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Wikipedia and tautologies

Saturday 12 September 2009, by Toots

So it has been said that wikipedia was a move from a world of experts to a world were everybody has the right to speak. Not that I dislike that, but I strongly believe it has its limits.

I realized that by reading again and again the same propositions for rejection about artists that are not considered notable. I really believe this notion is flawed. It has the same problem has in science: defining what is notable needs that you be part of the domain.

Not all contributors have the same understanding of why this or that artist/theory should be considered notable, and the fact that anyone can propose a page for deletion just leads to an encyclopedia where there are only pages about Michael Jackson or the Beatles.

This is really striking when you consider the notability page for music [1]. It is a very good example of what is a tautology [2]...

For instance:

9. Has won or placed in a major music competition.
(...)
11. Has been placed in rotation nationally by any major radio network.

Footnotes

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(music)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(rhetoric)

4 Forum messages

  • Wikipedia and tautologies Le 13 September 2009 à 10:10 , by martin f. krafft

    I very much agree with you, and it’s IMHO a shortcoming of Wikipedia. Why restrict information when you do not have to pay attention to cost-per-page and printing issues? Quality assurance is still needed, but the notability concept, along with the deletionists (I call them content police) are hurting the project and making it less useful.

    Of course I am biased: http://madduck.net/blog/2009.06.11:...

    Reply to this message

    • Wikipedia and tautologies Le 13 September 2009 à 19:47 , by Toots

      Tanks for your comment. I did not know this story, which is somehow very representative of this kind of issues.

      However, I don’t personally stand in any of the deletionist of inclusionist point. Most of the time I am in favour of inclusionism, in particular in the domain of art, where it is really difficult to be objective and it doesn’t cost much to add more pages.

      On the contrary, in the domain of science, it is really a pain to deal with inclusionists when some random guy created a page about some fake science like magnetisme or else.

      All in all, the thing that is really relevant is the degree of expertise that a contributor may have in the topic. Which, indeed, comes with conflict of interest, otherwise it would be too easy :)

      Reply to this message

    • Wikipedia and tautologies Le 13 September 2009 à 22:13

      I’ve seen the same issue with a couple of artists that have gone viral a couple of times.

      Often with these bands it is hard to show they exist outside the Internet, but on the other hand most of them have already had their work viewed by tens of millions of people, and often somewhere like Wikipedia is the only place to find independent reference to them (that and their own MySpace page). Most of them do have an existence outside of the Internet, and usually with the success they have a few TV appearances.

      In one case both artists in a group already had Wiki pages for other aspects of their creative work, but because they only do the Internet stuff together as mates from school, and it isn’t highbrow, it would usually not be recorded. This is why so many folk songs got lost.

      A lot of these articles were incredibly poorly written, which I’m sure make it harder for Wikipedia’s bots to sort wheat from chaff. Most cases the articles can be saved just by tidying it up, linking to some mainstream press coverage of the artist, and challenging or removing the deletion request. Which I guess is the point - Wiki wants encyclopedia articles not just odd footnotes about less well known bands. It doesn’t have to be extensive, just has to be done the wikipedia way.

      Reply to this message

      • Wikipedia and tautologies Le 13 September 2009 à 22:30 , by Toots

        Yes, indeed, the quality matter. However, there are well written articles that are also challenged.

        The precise article that made me write this post was about the artist named Victor Démé on the french wikipedia.

        The guy is a huge star in his home country and has just released an album on the independant french label Makasound.

        However, since for the european-centered guys on WP he has only made one album, the relevance of the page is challenged.

        That really sucks, and I am sure none of the guys that challenge this page have anything to do with african music and as such are really not entitled for claiming anything about this page, except, of course, about the quality of the content.

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