User:AboutWestTulsa
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[edit] About AboutWestTulsa
AboutWestTulsa lives in Tulsa,Oklahoma. "Born and raised" in West Tulsa, in the community of Berryhill, he recently started enjoying writing about his hometown on Wikipedia until he recognized Wikipedia was not the environment for this original documentation.
[edit] New User Perspective on Contributing to Wikipedia
As a new user, Wikipedia has come across to AboutWestTulsa as a mess of in-fighting, politics, witchhunts by "deletionists", crusades by "wikiLords" and completely lacking in definitions to form a functional and logical basis for objective reasoning. He is disgusted to find that, at the stage in development, Wikipedia lacks comprehensive understanding of the basic framework and rules in place to control socio-economic and other biases. The conflicting viewpoints of editors I find fascinating; conflicting policies between various Wikipedia pages concerning the same issue concerns me.
[edit] Poor Materials and Poor Controls
Wikipedia needs a crash course in objectivist thought for new users and how this philosophy is supposed to be applied to editing Wikipedia articles. Also, controls must be instituted to ensure objectivity in the editing of articles by Admins. Admins must contribute to discussion and consensus building, as oppossed to making what appears to be arbitrary decisions. (NOTE: Anytime an Admin posts a decision and doesn't posts an account of the factors and considerations in making that decision, it comes across as arbitrary.)
[edit] AboutWestTulsa's Experience as a New Contributor
An example is the streets of West Tulsa. These have been (or are being) deleted from Wikipedia as not being encyclopedic. However, for a reader to understand West Tulsa, they must understand how the communities of West Tulsa are built around and connected by the main avenues. People from West Tulsa drive to Tulsa daily, down these roads. Which street you live on, defines your community, your distance from the city (i.e. rural influence). W. 21st St. is and of itself is an attraction which people from Tulsa go to West Tulsa to use/enjoy. Southwest Boulevard is historical, important and interesting. Perhaps the articles should have been more about how our roads play into our lives and impact one's understanding of West Tulsa, which would have possibly developed in organic growth.
[edit] Experience with having a VfD discussion closed
However, deletionists and even Admins have close-mined biases such as "streets are never important and hence roadcruft" (fallacy of over-generalization) or "only the most important/famous streets should be included" (socio-economic basis) or the ubiquitous "non-encyclopedic". The closing of the VfD debate on Southwest Boulevard involved counting up the Keep and Delete votes and going with the majority. Wikipedia so loudly proclaims, "We are not a Democracy!" until it comes time to appease the deletionists. The Admin did not include much insight into what factors were considered or if any weight was given or determinations were made about arguments to keep. Also, unique information in the article was deleted and not merged or copied into other articles where it should/could be a paragraph of detail.
[edit] Problem of the "Non-encyclopedic" Argument
As AboutWestTulsa has said in debates about what's in/what's out, if the "non-encyclopedic" stance isn't addressed, then Wikipedia eventually becomes an on-line standard encyclopedia without any of the depth of knowledge the originators intended, because non-encyclopedic really means "this isn't in Encyclopedia Americana".
[edit] The Objective Deciding Factor is...
The fact is, AboutWestTulsa has moved to Wikinfo, because Wikinfo allows "original research" whereas Wikipedia does not. This is the real reason his articles are not appropriate for Wikipedia, because little has been written/saved about West Tulsa, especially general knowledge like principal streets and locations (something everyone from West Tulsa already knows), therefore research is time-consuming and difficult. However, not one reviewer commented on this valid argument, each instead focused on pursing their own biases such as "notable", "non-encyclopedic", or anti-cruft.
[edit] Problems with Application of Objectivist Philosophy
The Admins who conduct the actual deletions are supposed to be responsible for looking with their own judgement at the implications of keeping/deleting an article. They are supposed to ferret out bias in their decisions. This was not done with the deletion of the Southwest Boulevard article. If Wikipedia doesn't fix these problems, they will overcome the noble goals and potential value of the project.
One bad judgement on one article is certainly not worthy of the politics of de-Adminship or other reprimand. In fact, the editor performs worthy service and is a great asset to Wikipedia. AboutWestTulsa believes the Admin/Editor was performing what seemed to them an everyday, general task and performed this VfD closing in much the same way as any Admin on Wikipedia would do. Thus, the issue is systemic.
Wikipedia needs to do more to "train" Admins who are going to delete an article to spot biased comments and to publicly disregard them, so that editors who make these comments and are bent on a certain crusade (like no streets not in Manhattan or no high schools unless they are notable) do not become deletionists. They can see that Admins are not going to count votes based on notability and other subjective reasons.
[edit] The Solution: Focus on "no sources", not "notability"
One cannot assign importance without subjectivity, and to think Wikipedia can get away with the "subjectivity creep" because of fear of "instruction creep" is not an acceptable compromise, because it compromises Wikipedia's objectivity and hence it's ability to ever gain the credibility it deserves. The bad articles are not articles on a subject that is unnotable as in not important. Bad articles are the articles who are unnotable because nothing has been written about the subject.
Also, many of those who voted against Southwest Boulevard, themselves created pages about their hometown, school, alma mater, fiction of interest, etc. without any sources noted. Believing it would be juvenille to launch a counter-attack on his part, AboutWestTulsa feels that Wikipedia would have a lot of gain by replacing the "non-encyclopedic" argument with "original research/doesn't cite sources". If there are sources for a topic, even W. 21st Street, then it should be included. This is the only way to eliminate the "non-encyclopedic" bias, and very much in line with Wikipedia's objectivist philosophy. Terms like "non-encyclopedic", "x-cruft", "notable" are subjective terms and have no place in objective discussion of articles.
[edit] Wikipedia Debates a Policy on Deleting Road Pages
Please contribute to the discussion of this article and other articles about streets or roads which might be deleted in the future, if subjective tests like notability, importance and inclusion are adopted.
[edit] Deletionist Defined
The term "deletionist" is somewhat controversial, and so as to not dissuade from my argument above, I would like to define how I define deleteionist. (JOKE: I hope this doesn't get my page transfer to Wikitionary.) A "deletionist" is not only a user/Admin who strongly supports deleting questionable articles but makes deleting articles the main business of that user being on Wikipedia. Deletionists lack an understanding of the table in Wikipedia titled "Problems not Requiring Deletion". Those who help cull the multitude of vanity, fan-craft and other pages which simply do not belong are not deletionists, because they are following the guidelines of when to delete a page.
