Comet (programming) on Wikipedia on 4th June 2008 (via) The last useful version (which I had pointed many people to) before it was gutted down to just a couple of paragraphs by infuriating deletionists.
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Comet (programming) on Wikipedia on 4th June 2008 (via) The last useful version (which I had pointed many people to) before it was gutted down to just a couple of paragraphs by infuriating deletionists.
Ugh. I'd classify that as an ugly regression. The new article reads worse than your random Britney Spears lyrics.
And the amusing thing is, the bottom of the article now says:
"This computer programming-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it."
Ooh - looks like someone switched it back again in the last couple of minutes.
I think that's a little unfair Simon.
The user who edited down the article did so in a step by step fashion citing what looks like pretty reasonable arguments (non-POV, COI, etc) - and if anything, the article's main author has refused to respond to each point on it's own merit, instead choosing to mass revert back to "his" version.
Noah Slater - 16th June 2008 11:37 - #
I was pretty careful with my description of the culprit - I picked "infuriating deletionsists" because I, personally, find deletionists infuriating - especially when they're willing to wipe out over a year's worth of collected work.
Hi Noah:
He removed 85% of the article in less than an hour, paragraph by paragraph, with rather unconvincing short summaries of each removal. I bulk reverted in an attempt to start a discussion of what the article *should* have, on the talk page (notice, I did not say my goal was preserving the article unchanged, etc.), but instead of having that discussion he insisted on keeping his chopped-to-bits version.
At some point, edit warring with a user completely unfamiliar with the topic and absolutely biased against it is not worth my time, so I mostly gave up.
I think the article, as it was before, remained fairly NPOV (though I readily admit that I do have strong personal opinions about the topic), but I certainly welcome a real discussion about that, and editors interested in actually writing an NPOV article, rather than merely a (notice, not even very accurate) stub, should get involved. Whatever biases there were can surely be worked on in a process aiming for a comprehensive and fair treatment of the topic.
Jacob Rus - 16th June 2008 15:07 - #
Apparently "vandalism" is the new name for "putting content back": http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comet_%2 8programming%29&diff=prev&oldid=219716661
Paul Mison - 16th June 2008 16:47 - #
Simon/Jacob, sure, I guess that makes sense. I know how infuriating edit wars can be, from both sides. It does seem fairly clear that he should have opened up discussion before going ahead with such substantial edits.
Appologies for jumping the gun. :)
Noah Slater - 16th June 2008 17:02 - #
For reasons such as those demonstrated in this case, I don't know why anyone would put their own content on Wikipedia if they could offer an alternative location. Sharing content is one thing; having people tidy it up or "improve" it is quite another.
Paul Boddie - 17th June 2008 16:50 - #
This sort of behavior is pretty frustrating.
They're just asking for a revert-bot running through tor. :-/
Jeremy Dunck - 18th June 2008 03:03 - #