Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criticism of Wikipedia

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep, don't move and don't merge. Luigi30 (Ταλκ) 02:05, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Criticism of Wikipedia

This has been submitted before, however it was never resolved whether we should keep and merge. I am resubmitting this, and this time I am asking whether it should also be merged. Please comment in the relevant sections. - Ta bu shi da yu 02:22, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Previous

Criticism of Wikipedia was nominated for deletion. The result of the discussion was "speedy keep". For the prior discussion see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criticism of Wikipedia/18 October 2005.
Criticism of Wikipedia was nominated for deletion on 2004-12-03. The result of the discussion was "no consensus". For the prior discussion see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criticism of Wikipedia/2004-12-03.
Criticism of Wikipedia was nominated for deletion on 2005-02-25. The result of the discussion was "keep". For the prior discussion see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criticism of Wikipedia/2005-02-25.

[edit] Rename

  • Let's be honest. These are not arguments against Wikipedia. They are arguments for changing the policies of Wikipedia to give administrators more power. The article should be renamed to reflect its content. --Peter McConaughey 22:39, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Keep as is

  • Keep. It's an important entry of reference that people not convinced of the Wiki idea (especially thos used to traditional encyclopedia usage) can be pointed to. martin 8 December 2005
  • Keep. Should be an independent subject.. KrisR 4 December 2005
  • Keep. It's too large to fit nicely within the main Wikipedia article. -- Saikiri~ 02:46, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Wikipedia is a very valuable resource, and a fascinating social experiement, but many, if not most of these points are right-on. The only argument I could see for not keeping this is that it is POV, but that would be somewhat disingenuous. --RoySmith 03:06, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Doesn't need merging - wouldn't look good jammed into the main WP article. --Loopy 03:11, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep as useful resource. Capitalistroadster 03:13, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Does anyone have an actual reason to delete or merge this? Seems kind of strange to have a VfD without lodging a single formal complaint with the article as-is. -Silence 03:20, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Wikipedia has become a case study in all kinds of debates about knowledge and democracy. This page documents some of that. (Comment: If this was intended as just another VfD/AfD I think you'd be right. I guess this is intended to settle the keep vs. merge question... but I agree, it feels like this has been done and done.) rodii 03:32, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Speedy keep. Too large to merge anywhere. Creating sub-articles is a natural part of the growth of an article, so I'm not sure what the problem is here. BrianSmithson 04:06, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
    • The problem is that we need to determine whether enough people believe it should be merged or not. That's the main reason for this AfD. - Ta bu shi da yu 04:16, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
      • We don't (or should'nt) need an AFD to establish consensus for or against a merge, though. El_C 05:54, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep - I think it is beautifully well written, well resourced, and neutral. A wonderful article. It is important to keep it because it reflects transparency of Wikipedia. I think that there should be more of this kind of article. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 04:34, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep A useful collection of information, too big to merge with main article. Jasmol 04:39, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep- Per Zordrac. Reyk 05:47, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep per above. worthawholebean talkcontribs 05:51, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep Thanks, Luc "Somethingorother" French 05:53, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. El_C 05:54, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Worthwhile article, located correctly. Herostratus 06:32, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, as the article is well written and accurately portrays the flaws and eventual undoing of this encyclopedia. --Agamemnon2 08:39, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. It's an important subject, as much as any other current event. --QubitOtaku 10:40, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Speedy keep. I don't understand why it's up for AFD again seeing as it's been kept the previous times. Wikipedia has to include the bad with the good and while I disagree with Agamemnon2's statement about "eventual undoing" I think it's articles like this that make Wikipedia worthwhile. I don't recall seeing an article in Britannica devoted to people who don't like it. Just as long as this article retains NPOV, I'm all for it, even if I don't always agree with it. In fact, deleting this article would play into the hands of some of the critics who accuse Wikipedia of censoring any criticism about it. 23skidoo 16:16, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. To be objective and unbiased, me do need some critics. However, the article could needs some edit, because i think it is slightly POV
  • Keep as is The Land 16:35, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Gtabary 17:35, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Wikipedia is highly notable these days, and thus fair game for criticism; it also shouldn't put itself in the position of appearing to censor its critics. *Dan T.* 17:48, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep: Too big to merge, and the last thing anyone would want to do is justify the complaining of people like these. Until Wikipedia's perfect, it'll have its critics, and that information is welcome as long as its encyclopedic. karmafist 18:45, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree with karmafist. I tried to ask them for some constructive criticism, but they have none. Apparently I was "trolling" using the power of my "hive mind" (and other such personal attacks). With critics like that, we're actually in a pretty good position (they just look - and they are! - unreasonable). For instance, they criticise us for being in the top 10 of clusty.com (Daniel Brandt's recommended search engine) - surely they should be criticising the search engine and not us? - Ta bu shi da yu 21:12, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Too big to merge, and I don't buy the argument that "Criticism of X" articles are automatically more POV than any of the very POV articles we wouldn't dream of deleting or merging, like those of major religions or heads of state -- Antaeus Feldspar 21:23, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Any organization should have a plan to derive benefit by listening to criticism. There should be a link to Criticism of Wikipedia in the toolbox in order to make it easy for users to provide criticism. --JWSchmidt 23:30, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Speedy Keep It is important that WP acknowledges its critics. --rogerd 23:48, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, though when I say "as is", I don't mean the article as it is at this instant. In particular, the recent removal of the counters to some of this criticism strikes me as an effort to turn the article into a POV attack. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep Tlogmer 02:20, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep Olorin28 03:12, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep εγκυκλοπαίδεια* (talk) 05:02, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep as an important hubris-deflator for those like myself who try to believe that nothing is ever wrong on Wikipedia (I don't mean that in a negative way, I'm just saying I'm prone to believing everything I read on Wikipedia without acknowledging the possibility that someone has discreetly edited a number somewhere. I RC patrol, I know what kinds of stupid crap people do!) Mo0[talk] 06:25, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. As AOLers used to be notorious for saying: me too! --Modemac 13:08, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. If this useful material were merged into the Wikipedia article, that article would simply expand too fast for comfort. This is clearly material that belongs in its own article. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 20:05, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Speedy keep by now. Ashibaka tock 01:44, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • KEEP! Its healthy for organizations allow for criticism - allowing this to stand will also blunt the negative impact if its removed. But one word of caution, the content on this article should never dissolve into a personal gripe section. My greatest fear is that future "contributors" could use the space to air their personal gripes, an Wikipedia has a mechanism for dealing with that. Stu 17:15, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep or speedy keep given the general consensus here. Hall Monitor 18:37, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep — Matt Crypto 21:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Speedy keep It troubles me that some Wikipedians are unable to tolerate criticisms. This page is a valuable resource that provides alternative views of Wikipedia and can help improve the project. --SamOdio 18:37, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep What wont kill us will only make us stronger. We are the BORG Larsinio 19:48, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. We should strive to address these criticisms, not silence them. Silensor 19:52, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Sounds like a noteworthy page that we should pay attention to. --Thephotoman 00:30, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Those unfamiliar with WP should stumble across this early in their wanderings through it. BYT 20:14, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Speedy keep and delist. If someone doesn't within the next 24 hours, I will. —RaD Man (talk) 20:50, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Please do not do this, and let it run its course. - Ta bu shi da yu 21:29, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep: RENTASTRAWBERRY FOR LET? röck 01:04, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Delete entirely

  • Delete Somebody can make a user who does NOTHING BUT CRITICISE, and this could be their user page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blah2 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Redirect (please list where)

  • Redirect to Wikipedia:Criticism of Wikipedia. Thgis would make far more sense in the project namespace than in article space. Grutness...wha? 05:54, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • There is a certainly logic to what Grutness says, and from a purely logical point of view, I think he's right. On the other hand, hiding critisism of oneself out of the public view is the Wrong Thing to do. --RoySmith 14:57, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Um. Are you suggesting that our only real reason for wanting to keep the article as-is is to stave off being criticized by criticizing ourselves first, and that it's only by being (at least to some extent) illogical and irrational, only by treating this article preferentially and being biased enough to deal differently with this article than we would with any other article, that we can possibly argue for this article's existence? That's nonsense, I'd argue the same for any Criticism article about a major subject that has had a large number of significant criticisms. We already have a page called Wikipedia:Criticisms, which is a page for the purpose of Wikipedia editors to read over, discuss, and try to address relevant critiques of Wikipedia. The purpose of this article, on the other hand, is for our readers. Many people will no doubt be interested and fascinated to see some of the main criticisms of Wikipedia (and the significant responses)—all the more so, yes, because the page happens to be on Wikipedia, but even if it wasn't, the topic's significant enough that we shouldn't attack such a well-written article. We should do the same thing we do with any other article: try to improve it, fix its biases, bring it up to shape. Endless VfDs don't improve the article, they just lead to us spending more time arguing back and forth, back and forth, then actually working on the article itself (which is, in fact, the case with this article, from what I can see). -Silence 22:58, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Redirect to Wikipedia:Criticism of Wikipedia. I agree with grutness, it would make more sense to have that in the Wikipedia: name sapce --Chemturion 21:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
On the theory that abuses of WP, and the resultant criticisms, are not prominent or newsworthy? I have to disagree. The Siegenthaler thing was on the front page of the New York Times Week in Review section this week, quite a promiment placement. Clearly, this should be front and center, not something for insiders. It is simply too big to pour into Wikipedia. Seems to me like the consensus here is dead-on. BYT 20:18, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge and redirect (please list where)

  • Merge to the Wikipedia article. In The Flesh? 02:34, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge to the Wikipedia article. Smerk
    • Incidentally, as a side-note to the vote, would you guys (a) support the merging of Criticisms of Mozilla Firefox into Mozilla Firefox, Criticisms of Internet Explorer into Internet Explorer (and possibly other articles, like Common criticisms of Microsoft into Microsoft or even Criticisms of communism into Communism), (b) support the merging of this article but not those, because Wikipedia criticism is less noteworthy than that of Mozilla Firefox, etc., or (c) none of the above. Just interested in getting a broader perspective on what this vote would entail for Wikipedia's requirements to be a distinct article; that way its results might be useful for future decisions. -Silence 04:41, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
      • I wouldn't. The Internet Explorer criticisms was done to specifically keep the size of the article down to a minimum. - Ta bu shi da yu 05:37, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
      • To be fair, criticism of Wikipedia IS vastly less important than criticisms of Communism, Microsoft and Internet Explorer, and I'm pretty sure Firefox has it beat in overall importance too. No need to raise ourselves on a pedestal here. --Agamemnon2 08:41, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
        • I would agree that criciticms of Wikipedia is less important than all those things, however this does not mean that criticisms of Wikipedia are not important. - Ta bu shi da yu 12:11, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Merging is the wrong answer. Making the scope of the article neutral is the right answer. And, indeed, Criticisms of communism is an example of the sort of perennial neutrality dispute that results from "Criticism of X" articles with a non-neutral scope. See below. Uncle G 17:21, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Clean Up and Merge into Wikipedia --Arm 13:33, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

  • I'm sick of seeing this thing, frankly. I disagree with this and all other pages titled Criticism of X; I would much rather like to see Evaluations of X or perhaps Critical evaluations of X. Doesn't anybody wonder why we don't have Praise of X or Positive opinions on X articles? Articles like these are ways to exile negative POVs to places where they can do less damage. That has some value, but it's still a poor compromise of our NPOV policy. Opposing viewpoints should be integrated, not separated. These articles attract huge amounts of unverifiable statements and irrelevant fluff as a result of their unquestioning titles.
    That said, I suppose this is just an issue of practicality that is not going to resolve any time soon. Until and if I can finally find the strength to rewrite this thing into Evaluations of Wikipedia and hope it's so great that nobody wants to undo it, I'll leave it alone. JRM · Talk 12:58, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  • IMHO, "Critics" can be quite positive. Unless you mean "Criticasting", which you are doing now, if you ask me (not that anyone did) Nazgjunk - - Signing is for Whimps 16:27, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
    With a dictionary in hand, you may be perfectly correct. Looking at the content of these pages, though, it's clear that most editors do not in fact have a dictionary in hand when editing. "Criticism" is a strongly negative term, regardless of what it can mean or ought to mean in a scholarly context. JRM · Talk 17:26, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
    The distinction doesn't run exactly like that, please stuff the scholarly context back in the closet. "Criticism" and "critic" can be quite neutral, and with words like "bible", "literary", "movie", "theatre", or such in front of them, they are. "Literary criticism" is book reviewing, and "biblical criticism" is about analyzing the bible, not about pointing out weaknesses in it. But "Criticism of X" is negative regardless of context. "Criticism of the bible" would mean pointing out perceived weaknesses in the bible. Therefore, assuming nobody would want to coin a horror like "Wikipedian criticism", a neutral article would indeed need to be called something like "Critical evaluations of Wikipedia". Bishonen | talk 23:00, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • AFD is not the place for solving the problem with this article, since doing so doesn't involve deletion at all.

    See the main discussion at Wikipedia talk:Content_forking#.22Criticism.28s.29_of_....22.

    JRM is exactly right. "Criticism of X" pages are inherently non-neutral, since they only present one side of a debate, contrary to our policy. They are a short route to perennial and unresolvable neutrality disputes. Criticism of Christianity, Criticism of Islam, Criticism of Mormonism, Criticisms of communism, and Criticism of Hinduism all sport neutrality disputes, all because either the scope of the article implies that the only discussion of the subject that exists is negative or the scope of the article inherently advocates the negative point of view. As I wrote at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arguments for the existence of Bigfoot, the way to resolve this problem is to have a single article that encompasses the entire debate, but this is not a matter for AFD, since deletion is not required in order to achieve this. Just rename or merge the article to a neutral title and expand its scope.

    This should have been discussed on Talk:Criticism of Wikipedia as a simple renaming/merger and refactoring proposal and taken to Wikipedia:Requests for comment if there wasn't enough input. Uncle G 17:21, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with that last remark. Which is why I in fact have done this once already. Neither the talk page nor an RFC had any effect, and I strongly suspect nothing short of actually going ahead with the rewrite will. But that's only going to stick if you produce a brilliant article from the start, since otherwise people are going to say you're "acting unilaterally" and "against consensus", which in this case just means you're violating the status quo, and people don't like that. It's pretty hopeless, really. JRM · Talk 17:34, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
I disagree that "criticism of..." pages are inherently non-neutral. The way to make them neutral, obviously, is to list all the noteworthy criticisms (citing them all), and then to list noteworthy rebuttals to all of those criticisms where they exist (citing them all), and counter-rebuttals if those are noteworthy, etc. "Criticism of..." articles aren't just a place for criticism, they're a place about criticism—the history of criticism of communism, for example, or Christianity, would belong in those articles, not just the criticism itself. The fact that an article is too POVed currently does not mean that the topic is inherently POVed. In this case, all it means is that it's unusually difficult to get the article NPOV—though far from impossible, since many of the "Criticism of..." articles (including this one) don't have NPOV stickers on them. Separating Criticism into its own article is only a "POV fork" if (1) no criticism is mentioned as well on the article's main page, even where appropriate, and (2) no responses to criticism are allowed on the criticism page. Those two requirements may not be satisfied quite yet for some of the pages, but they certainly can be in the future. -Silence 19:15, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
That's a nice idea in theory (and I do not believe in "inherently non-neutral" articles either), but the point-counterpoint style is not a very good instance of NPOV either. I am not convinced that criticism of any topic (as opposed to critical evaluations, which is not quite the same thing) should be separated, when endorsement, encouragement or neutral reactions never get split off. In most cases the criticism of a topic is not interesting in and of itself, but in context of the topic. The present structure encourages articles of the form "Topic. X, Y and Z. Oh, but Criticism of Topic." "Criticism of Topic. X is bogus, Y is bogus, Z is bogus." It should be "Topic. X, but maybe X is bogus. Y, but maybe Y is bogus. Z, but maybe Z is bogus." The individual parts can get separate articles again, but it should be unusual and undesirable for (unqualified) criticism to be a topic in and of itself. It makes things unnecessarily hard and obscures the broad picture. It's an easy way to split up an article, but I'd argue it's a suboptimal one. JRM · Talk 19:42, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
A number of the articles caught up in previous edit wars -- especially religious articles -- seemed to settle down after a "Criticism of..." section was created. (Examples: Criticism of Prem Rawat, Scientology controversy.) The reasoning here seemed to satisfy both the proponents and opponents of the "critics" of these groups. Those who wanted to place negative information about the groups were generally content that they were able to keep their information and links in the spotlight, with prominent links to their article on the main page; meanwhile, supporters of the groups in question were largely free to add their own information to the main page while letting the critics have their say in the "criticism" article. --Modemac 13:08, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't dispute that this will help stop edit wars for controversial topics. It is a compromise, a truce of sorts, a way to prevent you from having to face the harsh and complex demands of NPOV. Splitting up an article in an unbiased/pro part and a contra part is not neutral. Our job is not to keep editors con\tent, but to provide an integral story to our readers. Basically, NPOV is hard, tough noogies. Why not Criticism of George W. Bush? Sure would cool some edit wars. No. That's Wikinfo's modus operandi, not ours. By doing this we give up, saying "maybe NPOV is just impossible/not worth it".
And besides—we're talking Wikipedia here, not religion. Do we really think Wikipedia editors will be unable to exercise restraint when faced with criticism of "their" encyclopedia? I value us a little higher than that, really. JRM · Talk 01:32, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Like in religion, some will be able to exercise restraint and others will not. I'll have you know I'm a "religious" person. - Ta bu shi da yu 11:11, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
And we have plenty of Bush supporters too, I wager. My comment was not directed at particular groups or individuals. I trust my implication that some topics will attract more and more heated conflicts than others is not challenged. Wikipedia is special because it's personal too all of us, and because it is, we should respect NPOV even more than for other topics if we want any hope of looking good. JRM · Talk 15:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
True, just wanted to point this out. - Ta bu shi da yu 04:38, 7 December 2005 (UTC)


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.