm? Yeah, seducing, that was the official term for rival theatre managements "stealing" each other's actors). Much more fun. :-) Though I have to admit your John Rich stuff sounds like fun, too. It really does. I sure didn't know the half of it. You know, I just thought of something: Christopher Rich has the worst reputation in the world. But then everybody relies so much on Cibber for the 1690s stuff. As self-serving as the Apology is, it's all the source there is for a lot of stuff, and so it gets used. So, maybe Christopher wasn't that bad, then? I can just see Colley maligning him purely for being his rival John's father. An experiment tonight: actually going to bed now. Only midnight. Maybe I'll pop back up, but hope not. Must. Get. Some. Sleep. Hope all's well with you. --Bishonen 22:02, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • No, things are not so well with me, but I was much encouraged by the Kerry/Bush debate. I'm worried very much about a repeat of 2000, when Gore won the debate but all the spindoctors replayed every fault of Gore's and made the impression, in people who didn't watch it, that Gore was stiff and stupid. We've learned, on the left, since then, and some of the shadier left wing folks are encouraging all Dems. to go to all the online "undecided voter" polls to register their opinion. At any rate, I think that objectively Kerry not only said better things but looked and sounded better. This was all about Iraq, which is supposed to be his weak spot, and he actually came out in real-time polls as being more reliable and approvable than Bush.
  • Anyhow, I am absolutely sure that Cibber is bashing Papa Rich for being the father of the son. It's very much something Cibber would do, especially since the rivalry didn't end with Chris Rich's death. John took over a rival theater, made it work, and then pushed very, very hard in a direction that the restrained Tory wits hated (a way that Cibber says he hates in the Apology, but which he was blamed for -- the elephant in the theater). I am interested in the Spectacle thing because I think, honestly, these things are like contemporary Hollywood movies going from their Golden Age to the age of blockbusters and special effects movies. I.e. it's happened before, and the solution was the death of the theater. Geogre 03:51, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • I'm sending you good thoughts, Geogre. Have rented that truck and am off to KB now. (By "truck", I mean I'm bringing your fine big brown book bag from The Strand.) Did you see my "She-tragedy" note above, about Deb adding a fourth "Virtue Rewarded" book to that inane list? Temptation Sordid, or, Virtue Rewarded. Apparently a faux-Victorian jape (1960). You gotta dig the rhyme Sordid/Rewarded. :-)--Bishonen 10:06, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Hey, that Strand bag was one of the best I've ever seen. I wonder where mine is. Oh, well, I have the heavy library bag, which is the best walking bag I've ever seen. The long handles of that make it great for going over the shoulder, and it's voluminous, too.
  • Nah, universal sadness here, generally. I'm not hearing from people I expect to have heard from. I did get prescriptions refilled, and I found out my INR (scary high, but who cares?). I just fetched my Johnson's Poetry Yale over here to see if I can remember or, if I'm lucky, took notes in it on the material I found out about Percy so that I can write the Percy article. I also fetched my Behn Love Letters, but it's that shitty, shitty, shitty Virago Penguin edition. At least the editor is Maureen Duffy, so it's not as bad as the Viragos usually are (with fashionably feminist editors who are critics and not scholars and who fill their headspaces with junk and rants rather than information, or who crib all their information from some scholar like Duffy without credit). So I expect to do a real Love Letters article as soon as I've reread the introduction. I remember the novel itself well enough (both of it; see the article, when it comes). Strange book. It's actually a very good book and a very bad book all in one, like Hermsprong. Geogre 18:56, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Fortunately, McAdam and Milne had the general material I needed in their Yale Johnson: It was "The Hermit of Warkworth" 1771 (pub) that SJ parodied with "I put my hat upon my head and went into the strand and there I met another man whose hat was in his hand." That poem, Hermit, was a suck-up by TP to the noble Percies. Ok, Reliques is '65. Hermit is 71. SJ says it's "pretty enough" before pub. After ballad imitations get popular and people praised their "simplicity," SJ said that it's a thin partition dividing simplicity from simple mindedness: just leave out the content. Bingo. "I put my hat upon my head." Anyway, leaving the SJ angle out, I needed when Percy attempted to commemorate the county seat of the Percies.
"I therefore pray thee, Renny dear,
That thou wilt give to me,
With cream and sugar soften'd well,
Another dish of tea.
Nor fear that I, my gentle maid,
Shall long detain the cup,
When once unto the bottom I
Have drank the liquor up.
Yet hear, alas! this mournful truth,
Nor hear it with a frown; -
Thou canst not make the tea so fast
As I can gulp it down." --SJ, the third and lesser known of the parodies on Percy.

Geogre 19:15, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

    • EDIT CONFLICT! You don't know the half of the goodness of the Strand bag. The lower third of it fits perfectly into the bike basket, and the cloth is so sturdy that it'll stand there without buckling, like a tower of cloth, magically more than doubling the basket's book-holding capacity. The library staff know I mean business when I arrive with that bag. :-) --Bishonen 19:23, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Miscellanies

I had the misfortune of being stuck listening to the Rush Limbaugh show for about :30 earlier today (it was on at the clinic), but it was a pleasure to hear the man sputtering, trying to find something good to say about Bush in last night's debate. It was a massacre. "Harold and Maude" is on TV right now. Great, funny, weird movie. It's weird even now, and it was even weirder when it came out. They don't make movies that odd anymore, or at least none that are that odd and that work. Anything that strange these days is a student film that looks like garbage and plays like garbage, too. I wonder if there is an entry on Harold and Maude or Harold and Maude (film)? I wouldn't write one. Some things are better not explained. It's a movie like "Dr. Strangelove": the less you know about it before you see it the first time, the better. I had a phone solicitation earlier from a veteran's group. I told the fellow that I was unemployed, and we had a :30 sympathetic phone call. He was really great and encouraging. Geogre 22:41, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage

That stuff about Collier's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage causing the downfall of Restoration comedy seems to be the one established "fact" that everybody "knows" about Restoration comedy on Wikipedia. (In 1698! A likely story!) It pops up all over the place. I've been in there changing a lot of it, but I bet it's in dozens of places I don't even know about. Grrr. I'm doing me a bad-tempered de novo article about the real (miniscule) role of the Short View.

I'm very sorry about Vidalia. :-( --Bishonen 00:45, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • It's not Vidalia. It's employment. Anyway, never mind that. Why start worrying about tomorrow now, after all the tomorrows that have passed since it would have been appropriate? Well, I sure learned that Collier killed the Restoration comedy. I was taught that several times, in fact. What I found on my own is that there had been prior attacks, that Collier had agitated against the theater before his publication in '98 and that others had launched attacks before him as well. What killed the Restoration comedy was the death of Charles. Jimmy 2 didn't stick, and Bill & Mary were dour folks who didn't go to plays. What we don't have is a Williamite stage, and there's a reason for that. The Williamite stage is the dying of the Jacobean stage and the failure of the po-faced Steele and Lillo stuff (with rebellions from some) to launch. What disappeared under William was sex. Subversion stayed in the Anne stage, but the sex seems to have gone. I need to read Three Hours After Marriage. I hear it's not as bad as all that.
  • I just did Percy, and Dave Rehmal edited it before the ink dried. :-) Geogre 00:51, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Well, I explain about the killing in the Short View article, akshully. (And you're right about it.) Yeah, David stalks me, too. ;-) He can't very well be a Dave, he's Swedish. I know it's employment, I was just exercising my ineradicable instinct to be vague in a public space. --Bishonen 01:02, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Did you really cover the monarchical change as a reason for the death? I need to read your article, then. It seems so scary to say things like that these days, what with all Great Man History being dead, etc. The change of king is not supposed to be important in a post-Marxist historical model, etc. Nevertheless, it moves. Nevertheless, patrons had the patronage, and when they died their pets suffered. It wasn't a market economy stage, after all. As soon as it became one, welcome soap opera in the playhouse.
  • I just did Churchyard Poets. Now I have to create a bunch of redirects for all the vague terms people use for the same non-event. (Can't help it. I don't think Romanticism happened, either.) Geogre 01:15, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Great article, btw. About as well as the subject can be presented, I'd say. Geogre 04:23, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • I'm so flattered now (blush). Maybe I shouldn't have gone back and bloated up the article after you said that. Anyway, yes, I noticed you didn't notice the link at first. Hey, are you going to do a List of graveyard poets named Thomas or shall I? Your Cotton library article is too cool for words. I love the numbering by Caesar busts, I'd never heard of that. :-) And the books and artifacts getting freed up by the dispersal of the monasteries. --Bishonen 19:50, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • I need to re-read it, then. There are nice opportunities, somewhat, to set the record straight as a scholar (e.g. my presentation of the single-mask theory in A Tale of a Tub, where I knew full well that my reading is not the only one, but I was the one writing, and I don't think Ehrenpreis had anything worthwhile to say at all; good biographer, but a moron when it comes to the persona theory). Cotton's library is neat indeed. I did the "freeing" verb. I was being delicate, let's say. The fact is that the dispersal of the monasteries destroyed probably 800 years of literature. The English were a very literate people when Europe was poking around with sticks, and the monasteries had all that stuff. 17th and 18th c. people used those incomprehensible pages to light fires and to pad book bindings. The text of Waltherius, for example, was discovered in a book binding. I suppose the Puritans would have had a bonfire of vanities, though, even if Henry hadn't busted up the place. I assume you're with me in thinking that there is no such thing as "pre-Romantics" really, that it's just a way to divide the chapters in an anthology. You should see the entry on Edward Young: 100% 1911 Britanica. If I cared about Young at all, I'd look over it carefully. Geogre 04:08, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Say, I read the expanded version. It's even better. You cover all bases. You state that the pamphlet war broke out (which it did, of course, and one can hear the hammer blows long after it was over), and you covered Bill & Mary. Yep. Pretty much a model article, IMO. Geogre 18:08, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Hello

Hi Geogre--I just wanted to say hello. I appreciate all the work you are doing on 18th century English literature, and area which was (formerly) embarrassingly underrepresented on Wikipedia. Are you interested in Addison-Steele and the Spectator at all? I was idly thinking of fattening those up, but I didn't do graduate work in this area. Peace and happy editing, Antandrus 01:41, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hey, thanks. Yeah, my specialization in my Ph.D. was early 18th c. (18th I, in the old Yale classification of the canon, which is Restoration to novel. II is novel of the whole era. III is Age of Johnson. In that schema, I'm an 18th I person.) In particular, I'm a 1680's-1720's person, so Addison/Steele are my area altogether. Right now I seem to be on a poetry kick, but I'd be happy to work on the Addison-Steele things. What area is your field? I may like to call on you for some help on the wide range, too. (It should be obvious, but my major concentration was 18th c., and my minor concentration was medieval. It's easier to write medievalist articles on Wikipedia because there are so few who know anything about the non-marquee works. I was able to get in with Ormulum, e.g. Since I gave up VfD and worrying about policy, I've been on an article writing tear. Geogre 04:02, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
My specialty on Wikipedia is actually Medieval music (and Renaissance, and Baroque) though my Ph.D. is in music composition with history and theory on the side. Like you say, it is easy to be a medievalist here because there are so few of us! I just seized the music area as unclaimed--no one else was writing there at all. Always loved English lit though, know Swift pretty well (I like your Tale of the Tub article, noticed it a while back). Regarding Addison-Steele I have that Morley three-volume edition of the Spectator (mine was printed in 1883, bought it for five bucks at a Planned Parenthood book sale, LOL). I still get a kick out of reading Addison. Be well, Antandrus 04:16, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Orthoepeia

Orthoepeia is the correct use of words? I assumed it was the goddess of knee surgery. --Bishonen 21:16, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Yeah, I was really skeptical about it, too. I therefore went to check out every name mentioned in the article, and they all squared. Furthermore, the author used "pre-logical" in a correct sense to mean pre-Logic-of-Aristotle. I couldn't find confirmation of "orthoepeia," but the author established so much credibility that I'd need to have found the term used in a way that made it clear that it wasn't that before I'd have VfD'd or SD'd it. Geogre 00:07, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, I was kidding, but I'm checking now. Tried to paste the Greek word in here, but Mozilla laughed in my face. Never mind, it's from the Greek for correct + diction. The OED has the forms as orthoepy and orthoepia, but that's fine, orthoepeia has surely just been re-formed more recently as being a more proper trans-whatever-it-is of the Greek word, which I think it is (trying to sound like I know some Greek here).

The problem, if you want to call it that, is that the OED only acknowledges the sense of pronunciation. These are the definitions they give:
  • 1. That part of grammar which deals with pronunciation; phonology. Also, the study of the relationship between pronunciation and a writing system.
  • 2. Correct, accepted, or customary pronunciation.

They have a bunch of quotes for sense 1:

  • 1668: Parts of Grammar..Concerning the most convenient marks or sounds for the expression of such names or words; whether by writing, Orthography; or by speech, Orthoepy.
  • 1711: J. GREENWOOD Eng. Gram. 35 Orthoepy..ought to have been reckon'd as a Part of Grammar before Orthography, since Speech preceeds Writing.
  • 1957: E. J. DOBSON Eng. Pronunc. 1500-1700 I. ii. 193 In spite of his title Orthoepia Anglicana..what he [sc. Daines] sets out to teach is orthography, not orthoepy.
  • 1969: A. C. PARTRIDGE Tudor to Augustan English viii. 181 Though his was not the last shot fired in the hundred years' war of English orthoepy, Cooper's Grammar established that the criterion of correct Standard English rests firmly on its pronunciation.
  • 1976: Visible Language X. 20 Phonetization of the alphabet and other writing systems is a province of orthoepy.

And this quote for sense 2:

  • 1773: W. KENRICK (title) A new Dictionary of the English Language: containing not only the explanation of words..but likewise their orthoepia or pronunciation in speech.

So the only part of the Orthoepeia article that I can source is the grudging half-sentence "Often, it refers to what we would call diction, but...". You want to disambiguate the article a bit more, or shall I? --Bishonen 09:11, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • That's interesting. It seems like the author's descriptions of the references in the ancient world are right, but the main meaning isn't. It would be better if you did the fixing than I, since having a bunch of author names on a history is a lot better than having just one. I do have the Princeton Encycl. of Poetry and Poetics in the trunk of my car, I think, if weather and worm haven't eaten it, and it's great for that kind of technical stuff. Geogre 14:16, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • BTW, and I'll say this rather than on your page, the author seems to have done other things recently that are off a bit. For example, he created an article on the Liddell Scott Jones Greek lexicon. Good, right? Well, he created an article called LSJ for it. Who does that? Classicists, perhaps, but is there an OED article? Is there an OUP article? If there are, there shouldn't be. Geogre 04:27, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Your speedy deletion

Hi, why did you delete Gallagher? Did you read the corresponding talk page before you pressed the delete button?

Apart from the fact that there is no need whatsoever to delete the page (as User:Radiojon wants to recreate it as soon as it has been deleted), can just anyone (and it was just one person, with a record of messing around with page titles) put up that deletion sign and then some willing executioner will immediately go to work and do as told?

All the best, <KF> 01:45, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)

  • Well, take it up with the person who tagged it, I guess. What I got from the speedy tag was that the page was created as duplicate content to try to get the article at Gallagher (comedian over to Gallagher, that it was a protest creation. As such, it qualifies as speedy deletion. First, for being duplicate creation of material. Second for being what could be called vandalism, though I wouldn't call it that. I do see every reason for the article not to be at Gallagher, since it's a common enough last name that a disambig should exist at Gallagher, but I was following the speedy tag. If, of course, we had a juried system for speedy deletes, things would be smoother. We don't, though. Geogre 04:01, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Never mind. The disambiguation page is now at Gallagher (disambiguation), but I don't argue with people who claim that strictly speaking it has no right to exist. Also, I was shocked at how quickly you administrators follow orders (the page was deleted twice within a few hours), obviously with little or no fact checking.
I don't really understand the first part of your message to me: Who, by doing what exactly, made a "protest creation"? Have I just made a narrow escape from being called a vandal?
Thanks for your reply, but this topic is not worth talking about any longer. Best wishes, <KF> 04:15, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] consensus

Hi Geogre -- I thought you might be interested in the discussion about my post at Wikipedia:Votes_for_undeletion#List_of_civilian_killed_by_US_force_in_Fallujah, since you've obviously thought a lot about how deletion should work. I quoted two sentences from your managed deletion proposal there. BTW, I don't quite see how what I quoted fits together with what you say on your user page: "What you should not do is engage in a dialogue". What how can we "reason together" and "make it a truly deliberative page" if we don't engage in a dialogue? Fpahl 15:52, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Well, the Early Deletion process was designed to be simply triage. My idea was that it could be used only for those things so clearly out of bounds that we didn't need to debate. The other idea was that things from there should go to VfD quickly, if there were any dissent and that VfD be truly a place for us to reason together. My feeling was and is that we don't do that on VfD, because it's too big, too full of dross, and too full of people pursuing narrow agendas. I.e. Early Delete was supposed to be a flag that was raised to indicate when a thing was, and was not, in need of deliberation. Most of the things now on VfD do not get "keep" votes. Most of them would still be there with the Early Deletion process I propose; however, those that just don't have any rationale (and there are some) and that are dangerous to the site probably should be speedy deleted, but speedy deleted with consensus (non-dialogic consensus; any disagreement moves the nomination). No one seems to have gotten that. (shrug) Given that I was trying to make things less unilateral and people voted against on the basis that voting wasn't open to all (and open voting to all would render it useless since article authors would invariably vote "keep" and any keep means VfD or Cleanup), I'm giving up trying to help policy. If something that timid could be misunderstood so profoundly, I don't think anything more substantive can be possible. Geogre 17:34, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] The Licensing Act

Yay! Drumroll! And here it comes: The great! The long-awaited! The. . . Licensing Act! Written and performed by Hugh Bigodson! That really is great, Geogre. Congratulations on getting to do that one de novo, and on doing it very, very beautifully.--Bishonen 17:44, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC) (edit conflict AGAIN!)

  • Thanks. I can't believe it hadn't been done before. You know, all the "speculation" in there about its causing the novel is self-evident to anyone who studies the period, but there is real scholarship and publication material to back up every word (because, after all, it's true and pretty obvious). I still felt really, really uncomfortable saying that this or that novelist would have tried plays. I get a sick feeling making a generalization like that, but it's certainly true that the act created novelists. It's just queasy-giving to say that this or that novelist would have been a playwright. Geogre 17:48, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Ping

Ping: wrote to you on my own page (by mistake), about getting logged out. :-( Btw, about ripping off some popular art history site for Van's architecture: nah, not after I've seen how awful the stuff out there on the popularizing sites is on the aspects (of Van, of the Restoration, of the drama, of the 18th century) that I do know something about. The thing is, everything out there on the literature of our period, yours and mine, is old. It's just ancient clichés. I guess they're ripping off some public domain (=old) source. You think it's digital, it's gonna be up to date? No, it's some repetition of a repetiton of a repetition of what somebody claimed in the late 19th century and even that person was just guessing. Barring the tweedy language, I might as well keep the 1911 EB. Everything within half a century of being cutting edge is on paper, not on the web. Anyway, I'm going a long way around, but what I mean is this: I daren't use Internet stuff that I don't already know about, because then I can't tell if it's horrible, the way I can with the lit stuff. Anyway, never mind about all that. I hope today has brought you some prospects and some joys. Goodnight, Geogre. --Bishonen 22:52, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • No good news or news of any sort, but the weather was fine. I'll settle for that. I don't know what's going on with being logged out. It hasn't happened to me, but there were clearly some issues being addressed earlier today. I agree with you about the web in general. I was thinking of something like the Adams or the Johanson History of Art books, the content of which probably is stealthily appearing in paraphrase all over the web by now. They're good books. Anyway, a Big Book of Art History might give a comprehensible and fair assessment at least of the Received Wisdom about Vanbrugh. Even if it's out of date, it can't be as out of date as the 1911. Geogre 04:24, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Early Deletions

I'm glad you liked my comments at early deletions. Moreover I'm glad someone read them. Sort of wish I had gotten involved in the debate a bit sooner, maybe people would have reconsidered their votes. Then again, probably not. People do have to realize that if you allow a policy to be open to non-sysops then its open to everyone, as any hack or troll can get an account in about 10 seconds. People sometimes make the point of counting "legitimate" (or some such word) votes, but while that sort of works when counting votes on VfD, it's way to subjective be made policy. People are either logged in users or not. They are either sysops or not. Anything else is a grey area. Anyway, the good news is that at least it looks like there might be enough support to expand speedy deletions for clear vanity and advertisement, which I think is better than nothing, but now I'm sort of worried about abuse of that power, which I wasn't worried about from your proposal.

Anyway, sorry to say I hadn't actually read your A Tale of a Tub article fully. I made that minor edit because I recently have been disamiguating links to Charles II (and other monarchs who share names) and that page was a link there. But I have read it now, and I gotta say that's quite a thorough article for a pretty minor work. Sort of makes me sad how many great works have no articles or just short stubs. Maybe I should work on that sometime. Keep up the good work. -R. fiend 23:04, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • <cough cough> Well, A Tale of a Tub is pretty monumental, actually -- about like Life of Johnson in that not everyone reads it, but the Tale had more influence than Gulliver by a good stretch. Most people who teach 18th c. lit. have given up trying to teach it, because it's "too difficult," according to the last time the subject came up on the C18L 18th century listserv. That's too bad, really, because Tale is one of those landmines of satire. Once you open the covers, the thing goes off in all directions -- a true delight.
  • Anyway, the Early Deletion proposal is dead, but why? What rationale is there? "Too much power?" Hell, I have the power already. "Not democratic?" Ditto. I'm glad, if the Speedy Delete categories get broadened, but all the new areas are susceptible to abuse, and that's why I thought the jury system was best. "Clear vanity" is the thing we make the most frequent mistakes on, and "advertising" is second. As I've said before, I trust no one with that power, and that's why I trust everyone: let's peer over each others' shoulders just a bit, but without argument -- just double checking on these new and scary areas of speedy. Nevermind, though -- it's a lost cause, because surely this is some kind of power grab. :-( Geogre 04:21, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Well, perhaps "minor work" wasn't the right term, but I don't think I had heard of it, and I generally pride myself on being resonably well-read (of course there's "well-read" when referring to the general population, and "well-read" when conversing with encyclopedians, which, I've found, are very different things). I'm sure I'm by no means unique when I state that the only thing I've actually read by Swift is Gulliver's Travels, and though Tale of a Tub may have had more influence, I'd warrant that today Gulliver's Travels is more influential among the general population, if only because its so well known. Maybe I'll take a stab at Tale sometime, sounds interesting, to be sure. Anyway, yeah, too bad about Early Deletion. I still hope clear vanity makes it to the speedy category now, though I'm sure some mistakes will be made. That's why I think there should be a great deal of stress on the difference between obvious vanity, and probable vanity. I'd like to think that some entry that states nothing but a person's favorite foods and movies should clearly be a speedy, but any article where nearly any sort of claim of notability is made is still sent to VfD. "Johnny Flotilla (b. 1954) is an expert in the field of speedo research, and works for the Phoenix Foundation" could go to VfD. Even though I'd wager that anyone in speedo research isn't notable, the guy claims he is, and that claim should go through the standard procedure to be verified (OK, maybe this example is a bit over the top). Such an article, on the other hand, would have been a perfect Early Deletion candidate. Oh well, better to err on the side of caution, I guess. If speedy is expanded I'm sure we'll see the unnecessary deletion of some articles (though probably not terribly good ones). If I were a sysop I'd certainly be tempted to delete some of the vanity articles we see every day, but I guess that what the overcrowded VfD is for. -R. fiend 05:15, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Pat O'Brien's Bar

Thanks for your addition to the article. Do you have proof for your claim that it's in the top 3 of New Orleans tourist destinations? [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 17:42, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

  • They make the claim at Pat O'Brien's itself. I also think that I said that it was in the top three in the French Quarter, which is important, since it clears it from the Garden District and other areas. I lived in New Orleans for a bit, and Pat O'Brien's was where the tourists went as surely as they went to bank machines. The place is very, very centrally located, and it's a vaccuum for tourists: they all end up in there. The claim comes from the bar itself, and I have no reason to doubt it, but I also have no other verification. (The other two would be Jackson Square (in daylight) and Preservation Hall.) Geogre 17:46, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion

See Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion. Anthony DiPierro is challenging your right to make speedy deletions. RickK 00:12, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

  • Fine. Geogre 00:16, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • No I'm not. I'm only challenging a few speedy deletions which don't appear to fit the criteria for speedy deletions. anthony (see warning) 00:39, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • You know, anthony, I tried...I really tried to propose a policy that would have allowed people to review and ensure that cranky moods didn't mean unilateral deletes. At this point, I don't care so much. It's a choice: care about what goes on Wikipedia, or care about deleting only the most letter-perfect and obvious candidates.

The rules were written when the #1 concern of Wikipedia was attracting editors and growing. Well, that's not a big concern now. With an Alexa rank below 500 and with over 1,000,000 articles, I'd say "don't scare away the feebs" is not really a big worry. However, because every rule adjustment should be voted on, guess what happens? The tipping point was some months ago. Geogre 00:43, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • I hope you haven't taken these listings personally. I didn't mean to slight your decision, I just disagree with it in a few cases and have asked others to review the decision. As it says on Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion, that page is about articles, not people. anthony (see warning) 00:52, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Nah, Anthony, I don't. Seriously. The way RickK phrased it above, I thought it was, but then I saw that you were hitting all sorts of articles. That's fine. I do, though, think that admins are going to speedy delete things that don't qualify. I tried to fix that. Nobody was interested. So, we're back to square one: admins have to either break the rules, or VfD has to get to 100 kb of obvious stuff. I've started interpreting the speedy delete definitions broadly. With an article like account, you kind of need to. The author was vandalizing, and the article was, at best, a very, very self-evident dictdef. The problem is that it was in whole sentences. So I've started reading "no content" more broadly than I would like to. Geogre 12:26, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • I would support the "quarantine" proposal, or anything else which keeps the articles in a database dump for at least 5-7 days. I download the database dump every time it comes out, precisely so I can keep articles like these which were listed on VFD but deleted for reasons of non-notability. Speedy deletion, even accelerated deletion, does not allow me to do this. anthony (see warning) 13:42, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Incidently, I just read your user page on your "deletionism", and I think you make some really good points. I hope we can find a way to satisfy your concerns (of poorly written, or unfinished articles) with the concerns of some of the "eventualists" (most well written articles started out as a poorly written, unfinished one). I suggest you take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Al_Gore&oldid=233829. That was the Al Gore article which we had from March 29, 2001 until December 24, 2001.

I think we can find a way to come together on these questions, but it involves taking consensus to mean a true general agreement, and not 2/3rds majority. For instance, some articles might be hidden from random page, from search engines, and from logged out users, but still be available to editors.

anthony (see warning) 00:18, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Oh yeah, and when you say "Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art" you probably mean "Museum of Modern Art". There's also a "Metropolitan Museum of Art", but you mention the MoMA, not the Met. anthony (see warning) 00:45, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Nagaland

I'm asking you to unprotect the page Nagaland. As you can see from the [page history], the dispute was over the map on the page. I have since replaced the map with one that I hope Simonides will agree with. Another administrator agreed with this decision on the talk page.

Thanks. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 22:13, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

I dropped a note on Simonides's page asking for him to comment. From the talk page to the article, it was unclear whether he saw the new map and had no objections (but didn't say so, explicitly) or if there were still issues that needed to be addressed. If he fails to respond with additional needs for protection (I asked him to respond here) in 24 hours, I'll unprotect the page. Geogre 23:43, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Help with a move

I was wondering if I could get your help with something as an administrator. I'm trying to move Benedict to Saint Benedict of Nursia, as there's more than one Saint Benedict and a whole bunch of other Benedicts as well. Since there's already a Saint Benedict of Nursia page (a redirect to Benedict), I can't do it. I'll make the necessary disambiguation page and take care of the redirects and links myself if you can do the move. Thanks. -R. fiend 18:53, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Ok, so what we want to do is make Benedict a disambig, right? It will then list all the saints Benedict, and one of those will be Saint Benedict of Nursia, which will be what is now at Benedict? Sounds reasonable. I do get Nursia as "the saint" number one, but there is also Benedict of Aniane and Benedict Biscop, both saints. I'll do the move. Geogre 20:10, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Grr. Ok, a move is not possible since the Benedict of Nursia exists. Copying and pasting destroys history. Deleting the redirect page doesn't work, because the name stays for several months. We can do that and ask for a database updating, but that requires getting a developer. Manually copying over the edit history is possible but very time consuming. The interim solution I've come up with is to put a whopping big disambig at the header of Benedict before it gets into a discussion of the saint. That's the easy way out. Geogre 20:19, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • OK, this is a good temporary solution, but there are other Benedicts too, such as a whole slew of popes, if I recall (well, several, at least). And possibly other place names. How hard is it to get a developer to aid this? Or is cutting and pasting really too much of a a frowned upon method? I guess this isn't terribly important, but it's the sort of thing I like to try to get right, and presently I think having this article at Benedict is flawed. I guess we could create a Benedict (disambiguation) page and have that listed at the top of the Benedict page. I'd still prefer this guy on his much more specific page Saint Benedict of Nursia, if at all possible. Well, thanks for your help anyway. Let me know if you find a way of doing it. -R. fiend 04:06, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Managed deletion

Well, that sucked. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:58, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 :-) Thanks for that, Cyrius. That's my sentiment exactly. It sure did. You know, it was the most mild proposal I could think of. Honestly, it was such a modest, timid, incremental change that I thought up, and it got so entirely misunderstood as to just be ridiculous. It sucked a lot. Ah, well. So it goes. Honestly, I don't see how anyone else is going to get any other reforms passed, but I'll support those who try. Geogre 03:15, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
BTW, I see that David Roehmal has asked for voting to be left open, so it's going to be extended for a week. I'm over my bitterness by now -- which I expressed by retiring from VfD and writing lots of articles -- but, unless people actually campaign "no" voters, I don't see much hope still. It was about 65% "No," and we'd need a reversal of percentages. At the same time, this may be the most voted-on proposal ever. Geogre 03:25, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] I did know you'd keep it

...but I thought you might move it elsewhere. I probably should have done it anonymously. :) Oh well. After that first statement on your user page, how could you possibly delete a bit of lighthearted fun? :> The Steve 05:41, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Hmmm...

Perhaps we should elide "Notable" from VfD.

Note that you can't really vote to delete based on any terms, just the reasons in VfD policy. Granularity is definately irrelevant. Notability is probably too subjective and is too much of a PITA to keep. (I'm neither an inclusionist or a deletionist, I'm a technocrat). ;-)

  • Example: If that 10 year old takes a lot of time to write that article, and the article sucks, but the topic is encyclopedic, then that's a Keep, because "article sucks" is not in VfD rules.

Note that VfD takes up more resources than the articles being deleted at the moment (both in time by different people, and server space) so we really need to be cutting back on it.

Deliberately making these comments to you first, since I know you'd be the toughest opponent. ;-)

I'm on irc often enough, see if you can spot me there if you'd like to iron this out in real time :-) Kim Bruning 21:48, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Kim, I couldn't disagree with you more. Ok, let's take this in pieces: the primary reason to not support infinite granularity is usability. Where I differ from the bulk of Wikipedians is that I always think about how we can get more users of Wikipedia, not more contributors. I think we can be an online encyclopedia, and it's part of our mission to be one. So I think what we've got to do is look at the logical organization of information. Breaking out information isolates it from its natural context. Duplicating it in two places is redundancy that can be handled by a redirect. So, if Francis Bean Cobain says that this is the daughter of Kurt Cobain and that's all, it's not an abomination unto the Lord: it's not useful. If Bean Cobain does something, then she needs a discussion. If she only got born, breaking her out isolates her from her parents' article. If the fact that she was born is mentioned in their articles, then it's redundant.
The argument on notability is obviousness. It is the duty of encyclopedias not to try to capture all of the world. Experience and existence elude all our efforts. So there is always a principle of selection. Again, don't think about "whatever someone might want to write about," but "whatever someone might want to learn about." Thus, the bike club I belong to is a matter of interest to all 20 members. People in the next town over don't care. Similarly, if someone likes to get spanked while having hot oil poured on his head and watching women shave their legs, that's groovy for him and his accomplices, but not, frankly, something that needs to be investigated by the world at large. "Notable" is shorthand, I admit, but it's the best shorthand for trying to establish the things that someone will need to know about and therefore the things we should be recording and preserving. "Notable" is a better word than "important," btw, or "well known." "Notable" things can be the firsts of their kind, the trendsetters, the sui generis items, etc. "It is worthy of note." Granted, we can argue about it. We do argue about it.
As for VfD's length, it's a mess. I think VfD's broken. Most people do. No one agrees with how it's broken, though. I wanted to shunt off the obvious cases to a separate process so that the VfD page (especially with its endless arguing over trivial matters by impassioned authors) could settle down to the more controversial cases, the cases where we really need the whole Wikipedia community to hash things out. However, my efforts were decried as being a Sysop power grab, despite the fact that the alternative was entirely unworkable.
Are you planning to challenge the VfD standards by policy?

Geogre 00:57, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hehe, I knew you'd disagree with me. It's a good idea to discuss your ideas with the people who are least likely to agree. That way, they won't hesitate to tell you where your ideas are unsound. :-)
Sorry that this reply is so long. This is my first attempt at formulating the information in plain english, and this will need some cutting down in time.
I disagree about breaking up of information, it's still only a hyperlink away. In the example you mentioned, (Francis Bean Cobain), that should be a merge and redirect, no vfd needed. (Though note to check if the page hasn't only just been created. If so, come back a week later, lots of folks make placeholders before expanding an article.)
I don't see how someone who is not interested in too detailed information would be confronted by it on wikipedia, so I don't see why it would be harmful. Conversely, someone seeking more detail on a subject might be confronted by lack of granularity. There's some optimal level of granularity where suddenly things start to "self organize", it's hard to explain unless you've seen it before.
Your personal tolerance level for granularity seems to lie below the self-organisation limit (though this is only a subjective observation at the moment, I'd need to do experimentation and statistics to find objective values), which is unfortunate.
So those are some personal views.
Here's some "technical" views
You state that there is a principle of selection. However, selection is only relevant in a situation with limited resources.
Pages on all wikipedias taken together currently take up roughly 0.3 Tb, on a total capacity of roughly 0.9 Tb (Leaving us with 0.6Tb to play with). The english wikipedia takes up .15 Tb. Text only (which includes all stubs, and most unfinished articles) for the english wikipedia only takes up roughly 800 Mb (which is 0.0008 Tb). I'd say we have sufficient resources for a little while yet. While I haven't seen the precice budgets for the wikimedia foundation, 1 Tb of storage costs roughly $1200 at this moment in time. Even counting multiple backups, caches and internal mirrors, storage would not seem to form the bulk of wikimedia costs.
This thoroughly destroys the argument of selection being required to save space, because space saving need not currently be a priority.
As to reducing s/n ratio, I have observed that deletion is usually counterproductive.
VfD can only handle so much data in a day, because only so many editors track it. Through time we are seeing more and more traffic on VfD, and each VfD is being considered less well.
Even though people spend less time researching each vote, VfD is still being overloaded, and can't track everything. You'll find in time that VfD will start to fall behind, if it isn't already.
If trends continue, VfD will be no longer be up to the task in only a matter of months.
Truely, if we want to remove merely the worst problem articles from wikipedia, we will have to use strictly (near-) mechanical processes with short cycle times, and even then I worry if it's a viable system, though certainly more viable than what we have now. (VfD might be able to last for half a year to a year longer). If/when I propose VfD policy changes, this will be my first stop.
This attacks the argument where selection by deletion is considered usable at all.
So how do you select useful articles?
By anology in biology: The kidney organs in vertebrates filter blood by first removing *everything*, and then selectively adsorbing back only those things that are deemed useful.
A similar plan is being used to make wikireaders. Start out with a blank slate, then pull together all the articles deemed relevant, and -as required- pull up any remaining articles to feature standard.
What I am missing from you is why you deem selection to be a nescesity at all, you merely stated an analogy, but I do not see how it applies to wikipedia. Selection in paper encyclopedias is forced upon them by the limitations of paper, not because they wouldn't want to explain everything.Wikipedia is not paper, so we have no such problems.
Perhaps I am missing the obvious. Could you spell out more precicely why you advocate selection, and why selection should occur in the manner you appear to advocate? I'd like to concentrate on what it is that you hope is gained, and how you view the practicality of the process. Hopefully we can work out a process that will achieve the aims we both hope for in a practical fashion. :-) Kim Bruning 12:20, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ok, you have two separate arguments. One is about "why ever delete," and the other is "granularity," and the "notable" thing has been lost.

[edit] Deletion at all

First thing, let's ditch the "not paper" argument altogether, because I have never advocated selection based on computer concerns. I suspect both the "we have room" and the "we don't have room" appeals to hardware. I think that's right into the "damned lies and statistics" category. Your argument that we have space per dollar is self-defeating in the same way that the "we don't have room" argument is: both are based on faulty premises. Yours is on the idea that infinite growth in storage can match infinite growth in content, and the other is based on shrinking storage in the face of growing content. So, why select? Selection ALWAYS takes place. It is simply inescapable. This is something historians have had to realize. Every narrative, every account, selects. Similarly, every record of the world selects. We select with our items already: our selection is, currently, based on the interests of volunteers. So, do we throw up our hands and say, "Anything you like, that goes in," or do we say, "Whether you like it or not, it has to have value?" The overwhelming majority of scholars, and Wikipedia contributors, would say "value." So we're already past the "include whatever the hell" position and down to a debate over "value." In the debate over "value," we can either think of our contributors or our users. The more we try to suit every contributor, the closer we get to Everything2.com. The more we try to suit only our users, the closer we get to Britanica. I'd prefer the latter to the former. I'm not interested in an onanistic project that simply serves as a vast sandbox. The obverse of "value" is "valueless," and that means deletion. This is not a question of space: it's a question of integrity. Is this project aiming for encyclopedia status or feel-good online time? If the former, and I think it's what the project was meant for, then you've got to cut out the junk. It isn't signal to noise ratio that's at stake: it's noise of any sort. We shouldn't have any.

Alright, well clearly we have some amount of noise at the moment.
Let's establish that there exist 2 types of selection:
  • Positive selection: "Yes, this should be added!"
  • Negative selection: "No, this should be removed!"
It turns out that these 2 different forms of selection have very different dynamics.
* Imagine an infinitely large space containing an infinite number of articles. Let's call this space "Everything".
* Now 99% of everything consists of noise (the 99% of anything consists of crud rule)
* Any Negative selection from Everything would yield a new infinite space, with identical characteristics (That is: 99% crud). Try and do the logic in your head. It's a bit tricky, because it includes an infinity. :-)
* A Positive selection from Everything also yields a new space. Positive selections yield a finite space, while the characteristics of this space depend on the selection criteria (ie, the selection might be 0% crud, 100% crud, or something in between.)
I realise that wikipedia is not actually infinite in size, but the larger wikipedia gets (it's now closing on 1,000,000 articles on en:), the more it takes on the characteristics of our Everything space.
Note that negative selections aren't always bad, if you have a small finite space you want to clean up, negative selection can be more efficient than positive selection. There's a flipover point where the one becomes more efficient than the other. I'll argue that wikipedia has probably passed that flipover point, and likely by a rather large margin.
VfD uses the principle of negative selection, so as time goes on, we'll see it become less and less effective. It's unrealistic to expect VfD to be able to improve S/N ratio, so we shouldn't use it for that.
Instead, people make wikireaders and plain paper versions of wikipedia, applying positive selection to drastically cut down on (or even remove) all noise. The new mediawiki engine also supports tools for positive selection from the larger database.
Storage capacity does factor into all arguments, because selection stratagy is determined by it. The less space you have, the more strict you have to be in your selections. Currently, as far as plain text is concerned, we have sufficient storage space to last roughly a century (approximately 100 years), at our current rate of growth. Other media are more likely to cause problems, and those need to be more tightly policed as a consequence. I get the idea that many people aren't quite aware about what storage space we have, and how it is organised, from reading vfd a lot, so I'm covering that argument here just to be on the safe side.
Kim Bruning 15:57, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
NB: I'm assuming that any selection will consist of a finite number of elements (like occurs in real life). If we were to assume that selections could have an infinite number of elements, then both styles of selection would yield identical results.

We're going to get to the "web vs. tree" pretty quickly, given the rationale you're offering, because it applies here as well as to the granularity arguments. I'll forestall some of it for now and try to address what you've written per se.

The fallacy in your approach is that you are working from sets, compared to working with process. VfD is supposed to be an adjunct to New Pages and only secondarily a pruning of the existing set. Wikipedia is not infinitely large, for it is, instead, growing. Therefore, I'd rather see an organic model applied. These are new citizens or new cells being added to an existing, presumably majority-good or fit, body. Therefore, VfD can be overwhelmed quite simply by having too many additions for excision of the unfit. There are two mechanisms for evaluating initial worth: speedy delete and VfD.

Once upon a time, Wikipedia was very worried about getting people to participate. After that, it was enjoying growing participation and wanted people to stay. Let's call these the desires for growth. On the other side was the antibody system, the excretory system, the need for health. As the desires succeed, the needs must match. I say that VfD is broken simply because the critical process is overwhelmed.

Pruning the extant weakness is a separate need. I don't know to what degree VfD is failing for that. Generally, when people see something and VfD it from a Random Page flip, it goes down or stays quickly on VfD. I would argue that such articles on VfD are extremely rare. In general, people repair those articles or ignore them. So positive and negative selection apply, in my opinion, to the body as it exists, whereas what I think has broken VfD is the inability to perform triage. VfD and Speedy Delete are supposed to distinguish growth from the neoplasm of cancer.

You seem to be hinting at the idea of a Wikipedia reader, of a Version 1.0 model. I'm not against that at all, but the mechanisms for doing it, so far, have been faulty, and I cannot begin to imagine the outrage that will be expressed when it comes to figuring out by whom and how an article will be vetted for positive selection.

[edit] Granularity

"A hyperlink away" is not true. If an article says "Francis Bean Cobain is the daughter of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain," then a link from their articles is not profitable, because the resulting page tells you what you already know. Secondly, to suggest that we have aspects of an article set up hierarchically by links within pages is to suggest subpages, which, I'm told "were tried and don't work." I can see some reasons why they might not work right off. Let's suppose that one of the "Friends" maniacs had an article on the show and then set up one hundred and twenty-two subpages, one for every single episode. Well, if there were a destructive edit to the "Friends" page or a need to delete it (imagine instead that it was "Sad Girl in Snow Chronicles" and not "Friends"), then those subpages might never be recovered in the one instance or deleted in the other. However, let's say that there is a way to hyperlink over to the greater detail. I have never had a problem with that, if the new article arises because its subject is independently notable or because the master topic is too long. If the subject is United States, then it might be wise to have United States history as a separate page -- too big, too complex, and well known by itself. Similarly, it makes sense to list the names of the four Beatles in Beatles and to have an article on each of them, for each is known and notable as a person. On the other hand, when Norwegian Funeral Metal Band #25 gets an article, the members of the band are anonymous folks who have not done anything to warrant an article, and it is noise to have a page on each of them. I maintain that we isolate the information by granularity, or we simply make waste by having them, if the treated topics aren't notable in their own right.

Wikipedia is not hierarchical, I'll come back to that when answering the next section. "Subpages" for a topic can be tracked by following "What Links Here" and "Related Changes", which were designed specifically for this task.
Importantly: Define "Waste".
Kim Bruning 16:12, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)


You can say that "What links here" and "related changes" can be used, but I'd say that there will be a great many mistakes. Subpages require a developer change. I actually think subpages are a good way to do things, but I understand why they don't work.

The non-directional nature of the web is not the same thing as the absence of hierarchy. In fact, I would suggest that it emphasizes logical and memetic hierarchy by removing formal hierarchy. There is no hierarchy in the form (i.e. an article is not shaped like an arrow), but there is a cognitive and meme-based hierarchy that is vastly more important than the formal taxonomy, and smart webs know their true hierarchies and build accordingly. (See Litgeek.com for some implications of non-hierarchical webs in education and the ways they change, but only subtly, learning.) Geogre 17:20, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Why Delete

Our project is non-hierarchical on the machine level, but it is still an encyclopedia, and that means that it is still hierarchical on the logical level. It means that the criteria for selection have to be educational and historical. It's not wrong to have a project where people write up anything and everything in a wiki, but it's not this project, I think. If it is this project, then I'm at the wrong site. I mean that sincerely. I keep trying to write up encyclopedia articles, and I vote to delete things that either aren't encyclopedia articles or don't need to be in an encyclopedia at all.

Wikipedia is not hierarchical (tree shaped), but rather web shaped. Hmmm, Since web is giving me a red link, consider the layout of the world wide web, and you might have some idea what that looks like.
As a note, I vote delete for things that shouldn't be in an encyclopedia. I vote keep for things that are clearly encyclopedic, should be kept according to vfd rules, and which probably shouldn't have been vfd'd at all. I agree with the catagory "keep or delete all" for topics that are spread over multiple pages.
I only view a random sample of vfd every day, and only vote on a small section of pages that clearly need keeping, or clearly need deleting.
I find it interesting that -when following this stratagy- I turn out to be making a large number of Keep votes on vfd. That's not what I'd expect to be doing. This suggests to me (among other things) that vfd nomination criteria are too loose, making vfd more unworkable than it need be. (see above for statements about negative selection)
Kim Bruning 16:35, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think the VfD nominators by and large choose wisely. I find myself voting "delete" on virtually all because I think people have, indeed, flagged things that shouldn't be part of the body. No, I don't assess on perfection, but rather on perfectability. When I look at an article, I ask, "In its perfect form, what will this be?" and I ask, "In its current form, will it grow to perfection?" and I ask, "In its present form, will it inform anyone?" If the answer to either of those last form is "no," then I don't think our users (the readers...and we must always remember the readers) get any benefit, and therefore we ought not have it.

The tricky bit of thinking that most people can't handle is seeing that webs do have hierarchies. First, they must, simply because one page is an index. Second, there is an hierarchy that is temporal created by every use of the web. Third, there is an hierarchy of association, where users go from the commonly used to the less used. When it comes to instruction and webs, we should know that these hierarchies are going to exist, make it possible to use the associative element, and make sure that the temporal hierarchy isn't choked off by, for example, the repetition of content or difficulty of navigation. Wikipedia does a good job with having few choke points of use. Where the taxobox, categories, templates, lists, and subpages folks are arguing, I think, is with attempting to increase the associative usefulness of Wikipedia. I don't have any objections, there, except that we ought to be skeptical and never let those features overwhelm the yield of pages (and yield is information sought, not multimedia pleasure).

See, I have thought rather a lot about the metaphorical and cognitive implications of webs. :-) Geogre 17:28, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Broken VfD

Like I said, my Early Deletion scheme would have sped up and removed the weight of some of it. However, we're seeing the hazards of democracy and the tipping point of participation. We have too many users for VfD to work, and total democracy means that the authors of bad articles will always, always, always argue. In the case of the grand micronational genocide, I understand and agree that we ought to have those fights, but when it comes to an article on Stereo City having a big sale, we ought to be able to just kill the articles with nothing much said. Speedy Delete needs its criteria rewritten. Like I said, I tried. I'm no crazy deletionist: I'm just trying to help build an online encyclopedia. Geogre 14:28, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm not a deletionist or inclusionist, I think that both doctrines are flawed.
I'd like to build an online encyclopedia, but do so in a realistic fashion. I'm willing to compromise on things where nescesary, but you might disagree with me on which compromises are nescesary. :-) Kim Bruning 16:38, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, that much is clear. It's just that I think we really need to have more than one way of bottlenecking the flow in to Wikipedia. A Version system on new pages would solve a lot, frankly, but it's kind of hard to do. (Angela has a proposal somewhat along these lines, I think: articles are read and scored by readers. If an article gets enough of a good score, it goes over into the Version. I think that's what she was proposing. It's not a bad idea. If it were applied to New Pages, in particular, so that VfD only took up the issues of strengthening the existing body, it would solve the backlog instantly.) I'm up for other ideas. I would want us to be up to the standards of the old Cambridge History or something, if I could (i.e. with errors, but good stuff to such a degree that you forgive the errors). What I don't want is Wikipedia as a playground, as a discussion board, as Everything2.com. Geogre 17:32, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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