Wikipedia vs. the Webcomics, Take II

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

Life and other people have both taught me to stop caring about things.

[Sortelli]

It is fifteen kinds of ridiculous that my entry remains.

[Dr Legostar]

my comic has never had an actual entry of its own, but references to my comic have been purged from the entries for "red shirt" "cthulhu" and "pirates vs ninjas"

a reference (but no link) to my comic remains on the page for "Lego" however, which just makes me grin.

however the other lego comic mentioned on the "Lego" page, Irregular Webcomic, does have a wiki page that appears to have avoided the purges.

[Dr Neo Lao]

Well, I suppose that if Wiki P has certain things it won't touch (webcomics in this case) and there are "niche" Wiki's devoted to those things (such as Comixpedia) then the logical outcome would be to encourage Wiki P to simply put a link to the niche Wiki with a note saying "go over there".

If done properly, it would look like one Ultra Wiki, except that the more specialized stuff has it's own Wiki.

Unless of course, a "niche" Wiki is "not notable"

I'll wander over to Comixpedia to see just how hard it is to do a Wiki entry there...

[Komiyan]

It is fifteen kinds of ridiculous that my entry remains.

Join me, with our oddly undeleteable entries we shall RULE!

To be serious, though, I said this on a Spot thread and I'll paste it here:

I wish people would stop trying to make Wiki host content that it doesn't seem to want to host. In the grand scheme of things, there are only a handful of "notable" webcomics that have had any impact on culture as a whole, and let's face it, we're talking Penny Arcade and that's almost it.

Sorry guys, I think this is a silly debate and webcomickers are looking pretty childish as a result of it.

[Kisai]

Don't use Wikipedia. Period.


The problem is Wikipedia at some point became the new google, thereby bringing all the crap that comes along with it. That includes millions of useless articles with bad content. It also leaves a bad taste in any new wikipedia editors mouth when editors like Dragonfiend just beat them to death with a notability guideline that is not a policy.

I honestly tried this game once, editing, following some webcomics, and decided that this was just a stacked deck. It kinda reminds me of some policies at work. If it's clearly bad, any weak excuse can kill something.

Why would anyone ever want to use wikipedia after being told their article is crap, *delete* ? It's like being escorted by security and thrown out from places you interview for a job at for doing nothing more than trying.

Don't use Wikipedia.

[Komiyan]

If I need to look up how many teeth a tiger shark has in a hurry, damn right I'll use wiki. Just because they don't want to host an article about MS Paint Catgirl Princess or even an article about my own comic doesn't stop it from being a useful site in a pinch.

[Zwuh]

Webcomic people think they're pretty bloody important.

[C.w.]

Well, from what i gathered from the slashdot article on it earlier today, deletion has sort of become a sort of passive agressive thing.

Not to mention the amazing amount of useless articles in other catagories.

[Dr Legostar]

Webcomic people think they're pretty bloody important.

we're.. we're not?

[Levi-chan]

You and your disregard for my feelings! MY FEEEEEEEELLLINGS

[Bustertheclown]

Webcomic people think they're pretty bloody important.

Get outta my head!

[McDuffies]

Here's the (most accurate) list of comics that were purged according to Comixpedia:

A Doemain of Our Own, Abby's Agency, Acredale/Apathy Kat, Acts of Gord, Akaelae, Altermeta, Angel Moxie, Ashfield Online, Astounding Space Thrills, Badly Drawn Kitties, Boat Anchor, Bobbins, Building 12, Carpe Diem, The Class Menagerie, Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break, The Cyantian Chronicles, Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, Dead Days, Dragon Tails, Evil Inc., ExtraLife, Flipside, Fluble, Full Frontal Nerdity, Funny Farm, Gene Catlow, Goblin Hollow, Krakow, Krazy Larry, Living in Greytown, Lizard!, Marilith, Misfile, Movie Punks, Namir Deiter, Nerd Boy, No 4th Wall to Break, Pastel Defender Heliotrope, Poisoned Minds, Purple Pussy, Return to Sender, Shifters, Sore Thumbs, Spamusement, The Suburban Jungle, Superosity, Tales From Band Camp, Tales Of The Questor, Unicorn Jelly, The Way To Your Heart, Whimville, White Ninja, and Zortic

I could be wrong, but at least a few of those are pretty big comics.

And I can't see any that should be on wikipedia. I'm all for non-notable stuff being removed from wikipedia, it just needs to be applied fairly to all subject areas.

For example:
This is not notable.
This is not notable.
This is not notable.

Wikipedia should be contain either everything, or specialised areas. I feel that it should remain specialised like traditional encyclopaedias. If you want information about anything, that's what the internet is for. We don't need one website for that.

I'm happy to know that I'm not the only one here who actually thinks that Wikipedia should be more strict.
Sertiously, when you try to read entries on manga series or old sci-fi shows, you find so much crap that you'd have to be obsessive to care about. If you have a list of characters of some minor manga series that's one thing, but when you have a detailed description of every character with explanations why this character belongs to one stereotype and not to the other and references to arguements of groups of manga fan about which type of stereotype it belongs... well the only thing that you can possibly learn from that is how too much time in front of computer affects someone's brain.
Other times editors are awfully literal and anal. It's like when you read short descriptions of South Park description - I guess it's interesting when they spot inconsistencies from episode to episode, but when they try to make explanations for those inconsistencies... dude, that's the series where one character dies in every episode! The only reason inconsistencies are there is because authors don't think they're important enough to pay attention to them! And if they don't think, then neither should we.
If you ask me, all that should go, together with webcomic entries started by either authors or hyperactive fans. Sure, criteria isn't the same for us as is for said manga obsesees, but several years ago we turned attention to ourselves by "cleverly" trying to organize the action of entering *all* webcomics in wikipedia (thus using someone else's payed space for making our personal webcomic index) and since then they have their eye on us. Other communities didn't make such incidents so there you have it.

Look folks, we are people inside webcomic world, we read about them every day, it's our world so all those things are important to us. What we have to realise is that they aren't as important to everyone else, furthermore that, being in webcomics, we've pretty much lost the sence of how much these things are important outside of our close circles. It's like a kid saying that "Harry Potter" is the best book every written, while barely having knowledge of literature in general.

We aren't capable of judging whether our stuff is notable to other people!

Therefore leave the judgement to other people.

There's one more thing to ponder. Many articles about popular culture, specially culture on margines of notability, such as webcomics, are written in an obviously fanboyish style, in a style that's far from objective journalistic that you expect to see on wikipedia, and many others are just copied from the original website. Not only that such style doesn't match wiki's criterium, but it also suggests that subject is not notable in a sence that it wasn't a subject of objective observer. If you wonder why Purple Pussy or Superocity are deleted while others less known comics stay, well perhaps the answer is in style in which the article is written.
One thing that authors of webcomic articles could to to help keep their articles from deletion is writing them in more objective, professional manner, and stripping them from data that only a fanboy would be interested in.

And seriously, if you were someone who approached the topic unbiased and read this:

Much of the criticism has been focused on Wikipedia editor Dragonfiend, who has described notability as "whether a topic has been noted by independent reputable sources". She has said that "If we include every article that anyone wants to write, then the encyclopedia becomes useless because nobody can find the actual needle of worthwhile information on a topic hidden in that hay stack of trivia."

then this:

Erfworld and PartiallyClips writer Rob Balder has expressed similar viewpoints, calling the deletion of the webcomics articles a "goddamned crime" and describing a "deletionist jihad" by "the politest bunch of book-burning assholes on the planet".

which of these two people would you take seriously? I mean, really.

[Deathbringer]

People see big webcomics like Penny Arcade and say "I can do this!" (badly)

They see an entry for a big webcomic on Wikipedia and say "I can do this!" (cheesily)

IMO if you want your comics to be on a Wiki, put them on Comixpedia, which does encourage entries by the authors themselves (they seem to be going for completeness over notability, so if you're your only reader do it anyway), and seems to let anything stay up, even people with a sprite comic who create individual pages for all the characters including one-offs (which i think is a bit much, i use one page per comic, even Agent Smoke which also includes a big description of the politics and culture of the country it's set in )

[Warren]

Webcomic people think they're pretty bloody important.

Just try missing a few student loan payments and Nelnet thinks you're pretty important too.