This « rule » is infuriating. Google searches are tailored to serve us content that might interest us. In this case, Google search first page returns plenty of notable results for me. Might not be the case for a person interested in geology and dogs, though.
How could such a biased thing be a valid WikiPedia criteria?
"Self-Organizing Social Learning Through the Monastery Gates" ( Rose M. Baker & David L. Passmore : The Pennsylvania State University ; 2005 )
"Abstract
An example of an emergent, self-organizing on-line social
learning system is available at the PerlMonks site at
http://perlmonks.org/. Perl is a scripting language
commonly used to as an interface between databases and
web pages. Provided in this paper is a review of principles
of emergent, self-organizing systems from a perspective
of learning systems as well as case study of PerlMonks as
self-organizing eLearning."
The reasons for deletion don't seem that outlandish to me. I'd rather not see them deleted, but I also don't think this outcome is that surprising, nor would I describe it as a "memory wipe."
The CPAN page on Wikipedia has existed for 24 years, has dozens of references, yet an editor nominated it for deletion - I can't help but feel that as hostile. Fortunately this one has been voted "keep", but still...
That article wouldn't be deleted, because I can find 20 or so references in paper publications saying things like "The Stack Exchange family of websites is a Q&A service for developers and other technical roles. If you’re stuck on a problem, the chances are someone else was too and turned to Stack Exchange for help", or in some cases doing a quick bio of Jeff Atwood or mentioning codinghorror.
Hmm, OTOH I can also find multiple paper references to perlmonks, such as "Perlmonks is a web bulletin board dedicated to Perl. It’s not specifically a help desk, but if you’ve done your homework and ask a good question, you’re likely to get top-notch help very quickly" - that's from the O'Reilly Perl book. Sometimes I'm overoptimistic about these things, because I want to keep every obscure article.
Well, Perlmonks is still mentioned on the articles for Perl, Outline of the Perl programming language, Perl language structure, and Perl Foundation. (This is because deletionists are lazy and don't actually like doing a thorough job.) So I could see Perlmonks becoming a redirect to one of those pages, which could describe it in a section. Similarly, if Stack Exchange faded into obscurity, it might be rolled into a section of Jeff Atwood's page (or vice versa).
I'll never understand the amount of vitriol Wikipedia volunteers must receive. Why is the deletion (or even deletion proposal) regarded as such a heinous act that people feel the need to attack and bully others?
I find this kind of behaviour and rethoric wholly unacceptable.
> Why is the deletion (or even deletion proposal) regarded as such a heinous act that people feel the need to attack and bully others?
FWIW I don't see this as an attack (with, perhaps, the exception of a couple of comments in the linked thread) and posted the link to the reddit thread as I see it more as an interesting observation around the myriad issues facing "legacy" languages and communities. To wit:
* Google appears to be canon for finding secondary sources, according to the various arguments in the deletion proposals, yet we're all aware of how abysmal Google's search has been for a while now.
* What's the future of this policy given the fractured nature of the web these days, walled gardens, and now LLMs?
* An article's history appears to be irrelevant in the deletion discussion: the CPAN page (now kept) had 24 years of history on Wikipedia, with dozens of sources, yet was nominated for deletion.
* Link rot is pervasive, we all knew this, but just how much of Wikipedia is being held up by the waybackmachine?
* Doesn't this become a negative feedback cycle? Few sources exist, therefore we remove sources, therefore fewer sources exist.
People get extremely frustrated and upset about arbitrary rules, especially when they are imposed inconsistently.
From the talk page it seems like exactly three people were involved in deciding if this was worth deleting and they indicated they could not find evidence of notability. Meanwhile I found a Register article about PerlMonks in minutes and there are pointers here to Google Scholar references as well.
When the bar for deletion is “a couple of people who didn’t try very hard didn’t find notability” is it any wonder that there’s pushback? This feels entirely arbitrary.
Consider the other perspective: how should Perl programmers feel when Google's index becomes the main criterion for what is considered important or not? This creates a circular dependency that can erase genuine technical contributions from the historical record.
pella|2 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion...
"From a Google search, I wasn’t able to find" appears multiple times on that page alone.
jorams|2 months ago
> This article is exclusively sourced on primary sources.
The Google search is the nominator looking for an alternative source that could make it notable, something earlier editors failed to establish.
smonff|2 months ago
How could such a biased thing be a valid WikiPedia criteria?
snvzz|2 months ago
Neat. Not.
pella|2 months ago
"Abstract
An example of an emergent, self-organizing on-line social learning system is available at the PerlMonks site at http://perlmonks.org/. Perl is a scripting language commonly used to as an interface between databases and web pages. Provided in this paper is a review of principles of emergent, self-organizing systems from a perspective of learning systems as well as case study of PerlMonks as self-organizing eLearning."
PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rose-Baker/publication/...
via google scholar:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22perlmonks.org%22
Philpax|2 months ago
leejo|2 months ago
dpark|2 months ago
mrjay42|2 months ago
I searched it, the site is down The Wikipedia article is deleted
This is pure loss of information somehow.
I and a lot of other people in the future will never know what "perlmonks" is/are, how important it was?, etc. etc.
The logic seems to be: if tomorrow Stack Exchange disappears, the Wikipedia article will be deleted? If yes, then that makes zero sense.
card_zero|2 months ago
Hmm, OTOH I can also find multiple paper references to perlmonks, such as "Perlmonks is a web bulletin board dedicated to Perl. It’s not specifically a help desk, but if you’ve done your homework and ask a good question, you’re likely to get top-notch help very quickly" - that's from the O'Reilly Perl book. Sometimes I'm overoptimistic about these things, because I want to keep every obscure article.
Well, Perlmonks is still mentioned on the articles for Perl, Outline of the Perl programming language, Perl language structure, and Perl Foundation. (This is because deletionists are lazy and don't actually like doing a thorough job.) So I could see Perlmonks becoming a redirect to one of those pages, which could describe it in a section. Similarly, if Stack Exchange faded into obscurity, it might be rolled into a section of Jeff Atwood's page (or vice versa).
cedilla|2 months ago
I find this kind of behaviour and rethoric wholly unacceptable.
leejo|2 months ago
FWIW I don't see this as an attack (with, perhaps, the exception of a couple of comments in the linked thread) and posted the link to the reddit thread as I see it more as an interesting observation around the myriad issues facing "legacy" languages and communities. To wit:
* Google appears to be canon for finding secondary sources, according to the various arguments in the deletion proposals, yet we're all aware of how abysmal Google's search has been for a while now.
* What's the future of this policy given the fractured nature of the web these days, walled gardens, and now LLMs?
* An article's history appears to be irrelevant in the deletion discussion: the CPAN page (now kept) had 24 years of history on Wikipedia, with dozens of sources, yet was nominated for deletion.
* Link rot is pervasive, we all knew this, but just how much of Wikipedia is being held up by the waybackmachine?
* Doesn't this become a negative feedback cycle? Few sources exist, therefore we remove sources, therefore fewer sources exist.
dpark|2 months ago
From the talk page it seems like exactly three people were involved in deciding if this was worth deleting and they indicated they could not find evidence of notability. Meanwhile I found a Register article about PerlMonks in minutes and there are pointers here to Google Scholar references as well.
When the bar for deletion is “a couple of people who didn’t try very hard didn’t find notability” is it any wonder that there’s pushback? This feels entirely arbitrary.
pella|2 months ago
ptrl600|2 months ago
I wonder if there are any privileged Wikipedia accounts who have defected and are doing a sci-hub thing.
hulitu|2 months ago
"Those who control the past, control the future"
pella|2 months ago
HN https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=perlmonks.org
HN-Search: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=perlmonks
DrScientist|2 months ago
Why is that still relevant?
Or to put it another way when does the contemporary move into interesting history?
EdwardDiego|2 months ago
Apples and oranges.
pwdisswordfishy|2 months ago
csvance|2 months ago
smonff|2 months ago