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.
> 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.
Nobody is forcing you to use Google. If you can provide an acceptable source without the help of Google, go ahead. But the burden of proof is on the one who claims sources exist.
> 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.
Such is life when anyone can nominate anything at any moment... and when many articles that should have never been submitted in the first place slip through cracks of haphazard volunteer quality control. (Stack Overflow also suffers from the latter.)
The sources is the only part that matters. And they sufficed to keep the CPAN article on site, so the system works.
> Doesn't this become a negative feedback cycle? Few sources exist, therefore we remove sources, therefore fewer sources exist.
It was wrong to submit the article without sourcing in the first place. Circular sourcing is not allowed.
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.
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.
pwdisswordfishy|2 months ago
Nobody is forcing you to use Google. If you can provide an acceptable source without the help of Google, go ahead. But the burden of proof is on the one who claims sources exist.
> 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.
Such is life when anyone can nominate anything at any moment... and when many articles that should have never been submitted in the first place slip through cracks of haphazard volunteer quality control. (Stack Overflow also suffers from the latter.)
The sources is the only part that matters. And they sufficed to keep the CPAN article on site, so the system works.
> Doesn't this become a negative feedback cycle? Few sources exist, therefore we remove sources, therefore fewer sources exist.
It was wrong to submit the article without sourcing in the first place. Circular sourcing is not allowed.
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
smonff|2 months ago
If Google index becomes a criterion of notability, we are in a deep deep shit.
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"